people on Luna!” He paused a moment for breath, then went on. “A person your age has no business flying rocket ships in the first place. It’s a job for older men with mature judgment!”

With that, Dr. Shepard clattered back to his seat in the back, leaving Toby with a feeling of being as incompetent as the doctor had said. He stared glumly out the forward port at the wrinkled witch-face of Luna. Her gaping craters were like taunting eyes, and her jagged mountains appeared to wear the twisted grin of a mocking giant. Even nature herself seemed allied against him.

Suddenly he had company again. It was Deb this time. He studied her pretty face closely, wondering if the inscrutable look on it meant that she was one of that majority of disbelievers or whether perhaps....

“Tell me, Deb,” he said to her, “do you believe that accident was my fault?”

She smiled sympathetically, tossing her titian curls. Her large clear eyes were sincere and direct. “Would it make any difference to the examining board if I did believe in you?” she asked.

“No, they’d still lift my license if they wanted to,” he answered, “but it would make a lot of difference to me.”

“You said it wasn’t your fault,” she said softly, “and I believe you, Toby.”

Suddenly Toby didn’t feel quite so lonely. “It helps a lot to know that one person, at least, believes in me,” Toby said gratefully. “Thanks, Deb.”

Dr. Shepard called his daughter back. Toby had half expected Deb to say what she had. She was a swell person. Even since she had been transferred to his school class, he had known her as a quiet girl who couldn’t believe the worst in anybody. Like Lou and himself, she was doing extra summer work in order to earn her space nurse’s rating sooner. Her father was considered one of the best space surgeons. Toby had never been one of his favorites among the fellows who came to see Deb. Toby had heard from Deb that her father regarded him as reckless and too ambitious for his age. The doctor’s own education had been a plodding one, hence his inability to accept the idea of young people still in high school piloting rockets.

The flight continued to be a tense one for Toby as the dragging hours passed. Dr. Shepard kept Deb in the back, leaving Toby with only the cold remote stars for companionship. When Toby slept, he put the rocket on automatic pilot, but he could not completely relax.

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