The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun

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Title: The Planet Strappers

Author: Raymond Zinke Gallun

Release Date: April 13, 2008 [EBook #25067]

Language: English

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Transcriber's Note:
      Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
      the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
      Text enclosed by asterisks was in bold face in the
      original (*bold*). The 3-dot ellipsis has been retained
      as in the original.


Out There--the world's first space colony--adventures and dangers beyond
human ken!




The Planet Strappers


RAYMOND Z. GALLUN




*A Million Miles Beyond the Moon...*

... Nelson and Ramos sped on toward Mars in their tiny plastic-bubble
spacecraft. They were on the alert--it didn't pay to take anything for
granted in the Big Vacuum....

The way between the worlds was mostly empty space--except for the
outlaws of the void who drifted, patiently and vengefully waiting for a
victim, then struck!

Nelsen and Ramos tensed--blips on the radar screen! Maybe meteors...
More blips--and fist-sized chunks of rock flicked through their fragile
vehicles. Air puffed out ... and Nelson and Ramos were fighting for
their lives...

*... A Million Miles Beyond the Moon!*




THE PLANET STRAPPERS


Raymond Z. Gallun


PYRAMID BOOKS, 444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York




*THE PLANET STRAPPERS,*
_by Raymond Z. Gallun_


This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character
herein and any person (Here or Out There), living or dead; any such
resemblance is purely coincidental.


Published by Pyramid Books
First printing: _October 1961_


_Printed in the United States of America_




I


The Archer Five came in a big packing box, bound with steel ribbons and
marked, _This end up--handle with care_. It was delivered at a
subsidized government surplus price of fifty dollars to Hendricks'
Sports and Hobbies Center, a store in Jarviston, Minnesota, that used to
deal mostly in skin diving equipment, model plane kits, parts for
souping up old cars, and the like. The Archer Five was a bit obsolete
for the elegant U.S. Space Force boys--hence the fantastic drop in price
from two thousand dollars since only last June. It was still a
plenty-good piece of equipment, however; and the cost change was a real
break for the Bunch.

By 4:30 that bright October afternoon, those members who were attending
regular astronautics classes at Jarviston Technical College had gathered
at Hendricks' store. Ramos and Tiflin, two wild characters with
seldom-cut hair and pipe stem pants, who didn't look as if they could be
trusted with a delicate unpacking operation, broke the Archer out with a
care born of love, there in Paul Hendricks' big backroom shop, while the
more stolid members--and old Paul, silent in his swivel chair--watched
like hawks.

"So who tries it on first?" Ramos challenged. "Dumb question. You,
Eileen--naturally."

Most Bunches have a small, hard, ponytailed member, dungareed like the
rest.

Still kidding around, Ramos dropped an arm across Eileen Sands'
shoulders, and got her sharp elbow jabbed with vigor into his stomach.

She glanced back in a feminine way at Frank Nelsen, a tall, lean guy of
nineteen, butch-haircutted and snub featured. But he was the purposeful,
studious kind, more an observer and a personal doer than a leader; he
hadn't much time for the encouraging smiles of girls, and donning even
an Archer Five now instead of within a few hours, didn't exactly
represent his kind of hurry.

"I'll wait, Eileen," he said. Then he nodded toward Gimp Hines. That the
others would also pick Gimp was evident at once. There were bravos and
clapping, half for a joke.

"Think I won't?" Gimp growled, tossing his crutches on a workbench
littered with scraps of color-coded wire, and hopping forward on the one
leg that had grown to normal size. He sort of swaggered, Frank Nelsen
noticed. Maybe the whole Bunch swaggered with him in a way, because,
right now, he represented all of them in their difficult aim. Gimp
Hines, with the nylon patch in his congenitally imperfect heart, and
with that useless right underpinning, had less chance of taking part in
space-development than any of them--even with all his talent for
mechanics and electronics.

Two-and-Two (George) Baines, a large, mild person who was an expert
bricklayer in his spare time, while he struggled to absorb the intricate
math that spacemen are supposed to know--he used to protest that he
could at least add two and two--bounced forward, saying, "I'll give yuh
a hand, Gimp."

Mitch Storey, the lean colored kid with the passion for all plant life,
and the specific urge to get somehow out to Mars, was also moving to
help Gimp into the Archer. Gimp waved them off angrily, but they valeted
for him, anyhow.

"Shucks, Gimp," Storey soothed. "Anybody needs assistance--the first
time..."

They got his good leg, and what there was of the other, into the boots.
They laced carefully, following all they had learned from books. They
rolled the wire-braced silicone rubber body-section up over his torso,
guided his arms into the sleeves, closed the zipper-sealers and centered
the chest plate. While the others checked with their eyes, they
inspected the nipples of the moisture-reclaimer and chlorophane
air-restorer capsules. They lifted the helmet of clear, darkened plastic
over his head, and dogged it to the gasket with the automatic
turnbuckles. By then, Gimp Hines' own quick fingers, in the gloves, were
busy snapping this and adjusting that. There was a sleepy hum of
aerating machinery.

"It even _smells_ right, in here," Gimp growled muffledly, trying to be
nonchalant.

There was loud laughter and clapping. Ramos whistled piercingly, with
two fingers. The huge Kuzak twins, Art and Joe--both had football
scholarships at Tech--gave Indian yells. Eileen Sands clasped her hands
over her head and went up on her toes like the ballet dancer she had
once meant to be. Old Paul, in his chair, chortled, and slapped his arm.
Even little David Lester said "Bravo!" after he had gulped. The applause
wasn't entirely facetious.

Gimp's whole self had borrowed hard lines and an air of competence from
the Archer Five. For a second he looked like somebody who could really
cross millions of miles. There was a tiny, solar-powered
ionic-propulsion unit mounted on the shoulders of the armor, between
the water-tank and the beam-type radio transmitter and receiver. A
miniaturized radar sprouted on the left elbow joint. On the inside of
the Archer's chest plate, reachable merely by drawing an arm out of a
sleeve, emergency ration containers were racked. In the same place was a
small airlock for jettisoning purposes and for taking in more supplies.

"What do yuh know--toilet facilities, yet!" Ramos chirped with spurious
naivete, and there were guffaws which soon died out. After all, this
_was_ a serious occasion, and who wanted to be a jerk? Now that the
price had been shoved down into the ground, they could probably get
their Archer Fives--their all-important vacuum armor. They were one more
hurdle nearer to the stars.

Two regular members of the Bunch hadn't yet shown up. Ten were present,
including Gimp in the Archie. All were different. Each had a name.

But Frank Nelsen figured that numbers, names, and individual variations
didn't count for much, just then. They were a crowd with an overall
personality--often noisy, sometimes quiet like now, always a bit grim to
sustain their nerve before all they had to learn in order to reduce
their inexperienced greenness, and before the thought of all the
expensive equipment they had to somehow acquire, if they were to take
part in the rapid adaptation of the solar system to human uses. Most of
all, their courage was needed against fear of a region that could be
deadly dangerous, but that to them seemed wonderful like nothing else.

The shop smelled of paint, solvent and plastic, like most any other.
Gimp, sitting in the Archer, beside the oil-burning stove, didn't say
any more. He forgot to play tough, and seemed to lose himself in a
mind-trip Out There--probably as far as he would ever get. His face,
inside the helmet, now looked pinched. His freckles were very plain in
his paled cheeks. Gimp was awed.

So was everybody else, including Paul Hendricks, owner of the Hobby
Center, who was approaching eighty and was out of the running, though
his watery blue eyes were still showing the shine of boyhood, right now.

Way back, Paul Hendricks used to barnstorm county fairs in a
wood-and-fabric biplane, giving thrill rides to sports and their girls
at five dollars a couple, because he had been born sixty years too soon.

Much later in his spotty career, he had started the store. He had also
meant to do general repair work in the backroom shop. But in recent
years it had degenerated into an impromptu club hall, funk hole,
griping-arguing-and-planning pit, extracurricular study lab and project
site for an indefinite horde of interplanetary enthusiasts who were
thought of in Jarviston as either young adults of the most resourceful
kind--for whom the country should do much more in order to insure its
future in space--or as just another crowd of delinquents, more bent on
suicide and trouble-making than any hot rod group had ever been. Paul
Hendricks was either a fine, helpful citizen--among so many who were
disinterested and preoccupied--or a corrupting Socrates who deserved to
drink hemlock.

Frank Nelsen knew all this as well as most. He had been acquainted with
Paul ever since, at the age of seven, he had come into the store and had
tried to make a down payment on a model building kit for a Y-71
ground-to-orbit freight rocket--clearly marked $49.95 in the display
window--with his fortune of a single dime. Frank had never acquired a
Y-71 kit, but he had found a friend in Paul Hendricks, and a place to
hang around and learn things he wanted to know. Later on, as now, he had
worked in the store whenever he had some free time.

Frank leaned against a lathe, watching the others, the frosty thrill and
soul-searching hidden inside himself. Maybe it was hard to guess what
Eileen Sands, standing near, was thinking, but she was the firm kind who
would have a definite direction. Perhaps unconsciously, she hummed a
tune under her breath, while her feet toyed with graceful steps. No
doubt, her mind was also on the Big Vacuum beyond the Earth.

But what is there about a dangerous dream? When it is far out of reach,
it has a safe, romantic appeal. Bring its fulfillment a little closer,
and its harsh aspects begin to show. You get a kick out of that, but you
begin to wonder nervously if you have the guts, the stamina, the
resistance to loneliness and complete strangeness.

Looking at a real Archie--with a friend inside it, even--did this to
Frank Nelsen. But he could see similar reactions in some of the others.

Mitch Storey sat, bent forward, on a box, staring at his big, sepia
hands, in which he tossed back and forth a tiny, clear capsule
containing a fuzzy fragment of vegetation from Mars. He had bought this
sealed curio from Paul a year ago for fifty dollars--souvenirs that came
from so far were expensive. And now, in view of what was happening to
hopeful colonists of that once inhabited and still most Earth-like other
planet, ownership of such a capsule on Earth seemed about to be banned,
not only by departments of agriculture, but by bodies directly concerned
with public safety.

Did the color photographs of Mars, among all the others that the Bunch
had thumbtacked to the shop walls, still appeal as strongly to Mitch?
Did he still want to go out to that world of queer, swirled markings,
like the fluid flow in the dregs of a paper coffee cup? Mitch
would--more so than ever. He had plant life in his soul, maybe from
wandering in the swamps near his home in Mississippi. He had been
supporting himself here at school by fixing gardens. If it was plant
life of a different, dangerous sort, with other billions of years of
development behind it, that just made the call stronger. Mitch just sat
and thought, now, the mouth organ he seldom played sagging forward in
his frayed shirt pocket.

Ramos--Miguel Ramos Alvarez--only stood with his black-visored cap
pushed back on his head, and a cocky smirk of good humor on his mouth.
Reckless Ramos, who went tearing around the country in an ancient motor
scooter, decorated with squirrel tails and gaudy bosses, would hardly be
disturbed by any risky thing he wanted to do. The thumbtacked pictures
of the systems of far, cold Jupiter and Saturn--Saturn still
unapproached, except by small, instrumented rockets--would be the things
to appeal to him.

The Kuzak twins stood alertly, as if an extra special homecoming
football game was in prospect. But they weren't given to real doubts,
either. From their previous remarks it was clear that the asteroids,
those fragments of an exploded and once populated world, orbiting out
beyond Mars, would be for them. Osmium, iridium, uranium. The rich,
metallic guts of a planet exposed for easy mining. Thousands of
prospectors, hopeful characters, and men brutalized by the life in
space, were already drifting around in the Asteroid Belt.

Two-and-Two Baines wore a worried, perplexed expression. He was a
massive, rather lost young man who had to keep up with the times, and
with his companions, and was certainly wondering if he was able.

Little David Lester, the pedant, the mother's boy, who looked eighteen
but was probably older, pouted, and his heavy lips in his thin face
moved. "Cores," Nelsen heard him whisper. He had the habit of talking to
himself. Frank knew his interests. Drill cores withdrawn from the strata
of another planet, and inspected for fossils and other evidences of its
long history, was what he probably meant. Seeing Gimp in the Archie had
set off another scientific reverie in his head. He was a whizz in any
book subject. Maybe he had the brains to be a great investigator of the
past, in the Belt or on Mars, if his mind didn't crack first, which
seemed sure to happen if he left Earth at all.

But it was Glen Tiflin's reactions that were the strangest. He had his
switch blade out, and was tossing it expertly against a wall
two-by-four, in which it stuck quivering each time. This seemed his one
skill, his pride, his proof of manhood. And he wanted to get into space
like nobody else around, except maybe Gimp Hines. It wasn't hard to
sense how his head worked--the whole Bunch knew.

Tiflin's face seemed to writhe, now, with self-doubt and truculence; his
eyes were on the photos of the heroes, beginning way back; Goddard. Von
Braun. Clifford, who had first landed on the far side of the Moon.
LaCrosse, who had reached Mercury, closest to the sun. Vasiliev, who had
just come back from the frozen moons of Jupiter, scoring a triumph for
the Tovies--somebody had started calling them that, a few years ago--up
in high Eurasia, the other side of an ideological rift that still
threatened the ever more crowded and competitive Earth, though mutual
fear had so far kept the flare ups within limits. Bannon, whose
expedition was even now exploring the gloomy cellar of Venus' surface,
smothered in steam, carbon dioxide and poisonous formaldehyde.

To Tiflin, as to the others, even such places were glamorous. But he
wanted to be a big shot, too. It was like a compulsion. He was touchy
and difficult. Three years back, he had been in trouble for breaking and
entering. Maybe his worship of space, and his desire to get there and
prove himself, were the only things that had kept him straight for so
long--grimly attentive at Tech, and at work at his car-washing job,
nights.

In his nervousness, now, he stuck a cigarette savagely between his lips,
and lighted it with a quick, arrogant gesture, hardly slowing down the
continuous toss and recovery of his knife.

This had begun to annoy big Art Kuzak. For one thing, Tiflin was doing
his trick too close to the mass of crinkly, cellophane-like stuff draped
over a horizontal wooden pole suspended by iron straps from the ceiling.
The crinkly mass was one of the Bunch's major projects--their first
space bubble, or bubb which they had been cutting and shaping with more
care and devotion than skill.

"Cripes--put that damn shiv away, Tif!" Art snapped. "Or lose it
someplace!"

Ramos, who was a part-time mechanic at the same garage where Tiflin
worked, couldn't help taunting. "Yeah--smoking, too. Oh-oh. Using up
precious oxygen. Better quit, pal. Can't do much of that Out There."

This was a wrong moment to rib Tiflin. He was in an instant flare. But
he ground out the cigarette at once, bitterly. "What do _you_ care what
I do, Mex?" he snarled. "And as for you two Hunky Kuzaks--you oversized
bulldozers--how about weight limits for blastoff? Damn--I don't care
_how_ big you are!"

In mounting rage, he was about to lash out with his fists, even at the
two watchful football men. But then he looked surprised. With a terrible
effort, he bottled up even his furious words.

The Bunch was a sort of family. Members of families may love each other,
but it doesn't have to happen. For a second it was as if Ramos had
Tiflin spitted on some barb of his taunting smile--aimed at Tiflin's
most vulnerable point.

Ramos clicked his tongue. What he was certainly going to remark was that
people who couldn't pass the emotional stability tests, just couldn't
get a space-fitness card. But Ramos wasn't unkind. He checked himself in
time. "No sweat, Tif," he muttered.

"Hey, Gimp--are you going to sit in that Archie all night?" Joe Kuzak,
the easy-going twin, boomed genially. "How about the rest of us?"

"Yeah--how about that, Gimp?" Dave Lester put in, trying to sound as
brash and bold as the others, instead of just bookish.

Two-and-Two Baines, still looking perplexed, spoke in a hoarse voice
that sounded like sorrow. "What I wanna know is just how far this fifty
buck price gets us. Guess we have enough dough left in the treasury to
buy us each an Archer Five, huh, Paul?"

Paul Hendricks rubbed his bald head and grinned in a way that attempted
to prove him a disinterested sideliner. "Ask Frank," he said. "He's your
historian-secretary and treasurer."

Frank Nelsen came out of his attitude of observation enough to warn,
"That much we've got, if we want as many as twelve Archies. And a little
better than a thousand dollars more, left over from the prize money."

They had won twenty-five hundred dollars during the summer for building
a working model of a sun-powered ionic drive motor--the kind useful for
deep-space propulsion, but far too weak in thrust to be any good,
starting from the ground. The contest had been sponsored by--of all
outfits--a big food chain, Trans-Columbia. But this wasn't so strange.
Everybody was interested in, or affected by, interplanetary travel, now.

On a workbench, standing amid a litter of metal chips and scraps of
color-coded wire, was the Bunch's second ionic, full-size this time, and
almost finished. On crossed arms it mounted four parabolic mirrors; its
ion guide was on a universal joint. Out There, in orbit or beyond, and
in full, spatial sunlight, its jetting ions would deliver ten pounds of
continuous thrust.

"A thousand bucks--that's nowhere near enough," Two-and-Two mourned
further. "Doggone, why can't we get blasted up off the Earth--that costs
the most, all by itself--just in our Archies? They've got those little
ionic drives on their shoulders, to get around with, after we're in
orbit. Lots of asteroid hoppers live and ride only in their space suits.
Why do they make us get all that other expensive equipment? Space bubbs,
full-size ionics, lots of fancy instruments!"

"'Cause it isn't legal, otherwise," Mitch Storey pointed out. "'Cause
new men are green--it isn't safe for them, otherwise--the
Extra-Terrestrial Commission thinks. Got to have all the gear to get
clearance. Travelling light isn't even legal in the Belt. You know
that."

"Maybe we'll win us another prize," Ramos laughed, touching the crinkly
substance of their first bubb, hanging like a deflated balloon over the
ceiling pole.

Tiflin sneered. "Oh, sure, you dumb Mex. Too many other Bunches, now.
Too much competition. Like companies starting up on the Moon not hiring
ordinary help on Earth and shipping them out, anymore--saying contract
guys don't stick. Nuts--it's because enough slobs save them the expense
by showing up on their own... Or like most all of us trying to get into
the Space Force. The _Real Elite_--sure. Only 25,000 in the Force, when
there are over 200,000,000 people in the country to draw from. Just one
guy from Jarviston--Harv Diamond--ever made it. Choosy? We can get old
waiting for them to review our submitted personal data, only to have a
chance to take their lousy tests!"

Joe Kuzak grinned. "So down with 'em--down with the worthy old U.S.S.F.!
We're on our own--to Serenitatis Base on the Moon, to the Belt,
Pallastown, and farther!"

Ramos still hovered near Eileen Sands. "What do you say, Sweetie?" he
asked. "You haven't hardly made a comment."

Eileen remained tough and withdrawn. "I'm just listening while you smart
male characters figure out everything," she snapped. "Why don't you
become a listener, too, for a change, and go help Gimp out of that
Archer?"

Ramos bowed elegantly, and obeyed the latter half of her suggestion.

"I have a premonition--a hunch," little Lester offered, trying to sound
firm. "Our request for a grant from the Extra-Terrestrial Development
Board will succeed. Because we will be as valuable as anybody, Out
There. Then we will have money enough to buy the materials to make most
of our equipment."

Joe Kuzak, the gentler twin, answered him. "You're right about one
thing, Les. We'll wind up building most of our own stuff--with our own
mitts...!"

Some noisy conversation about who should try the Archer next, was
interrupted when the antique customer's bell over the street door of
the store, jangled. There was a scrape of shoe soles, as the two
previously absent members of the Bunch, Jig Hollins and Charlie
Reynolds, arriving together by chance, came into the shop.

Jig (Hilton) Hollins was a mechanic out at the airport. He was lean,
cocky, twenty-four, with a stiff bristle of blond hair. Like Charlie
Reynolds, he added up what had just been happening, here, at a glance.
Both were older than the others. They had regular jobs. Their educations
were completed, except for evening supplementary courses.

"Well, the _men_ have arrived," Jig announced.

Maybe Charlie Reynolds' faint frown took exception to this remark. He
was the only one in a suit, grey and tasteful, with a subdued flash to
match the kind of car he drove. Few held this against him, nor the fact
that he usually spent himself broke, nor the further fact that J. John
Reynolds, tight-fisted president of the Jarviston First National Bank,
was his grandfather. Charlie was an engineer at the new nuclear
powerhouse, just out of town. Charlie was what is generally known as a
Good Guy. He was brash and sure--maybe too sure. He had a slight
swagger, balanced by a certain benignancy. He was automatically the
leader of the Bunch, held most likely to succeed in their aims.

"Hi, gang," he breezed. "Otto is bringing beer, Pepsi and sandwiches
from his joint across the street. Special day--so it's on me. Time to
relax--maybe unsnarl. Any new problems?"

"Still plenty of old ones," Frank Nelsen commented laconically.

"Has anybody suddenly decided to back out?" Charlie chuckled. "It's
tiresome for me always to be asking that." He looked around, meeting
carefully easy grins and grim expressions. "Nope--I guess we're all
shaggy folk, bent on high and wild living, so far. So you know the only
answer we _can_ have."

"Umhmm, Charlie," Art Kuzak, the tough, business-like twin, gruffed. "We
can get the Archers, now. I think Frank has our various sizes noted
down. Let everybody sign up that wants an Archie. Better hurry,
though--there'll be a run on them now that they're being almost given
away... List all the other stuff we need--with approximate purchase
price, or cost of construction materials, attached. Sure--we'll be way
short of funds. But we can start with the items we can make, ourselves,
now. The point is not to lose time. New restrictions may turn up, and
give us trouble, if we do. We'll have to ride our luck for a break."

"Hell--you know the lists are ready, Art," Frank Nelsen pointed out. "A
bubb for everybody--or the stuff to make it. Full-scale ionic drives,
air-restorers and moisture-reclaimers, likewise. Some of the navigation
instruments we'll almost have to buy. Dehydrated food, flasks of oxygen
and water, and blastoff drums to contain our gear, are all relatively
simple. Worst, of course, is the blastoff price, from one of the
spaceports. Who could be rich enough to have a ground-to-orbit nuclear
rocket of his own? Fifteen hundred bucks--a subsidized rate at
that--just to lift a man and a thousand pounds of equipment into orbit.
Five thousand dollars, minimum per person, is what we're going to need,
altogether."

Gimp Hines, who always acted as if he expected to get off the Earth,
too, had yielded his position inside the Archer to Tiflin, and had
hobbled close.

"The cost scares a guy who has to go to school, too, so he can pass the
tests," he said. "Well, don't worry, Frank. A thousand dollars buys a
lot of stellene for bubbs. And we can scratch up a few bucks of our own.
I can find a hundred, myself, saved from my TV repair work, and my
novelties business. Charlie, here, ought to be able to contribute a
thousand. Same for you, Hollins. That'll buy parts and materials for
some ionic motors, too."

"Oh, certainly, Gimp," Hollins growled.

But Charlie Reynolds grinned. "I can kick in that much, if I hold down a
while," he said. "Maybe more, later. What we've got to have, however, is
a loan. We can't expect a grant from the Board. Sure they want more
people helping to develop resources in space, but they're swamped with
requests. Let's not sweat, though. With a little time, I'll swing
something... Hey, everybody! Proposition! I move that whoever wants an
Archer put his name down for Frank. I further move that we have him
order us a supply of stellene, and basic materials for at least three
more ionic motors. I also suggest that everybody donate as much cash as
he can, no matter 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
friend, and who had said little all during the session, though he knew
more about space travel than any of them--as much as anybody can know
without ever having been off the Earth.

"Hey, Paul," Frank called in a low tone, leaning his elbows across a
workbench.

"Yeah?"

"Nothing," Frank Nelsen answered with a lopsided smile.

But he felt that that was the right word, when your thoughts and
feelings became too huge and complicated for you to express with any
ease.

Grandeur, poetry, music--for instance, the haunting popular song, _Fire
Streak_, about the burial of a spaceman--at orbital speed--in the
atmosphere of his native planet. And fragments of history, such as
covered wagons. All sorts of subjects, ideas and pictures were swirling
inside his head. Wanting to sample everything in the solar system...
Home versus the distance, and the fierce urge to build a wild history of
his own... Gentleness and lust to be fulfilled, sometime. There would be
a girl... And there were second thoughts to twist your guts and make you
wonder if all your savage drives were foolish. But there was a duty to
be equal to your era--helping to give dangerously crowded humanity on
Earth more room, dispersal, a chance for race survival, if some
unimaginable violence were turned loose...

He thought of the names of places Out There. Serenitatis
Base--Serene--on the Moon. Lusty, fantastic Pallastown, on the Golden
Asteroid, Pallas... He remembered his parents, killed in a car wreck
just outside of Jarviston, four Christmases ago. Some present!... But
there was one small benefit--he was left free to go where he wanted,
without any family complications, like other guys might have. Poor Dave
Lester. How was it that his mother allowed him to be with the Bunch at
all? How did he work it? Or was she the one that was right?...

Paul Hendricks had leaned his elbows on the workbench, too.
"Sure--_nothing_--Frank," he said, and his watery eyes were bland.

The old codger understood. Neither of them said anything for a minute,
while the rest of the Bunch, except Eileen who was still typing, guzzled
Pepsi and beer, and wolfed hotdogs. There was lots of courage-lifting
noise and laughter.

Ramos said something, and Jig Hollins answered him back. "Think there'll
be any girls in grass skirts out in the Asteroid Belt, Mex?"

"Oh, they'll arrive," Ramos assured him.

Nelsen didn't listen anymore. His and Paul's attention had wandered to
the largest color photo thumbtacked to the wall, above the TV set, and
the shelf of dog-eared technical books. It showed a fragile, pearly
ring, almost diaphanous, hanging tilted against spatial blackness and
pinpoint stars. Its hub was a cylindrical spindle, with radial guys of
fine, stainless steel wire. It was like the earliest ideas about a space
station, yet it was also different. To many--Frank Nelsen and Paul
Hendricks certainly included--such devices had as much beauty as a yacht
under full sail had ever had for anybody.

Old Paul smirked with pleasure. "It's a shame, ain't it, Frank--calling
a pretty thing like that a 'bubb'--it's an ugly word. Or even a 'space
bubble.' Technical talk gets kind of cheap."

"I don't mind," Frank Nelsen answered. "Our first one, here, could look
just as nice--inflated, and riding free against the stars."

He touched the crinkly material, draped across its wooden support.

"It _will_," the old man promised. "Funny--not so long ago people
thought that space ships would have to be really rigid--all metal. So
how did they turn out? Made of stellene, mostly--an improved form of
polyethylene--almost the same stuff as a weather balloon."

"A few millimeters thick, light, perfectly flexible when deflated,"
Nelsen added. "Cut out and cement your bubb together in any shape you
choose. Fold it up firmly, like a parachute--it makes a small package
that can be carried up into orbit in a blastoff rocket with the best
efficiency. There, attached flasks of breathable atmosphere fill it out
in a minute. Eight pounds pressure makes it fairly solid in a vacuum.
So, behold--you've got breathing and living room, inside. There's nylon
cording for increased strength--as in an automobile tire--though not
nearly as much. There's a silicone gum between the thin double layers,
to seal possible meteor punctures. A darkening lead-salt impregnation in
the otherwise transparent stellene cuts radiation entry below the danger
level, and filters the glare and the hard ultra-violet out of the
sunshine. So there you are, all set up."

"Rig your hub and guy wires," old Paul carried on, cheerfully. "Attach
your sun-powered ionic drive, set up your air-restorer, spin your
vehicle for centrifuge-gravity, and you're ready to move--out of orbit."

They laughed, because getting into space wasn't as easy as they made it
sound. The bubbs, one of the basic inventions that made interplanetary
travel possible, were, for all their almost vagabondish simplicity,
still a concession in lightness and compactness for atmospheric transit,
to that first and greatest problem--breaking the terrific initial grip
of Earth's gravity from the ground upward, and gaining stable orbital
speed. Only a tremendously costly rocket, with a thrust greater than its
own weight when fully loaded, could do that. Buying a blastoff passage
_had_ to be expensive.

"Figuring, scrounging, counting our pennies, risking our necks," Nelsen
chuckled. "And maybe, even if we make it, we'll be just a third-rate
group, lost in the crowd that's following the explorers... Just the
same, I wish you could plan to go, too, Paul."

"Don't rub it in, kid. But I figure on kicking in a couple of thousand
bucks, soon, to help you characters along."

Nelsen felt an embarrassed lift of hope.

"You shouldn't, Paul," he advised. "We've overrun and taken possession
of your shop--almost your store, too. You've waived any profit, whenever
we've bought anything. That's enough favors."

"My dough, my pleasure... Let's each get one of Reynolds' beers and
hotdogs, if any are left..."

Later, when all the others had gone, except Gimp Hines, they uncovered
the Archer, which everyone else had tried. Paul got into it, first. Then
Nelsen took his turn, sitting as if within an inclosed vault, hearing
the gurgle of bubbles passing through the green, almost living fluid of
the air-restorer capsule. Chlorophane, like the chlorophyl of green
plants, could break up exhaled carbon dioxide, freeing the oxygen for
re-breathing. But it was synthetic, far more efficient, and it could use
much stronger sunlight as an energy source. Like chlorophyl, too, it
produced edible starches and sugars that could be imbibed, mixed with
water, through a tube inside the Archer's helmet.

Even with the Archer enclosing him, Nelsen's mind didn't quite reach. He
had learned a lot about space, but it remained curiously inconceivable
to him. He felt the frost-fringed thrill.

"Now we know--a little," he chortled, after he stood again, just in his
usual garb.

It was almost eight o'clock. Gimp Hines hadn't gone to supper, or to
celebrate decision on one of the last evenings of any kind of freedom
from work. He couldn't wait for that... Under fluorescent lights, he was
threading wire through miniature grommets, hurrying to complete the
full-size ionic drive. He said, "Hi, Frank," and let his eyes drop,
again, into absorption in his labors. Mad little guy. Tragic, sort of. A
cripple...

"I'll shove off, Paul," Nelsen was saying in a moment.

Out under the significant stars of the crisp October night, Nelsen was
approached at once by a shadow. "I was waiting for you, Frank. I got a
problem." The voice was hoarse sorrow--almost lugubrious comedy.

"Math again, Two-and-Two? Sure--shoot."

"Well--that kind is always around--with me," Two-and-Two Baines chuckled
shakily. "This is something else--personal. We're liable--honest to
gosh--to _go_, aren't we?"

"Some of us, maybe," Nelsen replied warily. "Sixty thousand bucks for
the whole Bunch looks like a royal heap of cabbage to me."

"Split among a dozen guys, it looks smaller," Two-and-Two persisted.
"And you can earn royal dough on the Moon--just for example. Plenty to
pay back a loan."

"Still, you don't pick loans off trees," Nelsen gruffed. "Not for a
shoestring crowd like us. We look too unsubstantial."

"Okay, Frank--have that part your way. I believe there still is a good
chance we _will_ go. I _want_ to go. But I get to thinking. Out There is
like being buried in millions of miles of nothing that you can breathe.
Can a guy stand it? You hear stories about going loopy from
claustrophobia and stuff. And I got to think about my mother and dad."

"Uh-huh--other people could be having minor second thoughts--including
me," Frank Nelsen growled.

"You don't get what I mean, Frank. Sure I'm scared some--but I'm gonna
try to go. Well, here's my point. I'm strong, willing, not too clumsy.
But I'm no good at figuring what to do. So, Out There, in order to have
a reasonable chance, I'll have to be following somebody smart. I thought
I'd fix it now--beforehand. You're the best, Frank."

Nelsen felt the scared earnestness of the appeal, and the achy shock of
the compliment. But in his own uncertainty, he didn't want to be
carrying any dead weight, in the form of a dependent individual.

"Thanks, Two-and-Two," he said. "But I can't see myself as any leader,
either. Talk about it to me tomorrow, if you still feel like it. Right
now I want to sweat out a few things for myself--alone."

"Of course, Frankie." And Two-and-Two was gone.

Frank Nelsen looked upward, over the lighted street. There was no
Moon--site of many enterprises, these days--in the sky, now. Old Jupiter
rode in the south. A weather-spotting satellite crept across zenith,
winking red and green. A skip glider, an orbit-to-ground freight
vehicle, possibly loaded with rich metals from the Belt, probably about
to land at the New Mexico spaceport far to the west, moved near it.
Frank felt a deliciously lonesome chill as he walked through the
business section of Jarviston. From somewhere, dance music lilted.

In front of Lehman's Drug Store he looked skyward again, to see a
dazzling white cluster, like many meteors, falling. The gorgeous display
lasted more than a second.

"Good heavens, Franklin Nelsen--what was that?"

He looked down at the slight, aging woman, and stiffened slightly. Miss
Rosalie Parks had been his Latin teacher in high school. Plenty of times
she used to scold him for not having his translations of Caesar worked
out. A lot she understood about a fella who had to spend plenty of time
working to support himself, while attending school!

"Good evening, Miss Parks," he greeted rather stiffly. "I think it was
that manned weather satellite dumping garbage. It hits the atmosphere at
orbital velocity, and is incinerated."

She seemed to be immensely pleased and amused. "Garbage becoming beauty!
That is rather wonderful, Franklin. I'll remember. Thank you and good
night."

She marched off with the small purchase she had made, in the direction
opposite his own.

He got almost to the house where he had his room, when there was another
encounter. But it was nothing new to run into Nancy Codiss, the spindly
fifteen-year-old next door. He had a sudden, unbelievably expansive
impulse.

"Hi, Nance," he said. "I didn't get much supper. Let's go down to
Lehman's for a hamburger and maybe a soda."

"Why--_good_--Frankie!"

They didn't talk very much, walking down, waiting for their orders, or
eating their hamburgers. But she wasn't as spindly as he used to think.
And her dark hair, even features and slim hands were nicer than he
recalled.

"I hear you fellas got your space-armor sample, Frank."

"Yep--we did. We're ordering more."

Her expression became speculative. Her brown eyes lighted. "I've been
wondering if I should look Outward, too. Whether it makes sense--for a
girl."

"Could be--I've heard."

Their conversation went something like that, throughout, with long
silences. Finally she smiled at him, very brightly.

"The Junior Fall dance is in two weeks," she said. "But I guess you'll
be too busy to be interested?"

"'Guess' just isn't the word, Nance. I regret that--truly."

He looked and sounded as though he meant it. In some crazy way, it
seemed that he _did_ mean it.

He walked her home. Then he went to the next house, and up to his rented
room. He showered, and for once climbed very early into bed, feeling
that he must have nightmares. About strange sounds in the thin winds,
over the mysterious thickets of Mars. Or about some blackened, dried-out
body of a sentient being, sixty million years dead, floating free in the
Asteroid Belt. A few had been found. Some were in museums.

Instead, he slept the dreamless sleep of the just--if there was any
particular reason for him to consider himself just.




II


Gimp Hines put the finishing touches on the first full-scale ionic
during that next week. The others of the Bunch, each working when he
could, completed cementing the segments of the first bubb together.

On a Sunday morning they carried the bubb out into the yard behind the
store and test inflated the thirty-foot ring by means of a line of hose
from the compressor in the shop. Soapsuds dabbed along the seams
revealed a few leaks by its bubbling. These were fixed up.

By late afternoon the Bunch had folded up the bubb again, and were
simulating its practice launching from a ground-to-orbit rocket--as well
as can be done on the ground with a device intended only for use in a
state of weightlessness, when the operators are supposed to be
weightless, too. The impossibility of establishing such conditions
produced some ludicrous results:

The two Kuzaks diving with a vigor, as if from a rocket airlock, hitting
the dirt with a thud, scrambling up, opening and spreading the great
bundle, attaching the air hose. Little Lester hopping in to help fit
wire rigging, most of it still imaginary. A friendly dog coming over to
sniff, with a look of mild wonder in his eyes.

"Laugh, you leather-heads!" Art Kuzak roared at the others. He grinned,
wiping his muddy face. "We've got to learn, don't we? Only, it's like
make-believe. Hell, I haven't played make-believe since I was four! But
if we keep doing it here, all the kids and townspeople will be peeking
over the fence to see how nuts we've gone."

This was soon literally true. In some embarrassment, the Bunch rolled up
their bubb and lugged it into the shop.

"I can borrow a construction compressor unit on a truck," Two-and-Two
offered. "And there's a farm I know..."

A great roll of stellene tubing, to have a six-feet six-inch inside
diameter when inflated, was delivered on Monday. Enough for three bubbs.
The Archer Fives were expected to be somewhat delayed, due to massive
ordering. But small boxes of parts and raw stock for the ionics had
begun to arrive, too. Capacitors, resistors, thermocouple units.
Magnesium rods for Storey or Ramos or the Kuzaks to shape in a lathe.
Sheet aluminum to be spun and curved and polished. With Eileen Sands
helping, Gimp Hines would do most of that.

So the real work began. Nobody in the Bunch denied that it was a grind.
For most, there were those tough courses at Tech. And a job, for money,
for sustenance. And the time that must be spent working for--Destiny.
Sleep was least important--a few hours, long after midnight, usually.

Frank Nelsen figured that he had it relatively easy--almost as easy as
the Kuzak twins, who, during football season, were under strict orders
to get their proper sack time. He worked at Hendricks'--old Paul didn't
mind his combining the job with his labors of aspiration. Ramos, the
night-mechanic, Tiflin, the car-washer, and Two-and-Two Baines, the
part-time bricklayer, didn't have it so easy. Eileen, a first-rate legal
typist employed for several hours a day by a partnership of lawyers,
could usually work from notes, at the place where she lived.

Two-and-Two would lift a big hand facetiously, when he came into the
shop. Blinking and squinting, he would wiggle his fingers. "I can still
see 'em--to count!" he would moan. "Thanks, all you good people, for
coaching me in my math."

"Think nothing of it," Charlie Reynolds or David Lester, or most any of
the others, would tell him. Two-and-Two hadn't come near Frank Nelsen
very much, during the last few days, though Frank had tried to be
friendly.

Lester was the only one without an activity to support himself. But he
was at the shop every weekday, six to ten p.m., cementing stellene with
meticulous care, while he muttered and dreamed.

The Bunch griped about courses, jobs, and the stubbornness of materials,
but they made progress. They had built their first bubb and ionic. The
others would be easier.

Early in November, Nelsen collected all available fresh capital,
including a second thousand from Paul Hendricks and five hundred from
Charlie Reynolds, and sent it in with new orders.

That about exhausted their own finances for a long time to come. Seven
bubbs, minus most of even their simpler fittings, and five ionics,
seemed as much as they could pay for, themselves. Charlie Reynolds
hadn't yet lined up a backer.

"We should have planned to outfit one guy completely," Jig Hollins
grumbled on a Sunday afternoon at the shop. "Then we could have drawn
lots about who gets a chance to use the gear. That we goofed there is
your fault, Reynolds. Or--your Grandpappy didn't come through, huh?"

Charlie met Hollins' sneering gaze for a moment. "Never mind the
'Grandpappy', Jig," he said softly. "I knew that chances weren't good,
there. However, there are other prospects which I'm working on. I
remember mentioning that it might take time. As for your other remarks,
what good is equipping just one person? I thought that this was a
project for all of us."

"I'm with Charlie," Joe Kuzak commented.

"Don't fight, guys--we've got to figure on training, too," Ramos
laughed. "I've got the problem of an expensive training centrifuge about
beat. Out at my old motor scooter club. Come on, Charlie--you, too,
Jig--get your cars and let's go! It's only seven miles, and we all need
a break."

Paul Hendricks had gone for a walk. So Nelsen locked the shop, and they
all tore off, out to the place, Ramos leading the way in his scooter. At
the scooter club they found an ancient carnival device which used to be
called a motordrome. It was a vertical wooden cylinder, like a huge,
ironbound, straight sided cask, thirty feet high and wide, standing on
its bottom.

Ramos let himself and the scooter through a massive, curved
door--conforming to the curvature of the walls--at the base of the
'drome.

"Secure the latch bar of this door from the outside, fellas," he said.
"Then go to the gallery around the top to watch."

Ramos started riding his scooter in a tight circle around the bottom of
the 'drome. Increasing speed, he swung outward to the ramped juncture
between floor and smooth, circular walls. Then, moving still faster, he
was riding around the vertical walls, themselves, held there by
centrifugal force. He climbed his vehicle to the very rim of the great
cask, body out sideways, grinning and balancing, hands free, the
squirrel tails flapping from his gaudily repainted old scooter.

"Come on, you characters!" he shouted through the noise and smoke. "You
should try this, too! It's good practice for the rough stuff to come,
when we blast out!... Hey, Eileen--you try it first--ride with me--then
alone--when you get the hang of it!..."

This time she accepted. Soon she was riding by herself, smiling
recklessly. Reynolds rode after that, then the Kuzaks. Like most of
them, Frank Nelsen took the scooter up alone, from the start. He was a
bit scared at first, but if you couldn't do a relatively simple stunt
like this, how could you get along in space? He became surer, then
gleeful, even when the centrifugal force made his head giddy, pushed his
buttocks hard against the scooter's seat, and his insides down against
his pelvis.

Storey, Hollins and Tiflin all accomplished it. Even Gimp Hines rode
behind Ramos in some very wild gyrations, though he didn't attempt to
guide the scooter, himself.

Then it was David Lester's turn. It was a foregone conclusion that he
couldn't take the scooter up, alone. Palefaced, he rode double. Ramos
was careful this time. But on the downward curve before coming to rest,
the change of direction made Lester grab Ramos' arm at a critical
instant. The scooter wavered, and they landed hard, even at reduced
speed. Agile Ramos skipped clear, landing on his feet. Lester flopped
heavily, and skidded across the bottom of the 'drome.

When the guys got to him, he was covered with friction burns, and with
blood from a scalp gash. Ramos, Storey and Frank worked on him to get
him cleaned up and patched up. Part of the time he was sobbing bitterly,
more from failure, it seemed, than from his physical hurt. By luck there
didn't seem to be any bones broken.

"Darn!" he choked in some infinite protest, beating the ground with his
fists. "Damn--that's the end of it for me...! So soon... Pop..."

"I'll drive you to Doc Miller's, Les," Charlie Reynolds said briskly.
"Then home. You other people better stay here..."

Charlie had a baffled, subdued look, when he returned an hour later. "I
thought his mother would chew my ear, sure," he said. "She didn't. She
was just polite. That was worse. She's small--not much color. Of course
she was scared, and mad clean through. Know her?"

"I guess we've all seen her around," Nelsen answered. "Widow. Les was in
one of my classes during my first high school year. He was a senior,
then. They haven't been in Jarviston more than a few years. I never
heard where they came from..."

Warily, back at the shop, the Bunch told Paul what had happened.

For once his pale eyes flashed. "You Bright Boys," he said. "Especially
you, Ramos...! Well, I'm most to blame. I let him hang around, because
he was so doggone interested. And _driven_--somehow. Lucky nothing too
bad happened. Last August, when you romantics got serious about space, I
made him prove he was over twenty-one..."

They sweated it out, expecting ear-burning phone calls, maybe legal
suits. Nothing happened. Nelsen felt relieved that Lester was gone. One
dangerous link in a chain was removed. Contempt boosted his own arrogant
pride of accomplishment. Then pity came, and anger for the sneers of Jig
Hollins. Then regret for a fallen associate.

The dozen Archers were delivered--there would be a spare, now. The Bunch
continued building equipment, they worked out in the motordrome, they
drilled at donning their armor and at inflating and rigging a bubb. Gimp
Hines exercised with fierce, perspiring doggedness on a horizontal bar
he had rigged in the back of the shop. He meant to compensate for his
bad leg by improving his shoulder muscles.

Most of the guys still figured that Charlie Reynolds would solve their
money problem. But in late November he had a bad moment. Out in front of
Hendricks', he looked at his trim automobile. "It's a cinch I can't use
it Out There," he chuckled ruefully and unprompted. Then he brightened.
"Nope--selling it wouldn't bring one tenth enough, anyhow. I'll get what
we need--just got to keep trying... I don't know why, but some so-called
experts are saying that off-the-Earth enterprises have been
overextended. That makes finding a backer a bit tougher than I thought."

"You ought to just take off on your own, Reynolds," Jig Hollins
suggested airily. "I'll bet it's in your mind. The car would pay for
that. Or since you're a full-fledged nuclear engineer, some company on
the Moon might give you a three year contract and send you out free in a
comfortable vehicle. Or wouldn't you like to be tied that long? I
wouldn't. Maybe I could afford to be an independent, too. Tough on these
shoestring boys, here, but is it _our_ fault?"

Hollins was trying to taunt Reynolds. "You're tiresome, Jig," Reynolds
said without heat. "Somebody's going to poke you sometime..."

Next morning, before going to classes at Tech, Frank Nelsen, with the
possibility of bitter disappointment looming in his own mind, spotted
Glen Tiflin, the switch blade tosser, standing on the corner, not quite
opposite the First National Bank. Tiflin's mouth was tight and his eyes
were narrowed.

Nelsen felt a tingle in his nerves--very cold.

"Hi--what cooks, Tif?" he said mildly.

"To you it's which?" Tiflin snapped.

Nelson led him on. "Sometimes I think of all the dough in that bank," he
said.

"Yeah," Tiflin snarled softly. "That old coot, Charlie Reynolds'
grandpa, sitting by his vault door. Too obvious, though--here. Maybe in
another bank--in another town. We could get the cash we need. Hell,
though--be cavalier--it's just a thought."

"You damned fool!" Nelsen hissed slowly.

It was harder than ever to like Tiflin for anything at all. But he did
have that terrible, star-reaching desperation. Nelsen had quite a bit of
it, himself. He knew, now.

"Get up to Tech, Tif," he said like an order. "If you have a chance,
tell my math prof I might be a little late..."

That was how Frank Nelsen happened to face J. John Reynolds, who, in a
question of progress, would still approve of galley slaves. Nelsen had
heard jokes like that laughed about, around Jarviston. J. John, by
reputation, was all hard business.

Nelsen got past his secretary.

"Young man--I hope you have something very special to say."

There was a cold, amused challenge in the old man's tone, and an
implication of a moment of casual audience granted generously, amid
mountains of more important affairs.

Nelsen didn't waver. The impulse to do what he was doing had come too
suddenly for nervousness to build up. He hadn't planned what to say, but
his arguments were part of himself.

"Mr. Reynolds--I'm Frank Nelsen, born here in Jarviston. Perhaps you
know me on sight. I believe you are acquainted with Paul Hendricks, and
you must have heard about our group, which is aiming at space, as people
like ourselves are apt to be doing, these days. We've made fair
progress, which proves we're at least earnest, if not dedicated. But
unless we wait and save for years, we've come about as far as we can,
without a loan. Judging from the success of previous earnest groups, and
the development of resources and industries beyond the Earth, we are
sure that we could soon pay you back, with considerable interest."

J. John Reynolds seemed to doze, hardly listening. But at the end his
eyes opened, and sparks of anger--or acid humor--seemed to dance in
them.

"I know very well what sort of poetic tomfoolery you are talking about,
Nelsen," he said. "I wondered how long it would be before one of
you--other than my grandson with his undiluted brass, and knowing me far
too well in one sense, anyway--would have the gall to come here and talk
to me like this. You'd probably be considered a minor, too, in some
states. Dealing with you, I could even get into trouble."

Nelsen's mouth tightened. "I came to make a proposition and get an
answer," he responded. "Thank you for your no. It helps clear the view."

"Hold on, Nelsen," J. John growled. "I don't remember saying no. I said
'gall,' intending it to mean guts. That's what young spacemen need,
isn't it? They've almost got to be _young_, so legal viewpoints about
the age at which competence is reached are changing. Oh, there is plenty
of brass among your generation. But it fails in peculiar places. I was
waiting for one place where it didn't fail. Charlie, my grandson,
doesn't count. It has never taken him any courage to talk to me any way
he wants."

This whole encounter was still dreamlike to Frank Nelsen.

"Then you are saying yes?"

"I might. Do you foolishly imagine that my soul is so completely sour
milk that in youth I couldn't feel the same drives that you feel, now,
for the limited opportunity there was, then? But under some damnable
pressure toward conformity, I took a desk job in a bank. I am now
eighty-one years old... How much does your 'Bunch' need--at minimum,
mind you--for the opportunity to ride in space-armor till the rank smell
of their bodies almost chokes them, for developing weird allergies or
going murdering mad, but, in the main, doing their best, anyway,
pathfinding and building, if they've got the guts? Come on, Nelsen--you
must know."

"Fifty thousand," Frank answered quickly. "There are still eleven in our
group."

"Yes... More may quit along the way... Here is _my_ proposition: I would
make funds available for your expenses up to that amount--from my
personal holdings, separate from this bank. The amount due from each
individual shall be ten percent of whatever his gains or earnings are,
off the Earth, over a period of ten years, but he will not be required
to pay back any part of the original loan. This is a high-risk,
high-potential profit arrangement for me--with an experimental element.
I will ask for no written contract--only a verbal promise. I have found
that people are fairly honest, and I know that, far in space,
circumstances become too complicated to make legal collections very
practical, anyway, even if I ever felt inclined to try them... Now,
if--after I see your friends, whom you will send to me for an interview
and to give me their individual word, also, I decide to make my
proposition effective--will you, yourself, promise to abide by these
terms?"

Nelsen was wary for a second. "Yes--I promise," he said.

"Good. I am glad you paused to think, Nelsen. I am not fabulously rich.
But having more or less money hardly matters to me at this late date, so
I am not likely to try to trap you. Yet there is still a game to play,
and an outcome to watch--the future. Now get out of here before you
become ridiculous by saying more than a casual thanks."

"All right--thanks. Thank you, sir..."

Nelsen felt somewhat numb. But a faint, golden glow was increasing
inside his mind.

Tiflin hadn't gone up to Tech. He was still waiting on the street
corner. "What the hell, Frank?" he said.

"I think we've got the loan, Tif. But he wants to see all of us. Can you
go in there, be polite, say you're a Bunch member, make a promise,
and--above all--avoid blowing your top? Boy--if you queer this...!"

Tiflin's mouth was open. "You kidding?"

"No!"

Tiflin gulped, and actually looked subdued. "Okay, Frank. Be cavalier.
Hell, I'd croak before I'd mess this up...!"

By evening, everybody had visited J. John Reynolds, including Charlie
Reynolds and Jig Hollins. Nelsen got the backslapping treatment.

Charlie sighed, rubbed his head, then grinned with immense relief.
"That's a load off," he said. "Glad to have somebody else fix it.
Congrats, Frank. I wonder if Otto has got any champagne to go with the
hotdogs...?"

Otto had a bottle--enough for a taste, all around. Eileen kissed Frank
impulsively. "You ought to get _real_ smart," she said.

"Uh-huh," he answered. "Now let's get some beer--more our speed."

But none of them overdid the beer either...

Just after New Year's they had eight bubbs completed, tested, folded
carefully according to government manuals, and stowed in an attic they
had rented over Otto's place. They had seven ionics finished and stored.
More parts and materials were arriving. The air-restorers were going to
be the toughest and most expensive to make. They were the really vital
things to a spaceman. Every detail had to be carefully fitted and
assembled. The chlorophane contained costly catalytic agents.

A winter of hard work was ahead, but they figured on a stretch of clear
sailing, now. They didn't expect anyone to shake their morale, least of
all a nice, soft-spoken guy in U.S.S.F. greys. Harv Diamond was the one
man from Jarviston who had gotten into the Space Force. He used to hang
around Hendricks'.

He dropped in on a Sunday evening, when the whole Bunch was in the shop.
They were around him at once, like around a hero, shouting and
questioning. There were mottled patches on his hands, and he wore dark
glasses, but he seemed at ease and happy.

"There have been some changes in the old joint, huh, Paul?" he said. "So
you guys are one of the outfits building its own gear... Looks pretty
good... Of course you can get some bulky supplies cheaper on the Moon,
because everything from Earth has to be boosted into space against a
gravity six times as great as the lunar, which raises the price like
hell. Water and oxygen, for instance. Peculiar, on the dry, almost
airless Moon. But roasting water out of lunar gypsum rock is an easy
trick. And oxygen can be derived from water by simple electrolysis."

"Hell, we know all that, Harv," Ramos laughed.

So Harv Diamond gave them the lowdown on the shortage of girls--yet--in
Serenitatis Base, on the Moon. Just the same, it was growing like corn
in July, and was already a pretty good leave-spot, if you liked to look
around. Big vegetable gardens under sealed, stellene domes. Metal
refineries, solar power plants, plastic factories and so forth, already
in operation... But there was nothing like Pallastown, on little Pallas,
out in the Asteroid Belt... Mars? That was the heebie-jeebie planet.

Gimp asked Harv how much leave he had on Earth.

"Not long, I guess," Harv laughed. "I've got to check back at the Force
Hospital in Minneapolis tomorrow..."

But right away it was evident that his thoughts had been put on the
wrong track. His easy smile faded. He gasped and looked kind of
surprised. He hung onto Paul's old swivel chair, in which he was
sitting, as if he was suddenly terribly afraid of falling. His eyes
closed tight, and there was a funny gurgle in his throat.

The Bunch surrounded him, wanting to help, but he half recovered.

"Even a good Space Force bubb, manufactured under rigid government
specifications, can tear," he said in a thick tone. "If some jerk,
horsing around with another craft, bumps you even lightly.
Compartmentation helps, but you can still be unlucky. I was
fortunate--almost buttoned into my Archer Six, already. _But did you
ever see a person slowly swell up and turn purple, with frothy bubbles
forming under the skin, while his blood boils in the Big Vacuum?_ That
was my buddy, Ed Kraft..."

Lieutenant Harvey Diamond gasped. Huge, strangling hiccups came out of
his throat. His eyes went wild. The Kuzaks had to hold him, while Mitch
Storey ran to phone Doc Miller. A shot quieted Diamond somewhat, and an
ambulance took him away.

That incident shook up the Bunch a little. A worse one came on a Tuesday
evening, when not everybody was at the shop.

The TV was on, showing the interior of the _Far Side_, one of those big,
comparatively luxurious tour bubbs that take rubbernecks that can afford
it on a swing around the Moon. The _Far Side_ was just coming into
orbit, where tending skip gliders would take off the passengers for
grounding at the New Mexico spaceport. Aboard the big bubb you could see
people moving about, or sitting with drinks on curved benches. A girl
was playing soft music on a tiny, lightweight piano.

There wasn't any sign of trouble except that the TV channel went dead
for a second, until a stand by commercial with singing cartoon figures
cut in.

But Frank Nelsen somehow put his hands to his head, as if to protect it.

Mitch Storey, with a big piece of stellene in his brown mitts, stood up
very straight.

Gimp, at a bench, handed a tiny capacitor to Eileen, and started
counting, slow and even. "One--two--three--four--five--"

"What's with you slobs?" Jig Hollins wanted to know.

"Dunno--we're nuts, maybe," Gimp answered. "Ten--eleven--twelve--"

Charlie Reynolds and Paul Hendricks were alert, too.

Then a big, white light trembled on the thin snow beyond the windows,
turning the whole night landscape into weird day. The tearing, crackling
roar was delayed. By the time the sound arrived, all of the stellene in
the _Far Side_ must have been consumed. It had no resistance to
atmospheric friction at five miles per second, or faster. There were
just the heavier metallic details left to fall and burn. Far off, there
was a thumping crash that seemed to make the ground sag and recover.

"Here we go!" Charlie Reynolds yelled.

In his and Hollins' cars, they got to the scene of the fragment's fall,
two miles out of town, by following a faint, fading glow. They were
almost the first to reach the spot. Tiflin and Ramos, who had been
working on their jobs, came with their boss, along with a trailing horde
of cars from town.

Flashlights probed into the hot impact pit in the open field, where the
frozen soil had seemed to splash like a liquid. Crumpled in the hole was
a lump of half-fused sheet steel, wadded up like paper. It was probably
part of the _Far Side_'s central hub. Magnesium and aluminum, of which
the major portions had certainly been made, were gone; they could never
have endured the rush through the atmosphere.

Ramos got down into the pit. After a minute, he gave a queer cry, and
climbed out again. His mitten smoked as he opened it, to show something.

"It must have been behind a heavy object," he said very seriously, not
like his usual self at all. "That broke the molecular impact with the
air--like a ceramic nose cone. Kept it from burning up completely."

The thing was a lady's silver compact, from which a large piece had been
fused away. A bobbypin had gotten welded to it.

Old Paul Hendricks cursed. Poor Two-and-Two moved off sickly, with a
palm clamped over his mouth.

Eileen Sands gasped, and seemed about to yell. But she got back most of
her poise. Women have nursed the messily ill and dying, and have tended
ghastly wounds during ages of time. So they know the messier side of
biology as well as men.

Ramos gave the pathetic relic to a cop who was trying to take charge.

"Somebody must have goofed bad on the _Far Side_, for it to miss orbit
like that," Ramos grated. "Or was something wrong, beforehand? Their TV
transmitter went out--we were watching, too, at the garage... You can
see the aurora--the Northern Lights... Those damn solar storms might
have loused up instruments...! But who'll ever know, now...?"

The Kuzaks, who had been to an Athletic Association meeting at Tech, had
grabbed a ride out with the stream of cars from town. Both looked grim.
"No use hanging around here, Charlie," Art urged. "Let's get back to the
shop."

Before he drove off, Jig Hollins tried to chuckle mockingly at
everybody, especially Charlie Reynolds. "Time to think about keeping a
nice safe job in the Jarviston powerhouse--eh, Reynolds? And staying
near granddad?"

"We're supposed not to be children, Hollins," Charlie shot back at him
from his car window. "We're supposed to have known long ago that these
things happen, and to have adjusted ourselves to our chances."

"Ninnies that get scared first thing, when the facts begin to show!"
Tiflin snarled. "Cripes--let's don't be like soft bugs under boards!"

"You're right, Tif," Frank Nelsen agreed, feeling that for once the
ne'er-do-well--the nuisance--might be doing them all some good. Frank
could feel how Tiflin shamed some of the quiver out of his own insides,
and helped bring back pride and strength.

The _Far Side_ disaster had been pretty disturbing, however. And next
day, Thursday, the blue envelopes came to the members of the Bunch. A
printed card with a typed-in date, was inside each: "Report for
space-fitness tests at Space-Medicine Center, February 15th..."

"Just a couple of weeks!" Two-and-Two was moaning that night. "How'll I
get through, with my courses only half-finished. You've gotta help me
some more, people! With that stinking math...!"

So equipment building was almost suspended, while the Bunch crammed and
sweated and griped and cursed. But maybe now some of them wouldn't care
so very much if they flunked.

Two loaded automobiles took off for Minneapolis on the night before the
ordeal. The Bunch put up at motels to be fresh the next morning. Maybe
some of them even slept.

At the Center, there were more forms to fill out. Then complete
physicals started the process. Next came the written part. Right off,
Frank Nelsen knew that this was going a familiar way, which had
happened quite often at Tech: Struggle through a tough course, hear dire
promises of head-cracking questions and math problems in the final quiz.
Then the switch--the easy letdown.

The remainder of the tests proceeded like assembly-line operations, each
person taking each alone, in the order of his casual position in the
waiting line.

First there was the dizzying, mind-blackening centrifuge test, to see if
you could take enough Gs of acceleration, and still be alert enough to
fit a simple block puzzle together.

Then came the free fall test, from the top of a thousand foot tower. A
parachute-arrangement broke your speed at the bottom of the track. As in
the centrifuge, instruments incorporated into the fabric of a coverall
suit with a hood, were recording your emotional and bodily reactions.
The medics wanted to be sure that your panic level was high and cool.
Nelsen didn't find free fall very hard to take, either.

Right after that came the scramble to see how fast you could get into an
Archer, unfold and inflate a bubb and rig its gear.

"That's all, Mister," the observer with the camera told Nelsen in a
bored tone.

"Results will be mailed to your home within twelve hours--Mr. Nelsen," a
girl informed him as she read his name from a printed card.

So the Bunch returned tensely to Jarviston, with more time to sweat out.
Everybody looked at Gimp Hines--and then looked away. Even Jig Hollins
didn't make any comments. Gimp, himself, seemed pretty subdued.

The small, green space-fitness cards were arriving at Jarviston
addresses in the morning.

Near the end of the noon hour, Two-and-Two Baines was waving his around
the Tech campus, having gone home to look, as of course everybody else
who could, had also done. "Cripes!--Hi-di-ho--here it is!" he was
yelling at the frosty sky, when Frank came with his own ticket.

The Kuzaks had theirs, and were calm about it. Eileen Sands' card was
tucked neatly into her sweater pocket, as she joined those who were
waiting for the others on the front steps of Tech's Carver Hall.

Ramos had to make a noise. "See what Santa brought the lady! But he
didn't forget your Uncle Miguel, either--see! We're in, kid--be happy.
Yippee!"

He tried to whirl her in some crazy dance, but Gimp was swinging along
the slushy walk on his crutches. His grin was a mile wide. Mitch Storey
was with him, looking almost as pleased.

"Guess legs don't count, Out There," Gimp was saying. "Or patched
tickers, either, as long as they work good! I kind of figured on it...
Hey--I don't want to ride anybody's shoulders, Ramos--cut it out...! We
won't know about Charlie and Jig till tonight, when they come to Paul's
from their jobs. But I don't think that there's any sweat for them,
either... Only--where's Tif? He should be back by now from where he
lives with his father..."

Tiflin didn't show up at Hendricks' at all that evening, or at his
garage job either. Ramos phoned from the garage to confirm that.

"And he's not at home," Ramos added. "The boss sent me to check. His Old
Man says he doesn't know where Tif is and cares less."

"Just leave Tif be," Mitch Storey said softly.

"Maybe that's best, at that," old Paul growled. "Only I hope the darned
idiot doesn't cook himself up another jam..."

They all knew then, for sure, what had happened. Right now, Glen Tiflin
was wandering alone, somewhere, cursing and suffering. As likely as not,
he'd start hitchhiking across the country, to try to get away from
himself... Somewhere the test instruments--which had seemed so
lenient--had tripped him up, spotting the weakness that he had tried to
fight. Temper, nerves--emotional instability. So there was no green card
for Tif, to whom space was a kind of Nirvana...

The Bunch worked on with their preparations. Things got done all right,
but the fine edge of enthusiasm had dulled. Jig Hollins flung his usual
remarks, with their derisive undertone, around for a couple of weeks.
Then he came into the shop with a girl who had a pretty, rather blank
face, and a mouth that could twist with stubborn anger.

"Meet Minnie," Jig said loudly. "She is one reason why I have decided
that I've had enough of this kid stuff. I gave it a whirl--for kicks.
But who, with any sense, wants to go batting off to Mars or the
Asteroids? That's for the birds, the crackpots. Wife, house, kids--right
in your own home town--that's the only sense there is. Minnie showed me
that, and we're gonna get married!"

The Bunch looked at Jig Hollins. He was swaggering. He was making sour
fun of them, but in his eyes there were other signs, too. A pleading:
Agree with me--back me up--quit! Don't see through me--it's not so,
anyhow! Don't say I'm hiding behind a skirt... Above all, don't call me
yellow! I'm _not_ yellow, I tell you! I'm tough Jig Hollins! You're the
dopes!...

Frank Nelsen spoke for the others. "We understand, Jig. We'll be getting
you a little wedding present. Later on, maybe we'll be able to send you
something really good. Best of luck..."

They let Jig Hollins and his Minnie go. They felt their contempt and
pity, and their lifting, wild pride. Maybe Jig Hollins, wise guy and big
mouth, boosted their own selves quite a bit, by contrast.

"Poor sap," Joe Kuzak breathed. "Who's he kidding--us or himself, or
neither...?"

Soon Eileen began to show symptoms: Sighs. A restlessness. Sudden angry
pouts that would change as quickly to the secret smiles of reverie,
while she hummed a soft tune to herself, and rose on her toes, dancing a
few steps. Speculative looks at Nelsen, or the other guys around her.
Maybe she envied men. Her eyes would narrow thoughtfully for a second.
Then she might look scared and very young, as if her thoughts frightened
her. But the expression of determined planning would return.

After about ten days of this, Gimp asked, "What's with you, Eileen? You
don't usually say much, but now there must be something else."

She tossed down a fistful of waste with which she had been wiping her
hands--she had been cementing segments of the last of the ten bubbs they
would make--more than they needed, now, but spares might be useful.

"Okay, all," she said briskly. "You should hear this, without any
further delay. I'm clearing out, too. Reasons? Well--at least since Tif
flunked his emotional I've been getting the idea that possibly I've been
playing on a third-rate team. No offense, please--I don't really believe
it's so, and if it isn't so you're tough enough not to be hurt. Far
worse--I'm a girl. So why am I trying to do things in a man's way, when
there are means that are made for me? I'm all of twenty-two. I've got
nobody except an aunt in Illinois. Meanwhile, out in New Mexico, there's
a big spaceport, and a lot of the right people who can help me. I'll bet
I can get where you want to go, before you do. Tell Mr. J. John Reynolds
that he can have my equipment--most of which he paid for. But perhaps
I'll still be able to give him his ten percent."

"Eileen! Cripes, what are you talking about?" This was Ramos yelping, as
if the clown could be hurt, after all.

"I don't mean anything so bad, Fun Boy," she said more gently. "Lots of
men are remarkably chivalrous. But no arguments. Now that I have
declared my intentions, I'll pick up and pull out of here this
minute--taking some pleasant memories with me, as well as a
space-fitness card. You're all good, plodding joes--honest. But there'll
be a plane west from Minneapolis tomorrow."

She was getting into her blazer. Even Ramos saw that arguments would be
futile. Frank Nelsen's throat ached suddenly, as if at sins of omission.
But that was wrong. Eileen Sands was too old for him, anyhow.

"So long, you characters," she said. "Good luck. Don't follow me
outside. Maybe I'll see you, someplace."

"Right, Eileen--we'll miss yuh," Storey said. "And we better sure enough
see you that someplace!"

There were ragged shouts. "Good luck, kid. So long, Eileen..."

She was gone--a small, scared, determined figure, dressed like a boy. On
her wrist was a watch that might get pawned for a plane ticket.

Ramos was unbelievably glum for days. But he worked harder building
air-restorers than most of the Bunch had ever worked before. "We're
hardcore, now--we'll last," he would growl. "Final, long lap--March,
April and May--with no more interruptions. In June, when our courses at
Tech are finished, we'll be ready to roll..."

That was about how it turned out. Near the end of May, the Bunch lined
up in the shop, the ten blastoff drums they had made, including two
spares. The drums were just large tubes of sheet magnesium, in which
about everything that each man would need was compactly stowed: Archer
Five, bubb, sun-powered ionic drive motor, air-restorer,
moisture-reclaimer, flasks of oxygen and water, instruments, dehydrated
foods, medicines, a rifle, instruction manuals, a few clothes, and
various small, useful items. Everything was cut to minimum, to keep the
weight down. The lined up drums made a utilitarian display that looked
rather grim.

The gear was set out like this, for the safety inspectors to look at
during the next few days, and provide their stamp of approval.

The blastoff tickets had also been purchased--for June tenth.

"Well, how do you think the Bunch should travel to New Mexico, Paul?"
Frank Nelsen joshed.

"Like other Bunches, I guess," Paul Hendricks laughed. "A couple of
moving vans should do the trick..."




III


On June first, ten days before blastoff, David Lester came back to the
shop, sheepishness, pleasure and worry showing in his face.

"I cleared up matters at home, guys," he said. "And I went to
Minneapolis and obtained one of these." He held up the same kind of
space-fitness card that the others had.

"The tests are mostly passive," he explained further. "Anybody can be
whirled in a centrifuge, or take a fall. That is somewhat simpler, in
its own way, than clinging to a careening motor scooter. Though I do
admit that I was still almost rejected...! So, I'll join you, again--if
I'm permitted? I understand that my old gear has been completed, as a
spare? Paul told me. Of course I'm being crusty, in asking to have it
back, now?"

"Uh-uh, Les--I'm sure that's okay," Ramos grunted. "Right, fellas?"

The others nodded.

A subdued cheerfulness seemed to possess Lester, the mamma's boy, as if
he had eased and become less introverted. The Bunch took him back
readily enough, though with misgivings. Still, the mere fact that a
companion could return, after defeat, helped brace their uncertain
morale.

"I'll order you a blastoff ticket, Les," Frank Nelsen said. "In one of
the two GOs--ground-to-orbit rockets--reserved for us. The space is
still there..."

David Lester had won a battle. He meant to win through, completely.
Perhaps some of this determination was transmitted to the others.
Two-and-Two Baines, for example, seemed more composed.

There wasn't much work to do during those last days, after the equipment
had been inspected and approved, the initials of each man painted in red
on his blastoff drum, and all the necessary documents put in order.

Mitch Storey rode a bus to Mississippi, to say goodbye to his folks. The
Kuzaks flew to Pennsylvania for the same reason. Likewise, Gimp Hines
went by train to Illinois. Ramos rode his scooter all the way down to
East Texas and back, to see his parents and a flock of younger brothers
and sisters. When he returned, he solemnly gave his well-worn vehicle
to an earnest boy still in high school.

"No dough," Ramos said. "I just want her to have a good home."

Those of the Bunch who had families didn't run into any serious last
minute objections from them about their going into space. Blasting out
was getting to be an accepted destiny.

There was a moment of trouble with Two-and-Two Baines about a kid of
eight years named Chippie Potter, who had begun to hang around
Hendricks' just the way Frank Nelsen had done, long ago. But more
especially, the trouble was about Chippie's fox terrier, Blaster.

"The lad of course can't go along with us, Out There, on account of
school and his Mom," Two-and-Two said sentimentally, on one of those
final evenings. "So he figures his mutt should go in his place. Shucks,
maybe he's right! A lady mutt first made it into orbit, ahead of any
people, remember? And we ought to have a mascot. We could make a sealed
air-conditioned box and smuggle old Blaster. Afterwards, he'd be all
right, inside a bubb."

"You try any stunt like that and I'll shoot you," Frank Nelsen promised.
"Things are going to be complicated enough."

"You always tell me no, Frank," Two-and-Two mourned.

"I know something else," said Joe Kuzak--he and his tough twin had
returned to Jarviston by then, as had all the others who had visited
their homes. "There's a desperate individual around, again. Tiflin. He
appealed his test--and lost. Kind of a good guy--someways..."

The big Kuzaks, usually easy and steady and not too comical, both had a
certain kind of expression, now--like amused and secretive gorillas.
Frank wasn't sure whether he got the meaning of this or not, but right
then he felt sort of sympathetic to Tiflin, too.

"I didn't hear anything; I won't say or do anything," he laughed.

Afterwards, under the pressure of events, he forgot the whole matter.

It would take about thirty-six hours to get to the New Mexico spaceport.
Calculating accordingly, the Bunch hoisted their gear aboard two
canvas-covered trucks parked in the driveway beside Hendricks', just
before sundown of their last day in Jarviston.

People had begun to gather, to see them off. Two-and-Two's folks, a
solid, chunky couple, looking grave. David Lester's mother, of course,
seeming younger than the Bunch remembered her. Make-up brought back some
of her good-looks. She was more Spartan than they had thought, too.

"I have made up a basket of sandwiches for you and your comrades,
Lester," she said.

Otto Kramer was out with free hotdogs, beer and Pepsi, his face sad. J.
John Reynolds, backer of the Bunch, had promised to come down, later.
Chief of Police, Bill Hobard, was there, looking grim, as if he was half
glad and half sorry to lose this passel of law-abiding but worrisome
young eccentrics. There were various cynical and curious loafers around,
too. There were Chippie Potter and his mutt--a more wistful and
worshipping pair would have been hard to imagine.

Sophia Jameson, one of Charlie Reynolds' old flames, was there. Charlie
had sold his car and given away his wardrobe, but he still managed to
look good in a utilitarian white coverall.

"Well, we had a lot of laughs, anyway, you big ape!" Sophia was saying
to Charlie, when Roy Harder, the mailman with broken-down feet, shuffled
up, puffing.

"One for you, Reynolds," he said. "Also one for you, Nelsen. They just
came--ordinarily I wouldn't deliver them till tomorrow morning. But you
see how it is."

A long, white envelope was in Frank Nelsen's hands. In its upper
left-hand corner was engraved:

                 UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE
                 RECRUITING SECTION
                 WASHINGTON, D.C.

"Jeez, Frankie--Charlie--you made it--open 'em, quick!" Two-and-Two
said.

Frank was about to do so. But everybody knew exactly what was inside
such an envelope--the only thing that was ever so enclosed, unless you
were already in the Force. An official summons to report, on such and
such a date and such and such a place, for examination.

For a minute Frank Nelsen suffered the awful anguish of indecision over
a joke of circumstance. Like most of the others, he had tried to get
into the Force. He had given it up as hopeless. Now, when he was ready
to move out on his own, the chance came. Exquisite irony.

Frank felt the lift of maybe being one of--well--the Chosen. To wear the
red, black and silver rocket emblem, to use the finest equipment, to
carry out dangerous missions, to exercise authority in space, and yet to
be pampered, as those who make a mark in life are pampered.

"_Que milagro!_--holy cow!" Ramos breathed.
"Charlie--Frankie--congratulations!"

Frank saw the awed faces around them. They were looking up to him and
Charlie in a friendly way, but already he felt that he had kind of lost
them by being a little luckier. Or was this all goof ball sentiment in
his own mind, to make himself feel real modest?

So maybe he got sentimental about this impoverished, ragtag Bunch that,
even considering J. John Reynolds' help, still were pulling themselves
up into space almost literally by their own bootstraps. He had always
belonged to the Bunch, and he still did. So perhaps he just got sore.

Charlie's and his eyes met for a second, in understanding.

"Thanks, Postman Roy," Charlie said. "Only you were right the first
time. These letters shouldn't be delivered until your next trip around,
tomorrow morning."

They both handed the envelopes back to Roy Harder.

The voices of their Bunch-mates jangled in a conflicting chorus.

"Ah--yuh damfools!" Two-and-Two bleated.

"Good for them!" Art Kuzak said, perhaps mockingly.

"Hey--they're us--they'll stay with us--shut up--didn't we lose enough
people, already?" Gimp said.

Frank grinned with half of his mouth. "We always needed a name," he
remarked. "How about _The Planet Strappers_? Hell--if the chairborne
echelon of the U.S.S.F. is so slow and picky, let 'em go sit on a
sunspot."

"I need some white paint and a brush, Paul," Ramos declared, running
into the shop.

In a couple of minutes more, the name for the Bunch was crudely and
boldly lettered on the sides of both trucks.

"Salute your ladies, shake hands with your neighbors, and then let's get
moving," Charlie Reynolds laughed genially.

And so they did. Old Paul Hendricks, born too soon, blinked a little as
he grinned, and slapped shoulders. "On your way, you lucky tramps...!"

There were quick movements here and there--a kiss, a touch of hands, a
small gesture, a strained glance.

Frank Nelsen blew a kiss jauntily to Nance Codiss, the neighbor girl,
who waved to him from the background. "So long, Frank..." He wondered if
he saw a fierce envy showing in her face.

Miss Rosalie Parks, his high school Latin teacher, was there, too. Old
J. John Reynolds appeared at the final moment to smile dryly and to flap
a waxy hand.

"So long, sir... Thanks..." they all shouted as the diesels of the
trucks whirred and then roared. J. John still had never been around the
shop. It was only Frank who had seen him regularly, every week. It might
have been impertinent for them to say that they'd make him really rich.
But some must have hoped that they'd get rich, themselves.

Frank Nelsen was perched on his neatly packed blastoff drum in the back
of one of the trucks, as big tires began to turn. Near him, similarly
perched, were Mitch Storey, dark and thoughtful, Gimp Hines with a
triumph in his face, Two-and-Two Baines biting his lip, and Dave Lester
with his large Adam's apple bobbing.

So that was how the Bunch left Jarviston, on a June evening that smelled
of fresh-cut hay and car fumes--home. Perhaps they had chosen this hour
to go because the gathering darkness might soften their haunting
suspicions of complete folly before an adventure so different from the
life they knew--neat streets, houses, beds, Saturday nights, dances,
struggling for a dream at Hendricks'--that even if they survived the
change, the difference must seem a little like death.

Seeking the lifting thread of magical romance again, Frank Nelsen looked
up at the ribbed canvas top of the truck. "Covered wagon," he said.

"Sure--Indians--boom-boom," Two-and-Two chuckled, brightening. "Wild
West... Yeah--_wild_--that's a word I kind of like."

Up ahead, in the other truck, Ramos and Charlie Reynolds had begun to
sing a funny and considerably ribald song. They made lots of lusty,
primitive noise. When they were finished, Ramos, still in a spirit of
humor, corned up an old Mexican number about disappointed love.

_"Adios, Mujer--

Adios para siempre--

Adios..."_

Ramos wailed out the last syllable with lugubrious emphasis.

"Always it's girls," Dave Lester managed to chuckle. "I still don't see
how they expect to find many, Out There."

"If our Eileen has--or will--make it, she won't be the first--or last,"
Frank offered, almost mystically.

"Hey--I was right about the word, _wild_," Two-and-Two mused.
"Yeah--we're all just plum-full of wanting to be wild. Not _mean_ wild,
mostly--constructive wild, instead. And, damn, we'll _do_ it...!
Cripes--we ought to come back to old Paul's place in June, ten years
from now, and tell each other what we've accomplished."

"Damn--that's a fine idea, Two-and-Two!" David Lester piped up. "I'll
suggest it to the other guys, first chance I get...!"

Of course it was another piece of callow whistling in the dark, but it
was a buildup, too. Coming home at a fixed, future time, to compare
glittering successes. Eldorados found and exploited, cities built, giant
businesses established, hearts won, real manhood achieved past
staggering difficulties. But they all had to believe it, to combat the
icy sliver of dread concerning an event that was getting very near, now.

Mitch Storey sat with his mouth organ cupped in his hands. He began to
make soft, musing chords, tried a fragment of Old Man River, shifted
briefly to a spiritual, and wound up with some eerie, impromptu
fragments, partly like the drums and jingling brass of old Africa,
partly like a joyful battle, partly like a lonesome lament, and then,
mysteriously like absolute silence.

Storey stopped, abashed. He grinned.

"Reaching for Out There, Mitch?" Frank Nelsen asked. "Music of your own,
to tell about space? Got any words for it?"

"Nope," Mitch said. "Maybe it shouldn't have any words. Anyhow, the tune
doesn't come clear, yet. I haven't been--There."

"Maybe some more of Otto's beer will help," Frank suggested. "Here--one
can, each, to begin." For once, Frank had an urge to get slightly
pie-eyed.

"High's a good word," he amended. "High and sky! Mars and stars!"

"Space and race, nuts and guts!" Lester put in, trying to belong, and be
light-minded, like he thought the others were, instead of a scared,
pedantic kid. He slapped the blastoff drum under him, familiarly, as if
to draw confidence from its grim, cool lines.

The whole Bunch was quite a bit like that, for a good part of the night,
shouting lustily back and forth between the two trucks, laughing,
singing, wise-cracking, drinking up Otto Kramer's Pepsi and beer.

But at last, Gimp Hines, remembering wisdom, spoke up. "We're supposed
to be under mild sedation--a devil-killer, a tranquilizer--for at least
thirty hours. It's in the rules for prospective ground-to-orbit
candidates. We're supposed to be sleeping good. Here goes my pill--down,
with the last of my beer..."

Faces sobered, and became strained and careful, again. The guys on the
trucks bedded down as best they could, among their gaunt equipment. Soon
there were troubled snores from huddled figures that quivered with the
motion of the vehicles. The mottled Moon rode high. Big tires whispered
on damp concrete. Lights blinked past. The trucks curved around corners,
growled up grades, highballed down. There were pauses at all-night
drive-ins, coffees misguidedly drunk in a blurred, fur-tongued half
wakefulness that seemed utterly bleak. Oh, hell, Frank Nelsen thought,
wasn't it far better to be home in bed, like Jig Hollins?

At grey dawn, there was a breakfast stop, the two truck drivers and
their relief man grinning cynically at the Bunch. Then there was more
country, rolling and speeding past. Wakefulness was half sleep, and
vice-versa. And the hours, through the day and another night, dwindled
toward blastoff time, at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning.

When the second dawn came, the Bunch were all tautly and wearily alert
again, peering ahead, across dun desert. There wasn't much fallout from
the carefully developed hydrogen-fusion engines of the GO rockets, but
maybe there was enough to distort the genes of the cacti a little,
making their forms more grotesque.

Along the highway there were arrows and signs. When the trucks had
labored to the top of a ridge, the spaceport installations came into
view all at once:

Barbed-wire fences, low, olive-drab gate buildings, guidance tower, the
magnesium dome of a powerhouse reactor, repair and maintenance shops,
personnel-housing area carefully shielded against radiation by a huge
stellene bubble, sealed and air-conditioned, with double-doored
entrances and exits. Inside it were visible neat bungalows, lawns,
gardens, supermarket, swimming pools, swings, a kid's bike left casually
here or there.

The first sunshine glinted on the two rockets and their single,
attendant gantry tower, waiting on the launching pad. The rockets were
as gaunt as sharks. They might almost have been natural spires on the
Moon, or ruined towers left by the extinct beings of Mars. At first they
were impersonal and expected parts of the scene, until the numbers,
ceramic-enamelled on their striped flanks, were noticed: GO-11 and
GO-12.

"They're us--up the old roller coaster!" Charlie Reynolds shouted.

Then everybody was checking his blastoff ticket, as if he didn't
remember the number primly typed on it. Frank Nelsen had GO-12.
GO--Ground-to-Orbit. But it might as well mean go! glory, or gallows, he
thought.

The trucks reached the gate. The Bunch met the bored and cynical
reception committee--a half-dozen U.S.S.F. men in radiation coveralls.

Each of the Bunch held his blastoff ticket, his space-fitness and his
equipment-inspection cards meekly in sweaty fingers. It was an old
story--the unknowing standing vulnerable before the knowing and perhaps
harsh.

Nelsen guessed at some of the significance of the looks they all
received: Another batch of greenhorns--to conquer and develop and
populate the extra-terrestrial regions. They all come the same way, and
look alike. Poor saps...

Frank Nelsen longed to paste somebody, even in the absence of absolute
impoliteness.

The blastoff drums were already being lifted off the trucks, weighed,
screened electronically, and moved toward a loading elevator on a
conveyor. The whole process was automatic.

"Nine men--ten drums--how come?" one of the U.S.S.F. people inquired.

"A spare. Its GO carriage charge is paid," Reynolds answered.

He got an amused and tired smirk. "Okay, Sexy--it's all right with us.
And I hope you fellas were smart enough not to eat any breakfast. Of
course we'd like to have you say--tentatively--where you'll be headed,
on your own power, after we toss you Upstairs. Toward the Moon, huh,
like most fledglings say? It helps a little to know. Some new folks
start to scream and get lost, up there. See how it is?"

"Sure--we see--thanks. Yes--the Moon." This was still Charlie Reynolds
talking.

"No problem, then, Sexy. We mean to be gentle. Now let's move along, in
line. Never mind consulting wristwatches--we've got over four hours
left. Final blood pressure check, first. Then the shot, the
devil-killer, the wit-sharpener. And try to remember some of what you're
supposed to have learned. Relax, don't talk too much, and try not to
swallow any live butterflies."

The physician, looking them over, shook his head and made a wry face of
infinite sadness, when he came to Gimp and Lester, but he offered no
comment except a helpless shrug.

The U.S.S.F. spokesman was still with them. "All right--armor up. Let's
see how good you are at it."

They scrambled to it grimly, and still a little clumsily. Gimp Hines
had, of course, long ago tailored his Archer to fit that shrunken right
leg. Then they just sat around in the big locker room, trying to get
used to being enclosed like this, much of the time, checking to see that
everything was functioning right, listening to the muffled voices that
still reached them from beyond their protecting encasement. They could
still have conversed, by direct sound or by helmet-radio, but the
devil-killer seemed to subdue the impulse, and for a while caused a
dreaminess that shortened the long wait...

"Okay--time to move!"

Heavy with their Archies, they filed out into desert sun-glare that
their darkened helmets made feeble. They arose in the long climb of the
gantry elevator and split into two groups, for the two rockets,
according to their GO numbers. It didn't seem to matter, now, who went
with whom. Each man had his own private sweating party. The padded
passenger compartments were above the blastoff drum freight sections.

"Helmets secure? Air-restorer systems on? Phones working? Answer roll
call if you hear me. Baines, George?"

"Here!" Two-and-Two responded, loud and plain in Frank Nelsen's phone,
from the other rocket.

"Hines, Walter?"

One by one the names were called... "Kuzak, Arthur?... Kuzak,
Joseph?..."

"Okay--the Mystic Nine, eh? Lash down!"

They lay on their backs on the padded floors, and fastened the straps.
Gimp Hines, next to Frank, seemed to have discarded his crutches,
somewhere.

The inspector swaggered around among them, jerking straps, and tapping
shoulders and buttocks straight on the floor padding with a boot toe.

"All right--not good, not too bad. Ease off--shut your eyes, maybe. The
next twenty minutes are ours. The rest are yours, except for orders. I
hope you remember your jump procedures. Also that there are a lot of
wooden nickels Upstairs--in orbit, on the Moon, anyplace. We'll call
some of your shots from the ground. Good luck--and Glory help you..."

The growl in their phones died away with the muffled footsteps. Doors
closed on their gaskets and were dogged, automatically.

Then it was like waiting five minutes more, inside a cannon barrel.
There was a buzzing whisper of nuclear exciters. The roar of power cut
in. A soft lurch told that the rockets were off the ground--fireborne.
The pressure of acceleration mounted. You closed your eyes to make the
blackness seem natural, instead of a blackout in your optic nerves, and
the threadiness of your mind seem like sleep. But you felt smothered,
just the same. Somebody grunted. Somebody gave a thick cry.

Frank Nelsen had the strange thought that, by his body's mounting
velocity, enough kinetic energy was being pumped into it to burn it to
vapor in an instant, if it ever hit the air. But it was the energy of
freedom from gravity, from the Earth, from home--_for_ adventure.
Freedom to wander the solar system, at last! He tried, still, to believe
in the magnificence of it, as the thrust of rocket power ended, and the
weightlessness of orbital flight came dizzily.

He didn't consciously hear the order to leave the orbiting GO-12, which
was moving only about five hundred feet from it's companion, GO-11. But,
like most of the others, he worked his way with dogged purpose through
what seemed a fuzzy nightmare.

The doors of the passenger compartments had opened; likewise the
blastoff drums had been ejected automatically, and were orbiting free.

Maybe it was Gimp who moved ahead of him. Looking out, Frank saw what
was certainly Ramos, already straddling a drum marked with a huge red
M.R., riding it like a jaunty troll on a seahorse. He saw the Kuzaks
dive for their initialled drums, big men not yet as apt in this new game
as in football, but grimly determined to learn fast. The motion was all
as silent as a shadow.

Then Frank jumped for his own drum, and found himself turning slowly
end-over-end, seeing first the pearl-mist curve that was the Earth, then
the brown-black, chalk-smeared sky, with the bright needle points and
the corona-winged sun in it. Instinct made him grab futilely outward,
for the sense of weightlessness was the same as endless fall. He _was_
falling, around the Earth, his forward motion exactly balancing his
downward motion, in a locked ellipse, a closed trajectory.

His mind cleared very fast--that must have been another phase of the
devil-killer shot coming into action. Controlling panic, he relocated
his drum, marked by a splashed red F.N., set his tiny shoulder ionic in
operation, and reached back to move its flexible guide, first to stop
his spin, then to produce forward motion. He got to the drum, and just
clung to it for a moment.

But in the next instant he was looking into the embarrassed, anguished
face of a person, who, like a drowning man, had come to hang onto it for
dear life, too.

"Frank, I--I even dirtied myself..."

"So what? Over there is your gear, Two-and-Two--go get it!" Frank
shouted into his phone, the receiver of which was now full of sounds--a
moaning grunt, a vast hiccuping, shouts, exhortations.

"Easy, Les," Reynolds was saying. "Can you reach a pill from the rack
inside your chest plate, and swallow it? Just float quietly--nothing'll
happen. We've got work to do for a few minutes... We'll look after you
later... Cripes, Mitch--he can't take it. Jab the knockout needle right
through the sleeve of his Archer, like we read in the manuals. The
interwall gum will seal the puncture..."

Just then the order came, maddeningly calm and hard above the other
sounds in Frank's phone: "All novices disembarked from GOs-11 and -12
must clear four-hundred mile take-off orbital zone for other traffic
within two hours."

At once Frank was furiously busy, working the darkened stellene of his
bubb from the drum, letting it spread like a long wisp of silvery cobweb
against the stars, letting it inflate from the air-flasks to a firm and
beautiful circle, attaching the rigging, the fine, radial
spokewires--for which the blastoff drum itself now formed the hub. To
the latter he now attached his full-size, sun-powered ionic motor. Then
he crept through the double sealing flaps of the airlock, to install the
air-restorer and the moisture-reclaimer in the circular, tunnel-like
interior that would now be his habitation.

He wasn't racing anything except time, but he had worked as fast as he
could. Still, Gimp Hines had finished rigging his bubb, minutes ahead of
Frank, or anybody else. On second thought, maybe this was natural
enough. Here, where there was no weight, his useless leg made no
difference--as the space-fitness examiners must have known. Besides,
Gimp had talented fingers and a keen mechanical sense, and had always
tried harder than anybody.

Ramos was almost as quick. Frank wasn't much farther behind. The Kuzaks
were likewise doing all right. Two-and-Two was trailing some, but not
very badly.

"Spin 'em!" Gimp shouted. "Don't forget to spin 'em for
centrifuge-gravity and stability!"

And so they did, each gripping the rigging at their bubb rims, and using
the minute but accumulative thrust of the shoulder ionics of their
Archers, to provide the push. The inflated rings turned like wheels with
perfect bearings. In the all but frictionless void, they could go on
turning for decades, without additional impetus.

"We've made it--we're Out Here--we're all right!" Ramos was shouting
with a fierce exultation.

"Shut up, Ramos!" Frank Nelsen yelled back. "Don't ever say that, too
soon. Look around you!"

Storey and Reynolds were still struggling with their bubbs. They had
been delayed by trying to quiet Dave Lester, who now floated in a
drugged stupor, lashed to his blastoff drum.

Slowly, pushed by their shoulder ionics, Gimp, Ramos and Frank Nelsen
drifted over to see what they could do for Lester.

He was vaguely conscious, his eyes were glassy, his mouth drooled watery
vomit.

"What do you want us to do, Les?" Frank asked gently. "We could put you
back in one of the rockets. You'd be brought back to the spaceport, when
they are guided back by remote control."

"I don't know!" Lester wailed in a hoarse voice. "Fellas--I don't know!
A little falling is all right... But it goes on all the time. I can't
stand it! But if I'm sent back--I can't ever live with myself!..."

Frank felt the intense anguish of trying to decide somebody else's
quandary that might be a life or death matter which would surely involve
them all. Damn, weak-kneed kid! How had he ever gotten so far?

"We should have set up his bubb first, put him inside, and spun it to
kill that sense of fall!" Gimp said. "We'll do it, now! He should be all
right. He _did_ pass his space-fitness tests, and the experts ought to
know."

With the three of them at it, and with the Kuzaks joining them in a
moment, the job was quickly finished.

Meanwhile, the sharp, commanding voice of Ground Control sounded in
their phones, again: "GOs-11 and -12 returning to port. Is all in order
among delivered passengers? Sound out if true. Baines, George?..."

David Lester's name was called just before Frank Nelsen's, and he
managed to say, "In order!" almost firmly, creating a damnable illusion,
Frank thought. But for a moment, mixed with his anger, Frank felt a
strange, almost paternal gentleness, too.

At the end of the roll call, the doors of the GO rockets closed. Stubby
wings, useful for the ticklish operation of skip-glide deceleration and
re-entry into the atmosphere, slid out of their sheaths. Little, lateral
jets turned the vehicles around. Their main engines flamed lightly;
losing speed, they dipped in their paths, beginning to fall.

Watching the rockets leave created a tingling sense of being left all
alone, at an empty, breathless height from which you could never get
down--a height full of dazzling, unnatural sunshine, that in moments
would become the dreadful darkness of Earth's shadow.

"Hey--our spare drum--it'll drift off!" Ramos shouted.

The Kuzaks dived to retrieve the cylinder. Others followed. But there
was a peculiar circumstance. The friction cover at one of its ends hung
open. There was a trailing wisp of stellene--part of the bubb packed
inside--and a thin, angry face with rather hysterical eyes, within the
helmet of an Archer Five.

"Shhh--it ain't safe for me to come out yet," Glen Tiflin hissed
threateningly. "Damn you all--if you dare queer me...!"

"Cripes--another Jonah!" Charlie Reynolds growled.

Frank Nelsen looked at the Kuzaks, floating near.

"Well--what could we do?" Joe Kuzak, the gentler twin, whispered. "He
came back to Jarviston, to our rooming house, one night. We promised to
help him a little. What are you going to do with a character nuts enough
about space to armor up and stuff himself inside a blastoff drum? Of
course he didn't come that way from home. There's that electronic check
of drum contents at the gate of the port. But he was there on a
visitor's pass, waiting--having hitchhiked all the way to here. After
the electronic check, he figured on stowing away, while the drums were
waiting to be loaded. The only thing we did to help was to take a little
of the stuff out of the spare drum and stow it in our two drums, to
leave him some room. We thought sure he'd be caught, quick. But you can
see how he got away with it. Those U.S.S.F. boys at the port don't
really give a damn who gets Out Here."

"Okay--I'll buy it," Reynolds sighed heavily. "Good luck with the stunt,
Tif."

Tiflin only gave him a poisonous glare, as the nine fragile, gleaming
rings, the drifting men and the spare drum, orbited on into the Earth's
shadow, not nearly as dark as it might have been because the Moon was
brilliant.

"We'd better rig the parabolic mirrors of the ionics to catch the first
sunshine in about forty minutes, so we can start moving out of orbit,"
Ramos said. "We'll have to think of food, sometime, too."

"Food, yet--ugh!" Art Kuzak grunted.

Frank felt the fingers of spasm taking hold of his stomach. Most
everybody was getting fall-sick, now, their insides not finding any up
or down direction. But the guys wavered back to their bubbs. The
shoulder ionics of their Archers, though normally sun-energized, could
draw power from the small nuclear batteries of the armor during the rare
moments when there could be darkness anywhere in solar space.

The Planet Strappers stood in the rigging of their fragile vehicles,
setting the full-sized ionics to produce increased acceleration which
would gradually push the craft beyond orbit. Joe Kuzak ran a steel wire
from a pivot bolt at the hub of his ring, to tow Tiflin and his drum.

Then everybody crawled into their respective bubbs, most of them needing
the centrifugal gravity to help straighten out their fall-sickness.

"My neck is swelling, too," Frank Nelsen heard Charlie Reynolds say.
"Lymphatic glands sometimes bog down in the absence of weight. Don't
worry if it happens to some of you. We know that it straightens out."

For a few minutes it seemed that they had a small respite in their
struggle for adjustment to a fantastic environment.

"Well--I got cleaned up, some--that's better," Two-and-Two said. "But
look at the fuzzy lights down on Earth. Hell, is it right for a fella to
be looking down on the lights of Paris, Moscow, Cairo, and Rangoon--when
he hasn't ever been any farther than Minneapolis?" Two-and-Two sounded
fabulously befuddled.

David Lester started screaming again. They had left him alone and
apparently unconscious, inside his ring, because all ionics, including
his, had had to be set. Then, in the pressure of events, they had almost
forgotten him.

"I'll go look," Frank Nelsen said.

Mitch Storey was there ahead of him. Mitch's helmet was off; his dark
face was all planes and hollows in the moonlight coming through the
thin, transparent walls of the vehicle. "Should we call the U.S.S.F.
patrol, Frank?" he asked anxiously. "Have them take him off? 'Cause he
sure can't stand another devil-killer."

"We'd better," Frank answered quickly.

But now Tiflin, having deserted his blastoff drum, was coming through
the airlock flaps, too. He stepped forward gingerly, along the spinning,
ring-shaped tunnel.

"Poor bookworm," he growled in a tone curiously soft for Glen Tiflin.
"Think I don't understand how it is? And how do you know if he _wants_
to get sent back?"

Mitch had removed Lester's helmet, too. Tiflin knelt. His arm moved with
savage quickness. There was the crack of knuckles, in a rubberized
steel-fabric space glove, against Lester's jaw. His hysterical eyes
glazed and closed; his face relaxed.

For a second of intolerable fury, Frank wanted to tear Tiflin apart.

But Mitch half-grinned. "That might be an answer," he said.

They plopped where they were, and tried to rest until the orbiting
cluster of rings emerged from Earth's shadow into blazing sunshine,
again. Then Mitch and Frank returned to their own bubbs to check on the
acceleration.

It was soon plain that Joe Kuzak's bubb, towing Tiflin's drum, would
lag.

"Hell!" Art Kuzak snapped. "Get that character out here to help us
inflate and rig his own equipment! We did enough for him! So if the
Force notices that there are ten bubbs instead of nine, the extra is
still just our spare... Hey--Tiflin!"

"Nuts--I'm looking after Pantywaist," Tiflin growled back.

"Awright," Art returned. "So we just cast your junk adrift! Come on,
boy!" There was no kidding in the dry tone.

Tiflin snarled but obeyed.

Ions jetting from the Earthward hub-ends of the rotating rings, yielded
their steady few pounds of thrust. The gradual outward spiral began.

"Cripes--I'm not sure I can even astrogate to the Moon," Two-and-Two was
heard to complain.

"I'll check your ionic setting for you, Two-and-Two," Gimp answered him.
"After that the acceleration should continue properly without much
attention. So how about you and me taking first watch, while the others
ease off a little...?"

Frank Nelsen crept carefully back into his own rotating ring, still half
afraid that an armored knee or elbow might go right through the thin,
yielding stellene. Prone, and with his helmet still sealed, he slipped
into the fog which the tranquilizer now induced in his brain, while the
universe of stars, Moon, sun and Earth tumbled regularly around him.

He dreamed of yelling in endless fall, and of climbing over metal-veined
chunks of a broken world, where once there had been air, sea, desert and
forest, and minds not unlike those of men, but in bodies that were far
different. Gurgling thickly, he awoke, and snapped on his helmet phone
to kill the utter silence.

Someone muttered a prayer in a foreign tongue:

"... _Nuestra Dama de Guadalupe--te pido, por favor... Tengo miedo_--I'm
scared... _Pero pienso mas en ella_--I think more of her. _Mi chula, mi
linda_... My beautiful Eileen... Keep her--"

The prayer broke off, as if a switch was turned. It had been brash
Ramos... Now there were only some fragments of harmonica music...

Frank slipped into the blur, again, awakening at last with Two-and-Two
shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Frankie--we're five hours out, by the
chronometers--look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have
brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing,
before? Stripped down to his shorts, and with the spin stopped for
zero-G, he was bouncing back and forth from wall to wall inside his
bubb! The sun makes it nice and warm in there. Think I might try it,
myself, sometime. Shucks, I feel pretty good, now... Frankie, ain't you
hungry?"

Frank felt limp as a rag, but he felt much better than before, and he
could stand some nourishment. "Lead on, Two-and-Two," he said.

Ramos' bubb was spinning once more, but he was wearing just dungarees.
The Bunch--the Planet Strappers--with only their helmets off, were
crouched, evenly spaced, around the circular interior of the ring. Dave
Lester was there, too--staring, but fairly calm, now. In this curious
place, there was a delicious and improbable aroma of coffee--cooked by
mirror-reflected sunlight on a tiny solar stove.

"So that's the way it goes," Charlie Reynolds commented profoundly. "We
reach out for strangeness. Then we try to make it as familiar as home."

"Stew, warmed in the cans, too," Ramos declared. "Enough for a light
one-time-around. I brought the stew along. Hope you birds remember.
Then we're back on dehydrates. Hell, except for that weight problem and
consequent cost of stuff from Earth, we'd have it made, Out Here. The
Big Vacuum ain't so tough--no storms in it, even, to tear our bubbs
apart. I guess we won't ever have a bigger adventure than finding out
for ourselves that we can get along with space."

"If we had a beef roast, we'd put it in a sealed container of clear
plastic," Gimp laughed. "Set it turning, outside the bubb, on a swiveled
tether wire. It would rotate for hours like on a spit--almost no
friction. Rig some mirrors to concentrate the sun's heat. Space Force
men do things like that."

"Shut up--I'm getting _hong_-gry!" Art Kuzak roared.

Ramos poured the coffee in the thin magnesium cups that each of the
Bunch had brought. Their squeeze bottles, for zero-G drinking, were not
necessary, here. Their skimpy portions of stew were spooned on magnesium
plates. Knife and fork combinations were brought out. An apple purée
which had been powder, followed the stew. Brunch was soon over.

"That's all for now, folks," Ramos said ruefully.

Tiflin snaked a cigarette out from inside the collar of his Archer.

"Hey!" Reynolds said mildly. "Oxygen, remember? Shouldn't you ask our
host, first?"

Ramos had eased up on ribbing Tiflin months ago. "It's okay," he said.
"The air-restorers are new."

But Tiflin's explosive nerves, under strain for a long time, didn't take
it. He threw down the unlighted fag. He snicked his switch blade from a
thigh pocket. For an instant it seemed that he would attack Reynolds.
Then the knife flew, and penetrated the thin, taut wall, to its handle.
There was a frightening hiss, until the sealing gum between the double
layers, cut off the leak.

The Kuzaks had Tiflin helpless and snarling, at once.

"Get a patch, somebody--fix up the hole," Joe, the mild one, growled.
"Tiflin--me and my brother helped you. Now we're gonna sit on you--just
to make sure your funny business doesn't kill us all. Try anything just
_once_, and we'll feed you all that vacuum--without an Archer. If you're
a good boy, maybe you'll live to get dumped on the Moon as we pass by."

"Nuts--let's give this sick rat to the Space Force right now." Art Kuzak
hissed. "Here comes their patrol bubb."

The glinting, transparent ring with the barred white star was passing at
a distance.

"All is well with you novices?" The enquiring voice was a gruff drawl,
mingled with crunching sounds of eating--perhaps a candy bar.

"No!" Tiflin whispered, pleading. "I'll watch myself!"

The United Nations patrol was out, too, farther off. Another, darker
bubb, with other markings, passed by, quite close. It had foreign lines,
more than a bit sinister to the Bunch's first, startled view. It was a
Tovie vehicle, representing the other side of the still--for the most
part--passively opposed forces, on Earth, and far beyond. But through
the darkened transparency of stellene, the armored figures--again
somewhat sinister--only raised their hands in greeting.

In a minute, Frank Nelsen emerged from Ramos' ring. Floating free, he
stabilized himself, fussed with the radio antenna of his helmet-phone
for a moment, making its transmission and reception directional. On the
misty, shrinking Earth, North America was visible.

"Frank Nelsen to Paul Hendricks," he said. "Frank Nelsen to Paul
Hendricks..."

Paul was waiting, all right. "Hello, Frankie. Some of the guys talked
already--said you were asleep."

"Hi, Paul--yeah! Terra still looks big and beautiful. We're okay.
Amazing, isn't it, how just a few watts of power, beamed out in a thin
thread, will reach this far, and lots farther? Hey--will you open and
shut your front door? Let's hear the old customer's bell jingle... Best
to you, to J. John, to Nance Codiss, Miss Parks--everybody..."

The squeak of hinges and the jingling came through, clear and
nostalgically.

"Come on, Frank," Two-and-Two urged. "Other guys would like to talk to
Paul... Hey, Paul--maybe you could get my folks down to the store to say
hello to me on your transmitter. And I guess Les would appreciate it if
you got his mother..."

When the talk got private, Frank went to Mitch Storey's bubb.

"I wanted to show you," Mitch said. "I brought seeds, and these little
plastic tubes with holes in them, that you can string around inside a
bubb. The weight is next to nothing. Put the seeds in the tubes, and
water with plant food in solution. The plants come up through the holes.
Hydroponics. Gotta almost do it, if I'm going way out to Mars without
much supplies. Maybe, before I get there, I'll have even ripe tomatoes!
'Cause, with sun all the time, the stuff grows like fury, they say. I'll
have string beans and onions and flowers, anyhow! Helps keep the air
oxygen-fresh, too. Wish I had a few bumble bees! 'Cause now I'll have to
pollenate by hand..."

Nope--Mitch couldn't get away from vegetation, even in space.

The Planet Strappers soon established a routine for their journey out as
far as the Moon. There were watches, to be sure that none of the bubbs
veered, while somebody was asleep or inattentive. Always at hand were
loaded rifles, because you never knew what kind of space-soured men--who
might once have been as tame as neighbors going for a drive on Sundays
with their families--might be around, even here.

Neither Kuzak slept, if the other wasn't awake. They were watching
Tiflin, whose bubb rode a little ahead of the others. He was ostracized,
more or less.

Everybody took to Ramos' kind of exercise, bouncing around inside a
bubb--even Lester, who was calmer, now, but obviously strained by the
vast novelty and uncertainty ahead.

"I gave you guys a hard time--I'm sorry," he apologized. "But I hope
there won't be any more of that. The Bunch will be breaking up, soon, I
guess--going here and there. And if I get a job at Serenitatis Base, I
think I'll be okay."

Frank Nelsen hoped that he could escape any further part of Lester, but
he wasn't sure that he had the guts to desert him.

It wasn't long before the ionics were shut off. Enough velocity had been
attained. Soon, the thrust would be needed in reverse, for braking
action, near the end of the sixty hour journey into a circumlunar orbit.

Sleep was a fitful, dream-haunted thing. Food was now mostly a kind of
gruel, rich in starches, proteins, fats and vitamins--each meal
differently flavored, up to the number of ten flavors, in a
manufacturer's attempt to mask the sameness. Add water to a powder--heat
and eat. The spaceman's usual diet, while afield...

One of the functions of the moisture-reclaimers was a rough joke, or a
squeamishness. A man's kidneys and bowels functioned, and precious water
molecules couldn't be wasted, here in the dehydrated emptiness. But what
difference did it really make, after the sanitary distillation of a
reclaimer? Accept, adjust...

Decision about employment or activity in the immediate future, was one
thing that couldn't be dismissed. And announcements, beamed from the
Moon, emphasized it:

"Serenitatis Base, seventeenth month-day, sixteenth hour. (There was a
chime) Lunar Projects Placement is here to serve you. Plastics-chemists,
hydroponics specialists, machinists, mechanics, metallurgists, miners,
helpers--all are urgently needed. The tax-free pay will startle you.
Free subsistence and quarters. Here at Serene, at Tycho Station or at a
dozen other expanding sites..."

Charlie Reynolds sat with Frank Nelsen while he listened. "The lady has
a swell voice," said Charlie. "Otherwise, it _sounds_ good, too. But I'm
one that's going farther. To Venus--just being explored. All fresh, and
no man-made booby traps, at least. Maybe they'll even figure out a way
to make it rotate faster, give it a reasonably short day, and a
breathable atmosphere--make a warmer second Earth out of it...
Sometimes, when you jump farther, you jump over a lot of trouble. Better
than going slow, with the faint-hearts. Their muddling misfortunes begin
to stick to you. I'd rather be Mitch, headed for heebie-jeebie Mars, or
the Kuzaks, aiming for the crazy Asteroid Belt."

That was Charlie, talking to him--Frank Nelsen--like an older brother.
It made a sharp doubt in him, again. But then he grinned.

"Maybe I am a slow starter," he said. "The Moon is near and humble, but
some say it's good training--even harsher than space. And I don't want
to bypass and miss anything. Oh, hell, Charlie--I'll get farther, soon,
too! But I really don't even know what I'll do, yet. Got to wait and see
how the cards fall..."

Several hours before the rest of the Bunch curved into a slow orbit a
thousand miles above the Moon, Glen Tiflin set the ionic of his bubb for
full acceleration, and arced away, outward, perhaps toward the Belt.

"So long, all you dumb slobs!" his voice hissed in their helmet-phones.
"Now I get really lost! If you ever cross my path again, watch your
heads..."

Art Kuzak's flare of anger died. "Good riddance," he breathed. "How long
will he last, alone? Without a space-fitness card, the poor idiot
probably imagines himself a big, dangerous renegade, already."

Joe Kuzak's answering tone almost had a shrug in it. "Don't jinx our
luck, twin brother," he said. "For that matter, how long will _we_
last...? Mex, did you toss Tiflin back his shiv?"

"A couple of hours ago," Ramos answered mildly.

Everybody was looking down at the Moon, whose crater-pocked ugliness and
beauty was sparsely dotted with the blue spots of stellene domes, many
of them housing embryo enterprises that were trying to beat the blastoff
cost of necessities brought from Earth, and to supply spacemen and
colonists with their needs, cheaply.

The nine fragile rings were soon in orbit. One worker-recruiting rocket
and several trader-rockets--much less powerful than those needed to
achieve orbit around Earth--because lunar gravity was only one-sixth of
the terrestrial--were floating in their midst. On the Moon it had of
course been known that a fresh Bunch was on the way. Even telescopes
could have spotted them farther off than the distance of their 240,000
mile leap.

Frank Nelsen's tongue tasted of brassy doubt. He didn't know where he'd
be, or what luck, good or bad, he might run into, within the next hour.

The Kuzaks were palavering with the occupants of two heavily-loaded
trader rockets. "Sure we'll buy--if the price is right," Art was saying.
"Flasks of water and oxygen, medicines, rolls of stellene. Spare parts
for Archies, ionics, air-restorers. Food, clothes--anything we can sell,
ourselves..."

The Kuzaks must have at least a few thousand dollars, which they had
probably managed to borrow when they had gone home to Pennsylvania to
say goodbye.

Out here, free of the grip of any large sphere, there was hardly a limit
to the load which their ionics could eventually accelerate sufficiently
to travel tremendous distances. Streamlining, in the vacuum, of course
wasn't necessary, either.

Now a small, sharp-featured man in an Archie, drifted close to Ramos and
Frank, as they floated near their bubbs. "Hello, Ramos, hello, Nelsen,"
he said. "Yes--we know your names. We investigate, beforehand, down on
terra firma. We even have people to snap photographs--often you don't
even notice. We like guys with talent who get out here by their own
efforts. Shows they got guts--seriousness! But now you've arrived. We
are Lunar Projects Placement. We need mechanics, process technicians,
administrative personnel--anything you can name, almost. Any bright lad
with drive enough to learn fast, suits us fine. Five hundred bucks an
Earth-week, to start, meals and lodging thrown in. Quit any time you
want. Plenty of different working sites. Mines, refineries, factories,
construction..."

"Serenitatis Base?" Ramos asked almost too quickly, Frank thought. And
he sounded curiously serious. Was this the Ramos who should be going a
lot farther than the Moon, anyway?

"Hell, yes, fella!" said the job scout.

"Then I'll sign."

"Excellent... You, too, guy?" The scout was looking at Frank. "And your
other friends?"

"I'm thinking about it," Frank answered cagily. "Some of them aren't
stopping on the Moon, as you can see."

Mitch Storey was lashing a few flasks of oxygen and water to the rim of
his bubb, being careful to space them evenly for static balance. He
didn't have the money to buy much more, even here.

The Kuzaks were preparing two huge bundles of supplies, which they
intended to tow. Reynolds was also loading up a few things, with
Two-and-Two helping him.

"I'm all set, Frank!" Two-and-Two shouted. "I'm going along with
Charlie, maybe to crash the Venus exploration party!"

"Good!" Frank shouted back, glad