Gotch grunted and climbed into the rear seat and he followed. The chauffeur blinked his lights twice before starting the engine. Somewhere ahead a car pulled away from the curb. They followed, leaving the four soldiers behind. Crag twisted his body and looked curiously out the rear window. Another car dogged their wake. Precautions, always precautions, he thought. Gotch had entered with an Air Force officer and had ostensibly left with one; ergo, it must be the same officer. He chuckled, thinking he had more doubles than a movie star. They sped through the night with the escorts fore and aft. Gotch was a silent hulking form on the seat beside him. It's his zero hour, too, Crag thought. The Colonel had tossed the dice. Now he was waiting for their fall, with his career in the pot. After a while Gotch said conversationally: "You'll report in at Albrook, Major. I imagine you'll be getting in a bit of flying from here on out." Talking for the chauffeur's benefit, Crag thought. Good Lord, did every move have to be cloak and dagger? Aloud he said: "Be good to get back in the air again. Perhaps anti-sub patrol, eh?" "Very likely." They fell silent again. The car skimmed west on Highway 80, leaving the silver rocket farther behind with every mile. Where to and what next? He gave up trying to figure the Colonel's strategy. One thing he was sure of. The hard-faced man next to him knew exactly what he was doing. If it was secret agent stuff, then that's the way it had to be played. * * * * * He leaned back and thought of the task ahead--the rocket he had lived with for over a year. Now the marriage would be consummated. Every detail of the Aztec was vivid in his mind. Like the three great motors tucked triangularly between her tail fins, each a tank equipped with a flaring nozzle to feed in hot gases under pressure. He pictured the fuel tanks just forward of the engines; the way the fuels were mixed, vaporized, forced into the fireports where they would ignite and react explosively, generating the enormous volumes of flaming hot gas to drive out through the jet tubes and provide the tremendous thrust needed to boost her into the skies. Between the engines and fuel tanks was a maze of machinery--fuel lines, speed controllers, electric motors. He let his mind rove over the rocket thinking that before many hours had passed he would need every morsel of the knowledge he had so carefully gathered. Midway where the hull tapered was a joint, the separation point between the first and second stages. The second stage had one engine fed by two tanks. The exterior of the second stage was smooth, finless, for it was designed to operate at the fringe of space where the air molecules were widely spaced; but it could be steered by small deflectors mounted in its blast stream.