He pressed a button. Something went whump, then the ship groaned and shuddered while a great circular cloud of dust and vapour rolled across the concrete and concealed the safety barriers. The low groaning and trembling continued while he sat in silence, his full attention upon the instrument bank. The needles of twenty meters crawled to the right, quivered awhile, became still. That meant steady and equal pressure in the twenty stern tubes.

“Everything all right, Pilot?”

“Yes.”

“Take off at will.” A pause; followed by, “Lots of luck!”

“Thanks!”

He let the tubes blow for another half minute before gradually lie moved the tiny booster-lever towards him. Shuddering increased, the groan raised its pitch until it became a howl, the cabin windows misted over and the sky was obscured.

For a nerve-wracking second the vessel rocked on its tail-fins. Then it began to creep upward, a foot, a yard, ten yards. The howl was now a shriek. The chronically slow rate of climb suddenly changed as something seemed to give the vessel a hearty shove in the rear. Up it went, a hundred feet, a thousand, ten thousand. Through the clouds and into the deep of the night. The cabin windows were clear, the sky was full of stars and the Moon looked huge.

The loudspeaker said in faint, squeaky tones, “Nice work, Pilot.”

“All my work is nice,” 5etorted Leeming. “See you in the asylum.”

There was no answer to that. They knew that he’d become afflicted with an exaggerated sense of freedom referred to as take-off intoxication. Most pilots suffered from it as soon as a planet lay behind their tail and only the stars could be seen ahead. The symptoms consisted of sardonic comments. and abuse raining down from the sky.