e known as Melody's
Mighty Material had been born.

The testing started. But there was a difference. By the time the brown
chunk had been removed from the bunker it had solidified to the point
that nothing would break or cut it. The surface yielded slightly to the
heaviest cutting edge of a power saw and then sprang back, unmarked. A
diamond drill spun ineffectually.

So the entire block started making the rounds of the various labs. It
was with downright jubilation that radiation labs reported no
properties of resistance for the stuff. One after the other, the test
proved nothing until the physical properties unit came up with an idea.

"You can't cut it, break it or tear it," the technician told Peterson,
as he hefted the chunk of lightweight enigma. "You can't burn it, shoot
holes in it, or so much as mark the surface with any known acid. This
stuff's tougher than steel and about fifty times lighter."

"O.K.," Peterson asked, "so what good is it?"

"You can mold it when you mix it," the technician said significantly.

"Hey, you're right," Peterson jumped up excitedly. "Why, a spacer cast
out of this stuff and coated with Sally's paint would be light enough
and shielded enough to work on regular missile fuels."

* * * * *

Working under crash priorities, the nation's three leading plastics
plants turned out three, lightweight, molded, one-man space vehicles
from the government-supplied Melody's Mix. A double coating of Sally's
Paint then covered the hulls and a single stage liquid fuel rocket
engine was hooked to the less-than-one-ton engineless hull.

Twenty-eight days after the milk first appeared, on a warm August
evening, the first vehicle stood on the pads at Cape Canaveral,
illuminated by towers of lights. Fuel crews had finished loading the
tanks which would be jettisoned along with the engine at burn-out.
Inside the rocket, Major Quartermain lounged uncomfortably and cramped
in the take-off sling for a short but telling trip through the Van
Allen radiation fields and back to Earth.

The take-off sling rested inside an escape capsule since the use of
chemical fuel brought back many of the old uncertainties of launchings.
On the return trip, Quartermain would eject at sixty thousand feet and
pull the capsule's huge parachute for a slow drop to the surface of the
Atlantic where a recovery fleet was standing by. The light rocket hull
would pop a separate chute an