Sam Meecham shut off the tester and stood very still for a minute and thought about it. His glance fell on the intricate wiring within the atomic engine and he saw with a start that it looked different from usual. Wires were where wires had never been before, where wires were not supposed to be. With another quick glance about him Sam began copying the wiring pattern on a sheet of paper. He thrust the paper into his pocket as the foreman came up to him. "Say, Meecham," the foreman said, "that last engine okay?" Sam Meecham hesitated briefly, then said, "The wiring was a little fouled up. Busted the dial on the tester." The foreman shook his head. "I was afraid of that. Some wireman on the third floor came in half drunk a few minutes ago. That was only his first machine, so the others ought to be okay." He jabbed a finger at the engine. "You'd better send it back up." When the foreman was gone Sam checked the wiring with his diagram to make certain he hadn't made any mistakes, and then he disconnected some of the wires--just in case. For the first time in years Sam Meecham felt a new freedom. He'd always been a dreamer hampered by cold reality--a man with his head in the stars and his feet chained to solid earth. He'd wanted to go to the Moon when the government first started colonizing; but Dorothy, his wife, talked him out of it. At various times he had felt that secret longing, that beckoning of the stars, but each time he had shelved the desire and turned to attaching his two wires of the tester to their proper terminals on each atomic engine, and then when his shift was up he turned homeward to face an existence equally uninspiring. The moment he had seen that needle pass into the hundreds, Sam Meecham knew what he was going to do. He had planned it years ago, when he first stood alone in the night and gazed upward at the glittering diamonds that lay beyond reach. Even then he had known what he would do if ever the opportunity presented itself. In those moments of self-pity that came too often, however, he had told himself that it was only wishful thinking and cursed himself for being a weakling and a dreamer who did nothing about his dreams. But he had resolved that someday he _would_ go out among the stars. That day had come, and as Sam Meecham went homeward that evening he felt his heart beat in time with the pulsing light of the stars overhead. But with this new exultation he felt a desperate fear. A fear that he might again bypass his opportunity as he had done so often before. Yet he knew that this was his greatest chance, perhaps his last chance. He must be brave and strong, and above all confident that his intense longing would make his venture successful. "How did everything go?" Dorothy asked when he came in. It was a mechanical question and he answered it mechanically, "Okay. Everything went as usual."