“To the moon? Around the moon? Maybe. You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance.” Hallmyer ran fingers through his lank hair. “But for God’s sake, Stephen, I’m not worried about you. If you want to kill yourself, that’s your own affair. It’s the Earth I’m worried about—”
“Nonsense. Go home and sleep it off.”
“Look"—Hallmyer pointed to the sheets of paper with a shaky hand—"no matter how you work the feed and mixing system you can’t get one hundred percent efficiency in the mixing and discharge.”
“That’s what makes it a fifty-fifty chance,” Crane said. “So what’s bothering you?”
“The catalyst that will escape through the rocket tubes. Do you realize what it’ll do if a drop hits the Earth? It’ll start a chain of iron disintegrations that’ll envelope the globe. It’ll reach out to every iron atom—and there’s iron everywhere. There won’t be any Earth left for you to return to—”
“Listen,” Crane said wearily, “we’ve been through all this before.”
He took Hallmyer to the base of-the rocket cradle. Beneath the iron framework was a two-hundred-foot pit, fifty feet wide and lined with firebrick.
“That’s for the initial discharge flames. If any of the catalyst goes through, it’ll be trapped in this pit and taken care of by the secondary reactions. Satisfied now?”
“But while you’re in flight,” Hallmyer persisted, “you’ll be endangering the Earth until you’re beyond Roche’s limit. Every drop of non-activated catalyst will eventually sink back to the ground and—”
“For the very last time,” Crane said grimly, “the flame of the rocket discharge takes care of that. It will envelop any escaped particles and destroy them. Now get out. I’ve got work to do.”