Then, suddenly, we are back on Mass-Time again.
At first being on Mass-Time makes everything seem normal again. By sleep time there is a strain, and next day it is everywhere. I know as well as any that on Mass-Time the greater the mass the faster the shift; all the same I cannot help feeling we are being slowed, dragged back by the dead ship coupled to our live one.
When you stand by the hull _Gilgamesh_ is only ten feet away.
I should have kept something to work on like B and Kirsty who have not done their Letters for Home in Case of Accidents; mine is signed and sealed long ago. I am making a good start on a Neurosis when Delano-Smith announces a Meeting for one hour ahead.
Hurrah! now there is a time-mark fixed I think of all sorts of things I should have done before; for instance taking a look at the controls of the Hoppers.
I have been in one of them half an hour and figured out most of the dials--Up down and sideways are controlled much as in a helicar, but here a big viewscreen has been hooked in to the autopilot--when across the hold I see the air lock start to move.
It takes forever to open. When at last it swings wide on the dark tunnel what comes through is a storage rack, empty, floating on antigrav.
What follows is a figure in a spacesuit; modern type, but the windows of the hopper are semipolarized and I cannot make out the face inside the bubble top.
He slings the rack upon the bulkhead, takes off the helmet and hangs that up, too. Then he just stands. I am beginning to muster enough sense to wonder why when he comes slowly across the hold.
Reaching the doorway he says: "Oh it's you, Lizzie. You'll have to help me out of this. I'm stuck."
The outside of the suit is still freezing cold; maybe this is what has jammed the fastening. After a few minutes tugging it suddenly gives away. M'Clare climbs out of the suit, leaving it standing, and says, "Help me count these, will you?"
_These_ are a series of transparent containers from a pouch slung at one side of the suit. I recognize them as the envelopes in which we put what are referred to as Personal Background Sets.
"No," says M'Clare dreamily, "twenty-two, we're saving one of them."
"What on earth is the use of an extra set of faked documents and oddments--"