There was again weightlessness.  A rocket-ship doesn’t burn its rocket-engines all the time.  It runs them to get started, and it runs them to stop, but it does not run them to travel.  This ship was floating above the Earth, which might be a vast sunlit ball filling half the universe below the rocket, or might be a blackness as of the Pit.  Cochrane had lost track of time, but not of the shattering effect of being snatched from the job he knew and thought important, to travel incredibly to do something he had no idea of.  He felt, in his mind, like somebody who climbs stairs in the dark and tries to take a step that isn’t there.  It was a shock to find that his work wasn’t important even in the eyes of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe.  That he didn’t count.  That nothing counted ...

There was another dull booming outside and another touch of weight.  Then the rocket floated on endlessly.

A long time later, something touched the ship’s outer hull.  It was a definite, positive clanking sound.  And then there was the gentlest and vaguest of tuggings, and Cochrane could feel the ship being maneuvered.  He knew it had made contact with the space platform and was being drawn inside its lock.

There was still no weight.  The stewardess began to unstrap the passengers one by one, supplying each with magnetic-soled slippers.  Cochrane heard her giving instructions in their use.  He knew the air-lock was being filled with air from the huge, globular platform.  In time the door at the back—­bottom—­base of the passenger-compartment opened.  Somebody said flatly: 

“Space platform!  The ship will be in this air-lock for some three hours plus for refueling.  Warning will be given before departure.  Passengers have the freedom of the platform and will be given every possible privilege.”

The magnetic-soled slippers did hold one’s feet to the spiral ramp, but one had to hold on to a hand-rail to make progress.  On the way down to the exit door, Cochrane encountered Babs.  She said breathlessly: 

“I can’t believe I’m really here!”

“I can believe it,” said Cochrane, “without even liking it particularly.  Babs, who told you to come on this trip?  Where’d all the orders come from?”

“Mr. Hopkins’ secretary,” said Babs happily.  “She didn’t tell me to come.  I managed that!  She said for me to name two science men and two writers who could work with you.  I told her one writer was more than enough for any production job, but you’d need me.  I assumed it was a production job.  So she changed the orders and here I am!”

“Fine!” said Cochrane.  His sense of the ironic deepened.  He’d thought he was an executive and reasonably important.  But somebody higher up than he was had disposed of him with absent-minded finality, and that man’s secretary and his own had determined all the details, and he didn’t count at all.  He was a pawn in the hands of firm-partners and assorted secretaries.  “Let me know what my job’s to be and how to do it, Babs.”