"Were you surprised when you heard take-off's tomorrow?"

McCauley nodded reservedly.

"That's my doing," said Furness proudly. "I told the general we'd be ready. He was cussing a blue streak. An intelligence report had come through, saying that—um—there's to be an attempt abroad to lift a rocket up and set it down again on its own tail. Lift and land. No rocket's ever landed unsmashed, you know."

"I know," said McCauley.

Furness grinned. Engagingly.

"So it won't look good if us Americans get our eye wiped by somebody else doing something with a rocket that we can't do. The general made the air blue. So I said, 'General, McCauley's been training for our job for months, off there in Dayton. He's all set to do his stuff. The ship's practically ready to go. We could get it ready to take off the day after McCauley gets here. Why not do it?' And the General said, 'Furness, if we could....' And I said, 'General, we can!' So he began to give orders right and left. And that's it. Tomorrow noon. Twelve hundred. Get it over with, eh?"

McCauley opened his mouth. He closed it. Anger swept over him and he opened it a second time.

Then he shut up. For him to protest anything short of plain suicide would be considered pomposity and self-importance. But he should have had a chance to look over the ship before take-off. He'd had a glance at it, hardly more. Yet he couldn't afford to stand on his dignity or his rights because too many people envied him.

Furness looked at him and flushed a little. The cordiality that should exist between two men who are going to risk their necks together was totally missing. Furness felt it. His expression grew almost defiant.

"Look here!" he said. "That was all right, wasn't it?"

"I don't know," said McCauley. "Anyhow it's done."

Furness stared at him.

"What else was there to do?"

"I wouldn't know," said McCauley. "The ship can't be test-flown, of course—not in any ordinary sense of the word. You can't test-fly a hydrazine rocket, and among other things that's what this ship is. You just have to take it up. But—hm—how were the tests on the rocket motor?"

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