He stood looking at me for a moment, then turned and hurried up the gangway.
Just as he reached the hatch, two figures emerged suddenly from the ship. One wore the uniform of a Space Fleet astro-navigator. The other was Adam-Two.
I ran up the gangway in time to hear the navigator telling Hoppy, "I found him in the forward chart room."
"Adam!" I yelled. "What are you up to now?"
"I wanted to go along," he said. "I wanted to see if they were really going to the cold side of Number One Sun."
I grabbed his arm and hustled him down to the mono-car. We slid clear of the dock and about half a mile away I stopped the car to watch them blast off.
Adam's eyes were wide with wonderment. "What makes it go?"
"Rocket motors," I said absently. I watched the ship, now just a mote disappearing in the twilight sky. And I thought, There goes the tag end of a twenty-year dream.
That was all it had ever been; I knew that now. Just a dream, and a stupid one at that. I'd deluded myself even more than the Kids.
"What's a rocket motor?"