True, the piloting radar had kept them in touch by radio, in a manner of speaking, during the early part of the journey, but they were now beyond the range of the type of equipment used for piloting. It bore little resemblance to the giant radars used to bounce signals against the moon. The quartz windows through which it operated would have been quite inadequate for the large antenna used to fling power from the earth to the moon.

Art got busy at once, while stating that he thought the chances of picking up anything were slim. "It would have to be beamed tight as a, as a, well—tight. And why would anybody be beaming stuff out this way?"

"At us, of course," Ross offered.

"They can't find us. Radar won't pick up anything as small as this ship at this distance—too little mirror cross section." Art spoke authoritatively. "Not the radars they've got so far. Maybe some day, if—hey!"

"What have you got?"

"Keep quiet!" Art stared ahead with that look of painful, unseeing concentration found only under a pair of earphones. He twiddled his dials carefully, then fumbled for pencil and paper. Writing, he found, was difficult without gravity to steady himself and his hand. But he scribbled.

"Get a load of this," he whispered a few minutes later. He read:

RADIO PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO

RADIO PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO

RADIO PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO

DOCTOR DONALD CARGRAVES ARTHUR MUELLER

MAURICE ABRAMS ROSS JENKINS GREETINGS YOUR

FLIGHT FOLLOWED UNTIL OH ONE ONE THREE

GREENWICH TIME SEPTEMBER TWENTYFIFTH

CONTACT LOST WILL CONTINUE TO CALL YOU ON

THIS BEAM AND FREQUENCY FOLLOWING PROB-

ABLE TRAJECTORY GOOD LUCK TO YOU RADIO

PARIS CALLING ROCKET SHIP GALILEO RADIO

PARIS-

"And then they repeat. It's a recording." His voice was shaky.

"Gosh!" Ross had no other comment.

"Well, boys, it looks like we're celebrities." Cargraves tried to make his words sound casual. Then he found that he was holding a piece of his pipe in each hand; he had broken it in two without knowing it. Shrugging, he let the pieces float away from him.

"But how did they find us?" persisted Art.

"The message shows it," Morrie pointed out. "See that time? That's the time we went into free fall. They followed the jet."

"How? By telescope?"

"More likely," Cargraves put in, "by anti-rocket radiation tracer."

"Huh? But the UN patrol are the only ones with that sort of gear."

Cargraves permitted himself a grin. "And why shouldn't the UN be interested in us? See here, kid—can you squirt anything back at them?"

"I'll sure try!"

Chapter 11 - ONE ATOM WAR TOO MANY?

ART GOT BUSY AT HIS TASK, but nothing came back which would tell him whether or not his attempts had been successful. The recording continued to come in whenever he listened for it, between attempts to send, for the next three and a half hours. Then it faded out—they were off the beam.

Nevertheless, it was the longest direct communication of record in human history.

The Galileo continued her climb up from the earth, toward that invisible boundary where the earth ceased to claim title and the lesser mass of the moon took charge. Up and up, out and farther out, rising in free flight, slowing from the still effective tug of the earth but still carried on by the speed she had attained under the drive of the jet, until at last the Galileo slipped quietly over the border and was in the moon's back yard. From there on she accelerated slowly as she fell toward the silvery satellite.

They ate and slept and ate again. They stared at the receding earth. And they slept again.

While they slept, Joe the Robot stirred, consulted his cam, decided that he had had enough of this weightlessness, and started the jet. But first he straightened out the ship so that the jet faced toward the moon, breaking their fall, while the port stared back at earth.

The noise of the jet woke them up. Cargraves had had them strap themselves down in anticipation of weight. They unstrapped and climbed up to the control station. "Where's the moon?" demanded Art.

"Under us, of course," Morrie informed him.

"Better try for it with radar, Morrie," Cargraves directed.

"Cheek!" Morrie switched on the juice, waited for it to warm, then adjusted it. The moon showed as a large vague mass on one side of the scope. "About fifteen thousand miles," he declared. "We'd better do some checking, Skipper."

They were busy for more than an hour, taking sights, taking readings, and computing. The bearing and distance of the moon, in relation to the ship, were available by radar. Direct star sights out the port established the direction of drive of the ship. Successive radar readings established the course and speed of the ship for comparison with the courses and speeds as given by the automatic instruments showing on the board. All these factors had to be taken into consideration in computing a check on the management of Joe the Robot.

Minor errors were found and the corrections were fed to the automatic pilot. Joe accepted the changes in his orders without comment.

While Morrie and Cargraves did this, Art and Ross were preparing the best meal they could throw together. It was a relief to have weight under their feet and it was a decided relief to their stomachs. Those organs had become adjusted to free fall, but hardly reconciled. Back on firm footing they hollered for solid food.

The meal was over and Cargraves was thinking sadly of his ruined pipe, when the control alarm sounded. Joe the Robot had completed his orders, his cam had run out, he called for relief.

They all scrambled up to the control station. The moon, blindingly white and incredibly huge was shouldering its way into one side of the port. They were so close to it now that their progress was visible, if one looked closely, by sighting across the frame of the port at some fixed object, a crater or a mountain range.

"Whee!" Art yelled.

"Kinda knocks your eyes out, doesn't it?" Ross said, gazing in open wonder.

"It does," agreed Cargraves. "But we've got work to do. Get back and strap yourselves down and stand by for maneuvering."

While he complied, he strapped himself into his chair and then flipped a switch which ordered Joe to go to sleep; he was in direct, manual command of the rocket. With Morrie to coach him by instrument, he put the ship through a jockeying series of changes, gentle on the whole and involving only minor changes in course at any one time, but all intended to bring the ship from the flat conoid trajectory it had been following into a circular orbit around the moon.

"How'm I doin'?" he demanded, a long time later.

"Right in the groove," Morrie assured him, after a short delay.

"Sure enough of it for me to go automatic and swing ship?"

"Let me track her a few more minutes." Presently Morrie assured him as requested. They had already gone into free flight just before Cargraves asked for a check. He now called out to Art and Ross that they could unstrap. He then started the ship to swinging so that the port faced toward the moon and switched on a combination which told Joe that he must get back to work; it was now his business to watch the altitude by radar and to see to it that altitude and speed remained constant.

Art was up at the port, with his camera, by the time he and Morrie had unstrapped.

"Goshawmighty," exclaimed Art, "this is something!" He unlimbered his equipment and began snappihg frantically, until Ross pointed out that his lens cover was still on. Then he steadied down.

Ross floated face down and stared out at the desolation. They were speeding silently along, only two hundred miles above the ground, and they were approaching the sunrise line of light and darkness. The shadows were long on the barren wastes below them, the mountain peaks and the great gaping craters more horrendous on that account. "It's scary," Ross decided. "I'm not sure I like it."