n the hastily improvised
base on the Wyoming prairie where the final work was being done. The
day had been a confused jumble of impressions, with little time to catch
his breath. Now he had slept the sleep of exhaustion, only to be
awakened at dawn by Lockhart.

"Up and dress," the colonel greeted him. "We're taking you out to look
the ship over. Detmar will come along and explain the drive."

Burl threw his clothes on, gulped down breakfast in the company of the
others at the messhall, and soon was speeding along a wide, new road
that ran up to the mountains edging the wide western plain. As they
neared the mountains, he saw a high wooden wall blocking the road and
view; this was the barrier that concealed the ship nestled in the valley
beyond.

They passed the guards' scrutiny and emerged into the valley. The A-G 17
loomed suddenly above them, and Burl's first impression was of a
glistening metal fountain roaring up from the ground, gathering itself
high in the sky, as if to plunge down again in a rain of shining steel.

The ship was like a huge, gleaming raindrop. It stood two hundred feet
high, the wide, rounded, blunt bulk of it high in the air, as if about
to fall upward instead of downward. It tapered down to a thin, perfectly
streamlined point which touched the ground. It was held upright by a
great cradle of girders and beams. At various points the polished steel
was broken by indentations or inset round dots that were thick portholes
or indications of entry ports. Around its equator, girding the widest
section was a ring of portholes, and there were scattered rings of
similar portholes below this.

As the three men drew near the tail, the great bulk loomed overhead, and
Burl felt as if its weight were bearing down on him as they walked
beneath.

Two men were suspended from the scaffolding above. Burl twisted his neck
and saw that the designation A-G 17 and the white-star insignia of the
United States had been lettered along the sides. But what was it the men
were painting now?

"It will read _Magellan_," said Lockhart, following Burl's eyes. "We
decided that that would be the appropriate name for it. For what we are
going to have to do with it is not just to make a simple trip to explore
another planet, but to circumnavigate the entire solar system."

Burl found his eyes dazzled by the vessel, hanging like a giant bulbous
mushroom over them. Around him, he began to realize that a number of
other acti