A. is trying to serve him a subpoena.

"You are in, Axie," I says. "A crew of three is enough as that is about
all the oxygen we can store up. Meet D'Ambrosia Zahooli."

"Why is he wearing a mask?" Wurpz quips.

"You are as funny as a plutonium crutch," Zahooli says.

"No hard feelin's," Wurpz says, and takes a small flask out of his
pocket. "We will drink to Operation Earthworm."

As might have been expected, we run into some snags. The Euthanasia
Society serve us with papers as they maintain nobody can commit suicide
in the year 2022 without permission from the Board. Gulflex and other
oil companies protest to Number One as they say we might open up a hole
that will spill all the petroleum out of the earth all at once, so fast
they couldn't refine it. A spark could ignite it and set the globe on
fire like it was a brandied Christmas pudding. But then another
earthquake shakes Earth from the rice fields of China to the llamas in
Peru just when it looks as if we were about to be tossed into an outer
space pokey.

The seismologists get together and agree that they can't possibly figure
out the depth of the focus and state that the long waves have to pass
through the epicenter or some such spot underground. Anyway, all the
brass agrees that something is going on in inner space not according to
Hoyle or Euclid or anybody else and that we three characters might just
hit on something of scientific value.

The Magnificent Mole is built mostly of titanium, a metal which is only
about half as heavy as steel and twice as rugged. It is not quite as big
in diameter as the auger, for if it was any Martian moron knows we would
scrape our sides away before we got down three miles. We store
concentrated chow to last six months and get the acceleration couches
ready. We are to blast down at eighteen point oh-four hours, Friday, May
26th, 2022. Today is Wednesday. The big space brass, the fourteenth
estate haunt the spot marked X.

We get it both barrels from the jokers carrying press cards. They call
it Operation Upside Down. At last three characters were really going to
dig a hole and pull it in after them. Three hours before Dig-day, Exmud
R. Zmorro interviews us. We are televised around the orbit.

"Laying all joking aside, Spink," the news analyst says dolefully, "you
don't expect this to work."

"Of courst!" I says emphatically. "You forget the first man to reach New
Mu was a Spink. A Spink helped Columbus wade ashore i