Footsteps sounded in the tube outside the cabin. Mark Kramer walked in.
"Hi, chief," he grinned, "Moonbeam ready to go?"
"The techs are out now and fuel's aboard. How about you? Shouldn't you get some rest?"
"That's all I've had since they shipped me out here." Kramer laughed. "It'll be a snap. After all, I'll never make over two gees and pick up 7000 mph to leave you guys behind. Then I play ring around the rosy, take a look at Luna's off side and come home. Just like that."
"Just like that," Kevin whispered meditatively. The moon rocket, floating there outside the station's rim was ugly, designed never to touch a planet's atmosphere, but it was the most beautiful thing man had ever built, assembled in space from individual fragments boosted laboriously from the Earth's surface.
Another clatter of footsteps approached the hatch. Max Gordon entered and stood at attention as Senator McKelvie made a dignified entrance. The senator wore an adhesive patch on his high forehead. He turned to Kramer.
"Young man," he rumbled, "are you the fool risking your life in that—that thing out there? You must know it'll never reach the moon. I know it'll never—"
Kramer's face paled slightly and he moved swiftly between the two men. Without using force, he backed the senator and Gordon through the hatch and slammed it behind him. Anger was a knot of green snakes in his belly.
"I want to talk to that pilot," McKelvie said belligerently.
"I'm sorry, senator. The best psychiatrists on Earth worked eight months to condition Kramer for this flight. He must not be emotionally disturbed. You can't talk to him."