They blasted off from Chicago Spaceport on a raw March midnight. Just another rocket take-off, routine stuff, now. But have you ever seen it? The night, the wind, the distant city glow in the sky? On the strip squats the massive bulk of the rocket, loading hatches closed, sealed port holes gleaming through the gusts of rain that sweep the field. In the sound proofed spaceport control tower the officials are relaxed over coffee and cigarettes; their part is over; they sit watching. Somewhere in the mighty shell on the field, chronometer hands reach the calculated second, a circuit closes, relays chatter briefly. The rocket igniters are firing, flame billows over the field, a low rumble from the tubes builds to a throbbing roar. Twenty miles away a housewife looks up, a question on her face. Her husband listens and smiles. "It's the Saturn rocket. It's here in the paper, under Departures." On the field the roar rises to an insane bellow of sound. Under the mighty jets, the ten feet of concrete and the solid earth beneath it are shaking. In the insulated control tower a water glass dances in its holder. The watchers are not relaxed now; they lean forward. It's old stuff, routine, precalculated to a fraction of a second, but--watch. There--a stir--movement. Slowly at first, with a deliberate and awful majesty, then faster and faster. Straight toward the zenith the ship rises, trailing fire. Faster yet, hurling herself upward, under full power, through the last threads of atmosphere. Upward and onward, out past Roches limit, out where gravity dwindles toward zero, into the empyrean where the shades of dead spacemen cruise the cosmos in their phantom craft, spaceborne in the night. After he had recovered from the pangs of his initial attack of space nausea, Morley enjoyed himself. He had one minor social asset, a retentive mind, well stocked with general information. If the two apprentices got involved in an argument over the identity of the highest peak in America, Morley was the inevitable arbiter. He could with equal facility name the author of a recent best seller, or inform you that a young seal was a cub, a young hare, a leveret, and a young swan, a cygnet. He was fairly popular with the crew, except for a big Norwegian from New York, named Olaf Madsen. Madsen was a chunky, hard bitten veteran of the spaceways. Round faced, deceptively soft spoken, he had a penchant for practical jokes, and a flair for biting sarcasm which found full expression in the presence of any first tripper. He made the life of any apprentice miserable, and finished the last two weeks of one trip in the brig for panicking an entire crew by painting his face to resemble the onset of Martian blue fever. Morley considered him an oaf, and he considered Morley a human filing cabinet with a weak stomach.