vities were going on. There were spidery scaffolds leading up
to open ports in the metallic sides. Workmen were raising loads of
material into these ports, and for an instant Burl caught sight of
Haines, in rough work clothes, shouting orders from one of the openings
as to exactly where to stow something.

At last he took his eyes away from the startling sight. The little
valley around him had a number of low storage shacks. A road led in from
another pass through the mountains. Two loaded trucks came down this
pass now in low gear. Lockhart, watching, remarked, "We are having our
equipment and supplies flown up to a town twenty miles away and then
trucked in."

"Why didn't you leave this ship where it was built--in your plant in
Indiana--and load it from there?" Burl asked.

"It would have been easier," said the colonel, "but security thought it
better to transfer the craft to its launching sight up here in these
deserted hills. We are going to make our take-off from here because we
are still too experimental to know what might happen if something kicked
up or if the engines failed. We'd hate to splatter all over a highly
populated industrial area. Besides, you must know, if you looked over
those papers yesterday, that there's a lot of radioactive stuff here."

Burl nodded. Detmar cut in. "Why don't we get aboard and show him over
the ship? It will be easier to make it clear that way."

Suiting action to the word, the three went over to one of the loading
platforms, climbed on the wiry little elevator, and were hoisted up
fifty feet to the port in the side of the ship. They entered well below
the vast, overhanging equatorial bulge which marked the wide end of the
teardrop-shaped vessel.

They walked through a narrow plastic-walled passage, broken in several
places by tight, round doors bearing storage vault numbers. At the end
of the passage they came to a double-walled metal air lock. They stepped
through and found themselves in what was evidently the living quarters
of the spaceship.

The _Magellan_ was an entirely revolutionary design as far as space
vehicles were concerned. Its odd shape was no mere whimsy, but a
practical model. If a better design were to be invented, it would only
come out of the practical experiences of this first great flight.

It had long been known, ever since Einstein's early equations, that
there was a kinship between electricity, magnetism, and gravitation. In
electricity and magn