Then she said fiercely, "I don't care if
somebody's looking, Joe. It's time for you to go in the ship."

He kissed her, and turned and went quickly to the peculiar mass of
clustered pushpots, touching and almost overlapping each other.

He ducked under and looked back. Sally waved. He waved back. Then he
climbed up the ladder into Pelican One's cabin. Somebody pulled the
ladder away and scuttled out of the cage.

The others were in their places. Joe slowly closed the door from the
cabin to the outer world. There was suddenly a cushioned silence about
him. Out the quartz-glass ports he could see ahead, out the end of the
cage through the monstrous doorway to the desert beyond. Overhead he
could see the dark, girder-lined roof of the Shed. On either side,
though, he could see only the scratched, dented, flat undersides of the
pushpots ready to lift the ship upward.

"You can start on the pushpot motors, Haney," he said curtly.

Joe moved to his own, the pilot's seat. Haney pushed a button. Through
the fabric of the ship came the muted uproar of a pushpot engine
starting. Haney pushed another button. Another. Another. More jet
engines bellowed. The tumult in the Shed would be past endurance, now.

Joe strapped himself into his seat. He made sure that the Chief at the
steering-rocket manual controls was fastened properly, and Mike at the
radio panel was firmly belted past the chance of injury.

Haney said with enormous calm, "All pushpot motors running, Joe."

"Steering rockets ready," the Chief reported.

"Radio operating," came from Mike. "Communications room all set."

Joe reached to the maneuver controls. He should have been sweating. His
hands, perhaps, should have quivered with tension. But he was too much
worried about too many things. Nobody can strike an attitude or go into
a blue funk while they are worrying about things to be done. Joe heard
the small gyro motors as their speed went up. A hum and a whine and then
a shrill whistle which went up in pitch until it wasn't anything at all.
He frowned anxiously and said to Haney, "I'm taking over the pushpots."

Haney nodded. Joe took the over-all control. The roar of engines outside
grew loud on the right-hand side, and died down. It grew thunderous to
the left, and dwindled. The ones ahead pushed. Then the ones behind. Joe
nodded and wet his lips. He said: "Here we go."

There was no more ceremony than that. The noise of the jet motors
outside rose to a t