tower and then landed somewhere nearby. But the Aerobee would keep on going. By the time it reached the top of the tower and the end of the guide rail, it should be going fast enough for its fins to have some grip on the air. When the air got too thin to be of any use, the steam-jets working from the fin tips should guide it.

The nitric acid truck came slowly into position. It didn't cross the track the hydrazine truck had taken, and stopped in an entirely different place; the fueling crew reappeared, in their different-colored plastic coveralls. The precautions taken against the premature introduction of hydrazine and nitric acid were remarkable.

McCauley let himself look up once at the nose-cone. He'd tried it on for size before. In it, he was going to have to take the launching jolt of more gees than any jet pilot has to be prepared for. But he felt a serene confidence that he could do it.

Then somebody called:

"Hey! Lieutenant! They want you back at the blockhouse!"

McCauley turned back obediently. The fuel gang was pumping in the nitric as he left. It stank, and he knew that if the smell gets under the faceplate of your hood you throw back the hood and faceplate together and gasp for breath. He realized that he wasn't breathing too easily. The doctors were going to make their final check on him, and what they said would be it. He felt the familiar panicky conviction that they'd find something wrong with him. For instance, panic would be something wrong.

He caught hold of himself as he and Randy entered the blockhouse. Somehow the confusion and busyness of everybody there were reassuring. On the way to where the doctors waited, he heard people talking into telephones about wind velocities and barometric pressures and how in thunder did that civilian automobile get into the test area? Somebody had to get it out fast, because there was a shoot on, in case nobody'd heard. The last was pure sarcasm.

Anyhow the technical crew thought he was all right. So McCauley submitted himself to the doctors in a sort of truculent readiness to put up an argument if they said anything critical of his condition or his readiness to go where nobody had ever gone before. With everything else all ready, they'd have a nerve to suggest anything but a go-ahead!

They took his blood pressure and did a cardiogram, and they put a tape around his chest and a stylus drew a crazy curve which 

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