Stowaway to Mars

---

JAKE REILLY, the night watchman, made his usual round without any apprehension of danger. He was even yawning as he left the laboratory wing and came into the main assembly hangar. For a moment he paused on the threshold, looking at the structure in the centre of the floor. He wondered vaguely how they were getting on with it. Mighty long job, building a thing like that. It hadn't looked any different for months, as far as he could see.

But Jake could not see far. The towering object of his inspection was so closely scaffolded that only here and there could the dim lights filter between the poles to be reflected back from a polished metal surface.

'Workin' inside it mostly, now, I s'pose,' he told himself.

He switched on his lamp and let its white beam wander about inquisitively. The floor plan of this, the central part of the building, was circular. Around the walls lathes, power drills and other light machine tools were disposed at intervals. The constructional work cut off his view of the opposite wall, and he moved round it, conscientiously conducting his search. He let his light play upwards, sweeping the narrow gallery which circled the wall, and noticing that the doors giving upon it were all shut. He sent the beam still higher, above the level of the dim, shaded lights, to the distant roof. There was a criss-crossing of heavy girders up there, supporting huge pulley blocks. The cables and chains depending from them came curving down, looped back out of the way now on to iron hooks on the walls. He tilted his lamp so that its bright circle ran down the curved metal side again.

'Like bein' inside a blessed gasholder, that's what it is,' he told himself, not for the first time.

'Pile o' money that thing must've cost, and I don't s'pose it'll ever go.'

A sudden sound caused him to stiffen. Somewhere there had been a faint clink of metal upon metal. He transferred his lamp to his left hand, and a large, black, businesslike pistol suddenly appeared in his right. He swung the light around, sweeping the dimmer parts of the place with its beam.

'Now then. 'Oo's there? Come out of it,' he ordered.

There was no answer. His voice boomed round the metal wall, slowly diminishing into silence.

'Better come out quick. I got a gun,' Jake told the dimness.

He began to back towards the door where the alarm button was situated. No good trying to get the man single handed in here. Might chase him round and round that scaffolding for hours.

'Better come quiet, 'nless you want a bullet in you,' he said.

But still there was no reply. He was in reach of the alarm now. He hesitated. It might have been only a rat. Better be sure than sorry, though. He hung the lamp on the little finger of his pistol hand and reached, without turning, for the switch.

There was a sudden 'phut' somewhere in the shadows. Jake shuddered convulsively. The pistol and the lamp clattered together to the ground, and he slumped on top of them.

A dark figure slipped from behind the scaffolding and ran across the floor. It bent for a moment over the fallen watchman. Reassured, it dragged the body aside, and laid it inconspicuously behind one of the lathes. Returning, it kicked the lamp away, picked up the fallen pistol and slid it into its own pocket. For some seconds the dark figure stood silent and motionless, then, satisfied that there had been no alarm, it raised its arm and took steady aim at the nearest of the dim lamps. Four times came the muffled 'phut' as of a stick hitting a cushion, and each time it was followed by a not very different sound as an electric globe collapsed into fragments. In the utter darkness followed clicks which told of a new magazine sliding into the pistol. Then, with a series of carefully shielded flashes, the intruder made his cautious way towards the central scaffolding.

A door of the balcony suddenly opened, letting a fan of light into the blackness.

'Hullo,' said a voice, 'what's happened to the lights? Where's that fool Reilly?

Reilly! Where the devil are you?' it bawled.

The figure on the floor below delayed only an instant, then it raised its pistol against the man silhouetted in the doorway. Again came the muffled thud. The man above disappeared, and the door slammed shut. The man with the pistol muttered to himself as he continued on his way to the scaffolding.

He had barely reached it when a blaze of intense floodlighting threw every detail of the place into view. He looked round wildly, dazzled by the sudden glare, but he was still alone. Again he raised his pistol, training it on one of the blinding floods. 'phut.' There went one, now for the next.

But there was to be no next. The roar of an explosion, thunderous within the metal walls, made him miss his aim. He turned swiftly. There was a second roar.

The impact of a heavy bullet spun him round and sent him crashing headlong against the foot of the scaffolding.

'Got him,' a voice announced.

The door in the gallery opened wide again.

'Damned lucky he didn't get you,' said another.

'Awkward angle for him. He hit the rail,' the first replied, calmly.

A babble of men's voices was heard approaching rapidly. A door on the opposite side of the ground floor was thrown back to reveal a tousle headed, sleepy eyed group. It was evident that the sound of shots had awakened them, and they had delayed just long enough to slip greatcoats over their pyjamas and to seize their weapons. One of the men in the gallery called down:

'It's all right. We got him. He's round this side.'

The two of them made their way along the gallery to the staircase while the newcomers crossed the floor. By the time they had descended there was a small crowd round the body of the intruder. The man who was kneeling beside it looked up.

'He's dead,' he said.

'How's that, Doctor? I didn't '

'No, you got him in the shoulder, he knocked his head against one of the poles as he fell.'

'Damn. I'd have liked to have got something out of him. Anything to show who he is?' He looked round at the assembled men. 'Where the devil's that Reilly got to? Go and fetch him, someone.'

One of the group made off for the purpose. Close by the door he stopped at the sight of afoot protruding from behind the lathe mounting. He looked more closely, and called to the others.

'Here's Reilly. He got him, I'm afraid.'

The doctor rose from beside the first corpse and hurried across. One look at the watchman was enough.

'Poor old Jake, right in the heart.' He turned back to the tall man who had been on the gallery. 'What had we better do with them, Mr. Curtance?'

Dale Curtance frowned and hesitated a moment.

'Better bring them both up to my office,' he decided. The doctor waited until the bearers had retired, closing the door behind them, then he looked across at Dale.

'What actually happened?' he asked.

Dale shrugged his shoulders.

'I know about as much as you do. I had been working late in here with Fuller. We didn't hear anything at least, I didn't. Did you, Fuller' The secretary shook his head. Dale went on: 'Then when we went out to the gallery the lights were out, and somebody using a silencer took a pot shot at me. Naturally, we went back and turned on the floods, then I potted him.'

'You don't know him?'

'Never seen him before as far as I know. Have either of you?'

Both the others shook their heads. The doctor crossed to the body and continued the examination which had been cut short by the finding of the watchman.

'Not a thing on him,' he announced, after a while. 'Shouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be a foreigner; clothes aren't English, anyway.' There was a considerable pause.

'You realize, of course,' the doctor added, 'that we shall have to have the police in?'

Dale frowned. 'We can't er?'

'No, we certainly cannot. Why, all the men in the place will know about it by now. It'd be bound to leak out pretty soon. And that wouldn't look too good. No, I'm afraid you'll have to go through with it.'

Dale was still frowning. 'Damnation! That means the end of our privacy. The papers will be splashing it all round. The place will be overrun with reporters sniffing into every corner and trying to bribe everybody. I wanted to keep it quiet for months yet and now they'll get the whole thing. Oh, hell!

Fuller, the secretary, put in 'Does it really matter very much now? After all, we're well into construction nobody else could possibly build a challenger in the time available. It doesn't seem to me that we've really much to lose except our peace, of course.'

'That's true,' Dale nodded. 'It's too late for them to start building now, but we're going to be pestered and hindered at every turn. And once the secret's out, it won't all be unintentional hindering.'

The doctor paused in the act of lighting his pipe. He looked thoughtfully at Dale.

'It strikes me that the secret's already been blown. What do you suppose he was nosing around for?' He nodded in the direction of the black suited corpse. 'He wasn't just a casual burglar, you can depend on that. Silenced gun, no marks of identification, knew his way about here. No, somebody's on to you already, my boy, and whoever it is sent a spy to get hold of some more details or to do some damage.'

'But it's too late. Nobody could build in time. We shall have all our work cut out to finish by the end of September ourselves.'

'Unless,' said the doctor, gently, 'unless they are building already. Two can play at secrecy. One of the odd things about you men of action is that you so frequently forget that there are other men of action. Well, now I suppose we'd better call the police.'

---

DALE CURTANCE could not be called a man without fear. Not only because a man without fear is a man without imagination, but also because the old terrors die hard and the world has so multiplied the causes of fear that no one is left entirely unafraid. But, looking at Dale, at his six foot, broad shouldered form, his long arms with their strong, freckled hands, his blue eyes, cold and hard as ice, one could seem to see far back along a line of Norse descent to less complex ancestors: stern fighters who, sword in hand, feared nothing in this world and little in the next for they honoured Odin only to secure for themselves an eternity of battle among the champions of Valhalla. Of Dale, their descendant into a world where the battle is not necessarily to the strong, nor even the race to the swift, it might truthfully be said that he feared less and dared more than his fellows.

But this is an age of hair splitting. Many could be found to say that while Dale's Norse ancestors were physically courageous, they were spiritually cowardly that the motive of their courage was the fear of losing a reputation for valour. .

Dale should not have married at least, he should not have married a woman of Mary's type. And inwardly Mary herself knew that now.

He should have swept up one of the worshipping little things he had thrilled in the past. He should have installed in his home one of those pretty little goldenheads whose hope it was, and whose perpetual joy it would be, that she was the chosen and the closest to the hero acclaimed by millions. The envy of those millions would have been her constant nourishment; she would have lived in the reflected blaze of his triumphs, and all might have been happy ever afterwards or until Dale should break his neck.

Mary had not been a worshipper. She had not the temperament though she could not, at first, remain quite insensitive to the glamour of his success. It may have been her calm in contrast with the bubbling delight of the others which attracted him at their first meeting. He may have been in a mood which was tired of popular triumph and easy conquest. Whatever the cause, he fell very blindly in love with her. And Mary did not fall in love; she began to love him in a way which he never could and never did understand.

This morning, sitting up in bed with the newspaper spread across the untouched breakfast tray, she went back over it all.

A swift wooing and a swift marriage. She had been swept by a word out of her calm life into an insane volution of publicity. Her engagement had been a time of pesterment by interviewers, offers for signed articles, requests from photographers, suggestions by advertisers. The Press had played the occasion up well: they had even taken her own wedding away from her and substituted a kind of public circus.

That she resented it, Dale never knew. He never seemed to feel as she did that the journalists' avidity for details was all but a violation of the decencies. And she had tried not to mind. It was inevitable that they should see things differently. The circle of her upbringing had been unostentatious folk who had neither suffered from nor wanted popular publicity. Dale, on the other hand, had been born practically on the front page of a newspaper with a silver spoon in his mouth and a silver megaphone to announce his arrival. The first and, as it transpired, the only son of David Curtance, known far and wide, despite his personal antipathy to the phrase, as 'The Aerial Ford'.

Yes, Dale had been NEWS from the time of his birth.

They had splashed it about in large type: To David Curtance, the man who made the Gyrocurts the Flivvers of the Air the Multimillionaire, the world's paramount mass producer of aircraft, a son, Dale. No wonder publicity failed to worry him.

After their limelit honeymoon, the Press had let them go for a time. And though Mary could almost feel the journalistic eyes peering at her in the hope of scooping the first news of an impending 'happy event', more than two years had passed in comparative peace. Dale's name was to be seen only infrequently on the front pages. He had seemed to be well in the process of changing from a current to a legendary hero.

And now, this...!

Under the date, the tenth of March, 1981, ran the banner headline:

 DOUBLE DEATH IN CURTANCE HANGAR

closely followed by:

 TRAGEDY AT SPEED KING'S WORKS

Mary, frowning, read the fates of a night watchman and an intruder, identity at present unknown. The latter, it appeared, had been worsted by Dale himself in the course of prolonged and desperate duel. All readers would join with the Editor in his expression of thankfulness that the speed ace himself was untouched. She was wise enough now in the ways of journalism to discard a large percentage of the sensational wrapping. But the fact remained that two deaths had occurred, and Dale was once more on the front page. All her efforts at withdrawal had been nullified in a single night, and they were back again where they had been more than two years ago.

But, if the account made her irritable, it had been left to the final paragraph to arouse her real perturbation.

One of the effects of the tragedy has been to reveal that much secret experimenting has been lately taking place at the Curtance shops. We are informed from a reliable source that a new type of craft is already in an advanced state of construction though no details can yet be revealed. 'What is Curty going to do next?' is the question which many will ask themselves. Though Dale Curtance himself maintains strict silence on the subject, there can be no doubt that this new rocket 'plane is intended to contest yet another record. Whatever he intends to attempt with it, we know that not only our own' good wishes but those of all our readers will go with him. 'Curty', who has done more than any other man to put England 'on top in the air', will find when he makes his comeback that no one has been allowed to usurp his place in England's Hall of Fame. Good Luck to you, Curty.

Mary pressed the bell push beside 'her bed. To the maid who answered she said:

'Doris, tell Mr. Curtance I would like to see him at once, please.' The girl hesitated.

'He's very busy, madam,' she said, uncertainly. 'The gentlemen from the newspapers.'

Mary raised herself on her elbows and looked out of the window. A number of gyrocurts and other small aircraft was dotted about the lawn and the field beyond. Odd that she had not noticed them arriving.

'Have they been here long?' she asked.

'Some of them nearly all night, I understand, madam, and the others came very early this morning. They've been waiting to see Mr. Curtance, and he only went downstairs a few minutes ago.'

'I see. Then perhaps you had better not disturb him at present.'

As the girl went out, Mary relaxed on her pillow, looking unseeingly at the ceiling. It was impossible, as she knew from experience, to tear Dale away from the pertinacious young men of the Press. The Public came first, and herself second. She reached out her hand for the newspaper and re read the final paragraph. It had to come! What a fool she had been to pretend to herself that it would not. She let the paper fall and lay thinking of Dale and herself.

When she had married Dale, she had partially understood him, and had managed to work up a sympathy with his interests. Now, she was forced to admit, she understood him better and had lost sympathy with those interests. In rare moments of complete frankness she admitted her jealousy of those other interests and her resentment of other people's share in him.

Ten years ago, when he was just twenty four, he had won the first non stop Equatorial Flight and for that thousands of people had begun to idolize him. And it had only been the start of a fantastic record of success. He had gone on to triumph after triumph, collecting prizes and further acclamation in his spectacular career. Since then he had lowered the Equatorial record three times and still held it, together with the Greenwich to Greenwich Meridian record, and goodness knew how many more. Partly through luck, but mostly by hard work and endurance he had grown in the public view to the stature of a fabulous superman: the stuff of which the old world would have made a demi god.

She had regretted, but accepted the tact that the mass could give him something which she as an individual could not. Curiously, it was his preoccupation with inanimate things which caused her more active resentment. Once, in a state of depression, she had confided to a friend:

'With Dale it is not people who are my rivals so much as things. Things, things, things! Why do men think so much of things? Big, restless and to them such absorbing things. Why are they always wanting to change and invent more machines, more and more machines? I hate their machines! Sometimes I think they are the natural enemies of women. Often when I see a rocketplane go by, I say to myself: "Mary, that is your rival it can give him more than you can. It has more of his love than you have." . . . No, it's not nonsense. If I were to die now, he would turn to his machines and forget all about me in making them. But if his machines were taken away, he would not devote himself to me he would mope and be miserable. I hate his machines. I'd like to smash them all into little bits. They frighten me, and sometimes I dream of them. Big wheels whirling round and round and long steel bars sliding up and down with Dale standing in among them, laughing at me because I can't get at him, and there are rows and rows of cogs waiting to grind me up if I try. All I can do is to stand there and cry while Dale laughs and the machines rattle at me. I hate them, I tell you. I hate them!'

It had not been wise, she realized now, to extract that promise from him that he would give up racing rocketplanes and only enter contests for lightweights of the flipabout class. He had given it only grudgingly and it had fretted him though he had tried at first to hide it. Now she knew he was going to break it so, apparently, did the newspapers.

Her thoughts were broken into by a crunching of gravel beneath hurrying feet. Voices, mostly male, shouted incomprehensible sentences to one another. There was a dull throbbing of engines followed by the whirr of revolving sails as the gyrocurts and other flipabouts on the lawn began to take the air.

The door opened and Dale came in. He bent over and kissed her. Seating himself on the side of the bed, he took one of her hands in his own and apologized for his lateness. Mary lay back, watching his face. She heard scarcely a word that he said. He looked so young, so strong and full of energy; it made her feel that despite the ten years between them; she was the elder. Impossible to think of him as anything but an adventurous youth. It came to her with a sudden stab that he was looking happier than he had for a long time.

'Dale,' she interrupted, 'what did all those reporters want?'

He hesitated for a fraction of a second.

'We had a little trouble down at the shops last night. Nasty business. They wanted to know all about it, darling. You know how they're always after every little detail.'

She looked steadily into his eyes.

'Dale, please be honest with me. Weren't they much more interested in that?' She picked up the paper and pointed to the final paragraph. He read it, with a worried look on his face.

'Well, yes perhaps they were.'

'And now that you've told the whole world, don't you think you might tell your own wife?'

'I'm sorry, dear. I wasn't telling anyone at all nobody would have known anything about it for months yet if it hadn't been for that business last night. Then they were on to it at once=they couldn't be stopped.'

'Dale. You promised me you would give up rocket racing.'

He dropped his eyes and played with the fingers of the hand that he held.

'It's not exactly rocket racing ' he began. She shook her head.

'But you promised me '

He got up and crossed to the window, pushing both his hands deep in his trouser pockets.

'I must. I didn't know what I was saying when I promised that. I thought I could settle down and give it all up. I've tried, but I'm not cut out to be a designer of other men's machines. Hang it all, I'm still young. These last two years I've designed and built some of the best rocket planes in the world and then I've had to sit by like an old fogy of eighty while young fools lose races with them, crash them by damn bad flying and God knows what else. Do you think it's been easy for me to watch them being mishandled while all the time I know what they are capable of and could make them do it? This last year has been just hell for me down at the shops; it's been like, like giving birth to one stillborn child after another.'

'Dale!'

'I'm sorry, Mary darling.' He turned back to her. 'I shouldn't have said that.

But can't you see what it means to me? It's taking all my life away. Try to see it, dear. Look, all your life you've wanted the baby you're going to have; suppose you were suddenly told that you couldn't have it after all -- -could never have a baby at all. Wouldn't everything become worthless for you? Wouldn't the bottom just drop out of life? That's how I've felt. I promised you I would give up the thing I've wanted to do all my life the thing I've been doing all my life until I met you. Well, I've tried, I've done my best, but I can't keep that promise . . .'

Mary lay silent. She did not understand: did not want to understand. He was selfish and stupid. To compare a smashed machine with a stillborn child. Talking as if his passion for speed and more speed could be compared with the urge to bear a child. What nonsense l He spoke like a child himself. Why couldn't he understand what it meant to her. ..?

He was going on now. Something about her creating with her body and he with his mind. That neither of them should be permitted to ban the other's right to creation. Well, she had never said that he should not create rocket planes only that he should not fly them. It was not fair . . . It was his child that she was going to bear. His child that was making her feel so old and ill...

'What are you going to do with this new rocket?' she asked at last.

'Have a shot at the Keuntz Prize,' he said, shortly.

Mary sat up suddenly. Her eyes widened in a horrified stare.

'Oh, Dale, no' Her voice trailed away as she fell forward in a faint.

---

TUESDAY'S evening papers made considerable play with Dale's announcement, but a citizenry hardened through the years to seeing the sensations of one day's end amended or ignored at the beginning of the next, received the news on Wednesday morning as a novelty. It was impossible to ignore the headlines which erupted from Fleet Street.

CURTANCE TO DARE DEATH FLIGHT shrieked the Daily Hail.

'CURTY' TO ATTEMPT KEUNTZ PRIZE roared the Daily Excess, and the Views Record followed up with

BRITISH AIRMAN TO CHALLENGE SPACE The Poster and the Telegram printed leaders upon British pluck and daring with references to Nelson, General Gordon and Malcolm Campbell. (The Poster also revealed that Dale had once ridden to hounds.)

The Daily Socialist, after a front page eulogy very similar to that in the Hail, wondered, in the course of a short article in a less exposed part of the paper, whether the cost of such a venture might not be more profitably devoted to the social services. The Daily Artisan told the story under the somewhat biased heading: 'Millionaire out for Another Million.'

The Thunderer referred in a brief paragraph to 'this interesting project'. At nine o'clock in the morning the Evening Banner brought out special contents bills:

AIRMAN'S PLANS

To which the Stellar replied: CAN HE DO IT?

At ten o'clock the editor's telephone in the Daily Hail offices buzzed again. A voice informed him that Mrs. Dale Curtance wished to see him on urgent business.

'All right,' he said. 'Shoot her up.'

At ten twenty he began to hold a long and complicated telephone conversation with Lord Dithernear, the proprietor of the Concentrated Press. At approximately ten forty he shook hands with Mrs. Curtance and returned to his desk with a revised policy.

At eleven o'clock, Mr. Fuller, on behalf of Mr. Curtance, told an agency that he was in need of half a dozen competent secretaries.

At twelve o'clock one Bill Higgins, workman, employed upon the construction of the Charing Cross Bridge, knocked off for lunch. As he fed his body upon meat pie and draughts of cold tea he regaled his mind with the world's news as rendered by the Excess. Working gradually through the paper, he arrived in time at the front page. There he was impressed by a large photograph of Dale Curtance skilfully taken from a low viewpoint to enhance the heroic effect. His eyes wandered up to the headline whereat he frowned and nudged his neighbour.

'What is this 'ere Keuntz Prize. Alf?' he demanded.

'Coo!' remarked Alf, spitting neatly into the Thames below. 'You never 'eard of the Keuntz Prize? Coo!'

'No, I 'aven't,' Bill told him. He was a patient man.

Alf explained, kindly. 'Well, this bloke, Keuntz, was an American. 'E 'ad the first fact'ry for rocket planes in Chicago, it was, and 'e got to be a millionaire in next to no time. But it wasn't enough for 'im that 'is blasted rocket planes was banging and roarin' all over the world; 'e didn't see why they couldn't get right away from the world.'

'Whadjer mean? The Moon?' Bill inquired.

'Yus, the Moon and other places. So in 1970 or thereabouts 'e goes and puts down five million dollars what's more'n a million pahnds for the first bloke wot gets to a planit and back.'

'Coo! A million pahnds!' Bill was impressed. 'And nobody ain't done it yet?' ''

'Naow not likely,' Alf spoke with contempt. 'Nor never will, neither,' he added, spitting once more into the Thames.

At one o'clock two gentlemen with every appearance of being well fed were sitting down to more food at the Cafe Royal.

'I see,' remarked the taller, chattily, 'that that nephew of yours has more or less signed his death warrant. Think he'll go through with it?'

'Dale? Oh, yes, he'll have a shot at it, all right. I'll say this for him, he's never yet scratched in any event if he had a machine capable of starting.'

'Well, well. I suppose that means you'll come in for a pretty penny?'

'Never count my chickens. Besides, Dale's no fool. He knows what he's doing. He might even make it, you know.'

'Oh, rot. You don't really believe that?'

'I'm not so sure. Someday someone's going to do it. Why not Dale?'

'Nonsense! Get to another planet and back! It's impossible. It is to this age what the philosopher's stone was to an earlier one. It's fantastic chimerical.'

'So was flying once.'

At two o'clock a young schoolmaster looked earnestly at his charges.

'This,' he said, 'is a history lesson. I wonder what history really means to you. I should like you to see it as I do not as a dull procession of facts and dates, but as the story of Man's climb from the time when he was a dumb brute: a story that is still being told. If any of you saw the newspapers this morning, I wonder if it struck you as it struck me that within a year or so we may see a great piece of history in the making. You know what I refer to?'

'Curty's rocket flight, sir?' cried a shrill voice.

The schoolmaster nodded. 'Yes. Mr. Curtance is going to try to win the Keuntz Prize for the first interplanetary flight. Mr. Curtance, as you know, is a very brave man. A lot of people have already tried to win that prize, and, as. far as we know, they have all died in the attempt.

'Many men lost their lives in trying to reach the Moon, and most people said it was impossible for them to do it there was even a movement to get their attempts banned. But the men went on trying. Duncan, K. K. Smith and Sudden actually got there, but they crashed on the surface and were killed. Then came the great Drivers. In 1969 he managed to take his rocket right round the Moon and bring it safely back to Earth. Everybody was astounded, and for the first time they really began to believe that we could leave the Earth if we tried hard enough. Mr. Keuntz, who lived in Chicago, said: "If man can reach the Moon, he can reach the planets." And he put aside five million dollars to be given to the first men who should get there and back.

'The first one to try was Jornsen. His rocket was too heavy. He fell back and landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Then the great Drivers tried. He got up enough speed not to fall back, like Jornsen, but he wasn't fast enough to get right away, and he stuck. His rocket is still up there; sometimes they catch a glimpse of it in the big telescopes, circling round the Earth for ever, like a tiny moon.'

'Please, sir, what happened to Drivers himself?'

'He must have starved to death, poor man unless his air gave out first. He had a friend with him, and perhaps theirs is the worst of all the tragedies trapped in an orbit where they could look down on the world, knowing that they would never get back.

'After that came Simpson whose rocket was built in Keuntz's own works. He took off somewhere in Illinois, but something went wrong. It fell on the lake shore, just outside Chicago, and blew up with a terrible explosion which wrecked hundreds of houses and killed I don't know how many people.

'Since then there have been ten or more attempts. Some have fallen back, others have got away and never been heard of since.'

'Then somebody may have done it already, without our knowing it, sir?'

'It is possible. We can't tell.'

'Do you think Curty will do it, sir?'

'One can't tell that, either. But if he does he will make a more important piece of history than did even Columbus.'

At three o'clock Mr. Jefferson, physics master in the same school, demonstrated to an interested if rather sceptical class that rocket propulsion was even more efficient in a vacuum than in air.

'Newton taught us,' he began, 'that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction . . .'

At four o'clock the news came to a bungalow half way up the side of a Welsh mountain. The girl who brought it was breathing hard after her climb from the village below, and she addressed the middle aged man in the bungalow's one sitting room excitedly.

'Daddy, they're saying that Dale Curtance is going to try for the Keuntz Prize.'

'What? Let me see.'

He pounced on the copy of the Excess which protruded from her shopping bag, and settled down to it with a kind of desperate avidity.

'At last,' he said, as he reached the end of the column, 'at last. Now they will find out that we were right. We shall be able to leave here, Joan. We shall be able to go back and look them in the face.'

'Perhaps, but he hasn't done it yet, Daddy.'

'Young Curtance will do it if anyone can. And they'll have to believe him.'

'But, Daddy dear, it doesn't even say that he is going to try for Mars. Venus is much nearer; it's probably that.'

'Nonsense, Joan, nonsense. Of course it's Mars. Look here, it says he intends to start sometime in October. Well, Mars comes into opposition about the middle of April next year. Obviously he's working on Drivers' estimates of just under twelve weeks for the outward journey and under eleven for the return. That will give him a few days there to prospect and to overhaul his machine. He can't afford to leave the return a day past opposition. You see, it all fits in.'

'I don't see, darling, but I've no doubt you're right.'

'Of course I'm right, it's as plain as can be. I'm going to write to him.' The girl shook her head.

'I shouldn't do that. He might hand it over to one of the newspapers and you know what that would mean.'

The man paused in his elation, and frowned. 'Yes. Perhaps he would. We'll wait, my dear. We'll wait until he tells them what he's found there. Then we'll go back home and see who laughs last. .'

At five o'clock a telephone conversation between Mrs. Dale Curtance and her mother in law was in progress.

'. . . But, Mary dear, this is useless,' the elder Mrs. Curtance was saying.

'You'll never be able to stop him. I know Dale. Once he's made his mind up to a thing like this, he can't be stopped.'

'But he must be stopped. I can't let him do it. I'll move everything to stop him. You don't know what it means to me.'

'My dear, I know what it means to me and I am his mother. I also know something of what it means to him. We've just got to suppress our own selfishness.'

'Selfishness! You call it selfishness to try to stop him killing himself?'

'Mary, don't you see what you are doing? You're losing him. If you did manage to stop him, he'd hate you for it, and if you go on as you are doing, he'll hate you for trying to stop him. Please, please give it up, Mary. It's not fair on Dale or yourself or the child. In your condition you can't afford to behave like this. All we can do is what most women have to do make the best of it.'

'Oh, you don't understand. Without him there'll be nothing for me to make the best of.'

'There will be the child, Mary. You must get right away from all this. Come down here and stay quietly with me till that's over.'

'How can I "stay quietly" anywhere while this is going on? You must come up and see him. Perhaps if we both talked to him Will you come?'

Mrs. Curtance paused before she answered. 'All right, I will come.'

She put down the receiver and sighed. The most that she could hope for was that Mary should be convinced of the futility of kicking against fate.

At six o'clock the announcer read two S.O.S. messages and the weather report, and added: 'No doubt everyone has read the newspaper reports of Mr. Curtance's proposed bid for the Keuntz Prize. We have been able to persuade Mr. Curtance himself to come to the studio to tell you what he hopes to do. Mr. Dale Curtance.'

Dale's pleasant features faded in on millions of television screens, smiling in a friendly fashion at his unseen audience. 'It is kind of the B.B.C. to invite me here this evening,' he began, 'and I am grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to correct certain misunderstandings which seem to be current regarding my intentions. Firstly, let me say that it is quite true that I mean to attempt to reach another planet and to return to Earth. And it is also true, for a number of reasons which I will not go into now, that the planet I have chosen for this attempt is Mars. But it is quite untrue that I intend to make this flight alone. Actually there will be five of us aboard my ship when she takes off.

'I should like to dispel, too; the prevalent idea that I am engaged in deliberate suicide. I assure you we are not. All five of us could easily find much cheaper and less arduous ways of killing ourselves.

'There are, of course, risks. In fact, there are three distinct kinds of risk: the known ones which we can and shall prepare against: the known ones which we must trust to luck to avoid: and the entirely unknown. But we are convinced that we have more than a sporting chance against them all if we were not, we should not be making the attempt.

'Thanks to the courage and pertinacity of those who from the time of Piccard's ascent into the stratosphere in 1931 have pushed forward the examination of space, we shall not be shooting ourselves into the completely unknown. Thanks also to them, the design of my ship will be an improvement on any which has gone before, and unlike those of the early pioneers she is designed to contend with many of the known conditions of space as well as in the hope of surviving the unknown. Each expedition to leave Earth stands a better chance of success than its predecessor which is another way of saying that it risks less. Therefore, I say that if we are successful in this venture, if we gain for Britain the honour of being the first nation to achieve trans-spatial communication, it must never be forgotten that better men than we gave their lives to make it possible.

'If one can single out one man from an army of heroes and say, "This is the greatest of them all," I should point my finger at Richard Drivers. Compared with the risks that brave genius took, we take none. The story of that amazing man's persistence in the face of a jeering world when three of his friends had already crashed to their deaths upon the Moon, and the tale of his lonely flight around it are among the deathless epics of the race. Whatever may be done by us or by others after us, his achievement stands alone. And it will be he who made the rest possible.

'So, you see, we are not pioneers. We are only followers in a great tradition, hoping to tread the way of knowledge a little farther than the last man. If it is granted to us to be successful, we shall be satisfied to have been not entirely unworthy of our forerunners and of our country.'

The red light flickered and the televising mechanism slowed as the studio was cut off from the world. An important looking gentleman entered. He greeted Dale and shook hands.

'Thank you,' he said. 'Very good of you to come at such short notice.'

Dale grinned and shook his head. 'No, my thanks are due to you.' The other looked puzzled. 'You've not seen this evening's Banner?' Dale went on. 'They're trying to stop me. That means the Hail will be at it tomorrow. I was glad to get my word in first.'

'Trying to stop you?'

'Yes. Don't know why. Some stunt of theirs, I suppose. Nobody's going to stop me, but they might be a bit of nuisance if they got a big following.'

'H'm. It's a wonder people don't get sick of Dithernear's stunts, but they don't seem to. Well, I'm glad you came and I hope you are as optimistic as you sounded.'

'I am nearly,' Dale admitted, as they parted.

---

INTO the Curtance sheds where the great rocket rested in its thicket of scaffolding only the faintest ripples of popular excitement penetrated. Though Dale gave interviews freely enough to avid pressmen, he was adamant in his refusal to permit interruption in the routine of his shops, and the reception of those few journalists who attempted to enter by subterfuge was ungentle. An augmented corps of watchmen with the assistance of police dogs guarded doors behind which work went on with the same unhurried efficiency as in the days before the secret was out. The most obvious and concrete result of world wide interest was a new shed hastily run up to accommodate Dale's swollen secretariat.

The inquest upon the intruder was reported in full detail and followed with close attention, but it failed to provide any sensational revelations, and the body remained unidentified. The chief witness gave his evidence clearly, received the congratulations of the coroner upon his narrow escape and left the court with an increased reputation for courage.

Two days later the Chicago Emblem announced that the dead man had been an American citizen named Forder. It indignantly demanded a closer inquiry into the circumstances, hinting that Dale might show up less well. The leader on the subject finished by truculently demanding the passage of a special bill through Congress to prevent the Keuntz Prize from going abroad.

'That's the point,' Fuller said as he showed the article to Dale. 'That's the Keuntz works behind this, I'll bet. They're afraid of you lifting the prize.'

Dale nodded. 'Looks like it. Still, it's good news in one way. It suggests that they aren't building a rocket to try for it themselves.'

'I don't know.' Fuller was less sanguine. 'I know our reports say so, but you never can tell how much double and triple crossing is going on with these agents. It might equally well mean that they are having a shot at it and think that any rivals will be put off if there is no chance of their getting the prize.'

'Well, our men haven't let us down yet. You can be sure that if they were building a space rocket anywhere we'd have heard of it somehow just as they or somebody else seem to have heard of ours.'

'Perhaps. I should say it was they, since the man you shot was an American. Anyway, they're out to get that prize and the interest it's accumulated. Apart from the money, it'd put them back at the top of the rocket plane industry. Their reputation's been slumping badly the last year or two, you know for anyone else to get it would mean the end of them.'

The following day the Daily Hail threw overboard its noisy but uninfectious policy of Save Britain's Speed King From Himself and joined with the Excess in a vituperative duet against the Emblem. A scathing reply from the latter involving George III and the American debt was side tracked by the Potsdamer Tageblatt which pointed out on behalf of the Fatherland chat Keuntz, a German before he was an American, had with true German generosity offered his prize to the whole world. Keuntz, replied the Emblem, with some heat, was also a Jew who had been forced to flee from the kindly Fatherland in the days of the first Fi1hrer. America, the land of the free, had given him sanctuary, therefore, etc., etc. And the battle went on.

Outside the main brawl the Views Record was announcing that 'Mars Must be Internationalized'. Swannen Haffer in the Daily Socialist was asking, 'Will the Martian Workers be Exploited?' The Daily Artisan was predicting the discovery of a flourishing system of Martian Soviets. Gerald Birdy wrote articles on 'Planning a New World' and the need for a Planetician in the Cabinet. Woman's Love in publishing an article on 'Wives of Pioneers' with special, if inaccurate, references to Mary Curtance (who, though journalistically unfortunate in lacking children of her own, was indiscriminately devoted to those of other people), narrowly missed making the one scoop of its life. The Illustrated London Views published a sectional drawing of a typical rocketship and gave interesting data on the solar system. The Wexford Bee Keepers' Gazette announced that it had its eye on Mr. Curtance, and warned him to stay where God had put him.

The shares of Commercial Explosives, Limited, rose for three days as if propelled by their own fuel, and then fell back to a little above normal. A heavy slump in the price of gold took everyone by surprise. The cause was traced to a rumour that spectroscopy showed the presence of gold in great quantities on Mars; the rumour was duly exploded, but gold failed to respond. This caused less surprise, the behaviour of gold being unaccountable at the best of times. The Stock Exchange betting stood at 500 to one against Dale reaching Mars, and 10,000 to one against the double journey. A rumour that the Russians had for years been building a bigger and better rocket, to be called the Tovaritch, refused to be crushed until the Soviet Government issued an official denial of such a rocket's existence or even contemplation. Rumours of German, American and Japanese rival rockets were less hardy. The pastime of guessing the names of Dale's companions attained the status of a national game.

Meanwhile the work on the Curtance rocket went steadily forward throughout the summer. Dale was too busy to feel anything save an anxiety that his ship should be finished to schedule by the middle of September, certainly too busy to feel lonely because his wife had gone to his mother's home.

For Mary had given in. She had dropped her opposition and released him from his promise, but she had been unable to stand the sense of restlessness pervading the house. She had fled to the quiet Dorset countryside where only an occasional gyrocurt with its white sails whirling as it sauntered along amid summer clouds reminded her of the reign of machines.

Occasionally the child moved in her womb, hurting her. It would not be long now. Poor baby, what a world to come into. She hoped it would be a boy. This was a man's world, women walked unhappily and fearfully among its gears and flywheels, making shift with dreams and snatching what little joy was spared them. The machines were the hateful dictators of men and women alike. Only men could be so dense as to think that they themselves were the rulers . . .

---

THE few hardy souls who had elected to spend the night upon the open inhospitality of Salisbury Plain slept no later than dawn' upon the morning of the twelfth of October, 1981 for it was with the first rays of sunlight that the influx which would last all day began.

The hysterical ballyhoo timed to reach its climax upon this day had been sustained with an unsurpassed degree of journalistic art. The birth of a son to Dale Curtance had given a fillip to interest at a convenient moment, and every newspaper reader in the country had become familiar with the, at present, somewhat dough like features of Victor Curtance. The announcement of the names of Dale's companions for the flight had caught three unknown men and one rather more familiar figure into an undying fulguration of publicity.

Every person who could reach a radio set had seen and heard a prince of the royal blood say: 'I name this ship the Gloria Mundi. May God guide her and bring her safely back to us,' and the film of the occasion had been shown at every cinema. The arduous feat of transport ing the Gloria Mundi from the sheds of her birth at Kingston to a suitably desolate portion of Salisbury Plain for the take off, had been followed in detail with critical attention. The discovery by an advance guard that a part of the route had been tampered with and the subsequent disinterment of a case of dynamite (with detonator and wires attached) had roused indignation and speculation to feverish heats. The assurance that Dale himself was continually guarded by two or more armed police detectives met with immense popular appreciation. The song, 'Curty, the King of the Clouds', written at the time of the first Equatorial Flight, had been revived and stood in frequency of performance second only to the National Anthem. For the last fortnight the Press had really let itself go, and in loyal response to its efforts the public was prepared to invade the Plain on a scale perturbing to the authorities.

The first active sign of preparation in the grey light of that historic Monday was the ascent of more than a dozen small captive balloons, painted a bright yellow, and ranged in a circle about the scene of operations. Within the perimeter they marked no craft save police patrols was to be permitted at any height whatever, and it was considered likely that the five mile circle would insure an ample margin of safety. Half a dozen police gyrocurts rose and set themselves to hover in positions strategic for the control of traffic both by land and air.'

The first great charaplane of the day came booming out of the west. It landed to deposit its passengers, and within five minutes had taken off again to fetch another load. Machines of every kind from the dainty flipabout to the massive gyrobus, all with the early morning sunlight glancing from brightly painted bodies beneath swirling white sails, started to float in from each quarter, and the task of directing them to their appointed parks began in earnest. Within half an hour of the first car's arrival the congested road traffic had slowed to a tedious, bottom gear crawl.

The crowds began to pour from the 'plane parks and carparks, making for their enclosures and, the favoured few, for the stands. Hawkers in good voice offered silver trinkets in the form of miniature rockets, picture postcards of Dale, pictures of the rocketship itself and printed handkerchiefs as suitable mementoes of the occasion. A hundred camp kitchens began to cater for the hungry. Half a dozen loudspeakers burst into the inevitable 'Curty, the King of the Clouds'. A number of persons were already failing to Find the Lady. And still it was only eight a.m.

Somewhere about nine thirty Police Gyrocurt Number 4 came hovering close to Number 5. Number 4's pilot picked up a megaphone and shouted across:

'Just look at 'em down there. Bill. Like a bloomin' ant'eap, ain't it?'

Bill, in Number 5, nodded.

'If they keep on comin' in at this rate, we'll lave to start parking them vertical,' he bawled back.

That part of the Plain which lay below them had undergone a transformation. Outside the five mile circle of the beacon balloons acres of country were covered with parked cars and 'planes. From them crowds of black dots were stippled inwards, growing denser as they converged. The barrier which held the public back out of harm's way appeared already as a solid black ring two miles in diameter and of greater thickness on the western side where the several stands, broadcasting and observation towers and various other temporary structures were situated. Finally, in splendid isolation in the exact centre, could be seen the Gloria Mundi herself.

The portable sheds of those who had attended to the last tests and adjustments had been cleared away leaving only discoloured rectangles of grass to show where they had stood for the last fortnight. Gone also was the galvanized iron fence which had served to keep back the curious during that time, and the rocket, still shrouded in canvas, was left with a cordon of police as her only guard.

By midday the crowd was still swelling. The refreshment stalls were beginning to wonder whether the supply would hold out, and in accordance with economic laws were raising their prices. A self appointed prophet beneath a banner, consenting that 'God's Will be Done', patiently warned a regrettably waggish audience of the sacrilegious aspect of the occasion. Up on the broadcast tower an announcer told the world, confidently:

'It's a beautiful day. Couldn't be better for it. The crowds are still coming in as they have been all day, and although the take off is timed for half past four, the excitement is already tremendous. I expect you can hear the noise they are making out there. There must be over half a million people here now. Don't you think so, Mr. Jones?'

Mr. Jones was understood to suggest three quarters of a million as the minimum.

'Perhaps you're right. At any rate there are a lot of them, and it really is a beautiful day. Don't you think so, Mr. Jones?'

Rumours flocked to the Press Stand and to the rooms beneath it like iron filings to a magnet.

'Her tubes won't stand it,' said Travers of the Hail. 'Man I know, metallurgist in Sheffield, told me for a fact that there is no alloy known which will stand up to such a temperature'

'She can't rise,' Dennis of the Reflector was saying. 'She's too heavy. Man in Commercial Explosives showed me the figures. She'll turn over and streak along the ground and I hope to God she doesn't come my way.

'If she gets up,' conceded Dawes of Veracity, 'she's not got a chance in hell of getting out of the gravity pull. Take my word for it, it's going to be another Drivers business'

Tenson of the Co-ordinator knew for a fact that the drive for the rapid construction had meant incomplete testing.

'Sheer madness,' was the Excess man's view. 'Rockets have got to be small. Might as well try to fly St. Paul's as take up this great thing'

A small, insignificant member of the crowd plucked at Police Sergeant Yarder's sleeve and pointed upwards.

'Look, Officer, there's a gyrocurt inside the beacons.'

Sergeant Yarder shaded his eyes and followed the line of the pointing finger.

'That'll be Mr. Curtance and the rest, sir. Got to let them through, or there wouldn't be no show.'

Others had noticed the 'plane's arrival. A sound of cheering rose, faint at first, but growing in volume until it swept up in a great roar from tens of thousands of throats as more and more of the spectators realized that Dale was here at last. The 'plane dropped slowly and landed. The door opened and Dale could be seen waving in reply. He stepped to the ground and his four chosen companions followed. A few moments later they were all hidden from the crowd by a converging rush of movie vans and Presscars. The gyrocurt took off again and the mob of vans and cars moved closer to the still shrouded rocket.

The announcer up in the broadcasting tower talked excitedly into his microphone:

'He's here l you have just seen Dale Curtance arrive to make his interplanetary attempt. They're moving over now towards the rocket. The five are somewhere in the middle of that group there. The crowd is shouting itself hoarse. Here, we are more than a mile from the rocket itself, but we arc going to do our best to show you the unveiling ceremony. Just a minute, please, while we change the lens.'

The scene on the vision screens flickered and then blurred as the tele-optic was swung in. It refocused, searched, and finally came to rest on Dale and the group about him. He stood on a temporary wooden dais at the rocket's foot. In one hand he held the end of a rope which ran upwards out of television screen's field.

'Now we are going over to hear Mr. Curtance himself speak through the microphone which you can see beside him,' said the announcer.

A sudden, expectant silence fell on the crowds. Those who had brought portable screens with them watched Dale step forward smiling. The rest shaded their eyes to gaze at the group a mile away and imagine that well known smile as a hundred loudspeakers spoke at once:

'Anything I could say in answer to such a salute as you have given me must be inadequate. All that I can say, on behalf of my companions and myself, is "Thank you". We are going to do our best to prove ourselves worthy of such a reception. Again, "Thank you".'

He paused and tightened his hold on the hanging rope.

'And now,' he added, 'here is my Gloria Mundi.'

He pulled on the rope. For a breathless second nothing seemed to happen. Then the canvas fell away from the top, slithering down the polished metal sides to subside in billowing waves on the ground. The earlier cheers had been but a murmur compared with the volume of sound which now roared from the packed crowds.

The Gloria Mundi gleamed in the sunlight. She towered on the level plain like a monstrous shell designed for the artillery of giants; a shapely mass of glistening metal poised on a tripod of three great flanges, her blunt nose pointing already into the blue sky whither if all went well she would presently leap.

And then, surprisingly, the cheering died away. It was as though it had come home to the mass of sightseers for the first time that the five men on the platform were volunteers for almost certain death; that the shell like shape beside them was indeed a shell, the greatest projectile the world had ever seen, and that all of it, save for a small part near the nose where the circular windows showed, was filled with the most powerful known explosives.

When the crowd began to talk again a new note was dominant. The spirit of bank holiday jubilation had become impregnated with anxiety and a sense of trepidation. Even the phlegmatic Sergeant Yarder was aware of its injection.

The proposed flight had hitherto stirred his imagination only slightly; and that because the crowd attending its start was the largest on record. Now he looked across at the rocket with a new curiosity. Why wasn't the Earth big enough for them? It must be a queer kind of man who could find so little of interest in all the five continents and seven seas that he wished to shoot himself out into the emptiness of space. And what good would it do anybody; even if they managed it? What good had any of these rockets ever done? Even Drivers' Right round the Moon hadn't meant anybody's betterment. There had been millions of money wasted and scores of good men killed . . .

The sergeant sniffed and pulled out his watch. It was useful, though not an instrument of precision.

'Just gone 'alf past three. They got an hour yet,' he murmured, half to himself.

His small neighbour ventured a correction.

'Twenty to four, I think, Sergeant. They'll be going inside soon.'

The sergeant shook a disapproving head.

'Why do they do it? Blamed if I'd ever go up in one of them things not for millions, I wouldn't. Bein' a national 'ero's all right but it ain't much good to you if you're all in little bits so small that nobody can find 'em And it ain't no good if you go the way Drivers did, poor devil.'

'I don't think Curtance will do that, the other shook his head. 'He's a great man, and this Gloria Mundi of his is the greatest ship yet. He ought to do it.'

'Suppose it blows up?' asked the sergeant.

The small man smiled. 'We shan't know much about that, I think.'

The sergeant moved uneasily. 'But it can't 'urt us 'ere, can it? Look at the distance.'

'But the distance is only to keep us out of the way of the exhausts. If the Gloria Mundi should blow up well, remember Simpson at Chicago; his rocket was only half the size of this.'

For a few silent moments the sergeant remembered Simpson uncomfortably.

'But what do they want to do it for?' he inquired again, plaintively.

The other shrugged his shoulders. 'It seems not so much that they want to as that they must, I think. Something seems to drive them on and on whether they want it or not.'

The small circular door high up in the rocket's side shut with a decisive thud. The few favoured pressmen who had been allowed upon the small staging beside it clattered down the wooden steps and joined their less privileged fellows on the ground. Almost before the last of them was clear a squad of workmen was tipping over staging and steps together to load them across a lorry. The movie vans and the journalists' cars began to jolt over the grass towards the Press enclosure. Not far behind them followed the trucks carrying the last of the workmen. The Gloria Mundi, glowing in the rays of the sinking sun, was left sheer and solitary.

Barnes, of the Daily Photo, looked back at her with resentment.

'No appeal,' he grumbled. 'No woman's angle. That's the trouble about this job. Damn it all, it's a wife's duty to show up at a time like this and to bring the kid. The public wants to see pictures of the final embrace it's got a right to. Instead of that, his wife sits at home and watches it all over the radio. Can you beat it? It's not fair on us nor on the public. If I were him, I'd damn' well see that my wife'

'Oh, shut up,' said his neighbour. 'What the hell do your people run an art department for if it isn't to do a bit of montage at times like this. You have a look at our picture of the last farewell tomorrow. It's good. Nearly brought tears to my eyes when I first saw it last week.'

The cars ran into the enclosure. Their freight disembarked and made for the bar. Once more the loudspeakers burst out with 'Curty, the King of the Clouds'. The minute hands of thousands of watches passed the figure twelve and began to loiter down the final half hour.

---

'TWENTY minutes,' said Dale, unemotionally.

If the others heard him, they gave no sign of it. He looked at them, noticing their reactions to the strain of waiting as they stood clustered close to the circular windows. Of the five men in the steel room he was the least affected. His years of rocket racing had bred in him the ability to face the start of an adventure in a spirit of cold fatalism or, perhaps more accurately, to anaesthetize temporarily his natural emotions. The other four were gazing through the thick fused quartz panes across the unlovely Plain as though it were the most beautiful view on Earth.

Geoffrey Dugan, the youngest of them, took the least trouble to hide his feelings. Dale looked sympathetically at his eyes shining brightly with excitement, noted his parted lips and quick breathing through closed teeth. He knew just what Dugan was feeling. Had he not gone through it all himself', He had been twenty four, just Dugan's present age, when he had flown in the Equatorial race, and lie had not forgotten his sensations before the start. The lad was the right stuff. He was glad that he had chosen him out of the thousands of possibles to be his assistant pilot and navigator.

Frond, the journalist, turned and caught his eye, grinned unconvincingly, and then looked back to the window. Dale noticed that he was fidgeting. So the tension was getting under that cynical gentleman's skin, was it?

James Burns, the engineer, leaned against the glass, looking out. To appearance he was almost as calm as Dale himself, but when he moved, it was with a tell tale, irritable jerk. The expression on his face maintained a proper solemnity as would become one about to attend his own funeral.

As far as his crew was concerned Dale's only misgivings were on account of its last member. The sight of the doctor's face, ominously white and haggard, worried him. There had been much criticism of his decision to include this man of fifty six in his party, and it began to look as if the critics might be justified. Still, it was too late now for regrets one could only hope for the best.

Doctor Grayson lifted his eyes to the clear blue sky and gave an involuntary shudder. His face felt clammy and he knew that it was pale. He knew, too, that his eyes were looking glassy behind his thick spectacle lenses and his utmost efforts could not altogether restrain the trembling of his hands. Moreover, his imagination was persistently perverse. It continually showed him pictures of city streets filled with crowds, noisy with rumbling traffic, brilliant with lights of all colours, blinking and twinkling. It repeatedly told him that if he had the sense to get out of this steel room, he could be in such a place this very night . . .

Froud looked across the Plain to the black line held in check by an army of police. Up on the Press tower were the small, dark figures of men he knew, fellow journalists to whom he had said goodbye a short while ago. They had all professed envy of him. He doubted whether one of them meant it or would have been willing to change places with him, given the chance. At the moment he himself would willingly have changed places with any one of them. He turned to look again at the closely packed crowds.

'Thousands and thousands of them, all waiting for the big bang,' he murmured. 'They'll probably get a bigger earful than they want -- -- Hullo, there's someone with a heliograph.' He leaned forward, causing the characteristic sickle shaped lock of black hair to fall across his forehead.

'G-O-O-D L-U-C-K,' he spelt out from the flashes. 'Hardly original, but kindly meant and that's better than a lot of them. I wouldn't mind betting that there's a whole crowd out there not excluding my professional brethren who'd consider it a better show if we blew up than if we went up.'

'Aye, you're right there,' agreed Burns, his deep voice according well with his gloomy expression. 'They're the kind who don't feel they've had their money's worth unless some poor body crashes in an air race. But they're going to be disappointed with the Gloria Mundi. I helped to build her, and she's not going to blow up.'

The doctor moved, irritably.

'I wish you two wouldn't talk about blowing up. Isn't this waiting bad enough without imagining horrors?'

Young Geoffrey Dugan agreed with him. His look of eager anticipation was becoming supplanted by a worried frown.

'I'm with you, Doc. I wish we could get going now. This hanging about's getting me down. How much longer?' he added, turning back to Dale.

'Quarter of an hour,' Dale told him. 'We better be getting ready, Dugan. What's it say on the weather tower?'

Dugan crossed to one of the other windows.

'Wind speed twelve miles an hour,' he said.

'Good. Not much allowance necessary for that.' Dale turned back to the others. 'Put up the shutters now. It's time we got to the hammocks.'

He switched on a small light set in the ceiling. The shutterplates, heavy pieces of steel alloy, were swung across and their rubber faced edges clamped into place. When the last had been screwed down to its utmost and made airtight, the men turned to their hammocks.

These were couches slung by metal rods. Finely tempered steel and softest down had been used in an effort to produce the acme of comfort. No fairy tale princess ever rested upon a bed one half so luxuriously yielding as those provided for the five men.

They climbed on to them without speaking, and felt for the safety straps. The doctor's pale face had gone yet whiter. Little beads of sweat were gathering beneath his lower lip. Dugan saw him fumbling clumsily with the straps, and leaned across.

'Here, let me do it, Doc,' he suggested.

The doctor nodded his thanks and lay back while Dugan's strong, steady hands slid the webbing into the buckles.

'Five minutes,' said Dale.

Dugan attended to his own straps, then all five lay waiting.

The engineer rested motionless with all the graven solemnity of a stone knight upon his tomb. The journalist wriggled slightly to find the most comfortable position.

'Good beds you give your guests, Dale,' he murmured. 'Makes one wonder why we're such damn' fools as ever to do anything but sleep.'

Dale lay silent, his eyes fixed upon a flicking second hand. The fingers of his right hand already grasped the starting lever set into the side of his couch. His concentration left him without visible sign of fear, excitement or worry.

'Two minutes.'

The tension increased. Froud ceased to fidget. Dugan felt his heart begin to beat more quickly. The doctor started to count the seconds subconsciously; the surface of his mind was tormented with suggestions. Even yet it was not too late. If he were to jump up and attack Dale. .

'Half a minute.'

'And then what?' thought the doctor. He turned his head. His uneasy eyes met Dugan's, and he heard a murmur of encouragement.

'Fifteen seconds,' said Dale.

A comforting fatalism crept over the doctor. One must die sooner or later. Why not now? He'd had a good run for his money. If only it were quick . . .

'Five-four-three-two-one . . .'

The chattering of the crowd died down to a murmur, and thence to an excited silence broken only by the voice from the loudspeakers inexorably counting away the time. Every eye was turned to the centre of the circle, each focused upon the glittering rocket, scarcely daring even to blink lest it should miss the critical moment of the start. Into the dullest mind there crept at this moment some understanding of the scene's true meaning a thrill of pride in the indomitable spirit of man striving once again to break his age old bondage: reaching out to grasp the very stars.

So, into unknown perils had gone the galleys of Ericson so, too, had gone the caravels of Columbus, fearing that they might sail over the edge of the world into the Pit of Eternity, but persistent in their courage. It might well be that this day, this twelfth of October, 1981, would go down to history as a turning point in human existence it might well be. .

The telescopes in the great observatories were trained and ready. They had been trained before. They had followed the flaring tracks of adventurers from Earth, had seen them break from the shell of atmosphere into the emptiness of space, seen them fail to hold their courses and watched the beginnings of falls which would last for months until they should end at last in the sun. And now, before long, the fate of the Gloria Mundi would be told by the great lenses whether fate had decided that she should turn aside to be drawn relentlessly into the centre of the system, or whether she would be allowed to see the red disc of Mars growing slowly larger in the sky before her . . .

The last tense seconds passed. The watchers held their breath and strained their eyes.

A flash stabbed out between the tail fins. The great rocket lifted. She seemed balanced upon a point of fire, soaring like the huge shell she was into the blue above. Fire spewed from her ports in a spreading glory of livid flame like the tail of a monstrous comet. And when the thunder of her going beat upon the ears of the crowd, she was already a fiery spark in the heavens ....

The Daily Hail's correspondent had left his telephone on the Press tower and was gravitating naturally towards the bar. Before he could reach it, he found himself accosted by an excited individual clad in mechanic's overalls. This person gripped him firmly by the lapel.

'Mr. Travers, do you want a scoop?' he inquired urgently.

Travers detached the none too clean hand.

'Scoop?' he said. 'There are no scoops nowadays. Everybody knows all about everything before it's happened.'

'Don't you believe it,' the mechanic insisted earnestly. 'I've got a real scoop for you if you see that I'm treated right.'

'The Hail always treats everybody right,' Travers said loyally. 'What is it? About the rocket?'

The mechanic nodded. After a hasty glance to reassure himself that no one else was within hearing, he leaned closer and whispered in the journalist's ear. Travers stopped him after the first sentence.

'Nobody else knows?'

'Not a soul. Take my oath on it.'

Two minutes later, the mechanic, with Travers firmly clasping his arm, was being rushed across the ground in the direction of the Hail's special 'plane.

---

DOCTOR GRAYSON's eyes were tightly shut. The lids were pressed desperately together as though the slender membranes could cut him off from all sensation. Dugan's were open, and his head was turned slightly to one side as he watched Dale. The control lever and the hand upon it were hidden from him, but he could see the right arm stiffen as Dale's fingers gripped.

There was a sudden roar, loud and terrifying in spite of the evacuated double walls. An invisible weight pressed him deep into the cushions of his couch. The shuddering of the rocket shook him all over, despite the intervening springs, with a vibration which seemed to be shaking him to pieces. His head was swimming, and his brains felt like lead in his skull.

A new high note, a penetrating shriek, soared above the roar as the atmosphere fled screaming past outside. With an effort he managed to turn his head and look at the thermometer suspended above Dale. The temperature of the outer hull was rising already, and the speed indicator was only yet moving past the mile a second mark three thousand, six hundred miles an hour Dugan was swept by a sudden panic-did Dale know?

Dale's eyes were fixed on the large disc which bore only a single second-hand. Slowly, and in accordance with the planned acceleration of a hundred feet per second, per second, he was turning the control lever. And slowly the speed indicator was advancing. Intangible forces continued to press on the men. It became difficult to breathe. The fine springs and soft down felt like cast iron: compressed internal organs ached intolerably; hearts laboured: veins rose in cords. Heads burned and drummed: eyes no longer seemed to fit their sockets.

The whine of the air passed beyond hearing; the thermometer continued to rise, but it was still far below the red danger mark. The speed indicator slid forward three and a half, four, four and a half miles a second four minutes since the start . . A little behind schedule . . .

Dugan ceased to watch. He could no longer see clearly. His eyes felt as though they must burst. Like a refrain in his mind went the repetition: 'Seven miles a second . . . Seven miles a second. .' Less than that would mean failure to get free from Earth.

The pressure grew. Dale was increasing the acceleration beyond the hundred feet. The weight ground down on the men, crushing them with an intolerable agony, straining ribs as though to crack them . . . At last Dugan slipped into unconsciousness . . .

Dugan, the youngest and the strongest, was the first to open his eyes. He was immediately and violently sick. Before he had completely recovered the others were beginning to stir and to show similar symptoms. His first anxiety when he gained a little control of himself was the speed indicator, and he sighed with relief to see that it was registering a trifle above seven miles a second actually a point or two beneath seven might not have failed to tear them free from Earth's attraction, but the safety margin would have been unpleasantly narrow. He turned over on his side to look at Dale who had begun to move slightly. How the man had held out against the pressure to accelerate to such a point was a mystery. Somebody, Dugan decided, would have to invent an automatic acceleration control.

He sat up with great caution and released his straps. The rocket tubes were shut off now, and the ship travelling under her own momentum, so there would be no appreciable pull of gravity. He unfastened a pair of magnetic soled shoes from their holders beside his couch and strapped them on before lowering his feet to the floor.

Burns was less circumspect. He undid his buckles, sat up abruptly and met the ceiling with a smack. He swore.

'Why don't you use your brains?' the doctor grumbled, peevishly. He was feeling extremely unwell and remained quite unamused by the spectacle of Dugan dragging the engineer back to his couch.

'I didn't think we were going to hit the no gravity zone so soon,' Burns explained. The doctor shook his head.

'There's no such thing as no gravity,' he told him severely.

'Is there not, now? Well, it feels as if there is, blast it,' said the other ungratefully.

'Don't let Doc bother you,' advised Froud, pausing in the act of reaching for his shoes. 'You were quite in the best tradition. Wells' and Verne's people biffed about just like that. I say, can't we open one of those shutters?'

Dugan looked at the still horizontal Dale.

'Better wait for orders.'

'That's all right.' Dale's voice came weakly. 'Go ahead if the windows aren't broken. I'll lie here a bit.'

The three began to tackle one of the shutters while the doctor searched in his case for a syringe before moving over to Dale. There was some difficulty in unscrewing the. shutters. With no weight in their bodies to act as leverage every movement required purchase in the opposite direction, but at length the shutter was made to swing back.

Stars like diamonds, bright and undiffused, shone in brilliant myriads against a velvet blackness. Bright sparks which were great suns burnt lonely, with nothing to illuminate in a darkness they could not dissipate. In the empty depths of space there was no size, no scale, nothing to show that a million light years was not arm's length, or arm's length, a million light years. Microcosm was confused with macrocosm.

For a short time no one spoke, then:

'Where's the Earth?' Froud asked.

'She'll rise soon. We're twisting slightly,' Dugan told him.

They waited while the flaring stars slipped slowly sideways. A dark segment began to encroach, blotting everything else from sight. It swung farther and farther across their sky until upon its far edge, seemingly above them, gleamed the crescent Earth. Froud murmured half to himself: 'My God, isn't she a beauty? Shimmering like a pearl.'

The vast crescent had not the hard, clear outline of the moon. A cool, green blue light flooded out from it as it hung huge and lucent in the sky, softened as though by a powdering of some celestial bloom.

Sunset had just overtaken Europe and the nightline was moving out on to the Atlantic. The Americas showed their zigzag close to the outer edge, and the greater ranges of their mountains were still just discernible. It was strange to think that high in those mountains were observatories where even now telescopes were trained upon them. Still more odd to think of all the millions of men swarming with all their unimportant importance upon that beautiful piece of cosmic decay . . .

Dale and the doctor moved across and joined them. The rocket was still twisting, carrying the Earth out of sight. A sudden glare from the window took them all by surprise.

'Shut it quick, or we'll all be cooked,' ordered Dale.

The sun had 'risen' as a mass of naked, flaring flames; its heat was intense, and its brilliance too vivid to be suffered. Dugan and Burns together slammed the shutter across.

Dale turned and made his way to the control seat where he began to study the dials and gauges. The maximum thermometer showed that the acceleration had been controlled well below the danger point. The air pressure and condition meters read as he had expected. The speed dial, of course, remained steady at just over seven miles a second. Not until he came to the fuel level register did he find any great deviation from his expectations, but in front of that dial he paused, frowning. There was an appreciable difference between the estimate he had made and the reading it gave. He was puzzled.

'That's queer,' he murmured to Dugan, beside him.

'It's not a great error besides, we've gone over the seven a second mark,' said the other.

'I know, but, allowing for that, it's wrong. It's one of the simplest calculations of the lot the amount of power required to raise a given weight at a given speed its elementary. We can't have gone wrong over that half a minute.'

He took a slide rule from a drawer and did some rapid calculation.

'Somewhere between a hundred and thirty and a hundred and forty pounds, I make it. Now how the hell can we have gained that, I wonder?'

'You pushed up the acceleration during the fifth minute.'

'I know. I've compensated for that.' He spoke to the rest. 'Has any one of you brought anything extra aboard?'

Froud and Burns shook their heads. Their possessions had been weighed to an ounce. Doctor Grayson looked a trifle sheepish.

'Well?' Dale snapped.

'Er-my small grand daughter, you know. She insisted that I must have a mascot.' He fumbled in a pocket and produced a cat made of black velvet. It wore a bushy tail and an arrogant expression.

Dale smiled. 'Probable weight, one ounce. We'll forgive you that, Doc. But you didn't bring, for instance, that microscope of yours?'

'No, unfortunately. You ought to have let me have that, you know, Dale. It might have been very valuable to us.'

'So might a whole lot of things, but we've had to do without them. Are the rest of you absolutely sure that you've nothing extra?'

They all shook their heads.

'Well, it's an odd point, but apart from that, everything has gone like clockwork.'

'If you had my inside, you couldn't say that,' Froud observed. 'I ache, not only all over, but all through. I've got serious doubts whether my stomach will ever expand again, and the very thought of food. . .' He pulled an expressive face.

'What's next?' Dugan asked of Dale.

'Correct our course, and stop this twisting. Couches everyone.'

Froud groaned. 'Oh, my God. Again?'

'It's nothing much this time, but it might throw you about a bit.'

For twenty minutes he and Dugan in the control seats corrected and recorrected in a series of jerks.

'That's all for the present,' Dale said, at length. 'You can get up now, and if you want to open a shutter, that's the shady side, over there.' Turning to Dugan, he added: 'Get me charts one, two and three and we'll mark the course in detail.'

Dugan left the room by a trap door in the floor Beyond extended a metal ladder. The ladder could not be said to lead down, for there was now neither 'up' nor 'down' within the rocket, but it offered its rungs for the purpose of towing oneself along. The living and control room of the Gloria Mundi was situated forward, in the nose. Its floor was circular, and the walls, by reason of the projectile shape, converged slightly towards the ceiling. Dale had decided that a separate navigation room was unnecessary. Rocket flight, once the gravitation of Earth has been offset, is not, strictly speaking, a flight at all, but a fall. When in free space and on the correct course, the only attention required is that of slight modifications by short bursts on the steering tubes. Since it would be theoretically possible for the ship to keep her calculated track without any correction until she was slowed for landing, he considered that the provision of a special navigation cabin would be a waste of space.

Round the walls of the main room the five shuttered windows were set at equal intervals. Between them, and capable of operation when the shutters must be closed, were mounted telescopic instruments ingeniously made to pierce the double hull. Now that a radius of movement was no longer necessary, the five slung couches could be packed more closely together, a table with a magnetized surface screwed to the floor and other adaptations made for the sake of comfort during a fall which must last almost twelve weeks.

Beyond the trap door were the store rooms for food and other necessities. Batteries for lighting and heating. The air supply and purification plant. A small cabin, little more than a cupboard, for use in emergency as a sick bay. A work bench, a small light lathe and rack of tools for minor repairs, and even a corner fitted as a galley though the anticipated difficulties of weightless cooking precluded hope of many hot meals.

With this second level, the habitable portion of the rocket ended. Beyond lay the fuel tanks with their tons of explosives, the mixing chambers and the pumps supplying the combustion chambers whence the expanding gases would roar from the driving tubes.

Dugan towed himself towards that part of the storeroom where the charts were kept. He pushed off and floated towards the floor; his magnetized soles met it with a slight click, and immediately he began to feel more normal. Although one had expected it, there was a slight sense of uncanniness attending a weightless condition. He bent down, pulled open the long front of the chart locker, and then stood staring. When he had last seen them the charts had been neatly rolled into cylinders; now most of them had been flattened out by the pressure of acceleration. That caused him no surprise: what did, was the unmistakable toe of a boot protruding from between the folds of paper.

There was a short interval of stupefaction before he regained presence of mind enough to relatch the locker and go in search of a pistol. Back in the living room he reported:

'There's a stowaway aboard, Dale.'

The tour stared at him as the remark sank in. Dale grunted, scornfully:

'Impossible. The ship's been guarded all the time.'

'But there is. I saw...

'And searched before we left.'

'I tell you I saw his foot in the chart locker. Go and look for yourself.'

'You're sure?'

'Dead certain.'

Dale rose from the control desk and held out his hand.

'Give me that pistol. I'll settle with him. Now we know where the extra weight was.'

He was coldly angry. The presence of a stowaway might easily have meant disaster for all of them. No wonder the ship had lagged a little to begin with, and no wonder that the fuel level had shown an unexpected reading. He pulled himself through the trap door closely followed by the rest. The front of the locker was still fastened. He twisted the latch and flung it wide open.

'Now then. Out of that!' he ordered.

There was no movement. He jabbed the muzzle of his pistol among the papers and felt it encounter something yielding.

'Come out of it!' he repeated.

The protruding toe stirred, sending a bunch of charts floating out into the room and revealing a high boot laced to the knee. The stowaway began to wriggle slowly out of the opening, feet first. The boots were followed by breeches and a jacket of soft leather, and finally, a woebegone, grimy face. Dale, after one glance at the disordered hair around it, lowered his pistol.

'Oh, my God, it's a woman,' he said in a tone of devastating disgust.

'Dear me,' said Froud's voice calmly. 'Just like the movies, isn't it? Quaint how these things happen.'

The girl struggled free of the locker and came drifting across the room. But for her weightlessness, she would have collapsed. She put out her hand to grasp a stanchion, but did not reach it. Her eyes closed, and she floated inertly in mid air.

'What's more,' Dale added, 'she's the kind that begins by fainting. What, in heaven's name, have we done to deserve this?'

The doctor caught the girl's arm.

'You can't blame her for that. We all fainted and we had sprung couches. If she's not broken anything, it'll be a wonder.'

Burns slipped a flask from his pocket.

'Give the lass a drop of brandy,' he suggested.

The doctor thrust him off impatiently.

'Get away, man. How the devil do you think you can pour a liquid here? Do use what brains you've got.'

Burns stood back, abashed and regarding the unpourable brandy with a bewildered expression.

'You'd better take her into the sick room and look after her, I suppose,' Dale said grudgingly. 'You'd better clean her up, too. I never saw anyone in such a filthy mess. She's probably ruined some of those charts.'

'If I were you,' advised Frond, 'I'd do the cleaning up before the reviving. She'll never forgive you if she wakes up to see herself as she is now. This part of her performance is well below the movie standard nobody yet ever saw a film star just after she had been thoroughly ill.'

---

BACK in the living room there closed down one of those uncomfortable silences sometimes described as 'palpable'. Dale paused beside the control desk and glanced at the instruments there without seeing them, for his mind was at present entirely possessed by a sense of surging indignation. Burns sat down on the side of the table and placidly awaited the outcome. Frond, attempting to drop comfortably upon one of the couches found this casual gesture defeated by lack of weight, and hung for a time in a state of puzzled suspense. Dugan crossed to one of the unshuttered windows and examined the wonders of space with noticeably discreet attention.

It was Froud who ended the mute period.

'Well. Well. Well,' he murmured, reflectively. 'And here was I thinking that I had got the only all male assignment since sex appeal was invented. It just shows you even a journalist can be wrong sometimes. You know,' he added, 'old Oscar Wilde had his points in spite of what people said about him.'

Dugan turned from the contemplation of stars, looking puzzled.

'What the devil are you talking about?' he inquired.

'Oh, quite harmless. Only that Wilde had a theory about nature imitating art. The typical art of today is the movies hence the situation. Who but the movie minded would have thought of stowing away on a rocket? Therefore --

'That's all very well,' Dale told him, 'but this isn't as funny as you seem to think. And the point at present is what are we going to do about it?'

'Do?' echoed Froud, undismayed. 'Why, that's simple enough heave her outside.'

'Here, I say ' Dugan began.

Froud grinned at him.

'Exactly. But the fact remains that it is the only thing we can do. The alternative which we shall undoubtedly adopt is not to do anything: to lump it, in fact.'

'If it had been a man,' Dale said, 'I'd soon have settled him and it couldn't have been called murder.'

'But as it isn't a man?'

'Well, damn it all, why not? A woman doesn't eat less or breathe less. Is there any really good reason why she shouldn't be treated the same way?'

'None at all,' said Froud promptly. 'Equal pay for equal work, equal penalties for equal crimes, and all that. Entirely logical and correct procedure. But no one ever puts it into practice this is known as chivalry,' he explained, kindly.

Dale, engrossed with the problem, took no notice.

'She's just trading on her sex, as they all do that's what it is. Taking it for granted that just because she happens to be a woman we shall do her no harm.'

'No be fair to her,' the journalist said. 'It's your sex that she's trading on. If the Gloria Mundi had had a crew of women, she'd soon have been outside. But she argues that you, being a male, won't behave logically what's more, she's perfectly right.'

'Can't you be serious for a few minutes?'

'Oh, I am. I'm facing a terrible future which you chaps haven't thought of yet. By the time she's been here a week she'll be bossing the whole show and making us feel as if we were the supercargo instead of she. I know 'em.'

'If she stays.'

'Oh, she'll stay all right. I really don't know why you're making all this fuss. You know quite well none of us has guts enough to chuck her overboard, and that we'll just have to accept the situation in the end.'

'That's right,' Dugan put in. 'Anyway, she's done the really serious part of the damage already by coming at all. There'll be enough food to see us through. And I mean to say, we can't just bump her off, can we?'

He turned to Burns who nodded silent support.

Dale looked at the three faces. He wore a somewhat deflated appearance not surprising in one who felt himself to be showing weakness in the face of the trip's first emergency. He took refuge on a side track.

'Well, I'd like to know who got her aboard. I know none of you would play a damn fool trick like that, but when we get back, I'm going to find out who did, and, by God ' The return of the doctor cut short his threat.

'Well?'

'Given her a sedative. She's sleeping now.'

'Nothing broken?'

'Don't think so. Pretty well bruised, of course.'

'H'm, that's a blessing, at least. It would have been about the last straw to have been landed with an invalid.'

'I don't think you need bother about that. She'll probably be all right in a day or two.'

'And in the meantime,' said Froud, 'all we can do is to await this probably disruptive influence with patience.'

A full forty eight hours passed before Doctor Grayson would allow his patient to be seen, and even then his permission was given reluctantly. So far, he told them, she had made a good recovery, but now the thought of her reception was beginning to worry her and retard progress. He considered it worth the risk of a slight setback to have matters out and let the girl know where she stood.

Dale immediately made for the trap door. It would. be easier, he thought, to conduct this first interview in the privacy of the tiny sick room. To his irritation he found that he did not arrive there alone.

'What do you want' he demanded, rounding on Froud. 'Me? Oh, I'm just tagging along,' the other told him placidly.

'Well, you can go back to the rest. I don't need you.'

'But that's where you're wrong. I am, as it were, the official record of this trip you can't start by censoring me the moment something interesting happens.'

'You'll know all about it later.'

'It wouldn't be the same. Must have the stowaway's first words and the captain's reactions. I'm afraid you've not got the right angle on this, Dale. Now, here is Romance with a capital R.'

He shook his head at Dale's grunting snort.

'Oh, yes it is in spite of your noises. It's axiomatic in my profession. The unexpected appearance of any girl is always Romance. And I am the representative of the world population two thousand million persons, or thereabouts, all avidly clamouring for Romance is it fair, is it decent, that you for a mere whim should deprive?'

'Oh, all right. I suppose you'd better come. Only for God's sake don't talk so damn' much. In fact, don't talk at all if you can manage that without bursting.'

He opened the door, and the two of them crowded into the little place.

The interval had worked a wonderful transformation in the stowaway's appearance. It was difficult to believe that the girl who lay on the slung couch and examined her visitors with calm appraisement could be identical with the figure of misery which had emerged from the locker. Both men were a little taken aback by the serious, unfrightened regard of her dark eyes. Neither had known quite what attitude to expect, but their surmises had not included this appearance of detached calm. Dale returned her look, momentarily at a loss. He saw an oval face, tanned to a soft brown and framed by darkly gleaming curls. The features were small, fine and regular; a firm mouth, with lips only a shade redder than nature had intended, and, below it, a chin suggesting resolution without stubbornness. Insensibly, when faced with the particular cause, he modified his attitude to the situation in general, and from its beginning the interview progressed along lines he had not intended.

'Well?' the girl asked evenly.

Dale pulled himself together. He began as he had meant to begin, but he felt that there was something wrong with the tone.

'I am Dale Curtance, and I should like an explanation of your presence here.

First, what is your name?'

'Joan,' she told him.

'And your surname?'

Her gaze did not waver.

'I don't think that matters at present.'

'It matters to me. I want to know who you are, and what you are here for.'

'In that case you will be disappointed that I do not choose to give you my other name. If you were to press me I could give you a false one. You have no means of checking. Shall we say "Smith"?'

'We will not say "Smith",' Dale retorted shortly. 'If you will not tell me your name, perhaps you will be good enough to explain why you joined this expedition unasked and unwanted. I suppose you do not understand that just your presence might easily have wrecked us at the very start.'

'I hoped to help.'

'Help? -- You?' His contemptuous tone caused her to flush, but she did not drop her eyes. At that moment Froud, watching her, felt some slight stirring of memory.

'I've met. you before, somewhere,' he said suddenly.

Her gaze shifted from Dale's to his own face. He fancied that he caught a faint trace of apprehension, but the impression was slight.

'Indeed?' she said.

'Yes, I caught it just then, when you were angry. I've seen you look like that before. Now, where was it?' He knitted his brows as he stared at her, but the answer evaded him. Out of the thousands of girls he met each year in the course of his work, it was remarkable that he should have recalled her at all which suggested that they must have met in unusual circumstances, but for the life of him he could not place the occasion.

Dale had prepared appropriate sentiments and was not to be deterred from expressing them.

'I suppose,' he said, 'that you're one of those girls who think that they can get away with anything nowadays. Give a show girl smile, and everyone is only too glad to have you along and the newspapers lap it all up when you get back. Well, this time you've got it wrong. I'm not glad to have you along none of us is we don't want you'

'Except me,' put in Frond. 'The S.A. angle will be'

'You shut up,' snapped Dale. To the girl he went on: 'And I'd like you to know that, thanks to your interference, we shall be lucky if we ever do get back. If you'd been a man, I'd have thrown you out I ought to even though you're a woman. But let me tell you this, you're not going to be any little heroine or mascot here when there's work to be done, you'll do it the same as the rest. Help, indeed!'

The girl's eyes flashed, nevertheless, she spoke calmly.

'But I shall be able to help.'

'The only way you're likely to help is to give Froud a better story for his nitwit public only you've probably at the same time spoilt his chance of ever getting back to tell it.'

'Look here,' the journalist began, indignantly, 'my public is not '

'Be quiet,' Dale snapped.

All three were quiet. The girl shrugged her shoulders and continued to meet Dale's gaze, unabashed by his mood. The silence lengthened. She appeared unaware that some response from her was the natural next step in the conversation. Dale began to grow restive. He was not entirely unused to young women who kept their eyes fixed on his face, but they usually kept up at the same time a flow of chatter accompanied by frequent smiles. This girl merely waited for him to continue. He became aware that Froud was finding some obscure source of amusement in the situation.

'How did you get on board?' he demanded at last.

'I knew one of your men,' she admitted.

'Which?'

She shook her head silently. Her expression was a reproof.

'You bribed him?'

'Not exactly. I suggested that if he got me here, he would be the only one who knew about it and that the Excess or the Hail might be generous for exclusive information.'

'Well, I'm damned. So by now everybody knows about it?'

'I expect so.'

Dale looked helplessly at Froud.

'And yet,' said the latter reflectively, 'there are still people who doubt the power of the Press.'

Dale turned back once more to the girl.

'But why? Why? That's what I want to know. You don't look the kind who I mean if you'd not been as you are, I wouldn't have been so surprised, but ' He finished in the air.

'That's not very lucid,' she said, and for the first time smiled faintly.

'I think he's trying to say that you don't look like a sensationalist that this is not just a bit of exhibitionism on your part,' Froud tried.

'Oh, no.' She shook her head with the curious result that the outflung curls remained outflung instead of falling back into place. Unconscious of the odd effect, she went on: 'In fact, I should think he has a far more exhibitionistic nature than I have.'

'Oh,' said Dale a little blankly as Froud smiled.

Doctor Grayson came to the door.

'Have you two finished now?' he inquired. 'Can't have you tiring my patient out, you know.'

'Right you are, Doc,' said Froud, rising, 'though I fancy you rather underestimate your patient's powers of recovery.'

'What did she say?' Dugan demanded, as they entered the living room.

'Precious little except that her name is Joan, and that she considers Dale an exhibitionist which, of course, he is,' Froud told him. Dugan looked puzzled.

'Didn't you ask her why she had done it and all that'?'

'Of course.'

'Well?'

Froud shrugged his shoulders and pushed the familiar lock of hair back from his forehead.

'This looks like being a more interesting trip than I had expected.' He looked at the other three, thoughtfully. 'Five of us and her, cooped up here for three months. If the proportion of the sexes were reversed, there would be blue murder. Possibly we shall just avoid murder, but you never know.'

---

DALE's anger at the finding of the stowaway had been due as much to a dread of the consequences of her presence among them as to the practical results of her additional weight. The girl, Joan, was an unknown quantity thrust among his carefully chosen crew. He saw her as the potential cause of emotional disturbances, irrational cross currents of feeling, and, not impossibly, of violent quarrels which might make a misery of the voyage. The close confinement for weeks would have been a severe enough test of companionship for the men alone, for though he had chosen men he knew well, it was inevitable that he .should know them only under more or less normal conditions. How they were likely to react to the changed circumstances, he could only speculate and that not too happily.

Ultimately it depended upon the character of the girl. If she were level headed, they might conceivably get through without serious trouble: if not ... And now, ten days out (in the Earth reckoning), he still could not make up his mind about her. To all of them, as far as he knew, she was still that unknown quantity which had emerged from the locker. She had still given no reason for her presence, and yet, in some way, he was aware from her attitude, and as much of her character as she chose to show, that it had been no light whim nor search for notoriety which had driven her into this foolhardy adventure. But if it was not that, what could it be? What else was strong enough to drive an undeniably attractive girl to such a course? She did not seem to have the sustaining force of a specialized interest such as that which had enabled the doctor to face the trip. Her general education was good and her knowledge of astronomy unusual; her comprehension of physics, too, was above the general standard, but it was not an absorbing passion urging her to overcome almost insuperable difficulties. But there must be a reason of some kind . . .

But in spite of her retention of confidence he was admitting that they might have been far more unlucky in their supercargo. As Froud had pointed out, they might as easily have been saddled with a fluffy blonde with cinema ambitions. Joan was at least quietly inconspicuous and ready to perform any task suggested to her. He wondered how long that attitude would last.

She was standing close to one of the windows, looking out into space. Most of her time was spent in this way, though after the first novelty had worn off, she did not seem to study the far off suns; rather, it was a part of her aloofness from the rest of them; as though the unchanging, starry blackness before her eyes set her mind free to roam in its private imaginings. Of the course of these thoughts no sign appeared; there was no play of expression across the sunburned, serious face, no frown as though she sought a solution of problems, no hint of impatience, only sometimes did it appear that her eyes were deeper and her thoughts more remote than at others. Generally the talk of the rest passed her by, unheard, but infrequently a remark chanced to catch her attention, and she would turn to look at the speaker. Rarely, one had the impression that secretly and privately she might be smiling.

A question of Froud's brought her round now. He was sitting at the table sitting by force of habit, since neither sitting nor lying was more restful than standing in the weightless state. He was asking Dale:

'I've meant to ask you before, but it's kept on slipping my mind: why did you choose to try for Mars? I should have thought Venus was the natural target for the first trip. She's nearer. One would use less fuel. It was the place Drivers was aiming at, wasn't it?'

Dale looked up from his book, and nodded.

'Yes, Drivers was trying to reach Venus. As a matter of fact, it was my first idea to go for Venus, but I changed my mind.'

'That's a pity. It's always Mars in the stories. Either we go to Mars or Mars comes to us. What with Wells and Burroughs and a dozen or so of others, I feel that I know the place already. Venus would have been a change.'

Dugan laughed. 'If we find Mars anything like the Burroughs conception, we're in for an exciting time. Why did you give up the Venus idea, Dale?'

'Oh, several reasons. For one thing, we know a bit more about Mars. For all we can tell, Venus under those clouds may be nothing more than a huge ball of water. We do know that Mars is at least dry land, and that we shall have a chance of setting the Gloria Mundi up on end for the return journey. If we came down in a sea, it would mean finish. Then again, the pull of gravity is much less on Mars, and this ship is going to take some handling even there. I don't know why Drivers chose Venus probably he didn't want to wait for Mars' opposition or something of the kind. But you were wrong about it needing less fuel. Actually it would use more.'

'But Venus comes about ten million miles closer,' Froud objected, looking puzzled.

'But she's a much bigger planet than Mars. It would take much more power to get clear of her for the return journey. This falling through space uses no fuel. It's the stopping and starting that count, and obviously the bigger the planet, the greater its pull that is, the more it costs to get free.'

'I see. You mean that as we are now clear of the Earth's pull we could go to Neptune or to Pluto, even, with no more cost of power than to Mars?'

'Sure. In fact, we could go out of this system into the next if you didn't mind spending a few centuries on the journey.'

'Oh,' said Froud, ' and relapsed into a thoughtful silence.

'I wonder,' the doctor put in generally, 'why we do these things? It's quite silly really when we could all stay comfortably and safely at home. Is it going to make anyone any happier or better to know that man can cross space if he wishes to? Yet here we arc doing it.'

,Joan's voice came from the window, surprising them.

'It is going to make us wiser. Don't you remember Cavor saying to Bedford in Wells' First Men in the Moon, "Think of the new knowledge!"?'

'Knowledge ,' said the doctor. 'Yes, I suppose that is it. For ever and for ever seeking knowledge. And we don't even know why we seek it. It's an instinct, like self preservation; and about as comprehensible. Why, I wonder, do I keep on living. I know I've got to die sooner or later, yet I take the best care I can that it shall be later instead of finishing the thing off in a reasonable manner. After all, I've done my bit propagated my species, and yet for some inscrutable reason I want to go on living and learning. Just an instinct. Some kink in the evolutionary process caused this passion for knowledge, and the result is man an odd little creature, scuttling around and piling up mountains of this curious commodity.'

'And finding that quite a lot of it goes bad on him,' put in Froud. The doctor nodded.

'You're right. It's far from imperishable. I suppose there is some purpose. What do you suppose will happen when one day a man sits back in his chair and says: "Knowledge is complete"? You see, it just sounds silly.

We're so used to collecting it, that we can't imagine a world where it is all collected and finished.'

He looked up, catching Dugan's eye, and smiled.

'You needn't look at me like that, Dugan. I'm not going off my rocker. Have a shot at it yourself. Why do you think we are out here in the middle of nothing?'

Dugan hesitated 'I don't know. I've never really thought about it, but I've a sort of feeling that people grow out of well, out of their conditions just as they grow out of their clothes. They have to expand.'

Joan's voice surprised them again as she asked Dugan:

'Did you ever read J. J. Astor's Journey to Other Worlds?'

'Never heard of him. Why?' Dugan asked.

'Only that he seemed to feel rather the same about it, right back in 1894, too. As far as I remember he said:

"Just as Greece became too small for the civilization of the Greeks, so it seems to me that the future glory of the human race lies in the exploration of at least the Solar System." Almost the same idea, you see.'

The doctor looked curiously at the girl.

'And is that your own view, too?'

'My own view? I don't know. I can't say that I have considered the underlying reasons for my being here; my immediate reasons are enough.'

'I'm sorry you won't confide them. I think you would find us interested.'

The girl did not reply. She had turned back to the window and was staring out into the blackness as though she had not heard. The doctor watched her thoughtfully for some moments before returning to the rest. Like Dale he was now quite certain that no mere whim had led her to board the Gloria Mundi, and he was equally at a loss to ascribe any satisfactory reason for her presence. His attention was recalled by Froud saying:

'Surely the cause of our being here really lies in our expectations of what we shall find on Mars. The doc is primarily a biologist, and his reason is easy to understand. I, as a journalist, am after news for its own sake.' 'Superficially that is true,' the doctor agreed, 'but I was wondering at the fundamental urge the source of that curiosity which has sent generation after generation doing things like this without seeming to know why. I suppose we all have our own ideas of what we shall find, but I don't mind betting that not one of those expectations, even if it is fulfilled, is a good enough cause, rationally speaking, for our risking our lives. I know mine isn't. I expect to find new kinds of flora. If I do, I shall be delighted, but and this is the point whether it proves useful or quite useless I shall be equally delighted at finding it. Which makes me ask again, why am I willing to risk my life to find it?'

Froud broke in as he paused:

'It is really the same as my reason. News gathering. The difference is that your news is specialized. We are all gatherers of news which is another name for knowledge so now we're back where you started.'

'Well, what do you expect to find?' the doctor asked him.

'I don't really know. I think most of all I want evidence of the existence of a race of creatures who built the Martian canals.'

Dugan broke in. 'Canals! Why, everybody knows that that was a misconception from the beginning. Schiaparelli just called them canali when he discovered them, and he meant channels. Then the Italian word was translated literally and it was assumed that he meant that they were artificial works. He didn't imply that at all.'

'I know that,' Froud said coldly. 'I learnt it at school as you did. But that doesn't stop me from considering them to be artificial.'

'But think of the work, man. It's impossible. They're hundreds of miles long, and lots of them fifty miles across, and the whole planet's netted with them. It just couldn't be done.'

'I admit that it's stupendous, but I don't admit that it's impossible. In fact, I contend that if the oceans of the Earth were to dry up and our only way of getting water was to drain it from the poles, we should do that very thing.'

'But think of the labour involved!'

'Self preservation always involves labour. But if you want to shake my faith in the theory that the Martian canals were intelligently constructed, all you have to do is to account for their formation in some other way. If you've got an idea which will explain nature's method of constructing straight, intersecting ditches of constant width and hundreds of miles in length, I'd like to hear it.'

Dugan looked to Dale for assistance, but the latter shook his head.

'I'm keeping an open mind. There's not enough evidence.'

'The straight lines are evidence enough for me,' Froud went on. 'Nature only abhors a vacuum in certain places, but she abhors a straight line anywhere.'

'Aye,' Burns agreed, emerging unexpectedly from his customary silence. 'She can't draw a straight line nor work from a plan. Hit and miss is her way an' a lot of time she wastes with her misses.'

'Then, like me, you expect to find traces of intelligent life?' the journalist asked him.

'I don't know, that's one of the things I'm hoping to find out. Though now you're asking me, I never did see why we should think that all God's creatures are to be found on one