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himed in, and Mike. They were all very close together, and they were not at all impressive. But it hit Joe very hard, this sudden knowledge that the others didn't really care. It was the first time it had occurred to him that Haney and Mike and the Chief would rather be left behind with him, as a gang, than go on to individual high achievement in a first landing on the Moon.
It felt good. It felt real good.
* * * * *
But that, and all other sources of satisfaction, was wiped out by news that came back from the Moonship a bare six hours later.
The Moonship was in trouble. The sequence and timing of its rocket blasts were worked out on Earth, and checked by visual and radar observation. The computations were done by electronic brains the Moonship could not possibly have carried. And everything worked out. The ship was on course and its firings were on schedule.
But then the unexpected happened. It was an error which no machine could ever have predicted, for which statistics and computations could never have compensated. It was a human error. At the signal for the final acceleration blast, the pilot of the Moonship had fired the wrong set of rockets.
Inexperience, stupidity, negligence, excitement--the reason didn't matter. After years of planning and working and dreaming, one human finger had made a mistake. And the mistake was fatal!
When the mistake was realized, they'd had sense enough to cut loose the still-firing rockets. But the damage had been done. The ship was still plunging on. It would reach the Moon. But it wouldn't land in Aristarchus crater as planned. It would crash. If every rocket remaining mounted on the hull were to be fired at the best possible instant, the Moonship would hit near Copernicus, and it would land with a terminal velocity of 800 feet per second--540 miles an hour.
It could even be calculated that when the Moonship landed, the explosion oug