He stared at me. His long-fingered hands, so very white, were trembling with the papers. Suddenly he said, decisively:
"All right, Horn. You'll do."
"Now," I demanded again, "what's the job?"
"Come." He rose. "I'll show you."
A huge, shabby old car carried us uptown, across the George Washington bridge, and up the river to a big, wooded estate. A uniformed butler let us into an immense old house, as shabby as the car.
"My library."
Guiding me back through the house, Crosno paused as if he wished me to look into the room. An intricate planetarium was suspended from the ceiling. Glass cases held models of things that I took to be experimental rockets. The big man silently pointed out shelves of books on explosives, gases, aerodynamic design, celestial mechanics, and astro-physics. Startled, I met Crosno's piercing eyes.
"Yes, Horn," he told me. "You're to be the first rocketeer."
"Eh?" I stared at him. "You don't mean—outer space?"
I wondered at the shadow of bleak despair that had fallen across his cragged, dead-white features.