touched down.

Lipton, Earle, and the staff came hurrying from the blockhouse. Rick
climbed down, pulling the helmet off hair that was swimming-wet with
perspiration.

Now the brains for winged horse had been tried and proved. Rick looked
at the great rocket, almost hidden by the crane and its equipment. Soon,
he thought. Soon Pegasus would make the payoff flight!

CHAPTER XV

The Open Hatchway

Pegasus was ready.

The dry run was over and only the final checkout remained.

At zero minus sixteen hours Rick stood at the base of the huge rocket
and looked up, studying every inch of it. He knew he would never have
the opportunity again.

About fifty feet up he could make out the smooth, stainless-steel
connecting ring where the second stage joined the first. Explosive
bolts, set off by one of the electronic circuits, would blow the stages
apart. The second stage, still carrying the final stage, would
accelerate away on its own motors until they, too, had consumed all
available fuel. Again, explosive bolts would destroy the connection and
the final stage would be on its own. The motors would flare briefly,
providing less than a minute's acceleration, then the final stage would
coast on its momentum to maximum altitude nearly three hundred miles
above the earth.

Not until the final stage started its downward plunge would Jerry Lipton
take over. His job, then, would be to control the plunging flight, to
use up the excess of energy by maneuvering the rocket into the
atmosphere and out, to prevent its burning up like a meteor. In slow,
careful stages, he would let it come lower and lower, until most of its
energy was used up. Then he would try to land it. The landing speed
would be terrific--nearly a thousand miles an hour.

Gee-Gee Gould came up and stood beside him. "It's a beautiful thing,
Rick. And it's ours. Yours, mine, Dick's, Frank's, Charlie's--it belongs
to every one of the crew."

Rick knew. It was _his_ rocket. If it worked, it would be because of the
care and devotion with which he had done his job. He knew others felt
the same, and they were equally right. All of them had built part of
themselves into Pegasus.

If it worked . . . Of course it would work! He sought reassurance from
Gee-Gee.

"It's going to be okay, isn't it?"

"Yes." Gee-Gee had no doubt. "Every piece of it has been checked and
double-checked. Even the inner workings of the critical parts have been
run and rerun. This i