s they
applied what they'd been taught aground about life in space. It was
three full Earthdays before the stores intended for the journey to the
Moon and the maintenance of a base there really began to move. The tug
and the space wagons had to be moored outside and reached only by space
suits through small personnel airlocks.

And there was the matter of discipline. Lieutenant Commander Brown had
been put in command of the Platform for experience in space. He was
considered to be prepared for command of the Moonship by that
experience. So now he turned over command of the Platform to Brent--he
made a neat ceremony of it--and took over the ship that would go out to
the Moon. He made another ceremony out of that.

In command of the Moonship, his manner to Joe was absolutely correct. He
followed regulations to the letter--to a degree that left Joe blankly
uncomprehending. But he wouldn't have gotten along in the Navy if he
hadn't. He'd tried to do the same thing in the Platform, and it wasn't
practical. But he ignored all differences between Joe and himself. He
made no overtures of friendship, but that was natural. Unintentionally,
Joe had defied him. He now deliberately overlooked all that, and Joe
approved of him--within limits.

But Mike and Haney and the Chief did not. They laid for him. And they
considered that they got him. When he took over the Moonship, Lieutenant
Commander Brown naturally maintained naval discipline and required
snappy, official naval salutes on all suitable occasions, even in the
Platform. And Joe's gang privately tipped off the noncommissioned
personnel of the Moonship. Thereafter, no enlisted man ever saluted
Lieutenant Brown without first gently detaching his magnet-soled shoes
from the floor. When a man was free, a really snappy salute gave a
diverting result. The man's body tilted forward to meet his rising arm,
the upward impetus was one-sided, and every man who saluted Brown
immediately made a spectacular kowtow which left him rigidly at salute
floating somewhere overhead with his back to Lieutenant Brown. With a
little practice, it was possible to add a somersault to the other
features. On one historic occasion, Brown walked clanking into a
storeroom where a dozen men were preparing supplies for transfer to the
Moonship. A voice cried, "Shun!" And instantly twelve men went floating
splendidly about the storeroom, turning leisurely somersaults, all
rigidly at salute, and all wearing re