Takeoff (Sci-Fi Classic). Cyril M. Kornbluth

in his advertisement was satisfactory. If the proposition aroused Dr. Novak's interest, would he please wire collect and a telegraphed money order sufficient to cover round-trip expenses to Los Angeles would be forthcoming.

      One of the big, coast aircraft outfits? It couldn't be anything else, but why secrecy? The letter was an intriguing trap, with the promised money order for bait. Maybe they wouldn't want him after all, but there was nothing wrong with a free trip to Los Angeles to see what they were up to. That is, if they really sent the money.

      He wired J. Friml, collect, at the address on the letterhead:

       Interested your offer but appreciate further details if possible.

      The next morning a more-than-ample money order was slipped under his door, with the accompanying message:

       Full details forthcoming at interview; please call on us at your convenience wiring in advance. Our office open daily except Sunday nine five. J. Friml, Secretary Treasurer.

      Of what?

      Novak laughed at the way he was being openly hooked by curiosity and a small cash bribe, and phoned for an airline reservation.

      * * * * *

      He left his bag at the Los Angeles airport and showered in a pay booth. He had wired that he would appear that morning. Novak gave the address to a cabby and asked: "What part of town's that?"

      "Well," said the cabby, "I'll tell you. It's kind of an old-fashioned part of town. Nothing's wrong with it."

      "Old-fashioned" turned out to be a euphemism for "run-down." They stopped at a very dirty eight-storey corner office building with one elevator. The lobby was paved with cracked octagonal tile. The lobby directory of tenants was enormous. It listed upwards of two hundred tenant firms in the building, quadrupled and quintupled up in its fifty-odd offices. Under f Novak found J. Friml, Room 714.

      "Seven," he bleakly told the unshaved elevator man. Whatever was upstairs, it wasn't a big, coast plane factory.

      Room 712 stopped him dead in the corridor with the audacity of the lettering on its glass door. It claimed to house the Arlington National Cemetery Association, the Lakeside Realty Corporation, the Western Equitable Insurance Agency, the California Veterans League, Farm and Home Publications, and the Kut-Rite Metal Novelties Company in one small office.

      But at Room 714 his heart sank like a stone. The lettering said modestly: American Society for Space Flight.

      I might have known, he thought glumly. Southern California! He braced himself to enter. They would be crackpots, the lab would be somebody's garage, they would try to meet their pay roll by selling building lots on Jupiter ... but they were paying for his time this morning. He went in.

      "Dr. Novak?" said a young man. Nod. "I'm Friml. This is Mr. MacIlheny, president of our organization." MacIlheny was a rawboned middle-aged man with a determined look. Friml was sharp-faced, eye-glassed, very neat and cold.

      "I'm afraid you might think you were brought here under false pretences, Doctor," said MacIlheny, as if daring him to admit it.

      Friml said: "Sit down." And Novak did, and looked around. The place was clean and small with three good desks, a wall banked with good files—including big, shallow blue-print files—and no decorations.

      "I asked for research and development work," Novak said cautiously. "You were within your rights replying to my ad if you've got some for me."

      MacIlheny cracked his knuckles and said abruptly: "The anonymous offer was my idea. I was afraid you'd dismiss us as a joke. We don't get a very good press."

      "Suppose you tell me what you're all about." It was their money he was here on.

      "The A.S.F.S.F. is about twenty years old, if you count a predecessor society that was a little on the juvenile side. They 'experimented' with powder rockets and never got anywhere, of course. They just wanted to hear things go bang.

      "An older element got in later—engineers from the aircraft plants, science students from Cal Tech and all the other schools—and reorganized the Society. We had a tremendous boom, of course, after the war—the V-2's and the atom bomb. Membership shot up to five thousand around the country. It dropped in a couple of years to fifteen hundred or so, and that's where we stand now."

      Friml consulted a card: "One thousand, four hundred, and seventy-eight."

      "Thanks. I've been president for ten years, even though I'm not a technical man, just an insurance agent. But they keep re-electing me so I guess everybody's happy.

      "What we've been doing is research on paper. Haven't had the money for anything else until recently. Last January I went to Washington to see the A.E.C. about backing, but it was no dice. With the approval of the membership I went the rounds of the industrial firms looking for contributions. Some foresighted outfits came through very handsomely and we were able to go to work.

      "There was a big debate about whether we should proceed on a 'bits-and-pieces' basis or whether we should shoot the works on a full-scale steel mock-up of a moon ship. The mock-up won, and we've made very satisfactory progress since. We've rented a few acres in the desert south of Barstow and put up shops and——" He couldn't keep the pride out of his voice. He opened his desk drawer and passed Novak an eight-by-ten glossy print. "Here."

      He studied it carefully: a glamour photograph of a gleaming, massive, bomb-shaped thing standing on its tail in the desert with prefab huts in the background. It was six times taller than a man who stood beside it, leaning with a studied air against a delta-shaped fin. That was a lot of metal—a lot of metal, Novak thought with rising excitement. If the picture wasn't a fake, they had money and the thing made a little more sense.

      "Very impressive," he said, returning the picture. "What would my job be?"

      "Our engineer in charge, Mr. Clifton, is a remarkable man—you'll like him—but he doesn't know refractories. It seems to be all he doesn't know! And our plans include a ceramic exhaust throat liner and an internal steering vane. We have the shapes, theoretically calculated, but the material has to be developed and the pieces fabricated."

      "Internal steering vane. Like the graphite vanes in the various German bombardment rockets?"

      "Yes, with some refinements," MacIlheny said. "It's got to be that way, though I don't envy you the job of developing a material that will take the heat and mechanical shock. Side-steering rockets would be much simpler, wouldn't they? But the practical complications you run into—each separate steering jet means a separate electrical system, a separate fuel pump, perforating structural members and losing strength, adding weight without a corresponding thrust gain."

      "You said you weren't a technical man?" asked Novak.

      MacIlheny said impatiently: "Far from it. But I've been in this thing heart and soul for a long time and I've picked up some stuff." He hesitated. "Dr. Novak, do you have a thick hide?"

      "I suppose so."

      "You'll need it if you go to work for us—crackpots."

      Novak didn't say anything and MacIlheny handed him some press clippings:

      Local Men See Stars;

       Building Space Ship

      and

      Buck Rogers Hearts Beat

       Beneath Business Suits

      There were others.

      "We never claimed," said MacIlheny a little bitterly, "that the Prototype's going to take off for the Moon next week or ever. We down-pedal sensationalism; there are perfectly valid military and scientific reasons for space-ship research. We've tried to make it perfectly clear that she's a full-scale model for study purposes, but the damned papers don't care. I know it's scared some good men away from the society and I'd hate to tell you how much it's cut into my business, but my lawyer tells me I'd be a fool to sue." He looked at his watch. "I owed you that much information, Doctor. Now tell me frankly whether you're