ou think any of these men would admit they are not up
to a mission a mere technician is ready to try? No! I can't get them
to beg off, either!"

"When do we go?" I asked.

Sid Stein was assigned as my pilot. He had made the trip into orbit
and back four times with the Dyna-Soar rocket, and was considered the
best risk to get me there and get me back. He was also the least
convinced I had any right to sit beside him in the cabin.

His final briefing was a beaut: "This is a spaceship, doctor," he said
frigidly. "And I want you to remember the 'ship' part of it. I'm in
command, and my every word, my every _belch_, has got to be law. Do
you understand that? This is my mission, and I'll tell you where to
put your feet."

"Sure," I said. "Who wants it?"

"Can't figure out why you do!"

"I'm just paying somebody back," I said. "Is it tomorrow?"

* * * * *

The start was a drag. Eighteen hours before blast-off Sid and I went
into a tank so that we would get rid of our nitrogen. We breathed the
standard helium-oxygen mix at normal pressure until about four hours
before H-hour. They wouldn't even let me smoke. Then we suited up and
were lifted by a crane and stuck in the control room of _Nelly Bly_,
as I had named our Dyna-Soar rocket-glider. The hatch stayed open, but
we were buttoned up tight in our suits. They had a couple of mods that
were supposed to fit them better for the mission. Instead of the usual
metal helmet with face plate, we had full-vision bubble helmets of
clear plastic. The necks were large enough so that we could, in
theory, drag our arms out of our suits and clean the inside of the
bubbles. That was in case I sicked up out in space, which all
experience said was a real enough hazard. They figured that filling me
full of motion sickness pills was partial prevention.

These space-jockeys have their own vocabulary, and their own oh, so
cool way of playing it during the countdown. I'm pretty familiar with
complex components, but they were checking off equipment I never heard
of. We had gyros--hell, our _gyros_ had gyros. And we had tanks, and
pressures and temperatures and voltages and who-stuck-John. It was all
very impressive.

There were suited men up on the gantry unplugging our air feed and
closing our hatch. Sid was straining up from where he lay on his back
to dog it down tight.

"Roger," Sid was saying to somebody, as he had been all morning.

The white vapor