that anyone will dare to make war. So you have a very
worthwhile mission. I suggest that you have breakfast and report to the
Shed. I'm on my way there now."

Joe said, "Yes, sir."

The major started for the door. Then he stopped. He hesitated, and said
abruptly, "If my security measures have failed, Joe, you'll be killed.
If there has been sabotage or carelessness, it will be my fault."

"I'm sure, sir, that everything anybody could do--"

"Everything anybody can do to destroy you has been done," said the major
grimly. "Not only sabotage, Joe, but blunders and mistakes and
stupidities. That always happens. But--I've done my best. I suspect I'm
asking your forgiveness if my best hasn't been good enough."

Then, before Joe could reply, the major went hurriedly away.

Joe frowned for a moment. It occurred to him that it must be pretty
tough to be responsible for the things that other men's lives depend
on--when you can't share their danger. But just then the smell of coffee
reached his nostrils. He trailed the scent. There was a coffeepot
steaming on the table in the dining-room. There was a note on a plate.

_Good luck. I'll see you in the Shed.

Sally_

Joe was relieved. Sally Holt had been somewhere around underfoot all
his life. She was a swell girl, but he was grateful that he didn't have
to talk to her just now.

He poured coffee and looked at his watch. He went to the window. The
faraway howling was much nearer, and dawn had definitely arrived. Small
cloudlets in a pale blue sky were tinted pinkish by the rising sun.
Patches of yucca and mesquite and sage out beyond the officers' quarters
area stretched away to a far-off horizon. They were now visibly
different in color from the red-yellow earth between them, and cast
long, streaky shadows. The cause of the howling was still invisible.

But Joe cared nothing for that. He stared skyward, searching. And he saw
what he looked for.

There was a small bright sliver of sunlight high aloft. It moved slowly
toward the east. It showed the unmistakable glint of sunshine upon
polished steel. It was the artificial satellite--a huge steel
hull--which had been built in the gigantic Shed from whose shadow Joe
looked upward. It was the size of an ocean liner, and six weeks since
some hundreds of pushpots, all straining at once, had gotten it out of
the Shed and panted toward the sky with it. They'd gotten it twelve
miles high and speeding eastward at the ul