At the very end of this assembly line a crane was loading a finished object onto a flat-bed trailer. As it swung in the air, Joe realized what it was. It might be called a jet plane, but it was not of any type ever before used. More than anything else, it looked like a beetle. It would not be really useful for anything but its function at the end of Operation Stepladder. Then hundreds of these ungainly objects would cluster upon the Platform's sides, like swarming bees. They would thrust savagely up with their separate jet engines. They would lift the Platform from the foundation on which it had been built. Tugging, straining, panting, they would get it out of the Shed. But their work would not end there. Holding it aloft, they would start it eastward, lifting effortfully. They would carry it as far and as high and as fast as their straining engines could work. Then there would be one last surge of fierce thrusting with oversize jato rockets, built separately into each pushpot, all firing at once. Finally the clumsy things would drop off and come bumbling back home, while the Platform's own rockets flared out their mile-long flames--and it headed up for emptiness. But the making of these pushpots and all the other multitudinous activities of the Shed would have no meaning if the contents of four crates in the wreckage of a burned-out plane could not be salvaged and put to use again. Joe said restlessly: "I want to see all this, Sally, and maybe anything else I do is useless, but I've got to find out what happened to the gyros I was bringing here!" Sally said nothing. She turned, and they moved across the long, long space of wood-block flooring toward the doorway by which they had entered. And now that he had seen the Space Platform, all of Joe's feeling of guilt and despondency came back. It seemed unbearable. They went out through the guarded door, Sally surrendered the pass, and Joe was again checked carefully before he was free to go. Then Sally said: "You don't want me tagging around, do you?" Joe said honestly: "It isn't exactly that, Sally, but if the stuff is really smashed, I'd--rather not have anybody see me. Please don't be angry, but--" Sally said quietly: "I know. I'll get somebody to drive you over." She vanished. She came back with the uniformed man who'd driven Major Holt. She put her hand momentarily on Joe's arm. "If it's really bad, Joe, tell me. You won't let yourself cry, but I'll cry for you." She searched his eyes. "Really, Joe!" He grinned feebly and went out to the car. The feeling on the way to the airfield was not a good one. It was twenty-odd miles from the Shed, but Joe dreaded what he was going to see. The black car burned up the road. It turned to the right off the white highway, onto the curved short cut--and there was the field.