But "permanent"? The quotemarks Helmuth's thinking always put around that word were there for a very good reason, he knew, but. he could not quite remember the reason. It was the damned conditioning showing itself again, creating another of the thousand small irreconcilables which contributed to the tension.

Helmuth watched Dillon with a certain compassion, tempered with mild envy. Charity Dillon's unfortunate given name betrayed him as the son of a hangover, the only male child of a Believer family which dated back long before the current resurgence of the Believers. He was one of the hundreds of government drafted experts who had planned the Bridge, and he was as obsessed by the Bridge as Helmuth was but for different reasons. It was widely believed among the Bridge gang that Dillon, alone, among them, had not been given the conditiomng, but there was no way to test that.

Helmuth moved back to the port, dropping his hand gently on Dillon's shoulders. Together they looked at the. screaming straw yellows, brick reds, pinks, oranges, browns, even blues and greens that Jupiter threw across the ruined stone of its innermost satellite. On Jupiter V, even the shadows had color.

Dillon did not move. He said at last: "Are you pleased, Bob?"

"Pleased?" Helmuth said in astonishment. "No. It scares me white; you know that. I'm just glad that the whole Bridge didn't go."

"You're quite sure?" Dillon said quietly.

Helmuth took his hand from Dillon's shoulder and returned to his seat at the central desk. "You've no right to needle me for something I can't help," he said, his voice' even lower than Dillon's. "I work on Jupiter four hours a day not actually, because we can't keep a man alive for more than a split second down there but my eyes and ears and my mind are there on the Bridge, four hours a day. Jupiter is not a nice place. I don't like it. I won't pretend I do.

"Spending four hours a day in an environment like that over a period of years well, the human mind instinctively tries to adapt, even to the unthinkable. Sometimes I wonder how I'll behave when I'm put back in Chicago again. Sometimes I can't remember anything about Chicago except vague .generalities, sometimes I can't even believe there is such a place as Earth how could there be when the rest of the universe is like Jupiter or worse?"

"I know," Dillon said. "I've tried several times to show you that isn't a very reasonable frame of mind."

"I know it isn't. But I can't help how I feel. For all I know it isn't even my own frame of mind though the part of my mind that keeps saying 'The Bridge must stand' is more likely to be the conditioned part. No, I don't think the bridge will last. It can't last; it's all wrong. But I don't want to see it go. I've just got sense enough to know that one of these days Jupiter is going to sweep it away."