tter how little, and as much time as possible for making
equipment. With luck, and if we get our applications for space-fitness
tests mailed to Minneapolis within a week, at least some of us should
get off Earth by next June. Now, shall we sign for the whole deal?"

Art Kuzak hunched his shoulders and displayed white teeth happily. "I'm
a pushover," he said. "Here I come. I like to see things roll."

"Likewise," said his brother, Joe. Their signatures were both small, in
contrast to their size.

Ramos, fully clad in the Archer, clowned his way forward to write his
name with great flourishes, his ball point clutched in a space glove.

Tiflin made a fierce, nervous scrawl.

Mitch Storey wrote patiently, in big, square letters.

Gimp chewed his lip, and signed, "Walter Hines," in a beautiful, austere
script, with a touch as fine as a master scientist's. "I'll go along as
far as they let me," he muttered.

"I think it will be the same--in my case," David Lester stammered. He
shook so much that his signature was only a quavering line.

"For laughs," Eileen Sands said, and wrote daintily.

Two-and-Two Baines gulped, sighed, and made a jagged scribble, like the
trail of a rocket gone nuts.

Jig Hollins wrote in swooping, arrogant circles, that came, perhaps,
from his extra jobs as an advertising sky writer with an airplane.

Frank Nelsen was next, and Charlie Reynolds was last. Theirs were the
most indistinctive signatures in the lot. Just ordinary writing.

"So here we all are, on a piece of paper--pledged to victory or death,"
Reynolds laughed. "Anyhow, we're out of a rut."

Nelsen figured that that was the thing about Charlie Reynolds. Some
might not like him, entirely. But he could get the Bunch unsnarled and
in motion.

Old Paul Hendricks had come back from waiting on some casual customers
in the store.

"Want to sign, too, Paul?" Reynolds chuckled.

"Nope--that would make thirteen," Paul answered, his eyes twinkling.
"I'll watch and listen--and maybe tell you if I think you're off beam."

"Here comes Otto with the beer and sandwiches," Ramos burst out.

They all crowded around heavy Otto Kramer and his basket--all except
Frank Nelsen and Paul Hendricks, and Eileen Sands who made the ancient
typewriter click in the little office-enclosure, as she typed up the
order list that Nelsen would mail out with a bank draft in the morning.

Nelsen had a powerful urge to talk to the old man who was his long-time