When she had got the huge boots over his shrunken feet, the magnasoles clanged against the iron bedframe and clung there, and she rolled him up so that he could look at them, and Old Donegal chuckled inside. He felt warm and clean and pleasantly dizzy. "The whiskey, Martha, and for God's sake, make them stop the noise till after the firing. Please!" She went to the window and looked out for a long time. Then she came back and poured him an insignificant drink. "Well?" "I don't know," she said. "I saw Father Paul on the terrace, talking to somebody." "Is it time?" She glanced at the clock, looked at him doubtfully, and nodded. "Nearly time." The orchestra finished a number, but the babble of laughing voices continued. Old Donegal sagged. "They won't do it. They're the Keiths, Martha. Why should I ruin their party?" She turned to stare at him, slowly shook her head. He heard someone shouting, but then a trumpet started softly, introducing a new number. Martha sucked in a hurt breath, pressed her hands together, and hurried from the room. "It's too late," he said after her. Her footsteps stopped on the stairs. The trumpet was alone. Donegal listened; and there was no babble of voices, and the rest of the orchestra was silent. Only the trumpet sang--and it puzzled him, hearing the same slow bugle-notes of the call played at the lowering of the colors. The trumpet stopped suddenly. Then he knew it had been for him. A brief hush--then thunder came from the blast-station two miles to the west. First the low reverberation, rattling the windows, then the rising growl as the sleek beast knifed skyward on a column of blue-white hell. It grew and grew until it drowned the distant traffic sounds and dominated the silence outside. _Quit crying, you old fool, you maudlin ass ..._ "My boots," he whispered, "my boots ... please ..." "You've got them on, Donny." He sank quietly then. He closed his eyes and let his heart go up with the beast, and he sank into the gravity padding of the blastroom, and Caid was with him, and Oley. And when Ronald Keith, III, instructed the orchestra to play Blastroom Man, after the beast's rumble had waned, Old Donegal was on his last moon-run, and he was grinning. He'd had a good day. Martha went to the window to stare out at the thin black trail that curled starward above the blast-station through the twilight sky. Guests on the terrace were watching it too. The doorbell rang. That would be Ken, too late. She closed the window against the chill breeze, and went back to the bed. The boots, the heavy, clumsy boots--they clung to the bedframe, with his feet half out of them. She took them off gently and set them out of company's sight. Then she went to answer the door. Transcriber's Note: