Rick nodded. He felt that way, too. The entire rocket had been checked out by teams of never less than two. Each man checked the other's work and both had to agree that all was in perfect order before the piece was accepted and checked off. Each man had to account to a guard before he could go to work. The system was foolproof. Now only the ultimate steps remained, the final checks, the fueling, and at the very last, the placement of the tiny spacemonk in his specially designed carrier.

"Let's go," Gee-Gee said.

They mounted the elevator and were whisked upward to the final stage. Gee-Gee picked up his walkie-talkie from the rack. "Do you read me, Dick?"

"Go ahead, Gee-Gee."

"Tell Jerry to go through checkoff."

Rick and Gee-Gee stood on the ramp and looked down at the ridiculously tiny wings and watched the control surfaces move in response to Jerry's gentle touch on the controls within the blockhouse. The drone control was working perfectly. Rick felt a surge of pride. This particular part of Pegasus was his.

The two went into the confined space in the nose. It was circular, the structural members rising to a near-peak overhead. A radar unit blocked out the tip of the nose cone. Under the unit a heavy steel channel ran down to the side of the drone control. Fixed to the channel by heavy springs was a tiny chair, complete with straps. The chair was festooned with wires, unconnected for the moment. The wires terminated in instruments that would sense every action, every response of the spacemonk's body. The chair channel was pivoted, so the monk would always be upright.

At Gee-Gee's order, Jerry Lipton ran through the check procedures again. This time Rick and Gee-Gee carefully watched the functioning of each servomotor. Finally Gee-Gee announced that he was satisfied. Next step was to check the spacemonk's instruments' circuits.

Rick picked up a tiny stethoscope. It would be taped to the monk's body, held tightly to his heart. He traced the circuit to where it disappeared into the oscillator switch, then took the walkie-talkie. "Display on? Checking the stethoscope."

"Go ahead," Earle replied.

Rick held it to his own heart for a few minutes, then tapped on the bell with his forefinger.

"Looks good on the display," Dick's voice came back. "What did you hit it with—a hammer?"

"Finger," Rick said. "Let's take a temperature next." He found the thermocouple that would be attached to the marmoset's body, traced the circuit to the oscillator, then called, "Watch my own body heat." He tucked the sensing element under his armpit.

"Hotter than a pistol," Dick said.

"Why? Do I have a fever?"

"Not unless you're a monkey. Next?"

"Sphygmomanometer. And don't worry about the pronunciation. The blood-pressure cuff." He traced the circuit, then inflated the rubber and fabric cuff.

"You just had heart failure," Dick reported.

They continued work, checking the radar equipment, the photon counters, cameras, the temperature-sensing devices, and myriad other instruments. Each instrument would feed its information to the oscillator, through the measurand transmitter and into the telemetering circuit, traveling by radio circuit back to the blockhouse. In the blockhouse it would appear in several forms. The information from the marmoset's instruments would appear as a series of waves on continually moving strips of special paper, in a machine called the display.

Finally Rick and Gee-Gee left the nose section and started to work down. It was already dark outside. The nose section was finished. The cameraman had arrived and loaded the cameras and departed. Now it remained only to place Prince Machiavelli, which was among the very last things to be done. Rick had hoped to carry the little monk to his seat, but Frank Miller and Dr. Bond had been given that job. He and Gee-Gee would be too busy with last-minute checks.

Gee-Gee was hard to satisfy. He told a guard, "Watch the nose section. No one is authorized to enter now until the monk is placed at zero minus thirty minutes." Then he led Rick across the desert to the blockhouse.

There were sandwiches and coffee on a table near the door. They helped themselves, then went and stood behind Dick Earle, who was paired off with Charlie Kassick.

"Punch up the nose section," Gee-Gee requested.

Dick ticked off the circuits as he pressed the buttons. One by one the red lights switched to green. All were operating. Only then did Gee-Gee nod his satisfaction. "Okay, Rick. Let's get back to work. Most of it's done, but we still have some checking to do in the first and second stages."

As they mounted the crane again Rick looked up at the festooned cables that terminated in the nose cone. At the moment of firing, the cables would drop off. After that, Pegasus would be on its own.

It was after dawn when the two emerged from the final check. The fueling crews were already at work. The loud-speaker on the crane emitted, "The time is zero minus twenty-five."

Gee-Gee departed for the blockhouse. Rick started after him, then as he cleared the gate he saw Scotty. His pal was waiting patiently in the jeep.

"Just wanted you to know I'm standing by," Scotty said. "You'll be in the blockhouse, I suppose?"

"That's right. Where will you be?"

"Watching the warehouse. Luis is watching it now. I suppose some of the security boys are, too, but I haven't seen them." Scotty's eyes traveled up the great rocket. "It's a honey. Suppose the Earthman has got in his licks?"

Rick shook his head. "Positively not. It's been checked out from nose to fins, and guarded every minute."

Scotty started the jeep motor. "I'd better get out of here. Good luck." The jeep roared off.

Rick turned for a last look at close range, and his eyes traveled up and up, from the stabilizing fins past the wings to the nose cone. Pegasus was ready. Then, he suddenly realized, the nose hatchway was still ajar.

That was strange. Prince Machiavelli should be installed in his seat by now and the hatchway buttoned for take-off. Rick ran to the gate, exchanged his badge for the special badge, and hurried to the crane. He half expected Dr. Bond and Frank to appear in the hatchway, but neither did.

"I'd better see," he muttered.

"The time is zero minus fifteen," the speaker stated.

Rick went up the elevator, hurried up the last few steps, and swung the hatch open. He took the flashlight from his belt kit and swung it around the interior. Prince Machiavelli blinked at him from a cocoon of tapes and straps. The light hurt the monk's eyes. Rick clicked it off and moved to the little marmoset's side. He stroked the tiny head. Why wasn't the hatch locked? Someone must have forgotten something. He walked over and peered through one of the two thick glass ports, expecting to see someone coming up the crane, but there was no sign of Dr. Bond or Frank.

Then, as he turned, the hatchway swung shut. For an instant Rick thought it had closed of its own weight, then he heard the scrape of metal as it was dogged down. Suddenly frightened he crossed the little room and banged on it, but the thick metal gave no sound under his fists. He had to make more noise! He lifted the flashlight to bang it on the door, and in that moment there was a scream of metal from outside as the crane was pulled away. He was locked in! Locked in the rocket! And it was ready to fire!



CHAPTER XVI

The Board Shows Green

Even through the rocket's walls the sound of motors and the creak of metal could be heard, and Rick knew that any slight noise he could make would never be noticed.

Frantic, he ran to the thick port and looked out. Surely there must be some way he could attract attention! The flashlight in his hand reminded him. He aimed it through the port and flashed a rapid SOS, SOS, SOS. Someone would see it! Someone must!

Frantically he flashed his SOS through the port, then ran to the other port and began flashing there. Why didn't someone respond? Everyone carried a flashlight. Why didn't someone think of signaling him that he had been seen?

He knew the answer. He hadn't been seen.

The flashlight picked out his wrist watch. It was now zero minus five! He stood at the port and kept flashing, his mind racing. Apparently whoever had closed the door hadn't known he was inside. His light hadn't been on at that moment. But it didn't make any difference now, because he was locked in from the outside. There was no way of opening the hatchway from inside.

Four minutes.

He had to think of something! Everyone was so occupied with last-minute details that probably no one was even looking at the rocket. Besides, it was light outdoors. His flashlight would be only a dim glow in the rising sunlight.

There had to be another way. He forced himself to calmness. Approach it logically, he told himself sternly. The way to do it is to signal the blockhouse.

He studied Prince Machiavelli, looking for a clue in the spacemonk's draping of instruments. He could tap on the bell of the stethoscope. But then he realized the display would not yet be rolling.

He had a quick vision of Dick Earle and Gee-Gee watching the master board, checking the circuit lights as they flicked from red to green. The board must be nearly all green now, he thought—and in the same instant he knew how he could attract attention.

Rick jumped to the center of the tiny room and crouched over the drone control. He removed the cover. There was one circuit that served only as a feed to the board, to show that the control was operative. Break that and the board would show red.

His flashlight probed the maze of wiring and he located the signal wire. Fishing into the spaghetti with his fingers, he got thumb and forefinger on it and tried to break it. The wire held.

He fumbled in his belt kit and found a pair of side-cutting pliers. They would do. He reached in and snipped the circuit wire, then he slumped down on the deck and mopped rivulets of water from his face.

Close! He glanced at his watch.

Zero minus two.

He grinned foolishly. This would be something to tell his grandchildren. Once, because of a silly mistake he came within two minutes of being the first spaceman!

Prince Machiavelli was looking down at him, the furry little face serious, like that of a very wise old owl. In the irregular light through the ports the tufted ears made the spacemonk look even more owl-like.

"At least I got you a little reprieve by saving my own skin," Rick said aloud. "Poor little guy."

The marmoset chirruped happily, glad of the human companionship.

Zero minus one minute.

Rick wasn't worried about the passage of time. Not until the drone circuit was thrown into operation in another thirty seconds would Gee-Gee and Dick realize that it wasn't functioning. A yell would stop Dr. Bernais, and the gantry would be wheeled back into place. Gee-Gee and Dick would probably come personally to check the circuit and find out why the board had shown red instead of switching to green.

Rick chuckled. What a surprise they'd get!

Fortunately, it would only take a few minutes to repair the signal wire and clear out. Pegasus would be a little late—perhaps fifteen minutes.

Again his thoughts turned to the awful moment when the hatchway closed. Now that he could think more calmly, he decided that whoever had closed the hatch hadn't known he was inside. The interior was gloomy, and he had switched his light off to keep it from shining in the marmoset's eyes.

He still couldn't be sure why the hatchway had been open, but in all probability Frank or Dr. Bond had simply gone down the gantry without closing it, not realizing until they were down that the team responsible for installing the spacemonk was also responsible for buttoning up.

There was no evidence of sabotage that he could see, so the open hatchway was nothing but the kind of mistake people make when working under extreme pressure.

Again he wondered about the identity of the Earthman. It was curious that no evidence of sabotage had been found in Orion, even though the theft of servomotors had taken place. Maybe, as Dr. Hiller had guessed, the picture left by the Earthman had been burned. Anyway, Pegasus was proof the Earthman wasn't infallible. This was one project he hadn't been able to sabotage.

His eye caught the glimmer of white on the bulkhead behind the spacemonk. He didn't remember that. He got up and walked over to it, peering to see in the dimness. Then he remembered his flashlight and focused the beam on the paper.

The blood drained from his head and he gasped. It was a sketch of a knight in armor, lance upraised, thrust through a winged rocket!

Rick let out a hoarse yell.

In the same instant he heard a whine, a rapidly accelerating whine. The pumps! The fuel pumps! The starting sequence had begun!

He looked at his watch, and saw that zero time was many seconds past. But surely his watch was wrong. The board was red! Wasn't anyone watching? He ran to the port and looked out at the deserted desert. He was alone in the great rocket, and the fuel pumps were going. He could almost picture the stream of boron hydride blending with the oxidizer and flowing in an ever-increasing stream toward the combustion chamber. He heard the scrape as the instrument cable dropped away outside.

Pegasus roared!

And Rick knew. He knew that somehow he had failed, that the board showed green!



CHAPTER XVII

Weight, One Ton

Rick had no time to think. He reacted. He pulled off the jacket he had worn against the chill of the desert night, and rolled it tightly. He dropped to the deck and stretched flat on his back, the jacket tucked under the back of his head and neck.

He put his hands flat on the deck and sensed the increasing shudder of the great rocket. It was building thrust! Fuel poured into the combustion chamber and fantastically hot exhaust gases flared from the motor exhaust. And with each passing second thrust built up inside the motor chamber.

When the thrust exceeded the rocket's weight, Pegasus would take off!

He knew it wouldn't be long. Seconds more.

The entire rocket screamed as vibration ran in torturing waves through its metal skeleton and skin. It passed the point of discomfort and became unbearable. Rick rocked his head from side to side, as though to get rid of the shattering howl, but it tore at his head, at his stomach, at his very skin.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again he saw that Prince Machiavelli had moved, downward. The powerful springs that held his little chair were lengthening.

Air-borne!

Rick became conscious of weight. He was being pressed into the metal deck by a mighty hand. It was hard to breathe.

Pegasus was not designed to accommodate humans. No attention had been paid to limits of human endurance. It was all right for the marmoset; his spring chair would take up much of the G forces. But Rick had no padding at all, except for the thin jacket under his head. He had no support but the metal deck, and before this was over his body would be terribly distorted as forces many times gravity rammed him relentlessly into the metal.

In spite of the horrifying scream of the rocket and the increasing pressure, his mind was clear. The rocket was programmed to reach twelve G during first-stage flight—twelve times the force of gravity!

First-stage flight would last slightly over three minutes. By then, Pegasus would be nearly thirty miles up.

The pain began, the pain of tortured muscles and organs pressed slowly, inexorably toward the deck as acceleration built up. Rick wanted to turn over, at least to change the direction of pain, but he couldn't even do that. He was spread-eagled on the deck now, his muscles unable to move his increased weight.

Consciousness began to slip from him, and he fought against it. He had to remain alive! He was going to!

For a brief moment he succeeded, then the grayness moved in like an all-encompassing curtain.

Pegasus climbed into the blue sky, arrow-straight, still accelerating. The seconds ticked away. For an instant, the accelerometer hovered at twelve G, and slipped toward thirteen.

Rick was five feet, ten inches tall, and his weight was a constant hundred and sixty pounds. The rocket reached maximum acceleration, 12.6g, and for that instant Rick weighed 2,016 pounds—slightly over one ton!

Then . . . all burnt, fuel exhausted, the first-stage motor stopped.

The explosive bolts went into action. There was an explosion that made itself felt in the skin of the rocket, and the grinding of metal as the first stage detached.

Rick's battered brains swam back to consciousness. For an instant he couldn't recall what had happened, then he realized he had survived the first-stage acceleration. He was in bad shape, he knew. The salt taste in his mouth was blood, and he was breathing bubbles of blood through internal damage in his nose or lungs. But there wasn't time for inventory. The aching silence was lost as the second stage fired. Acceleration built again. This time Rick slipped into the enveloping grayness almost at once. The acceleration was less, and the time of burning was less. Had he not been put through the torture of first-stage acceleration he could have taken the second stage without more than great discomfort. But now he had little resistance left.

He came back to consciousness again as the second stage cut off. In the welcome silence he found time to be thankful he was still alive, even though it might be a temporary thing. He looked up at Prince Machiavelli through bloodshot eyes and couldn't see the little monk. For a terrible instant he thought he was blind, then he saw a glimmer of light through the port. It was the sun. The rocket was in the wrong position to catch it directly, however, and the atmosphere was far too thin to scatter light.

He heard the second stage explode off and tried to brace himself for the final acceleration. He made himself think. He was in a spot, a very bad spot. The Earthman had sabotaged the flight. But how? The first two stages had worked. Even if the third-stage motor never fired, the rocket was high enough to prove out the project objective.

There was only one answer. Even to his fogged brain it was clear that the drone control had been sabotaged by the Earthman. Otherwise cutting the signal wire would have kept the board from showing green. Somehow, the signal wire had been bypassed, to keep the operators from knowing the drone control was inoperative.

The final stage fired and acceleration began once more. Rick fought it. He tried to ignore the pain of the crushing, distorting weight and tried to keep his mind on the problem. He failed.

Pegasus was no longer traveling straight out from earth now. The gimbaled rocket motor swung slightly to one side and the rocket's trajectory flattened. As it swung on the new course, sunlight glanced in through the open port and into Rick's open, sightless eyes.

It was raw sunlight, unfiltered by the atmosphere. It was sunlight no human had ever seen before. Even in his semiconscious state Rick realized the danger and managed to shut his eyes. The sunlight seemed to burn through the lids, to scorch the insides of his head. Then the rocket moved along its new trajectory slightly and the merciless beam shifted, blazed on the sketch of a knight in armor impaling Pegasus with his lance.

Rick realized dimly that the terrible light was gone. He opened his eyes and saw the spacemonk. It was as though someone had drawn layer after layer of gauze between the boy and the marmoset, but he understood that Prince Machiavelli was still alive, and in far better shape than he was.

The vibrating, paralyzing scream of the rocket suddenly cut off. Silence flooded in.

End of burning for stage three!

Pegasus had altered course slightly, in response to its pre-set mechanisms. Now it was on a course that would take it to the maximum point into space, but at the same time would keep it over Scarlet Lake. For a few minutes more it would coast on its momentum, slowing constantly until it reached maximum altitude. Then, briefly, it would hesitate.

Momentum used up, earth's gravity would again assume control. The rocket would slip back, tail first, slowly, slowly, then faster and faster, beginning the long, final plunge to the ground.



CHAPTER XVIII

Out of Control!

Rick came back to painful consciousness. He realized that the acceleration was at an end. The torture of G forces was over, and whatever happened from here on wouldn't compare with the past few minutes.

He tried to sit up, and strained muscles reacted. He groaned with pain and lay down again. Suddenly he realized he was no longer on the floor!

He hung in the air, as though by some weird magic, and tried to figure out what had happened to him. Of course he was weightless! The rocket was now in free flight, its inertia counteracting gravitational pull. He would continue weightless until gravity took over again.



It was comfortable, after the racking acceleration. He could have gone to sleep easily, and almost did. Then the spacemonk chirruped at him uneasily. The marmoset was feeling the odd weightlessness, too.

The chirrup brought Rick back to his senses. He wasn't in some marvelous bed, he was in space! But natural forces still bound him to earth, and mother earth would reclaim him with crushing, final impact within a very few minutes.

He tasted blood. The Earthman had done this! His death would be on the Earthman's head. He knew the drone control couldn't function, but he didn't know why. He was only sure of one thing. The Earthman was a member of the electronics department. Only someone who knew the drone system intimately could have bypassed the control by wiring it so the board showed green even when the control wasn't working.

Rising anger stirred him. With one trembling hand he reached out and managed to hook the channel on which the marmoset's chair was hung. He pulled himself erect. He had forgotten he was weightless. He kept right on going until his head banged painfully on the bottom of the nose-cone radar unit. The shock of pain, unlike the throbbing from the acceleration, cleared his head and made him angrier.

Carefully now, he hauled himself down again. He patted the spacemonk as he went by, an absent-minded, comradely gesture. He was intent on the drone control in the center of the floor. The Earthman hadn't had much time. Whatever he had done to sabotage the control must have been done in a very few minutes.

Rick got into position, kneeling on the deck, steadying himself with one hand. With the other he searched for his flashlight and found it hanging from his belt. His head sagged, and had it not been for the weightlessness he would have fallen forward onto the drone control. He was in worse shape than he realized. Then, some inner warning signal sounded, and he came back to consciousness with a start.

The startled reaction was enough to move him away from the drone control and break his loose grip. He slid through the air back against the bulkhead wall and felt the warmth that had not yet drained off into space. It was the heat of rapid passage through the atmosphere.

He thought grimly that the heat would be much worse when the rocket re-entered the atmosphere. Unless Jerry Lipton could somehow get control, the plunging rocket would flame like a meteor.

He moved back to the drone control, using his hands as paddles. His wrists were limp and his control was poor, but he made it. He had the flashlight now, and he shot its beam into the maze of wiring.

The cut wire dangled, its end gleaming redly in the light beam. Cutting the wire should have broken the circuit, but it hadn't. Why?

If the cut wire hadn't interrupted the circuit, that meant the circuit had been bypassed. Rick was sure a signal had gotten to the blockhouse somehow, showing that the drone control was operating.

He had it. Look for other cut wires. It didn't matter whether he found the bypass circuit or not. The signal to the blockhouse wasn't important for the moment, but getting the control back into operation was. He knew the board must still show green down where Earle and Gould were sitting, almost three hundred miles below.

Tracing the visible wires wasn't easy. There were dozens of them, and they all looked alike. His head wasn't working and his eyes kept seeing gray fog. Why, he knew this gadget by heart! He'd practically built most of it, and he'd checked it out half a dozen times.

Something was wrong inside the control box, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

He checked carefully, tracing the wiring with blurred eyes. Then, in a moment of clarity, he saw it! Someone had put an alligator clip in the box. It was clamping a wire to a terminal post. He shook his head. Pretty sloppy work. It made no sense at all to use a clip on a permanent wiring job. Who had done it? Didn't he know the clip was apt to vibrate off during the flight?

The grayness slipped away again and he recognized the circuit. Of course! He had found the bypass. The wire ran from the main, incoming signal circuit into the master control circuit. The Earthman had done this! What he had done was to feed the signal from the blockhouse right back to the blockhouse over the check-signal circuit, completely bypassing the drone control, which was still in operating condition but which now could not get the signals to activate it.

Rick studied the control carefully. He had to restore the circuit, but he couldn't for the life of him figure how to do it. Normally, before the crushing acceleration, he would have recognized the difficulty in a flash. Now his confused mind had to labor through steps that sometimes took him off on a wild tangent.

The rocket was slowing rapidly now. It reached maximum altitude and hesitated briefly.

One side of the rocket was brilliant with sunlight—raw, unfiltered light not meant for human eyes. The other side was black. On the sunny side, the rocket was heating from absorbed solar energy. On the dark side, the heat was radiating off. But the radiation was less than the absorption of energy, and the rocket was growing appreciably warmer.

For an instant the rocket paused, nearly three hundred miles above the earth. The space frontier was below—almost halfway back to earth. Out here was the vacuum of space.

Rick wasn't conscious of this. He wouldn't have cared. His whole attention was focused on the problem of the drone control. He didn't even realize the rocket had started the downward trip until he found himself floating upward. Then, frantically, he hauled himself back down to the control box, ignoring the stabbing pain in his stomach as he bent over again, one leg wrapped around the small pedestal that supported the control.

Strength was coming back to him slowly, his normal resilience overcoming to some extent the beating his body had taken. The grayness had thinned somewhat. He was less inclined to slip off into semiconsciousness.

Again he examined the circuit. The essential wire that fed the drone control the signals from the blockhouse was clipped to the terminal post. All he had to do was unclip it and reconnect it to the drone-control input.

He couldn't control his fingers accurately yet, and he made several attempts to pull the alligator clip off the terminal post. Finally he made it, and sank back exhausted from the physical effort.

Far below, in the blockhouse, the indicator light on the control panel changed from green to red. Circuit not operating! Those in the blockhouse had no way of knowing that it had been out of operation since before the take-off. To them, the sudden switch in signal meant something had gone wrong in flight.

Rick vaguely realized that the light must have changed, but he didn't think about it. Now he had to find the proper terminal for the input wire. He should know where it was. He had wired this circuit himself. But try as he would, he could not find the contact.

The rocket was accelerating rapidly now, and its flight pattern was changing slowly. Instead of dropping tail first, it was canting to one side. In less than a minute it would be entering the outer fringes of the atmosphere, in the region where friction against air molecules and atoms would start heating the rocket.

Rick's flashlight beam probed the innards of the drone control. The place from which the input wire had been ripped must be within easy reach. Otherwise, the Earthman couldn't have disconnected it in what must have been a short time. For another thing, it had to be within the length of loose wire, because the Earthman had simply disconnected it, then reconnected it in another place.

He was thinking more clearly now. He poked the loose wire around, careless of possible shorts, and his luck held. A dozen times the bare wire tip brushed within a tiny space of terminals that would have shorted out the whole control.

He found the terminal.

The wire had been soldered into place. The Earthman must have used a pair of needle-nose pliers to reach in and jerk it loose. There was a channel in the solder where the tip had rested.

Rick tried to replace the wire, but the area was too small for his hand. When he had wired the contact originally, the chassis had been sitting in the open on his workbench. Now it was encased in aluminum, except on the top where he had removed the cover plate.

He was conscious suddenly of a faint hiss. It was so faint that he didn't even notice it at first. Then, with sudden horror, he realized what it was. The rocket was striking the atmosphere! There wasn't yet enough air to act on the control surfaces. But soon the rocket would enter the denser layers of air and the airfoils would take hold. The rocket would turn over and plunge nose-down.

With the renewed energy of fear, Rick started to work again. He thrust his hand into the box, tearing the skin on the metal edge. He couldn't reach the terminal.

If he could only open the box in some way. But he couldn't do it with his bare hands. He needed a tool of some kind. He started to search his pockets and his hand brushed the kit at his belt. The pliers! He had completely forgotten them. He shook his head, and sweat ran down the sides of his face.

The rocket continued its rapidly accelerating fall, and heat built up, even from the thin air at a hundred and twenty miles. At the rocket's velocity of fall, Rick had less than two minutes to live. Pegasus was approaching dense air that would heat its skin to incandescence.

With the pliers he tore at the side of the box and managed to chew out a piece of the thin aluminum. Then he bent back the jagged edges and tried again. The wire touched the terminal.

Now to hold it in place!

He searched through the tool kit again, but found nothing that was useful for this purpose. The wire had to be locked in place fairly tightly, or it would tear loose just from vibration.

Again he flashed the light around, noting absently that he could see better. Light was diffusing into the cabin now that Pegasus had reached lower altitude.

The light fell on Prince Machiavelli. The spacemonk was taped tightly. Instruments were held to his shaven skin by surgical tape. Rick pulled himself to the monk's side and found an end of tape. It held the stethoscope. He pulled it free and the monk chattered at him excitedly.

"Sorry, boy," Rick muttered. The side-cutting pliers weren't the best tools, but he managed to chew off a piece of the tape. It was ragged, but it would have to do. Holding the piece of tape in the pliers, he pressed it down against the wire, forcing the wire tip into its tiny groove. Then he rubbed it with the blunt end of the pliers, trying to get a good bond between the tape and the solder of the junction.

He drew back and waited. The connection was made. He knew that the rush of air outside was louder, and he suddenly realized that the cabin was very hot. Jerry Lipton would have taken over control long ago! Why wasn't the control responding?

Rick fought down the fear that gripped at his throat and made breathing hard. He couldn't panic! There must be something still wrong. But what was it?

The flashlight beam moved over the maze of wiring, then stopped on the coppery gleam of a cut wire.

Of course! When he had pulled the alligator clip, the board had showed red. Jerry didn't know the controls were working!

Rick tried to reconnect the wire he had cut. The ends barely touched; the wire had been tight. He couldn't hold contact.

Jerry had to understand that the controls were working. If only he had a microphone, a key—anything with which to signal.

The heat was increasing rapidly. The temperature must surely be over a hundred. Pegasus had reached the air again, and was falling out of control!



CHAPTER XIX

The Unyielding Ground

Prince Machiavelli began to cry. He let Rick know he didn't like the heat in a series of sobbing yelps.

Rick glanced up, surprised at the sudden noise, and flashed his light on the monk. The little animal was suffering from the heat, the fur of his head matted and his eyes staring. Dangling from his little chest was the stethoscope Rick had ripped away to get the tape.

Rick stared at it. If only ...

He fought his body's tendency to fly to the top of the rocket and got a firm grip with one leg around the channel under the spacemonk, then he took the stethoscope bell and began to tap in Morse code:

T-A-K-E C-O-N-T-R-O-L T-A-K-E C-O-N-T-R-O-L.

* * * * *

In the blockhouse, Charlie Kassick was watching the display with an anxious eye. Suddenly the straight line—a reading of zero—that had begun when the stethoscope quit functioning began to break up into a regular pattern.

Charlie couldn't read Morse code. He only knew there was something strange going on. He let out a yell that brought John Gordon jumping to his side.

Gordon studied the strange pattern, a square wave shape, a blank, then a peak followed by a square wave shape, a blank, then a square wave, peak, and square ...

* * * * *

Rick was still tapping when he heard the sudden whine of servomotors. The rocket tilted but continued its fall, rushing toward earth while its nose swung slightly upward. Then the airfoils took hold and Pegasus began to climb once more.

Rick was flat on the floor, thrown there for a few seconds when gravity became normal. He climbed to his feet again, fighting pain and weakness. Jerry Lipton was flying Pegasus. It was a reprieve. The boy and the marmoset had a chance after all, if the heat didn't get them. Rick could feel his skin tighten, feel the moisture baking out of him.

He held on to the channel with one hand and found the stethoscope with the other. Concentrating, he tapped out a message.

E-R-T-H-M-A-N I-N E-L-E-C-T-R-O-N-C G-R-P H-E O-N-E O-F L-S-T T-O E-N-T-R R-O-C-K-T.

He signed his initials.

The rocket was dipping toward earth again, in accordance with the landing flight plan. It was traveling nearly ten thousand miles an hour. The speed had to be lost, and the only way to lose it was by friction against the air. But uncontrolled friction would turn it into a meteor, so Jerry was letting the heat build up by diving the rocket, then turning it upward again in a long glide, where it could cool in the outer fringes of atmosphere. Little by little it was losing its excess of kinetic energy.

Pegasus went into the atmosphere again in a long, shallow, turning glide. The heat built up until Rick's tense, weakened condition couldn't tolerate it any longer. He slid to the floor, unconscious.

* * * * *

Jerry Lipton had flown everything from small private planes to the latest jet. He had directed drone planes into atomic clouds and on trial bomb runs. But never in his career had he been faced with a piloting job like Pegasus.

It had been difficult enough, with just the rocket to worry about. But with Rick's life in his hands . . .

John Gordon and Gee-Gee Gould were standing by, relaying information to the pilot. Jerry watched the shape on the radar screen climb to higher altitude and asked, "What's his velocity?"

Dr. Bond was doing the calculations, based on the rocket's travel through the radar beam.

"Just above five thousand miles an hour."

Jerry shook his head. "I can't keep him up there all day. How's the temperature?"

Gee-Gee Gould consulted the temperature trace on the display.

"Cabin temperature is 105 Fahrenheit. The monk is in trouble, too. Skin temperature is just about the same as the cabin. That means Rick is running about the same."

"I'm going to cool 'em off." Jerry worked the controls and the angle of ascent steepened. He asked, without taking his eyes from the scope, "How much can he stand?"

The base physician was standing by. He had been summoned hurriedly. "It depends on the time of exposure. He could take quite high temperatures for a very short time."

"I'm worried," Gordon said bluntly. "He hasn't sent a signal since the last one. He must be badly hurt. According to Cliff's calculations, he pulled nearly thirteen G's on the ascent."

"He can't be in very good shape," the doctor agreed. "Can't you bring him down any faster?"

Jerry Lipton shook his head. "The faster the descent, the higher the heat. If the boy's already badly hurt, running his temperature up won't help his condition any. I'm no doctor, all I can do is try to bring him down in one piece, and that's tough enough for me. Decide, and I'll try to follow your plan."

The doctor went into a consultation with John Gordon, Dr. Bond, and Gee-Gee Gould.

"I see what Lipton means about bringing him down as slowly and smoothly as possible," the doctor said. "True, he's probably in bad shape, both physically and mentally, but we've no reason to assume any condition that might be more dangerous than the high temperature."

John Gordon nodded. The Spindrift scientist wanted to assure himself that the boy was all right. But that wasn't reason for taking a chance. "I agree," he said.

Bond and Gould nodded agreement, and John Gordon passed on their decision to Jerry Lipton.

"I think you're being wise," the pilot said. "Okay. Stand by, and I'll do the best I can."

* * * * *

Rick returned to consciousness slowly. He shook his head to clear it, but the grogginess persisted. It was light inside the cabin. He could see reasonably clearly, and he thought dimly that something was wrong. Then he realized what it was. He was plastered against the side of the cabin!

He realized that Pegasus was no longer a rocket, but a glider, traveling in a horizontal position. One part of the wall had become the deck when the rocket changed from vertical to normal flight. He saw the marmoset, still upright, riding smoothly. The channel supporting the spacemonk's little chair had moved as it was supposed to, changing position as the rocket's aspect changed.

The port window nearest Rick was within reach. He hauled himself up. It was like being in a plane. He looked down at the earth from an altitude of about thirty thousand feet. He was almost there, and the rocket was under control!

A wave of relief swept through him, and he sat down. He was going to make it! The cabin was hot, like a closed attic on a hot July day, but it was bearable. He got back to the port again and watched as Pegasus turned in lazy circles many miles in diameter. The earth was coming closer at a pretty good clip. He was almost comfortable now, knowing that Jerry Lipton had the rocket under control.

Rick closed his eyes, for just a moment. But the moment stretched ahead as his weakened body betrayed him. He didn't realize how much time had passed until he opened his eyes again just as Pegasus pulled up into a bank that sent the blood from his head and almost caused him to black out again. But in that instant he knew he was on the landing approach, and that his speed was far too great for comfort.

He had just enough sense left to take the proper precautions. He stretched out on his stomach, feet to the nose of the rocket, and cushioned his head in his hands.

* * * * *

Pegasus flashed low over the hills at the end of Scarlet Lake and touched earth at twelve hundred miles an hour. It bounced, then hit again on the tricycle landing gear. The brakes were applied, gently at first, then with all the strength of the servomotors. The deadly velocity dropped off, but not fast enough. The runway was miles long, but the rocket went over it and into the desert beyond. There was nothing anyone could do.

Rick vaguely felt the smooth runway change to rougher terrain. He felt the impact when Pegasus struck a hummock and tore off the landing gear. He felt the rocket slow. Then it stopped—too fast! He went flying forward, and he brought his arms up to cushion his head. He smashed with stunning impact into the bottom of the nose radar set, and dropped into infinite blackness.



CHAPTER XX

The Earthman

Rick came back to life briefly. He saw a patch of something white overhead, and after much staring decided it was a ceiling. He turned his head an inch and saw a festoon of rubber tubes and hanging bottles. Thinking was too difficult. He closed his eyes and drifted off again.

When he again awoke the rubber tubes and bottles were gone. Grinning faces were grouped around him. Some he recognized, others were strangers. That was Scotty, and that was John Gordon, and that was Tom Preston. The others were doctors and nurses.

Rick said, "So we got down in one piece."

"Not exactly one piece." John Gordon smiled.

Scotty asked anxiously, "How do you feel?"

Rick thought about it. He didn't really know how he felt. "Sort of ... light. I'm floating." Probably he had been asleep for some time. "What time is it?" he asked.

John Gordon gave a relieved chuckle. "Time sense returns. He's improving. You should ask what day it is, Rick. You've been asleep a long time. Pegasus went up three days ago."

"I must have needed sleep," Rick said weakly. Questions crowded into his mind. He asked the most important ones first. "How's the spacemonk? Did you get the Earthman?"

"The Prince is fine," John Gordon answered. "Yes, Rick, we got the Earthman. He gave himself away when we realized you were in the rocket. Now, no more questions. We'll be back again tomorrow and the doctor says we can talk more."

"Just one more question," Rick pleaded. He couldn't sleep without knowing. "Who is the Earthman?"

"Frank Miller."

And that was it, for the time being. Not until he was improved enough for Scotty and Gordon to spend most of the day with him did Rick get the whole story. They brought the spacemonk. The little creature petted Rick, then snuggled down and went to sleep against his side.

The landing had been cruel misfortune. The brakes were not strong enough to take the strain put on them. Worried because Rick had not signaled for a second time, Jerry had brought the rocket in faster than planned. Pegasus had buried its nose in the foothills.

Rick had suffered an amazing variety of bruises, coupled with internal damages, three broken ribs, and a dislocated right shoulder. On his right arm he had a permanent scar as a memento of the landing. A metal projection had given him a bad wound and cut an artery. He had lost considerable blood by the time the first-aid team was able to get him out and apply a tourniquet. He had also suffered concussion.

John Gordon described what had happened in the blockhouse.

"I just yelled your first message out loud. Jerry was staring at the radar screen at the time. He reached over and switched the equipment back on, then took control. At first we didn't know who was in the rocket. Then we took a quick nose count. You and two or three others were missing, but none of you had definite assignments, anyway. I was pretty sure it was you, knowing your ability for getting into trouble, but it wasn't until we got the message about the Earthman with your initials that we were really sure."

"When did you find out Frank Miller was the Earthman?" Rick asked.

"Then and there. He let out a sort of funny cry, grabbed his stomach, and fainted dead away. We brought him to, and he started crying that he hadn't meant to hurt anyone.

"Dr. Bond asked him bluntly if he was the Earthman, and he was so shaken I guess he didn't even think of trying to get out of it. He just nodded. Gee-Gee Gould had him by the throat in a minute, and I think he would have strangled him. But we got him off Miller and persuaded him to let the law take its course.

"After Dr. Bond and Miller finished putting the monk in place and started down, Miller said he had left his tool kit, and went back to get it. He must have changed the circuit then. I suppose in his excitement and fear of discovery he forgot the door. Later, he must have remembered and went back to close it, not knowing you were inside. Dr. Bond blames himself because he didn't stay with Miller."

Rick shook his head. "I can't understand it. Why would Miller do such a thing?"

"Obviously, he isn't a normal human being, in our sense of the word."

"You mean he's insane?" Scotty asked.

"No. Not insane. He's what some people call a psychopath. He is not morally responsible. In other words, he can't distinguish right from wrong, as most people understand the terms."

"That explains why he was able to do those things," Rick agreed. "But it doesn't explain why he became the Earthman and sabotaged rockets."

"We have a good explanation of that," John Gordon said. "It goes back to some time ago when selection of personnel for the projects began. Both Frank Miller and Dick Earle were professionally qualified to be electronics chief of Pegasus. But of course professional qualifications aren't everything. Miller was not well liked. Earle was given the assignment because it was thought he could do a better job of getting along with the staff."

"And Miller resented it," Rick said.

"Yes. That was natural enough. But because of his warped personality, he went from a natural reaction to a psychopathic one. He decided to take revenge. We don't know why he decided to call himself the Earthman, except that he apparently saw himself as a shining knight in armor, setting to rights the earth's wrongs—of course he meant the wrongs supposedly done to him. Being a design engineer he was naturally something of an artist, although his record didn't show any special talent."

"But," Scotty objected, "if he doesn't know right from wrong, why should he break up when he found Rick was in the rocket?"

Gordon shrugged. "Again, we can't be sure. My own opinion is that he had a shock reaction. The reaction was partly physical, and he was in poor physical condition. For another thing, Rick spoiled his beautiful design for destruction."

"Where is he now?" Rick asked.

"In custody at Nellis Air Force Base, awaiting trial."

There was still much Rick wanted to know, but his conversation with Scotty and John Gordon was interrupted. Gee-Gee Gould, Dick Earle, Dr. Bond, and others from the project stopped by. Gee-Gee brought him a medal, which he presented with proper ceremony. The staff had made it from a scrap of ribbon and the name plate of Pegasus.

"We salute you, young Brant," Gee-Gee proclaimed. "You will be forever recorded in our annals as the first, involuntary spaceman."

"Involuntary is right," Rick said, grinning.

"But, nevertheless, the first. Young Brant, we wish to bestow this small token of our esteem. We regret only that the world can never cheer you with us, on account of this being a classified project."

Dr. Bond shook hands with him. "Now that our hearts have come down out of our throats, Rick, we're pretty proud of you."

Dick Earle shook hands, too. "You certainly saved the project, Rick, even if by accident. If you hadn't been locked in, and able to get the control operating, Pegasus would have crashed."

Later, when he had a chance to talk with Scotty alone, Rick asked, "How about Mac and Pancho? Was anything stolen?"

"Mac and Pancho are still at large. Tom Preston hasn't let them know they're in any way under suspicion. And, yes, stuff was stolen. This time it was ionization chambers and photon counters."

Scotty had stayed in his position in the maintenance shop, where he could watch the warehouses. Luis Hermosa had also watched, from the firehouse. The janitor, Dusty Rhoads, had wandered casually into a warehouse, pushing his cart. On orders from Preston the clerks were on the job, instead of watching the shoot.

Then, fire had suddenly broken out in a small tool shed across from the warehouse area. Luis had to abandon the watch to go to the fire, and the clerks had all run out at the sound of the sirens. Whereupon, with Scotty watching, Dusty Rhoads had emerged, pushing his cleanup cart in front of him. He had even stopped to watch the fire being put out.

Scotty followed him, and watched Rhoads unload the stolen instruments from his cart and dump them into the base rubbish pile. The janitor covered them with other, noninflammable junk and went on about his business.

"So you got the stuff back," Rick commented.

"Nope." Scotty shook his head. "It's still there."

"What?"

"Under day and night guard. From a distance, of course. Rhoads doesn't know he was seen. Now Tom Preston is waiting for the next step."

"What's that?"

"Project Cetus shoots in two days."

The light dawned. "And you expect Mac and Pancho will get the stuff!"

"On the nose. Think you'll be around for it?"

"I wouldn't miss it," Rick said firmly.

He didn't miss it, although he was still too weak to be a participant. Instead, with arm in sling and ribs still taped, he was allowed to listen to the action in Tom Preston's office.

It started when Mac and Pancho picked up their radar unit in the maintenance shed. They drove to a dark area behind the shed where Dusty Rhoads was waiting with his cart. The stolen material was quickly transferred, and hidden behind the equipment racks in the truck. Then Mac and Pancho drove off, en route to Careless Mesa.

Dusty Rhoads put his cart away and started back to his barracks. Security officers fell in step on either side of him. Dusty was finished.

The gate reported by phone when Mac and Pancho went through, then there was a long wait. Tom Preston, John Gordon, and Rick had an early breakfast in the security chief's office. Just as they finished breakfast, the communications outfit on Preston's desk buzzed.

"Playboy One to Playboy Base. Come in."

Preston thumbed his microphone. "This is Playboy Base. Go ahead."

"Deadrock here, Tom. They're coming up the mountain."

"Roger. Keep us advised."

The waiting again, then Deadrock called once more, excitement in his voice. "Tom, there's another vehicle of some kind coming in from Steamboat."

"Good! How are you fixed?"

"We can handle a regiment. Scotty is going down around the mesa to cut them off in case they try to run for it. Hank is going down on the base side. How important is it for Careless Mesa to track the shoot?"

John Gordon gave Preston the answer. "Not important enough to risk not catching all of them. The other stations are tracking."

"Get 'em," Preston ordered.

"Right. Soon as it's a little lighter. We don't want one wriggling away in the dark."

Rick looked outside. Dawn was just breaking. It would be light enough in ten minutes. The ten minutes took an hour to pass. Then he had to wait ten more, until Deadrock came back on the air.

"They're all yours, Tom. I fired a shot and they looked up. Then Scotty and Hank fired over their heads from each side and they saw they were trapped. They upped hands, polite as you please, and we moved in to put the cuffs on."

Scotty elaborated later. Deadrock had waited until some of the stolen goods had changed hands before firing his warning shot. That was for purposes of evidence.

Pancho and Mac maintained a stony silence, but Dusty Rhoads was eager to talk. The other two had threatened to kill him, he claimed, and had forced him to steal. No one believed this, but Dusty's tale at least showed the connection between Miller and the thefts.

Pancho had stumbled across evidence that Miller was the Earthman, Dusty said. Dusty didn't know what the evidence was, and Pancho refused to tell him. But when Big Mac heard about it, he accused Miller, and promised to keep silent in exchange for co-operation. He demanded to be told when a shoot was to be sabotaged. Miller agreed, in exchange for part of the profits. Mac, Pancho, and Dusty had not participated in any way in the sabotage.

The other men, who had captured Rick and Scotty at Steamboat, proved to be well-known thieves with prison records. One admitted they had depended on Mac and Pancho to tip them off to any trap that might be waiting, but of course Preston had made sure no inkling reached Mac and Pancho that they were under suspicion. For that reason, the thieves had driven without hesitation to Careless Mesa to pick up the latest batch of stolen equipment—and had received the shock of their lives.

Rick thought that the trail of the Earthman had been a pretty devious one, complicated as it was by a gang of thieves as well as the saboteur himself.

He wondered briefly if Miller's identity would ever have come to light if he hadn't been trapped in the rocket. But the next moment he realized it would have, eventually, because the thieves were known, and at least the janitor would have talked.

Rick and Scotty still had their jobs. Both had done well in their assigned work, and could have stayed on indefinitely. But in spite of the temptation to remain for a while, the call of Spindrift was strong.

As Rick said, "It's nice to travel, but one thing that makes it nice is that we can go back home."

A letter from Barby had made him a little homesick. Everyone was fine. Dismal was lonesome. Jan Miller was back, with her parents. Dad was worried because he hadn't heard from Tony Briotti and Howard Shannon, but that was probably just the slowness of mail. Barby urged them to hurry back and hoped they were finding life dull enough so they would. She and Jan needed instruction in sailing, because they had just bought a new Comet-class sailboat.

The boys said farewell to their friends at Scarlet Lake, not forgetting Prince Machiavelli, and returned to Spindrift two days after the successful Cetus shoot.

Back at Spindrift they spent their time instructing the girls in proper sailing technique, but Rick still had to avoid exertion, and he couldn't swim because his arm was still bandaged. Then, one day the Brants' family doctor announced that he was fine, and a bandage was no longer needed.

Barby looked at the scar on Rick's forearm and her eyes opened wide. "Rick! That was a terrible cut! How on earth did you get it?"

He couldn't tell her the real story. He had been instructed by his father not to mention it, even to Barby. "It was pretty exciting," he said. "It happened when they let me fire a rocket."

"You fired a rocket?" Barby gasped.

"Sort of," Rick said. "I lit the fuse. I didn't jump back far enough, though. The tail fin clipped me as it went by."

For a long while Barby wasn't sure whether Rick's story was true or not. She didn't know whether the big rockets had fuses. When she found out by questioning Dr. Zircon, she asked Scotty to remind her not to talk to Rick for twenty-four hours.

But before the day was over, Rick was packing, in company with Scotty and Dr. Zircon, for an emergency trip to the Sulu Sea. Their mission: find two missing Spindrift scientists!

What happened during the search will be told in the next exciting book of Rick's adventures: THE PIRATES OF SHAN.



The RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE Stories

BY JOHN BLAINE

THE ROCKET'S SHADOW

THE LOST CITY

SEA GOLD

100 FATHOMS UNDER

THE WHISPERING BOX MYSTERY

THE PHANTOM SHARK

SMUGGLERS' REEF

THE CAVES OF FEAR

STAIRWAY TO DANGER

THE GOLDEN SKULL

THE WAILING OCTOPUS

THE ELECTRONIC MIND READER

THE SCARLET LAKE MYSTERY

THE END