miles of flight. After that, the speed of the ship remains constant. You
follow me?" Tardeau, the half-mad French genius had explained it so
logically. And Joshua had believed in him. That's where you made your
big gamble in a project of this kind. You selected your men and then
believed in them. Others dissented, of course. There are always
dissenters. And always points that could not be proven or disproven on
the drawing boards or in the test pits....

* * * * *

"I follow you, Henri. The booster units will be in three sections."

"Exactly, Msieu. The primary--ah, booster, as you say, breaks free at
twelve miles. That one, and the secondary, we control with radar. We
touch a button and Voila! they are free!"

"In case of the men in the ship blacking out, I think you said."

"Exactly. But the third will be disengaged from within the ship and she
will be free as a bird to fly to your most illusive Moon!"

"And the return?"

"There we have a much lighter ship, Monsieur. The smaller boosters will
lift her easily. The return trip will be slower--much slower, but she
will return!"

Michael Bernard was the dissenter. "The Frenchman's crazy! Mad as a
hatter, Chief."

"You think it won't work, then?"

"Too damn complicated. A dozen units of time and mechanism have to mesh
perfectly. The odds are against that happening. After all, you've got to
remember, what we're attempting has never been done before."

"But if it did work--?"

"It would be a beauty."

"Better than your idea of a single booster?"

"If it worked--yes. The weight problem would be solved. Five men could
ride the rocket. But--"

"Let's try it, Mike. Let's believe in our destiny."

"Okay--you're the boss. But destiny's a hard thing to lay out and
analyze on a drawing board."

A man and his dream....

The radar equipment had failed. Burdened with the weight of exhausted
booster sections, the rocket curved back into the clutches of gravity.

It crashed on the fringe of the Amazon jungles.

Five Moon pioneers dead. Three uninsured, dependent families. Joshua
provided for them, but the critical newspapers overlooked that point.
One editorial observed that Joshua Lake would get a rocket to the Moon
and back if it took every able-bodied man in the country. The project
would have died right there if Joshua had needed money. No bank in the
nation would have loaned him a dime. Fortunately he was not yet broke.
He st