"Chicken!" shouted Jones. "Chicken's what you are!"
"Oh yeah? So what happens to them guys what went before?"
"Nuts to that," Jones sneered. "I hear they's a lot of places up in space we don't know nothin' about, where there's maybe a lot of nice babes and buildings made out of gold and stuff like that."
"Scientists don't go much for babes," Moore said.
Jones kicked back in his seat, roaring laughter. "Hah! Don't kid yourself, son. Anyway, so what? So they get a chance to be kings, or somethin', on account of being from Earth. What do they do? They stay an' be kings, natch'!"
"It ain't for me," said Moore, moodily. "I know babes on good ol' Earth. An' who wants to be king?"
"That's what I'm tellin' you," Jones shouted. "We ain't got no worry at all. All we gotta do is not let them guys up there sidetrack us."
They fell silent, looking down at the reeling Earth. On the ground, two hundred miles below, at every tracking and control station around the world, men worked without pause, trying to make their tired minds outrace a speeding rocket. Night side and day side, messages flashed through the ether. They reported in: position, time, corrections made, passing the rocket quickly, from one to another like a hot potato.
On its last lap around the world before flinging itself moonward, the rocket screamed across the much worn boot of Italy. It climbed swiftly up the sky of the Holy Land and plunged down in the east, drawing a blue pencil line across the heavens that faded slowly.
At last it turned upward, and breathing streamers of fire and light, shot into airless space, a silver arrow gone from the bow and dead on its mark.
They looked through the glassite port into the great distances.
"Do you feel different?" Jones asked suddenly.
They sat and thought about it. The rocket was now fifteen hundred miles up, climbing swiftly.
"For one thing," Moore said, "we are lighter. What do they call it? Gravity? Gravity is less."
"I don't like it," cried Jones. "I don't like it at all!"
Jones stared back, frightened. "It's nothing like I thought it would be. Maybe we'll get so light there won't be anything left! Where is everything? It's so empty it don't make sense. Something's wrong, Bob. Let's try to turn back before we die like the others! I don't want to die! I want--"