smile. It hadn't been the champagne. It was the apricot cordial that Alice had brought him to take along. "I'll be fine," said Angel, managing a ghost of his lovely smile.

"Board!" shouted the commander.

Angel went up the ladder. Whittaker spat out his chaw and lent a hand. Boyd was standing by on the stage and, more to avert the necessity of having to see Angel's poor navigation than from interest, turned a powerful navy night glass on the Moon. Boyd was very fond of Angel in a cussing sort of way.

But Angel made it without help and had just turned to give the faces, white blurs there in the floodlights, a parting wave to the click of cameras when Boyd yelled.

"Oh, my aching Aunt!"

There was so much amazed fear in that shout that everyone stared at Boyd and then turned to find what he saw. Angel found Boyd shoving the glasses at him.

"Look, lieutenant!"

Angel hadn't supposed himself able to see a thousand-dollar bill, much less the clear Moon. And then he jumped as if he'd been clipped with a bullet.

The commander was howling at them to batten down but Angel stood and stared, glasses riveted to the lunar glory.

Those with sharper eyes could see it now. And a wail went up interspersed with awful silences. Even the testy commander turned to stare, looked back to the ship and then whipped about to snatch a quartermaster's glass from his gunner. He took one look and froze in silence.

Every face was uplifted now, the field was stunned. For there on the moon in print which must have been a hundred miles high, done in lampblack, were the letters—

U S S R

CHAPTER II

Take-Off

For some days Angel languished in bachelor officers' quarters, all out of gear. He had been nerved up to a job and then it hadn't come off. The frustration resulted in lack of any desire for animation of whatever kind.

It was the sort of feeling one gets when he says good-by, good-by, to all his friends at the curb and then, just as he starts off in the car, runs out of gas and has to call a garage.

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