he sun's corona now with color film ... huh? Oh, yes, sir,
it's beautiful all right, now that you mention it. But, hell, sir, who's
got the time for aesthetics now?... Oops, _that_ was a close one! Tenth
meteor whizzing past. Makes me think of flak back on those Berlin
bombing runs."

Dan couldn't help wincing when the meteors peppered down past. The
"flak" of space. Below he could see the meteors flare up brightly as
they hit the atmosphere. Most of those near his position were small,
none bigger than a baseball, and Dan took comfort in the fact that his
rocket was small too, in the immensity around him. A direct hit would be
sheer bad luck, but the good old law of averages was on his side.

"Yes, Colonel, this tin can I'm riding is holding together okay," Dan
continued to Rough Rock. If he paused even a second in his reports a
top-sergeant's yell from the Colonel's throat came back for him to keep
talking. Every bit of information he could transmit to them was a vital
revelation in this USAF-Alpha exploration of open space beyond Earth's
air cushion, with ceiling unlimited to infinity.

"Cosmic rays, sir? Sure, the reading shot up double on the Geiger ...
huh? Naw, I don't feel a thing ... like Doc Baird suspected, we invented
a lot of Old Wives' Tales in _advance_, before going into space. I feel
fine, so you can put down cosmic ray intensity as a Boogey Man....
What's that? Yeah, yeah, sir, the stars shine without winking up here.
What else?... Space is inky black--no deep purples or queer
more-than-blacks like some jetted-up writers dreamed up--just plain old
ordinary dead black. Earth, sir?... Well, it does look dish-shaped from
up here, concave.... Sure, I can see all the way to Europe and--say!
Here's something unexpected. I can see that hurricane off the coast of
Florida.... You said it, sir! Once we install permanent space stations
up here it will be easy to spot typhoons, volcano eruptions, tidal
waves, earthquakes, what have you, the moment they start. If you ask me,
with a good telescope you could even spot forest fires the minute they
broke out, not to mention a sneak bombing on a target city--uh, sorry,
sir, I forgot."

Dan broke off and almost retched as his stomach turned a flip-flop to
end all flip-flops. The VX-3 had reached the peak of its trajectory at
over 1000 miles altitude and now turned down, lazily at first. He gulped
oxygen from the emergency tube at his lips and felt better.

"Turning b