"There she is," said the stubby spaceman, pointing to the gleaming spaceship resting not two hundred feet away. "Rocket cruiser Polaris. The newest and fastest ship in space."
He faced the three boys with a smile. "And she's all yours. You earned her!"
Mouths open, Tom, Roger and Astro stood gaping in fascination at the mighty spaceship resting on the concrete ramp. Her long two-hundred-foot polished beryllium steel hull mirrored the spaceport scene around them. The tall buildings of the Academy, the "ready" line of space destroyers and scouts, and the hundreds of maintenance noncoms of the enlisted Solar Guard, their scarlet uniforms spotted with grime, were all reflected back to the Polaris unit as they eyed the sleek ship from the needlelike nose of her bow to the stubby opening of her rocket exhausts. Not a seam or rivet could be seen in her hull. At the top of the ship, near her nose, a large blister made of six-inch clear crystal indicated the radar bridge. Twelve feet below it, six round window ports showed the position of the control deck. Surrounding the base of the ship was an aluminum scaffold with a ladder over a hundred feet high anchored to it. The top rung of the ladder just reached the power-deck emergency hatch which was swung open, like a giant plug, revealing the thickness of the hull, nearly a foot.
"Well," roared the red-clad spaceman, "don't you want to climb aboard and see what your ship looks like inside?"
"Do we!" cried Tom, and made a headlong dash for the scaffold. Astro let out one of his famous yells and followed right at his heels. Roger watched them running ahead and started off at a slow walk, but suddenly, no longer able to resist, he broke into a dead run. Those around the Polaris stopped their work to watch the three cadets scramble up the ladder. Most of the ground crew were ex-spacemen like McKenny, no longer able to blast off because of acceleration reaction. And they smiled knowingly, remembering their reactions to their first spaceship.
Inside the massive cruiser, the boys roamed over every deck, examining the ship excitedly.
"Say look at this!" cried Tom. He stood in front of the control board and ran his hands over the buttons and switches. "This board makes the manual we worked on at the Academy look like it's ready for Galaxy Hall!"
"Yeeeooooooww!" Three decks below, Astro had discovered the rocket motors. Four of the most powerful ever installed on a spaceship, enabling the Polaris to outrace any ship in space.
Roger stuck his head through the radar-bridge hatch and gazed in awe at the array of electronic communicators, detection radar and astrogation gear. With lips pulled into a thin line, he mumbled to himself: "Too bad they didn't give you this kind of equipment."
"What'd you say, Roger?" asked Astro, climbing alongside to peer into the radar bridge.