Part 13

Hathaway said enviously:

"He'll be the first man on Mars, at that! But his air won't last all the way. He'll coast in and crash and never know it. But he'll be the first man on Mars!"

"Yes," said Randy wryly, "he'll have that.... Let's get these last rockets off and land at a respectful distance behind him."

And they did.

Of course, as everyone knows, the First Martian Expedition was a great success. Of the six men who left on it, five came back. They had maps and photographs and petrological samples, and a complete and surprisingly reasonable explanation of the canals and oases about which astronomers had argued for the best part of a century. They even brought back a sluggish, naked, squirming creature which initiated an entirely new line of biological research.

McCauley began a battle behind closed doors, and Randy helped him, and in time a curious error in the public records appeared. It is officially stated in all the books that one Joe Fallon was the first man to land on Mars, though the first records of the Expedition gave his name as Andrew--at least Fallon the crewman was not named Joe. There is a strange lethargy in official quarters. Nobody bothers to correct the records.

"Of course," said McCauley to Randy, "he stole our watches, but he was a pretty decent character at that, considering. He'd have no part in taking your lives."

"What was he sentenced for?" asked Randy suddenly.

"First-degree murder," said McCauley shortly. "I was curious too. I asked." Then he said, "They're talking about trying to make Jupiter, Randy. It seems to me that if we try, we can get to go on that job. What do you say?"

Randy grinned. He put out his hand and they shook on it.

* * * * *

(When Ed McCauley was a very young officer--in fact a new-made first lieutenant, space travel was only for robots. Nobody'd ever ridden out of the atmosphere in a rocket, and nobody'd ever piloted a ship into orbital flight and landed it again; there wasn't a Space Platform, and the moon bases hadn't been built. There was constant danger from cosmic rays and flare particles, and nobody dreamed of trying to reach either Venus or Mars.

By the time McCauley was a colonel, all those things had been done. But oddly enough, it didn't seem that the job was finished. The more that was done, the more remained to be done. And McCauley found that things never got any more settled down. There was Venus to be explored, right next door, and Mercury just beyond that. And Titan looked promising, and of course there were the asteroids, of which one or two urgently required examination. And even when there were settlements on Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, there were rumors of a planet beyond Pluto.... And after that, the stars.

There'd never be any end to the journeyings of men into space.)

* * * * *

TODAY: SATELLITES

TOMORROW: THE OUTER GALAXIES

MEN INTO SPACE is the thrilling story of man's gradual conquest of outer space. Starting with the rockets of today, the story moves on to trace the development of the Space Platform and spaceships. It concludes with the first successful attempts to land on the Moon ... Mars ... and points beyond....

The entire story is seen through the eyes of young Ed McCauley, whose adventures in outer space will excite you with the sheer wonder of man's daring in the Space Age.

MEN INTO SPACE is based on the popular television series starring William Lundigan.