And presently there was the ship. It was a singular spectacle--the huge, seemingly clumsy object with its dropped-down cabin shining in the slanting morning light. It seemed peculiarly isolated, out here on the featureless plain. There was nothing near it to account for its existence. Empty, board-flat ground stretched out for miles in every direction. The buildings at the base seemed tiny from here. The ship was alone like a steamer in the middle of the ocean, except that men clustered about its wheels, and there was a pickup truck that had brought ladders, and tiny dark figures swarmed over the still, glistening aluminum body. The jeep drew near. It swung in a slightly exaggerated curve and came to a stop. "The general's yonder," said the jeep driver, pointing. McCauley walked over. The general faced him, and McCauley saluted. "Ah, McCauley," the general said cordially. "You look fresh and rested." "Yes, sir," said McCauley. He saw Furness nearby. He felt very much like a heel. "It was a good idea to get a good night's sleep," said the general. "Yes, sir," said McCauley. "You've got your orders," said the general. "They give you a lot of leeway." "Yes, sir," said McCauley. "It's hoped you'll pass over the setup checkpoints, of course," said the general. "But the satellite watching stations will pick up your signal in any case. The main thing is to make a straight orbit. Anything short of a full twenty-four-thousand-mile course will cost you an impossible amount of fuel." "Yes, sir," said McCauley. "I'm aware of it, sir." It was one of the paradoxes of the flight that it would take much more fuel to make a shorter flight than a longer one. A course around the northern hemisphere, for example, not crossing the equator and the antipodes, would be extravagant in terms of the fuel required simply to stay aloft. But if McCauley established a proper orbit, he'd use fuel only to take off and to land. Landing would be as tricky a job as taking off, or even trickier. But McCauley had tried all the alternative landing processes in the training mock-up. His orders permitted him to choose the landing process himself, but it was not likely that he'd have any actual choice. The decision would be made by events.