Part 2

"No one is being fired, Bronsen. You've been a good leader, in my opinion, as well as a friend, but I do the firing around here." Bronsen glowered and reddened under the unexpected rebuttal but said nothing. "You are young yet," Reed continued. "You've got brains, imagination, leadership and ability. Wouldn't be where you are if you didn't. There's just one thing lacking, and Mars is the one that has it. Experience. And with that experience goes well-used caution. You've got the go-ahead, but he has the wisdom. Temperance and drive. That's Mars and you. You've got each other. Why don't you just learn how to work with and use each other?"

Bronsen remained in baleful silence. Mars glared at the younger man and sneered contemptuously.

"That young pup never will know what the word caution means. He's so eager to get his name up...."

Bronsen rose to his feet, his grey eyes flashing in hate. Reed slammed his cigar into the ashtray and threw up his hands.

"That's it! It's the last straw! I'm through playing referee for two snarling dogs. The project is closed, finished! If and when somebody can come up with a decent reason why it should be opened again, we'll consider it then. Until that time, consider the project non-existent and return to your regular jobs. And cut out the bickering and fighting--or you are both fired!"

He pulled out a fresh cigar, bit into it in disgust and dismissed the meeting by returning to the papers on his desk. Bronsen felt the anger boiling over within him and suppressed the desire to hand in his resignation on the spot. He looked for Mars and saw his thin frame out the door. He wearily passed a hand over his eyes and left the room.

* * * * *

Mars scowled in annoyance at Vern's whistling and silently wished the young assistant would get out of the room and let him brood in peace. He chewed the end of his pencil methodically and savagely, his features blushing pink with anger as he remembered the tirade of words exchanged with Bronsen a week ago. "Stupid, insolent, day-dreaming pup," he snarled half aloud.

Vern stopped in mid-step, eyeing him in surprise. "Huh?" he said. "Did you say something to me?"

Mars grimaced. "No. I was just talking to myself."

Vern grinned widely. "That's good. I'd sure hate to have anybody think those words were a description of me. Good old Vern, that's me. Combination office boy, slave, master of ceremonies and soothing balm for ruffled egos. That's my description of me. Master of all trades, Jack of none. Of course, I can't say what others think."

"You don't make much sense," Mars growled thickly, biting again into the pencil.

"Neither do you," Vern countered quickly. "But then again, what man does to a struggling young genius like myself?"

"Oh dry up," came the reply. "And take that drawing table into the new drafter's room."

"Oh, sure. You only need about three men to move that monster but...." He left the sentence unfinished and dragged the table from the wall. Mars smiled sympathetically, shook his head, and pointed to his bad leg when Vern indicated he could use some help.

"Such is the life of a slave," the younger man sighed and hoisting the clumsy article, headed for the door.

"Look out!" Mars suddenly yelled and jumped forward to catch a falling rocket model as the table edge glanced off it. Vern yelped in surprise, jolted backward and fell against the wall, the heavy board crashing down on his foot.

"My God, Vern. Your foot...."

The other grinned, withdrew his foot from beneath the board and pulled down his sock. "Not this baby," he flipped. "I've got cast-iron insurance. It's plastic from the ankle down, see?"

Mars stared in shock at the artificial limb and could think of nothing very brilliant to say.

"Got it in cadet school," Vern explained and then answered the question in Mars' eyes. "I was training to be a space pilot myself. Some fellows and I decided to celebrate our graduation, got drunk and ended up in a wreck. They put me together real good, even taught me how to use the foot so no one would ever know it wasn't the real thing. It washed me out as far as the Space Corps was concerned though. I drowned my sorrows in alcohol for a couple weeks, told myself I was going to hell with myself and then decided to put what I did know to work. That's how I joined up with this outfit. Now I sit back and design the rockets my classmates have to worry about flying.... Enough of this chatter ... got to get busy. See you."

Mars turned thoughtfully back to his desk. "That kid's got only one foot," he mused soberly. He looked down at his own injured leg and savagely kicked it against the wall.

"Your leg. Your poor, crippled leg ... what a fine crutch it has been," he bitterly reproached himself. "It proves you were one of the first in space, and you won't let people forget it. You're a jealous old man. You're afraid to have someone else do what you no longer can do. You want things to stay the way they were when you got hurt, so no one else can live your dream. If time stood still, there would be no trips to new planets, no new discoveries and Mars Kenton would still be the hero of his dream."

He tried to revolt, to denounce the self-accusations. "What about Bronsen Corbow?" he asked. "Does that explain why I've fought him so hard?"

His slowly growing conscience laughed at him. "But it does. Bronsen ignores your crutch, your proof that the old way worked the best. He's concerned with the future, the future you never want to come." He buried his grey-thatched head in his hands and felt the weariness in his bones. His thoughts returned to the unsuccessful launching.

"But it was a crazy idea," he argued weakly. "It would never have worked anyway." It was a poor defense, one that faltered and failed when he finally admitted the truth: He was a jealous, bitter man, fighting anonymity.

Once more he found himself mulling over the rocket launching, probing for support to his initial decision that it wouldn't work, searching for some point to substantiate his claim. But was he really right in that decision? Had he let his hate-ridden heart rule his reasoning mind? He waded back to the beginning of Bronsen's theory. Bullets ... the test models were the bullets. Shells ... the huge rocket itself was a shell compared to the bullets. Shells have an ojive, bourrelet, rotating band, but bullets are different. How? He stopped. He reviewed the parts in his mind, then suddenly lurched to the files and pulled out the rocket plans. He compared the ship's construction bit by bit with a shell, his mind working quickly, accurately, with a new enthusiasm....

Hours later he leaned back from his drawing table and his voice rumbled out into the quiet reaches of the empty room.

"Men will fly to the stars like a bullet," he prophesized. "Because I know why the rocket crashed."

It was dark but the light in Bronsen's office was still on. Mars pulled himself erect and turned toward Bronsen's room, then faltered. "I could just forget it," he mused. "Then the idea would be filed away. But someday...." He could not do it. The excitement was beginning to mount inside of him, pushing him forward. He took a deep breath and with a decisive shrug drew back his shoulders, standing straighter and taller than he had in fifteen long years. He strode from the room and headed down the hall.

Bronsen heard the door behind him open and close softly. He glanced up and saw who it was and returned, scowling, to his work. When Mars did not leave, he looked up again, curiosity stirring within him at the expression in the older man's face.

"Well?"

It wasn't really a question, nor an inflection denoting that he wanted to hear what Mars had to say. It was more of a compromise between physically throwing him out and grudgingly listening to what he had to say.

"I've got it, I know what happened to the ship," Mars announced quietly. "I knew it when I saw it come out of the launcher but I couldn't explain it." Bronsen returned to his papers with a snort and Mars pleaded, "I'm sorry about all those things I said. For God's sake. Listen to me!"

The tortured pleading in the man's voice made Bronsen put down the papers in surprise.

"The models worked," Mars plunged ahead. "Sure they did. But because they were small ... so much smaller than the real ship ... there was no trouble and they worked perfectly. The trouble reveals itself only as the projectile gets larger. The nose, Bronsen. A nose band. Don't you see what I'm trying to say?"

The younger man stared in silence at the pleading ex-space pilot, before the words began to penetrate his whirling thoughts. He forgot the crash of the ship; he forgot the feel of hard teeth splitting the skin across his knuckles; he forgot the animosity that existed between them. His mind could focus on nothing but what Mars was trying to say.

"The nose of the ship is long. The only guides were on the tail at the rotating band. Think of shells. Bourrelets. The _big_ shells have bourrelets ... bands around the nose that dig into the grooves and steady the front of the shell. The ship ... its front began trembling because there was nothing to guide the nose in a steady path. The more velocity the rocket had, the worse the trembling became until it threw the whole ship out of control. Don't you see? That's all that was wrong with it! It would have been perfect if it had had guide wings on the bourrelet. The guide pieces could be withdrawn when the ship is launched ... but they would have to be there in order to _get_ it launched. I'm right, you know I am! That's your answer. That was the only part wrong with it!"

The enormity of Mars' words left Bronsen speechless. He looked at the suddenly joyous man before him and saw the old bitterness replaced by the rapture of his discovery. Yes, that was what had been wrong. It was the solution ... the one tiny piece that made the puzzle into an understandable picture. He paused a moment, as if trying to make a great decision, then grabbed the older man by the arm.

"Come on! Let's get it down on paper!"

* * * * *

The rocket lay huddled in the belly of the launching tower, her needle-like body quiet, waiting, her control panels flashing signals and instructions to her masters, her circuits buzzing with the tenseness of the seconds before blast off. The steady counting drummed through her wires, tripped relays, and her masters flipped the switches, pressed the buttons and pulled the levers that readied her for her maiden flight. Eight seconds, seven seconds. Six seconds, five, four. The switch was jerked upward and she felt the power beginning to move in her vitals.

_Three, two, one!_

The driver button slammed home, her rockets roared out in ferocious birth, snarling, roaring, growing with each passing second. She settled back upon her rockets as if in protest at their screaming growth, then was forced to give ground and the ship moved up the shaft. Her rotating band and bourrelet fins dug deep into the spiraling grooves, her body began to turn ... slowly, so slowly. Then she suddenly leaped forward, her hull whirling upward; the shaft raced by in dizzy swiftness, her rockets roared louder and she raised her spinning body further. She was free! Her body hurtled up and up, her needle nose straight and true, her velocity leaping forward....

"Off rockets! Set up emergency interstellar drive for instant activation if needed. Signal in scanning screens. Activate force field and take a breather, boys. We're on our way and the blast off was perfect."

The pilot's mechanical sounding voice droned through the speaker in the moon-bound observation room and simultaneously the air was ruffled by the deep exhale of relief, the rustle of slowly relaxing bodies strung tight with the hopeful tenseness of the blast off.

Mars gazed up at the disappearing silver streak, his blue eyes intent, glistening with pride and excitement. "I never thought I'd see the day," he breathed. "Look at her, she's going straight and true. She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw."

Bronsen's face relaxed into a happy grin as the gleaming rocket hurtled up out of sight. He glanced at Mars and gave him a companionable smile.

"Even more beautiful than Mars that day? Or the old rockets?"

Mars looked slightly embarrassed and shuffled his legs into a more comfortable position. "Aw hell," he said awkwardly. "Can't you forget an old fool's ramblings? We just watched a rocket launched that's going to open up a whole new era in space travel. It was a perfect blast off and we know it'll be a perfect trip and landing."

Bronsen thoughtfully nodded his head, his grey eyes dancing.

"Tell you what," Mars continued. "I've got a bottle that I've been saving for about fifteen years. Got it when we got back from that first trip and never opened it."

Bronsen grinned and gave the old man's thin shoulder a hearty slap.

"Let's get that drink!"