Two men were suspended from the scaffolding above. Burl twisted his neck and saw that the designation A-G 17 and the white-star insignia of the United States had been lettered along the sides. But what was it the men were painting now?
"It will read Magellan," said Lockhart, following Burl's eyes. "We decided that that would be the appropriate name for it. For what we are going to have to do with it is not just to make a simple trip to explore another planet, but to circumnavigate the entire solar system."
Burl found his eyes dazzled by the vessel, hanging like a giant bulbous mushroom over them. Around him, he began to realize that a number of other activities were going on. There were spidery scaffolds leading up to open ports in the metallic sides. Workmen were raising loads of material into these ports, and for an instant Burl caught sight of Haines, in rough work clothes, shouting orders from one of the openings as to exactly where to stow something.
At last he took his eyes away from the startling sight. The little valley around him had a number of low storage shacks. A road led in from another pass through the mountains. Two loaded trucks came down this pass now in low gear. Lockhart, watching, remarked, "We are having our equipment and supplies flown up to a town twenty miles away and then trucked in."
"Why didn't you leave this ship where it was built—in your plant in Indiana—and load it from there?" Burl asked.
"It would have been easier," said the colonel, "but security thought it better to transfer the craft to its launching sight up here in these deserted hills. We are going to make our take-off from here because we are still too experimental to know what might happen if something kicked up or if the engines failed. We'd hate to splatter all over a highly populated industrial area. Besides, you must know, if you looked over those papers yesterday, that there's a lot of radioactive stuff here."
Burl nodded. Detmar cut in. "Why don't we get aboard and show him over the ship? It will be easier to make it clear that way."
Suiting action to the word, the three went over to one of the loading platforms, climbed on the wiry little elevator, and were hoisted up fifty feet to the port in the side of the ship. They entered well below the vast, overhanging equatorial bulge which marked the wide end of the teardrop-shaped vessel.
They walked through a narrow plastic-walled passage, broken in several places by tight, round doors bearing storage vault numbers. At the end of the passage they came to a double-walled metal air lock. They stepped through and found themselves in what was evidently the living quarters of the spaceship.
The Magellan was an entirely revolutionary design as far as space vehicles were concerned. Its odd shape was no mere whimsy, but a practical model. If a better design were to be invented, it would only come out of the practical experiences of this first great flight.