wouldn't hurt anybody if it exploded. Atomic power had not been adapted for air travel. Propulsion was from the conventional rocket-type engines, but with improved nozzles and new nitrogen-base fuel that had more wallop than nitroglycerine ever produced.

Threaded through all their work, Healey saw, was the secret hope of each man that, if they were successful, they would break down the steel-bound tradition of the Air Marines. Perhaps others beside Healey had fathers in the service. Healey didn't know. None of them ever talked about it. They only worked.

As for the ship, they knew they could get off the ground, and they knew they could pass critical speed; it was getting back to Earth alive that was the problem.

CHAPTER II

Venture Into Space

It was not until 2120 that they loaded materiel for the take-off. The two hundred former officers of the finest military organization on Earth climbed up the ladder. Healey was with Pickens in the control room.

He heard the commander give the order to seal the hatches, and then he realized that the depressed feeling he had was due to the fact that there had been no word from his father—not even good wishes. He hadn't heard from the Admiral since graduation day, and it hurt. Of course the old gentleman was saving trouble for both of them by forgetting their relationship, but it hurt. And the lieutenant knew that it probably hurt the Admiral a lot more than it did him....

They got into the air, but that wasn't anything unusual.

"Remember," Pickens said grimly to Healey, "we're the seventeenth to get safely off the ground. All this fire and thunder is just as dangerous as it looks."

"Yes, sir," said Healey, but in his heart was a song, a virile song of spaceways and man and the stars, such a song as he knew men would sing for a billion years.

They had christened her Phoebus, the Sun-god, and she lived up to her name. Within eight hours they were spotting a landing place on the Moon. In another hour they were sitting down. The Phoebus handled like a dream. She snuggled down on the bare volcanic rock, and Commander Pickens calmly wrote a message for the radio officer to transmit to Earth:

Phoebus reached port according to orders. All hands safe. And he added two words that were grimly remindful of the 

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