The strain made two or three of them giggle. Bairn said as if to a
naughty child: "It isn't that strong, Ed."
Bairn's hand moved to click off the firing lever when the motors
suddenly broke into thrumming life.
The inertia of new flight came to the ship again.
* * * * *
They made a frozen tableau, those men standing in the pilot's cubby.
Ed Parman was the first to break the tableau. He slumped to the floor,
and lay there, his shoulders shaking convulsively.
"Herd," Bairn said suddenly, "Take over. Come on, Tom. Whatever did
this is in the power room."
"Joe?" Herd asked.
"I don't know."
The two of them fled, leaving behind them, Parman on his knees staring
at the void, the others half-crying, half-laughing.
Bairn and Black Tom Morrissey came into the power room. They stood awed
at what they saw.
Joe was there.
Bairn said finally, voice as soft as the night wind over earth:
"Joe was right. He was good for something after all."
Tenderly, he and Black Tom lifted Joe's dead body down from the tank,
laid him gently on the floor.
"The only thing we forgot, Tom," Bairn said. "_Blood._"
Crimson still oozed slowly from Joe Wilding's cut wrists. There was a
smile on his dead lips. For it was a man named Joe who was the first to
reach the stars--and the roaring rockets had scattered his eternal life
across the star trails.