instant flare. But
he ground out the cigarette at once, bitterly. "What do _you_ care what
I do, Mex?" he snarled. "And as for you two Hunky Kuzaks--you oversized
bulldozers--how about weight limits for blastoff? Damn--I don't care
_how_ big you are!"

In mounting rage, he was about to lash out with his fists, even at the
two watchful football men. But then he looked surprised. With a terrible
effort, he bottled up even his furious words.

The Bunch was a sort of family. Members of families may love each other,
but it doesn't have to happen. For a second it was as if Ramos had
Tiflin spitted on some barb of his taunting smile--aimed at Tiflin's
most vulnerable point.

Ramos clicked his tongue. What he was certainly going to remark was that
people who couldn't pass the emotional stability tests, just couldn't
get a space-fitness card. But Ramos wasn't unkind. He checked himself in
time. "No sweat, Tif," he muttered.

"Hey, Gimp--are you going to sit in that Archie all night?" Joe Kuzak,
the easy-going twin, boomed genially. "How about the rest of us?"

"Yeah--how about that, Gimp?" Dave Lester put in, trying to sound as
brash and bold as the others, instead of just bookish.

Two-and-Two Baines, still looking perplexed, spoke in a hoarse voice
that sounded like sorrow. "What I wanna know is just how far this fifty
buck price gets us. Guess we have enough dough left in the treasury to
buy us each an Archer Five, huh, Paul?"

Paul Hendricks rubbed his bald head and grinned in a way that attempted
to prove him a disinterested sideliner. "Ask Frank," he said. "He's your
historian-secretary and treasurer."

Frank Nelsen came out of his attitude of observation enough to warn,
"That much we've got, if we want as many as twelve Archies. And a little
better than a thousand dollars more, left over from the prize money."

They had won twenty-five hundred dollars during the summer for building
a working model of a sun-powered ionic drive motor--the kind useful for
deep-space propulsion, but far too weak in thrust to be any good,
starting from the ground. The contest had been sponsored by--of all
outfits--a big food chain, Trans-Columbia. But this wasn't so strange.
Everybody was interested in, or affected by, interplanetary travel, now.

On a workbench, standing amid a litter of metal chips and scraps of
color-coded wire, was the Bunch's second ionic, full-size this time, and
almost finished. On crossed arms it mounted fo