ell, she's off," somebody said.

"Let's don't count chickens," Bannister said tautly. Wellington G.
Bannister worked for the Germans on V-2s. He is the chief executive of
technology in the section to which we were assigned at that time. He
is the world's leading expert on exotic fuel rocket projectile
systems, rocket design, and a brilliant electronic engineer as well.
High enough subordinates call him Wellie. Pilots always called him
Professor Bannister. I issued the report that was read in closed
session in London in which I accused Bannister of murdering Lynds.
That's how come I'm here now. I was cashiered out, just short of a
general court martial. That's one of the nice parts about truly
classified work. They can't make you out an idiot in public. Living on
a boat in the Mediterranean is far nicer than looking up at the earth
through a porthole in a smashed up ship on the moon, you must admit.

Well, Bannister could have well counted chickens on that launching.
The first, second and third stages fired off perfectly, and within
fourteen minutes the capsule detached into orbit just under escape
velocity. The orbit was enormously far out. They let Lynds complete a
single orbit, then fired the capsule's rockets. He ran off tangential
to orbit at escape velocity on a pattern that would probably run in a
straight path to infinity. In fact, the capsule is probably still on
its way, and as I said, it's six years now. After four minutes, the
return vehicle was activated and as it broke away from the capsule,
Lynds blacked out for twenty seconds. That was the only time I was out
of direct contact with him after he went into orbit.

* * * * *

"Now do you understand about the manual controls?" Bannister said.

"He'll come out of it in less than a minute."

"One can never be sure."

"There's still no reason why you can't use duplicate control systems."

"With a switch-off on the automatic, if they fail?"

"Yes. If for nothing more than to give a man a chance to save his own
neck."

"They won't fail."

"The simplest things fail, Bannister. Campbell was killed in a far
less elaborate way."

He looked at me. "Campbell? Oh, yes. The landing over the reef. I had
nothing to do with that."

"You designed the power shut-off that failed."

"Improper servicing. A simple mechanical failure."

"Or the inability of a mechanism to compensate. The wind shifted after
computer coordination. A p