d Joe was grinning like an
ape with excitement and relief and triumph which was at once his own and
that of all his dreams. Sally's eyes were shining and exultant. She
hugged him in purest exuberance, crying that the Space Platform was up,
was up, was up....

* * * * *

At sundown they were waiting on the porch of the Major's quarters behind
the Shed. The Major was there, and Haney and the Chief and Mike and Joe.
The Major's whole look had changed. He seemed to have shrunk, and he
looked more tired than any man should ever be allowed to get. But his
job was done, and the reaction was enough to explain everything. He sat
in an easy chair with a glass beside him, and he looked as if nothing on
earth could make him move a finger. But nevertheless he was waiting.

Sally came out with a tray. She gravely passed around the glasses and
the cakes that went with them. Then she sat down on the porch steps
beside Joe. She looked at him and nodded in friendly fashion. And Joe
was inordinately approving of Sally, but he felt awkward at showing it
too plainly in her father's presence.

Mike said defiantly: "But still it woulda been easier to get it up there
if it'd been built for guys like me!"

Nobody contradicted him. He was right. Anyhow every one of them felt too
much relaxed and relieved to enter into argument.

Haney said dreamily: "Everything broke right. Everything! They got in a
jet stream like they expected, and it gave 'em three hundred miles extra
east-speed. They were eight miles up when the pushpots fired their
jatos, an' twelve miles up when the pushpots let go--they musta near
broke their pilots' necks when they caught their motors again! And the
Platform's rockets fired just right, makin' flames a mile long, an' they
were goin' then--what were they makin'?"

"Who cares?" asked the Chief peacefully. "Plenty!"

"Six hundred from the pushpots," murmured Haney, frowning, "an' three
hundred from the jet stream, and then there was the jatos that all let
go at once, an' then there was eight hundred from the earth
rotatin'----"

"They had ten per cent of their rockets unfired when they got into their
orbit," said Mike authoritatively. "They were two thousand miles up when
they passed over India and now they're four thousand miles up and the
orbit's stable. This is their third round, isn't it?"

"Will be," said the Chief.

Joe and Sally sat watching the west. The Space Platform went