Signals came down and were translated into visible records which fed
instantly into computers. Then the computers clicked and hummed and
performed incomprehensible integrations, and out of their slot-mouths
poured billowing ribbons of printed tape. Men read those tapes and
talked crisply into microphones, and their words went swiftly aloft
again.

Down by the open eastern door of the Shed at the desert's edge, Sally
Holt and Joe's father waited together, watching the sky. Sally was white
and scared. Joe's father patted her shoulder reassuringly.

"He'll make it, all right," said Sally, dry-throated.

Joe's father nodded. "Of course he will!" But his voice was not steady.

"Nothing could happen to him now!" said Sally fiercely.

"Of course not," said Joe's father.

A loudspeaker close to them said abruptly: "_Nineteen miles._"

There was a tiny, straggling thread of white visible in the now. It
thinned out to nothingness, but its nearest part flared out and flared
out and flared out. It grew larger, came closer with a terrifying speed.

"_Twelve miles_," said the speaker harshly. "_Rockets firing._"

The downward-hurtling trail of smoke was like a crippled plane falling
flaming from the sky, except that no plane ever fell so fast.

At seven miles the white-hot glare of the rocket flames was visible even
in broad daylight. At three miles the light was unbearably bright. At
two, the light winked out. Sally saw something which glittered come
plummeting toward the ground, unsupported.

It fell almost half a mile before rocket fumes flung furiously out
again. Then it checked. Visibly, its descent was slowed. It dropped more
slowly, and more slowly, and more slowly still....

It hung in mid-air a quarter-mile up. Then there was a fresh burst of
rocket fumes, more monstrous than ever, and it went steadily downward,
touched the ground, and stayed there spurting terrible incandescent
flames for seconds. Then the bottom flame went out. An instant later
there were no more flames at all.

Sally began to run toward the ship. She stopped. A procession of
rumbling, clanking, earth-moving machinery moved out of the Shed and
toward the upright space tug. Prosaically, a bulldozer lowered its wide
blade some fifty yards from the ship. It pushed a huge mass of earth
before it, covering over the scorched and impossibly hot sand about the
rocket's landing place. Other bulldozers began to circle methodically
around and around, ov