a blue funk while they are worrying about things to be done. Joe heard
the small gyro motors as their speed went up. A hum and a whine and then
a shrill whistle which went up in pitch until it wasn't anything at all.
He frowned anxiously and said to Haney, "I'm taking over the pushpots."

Haney nodded. Joe took the over-all control. The roar of engines outside
grew loud on the right-hand side, and died down. It grew thunderous to
the left, and dwindled. The ones ahead pushed. Then the ones behind. Joe
nodded and wet his lips. He said: "Here we go."

There was no more ceremony than that. The noise of the jet motors
outside rose to a thunderous volume which came even through the little
ship's insulated hull. Then it grew louder, and louder still, and Joe
stirred the controls by ever so tiny a movement.

Suddenly the ship did not feel solid. It stirred a little. Joe held his
breath and cracked the over-all control of the pushpots' speed a tiny
trace further. The ship wobbled a little. Out the quartz-glass windows,
the great door seemed to descend. In reality the clustered pushpots and
the launching cage rose some thirty feet from the Shed floor and hovered
there uncertainly. Joe shifted the lever that governed the vanes in the
jet motor blasts. Ship and cage and pushpots, all together, wavered
toward the doorway. They passed out of it, rocking a little and pitching
a little and wallowing a little. As a flying device, the combination was
a howling tumult and a horror. It was an aviation designer's nightmare.
It was a bad dream by any standard.

But it wasn't meant as a way to fly from one place to another on Earth.
It was the first booster stage of a three-stage rocket aimed at outer
space. It looked rather like--well--if a swarm of bumblebees clung