full of dials and levers and words like "parsecs" and "off ram—on ram," and his head was full of dreams.

The Hester. Ever so slightly scored along her sides with the nailhead meteorites she had brushed rushingly aside. An imperceptible waver in her hull where a Panasia heat shell had nearly downed her. Glamorous witch of space. Cleopatra's needle of outer gulfs.

He knew about her. The Federation had won the war when they began casting rockets of the new, light, tough glass, mass-producing swarms to oust Panasia in the battles fought in the black deeps beyond the bounds of earth with weapons that would have destroyed both sides if used on the home planet. And after the war, thousands of the rockets had been sold, and many had gone to the young men like Murph whom the war had made into spacemen before they had a chance at any other business and who did not want now, ever, to be anything but spacemen, rocketmen. They went about the country selling rocket rides. Tradition had given them a name from another postwar epoch: barnstormers.

Pete handed the wrench to the barnstormer. "Which are the dark-light controls?"

"Holy tubes," grinned Murph, pushing the black hair from his eyes, "If you weren't such a handy kid you'd be a nuisance. Here." He pushed a button, and the dark hull grew clear, letting in the sunlight. Murph pushed deeper, and the hull darkened. He twirled and a long, clear porthole appeared along the rows of seats.

"Polaroid can keep radion or light—sunlight can be enough to kill you. Or you can clear a place to look through."

"Can I work it, huh?"

"Just once."

Pete manipulated the button. Then he held his breath, glanced at Murph, and slipped into the pilot's cradle. It was too wide and deep but he imagined that he filled it. He imagined the switchboard alive and winking and his body weighing a thousand tons, then weighing nothing at all. The Hester had passed escape velocity, cast off gravity, and earth lay already ten thousand miles behind her. The board showed she had slewed a little because of the slight warp in the hull. He corrected course. Then he cut power, and the ship went driving on with nothing to stop it at thirty thousand miles an hour.

Murph let him sit there a full minute. Then he lifted him down.

"Let's go outside, see if there's any business."

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