Free R is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury Page B

only a billion billion tons of space-fire would whisper, unheard, in space. Popped like strawberries in a furnace, their thoughts would linger on the scorched air a long breath after their bodies were charred roast and fluorescent gas.
        "There!" He stabbed the auxiliary pump with a screw driver. "So!" He shuddered. The complete annihilation of it. He clamped his eyes tight, teeth tight. Lord, he thought, we're used to more leisurely dyings, measured in minutes and hours. Even twenty seconds now would be a slow death compared to this hungry idiot thing waiting to eat us!
        "Captain, do we pull out or stay?"
        "Get the Cup ready. Take over, finish this. Now!"
        He turned and put his hand to the working mechanism of the huge Cup; shoved his fingers into the robot Glove. A twitch of his hand here moved a gigantic hand, with gigantic metal fingers, from the bowels of the ship. Now, now, the great metal hand slid out holding the huge Copa de Oro , breathless, into the chemical furnace, the bodiless body and the fleshless flesh of the sun.
        A million years ago, thought the captain, quickly, quickly, as he moved the hand and the Cup, a million years ago a naked man on a lonely northern trail saw lightning strike a tree. And while his clan fled, with bare hands he plucked a limb of fire, broiling the flesh of his fingers, to carry it, running in triumph, shielding it from the rain with his body, to his cave, where he shrieked out a laugh and tossed it full on a mound of leaves and gave his people summer. And the tribe crept at last, trembling, near the fire, and they put out their flinching hands and felt the new season in their cave, this small yellow spot of changing weather, and they, too, at last, nervously, smiled.  And the gift of fire was theirs.
        "Captain!"
        It took all of four seconds for the huge hand to push the empty Cup to the fire. So here we are again, today, on another trail, he thought, reaching for a cup of precious gas and vacuum, a handful of different fire with which to run back up cold space, lighting our way, and take to Earth a gift of fire that might burn forever. Why?
        He knew the answer before the question.
        Because the atoms we work with our hands, on Earth, are pitiful; the atomic bomb is pitiful and small and our knowledge is pitiful and small, and only the sun really knows what we want to know, and only the sun has the secret. And besides, it's grand, it's a chance, it's a great thing coming here, playing tag, hitting and running. There is no reason, really, except the pride and vanity of little insect men hoping to sting the lion and escape the maw. Look! See! We'll cry we did it! And here is our cup of energy, fire, vibration, call it what you will, that may well power our cities and sail our ships and light our libraries and tan our children and bake our daily breads and simmer the knowledge of our universe for us for a thousand years until it is well done. Here, from this cup, all good men of science and religion: drink! Warm yourselves against the night of ignorance, the long snows of superstition, the cold winds of disbelief, and from the great fear of darkness in each man. So: we stretch out our hand with the beggar's cup . . .
        "Ah."
        The Cup dipped into the sun. It scooped up a bit of the flesh of God, the blood of the universe, the Hazing thought, the blinding philosophy that set out and mothered a galaxy, that idled and swept planets in their fields and summoned or laid to rest lives and livelihoods.
        "What'll happen when we pull it inside? That extra heat now, at this time, Captain?"
        "Only the good Lord knows. . . ."
        "Now, slow," whispered the captain.
        "Auxiliary pump all repaired, sir."
        "Start it!"
        The pump leaped on.
        "Close the lid of the Cup and inside now, slow, slow." The beautiful hand outside the ship trembled, a tremendous image of his own