through its cycle. "But if you'd like to join in a little small talk about the universe at large, I'll be thankful for company. You realize, don't you, that this is the first time the bride and groom have really been alone together since they were married?"

She frowned. "Let's not talk about that, Bill Drake," she said.

"Why not? Afraid that if we mention it too often we might suddenly realize we're married?"

She nodded her head slowly. "Something like that."

I shut off the projector. I had no interest in astrogation at the moment. "Is that why you avoid me?"

"I don't avoid you."

"You always find time to horse around with Morrie," I said.

Now she smiled. "Are you by any chance jealous?" she asked. "If you are, you have no right."

"Damnit, I'm not. I just want equal time," I said. "I should have the right to want as much time with my legal wife as those other bums."

"I'm doing the laundry with you," she said teasingly. "That's the first time I've done that with anybody on this ship."

"I'm in your debt, gracious lady," I said. There was a trace of sarcasm, less than I felt, in my voice.

She heard it, too, and gave me a sharp glance. "I do want to talk to you about something, Bill Drake," she said.

"Sure. The laundry doesn't need attention. Let's talk."

"You've noticed that we're not the jolly little group we started out to be when we first boarded the ship, haven't you?"

"Yes, but it's because we're getting bored. We've been going around the earth in a spiral, like a merry-go-round. We don't seem to be getting anyplace."

"That's not what I mean," she said. "We are getting someplace. The spiral widens a little more each turn. Very soon now—perhaps within hours—we'll break away from the earth. We all realize it. And the farther away from earth we go, the less we'll feel bound by standards of the earth."

I frowned. "I don't see what you're driving at, Gail."

She 

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