isn't a weapon project?" Pitov asked.

"No, now that you mention it. I don't. You know, I don't believe I've
had to show an identity card the whole time I've been here."

"I don't believe I have an identity card," Pitov said. "Think of that."

The lights blazed everywhere around them, but mostly about the rocket
that towered above everything else, so thick that it seemed squat. The
gantry-cranes had been hauled away, now, and it stood alone, but it was
still wreathed in thick electric cables. They were pouring enough
current into that thing to light half the street-lights in Buenos Aires;
when the cables were blown free by separation charges at the blastoff,
the generators powered by the rocket-engines had better be able to take
over, because if the magnetic field collapsed and that fifty-kilo chunk
of negative-proton matter came in contact with natural positive-proton
matter, an old-fashioned H-bomb would be a firecracker to what would
happen. Just one hundred kilos of pure, two-hundred proof MC2.

The driver took them around the rocket, dodging assorted trucks and
mobile machinery that were being hurried out of the way. The countdown
was just beyond two hours five minutes. The jeep stopped at the edge of
a crowd around three more trucks, and Doctor Eugenio Galvez, the
director of the Institute, left the crowd and approached at an awkward
half-run as they got down.

"Is everything checked, gentlemen?" he wanted to know.

"It was this afternoon at 1730," Pitov told him. "And nobody's been
burning my telephone to report anything different. Are the balloons and