As gracefully poised and as shiningly beautiful.... It was Mary Anne who broke the spell. "Daddy, will it really go to the moon?" Elwood looked down at his daughter and patted her tousled red-gold hair. "How many times must I tell you it isn't an experimental model?" he chided. "It was designed for actual space flight." "But daddy--" "If you've any more silly notions you'd better get rid of them right now. You may never get another chance. Yesterday Melvin and I discussed the details as fellow-scientists. Suppose you tell her just how much the Government is contributing, son." "Forty thousand dollars!" Melvin said promptly, rolling the figure over his tongue as though it had some mysterious magic of its own which could elevate him to man's estate--if he repeated it often enough. "A research grant," Elwood added as if thinking aloud for his own benefit. "I had a tough time persuading them to let me do all the construction work right here in my own laboratory. I've probably cut more yards of official red tape than any odd duck since Archimedes." He smiled a little ruefully. "In case you're interested--I've had to pay through the nose for the technical assistance I've been getting. Those owl-faced characters you've seen drifting in and out won't work for peanuts." "But all of the rockets in the stereo-cineramas are much bigger!" Mary Anne protested. "Why is that, daddy?" "We've just about seen the end of the huge outmoded, stratosphere observation-type rockets," Elwood replied, including both children in his glance. "In the future observation rockets will be much smaller and there is little to be gained by attempting to send a large rocket to the moon. The cost would be a thousand times as great." "But daddy, how could such a little rocket ever get as far as the moon." "Perhaps the worst mistake an individual or a society can make is to confuse size with power," Elwood said. "There is a tiny bee which, in proportion to its size, can travel faster than our cleverest flight specialists in their jet planes." "But daddy--" "Don't look so incredulous, honeybunch. You remind me of your mother. Melvin knows just how much progress we've made in atomic research since Eniwetok. Tell her, son." "The primitive hydrogen bomb tested at Eniwetok laid the groundwork for the storage of vast amounts of nuclear power in blast compartments a few inches square," Melvin said pridefully. "We can now power a very small rocket designed for space flight with the equivalent of fifty million tons of TNT." "You left out one vital consideration, Melvin," Elwood said. "The automatic-control factor." "Pop's right," Melvin said, confronting his sister almost accusingly. "The power won't be released all at once." "It will be released in successive stages," Elwood corroborated. "We hope eventually to regulate the stages--or steps, as they are called--in such a way that other rockets, identical in design, will build up velocities approaching the speed of light."