The jatos burned out and dropped off. The ship swept on smoothly, and there were only two gees acceleration. But McCauley had to work swiftly, in spite of feeling that flatirons were attached to his fingers. He shook his head and panted, and swept his eyes around the horizon. It was level. He grasped the stick, unlocked it, and pulled it back. The horizon dipped downward before him and the ship rose tumultuously toward the sky. He heard Furness' voice as a faint murmur above the overwhelming noise from the ramjets. "X-21 reporting. Take-off complete. Everything functioning normally. Rate of ascent...." His voice went on. There was a strange note in it, though. Even in his desperate absorption in the task at hand, McCauley noted it. But he could not spare a look at Furness. The ship was airborne and already two thousand feet high. McCauley put it into a gigantic climbing sweep around a circle fully twenty miles across. It flew with the grace and precision of a garbage scow. Now and again it tended to wallow in flight, and he balanced it tensely, and then delicately as he confirmed the calculated feel of its controls. The earth spread out below, wider and wider as the ship rose, and the ramjets thundered a message of the flight to the empty plain and all the rolling ground beyond it. Furness' voice was barely audible. He talked steadily, reading off instrument indications into a microphone. There were telemeterings of all these data in transmission that were being recorded down at the base, but when the ship reached the limit to which the ramjets could carry it and began its rocket-powered flight, continuous reception of microwaves would be dubious. A longer wave length for a voice broadcast was necessary if the full value of the flight was to be realized. The X-21 was eighteen thousand feet up when it passed Quartermain Base on its first circle. Half the atmosphere was already beneath it. Furness read off the fuel consumption of the ramjet.... The air speed.... The altitude. His face was as gray as when he entered the cabin. He kept his left hand pressed stiffly against the left side of his abdomen. McCauley was aware of it, but could not spare the time to think about it.