They Reached for the Moon

The major problem in achieving space flight lay in overcoming gravity. That had been done and men had reached the Moon. But strangely, they never returned!
They took a thousand days to build the great, gleaming monster, and another two hundred to groom it for its trip around the moon. All this they did with an air that made a trip to the moon seem quite natural and sure, even though three other rockets had gone before and not one had returned.
This one will, they said, as though convincing themselves.
But they were not sure. They were stubborn, perhaps proud, but not sure at all. All the world had watched three other such rockets, with men in them, go screaming off moonward. All had waited for them to return. And all had seen nothing come back down from the sky. Not even a small scrap of metal. This one might return, and, if it did, the men in it just might be alive to tell. But that was not being sure.
A military base on the moon! the leaders had cried. And that had been that. Robot rockets had gone first. They had landed on the moon. They could do that, but they could not establish the desired base. So men had started on a round trip, around the moon, first to prove that men could do it. The only thing they proved was that whatever goes up need not come down.
Now the fourth rocket waited, leaning over against its heavy launching rack, ready to face whatever unknown danger lay out there beyond.
On a certain night, a night long appointed, one overshadowed with heavy clouds that brought a threat of rain, there were lights about the rocket and in the low, concrete buildings that cowered back a ways from the upright metal giant. Around the base of the rocket men scurried like ants, making last minute preparations and seeing that everything was just so and not being satisfied with good enough .
In one building, a little nearer the rocket than the others, two men lounged, talking of the coming trip and other things that concerned last night's women, and smoking endlessly, the last smokes they would have for four days. These men would soon climb into a long, metal thing and try to do what others had failed to do.