He felt remarkably good, knowing that presently he should be where no man had ever been before, seeing with his own eyes that the earth was round. It struck him suddenly that everybody else in the world had only indirect evidence for believing this. He'd be the first man to know this for a fact simply because he'd gone up to where he would see the earth as a ball. "No shivers?" asked Randy presently, as if in envy. "Wouldn't you rather not and say you did? I'll take over for you!" "Don't tempt me!" said McCauley, pushing his cup across the table. "And how about some more coffee?" Randy grunted. Maybe he'd been ordered to do some kidding, so McCauley wouldn't get the wind up. But it didn't matter to Ed. If only everything went all right at the blockhouse everything would have to go all right all along the line. But the chance that things might be fouled up there made him want to keep his fingers crossed. Yes. The blockhouse was the big hurdle. Anything that happened after that wouldn't be failure on his part. He wanted to pray again, this time about the blockhouse. But he didn't. The two men left the officers'-quarters building together. There was a jeep waiting, with Sergeant Hall at its wheel. "Mornin', Lieuten't. How you feeling?" The sergeant looked at McCauley with the same combination of envy and anxiety that Randy had shown--envy for what McCauley had ahead of him, anxiety for whether he felt all right so that he could go through with it. "Look!" said McCauley, annoyed. "I'm all right! There's nothing to worry about! The thing's been done before with instruments, dummies, monkeys, and now it's me. I'm just another ape. That's all! For the love of Saint Aloysius stop worrying!" Sergeant Hall let in the clutch. "Okay, Lieuten't," he said mildly. "I was just going to wish you good luck." "Cross your fingers against the medics," said McCauley dourly. "I never liked doctors. I've got to get by some of them." He settled back in the jeep and it went bolting out into the already blazing sunlight beyond the shadow of the building. The landscape wasn't pretty--sun-baked clay and sand on the road, and mesquite and more mesquite all around. The sunshine was hotter here than anywhere else in the world. It was still long before noon, but already the horizon shimmered in the heat and occasional little sand-devils rose up half-heartedly and then subsided as if it were too hot even for whirlwinds. Far away there were the mountains. McCauley had gone over there once, and they'd towered impossibly toward the sky. But presently he'd have trouble picking them out because they'd be so small and the ground so nearly flat. Heat beat up from the ground and through the windshield. After a quarter of an hour he could see the spindly launching tower--no gantry cranes here!--above one of the ridges over which the jeep went rolling, kicking up a monstrous cloud of yellow dust behind it.