Elshawe opened his eyes and looked at the bigger man. "I'm awake. Take that stuff away. What's the idea of slugging me?" "I was afraid you might not come willingly," Porter said apologetically. "I needed a witness, and I figured you'd do better than anyone else." Elshawe tried to move and found that he was tied to the seat and strapped in with a safety belt. "What's this for?" he asked angrily. His jaw still hurt. "I'll take that stuff off in a few minutes. I know I can trust you, but I want you to remember that I'm the only one who can pilot this ship. If you try anything funny, neither one of us will get back alive. I'll let you go as soon as we get up to three hundred miles." Elshawe stared at him. "Where are we?" "Heading out toward mid-Pacific. I headed south, to Mexico, first. We're over open water now, headed toward Baja California, so I put on the autopilot. As soon as we get out over the ocean, we can really make time. You can watch the sun come up in the west." "And then?" Elshawe felt dazed. "And then we head straight up. For empty space." Elshawe closed his eyes again. He didn't even want to think about it. * * * * * "... As you no doubt heard," Terrence Elshawe dictated into the phone, "Malcom Porter made good his threat to take a spaceship of his own devising to the Moon. Ham radios all over North America picked up his speech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-foot diameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundred thousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil, like the ones used on space stations. Paragraph. "He announced that the trip was made with the co-operation of the United States Space Force, and that it represented a major breakthrough in the conquest of space. He--" "Just a sec," Winstein's voice broke in. "Is that the truth? Was he really working with the Space Force?" "Hell, no," said Elshawe. "But they'll have to claim he was now. Let me go on." "Shoot." "... He also beamed a message to the men on Moon Base One, telling them that from now on they would be able to commute back and forth from Luna to Earth, just as simply as flying from New York to Detroit. Paragraph. "What followed was even more astounding. At tremendous acceleration, Malcom Porter and Terrence Elshawe, your reporter, headed for Mars. Inside Porter's ship, there is no feeling of acceleration except for a steady, one-gee pull which makes the passenger feel as though he is on an ordinary airplane, even though the spaceship may be accelerating at more than a hundred gravities. Paragraph. "Porter's ship circled Mars, taking photographs of the Red Planet--the first close-ups of Mars to be seen by the human race. Then, at the same tremendous rate of speed, Porter's ship returned to Earth. The entire trip took less than thirty-six hours. According to Porter, improved ships should be able to cut that time down considerably. Paragraph." [Illustration]