"
Jones pointed there in the shadow of the crater-wall, and Babs moved to
the switch he indicated. She said absorbedly:
"Five, four, three, two, one--"
She threw the switch. There was a spout of lurid red flame.
The rocket vanished.
It vanished. It did not rise, visibly. It simply went away from where it
was, with all the abruptness of a light going out. There was a flurry of
the most brilliant imaginable carmine flame. That light remained. But
the rocket did not so much rise as disappear.
Cochrane jerked his head up. He was close to the line of the rocket's
ascent. He could see a trail of red sparks which stretched to
invisibility. It was an extraordinarily thin line. The separate flecks
of crimson light which comprised it were distant in space. They were so
far from each other that the signal-rocket was a complete failure as a
device making a streak of light that should be visible.
The muffled voice in the helmet-phones said blankly:
"_Hey! What'd you do to that rocket?_"
The others did not move. They seemed stunned. The vanishing of the
rocket was no way for a rocket to act. In all expectation, it should
have soared skyward with a reasonable velocity, and should have
accelerated rather more swiftly from the moon's surface than it would
have done from Earth.
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