Geddes followed suit, but Hovic stood fast.

"He can stay sober for my part," Hovic growled. "Let him go back to his gambling friends and his wenches if he wants a handout."

Hanlon pocketed his alms and grinned at Geddes, the hangdog look melting before his old recklessness. "Keep a close eye on my pal Hovic, Ged. Ten to one he cracks up on you at null-area and finishes the trip under hypnol."

They forgot him the instant he was gone, turning to their last-minute packing, laying out the heavy coveralls they would wear during the flight, shaving and showering before their final nap.

In the shower, Geddes caught Lowe fingering the pale scar of his appendectomy and frowning thoughtfully. Without his dentures Lowe looked older and uncertain and somehow shrunken, and in spite of his conditioned calm Geddes felt a cold stirring of alarm.

"Forget Hanlon's carping," he said. He punched Lowe in the ribs, trying to be jocular. "Those Foundation medics know what they're about. Come on, we've got to get our beauty sleep before the jumpoff."

When they awoke three hours later and dressed for the flight they found that Hanlon had paid them a second visit and had stolen all three of their wrist chronometers, expensive instruments easily negotiable for their weight in platinum.

"Cheap at the price," said Geddes, and shrugged away the loss with conditioned equanimity. Lowe had no comment. Only Hovic grumbled.

"Those chronos will keep him in Irish whiskey for weeks," he said. "I hope the louse drinks himself to death on it."

On that note they went down to the Foundation staff car that waited to take them to the launching site—three calm, resolute young men, serenely confident and prepared for anything.

They arrived at dusk, just as the last supply drum was being hoisted into the vertical bronze spindle of the Terra IV. They went up the tall personnel ladder, undisturbed by the actinic lightnings of photographers' flash-bulbs, and vanished one at a time into the belly of the ship that was finally to bridge the emptiness between Earth and Venus. They sealed the port, checked the instrument gauges and the medicine cabinet with its hypnol equipment, and strapped themselves down on jointed pneumatic acceleration couches.

A red-glowing bulb on the 

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