ly
silly, Joe. I know what kind of a career I want! What other fascinating
topic do you know to talk about, Joe?"

"I don't know of any. Oh, yes! Mike got a letter from his girl. I don't
know what she said, but he's walking on air."

"But it isn't funny!" said Sally indignantly. "Mike's a person! A fine
person! If he'll let me, I'll write to his girl myself and--try to make
friends with her so when you come back I--maybe I can be a sort of
match-maker."

"That, I like!" Joe said warmly. "You're swell sometimes, Sally!"

Sally looked at him enigmatically in the moonlight.

"There are times when it seems to escape your attention," she observed.

* * * * *

The next morning she cried a little when he left her, to climb in the
space tug which was so small a part of today's activity. Joe and his
crew were the only living men who had ever made a round trip to the
Platform and back. But now there was the Moonship to go farther than
they'd been allowed. It was even clumsier in design than the Platform,
though it was smaller. But it wasn't designed to stay in space. It was
to rest on the powdery floor of a ring-mountain's central plain.

Let it get off into space, and somehow get to the Platform to reload.
Then let it replace the rockets it would burn in this take-off and it
could go on out to emptiness. It would make history as the first
serious attempt by human beings to reach the Moon.

Joe and his followers would go along simply to handle guided missiles if
it came to a fight, and to tow the Moonship to its wharf--the
Platform--and out into midstream again when it resumed its journey. And
that was all.

The Moonship lifted from the floor of the Shed to the sound of hundreds
of pushpot engines.

Then the space tug roared skyward. Her take-off rockets here substituted
for the pushpots. Her second-stage rockets were also of the nonpoisonous
variety, because she fired them at a bare 60,000 feet. They were
substitutes for the jatos the pushpots carried.

She was out in space when the third-stage rockets roared dully outside
her hull.

When the Moonship crossed the west coast of Africa, the space tug was
400 miles below and 500 miles behind. When the Moonship crossed Arabia,
the difference was 200 miles vertically and less than 100 in line.

Then the Moonship released small objects, steadied by gyroscopes and
flung away by puffs of compressed air. The small objects spread out.
Haney