bout Haldgren does you credit; but Haldgren is
dead. Now I am giving you another chance: I order you to come forward
and receive this honor, which is an honor to the entire Service of Air."

* * * * *

Chet was staring in open amazement. "No air on the Moon," this man had
said. And what of that? Neither was there air in interplanetary space,
yet he had traveled there. It was inconceivable that this imperious and
dictatorial man could be so blind.

"I can't do it, sir," he tried to explain. "You surely can't disregard
that message, the old call for help. We were using that, you know, when
Haldgren took off five years ago."

No longer did a masking softness overlay the hard brittleness of the
Commander's voice.

"Your star!" he snapped. "You are no longer in the Service, Bullard!"

But Chet Bullard, as he stepped forward that the Commander might rip the
triple star from his chest, was not alone. Walt Harkness was only a
Pilot of the Second Class, but he stripped the emblem from his own
silken blouse and placed it in the Commander's outstretched hand beside
Chet's star.

"Permit me, sir, to share Mr. Bullard's enviable humiliation," he
observed with venomous courtesy; and added:

"Whatever similar honors were in store for Mrs. Harkness and myself are
respectfully declined. We, too, are of the opinion that Pilot Haldgren
deserves them instead of us."

For an instant Chet's flashing smile drew his face into friendly lines.
"Thanks!" he said.

But all friendliness was erased as he swung back upon the Commander.

* * * * *

No thought now of the thousands of staring faces or of the millions
throughout the world who were watching him and were hearing his words.
Chet Bullard clipped those words into curt phrases, and he shot them at
his superior officer as if from a detonite gun:

"You think your judgment better than mine--you've dropped me from the
Service--and you've got the power to make that stick! But you're wrong,
sir, dead wrong! And I'll make you admit it, too.

"No--don't interrupt! I'm going to say what I please, and this is it,
Commander:

"Hang onto that jewel you were giving me. Keep it ready. For I'm going
to the Moon. I'm going to find Haldgren, if he's still living when I get
there. And, at the least, I will bring back some record to show he is
the man we should honor.

"Haldgren, alive or dead, was the first man to conquer space. N