The officials, civilian and military, stared up at the great white rocket with its space capsule blended into the nose far above. They were quiet, almost grim. The sun had almost reached them when a man in military uniform looked at his watch and spoke quietly. The officials all filed to waiting vehicles. The vehicles drove off toward the distant control building set like a pillbox on the flat surface of the desert.
At the launching pad itself nothing moved now. The area around the giant rocket and its gantry was unusually cleared. Nothing blocked a clear view of the rocket, pad, and giant gantry from all sides. Nothing and no one came near the great rocket with its capsule pointed up into the now bright sunny sky above the desert. All was silent in the growing heat.
Then the rocket began to smoke—clouds of white vapor rose as its oxygen-fueled engines began to fire.
The umbilical dropped. The gantry moved away.
Clouds of white vapor wreathed the slim white cylinder with its large spaceship capsule on the nose.
Majestically, incredibly slowly, the giant rocket began to lift.
Like some toy lifted straight up by the hand of an unseen giant, the rocket rose slowly into the air, reached a point above its gantry. It went twice as high, three times, gathered speed, began to tilt ever so slightly on its path to the stars.
The rocket never reached the stars.
Less than six hundred yards above the Earth the rocket suddenly seemed to lurch, to falter, to hesitate.
Like a silent pantomime in suspended time, the rocket seemed to stop in mid-air.
It tilted.
With a sudden lurch it tilted all the way over and fell onto its side.
Soundless, the giant rocket fell back to Earth. It struck on its side.
There was a mighty explosion. Fire and flame shot into the hot and sunny sky. Great clouds of smoke and vapor ascended into the air. The gantry toppled from the force of the mammoth explosion. The distant control buildings shook. Windows smashed. Vehicles parked in front of the buildings were hurled over.
The great rocket lay in a twisted heap of destroyed rubble, the cloud of smoke and vapor towering into the sky.
For a time nothing moved on the base.
Then men in asbestos suits, and other men in military uniforms, began to emerge from the buildings. They righted vehicles and checked to find ones still operable. When they had found vehicles that could be used, they climbed in and began to move out toward the wreckage of the rocket.
One of the vehicles suddenly stopped. A man in the uniform of a high-ranking officer in the United States Army pointed to his left. Everyone in the vehicle looked toward where he pointed.
They saw a cluster of low concrete buildings that bordered a series of low sand hills and a gully.
But it was not the buildings they stared at.
Beside one of the buildings there was a figure.
A strange, weird figure all in black.
The figure seemed to be staring toward the destroyed rocket. Even at the distance the occupants of the stopped vehicle could see that the figure wore a wide-brimmed black slouch hat.
Something glowed red in the sun from the figure. Even as they watched, the figure began to turn and float away—a shapeless figure in black that seemed to glide without feet or arms.
Two men jumped from the vehicle and raced back toward the main control building. The vehicle itself turned and drove as fast as it could toward the row of buildings where the figure had been. When they got there the figure was gone. They spread out to search the buildings and the hills and gully beyond. Those with weapons drew them. They found nothing. There was no trace of the strange black-shrouded figure.
In the control building the alarm was sent out.
For some fifteen minutes nothing more happened. The search of the hills and gully continued.
The entire security apparatus of the NASA Base was alerted. Still there was no report and no sign of the black figure.
Then a guard was found unconscious near the tall, electrified fence of the base. The guard could remember nothing but a sudden blackout. That, and a shape vanishing over the fence.
“Whoever he is, he’s out,” one of the military men said.
The Colonel who had first seen the figure looked up at the high, electric fence. “How? How did he get over that?”
The others all stared at the towering fence.
