He and Eva and Charity and the gang and the whole of satellite V were falling forward towards Jupiter; their unevent-ful cooped-up lives on Jupiter V were utterly unreal compared to the four hours of each changeless day spent on Jupiter’s everchanging surface. Every new day brought their minds, like ships out of control, closer and closer to that gaudy inferno.
There was no other way for a manor a womanon Jupiter V to look at the giant planet. It was simple experience, shared by all of them, that planets do not occupy four-fifths of the whole sky, unless the observer is himself up there m that planet’s sky, falling, falling faster and faster “I have no intention,” he said tiredly, “of blowing up the Bridge. I wish you could get it through your head that I want the Bridge to stay upeven though I’m not starry-eyed to the point of incompetence about the project. Did you think that rotten spot was going to go away by itself when you’d painted it over? Didn’t you know that”
Several helmeted, masked heads nearby turned blindly towards the sound of his voice. Helmuth shut up. Any distract-ing conversation or activity was taboo, down here in the gang room. He motioned Eva back to duty.
The girl donned her helmet obediently enough, but it was plain from the way her normally full lips were thinned that she thought Helmuth had ended the argument only in order to have the last word.
Helmuth strode to the thick pillar which ran down the central axis of the shack, and mounted the spiralling cleats towards his own foreman’s cubicle. Already he felt in anticipation the weight of the helmet upon his own head.