fiercely to a wire-gauze cage in which lay a silver minnow wrapped in
match-sticks; and if the bees buzzed furiously and lifted it in a
straining, clumsy, and altogether unreasonable manner; and if the
appearance and the noise together were multiplied a good many thousands
of times--why--it would present a great similarity to the take-off of
the spaceship under Joe's command. Nothing like it could be graceful or
neatly controllable or even very speedy in the thick atmosphere near the
ground. But higher, it would be another matter.

It _was_ another matter. Once clear of the Shed, and with flat, sere
desert ahead to the very horizon, Joe threw on full power to the pushpot
motors. The clumsy-seeming aggregation of grotesque objects began to
climb. Ungainly it was, and clumsy it was, but it went upward at a rate
a jet-fighter might have trouble matching. It wobbled, and it swung
around and around, and it tipped crazily, the whole aggregation of jet
motors and cage and burden of spaceship as a unit. But it rose!

The ground dropped so swiftly that even the Shed seemed to shrivel like
a pricked balloon. The horizon retreated as if a carpet were hastily
unrolled by magic. The barometric pressure needles turned.

"Communications says our rate-of-climb is 4,000 feet a minute and going
up fast," Mike announced. "It's five.... We're at 17,000 feet ...
18,000. We should get some eastward velocity at 32,000 feet. Our height
is now 21,000 feet...."

There was no change in the feel of things inside the ship, of course.
Sealed against the vacuum of space, barometric pressure outside made no
difference. Height had no effect on the air inside the ship.