“Nonsense. Go home and sleep it off.”

“Look"—Hallmyer pointed to the sheets of paper with a shaky hand—"no matter how you work the feed and mixing system you can’t get one hundred percent efficiency in the mixing and discharge.”

“That’s what makes it a fifty-fifty chance,” Crane said. “So what’s bothering you?”

“The catalyst that will escape through the rocket tubes. Do you realize what it’ll do if a drop hits the Earth? It’ll start a chain of iron disintegrations that’ll envelope the globe. It’ll reach out to every iron atom—and there’s iron everywhere. There won’t be any Earth left for you to return to—”

“Listen,” Crane said wearily, “we’ve been through all this before.”

He took Hallmyer to the base of-the rocket cradle. Beneath the iron framework was a two-hundred-foot pit, fifty feet wide and lined with firebrick.

“That’s for the initial discharge flames. If any of the catalyst goes through, it’ll be trapped in this pit and taken care of by the secondary reactions. Satisfied now?”

“But while you’re in flight,” Hallmyer persisted, “you’ll be endangering the Earth until you’re beyond Roche’s limit. Every drop of non-activated catalyst will eventually sink back to the ground and—”

“For the very last time,” Crane said grimly, “the flame of the rocket discharge takes care of that. It will envelop any escaped particles and destroy them. Now get out. I’ve got work to do.”

As he pushed him to the door, Hallmyer screamed and waved his arms. “I won’t let you do it!” he repeated over and over. “I’ll find some way to stop you. I won’t let you do it—”

Work? No, it was sheer intoxication to labor over the ship. It had the fine beauty of a well-made thing. The beauty of polished armor, of a balanced swept-hilt rapier, of a pair of matched guns. There was no thought of danger and death in Crane’s mind as he wiped his hands with waste after the last touches were finished.