to believe it, to combat the
icy sliver of dread concerning an event that was getting very near, now.

Mitch Storey sat with his mouth organ cupped in his hands. He began to
make soft, musing chords, tried a fragment of Old Man River, shifted
briefly to a spiritual, and wound up with some eerie, impromptu
fragments, partly like the drums and jingling brass of old Africa,
partly like a joyful battle, partly like a lonesome lament, and then,
mysteriously like absolute silence.

Storey stopped, abashed. He grinned.

"Reaching for Out There, Mitch?" Frank Nelsen asked. "Music of your own,
to tell about space? Got any words for it?"

"Nope," Mitch said. "Maybe it shouldn't have any words. Anyhow, the tune
doesn't come clear, yet. I haven't been--There."

"Maybe some more of Otto's beer will help," Frank suggested. "Here--one
can, each, to begin." For once, Frank had an urge to get slightly
pie-eyed.

"High's a good word," he amended. "High and sky! Mars and stars!"

"Space and race, nuts and guts!" Lester put in, trying to belong, and be
light-minded, like he thought the others were, instead of a scared,
pedantic kid. He slapped the blastoff drum under him, familiarly, as if
to draw confidence from its grim, cool lines.

The whole Bunch was quite a bit like that, for a good part of the night,
shouting lustily back and forth between the two trucks, laughing,
singing, wise-cracking, drinking up Otto Kramer's Pepsi and beer.

But at last, Gimp Hines, remembering wisdom, spoke up. "We're supposed
to be under mild sedation--a devil-killer, a tranquilizer--for at least
thirty hours. It's in the rules for prospective ground-to-orbit
candidates. We're supposed to be sleeping good. Here goes my pill--down,
with the last of my beer..."

Faces sobered, and became strained and careful, again. The guys on the
trucks bedded down as best they could, among their gaunt equipment. Soon
there were troubled snores from huddled figures that quivered with the
motion of the vehicles. The mottled Moon rode high. Big tires whispered
on damp concrete. Lights blinked past. The trucks curved around corners,
growled up grades, highballed down. There were pauses at all-night
drive-ins, coffees misguidedly drunk in a blurred, fur-tongued half
wakefulness that seemed utterly bleak. Oh, hell, Frank Nelsen thought,
wasn't it far better to be home in bed, like Jig Hollins?

At grey dawn, there was a breakfast stop, the two truck drivers and
their