The meeting broke up amidst frantic discussion, wails of misunderstanding, confusion and quiet self-musings. Bronsen smiled to himself, his face almost boyishly radiant in his pleasure. The seed had been planted. Now all he had to do was give it time to grow and bear fruit. * * * * * Vern's cry of amazement rang with reverence as he stood with Bronsen looking over the first test rocket as it was slowly wheeled to the launching area. "Boy-o-boy! Look at that beauty! Did you ever see anything like it?" The silver ship lay on its side as it approached the huge tower, but already Vern could see its glistening majesty soaring through the sky. "She was a lot of work, Vern. Let's just keep our fingers crossed. By the way, that design of yours on the rotating cylinder inside the rocket, working independently of the rocket's forced spin, was good. Tough thing to lick, but now the pilot can keep a steady 'up' and 'down' no matter how much the outside of the ship is spinning. Good work." Vern shrugged his shoulders. "Just call me the Einstein of the 23rd century, that's all. We'll all see how well everything works pretty soon now." Bronsen was finding the tension beginning to build up in him. Just a few more hours and his theory would be lauded with success or shattered into the dust. He peered at the rocket, at the tiny black figures of the men that were dwarfed by its size and at the giant, black tube, towering hundreds of feet high, waiting patiently to receive her first charge. The needle-nosed space craft glistened in the early morning sun, her thin beauty tantalizing to the senses of a spaceman. Her lines swept gracefully back across her smooth expanse until they hit the four fin tips sweeping out from the rotating band of the tail piece, the fin tips that would fit into the slowly spiraling grooves of the launching tower. The field and groove construction first suggested by Bronsen had been replaced by lands and grooves when it was found that the fewer grooves gave greater accuracy and better muzzle velocity when tested on the laboratory models. Thus, there were only four fins instead of the originally planned eight. The rocket reached the lowering platform and Bronsen watched in nervous anxiety as the ship was lowered into the ground tail first, then slowly began its upward ascent into the belly of the launcher. He thought of a thousand things that could happen right then, found that none of them were going to and returned to his office. The rocket was safely nestled in the launcher's belly, patiently waiting for the human crew to arrive and give it life. When they gathered about the launching field that afternoon Bronsen found himself sweating in both the heat of the day and the torrid intensity of Mars' insistence that the whole thing was going to be one big flop.