He thought they sounded like the hum of bees on a warm summer day. He
shivered, feeling that cold knife of fear slide into his vitals.
A giant hand slammed him in the chest, thrust him deep into the folds
of the acceleration chair. His breath was driven from his lungs. He
gasped, strained for air painfully. The die was cast, he realized
bitterly. There could be no turning back now. They were off.
In a few minutes the pressure slackened. He could turn his head. The
girl, he saw, had uncoupled her safety and was rising. He followed her
example, stood up unsteadily. The artificial gravity, two-thirds that
on Earth, was in effect. It gave him a light giddy sensation. He didn't
think he was going to enjoy the voyage.
"Isn't it delightful?" said the girl. "It always makes me feel
positively sylph-like."
Now that she was standing he could see how slim was her waist, how full
her hips, how long her legs. She stirred some atavistic sense in him. A
vein throbbed in his throat. I'm reacting like an animal, he thought.
Disgusting.
The girl held out her hand, said, "I'm Jennifer Scott. I'm going home
to Ganymede."
He took her hand, introduced himself. "I've been employed to lecture on
Ancient History at the Ganymede Seminar."
Jennifer clapped her hands. "Grand. Papa is commandant of the military
post. The fort is only a short distance from the Seminar. We'll be
neighbors. You'll love Ganymede. It's so wild and primitive."
"No doubt," he replied dryly.
Jennifer glanced at her watch, said, "It's time for lunch. I'm
ravenous. Shall we try the saloon or the grill." She seemed to have
assumed proprietorship of him. He rather liked it. He said, "Let's try
the dining saloon."
As he piloted her across the lounge, he observed again how few people
had booked passage. The fear returned, squeezed at his stomach. He said:
"Do you think it was wise to make the crossing at a time like this?"
"What?" said Jennifer. "Oh. You mean the terror. No, I suppose it
wasn't, and papa will be frantic. He sent me a spaceogram absolutely
forbidding me to return. But I was fed up."
"Fed up?"
"Yes, fed up with Earth and their dull stuffy ways," said the girl
passionately. "They're dead. They've forgotten how to play, or fight or
make love."
Norman Saint Clair was shocked. People who went to the Colonies, he had
always supposed, were driven to some such drastic step by the force of
circumstance--economic, possibly, as was his case. This view came as a
revelation, an unpleasant one.
"Anyway," continued the girl; "we're off. It's too late now."
They fell in behind a fat Earth woman, entered the passage which led
to the dining saloon. He started to ask the girl what she had found so
unpleasant about Earth, when the fat woman stopped, said: "Oh, my God!"
Then she began to scream. The screams lifted the hair right off Norman
Saint Clair's neck.