said, "Fine morning, fine morning lieutenant. You look fit. Fit, sir. No clouds and a splendid full moon."

He felt the call, one which generals too old for command can never resist, to give a young officer the benefit of a wealth of experience but, fortunately, his aide swiftly interposed.

The aide was brilliant with the usual aide's enthusiasm for paper glory and distaste for generals. Angel knew him well. The aide, in Angel's day at the Point, had been an Upperclassman, a noted grind, a shuddery bore and the darling of his seniors. He didn't look any better to Angel this morning.

"Beg pardon, sir," said the aide sidewise to the general, "but we've just time to brief him as we ride down. Here, this way lieutenant." And, abetted by the usherlike habit peculiar to the breed of aides, he got Angel into the car.

"Now," said the aide to Angel, who was hard put to stifle his groans and shivers at the unearthly hour, "you have been thoroughly briefed. But there must be a quick resumé unless you think you are thoroughly cognizant of your duties."

Angel would have answered but the sound came out as a groan.

"Very well," said the aide, just as though his were the really important job and Angel was just a sort of paperweight, very needful to aides but not at all important. "The staff is terribly interested in your surveys.

"You will confine yourself wholly to this one task. It has been thought wisest to entrust a topographer with this first mission because, after all, that's the way things are done. We've insufficient reconnaissance to send up a main body."

Angel would have added that he was a guinea pig. They didn't even know if he could really get to the moon. But aides talk like that and lieutenants somehow let them.

"As soon as you have completed a survey of an elementary sort you will televise your maps, then send a complete set in a pilot rocket and return if you are able. But you are not to risk bringing the maps back personally."

They were little enough sure he'd ever get there, much less get back.

"You will phone all data back to us. Our tests show that the wave can travel much further than that. Anything you may think important, beyond maps and perhaps geology, you are permitted to note and report.

"Under no circumstances are you to attempt to change any 

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