oiler
factories in the world and all the backfiring motors in creation trying
to drown each other's noise out--and all of them being very successful.

It was a pushpot. Joe recognized it with incredulity. It was one of
those utterly ungainly creations that were built around one half of the
sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of
a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled
vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a
blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome
flirtings from side to side.

The pushpot lifted from the vehicle on which it rode, and the vehicle
put on speed and got away from under it with frantic agility. The
vehicle swerved to one side, and Joe stared with amazed eyes at the
pushpot, some twenty feet aloft. It had a flat underside, and a topside
that still looked to him like the rounded top half of a loaf of baker's
bread. It hung in the air at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and
it howled like a panic-stricken dragon--Joe was getting his metaphors
mixed by this time--and it swung and wobbled and slowly gained altitude,
and then suddenly it seemed to get the knack of what it was supposed to
do. It started to circle around, and then it began abruptly to climb
skyward. Until it began to climb it looked heavy and clumsy and wholly
unimpressive. But when it climbed, it really moved!

Joe found his head out the window, craning up to look at it. Its
unearthly din took on the indignant quality of an irritated beehive. But
it climbed! It went up without grace but with astonishing speed. And it
was huge, but it became lost in the red-flecked dawn sky while Joe still
gaped.

Joe flung on his clothes. He went out the door through resonant empty
corridors, hunting for somebody to tell him something. He blundered into
a mess hall. There were many tables, but the chairs around them were
pushed back as if used and then left behind by people in a hurry to be
somewhere else. There were exactly two people still visible over in a
corner.

Another din like the wailing of a baby volcano with a toothache. It
began, and moved, and went through the series of changes that ended in a
climbing, droning hum. Another. Another. The launching of pushpots for
their morning flight was evidently getting well under way.

Joe hesitated in the nearly empty mess hall. Then he recognized the two
seated figures. They were the pilot a