Another time--a long, long while ago--a V-2 tied itself into knots and headed for Mexico. When it came down near Juarez, all the Mexicans for miles around came on the run with hacksaws. After they'd cut off pieces of it for "space souvenirs," there wasn't much left to be hauled back to base.... McCauley followed Randy around to the front. They walked over the hot sandy ground to the launching tower. There was a fuel truck there, and the sickly-sweet but bitter smell of hydrazine. The fueling gang wore plastic coveralls with hoods and clear plastic faceplates. McCauley knew this process; he'd helped with it. But today he kept carefully out of the way. The fueling gang was finicky about its work. Each man was extravagantly careful not to spill a drop of hydrazine, because if somebody stepped on a drop that had spilled and then, later on, stepped on a drop of nitric that had spilled, he'd have a hotfoot to end all hotfoots--on that foot, anyhow, because he wouldn't have it any longer. The hydrazine topped off. The truck went away, with everything carefully closed up lest a drop of anything spill on to the ground. The fueling gang went to change coveralls, for they wore coveralls of a different color when they were going to load up the nitric acid. Never the twain--hydrazine and nitric--should meet until pumped together into a rocket engine. The Aerobee was tall and sleek and smooth and streamlined, but now there were ladders leaning against it. Somebody was working through a door in the sidewall. McCauley went around and glanced at the guide rail. The Aerobee used a short-time booster to start up. The booster ran up the rail to the top of the launching tower and then landed somewhere nearby. But the Aerobee would keep on going. By the time it reached the top of the tower and the end of the guide rail, it should be going fast enough for its fins to have some grip on the air. When the air got too thin to be of any use, the steam-jets working from the fin tips should guide it. The nitric acid truck came slowly into position. It didn't cross the track the hydrazine truck had taken, and stopped in an entirely different place; the fueling crew reappeared, in their different-colored plastic coveralls. The precautions taken against the premature introduction of hydrazine and nitric acid were remarkable. McCauley let himself look up once at the nose-cone. He'd tried it on for size before. In it, he was going to have to take the launching jolt of more gees than any jet pilot has to be prepared for. But he felt a serene confidence that he could do it. Then somebody called: "Hey! Lieutenant! They want you back at the blockhouse!"