of the firm was still faintly visible: Lake and Gorman—Castings and Extrusions.

It wasn't difficult for Joshua to conjure up Lee Gorman's craggy, hostile face. Nor his words. Lee had a voice like gravel being ground to powder. A voice to remember....

"Of course I won't go along with this damn-fool idea of yours! Turn a perfectly sound, entrenched business into a blue-sky factory? You've gone crazy, Joshua."

"But it's feasible, Lee! Entirely feasible. All we need is a little imagination. I've investigated. I've hired the best brains in the world. I have all the necessary preliminary data. A rocket can be built that will take three men to the Moon and bring them back!"

"That's idiocy, Joshua!"

"Don't you believe it can be done?"

"I don't care whether it can be done or not!"

"But open your eyes, man! This is an age of development. An era of movement. We're on the threshold of the big tomorrow, and we can't let it pass us by! We can't let the honor and the glory go to others while we sit on our hands and hoot from the gallery! Come alive, Lee! The world is passing us!"

"I don't want honor and glory. All I want is a sound going business. Suppose we could put a rocket on the Moon and bring it back? Where would that leave us? Broke and famous. And laughed at probably in the bargain."

"Nothing of the kind. We could write our own ticket. We'd control the gateway to the greatest mineral deposits within reach of Man! Think of it, Lee. Use your imagination."

"I won't go along with you, Joshua. That's all there is to it."

More of the same; days of it, and finally: "You can have the customers then, Lee. I'll keep the plant—the physical properties."

"But that's not fair."

"Perhaps not, but it's legal."

"How can I service them—from my basement?"

"I offered you an alternative only a fool would have turned down—"

"That only a fool would accept!"

"—so now I'm going ahead and nothing can stop me. I've got a dream, man—a dream of a big tomorrow. I'm going to make that dream come true."

"Name it right, Joshua. You've got an obsession."

The end of Lake and Gorman....

Joshua turned from the window, then paused and looked again into the sky. The Moon was up, a round, white will-o'-the-wisp in the clear blue afternoon sky. He stared at it and the old feeling of affinity swept over him, stronger than ever. The Moon was, for him, both a goal and a tonic. Sight of its illusive form could always sweep away his doubts; straighten his shoulders.

The intercom buzzed. Joshua went over and snapped it. "Yes?"

"Mr. Coving to see you, sir."

"Send him in."

Rayburn Coving was probably the best rocket-fuel man in the world. He had a little of his sandy hair left, not much, and his forehead was permanently creased from frowning. "I'm afraid that new benzoic derivative is a failure, Chief. It piles up corrosion in the tubes too fast. They'd be clogged halfway through the trip."

One hundred and twenty thousand dollars up the spout. Joshua sighed. "Well, I suppose the chance of success was worth it. The added power in relatively smaller space would have solved so many other problems."

"I'm sorry it failed."

Joshua smiled. "To paraphrase a certain American inventor—we're finding any number of ways you can't go to the Moon. What now, Coving?"

"Back to the old method—and the other problems. None of them are insurmountable, though. A little more time—"

"Yes—a little more time." Joshua grimaced inwardly. He was talking to Coving as though they had years—not as though their time had run out. He was even in debt for Coving's labor; overdrawn on it without enough money to pay.

The moment of weakness—of deep-down weariness—passed. Joshua Lake stiffened as he had stiffened so many times before. As he had stiffened when Zornoff's alloys had flunked out and the first trip to the bank had been made necessary. The first trip