 How does Pat feel about the narrator?
"It'll be the biggest break a writer ever got," he told me, two days before blastoff. A you-are-there type of report? Trip time is supposed to take 260 days (that's one way), so we're aimed toward where Mars will be (had better be, or else). A pilot, co-pilot, navigator and biochemist. I've met all but the pilot (he's very busy today), and they seem friendly enough. Dwight Kroger, the biochemist, is rather old to take the "rigors of the journey," as he puts it, but the government had a choice between sending a green scientist who could stand the trip or an accomplished man who would probably not survive, so they picked Kroger. He's kind of balding, and very iron-gray-haired and skinny, but his skin is tan as an Indian's, and right now he's telling jokes in the washroom with the co-pilot. Jones (that's the co-pilot; I didn't quite catch his first name) is scarlet-faced, barrel-chested and gives the general appearance of belonging under the spreading chestnut tree, not in a metal bullet flinging itself out into airless space. Come to think of it, who does belong where we are? He keeps bent low over a welded-to-the-wall (they call it the bulkhead, for some reason or other) table, scratching away with a ballpoint pen on the maps, and now and then calling numbers over a microphone to the pilot. Kroger tells me that the pilot's name is Patrick Desmond, but that I can call him Pat when I get to know him better. So far, he's still Captain Desmond to me. He was already on board when I got here, with my typewriter and ream of paper, so we didn't meet. The inertial gravities didn't bother me so much as the gyroscopic spin they put on the ship so we have a sort of artificial gravity to hold us against the curved floor. With my paper and his ballpoint pen and ruler, it should be easy. Jones (I still haven't learned his first name) has been up with the pilot all day. He passed my room on the way to the galley (the kitchen) for a cup of dark brown coffee (they like it thick) and told me that we were almost past the Moon.
 Pat is highly annoyed to have an untrained passenger like the narrator aborad for this long, scientific journey.
 Pat thinks the narrator is an idiot. He cannot believe the space agency allowed the journalist to tag along.  Pat is highly annoyed to have an untrained passenger like the narrator aborad for this long, scientific journey.  Pat thinks the narrator is simple-minded and tells him as much.  Pat hates the narrator. Pat tells him to go to hell.