"Or, as the countdown reaches zero, one hour from now, will the dome tear through the atmosphere of Earth in man's first real step to the stars successfully? Is our bird perfect this time?" he asked, as the break came.
The witches danced on crying their chant ... "Witches of the world, unite to make it clean, clean, clean, Witch clean,—NOW!"
Randolph was chewing his lip still as he went to bed that night. The man from the Narcotics Squad had left peaceably. There were answers to all the questions, and it wasn't his worry anyway. He'd be glad when the little girl had her operation. Grafting bones and muscles might be miraculous, but they were explicable and everybody understood them. Talk of the FCC investigation had died aborning, but talk like that was enough to upset anybody. Everything had been upsetting recently, even though the up-curve on Witch products was holding steady.
The American dome landed on the moon the morning of the day that the crippled child was scheduled to come on the Witch program.
For the American people it was a day of celebration comparable to the Fourth of July. In the White House gloom hung like a palpable shroud.
"They'll have to move fast now," the Secretary of War was reporting to his chief. "They can't afford to let us get our man up there. Even if we could shoot him off successfully."
"We can't shoot a man up there until we've proved in at least two more successful shots that we can get him there," Security declared forcefully. "The threat from our enemies is as nothing to the threat from the vote-wielding public if we tried and failed when a human life is at stake."
"Formosa is leaking," admitted the CIA chief. "We can't hold it more than three days now at the outside."