The ship was out of the hangar. Men swarmed about it. Trucks towed it. It was being hauled well away from the buildings on the base. The preparations for take-off had begun. It would be a long time before fueling started, though. The ship would be towed for a couple of miles over the crunching pebbly ground, just in case something went wrong at the take-off. Then there'd have to be a checkover of everything from the tires to the wingtips to the instruments to the communication systems and the igniters for the ramjets, and so on indefinitely. Hours would be consumed in the simple final inspection. The ramjet fuel would go in. The jatos would be mounted and their circuits tested--the jatos would drop off after they'd done their stuff--Then on and on, endlessly. It would be long after sunrise before anybody began to think of the rocket fuel trucks. He looked at his watch again. He knew he couldn't go back to sleep, but he wouldn't get dressed. He stood by the tilted slat of the Venetian blind, watching the disturbance in the moonlight go farther and farther away until it was lost in the vagueness of the partly lit plain. He sat down, but didn't turn on the light in his room. He allowed himself one cigarette. He tried to relax, but his mind was tense. He managed a rueful grimace over his dream. That wasn't a good sign. He hadn't been worried before the Aerobee shoot, or so it seemed to him now. But in that shoot he'd had nothing to do but take a ride. Everything connected with the functioning of the rocket was somebody else's worry. Now everything was up to him. He wondered uncomfortably how Furness felt. Probably like the devil.... With such discomfortable reflections, McCauley did not feel bright and chipper when there came footsteps outside his door and then a knock. He waited for the knock to be repeated, and then said, as if drowsily: "What's the matter?" "Time to get up, sir," said a noncom's voice, "if you want to watch the fuel-up of your ship, sir." McCauley timed his pause and then said, less sleepily: "Oh. All right. I'm awake. I'll get up right away." He waited until the footsteps moved off. Then he swore. He'd put on an act himself. He was ashamed of being keyed up. He'd posed as a man with iron nerves, sleeping soundly before the take-off of the first ship ever to try a piloted orbital flight. When he went out of his room he disliked himself very much. It was an hour later, and the morning sunshine was bright, when he came out of the officers' quarters and got into the jeep that was waiting for him. Furness, he learned, was already out at the ship. The general was there too. Things were moving smoothly. The jeep rolled over the flat ground, the picked-up pebbles making a thunderous rattling against the mud-guards and a vast plume of yellow dust trailing it.