"Wake up. Helmuth," a voice from the gang deck snapped abruptly. "If it hadn't been for me, you'd have run yourself off the end of the Bridge. You had all the automatic stops on that beetle cut out."

Helmuth reached guiltily and more than a little too late for the controls. Eva had already run his beetle back beyond the danger line.

"Sorry," he mumbled, taking the helmet off. "Thanks, Eva."

"Don't thank me. If you'd actually been in it, I'd have let it go. Less reading and more sleep is what I recommend for you, Helmuth,"

"Keep your recommendations to yourself," he growled. The incident started a new and even more disturbing chain of thought. If he were to resign now, it would be nearly a year before he could get hack to Chicago. Antigravity or no antigravity, the senators' ship would have no room for unexpected extra passengers. Shipping a man hack home had to he arranged far in advance. Living space had to be provided, and a cargo equivalent of the weight and space requirements he would take up on the return trip had to he deadheaded out to Jupiter V.

A year of living in the station on Jupiter V without any function as a man whose drain on the station's supplies no longer could be justified in terms of what he did A year of living under the eyes of Eva Chavez and Charity Dillon and the other men and women who still remained Bridge operators, men and women who would not hesitate to let him know what they thought of his quitting.

A year of living as a bystander in the feverish excitement Of direct, personal exploration of Jupiter. A year of watching and hearing the inevitable deaths while he alone stood aloof, privileged and useless. A year during which Robert Helmuth would become the most hated living entity in the Jovian system.

And,. when he got back to Chicago and went looking for a job for his resignation from the Bridge gang would automatically take him out of government service he would be asked why he had left the Bridge at the moment when work on the Bridge was just reaching its culmination.

He began to understand why the man in the dream had volunteered.

When the trick change bell rang, he was still determined to resign, but he had already concluded bitterly that there were, after all, other kinds of hells besides the one on Jupiter.

He was returning the board to neutral as Charity came up the cleats. Charity's eyes were snapping like a skyful of comets. Helmuth had known that they would be.

"Senator Wagoner wants to speak to you if you're not too tired, Bob," he said. "Go ahead; I'll finish up there."