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space tug by murray leinster chapter 1 to the world at large, of course, it was justanother day. a different sort entirely at different places on the great, round, rollingearth, but nothing out of the ordinary. it was tuesday on one side of the date line andmonday on the other. it was so-and-so's wedding

pro fit professional portable spinning dance pole, anniversary and so-and-so's birthday and anotherso-and-so would get out of jail today. it was warm, it was cool, it was fair, it wascloudy. one looked forward to the future with confidence, with hope, with uneasiness orwith terror according to one's temperament and one's geographical location and past history.to most of the human race this was nothing

whatever but just another day. but to joe kenmore it was a most particularday indeed. here, it was the gray hour just before sunrise and already there were hintsof reddish colorings in the sky. it was chilly, and somehow the world seemed still and breathless.to joe, the feeling of tensity marked this morning off from all the other mornings ofhis experience. he got up and began to dress, in major holt'squarters back of that giant steel half-globe called the shed, near the town of bootstrap.he felt queer because he felt so much as usual. by all the rules, he should have experienceda splendid, noble resolution and a fiery exaltation, and perhaps even an admirable sensation ofhumility and unworthiness to accomplish what

was expected of him today. and, deep enoughinside, he felt suitable emotion. but it happened that he couldn't take time to feel thingsadequately today. he was much more aware that he wanted somecoffee rather badly, and that he hoped everything would go all right. he looked out of the windowsat empty, dreary desert under the dawn sky. today was the day he'd be leaving on a ratherimportant journey. he hoped that haney and the chief and mike weren't nervous. he alsohoped that nobody had gotten at the fuel for the pushpots, and that the slide-rule crewthat had calculated everything hadn't made any mistakes. he was also bothered about thesteering-rocket fuel, and he was uncomfortable about the business of releasing the spaceshipfrom the launching cage. there was, too, cause

for worry in the take-off rockets—if thetube linings had shrunk there would be some rather gruesome consequences—and there couldalways be last-minute orders from washington to delay or even cancel everything. in short, his mind was full of strictly practicaldetails. he didn't have time to feel noble aspirations or sensations of high destiny.he had a very tricky and exacting job ahead of him. the sky was growing lighter outside. starsfaded in a paling blue and the desert showed faint colorings. he tied his necktie. a deep-tonedkeening set up off to the southward, over the sere and dreary landscape. it was a farawaynoise, something like the lament of a mountain-sized

calf bleating for its mother. joe took a deepbreath. he looked, but saw nothing. the noise, though, told him that there'd been no cancellationof orders so far. he mentally uncrossed one pair of fingers. he couldn't possibly crossfingers against all foreseeable disasters. there weren't enough fingers—or toes either.but it was good that so far the schedule held. he went downstairs. major holt was pacingup and down the living room of his quarters. electric lights burned, but already the windowswere brightening. joe straightened up and tried to look casual. strictly speaking, majorholt was a family friend who happened also to be security officer here, in charge ofprotecting what went on in the giant construction shed. he'd had a sufficiently difficult timeof it in the past, and the difficulties might

keep on in the future. he was also the rankingofficer here and consequently the immediate boss of joe's enterprise. today's affair wasstill highly precarious. the whole thing was controversial and uncertain and might spoilthe career of somebody with stars on his collar if it should fail. so nobody in the high brasswanted the responsibility. if everything went well, somebody suitable would take the creditand the bows. meanwhile major holt was boss by default. he looked sharply at joe. "morning." "good morning, sir," said joe. major holt'sdaughter sally had a sort of understanding with joe, but the major hadn't the knack ofcordiality, and nobody felt too much at ease

with him. besides, joe was wearing a uniformfor the first time this morning. there were only eight such uniforms in the world, sofar. it was black whipcord, with an eisenhower jacket, narrow silver braid on the collarand cuffs, and a silver rocket for a badge where a plane pilot wears his wings. it wasstrictly practical. against accidental catchings in machinery, the trousers were narrow andtucked into ten-inch soft leather boots, and the wide leather belt had flat loops for theattachment of special equipment. its width was a brace against the strains of acceleration.sally had had much to do with its design. but it hadn't yet been decided by the pentagonwhether the space exploration project would be taken over by the army or the navy or theair corps, so joe wore no insignia of rank.

technically he was still a civilian. the deep-toned noise to the south had becomea howl, sweeping closer and trailed by other howlings. "the pushpots are on the way over, as youcan hear," said the major detachedly, in the curious light of daybreak and electric bulbstogether. "your crew is up and about. so far there seems to be no hitch. you're feelingall right for the attempt today?" "if you want the truth, sir, i'd feel betterwith about ten years' practical experience behind me. but my gang and myself—we'vehad all the training we can get without an actual take-off. we're the best-trained crewto try it. i think we'll manage."

"i see," said the major. "you'll do your best." "we may have to do better than that," admittedjoe wrily. "true enough. you may." the major paused."you're well aware that there are—ah—people who do not altogether like the idea of theunited states possessing an artificial satellite of earth." "i ought to know it," admitted joe. the earth's second, man-constructed moon—outin space for just six weeks now—didn't seem nowadays like the bitterly contested achievementit actually was. from earth it was merely a tiny speck of light in the sky, identifiablefor what it was only because it moved so swiftly

and serenely from the sunset toward the east,or from night's darkness into the dawn-light. but it had been fought bitterly before itwas launched. it was first proposed to the united nations, but even discussion in thecouncil was vetoed. so the united states had built it alone. yet the nations which objectedto it as an international project liked it even less as a national one, and they'd donewhat they could to wreck it. the building of the great steel hull now outthere in emptiness had been fought more bitterly, by more ruthless and more highly trained saboteurs,than any other enterprise in history. there'd been two attempts to blast it with atomicbombs. but it was high aloft, rolling grandly around the earth, so close to its primarythat its period was little more than four

hours; and it rose in the west and set inthe east six times a day. today joe would try to get a supply ship upto it, a very small rocket-driven cargo ship named pelican one. the crew of the platformneeded food and air and water—and especially the means of self-defense. today's take-offwould be the first attempt at a rocket-lift to space. "the enemies of the platform haven't givenup," said the major formidably. "and they used spectroscopes on the platform's rocketfumes. apparently they've been able to duplicate our fuel." joe nodded.

major holt went on: "for more than a monthmilitary intelligence has been aware that rockets were under construction behind theiron curtain. they will be guided missiles, and they will carry atom bomb heads. one ormore may be finished any day. when they're finished, you can bet that they'll be usedagainst the platform. and you will carry up the first arms for the platform. your shipcarries half a dozen long-range interceptor rockets to handle any attack from earth. it'svitally important for them to be delivered." "they'll attack the platform?" demanded joeangrily. "that's war!" "not if they deny guilt," said the major ironically,"and if we have nothing to gain by war. the platform is intended to defend the peace ofthe world. if it is destroyed, we won't defend

the peace of the world by going to war overit. but while the platform can defend itself, it is not likely that anyone will dare tomake war. so you have a very worthwhile mission. i suggest that you have breakfast and reportto the shed. i'm on my way there now." joe said, "yes, sir." the major started for the door. then he stopped.he hesitated, and said abruptly, "if my security measures have failed, joe, you'll be killed.if there has been sabotage or carelessness, it will be my fault." "i'm sure, sir, that everything anybody coulddo—" "everything anybody can do to destroy youhas been done," said the major grimly. "not

only sabotage, joe, but blunders and mistakesand stupidities. that always happens. but—i've done my best. i suspect i'm asking your forgivenessif my best hasn't been good enough." then, before joe could reply, the major wenthurriedly away. joe frowned for a moment. it occurred to himthat it must be pretty tough to be responsible for the things that other men's lives dependon—when you can't share their danger. but just then the smell of coffee reached hisnostrils. he trailed the scent. there was a coffeepot steaming on the table in the dining-room.there was a note on a plate. good luck. i'll see you in the shed. sally

joe was relieved. sally holt had been somewherearound underfoot all his life. she was a swell girl, but he was grateful that he didn't haveto talk to her just now. he poured coffee and looked at his watch.he went to the window. the faraway howling was much nearer, and dawn had definitely arrived.small cloudlets in a pale blue sky were tinted pinkish by the rising sun. patches of yuccaand mesquite and sage out beyond the officers' quarters area stretched away to a far-offhorizon. they were now visibly different in color from the red-yellow earth between them,and cast long, streaky shadows. the cause of the howling was still invisible. but joe cared nothing for that. he staredskyward, searching. and he saw what he looked

for. there was a small bright sliver of sunlighthigh aloft. it moved slowly toward the east. it showed the unmistakable glint of sunshineupon polished steel. it was the artificial satellite—a huge steel hull—which hadbeen built in the gigantic shed from whose shadow joe looked upward. it was the sizeof an ocean liner, and six weeks since some hundreds of pushpots, all straining at once,had gotten it out of the shed and panted toward the sky with it. they'd gotten it twelve mileshigh and speeding eastward at the ultimate speed they could manage. they'd fired jatorockets, all at once, and so pushed its speed up to the preposterous. then they'd droppedaway and the giant steel thing had fired its

own rockets—which made mile-long flames—andswept on out to emptiness. before its rockets were consumed it was in an orbit 4,000 milesabove the earth's surface, and it hurtled through space at something over 12,000 milesan hour. it circled the earth in exactly four hours, fourteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds.and it would continue its circling forever, needing no fuel and never descending. it wasa second moon for the planet earth. but it could be destroyed. joe watched hungrily as it went on to meetthe sun. smoothly, unhurriedly, serenely, the remote and twinkling speck floated onout of sight. and then joe went back to the table and ate his breakfast quickly. he wolfedit. he had an appointment to meet that minute

speck some 4,000 miles out in space. his appointmentwas for a very few hours hence. he'd been training for just this morning'seffort since before the platform's launching. there was a great box swinging in twenty-footgimbal rings over in the shed. there were motors and projectors and over two thousandvacuum tubes, relays and electronic units. it was a space flight simulator—a descendantof the link trainer which once taught plane pilots how to fly. but this offered the problemsand the sensations of rocketship control, and for many hours every day joe and the threemembers of his crew had labored in it. the simulator duplicated every sight and soundand feeling—all but heavy acceleration—to be experienced in the take-off of a rocketshipto space. the similitude of flight was utterly

convincing. sometimes it was appallingly sowhen emergencies and catastrophes and calamities were staged in horrifying detail for themto learn to respond to. in six weeks they'd learned how to handle a spaceship so far asanybody could learn on solid ground—if the simulator was correctly built. nobody couldbe sure about that. but it was the best training that could be devised. in minutes joe had finished the coffee andwas out of major holt's quarters and headed for the shed's nearest entrance. the shedwas a gigantic metal structure rising out of sheer flat desert. there were hills tothe westward, but only arid plain to the east and south and north. there was but one townin hundreds of miles and that was bootstrap,

built to house the workmen who'd built theplatform and the still invisible, ferociously howling pushpots and now the small supplyships, the first of which was to make its first trip today. the shed seemed very near because of its monstroussize. when he was actually at the base of its wall, it seemed to fill half the firmamentand more than half the horizon. he went in, and felt self-conscious when the guard's eyesfell on his uniform. there was a tiny vestibule. then he was in the shed itself, and it wasenormous. there were acres of wood-block flooring. therewas a vast, steel-girdered arching roof which was fifty stories high in the center. allthis size had been needed when the space platform

was being built. men on the far side weremerely specks, and the rows of windows to admit light usually did no more than makea gray twilight inside. but there was light enough today. to the east the shed's wallwas split from top to bottom. a colossal triangular gore had been loosened and thrust out androlled aside, and a doorway a hundred and fifty feet wide let in the sunshine. throughit, joe could see the fiery red ball which was the sun just leaving the horizon. but there was something more urgent for himto look at. pelican one had been moved into its launching cage. only joe, perhaps, wouldreally have recognized it. actually it was a streamlined hull of steel, eighty feet longby twenty in diameter. there were stubby metal

fins—useless in space, and even on take-off,but essential for the planned method of landing on its return. there were thick quartz portsin the bow-section. but its form was completely concealed now by the attached, exterior take-offrockets. it had been shifted into the huge cradle of steel beams from which it was tobe launched. men swarmed about it and over it, in and out of the launching cage, checkingand rechecking every possible thing that could make for the success of its flight to space. the other three crew-members were ready—haneyand chief bender and mike scandia. they were especially entitled to be the crew of thisfirst supply ship. when the platform was being built, its pilot-gyros had been built by aprecision tool firm owned by joe's father.

he'd gone by plane with the infinitely preciseapparatus to bootstrap, to deliver and install it in the platform. and the plane was sabotaged,and the gyros were ruined. they'd consumed four months in the building, and four monthsmore for balancing with absolute no-tolerance accuracy. the platform couldn't wait so longfor duplicates. so joe had improvised a method of repair. and with haney to devise specialmachine-tool setups and the chief to use fanatically fine workmanship, and mike and joe aidingaccording to their gifts, they'd rebuilt the apparatus in an impossibly short time. theoriginal notion was joe's, but he couldn't have done the job without the others. and there had been other, incidental triumphsby the team of four. they were not the only

ones who worked feverishly for the glory ofhaving helped to build the earth's first artificial moon, but they had accomplished more thanmost. joe had even been appointed to be an alternate member of the platform's crew. butthe man he was to have substituted for recovered from an illness, and joe was left behind atthe platform's launching. but all of them had rated some reward, and it was to servein the small ships that would supply the man-made satellite. now they were ready to begin. the chief grinnedexuberantly as joe ducked through the bars of the launching cage and approached the ship.he was a mohawk indian—one of that tribe which for two generations had supplied steelworkers to every bridge and dam and skyscraper

job on the continent. he was brown and bulkyand explosive. haney looked tense and strained. he was tall and lean and spare, and a goodman in any sort of trouble. mike blazed excitement. mike was forty-one inches high and he wasfull-grown. he had worked on the platform, bucking rivets and making welds and inspectionsin places too small for a normal-sized man to reach. he frantically resented any concessionsto his size and he was as good a man as any. he simply was the small, economy size. "hiya, joe," boomed the chief. "all set? hadbreakfast?" joe nodded. he began to ask anxious questions.about steering-rocket fuel and the launching cage release and the take-off rockets andthe reduction valve from the air tanks—he'd

thought of that on the way over—and theshort wave and loran and radar. haney nodded to some questions. mike said briskly, "i checked"to others. the chief grunted amiably, "look, joe! wechecked everything last night. we checked it again this morning. i even caught mikepolishing the ejection seats, because there wasn't anything else to make sure of!" joe managed a smile. the ejection seats wereassuredly the most unlikely of all devices to be useful today. they were supposedly life-savingdevices. if the ship came a cropper on take-off, the four of them were supposed to use ejection-seatslike those supplied to jet pilots. they would be thrown clear of the ship and ribbon-parachutesmight open and might let them land alive.

but it wasn't likely. joe had objected totheir presence. if a feather dropped to earth from a height of 600 miles, it would be fallingso fast when it hit the atmosphere that it would heat up and burn to ashes from pureair-friction. it wasn't likely that they could get out of the ship if anything went wrong. somebody marched stiffly toward the four ofthem. joe's expression grew rueful. the space project was neither army nor navy nor aircorps, but something that so far was its own individual self. but the man marching towardjoe was lieutenant commander brown, strictly navy, assigned to the shed as an observer.and there were some times when he baffled joe. like now.

he halted, and looked as if he expected joeto salute. joe didn't. lieutenant commander brown said, formally:"i would like to offer my best wishes for your trip, mr. kenmore." "thanks," said joe. brown smiled distantly. "you understand, ofcourse, that i consider navigation essentially a naval function, and it does seem to me thatany ship, including a spaceship, should be manned by naval personnel. but i assuredlywish you good fortune." "thanks," said joe again. brown shook hands, then stalked off.

haney rumbled in his throat. "how come, joe,he doesn't wish all of us good luck?" "he does," said joe. "but his mind's in uniformtoo. he's been trained that way. i'd like to make a bet that we have him as a passengerout to the platform some day." "heaven forbid!" growled haney. there was an outrageous tumult outside thewide-open gap in the shed's wall. something went shrieking by the doorway. it looked likethe magnified top half of a loaf of baker's bread, painted gray and equipped with an air-scoopin front and a plastic bubble for a pilot. it howled like a lost baby dragon, its flatunderside tilted up and up until it was almost vertical. it had no wings, but a blue-whiteflame spurted out of its rear, wobbling from

side to side for reasons best known to itself.it was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could notpossibly fly. only it did. it settled down on its flame-spouting tail, and the sparsevegetation burst into smoky flame and shriveled, and the thing—still shrieking like a fog-hornin a tunnel—flopped flat forward with a resounding clank! it was abruptly silent. but the total noise was not lessened. anotherpushpot came soaring wildly into view, making hysterical outcries. it touched and bangedviolently to earth. others appeared in the air beyond the construction shed. one floppedso hard on landing that its tail rose in the air and it attempted a somersault. it madeten times more noise than before—the flame

from its tail making wild gyrations—andflopped back again with a crash. two others rolled over on their sides after touchingground. one ended up on its back like a tumble-bug, wriggling. they seemed to land by hundreds, but theirnumber was actually in dozens. it was not until the last one was down that joe couldmake himself heard. the pushpots were jet motors in frames and metal skin, with built-injato rocket tubes besides their engines. on the ground they were quite helpless. in theair they were unbelievably clumsy. they were actually balanced and steered by vanes inthe blasts of their jets, and they combined the absolute maximum of sheer thrust withthe irreducible minimum of flyability.

crane-trucks went out to pick them up. joesaid anxiously, "we'd better check our flight plan again. we have to know it absolutely!" he headed across the floor to the flight databoard. he passed the hull of another ship like his own, which was near completion, andthe bare skeletons of two others which needed a lot of work yet. they'd been begun at distantplants and then hauled here on monstrous trailers for completion. the wooden mockup of the designfor all the ships—in which every possible arrangement of instruments and machinery hadbeen tested out—lay neglected by the shed wall. the four stood before the flight data board.it listed the readings every instrument should

show during every instant of the flight. thereadings had been calculated with infinite care, and joe and the others needed to knowthem rather better than they knew their multiplication tables. once they started out, they wouldn'thave time to wonder if everything was right for the time and place. they needed to know. they stood there, soaking up the informationthe board contained, forming mental pictures of it, making as sure as possible that anyone of them would spot anything wrong the instant it showed up, and would instantlyknow what had to be done about it. a gigantic crane-truck came in through thewide doorway. it dangled a pushpot. it rolled over to the launching cage in which the spaceshiplay and set the unwieldy metal object against

that cage. there was a clank as the pushpotcaught hold of the magnetic grapples. the crane went out again, passing a second cranecarrying a second pushpot. the second beetle-like thing was presented to the cage. it stuckfast. the crane went out for more. major holt came across the floor of the shed.it took him a long time to walk the distance from the security offices to the launchingcage. when he got there, he looked impatiently around. his daughter sally came out of nowhereand blew her nose as if she'd been crying, and pointed to the data board. the major shruggedhis shoulders and looked uneasily at her. she regarded him with some defiance. the majorspoke to her sternly. they waited. the cranes brought in more pushpots and setthem up against the steel launching cage.

the ship had been nearly hidden before bythe rocket tubes fastened outside its hull. it went completely out of sight behind themetal monsters banked about it. the major looked at his watch and the groupabout the data board. they moved away from it and back toward the ship. joe saw the majorand swerved over to him. "i have brought you," said the major in anofficial voice, "the invoice of your cargo. you will deliver the invoice with the cargoand bring back proper receipts." "i hope," said joe. "we hope!" said sally in a strained tone."good luck, joe!" "thanks."

"there is not much to say to you," said themajor without visible emotion. "of course the next crew will start its training immediately,but it may be a month before another ship can take off. it is extremely desirable thatyou reach the platform today." "yes, sir," said joe wrily. "i have even apersonal motive to get there. if i don't, i break my neck." the major ignored the comment. he shook handsformally and marched away. sally smiled up at joe, but her eyes were suddenly full oftears. "i—do hope everything goes all right, joe,"she said unsteadily. "i—i'll be praying for you."

"i can use some of that, too," admitted joe. she looked at her hand. joe's ring was onher finger—wrapped with string on the inside of the band to make it fit. then she lookedup again and was crying unashamedly. "i—will," she repeated. then she said fiercely,"i don't care if somebody's looking, joe. it's time for you to go in the ship." he kissed her, and turned and went quicklyto the peculiar mass of clustered pushpots, touching and almost overlapping each other. he ducked under and looked back. sally waved.he waved back. then he climbed up the ladder into pelican one's cabin. somebody pulledthe ladder away and scuttled out of the cage.

the others were in their places. joe slowlyclosed the door from the cabin to the outer world. there was suddenly a cushioned silenceabout him. out the quartz-glass ports he could see ahead, out the end of the cage throughthe monstrous doorway to the desert beyond. overhead he could see the dark, girder-linedroof of the shed. on either side, though, he could see only the scratched, dented, flatundersides of the pushpots ready to lift the ship upward. "you can start on the pushpot motors, haney,"he said curtly. joe moved to his own, the pilot's seat. haneypushed a button. through the fabric of the ship came the muted uproar of a pushpot enginestarting. haney pushed another button. another.

another. more jet engines bellowed. the tumultin the shed would be past endurance, now. joe strapped himself into his seat. he madesure that the chief at the steering-rocket manual controls was fastened properly, andmike at the radio panel was firmly belted past the chance of injury. haney said with enormous calm, "all pushpotmotors running, joe." "steering rockets ready," the chief reported. "radio operating," came from mike. "communicationsroom all set." joe reached to the maneuver controls. he shouldhave been sweating. his hands, perhaps, should have quivered with tension. but he was toomuch worried about too many things. nobody

can strike an attitude or go into a blue funkwhile they are worrying about things to be done. joe heard the small gyro motors as theirspeed went up. a hum and a whine and then a shrill whistle which went up in pitch untilit wasn't anything at all. he frowned anxiously and said to haney, "i'm taking over the pushpots." haney nodded. joe took the over-all control.the roar of engines outside grew loud on the right-hand side, and died down. it grew thunderousto the left, and dwindled. the ones ahead pushed. then the ones behind. joe nodded andwet his lips. he said: "here we go." there was no more ceremony than that. thenoise of the jet motors outside rose to a thunderous volume which came even throughthe little ship's insulated hull. then it

grew louder, and louder still, and joe stirredthe controls by ever so tiny a movement. suddenly the ship did not feel solid. it stirreda little. joe held his breath and cracked the over-all control of the pushpots' speeda tiny trace further. the ship wobbled a little. out the quartz-glass windows, the great doorseemed to descend. in reality the clustered pushpots and the launching cage rose somethirty feet from the shed floor and hovered there uncertainly. joe shifted the lever thatgoverned the vanes in the jet motor blasts. ship and cage and pushpots, all together,wavered toward the doorway. they passed out of it, rocking a little and pitching a littleand wallowing a little. as a flying device, the combination was a howling tumult and ahorror. it was an aviation designer's nightmare.

it was a bad dream by any standard. but it wasn't meant as a way to fly from oneplace to another on earth. it was the first booster stage of a three-stage rocket aimedat outer space. it looked rather like—well—if a swarm of bumblebees clung fiercely to awire-gauze cage in which lay a silver minnow wrapped in match-sticks; and if the bees buzzedfuriously and lifted it in a straining, clumsy, and altogether unreasonable manner; and ifthe appearance and the noise together were multiplied a good many thousands of times—why—itwould present a great similarity to the take-off of the spaceship under joe's command. nothinglike it could be graceful or neatly controllable or even very speedy in the thick atmospherenear 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 pushpotmotors. the clumsy-seeming aggregation of grotesque objects began to climb. ungainlyit was, and clumsy it was, but it went upward at a rate a jet-fighter might have troublematching. it wobbled, and it swung around and around, and it tipped crazily, the wholeaggregation of jet motors and cage and burden of spaceship as a unit. but it rose! the ground dropped so swiftly that even theshed seemed to shrivel like a pricked balloon. the horizon retreated as if a carpet werehastily unrolled by magic. the barometric

pressure needles turned. "communications says our rate-of-climb is4,000 feet a minute and going up fast," mike announced. "it's five.... we're at 17,000feet ... 18,000. we should get some eastward velocity at 32,000 feet. our height is now21,000 feet...." there was no change in the feel of thingsinside the ship, of course. sealed against the vacuum of space, barometric pressure outsidemade no difference. height had no effect on the air inside the ship. at 25,000 feet the chief said suddenly: "we'repointed due east, joe. freeze it?" "right," said joe. "freeze it."

the chief threw a lever. the gyros were runningat full operating speed. by engaging them, the chief had all their stored-up kineticenergy available to resist any change of direction the pushpots might produce by minor variationsin their thrusts. haney brooded over the reports from the individual engines outside. he mademinute adjustments to keep them balanced. mike uttered curt comments into the communicatorfrom time to time. at 33,000 feet there was a momentary sensationas if the ship were tilted sharply. it wasn't. the instruments denied any change from levelrise. the upward-soaring complex of flying things had simply risen into a jet-stream,one of those wildly rushing wind-floods of the upper atmosphere.

"eastern velocity four hundred," said mikefrom the communicator. "now four-twenty-five.... four-forty." there was a 300-mile-an-hour wind behind them.a tail-wind, west to east. the pushpots struggled now to get the maximum possible forward thrustbefore they rose out of that east-bound hurricane. they added a fierce push to eastward to theirupward thrust. mike's cracked voice reported 500 miles an hour. presently it was 600. at 40,000 feet they were moving eastward at680 miles an hour. a jet-motor cannot be rated except indirectly, but there was over 200,000horsepower at work to raise the spacecraft and build up the highest possible forwardspeed. it couldn't be kept up, of course.

the pushpots couldn't carry enough fuel. but they reached 55,000 feet, which is wherespace begins for humankind. a man exposed to emptiness at that height will die justas quickly as anywhere between the stars. but it wasn't quite empty space for the pushpots.there was still a very, very little air. the pushpots could still thrust upward. feebly,now, but they still thrust. mike said: "communications says get set tofire jatos, joe." "right!" he replied. "set yourselves." mike flung a switch, and a voice began tochatter behind joe's head. it was the voice from the communications-room atop the shed,now far below and far behind. mike settled

himself in the tiny acceleration-chair builtfor him. the chief squirmed to comfort in his seat. haney took his hands from the equalizingadjustments he had to make so that joe's use of the controls would be exact, regardlessof moment-to-moment differences in the thrust of the various jets. "we've got a yaw right," said the chief sharply."hold it, joe!" joe waited for small quivering needles toreturn to their proper registrations. "back and steady," said the chief a momentlater. "okay!" the tinny voice behind joe now spoke precisely.mike had listened to it while the work of take-off could be divided, so that joe wouldnot be distracted. now joe had to control

everything at once. the roar of the pushpots outside the shiphad long since lost the volume and timbre of normal atmosphere. not much sound couldbe transmitted by the near-vacuum outside. but the jet motors did roar, and the soundwhich was not sound at such a height was transmitted by the metal cage as so much pure vibration.the walls and hull of the spaceship picked up a crawling, quivering pulsation and turnedit into sound. standing waves set up and dissolved and moved erratically in the air of the cabin.joe's eardrums were strangely affected. now one ear seemed muted by a temporary differenceof air pressure where a standing wave lingered for a second or two. then the other eardrumitched. there were creeping sensations as

of things touching one and quickly movingaway. joe swung a microphone into place before hismouth. "all set," he said evenly. "brief me." the tinny voice said: "you are at 65,000 feet. your curve of rate-of-climbis flattening out. you are now rising at near-maximum speed, and not much more forward velocitycan be anticipated. you have an air-speed relative to surface of six-nine-two milesper hour. the rotational speed of earth at this latitude is seven-seven-eight. you have,then, a total orbital speed of one-four-seven-oh miles per hour, or nearly twelve per centof your needed final velocity. since you will

take off laterally and practically withoutair resistance, a margin of safety remains. you are authorized to blast." joe said: "ten seconds. nine ... eight ... seven ... six... five ... four ... three ... two ... one...." he stabbed the master jato switch. and a monstrousjato rocket, built into each and every one of the pushpots outside, flared chemical fumesin a simultaneous, gigantic thrust. a small wire-wound jato for jet-assisted-take-offwill weigh a hundred and forty pounds and deliver a thousand pounds of thrust for fourteenseconds. and that is for rockets using nonpoisonous compounds. the jatos of the pushpots usedthe beryllium-fluorine fuel that had lifted

the platform and that filled the take-offrockets of joe's ship. these jatos gave the pushpots themselves an acceleration of tengravities, but it had to be shared with the cage and the ship. still.... joe felt himself slammed back into his seatwith irresistible, overwhelming force. the vibration from the jets had been bad. nowhe didn't notice it. he didn't notice much of anything but the horrible sensations ofsix-gravity acceleration. it was not exactly pain. it was a feelingas if a completely intolerable and unbearable pressure pushed at him. not only on the outside,like a blow, but inside too, like nothing else imaginable. not only his chest pressedupon his lungs, but his lungs strained toward

his backbone. not only the flesh of his thighstugged to flatten itself against his acceleration-chair, but the blood in his legs tried to flow intoand burst the blood-vessels in the back of his legs. the six-gravity acceleration seemed to endurefor centuries. actually, it lasted for fourteen seconds. in that time it increased the speedof the little ship by rather more than half a mile per second, something over 1,800 milesper hour. before, the ship had possessed an orbital speed of a shade over 1,470 milesan hour. after the jato thrust, it was traveling nearly 3,400 miles per hour. it needed totravel something over 12,000 miles per hour to reach the artificial satellite of earth.

the intolerable thrust ended abruptly. joegasped. but he could allow himself only a shake of the head to clear his brain. he jammeddown the take-off rocket firing button. there was a monstrous noise and a mighty surging,and haney panted, "clear of cage...." and then they were pressed fiercely againsttheir acceleration chairs again. the ship was no longer in its launching cage. it wasno longer upheld by pushpots. it was free, with its take-off rockets flaming. it plungedon up and out. but the acceleration was less. nobody can stand six gravities for long. anybodycan take three—for a while. joe's body resisted movement with a weightof four hundred and fifty pounds, instead of a third as much for normal. his heart hadto pump against three times the normal resistance

of gravity. his chest felt as if it had aleaden weight on it. his tongue tried to crowd the back of his mouth and strangle him. thesensation was that of a nightmare of impossible duration. it was possible to move and possibleto see. one could breathe, with difficulty, and with titanic effort one could speak. butthere was the same feeling of stifling resistance to every movement that comes in nightmares. but joe managed to keep his eyes focused.the dials of the instruments said that everything was right. the tinny voice behind his head,its timbre changed by the weighting of its diaphragm, said: "all readings check withinaccuracy of instruments. good work!" joe moved his eyes to a quartz window. thesky was black. but there were stars. bright

stars against a black background. at the sameinstant he saw the bright white disks of sunshine that came in the cabin portholes. stars andsunshine together. and the sunshine was the sunshine of space. even with the polarizerscutting off some of the glare it was unbearably bright and hot beyond conception. he smelledoverheated paint, where the sunlight smote on a metal bulkhead. stars and super-hot sunshinetogether.... it was necessary to pant for breath, and hisheart pounded horribly and his eyes tried to go out of focus, but joe kenmore strainedin his acceleration-chair and managed to laugh a little. "we did it!" he panted. "in case you didn'tnotice, we're out of—the atmosphere and—out

in space! we're—headed to join the spaceplatform!" chapter 2 the pressure of three gravities continued.joe's chest muscles ached with the exertion of breathing over so long a period. six gravitiesfor fourteen seconds had been a ghastly ordeal. three gravities for minutes built up to somethingnearly as bad. joe's heart began to feel fatigue, and a man's heart normally simply doesn'tever feel tired. it became more and more difficult to see clearly. but he had work to do. important work. thetake-off rockets were solid-fuel jobs, like those which launched the platform. they werewire-wound steel tubes lined with a very special

refractory, with unstable beryllium and fluorinecompounds in them. the solid fuel burned at so many inches per second. the refractorycrumbled away and was hurled astern at a corresponding rate—save for one small point. the refractorywas not all exactly alike. some parts of it crumbled away faster, leaving a pattern ofbaffles which acted like a maxim silencer on a rifle, or like an automobile muffler.the baffles set up eddies in the gas stream and produced exactly the effect of a rocketmotor's throat. but the baffles themselves crumbled and were flung astern, so that thesolid-fuel rockets had always the efficiency of gas-throated rocket motors; and yet everybit of refractory was reaction-mass to be hurled astern, and even the steel tubes meltedand were hurled away with a gain in acceleration

to the ship. every fraction of every ounceof rocket mass was used for drive. no tanks or pumps or burners rode deadhead after theyceased to be useful. but solid-fuel rockets simply can't be madeto burn with absolute evenness as a team. minute differences in burning-rates do tendto cancel out. but now and again they reinforce each other and if uncorrected will throw aship off course. gyros can't handle such effects. so joe had to watch his instruments and listento the tinny voice behind him and steer the ship against accidental wobblings as the earthfell away behind him. he battled against the fatigue of continuingto live, and struggled with gyros and steering jets to keep the ship on its hair-line course.he panted heavily. the beating of his heart

became such a heavy pounding that it seemedthat his whole body shook with it. he had to do infinitely fine precision steering withhands that weighed pounds and arms that weighed scores of pounds and a body that had an effectiveweight of almost a quarter of a ton. and this went on and went on and on for whatseemed several centuries. then the voice in the speaker said thickly:"everything is in the clear. in ten seconds you can release your rockets. shall i count?" joe panted, "count!" the mechanical voice said, "seven ... six... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... cut!"

joe pressed the release. the small, unburntstubs of the take-off rockets went hurtling off toward emptiness. they consumed themselvesas they went, and they attained an acceleration of fifty gravities once they were relievedof all load but their own substance. they had to be released lest one burn longer thananother. it was also the only way to stop acceleration by solid-fuel rockets. they couldn'tbe extinguished. they had to be released. from intolerably burdensome heaviness, therewas abruptly no weight at all in the ship. joe's laboring heart beat twice with the violencethe weight had called for, though weight had ended. it seemed to him that his skull wouldcrack open during those two heart-beats. then he lay limply, resting.

there was a completely incredible stillness,for a time. the four of them panted. haney was better off than joe, but the chief washarder hit. mike's small body had taken the strain best of all, and he would use the factlater in shrill argument that midgets were designed by nature to be the explorers ofspace for their bulkier and less spaceworthy kindred. the ending of the steady, punishing drag wasinfinitely good, but the new sensation was hardly pleasant. they had no weight. it feltas if they and the ship about them were falling together down an abyss which must have a bottom.actually, they were falling up. but they felt a physical, crawling apprehension—a cringingfrom an imaginary imminent impact.

they had expected the sensation, but it wasnot the better for being understood. joe flexed and unflexed his fingers slowly. he stirredand swallowed hastily. but the feeling persisted. he unstrapped himself from his seat. he stoodup—and floated to the ceiling of the cabin. but there was of course no ceiling. everyway was up and every way was down. his stomach cramped itself in a hard knot, in the instinctivetensity of somebody in free fall. he fended himself from the ceiling and caughtat a hand-line placed there for just this necessity to grip something. in his absorption,he did not notice which way his heels went. he suddenly noticed that his companions, withregard to him, were upside down and staring at him with wooden, dazed expressions on theirfaces.

he tried to laugh, and gulped instead. hepulled over to the quartz-glass ports. he did not put his hand into the sunlight, butshifted the glare shutters over those ports which admitted direct sunshine. some portsremained clear. through one of them he saw the earth seemingly at arm's length somewhereoff. not up, not down. simply out from where he was. it filled all the space that the portholeshowed. it was a gigantic mass of white, fleecy specks and spots which would be clouds, andbetween the whiteness there was a muddy dark greenish color which would be the ocean. yetit seemed to slide very, very slowly past the window. he saw a tanness between the clouds, and itmoved inward from the edge of his field of

view. he suddenly realized what it was. "we've just about crossed the atlantic," hesaid in a peculiar astonishment. but it was true the ship had not been aloft nearly asmuch as half an hour. "africa's just coming into sight below. we ought to be about 1,200miles high and still rising fast. that was the calculation." he looked again, and then drew himself acrossto the opposite porthole. he saw the blackness of space, which was not blackness becauseit was a carpet of jewels. they were infinite in number and variations in brightness, andsomehow of vastly more colorings than one noticed from earth.

he heard the chief grunt, and haney gulp.he was suddenly conscious that his legs were floating rather ridiculously in mid-air withno particular relationship to anything. he saw the chief rise very cautiously, holdingon to the arms of his seat. "better not look at the sun," said joe, "eventhough i've put on the glare-shields." the chief nodded. the glare-shields wouldkeep out most of the heat and a very great deal of the ultraviolet the sun gave off.but even so, to look at the sun directly might easily result in a retinal sunburn which couldresult in blindness. the loudspeaker behind joe's chair clattered.it had seemed muted by the weight of its diaphragm at three gravities. now it blasted unintelligibly,with no weight at all. mike threw a switch

and took the message. "communications says radar says we're righton course, joe," he reported nonchalantly, "and our speed's okay. we'll reach maximumaltitude in an hour and thirty-six minutes. we ought to be within calculated distanceof the platform then." "good," said joe abstractedly. he strained his eyes at the earth. they weremoving at an extraordinary speed and height. it had been reached by just four human beingsbefore them. the tannishness which was the coast of africa crept with astonishing slownesstoward the center of what he could see. joe headed back to his seat. he could notwalk, of course. he floated. he launched himself

with a fine air of confidence. he misjudged.he was floating past his chair when he reached down—and that turned his body—and fumbledwildly. he caught hold of the back as he went by, then held on and found himself turninga grandly dignified somersault. he wound up in a remarkably foolish position with theback of his neck on the back of the chair, his arms in a highly strained position tohold him there, and his feet touching the deck of the cabin a good five feet away. haney looked greenish, but he said hoarsely: "joe, don't make me laugh—not when my stomachfeels like this!" the feeling of weightlessness was unexpectedlydaunting. joe turned himself about very slowly,

with his legs floating indecorously in entirelyunintended kicks. he was breathing hard when he pulled himself into the chair and strappedin once more. "i'll take communications," he told mike ashe settled his headphones. reluctantly, mike switched over. "kenmore reporting to communications," hesaid briefly. "we have ended our take-off acceleration. you have our course and velocity.our instruments read—" he went over the bank of instruments beforehim, giving the indication of each. in a sense, this first trip of a ship out to the platformhad some of the aspects of defusing a bomb. calculations were useful, but observationswere necessary. he had to report every detail

of the condition of his ship and every instrument-readingbecause anything might go wrong, and at any instant. anything that went wrong could befatal. so every bit of data and every intended action needed to be on record. then, if somethinghappened, the next ship to attempt this journey might avoid the same catastrophe. time passed. a lot of time. the feeling ofunending fall continued. they knew what it was, but they had to keep thinking of itscause to endure it. joe found that if his mind concentrated fully on something else,it jerked back to panic and the feel of falling. but the crew of the space platform—now outin space for more weeks than joe had been quarter-hours—reported that one got partlyused to it, in time. when awake, at least.

asleep was another matter. they were 1,600 miles high and still goingout and up. the earth as seen through the ports was still an utterly monstrous, bulgingmass, specked with clouds above vast mottlings which were its seas and land. they might havelooked for cities, but they would be mere patches in a telescope. their task now wasto wait until their orbit curved into accordance with that of the platform and they kept theirrendezvous. the artificial satellite was swinging up behind them, and was only a quarter-circleabout earth behind them. their speed in miles per second was, at the moment, greater thanthat of the platform. but they were climbing. they slowed as they climbed. when their pathintersected that of the platform, the two

velocities should be exactly equal. major holt's voice came on the communicator. "joe," he said harshly, "i have very bad news.a message came from central intelligence within minutes of your take-off. i—ah—with sallyi had been following your progress. i did not decode the message until now. but centralintelligence has definite information that more than ten days ago the—ah—enemiesof our space exploration project—" even on a tight beam to the small spaceship, majorholt did not name the nation everybody knew was most desperately resolved to smash spaceexploration by anybody but itself—"completed at least one rocket capable of reaching theplatform's orbit with a pay-load that could

be an atomic bomb. it is believed that morethan one rocket was completed. all were shipped to an unknown launching station." "not so good," said joe. mike had left his post when joe took over.now he made a swooping dart through the air of the cabin. the midget showed no signs ofthe fumbling uncertainty the others had displayed—but he'd been a member of a midget acrobatic teambefore he went to work at the shed. he brought himself to a stop precisely at a hand-hold,grinning triumphantly at the nearly helpless chief and haney. major holt said in the headphones: "it's worsethan that. radar may have told the country

in question that you are on the way up. inthat case, if it's even faintly possible to blast the platform before your arrival withweapons for its defense, they'll blast." "i don't like that idea," said joe dourly."anything we can do?" major holt laughed bitterly. "hardly!" hesaid. "and do you realize that if you can't unload your cargo you can't get back to earth?" "yes," said joe. "naturally!" it was true. the purpose of the pushpots andthe jatos and the ship's own take-off rockets had been to give it a speed at which it wouldinevitably rise to a height of 4,000 miles—the orbit of the space platform—and stay there.it would need no power to remain 4,000 miles

out from earth. but it would take power tocome down. the take-off rockets had been built to drive the ship with all its contents untilit attained that needed orbital velocity. there were landing rockets fastened to thehull now to slow it so that it could land. but just as the take-off rockets had beendesigned to lift a loaded ship, the landing-rockets had been designed to land an empty one. the more weight the ship carried, the morepower it needed to get out to the platform. and the more power it needed to come downagain. if joe and his companions couldn't get ridof their cargo—and they could only unload in the ship-lock of the platform—they'dstay out in emptiness.

the major said bitterly: "this is all mostirregular, but—here's sally." then sally's voice sounded in the headphonesjoe wore. he was relieved that mike wasn't acting as communications officer at the momentto overhear. but mike was zestfully spinning like a pin-wheel in the middle of the airof the control cabin. he was showing the others that even in the intramural pastimes a spaceshipcrew will indulge in, a midget was better than a full-sized man. joe said: "yes, sally?" she said unsteadily. "i'm not going to wasteyour time talking to you, joe. i think you've got to figure out something. i haven't thefaintest idea what it is, but i think you

can do it. try, will you?" "i'm afraid we're going to have to trust toluck," admitted joe ruefully. "we weren't equipped for anything like this." "no!" said sally fiercely. "if i were withyou, you wouldn't think of trusting to luck!" "i wouldn't want to," admitted joe. "i'd feelresponsible. but just the same—" "you're responsible now!" said sally, as fiercelyas before. "if the platform's smashed, the rockets that can reach it will be duplicatedto smash our cities in war! but if you can reach the platform and arm it for defense,there won't be any war! half the world would be praying for you, joe, if it knew! i can'tdo anything else, so i'm going to start on

that right now. but you try, joe! you hearme?" "i'll try," said joe humbly. "thanks, sally." he heard a sound like a sob, and the headphoneswere silent. joe himself swallowed very carefully. it can be alarming to be the object of anintended murder, but it can also be very thrilling. one can play up splendidly to a dramatic pictureof doom. it is possible to be one's own audience and admire one's own fine disregard of danger.but when other lives depend on one, one has the irritating obligation not to strike posesbut to do something practical. joe said somberly: "mike, how long beforewe ought to contact the platform?" mike reached out a small hand, caught a hand-hold,and flicked his eyes to the master chronometer.

"forty minutes, fifty seconds. why?" joe said wrily, "there are some rockets inenemy hands which can reach the platform. they were shipped to launchers ten days ago.you figure what comes next." mike's wizened face became tense and angry.haney growled, "they smash the platform before we get to it." "uh-uh!" said mike instantly. "they smashthe platform when we get to it! they smash us both up together. where'll we be at contact-time,joe?" "over the indian ocean, south of the bay ofbengal, to be exact," said joe. "but we'll be moving fast. the worst of it is that it'sgoing to take time to get in the airlock and

unload our guided missiles and get them inthe platform's launching-tubes. i'd guess an hour. one bomb should get both of us abovethe bay of bengal, but we won't be set to launch a guided missile in defense until we'renearly over america again." the chief said sourly, "yeah. sitting ducksall the way across the pacific!" "we'll check with the platform," said joe."see if you can get them direct, mike, will you?" then something occurred to him. mike scrambledback to his communication board. he began feverishly to work the computer which in turnwould swing the tight-beam transmitter to the target the computer worked out, he threwa switch and said sharply, "calling space

platform! pelican one calling space platform!come in, space platform!..." he paused. "calling space platform...." joe had a slide-rule going on another problem.he looked up, his expression peculiar. "a solid-fuel rocket can start off at tengravities acceleration," he said quietly, "and as its rockets burn away it can go upa lot higher than that. but 4,000 miles is a long way to go straight up. if it isn'tlaunched yet—" mike snapped into a microphone: "right!" tojoe he said, "space platform on the wire." joe heard an acknowledgment in his headphones."i've just had word from the shed," he explained carefully, "that there may be some guidedmissiles coming up from earth to smash us

as we meet. you're still higher than we are,and they ought to be starting. can you pick up anything with your radar?" the voice from the platform said: "we havepicked something up. there are four rockets headed out from near the sunset-line in thepacific. assuming solid-fuel rockets like we used and you used, they are on a collisioncourse." "are you doing anything about them?" askedjoe absurdly. the voice said caustically: "unfortunately,we've nothing to do anything with." it paused. "you, of course, can use the landing-rocketsyou still possess. if you fire them immediately, you will pass our scheduled meeting-placesome hundreds of miles ahead of us. you will

go on out to space. you may set up an orbitforty-five hundred or even five thousand miles out, and wait there for rescue." joe said briefly: "we've air for only fourdays. that's no good. it'll be a month before the next ship can be finished and take off.there are four rockets coming up, you say?" "yes." the voice changed. it spoke away fromthe microphone. "what's that?" then it returned to joe. "the four rockets were sent up atthe same instant from four separate launching sites. probably as many submarines at thecorners of a hundred-mile square, so an accident to one wouldn't set off the others. they'llundoubtedly converge as they get nearer to us."

"i think," said joe, "that we need some luck." "i think," said the caustic voice, "that we'verun out of it." there was a click. joe swallowed again. thethree members of his crew were looking at him. "somebody's fired rockets out from earth,"said joe carefully. "they'll curve together where we meet the platform, and get therejust when we do." the chief rumbled. haney clamped his jawstogether. mike's expression became one of blazing hatred. joe's mind went rather absurdly to the major'scurious, almost despairing talk in his quarters

that morning, when he'd spoken of a conspiracyto destroy all the hopes of men. the firing of rockets at the platform was, of course,the work of men acting deliberately. but they were—unconsciously—trying to destroy theirown best hopes. for freedom, certainly, whether or not they could imagine being free. butthe platform and the space exploration project in general meant benefits past computing foreverybody, in time. to send ships into space for necessary but dangerous experiments withatomic energy was a purpose every man should want to help forward. to bring peace on earthwas surely an objective no man could willingly or sanely combat. and the ultimate goal ofspace travel was millions of other planets, circling other suns, thrown open to colonizationby humanity. that prospect should surely fire

every human being with enthusiasm. but something—andthe more one thought about it the more specific and deliberate it seemed to be—made it necessaryto fight desperately against men in order to benefit them. joe swallowed again. it would have been comfortingto be dramatic in this war against stupidity and malice and blindness. especially sincethis particular battle seemed to be lost. one could send back an eloquent, defiant messageto earth saying that the four of them did not regret their journey into space, thoughthey were doomed to be killed by the enemies of their country. it could have been a verypretty gesture. but joe happened to have a job to do. pretty gestures were not a partof it. he had no idea how to do it. so he

said rather sickishly: "the platform told me we could fire our landing-rocketsas additional take-off rockets and get out of the way. of course we've got missiles ofour own on board, but we can't launch or control them. absolutely the only thing we can chooseto do or not do is fire those rockets. i'm open to suggestions if anybody can think ofa way to make them useful." there was silence. joe's reasoning was goodenough. when one can't do what he wants, one tries to make what he can do produce the resultshe wants. but it didn't look too promising here. they could fire the rockets now, orlater, or— an idea came out of the blue. it wasn't agood idea, but it was the only one possible

under the circumstances. there was just onedistinctly remote possibility. he told the others what it was. mike's eyes flamed. thechief nodded profoundly. haney said with some skepticism, "it's all we've got. we've gotto use it." "i need some calculations. spread. best timeof firing. that sort of thing. but i'm worried about calling back in the clear. a beam tothe platform will bounce and might be picked up by the enemy." the chief grinned suddenly. "i've got a trickfor that, joe. there's a tribesman of mine in the shed. get charley red fox to the phone,guy, and we'll talk privately!" the small spaceship floated on upward. itpointed steadfastly in the direction of its

motion. the glaring sunshine which at itstake-off had shone squarely in its bow-ports, now poured down slantingly from behind. thesteel plates of the ship gleamed brightly. below it lay the sunlit earth. above and aboutit on every hand were a multitude of stars. even the moon was visible as the thinnestof crescents against the night of space. the ship climbed steeply. it was meeting theplatform after only half a circuit of earth, while the platform had climbed upward forthree full revolutions. earth was now 3,000 miles below and appeared as the most giganticof possible solid objects. it curved away and away to mistiness at its horizons, andit moved visibly as the spaceship floated on.

invisible microwaves flung arrowlike throughemptiness. they traveled for thousands of miles, spreading as they traveled, and thenstruck the strange shape of the platform. they splashed from it. some of them reboundedto earth, where spies and agents of foreign powers tried desperately to make sense ofthe incredible syllables. they failed. there was a relay system in operation now,from spaceship to platform to earth and back again. in the ship chief bender, mohawk andsteelman extraordinary, talked to the shed and to one charley red fox. they talked inmohawk, which is an algonquin indian language, agglutinative, complicated, and not to belearned in ten easy lessons. it was not a language which eavesdroppers were likely toknow as a matter of course. but it was a language

by which computations could be asked for,so that a very forlorn hope might be attempted with the best possible chances of success. naturally, none of this appeared in the lookof things. the small ship floated on and on. it reached an altitude of 3,500 miles. theearth was visibly farther away. behind the ship the atlantic with its stately cloud-formationswas sunlit to the very edge of its being. ahead, the edge of night appeared beyond india.and above, the platform appeared as a speck of molten light, quarter-illuminated by thesun above it. spaceship and platform moved on toward a meetingplace. the ship moved a trifle faster, because it was climbing. the speeds would match exactlywhen they met. the small torpedo-shaped shining

ship and the bulging glowing metal satellitefloated with a seeming vast deliberation in emptiness, while the most gigantic of possibleround objects filled all the firmament beneath them. they were 200 miles apart. it seemedthat the huge platform overtook the shining ship. it did. they were only 50 miles apartand still closing in. by that time the twilight band of earth'ssurface was nearly at the center of the planet, and night filled more than a quarter of itsdisk. by that time, too, even to the naked eye throughthe ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. they were a thin skeinof threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. the vapor curled andexpanded preposterously. it could just be

seen to be jetting into existence from fourseparate points, two a little ahead of the others. they came out from earth at a ratewhich seemed remarkably deliberate until one saw with what fury the rocket-fumes spat outto form the whitish threads. then one could guess at a three-or even four-stage launchingseries, so that what appeared to be mere pinpoints would really be rockets carrying half-tonatomic warheads with an attained velocity of 10,000 miles per hour and more straightup. the threads unraveled in a straight line aimedat the two metal things floating in emptiness. one was small and streamlined, with inadequatelanding-rockets clamped to its body and with stubby fins that had no possible utility outof air. the other was large and clumsy to

look at, but very, very stately indeed inits progress through the heavens. they floated smoothly toward a rendezvous. the rocketsfrom earth came ravening to destroy them at the instant of their intersection. the little spaceship turned slowly. its roundedbow had pointed longingly at the stars. now it tilted downward. its direction of movementdid not change, of course. in the absence of air, it could tumble indefinitely withoutany ill effect. it was in a trajectory instead of on a course, though presently the trajectorywould become an orbit. but it pointed nose-down toward the earth even as it continued to hurtleonward. the great steel hull and the small spaceshipwere 20 miles apart. an infinitesimal radar-bowl

moved on the little ship. tight-beam wavesflickered invisibly between the two craft. the rockets raged toward them. the ship and the platform were 10 miles apart.the rockets were now glinting missiles leaping ahead of the fumes that propelled them. the ship and the platform were two miles apart.the rockets rushed upward.... there were minute corrections in their courses. they converged.... flames leaped from the tiny ship. its landing-rocketsspouted white-hot flame and fumes more thick and coiling than even the smoke of the bombs.the little ship surged momentarily toward the racing monsters. and then——

the rockets which were supposed to let theship down to earth flew free—flung themselves unburdened at the rockets which came withdeadly intent to the meeting of the two earth spacecraft. the landing-rockets plunged down at fortygravities or better. they were a dwindling group of infinitely bright sparks which seemedto group themselves more closely as they dwindled. they charged upon the attacking robot things.they were unguided, of necessity, but the robot bombs had to be equipped with proximityfuses. no remote control could be so accurate as to determine the best moment for detonationat 4,000 miles' distance. so the war rockets had to be devised to explode when near anythingwhich reflected their probing radar waves.

they had to be designed to be triggered byanything in space. and the loosed landing-rockets plunged amongthem. they did not detonate all at once. that wasmathematically impossible. but no human eye could detect the delay. four close-packedflares of pure atomic fire sprang into being between the platform and earth. each was brighterthan the sun. for the fraction of an instant there was no night where night had fallenon the earth. for thousands of miles the earth glowed brightly. then there was a twisting, coiling tumultof incandescent gases, which were snatched away by nothingness and ceased to be.

then there were just two things remainingin the void. one was the great, clumsy, shining platform, gigantic in size to anything closeby. the other was the small spaceship which had climbed to it and fought for it and defendedit against the bombs from earth. the little ship now had a slight motion awayfrom the platform, due to the instant's tugging by its rockets before they were released. it turned about in emptiness. its steering-rocketsspouted smoke. it began to cancel out its velocity away from the platform, and to swimslowly and very carefully toward it. chapter 3 making actual contact with the platform wasnot a matter for instruments and calculations.

it had to be done directly—by hand, as itwere. joe watched out the ports and played the controls of the steering jets with a nerve-rackedprecision. his task was not easy. before he could return to the point of rendezvous,the blinding sunlight on the platform took on a tinge of red. it was the twilight-zoneof the satellite's orbit, when for a time the sunlight that reached it was light whichhad passed through earth's atmosphere and been bent by it and colored crimson by thedust in earth's air. it glowed a fiery red, and the color deepened, and then there wasdarkness. they were in earth's shadow. there were starsto be seen, but no sun. the moon was hidden, too. and the earth was a monstrous, incredible,abysmal blackness which at this first experience

of its appearance produced an almost superstitiousterror. formerly it had seemed a distant but sunlit world, flecked with white clouds andwith sprawling differentiations of color beneath them. now it did not look like a solid thing atall. it looked like a hole in creation. one could see ten thousand million stars of everyimaginable tint and shade. but where the earth should be there seemed a vast nothingness.it looked like an opening to annihilation. it looked like the veritable pit of darknesswhich is the greatest horror men have ever imagined, and since those in the ship werewithout weight it seemed that they were falling into it.

joe knew better, of course. so did the others.but that was the look of things, and that was the feeling. one did not feel in dangerof death, but of extinction—which, in cold fact, is very much worse. lights glowed on the outside of the platformto guide the supply ship to it. there were red and green and blue and harsh blue-whiteelectric bulbs. they were bright and distinct, but the feeling of loneliness above that awfulappearance of the pit was appalling. no small child alone at night had ever so desolatea sensation of isolation as the four in the small ship. but joe painstakingly played the buttons ofthe steering-rocket control board. the ship

surged, and turned, and surged forward again.mike, at the communicator, said, "they say slow up, joe." joe obeyed, but he was tense. haney and thechief were at other portholes, looking out. the chief said heavily, "fellas, i'm goingto admit i never felt so lonesome in my life!" "i'm glad i've got you fellows with me!" haneyadmitted guiltily. "the job's almost over," said joe. the ship's own hull, outside the ports, glowedsuddenly in a light-beam from the platform. the small, brief surges of acceleration whichsent the ship on produced tremendous emotional effects. when the platform was only one mileaway, haney switched on the ship's searchlights.

they stabbed through emptiness with absolutelyno sign of their existence until they touched the steel hull of the satellite. mike said sharply: "slow up some more, joe." he obeyed again. it would not be a good ideato ram the platform after they had come so far to reach it. they drifted slowly, slowly, slowly towardit. the monstrous pit of darkness which was the night side of earth seemed almost aboutto engulf the platform. they were a few hundred feet higher than the great metal globe, andthe blackness was behind it. they were a quarter of a mile away. the distance diminished.

a thin straight line seemed to grow out towardthem. there was a small, bulb-like object at its end. it reached out farther than wasat all plausible. nothing so slender should conceivably reach so far without bending ofits own weight. but of course it had no weight here. it was a plastic flexible hose withair pressure in it. it groped for the spaceship. the four in the ship held their breaths. there was a loud, metallic clank! then it was possible to feel the ship beingpulled toward the platform by the magnetic grapple. it was a landing-line. it was themeans by which the ship would be docked in the giant lock which had been built to receiveit.

as they drew near, they saw the joints ofthe plating of the platform. they saw rivets. there was the huge, 30-foot doorway with itsvalves swung wide. their searchlight beam glared into it. they saw the metal floor,and the bulging plastic sidewalls, restrained by nets. they saw the inner lock-door. itseemed that men should be visible to welcome them. there were none. the airlock swallowed them. they touched againstsomething solid. there were more clankings. they seemed to crunch against the metal floor—magneticflooring-grapples. then, in solid contact with the substance of the platform, they heardthe sounds of the great outer doors swinging shut. they were within the artificial satelliteof earth. it was bright in the lock, and joe

stared out the cabin ports at the quiltedsides. there was a hissing of air, and he saw a swirling mist, and then the bulges ofthe sidewall sagged. the air pressure gauge was spinning up toward normal sea-level airpressure. joe threw the ready lever of the steeringrockets to off. "we're landed." there was silence. joe looked about him. theother three looked queer. it would have seemed natural for them to rejoice on arriving attheir destination. but somehow they didn't feel that they had. joe said wrily, "it seems that we ought toweigh something, now we've got here. so we feel queer that we don't. shoes, mike?"

mike peeled off the magnetic-soled slippersfrom their place on the cabin wall. he handed them out and opened the door. a biting chillcame in it. joe slipped on the shoe-soles with their elastic bands to hold them. hestepped out the door. he didn't land. he floated until he reachedthe sidewall. then he pulled himself down by the netting. once he touched the floor,his shoes seemed to be sticky. the net and the plastic sidewalls were, of course, themethod by which a really large airlock was made practical. when this ship was about totake off again, pumps would not labor for hours to pump the air out. the sidewalls wouldinflate and closely enclose the ship's hull, and so force the air in the lock back intothe ship. then the pumps would work on the

air behind the inflated walls—with netsto help them draw the wall-stuff back to let the ship go free. the lock could be used withonly fifteen minutes for pumping instead of four hours. the door in the back of the lock clanked open.joe tried to walk toward it. he discovered his astounding clumsiness. to walk in magnetic-soledshoes in weightlessness requires a knack. when joe lifted one foot and tried to swingthe other forward, his body tried to pivot. when he lifted his right foot, he had to turnhis left slightly inward. his arms tried to float absurdly upward. when he was in motionand essayed to pause, his whole body tended to continue forward with a sedate topplingmotion that brought him down flat on his face.

he had to put one foot forward to check himself.he seemed to have no sense of balance. when he stood still—his stomach queasy becauseof weightlessness—he found himself tilting undignifiedly forward or back—or, with equalunpredictability, sidewise. he would have to learn an entirely new method of walking. a man came in the lock, and joe knew who itwas. sanford, the senior scientist of the platform's crew. joe had seen him often enoughon the television screen in the communications room at the shed. now sanford looked nerve-racked,but his eyes were bright and his expression sardonic. "my compliments," he said, his voice tightwith irony, "for a splendidly futile job well

done! you've got your cargo invoice?" joe nodded. sanford held out his hand. joefumbled in his pocket and brought out the yellow sheet. "i'd like to introduce my crew," said joe."this is haney, and chief bender, and mike scandia." he waved his hand, and his wholebody wobbled unexpectedly. "we'll know each other!" said sanford sardonically."our first job is more futility—to get the guided missiles you've brought us into thelaunching tubes. a lot of good they'll do!" a huge plate in the roof of the lock—butit was not up or down or in any particular direction—withdrew itself. a man floatedthrough the opening and landed on the ship's

hull; another man followed him. "chief," said joe, "and haney. will you openthe cargo doors?" the two swaying figures moved to obey, thoughwith erratic clumsiness. sanford called sharply: "don't touch the hull without gloves! if itisn't nearly red-hot from the sunlight, it'll be below zero from shadow!" joe realized, then, the temperature effectsthe skin on his face noticed. a part of the spaceship's hull gave off heat like that ofa panel heating installation. another part imparted a chill. sanford said unpleasantly, "you want to reportyour heroism, eh? come along!"

he clanked to the doorway by which he hadentered. joe followed, and mike after him. they went out of the lock. sanford suddenlypeeled off his metal-soled slippers, put them in his pocket, and dived casually into a four-footmetal tube. he drifted smoothly away along the lighted bore, not touching the sidewalls.he moved in the manner of a dream, when one floats with infinite ease and precision inany direction one chooses. joe and mike did not share his talent. joelaunched himself after sanford, and for perhaps 20 or 30 feet the lighted aluminum sidewallof the tube sped past him. then his shoulder rubbed, and he found himself skidding to anundignified stop, choking the bore. mike thudded into him.

"i haven't got the hang of this yet," saidjoe apologetically. he untangled himself and went on. mike followedhim, his expression that of pure bliss. he was a tiny man, was mike, but he had the longingsand the ambitions of half a dozen ordinary-sized men in his small body. and he had known frustration.he could prove by mathematics that space exploration could be carried on by midgets at a fractionof the cost and risk of the same job done by normal-sized men. he was, of course, quiteright. the cabins and air and food supplies for a spaceship's crew of midgets would costand weigh a fraction of similar equipment for six-footers. but people simply weren'tinterested in sending midgets out into space. but mike had gotten here. he was in the spaceplatform. there were full-sized men who would

joyfully have changed places with him, forty-oneinch height and all. so mike was blissful. the tube ended and joe bounced off the wallthat faced its end. sanford was waiting. he grinned with more than a hint of spite. "here's our communications room," he said."now you can talk down to earth. it'll be relayed, now, but in half an hour you canreach the shed direct." he floated inside. joe followed cautiously.there was another crew member on duty there. he sat before a group of radar screens, withthigh grips across his legs to hold him in his chair. he turned his head and nodded cheerfullyenough. "here!" snapped sanford.

joe clambered awkwardly to the seat the seniorcrew member pointed out. he made his way to it by handholds on the walls. he fumbled intothe chair and threw over the curved thigh grips that would hold him in place. suddenly he was oriented. he had seen thisroom before—before the platform was launched. true, the man at the radar screens was upside-downwith reference to himself, and sanford had hooked a knee negligently around the arm ofa firmly anchored chair with his body at right angles to joe's own, but at least joe knewwhere he was and what he was to do. "go ahead and report," said sanford sardonically."you might tell them that you heroically destroyed the rockets that attacked us, and that yourcrew behaved splendidly, and that you have

landed in the space platform and the situationis well in hand. it isn't, but it will make nice headlines." joe said evenly, "our arrival's been reported?" "no," said sanford, grinning. "obviously theradar down on earth—shipboard ones on this hemisphere, of course—have reported thatthe platform still exists. but we haven't communicated since the bombs went off. theyprobably think we had so many punctures that we lost all our air and are all wiped out.they'll be glad to hear from you that we aren't." joe threw a switch, frowning. this wasn'tright. sanford was the senior scientist on board and hence in command, because he wasbest-qualified to direct the scientific observations

the platform was making. but there was somethingspecifically wrong. the communicator hummed. a faint voice sounded.it swelled to loudness. "calling space platform! calling space platform! calling space platform!"joe turned down the volume. he said into the microphone: "space platform calling earth. joe kenmorereporting. we have made contact with the platform and completed our landing. our cargo is nowbeing unloaded. our landing rockets had to be expended against presumably hostile bombs,and we are now unable to return to earth. the ship and the platform, however, are unharmed.i am now waiting for orders. report ends." he turned away from the microphone. sanfordsaid sharply, "go on! tell them what a hero

you are!" "i'm going to help unload my ship," joe saidshortly. "you report what you please." "get back at that transmitter!" shouted sanfordfuriously. "tell 'em you're a hero! tell 'em you're wonderful! i'll tell 'em how uselessit is!" joe saw the other man in the room, the manat the radar screens, shake his head. he got up and fumbled his way along the wall to thedoor. sanford shouted after him angrily. joe went out, found the four-foot tunnel,and floated not down but along it back to the unloading lock. wordlessly, he set towork to get the cargo out of the cargo hold of the spaceship.

handling objects in weightlessness which onearth would be heavy was an art in itself. two men could move tons. it needed only oneman to start a massive crate in motion. however, one had either to lift or push an object inthe exact line it was to follow. to thrust hard for a short time produced exactly thesame effect as to push gently for a longer period. anything floated tranquilly in theline along which it was moved. the man who had to stop it, though, needed to use exactlyas much energy as the man who sent it floating. he needed to check the floating thing in exactlythe same line. if one tried to stop a massive shipment from one side, he would topple intoit and he and the crate together would go floundering helplessly over each other.

the chief had gone off to help maneuver two-tonguided missiles into launching tubes. one crew member remained with haney, unloadingthings that would have had to be handled with cranes on earth. joe found himself neededmost in the storage chamber. a crate floated from the ship to the crewman. standing headdownward, he stopped its original movement, braced himself, and sent it floating to joe.he braced himself, stopped its flight, and very slowly—to move fast with anything heavyin his hands would pull his feet from the floor—set it on a stack of similar objectswhich would presently be fastened in place. everything had to be done in slow motion,or one would lose his footing. joe worked painstakingly. he gradually began to understandthe process. but the muscles of his stomach

ached because of their continuous, instinctivecramp due to the sensation of unending fall. mike floated through the hatchway from thelock. he twisted about as he floated, and his magnetized soles clanked to a deft contactwith the wall. he said calmly: "that guy sanford has cracked up. he's potty. if this were jailhe'd be stir-crazy. he's yelling into the communicator now that we'll all be dead ina matter of days, and the rocket missiles we brought up won't help. he's nasty aboutit, too!" haney called from the cargo space of the shipin the lock: "all empty here! we're unloaded." there were sounds as he closed the cargo doors.haney, followed by the chief, came into view, floating as mike had done. but he didn't landas skillfully. he touched the wall on his

hands and knees and bounced away and triedhelplessly to swim to a hand-hold. it would have been funny except that joe was in nomood for humor. mike whipped off his belt and flipped theend of it to haney. he caught it and was drawn gently to the wall. haney's shoes clickedto a hold. the chief landed more expertly. "we need wings here," he said ruefully. "youreported, joe?" joe nodded. he turned to brent, the crew memberwho'd been unloading. he knew him too, from their two-way video conversations. "sanford does act oddly," he said uncomfortably."when he met me in the lock he said our coming was useless. he talked about the futilityof everything while i reported. he sounds

like he sneers at every possible action asuseless." "most likely it is," brent said mildly. "here,anyhow. it does look as if we're going to be knocked off. but sanford's taking it badly.the rest of us have let him act as he pleased because it didn't seem to matter. it probablydoesn't, except that he's annoying." mike said truculently, "we won't be knockedoff! we've got rockets of our own up here now! we can fight back if there's anotherattack!" brent shrugged. his face was young enough,but deeply lined. he said as mildly as before: "your landing rockets set off four bombs onthe way from earth. you brought us six more rocket missiles. how many bombs can we knockdown with them?"

joe blinked. it was a shock to realize thefacts of life in an artificial satellite. if it could be reached by bombs from earth,the bombs could be reached by guided missiles from the satellite. but it would take oneguided missile to knock down one bomb—with luck. "i see," said joe slowly. "we can handle justsix more bombs from earth." "six in the next month," agreed brent wrily."it'll be that long before we get more. somebody sent up four bombs today. suppose they sendeight next time? or simply one a day for a week?" mike made an angry noise. "the seventh bombshot at us knocks us out! we're sitting ducks

here too!" brent nodded. he said mildly: "yes. the platform can't be defended againstan indefinite number of bombs from earth. of course the united states could go to warbecause we've been shot at. but would that do us any good? we'd be shot down in the war." joe said distastefully, "and sanford's crackedup because he knows he's going to be killed?" brent said earnestly. "oh, no! he's a goodscientist! but he's always had a brilliant mind. poor devil, he's never failed at anythingin all his life until now! now he has failed. he's going to be killed, and he can't thinkof any way to stop it. his brains are the

only things he's ever believed in, and nowthey're no good. he can't accept the idea that he's stupid, so he has to believe thateverything else is. it's a necessity for him. haven't you known people who had to thinkeverybody else was stupid to keep from knowing that they were themselves?" joe nodded. he waited. "sanford," said brent earnestly, "simply can'tadjust to the discovery that he's no better than anybody else. that's all. he was a niceguy, but he's not used to frustration and he can't take it. therefore he scorns everythingthat frustrates him—and everything else, by necessity. he'll be scornful about gettingkilled when it happens. but waiting for it

is becoming intolerable to him." he looked at his watch. he said apologetically,"i'm the crew psychologist. that's why i speak so firmly. in five minutes we're due to comeout of the earth's shadow into sunshine again. i'd suggest that you come to watch. it's goodto look at." he did not wait for an answer. he led theway. and the others followed in a strange procession. somehow, automatically, they fellinto single file, and they moved on their magnetic-soled slippers toward a passage tubein one wall. their slipper soles clanked and clicked in an erratic rhythm. brent walkedwith the mincing steps necessary for movement in weightlessness. the others imitated him.their hands no longer hung naturally by their

sides, but tended to make extravagant gestureswith the slightest muscular impulse. they swayed extraordinarily as they walked. brentwas a slender figure, and joe was more thick-set, and haney was taller, and lean. the burlychief and the forty-one inch figure of mike the midget followed after them. they madea queer procession indeed. minutes later they were in a blister on theskin of the platform. there were quartz glass ports in the sidewall. outside the glass weremetal shutters. brent served out dense goggles, almost black, and touched the buttons thatopened the steel port coverings. they looked into space. the dimmer stars wereextinguished by the goggles they wore. the brighter ones seemed faint and widely spaced.beneath their feet as they held to handrails

lay the featureless darkness of earth. butbefore them and very far away there was a vast, dim arch of deepest red. it was sunlight filtered through the thickestlayers of earth's air. it barely outlined the curve of that gigantic globe. as theystared, it grew brighter. the artificial satellite required little more than four hours for onerevolution about its primary, the earth. to those aboard it, the earth would go throughall its phases in no longer a time. they saw now the thinnest possible crescent of thenew earth. but in minutes—almost in seconds—the deep red sunshine brightened to gold. thehair-thin line of light widened to a narrow ribbon which described an eight-thousand-milehalf-circle. it brightened markedly at the

middle. it remained red at its ends, but inthe very center it glowed with splendid flame. then a golden ball appeared, and swam up anddetached itself from the earth, and the on-lookers saw the breath-taking spectacle of all ofearth's surface seemingly being born of the night. as if new-created before their eyes, seasand lands unfolded in the sunlight. they watched flecks of cloud and the long shadows of mountains,and the strangely different colorings of its fields and forests. as brent had told them, it was good to watch. it was half an hour later when they gatheredin the kitchen of the platform. the man who

had been loading launching tubes now brisklyworked to prepare a meal on the extremely unusual cooking-devices of a human outpostin interplanetary space. the food smelled good. but joe noticed thathe could smell growing things. green stuff. it was absurd—until he remembered that therewas a hydroponic garden here. plants grew in it under sunlamps which were turned onfor a certain number of hours every day. the plants purified the platform's air, and ofcourse provided some fresh and nourishing food for the crew. they ate. the food was served in plastic bowls,with elastic thread covers through which they could see and choose the particular morselsthey fancied next. the threads stretched to

let through the forks they ate with. but brentused a rather more practical pair of tongs in a businesslike manner. they drank coffee from cups which looked verymuch like ordinary cups on earth. joe remembered suddenly that sally holt had had much to dowith the design of domestic science arrangements here. he regarded his cup with interest. itstayed in its saucer because of magnets in both plastic articles. the saucer stayed onthe table because the table was magnetic, too. and the coffee did not float out to mid-airin a hot, round brownish ball, because there was a transparent cover over the cup. whenone put his lips to the proper edge, a part of the cover yielded as the cup was squeezed.the far side of the cup was flexible. one

pressed, and the coffee came into one's lipswithout the spilling of a drop. at that moment joe really thought of sallyfor the first time in a good two hours. she'd been anxious that living in the platform shouldbe as normal and earth-like as possible. the total absence of weight would be bad enough.she believed it needed to be countered, as a psychological factor in staying sane, bythe effect of normal-seeming chairs and normal-tasting food, and not too exotic systems for eating. joe asked brent about it. "oh, yes," said brent mildly. "it's likelywe'd all have gone off the deep end if there weren't some familiar things about. to haveto drink from a cup that one squeezes is tolerable.

but we'd have felt hysterical at times ifwe had to drink everything from the equivalent of baby bottles." "sally holt," said joe, "is a friend of mine.she helped design this stuff." "that girl has every ounce of brains thatany woman can be trusted with!" brent said warmly. "she thought of things that wouldnever have occurred to me! as a psychologist, i could see how good her ideas were when shebrought them up, but as a male i'd never have dreamed of them." then he grinned. "she felldown on just one point. so did everybody else. nobody happened to think of a garbage-disposalsystem for the platform." it came into joe's mind that garbage-disposalwas hardly a subject one would expect to be

discussing in interplanetary space. but theplatform wasn't the same thing as a spaceship. a ship could jettison refuse and leave itbehind, or store it during a voyage and dump it at either end. but the space platform wouldnever land. it could roll on forever. and if it heaved out its refuse from airlocks—why—thestuff would still have the platform's orbital speed and would follow it tirelessly aroundthe earth until the end of time. "we dry and store it now," said brent. "ifwe were going to live, we'd figure out some way to turn it to fertilizer for the hydroponicgardens. it's hardly worth while as things are. even then, though, the problem of tincans could be hopeless." the chief wiped his mouth deliberately. hehad helped load four guided-missile launching

tubes, and he had been brought up to dateon the state of things in the platform. he growled in a preliminary fashion and said,"joe." joe looked at him. "we brought up six two-ton guided missiles,"said the chief dourly. "we'll have warning of other bombs coming up. we can send thesemissiles out to intercept 'em. six of 'em. they can get close enough to set off theirproximity fuses, anyhow. but what are we going to do, joe, if somebody flings seven bombsat us? we can manage six—maybe. but what'll we do with the one that's left over?" "have you any ideas?" asked joe.

the chief shook his head. brent said mildly."we've worked on that here in the platform, i assure you. and as sanford puts it quitesoundly, about the only thing we can really do is throw our empty tin cans at them." joe nodded. then he tensed. brent had meantit as a rather mirthless joke. but joe was astonished at what his own brain made of it.he thought it over. then he said, "why not? it ought to be a very good trick." brent stared at him incredulously. haney lookedsolemnly at him. the chief regarded joe thoughtfully out of the corner of his eye. then mike shoutedgleefully. the chief blinked, and a moment later grunted wrathful unintelligible syllablesof mohawk, and then tried to pound joe on

the back and because of his want of weightwent head over heels into the air between the six walls of the kitchen. haney said disgustedly, "joe, there are timeswhen a guy wants to murder you! why didn't i think of that?" but brent was looking at the four of themwith a lively, helpless curiosity. "will you guys let me in on this?" they told him. joe began to explain it carefully,but the chief broke in with a barked and impatient description, and then mike interrupted tosnap a correction. but by that time brent's expression had changed with astonishing suddenness.

"i see! i see!" he said excitedly. "all right!have you got space suits in your ship? we have them. so we'll go out and pelt the starswith garbage. i think we'd better get at it right now, too. in under two hours we'll bea fine target for more bombs, and it would be good to start ahead of time." mike made a gesture and went floating outof the kitchen, air-swimming to go get space suits from the ship. the grin on his smallface threatened to cut his throat. joe asked, "sanford's in command. how'll he like thisidea?" brent hesitated. "i'm afraid," he said regretfully,"he won't like it. if you solve a problem he gave up, it will tear his present adjustmentto bits. he's gone psychotic. i think, though,

that he'll allow it to be tried while he swearsat us for fools. he's most likely to react that way if you suggest it." "then," agreed joe, "i suggest it. chief——" the chief raised a large brown hand. "i got the program, joe," he said. "we'llall get set." and joe went floating unhappily through passage-tubesto the control room. he heard sanford's voice, sardonic and mocking, as he reached the communicationsroom door. "what do you expect?" sanford was saying derisively."we're clay pigeons. we're a perfect target. we've just so much ammunition now. you sayyou may send us more in three weeks instead

of a month. i admire your persistence, butit's really no use! this is all a very stupid business...." he felt joe's presence. he turned, and thensharply struck the communicator switch with the heel of his hand. the image on the televisionscreen died. the voice cut off. he said blandly: "well?" "i want," said joe, "to take a garbage-disposalparty out on the outside of the platform. i came to ask for authority." sanford looked at him in mocking surprise. "to be sure it seems as intelligent as anythingelse the human race has ever done," he observed.

"but why does it appeal to you as somethingyou want to do?" "i think," joe told him, "that we can makea defense against bombs from earth with our empty tin cans." sanford raised his eyebrows. "if you happen to have a four-leaf cloverwith you," he said in fine irony, "i'm told they're good, too." his eyes were bright and scornful. his mannerwas feverishly derisive. joe would have done well to let it go at that. but he was nettled. "we set off the last bombs," he said doggedly,"by shooting our landing rockets at them.

they didn't collide with the bombs. they simplytouched off the bombs' proximity fuses. if we surround the platform with a cluster oftin cans and such things, they may do as well. things we throw away won't drop to earth.ultimately, they'll actually circle us, like satellites themselves. but if we can get enoughof them between us and earth, any bombs that come up will have their proximity fuses detonatedby the floating trash we throw out." sanford laughed. "we might ask for aluminum-foil ribbon tocome up in the next supply ship," said joe. "we could have masses of that, or maybe metallicdust floating around us." "i much prefer used tin cans," said sanfordhumorously. "i'll take the watch here and

let everybody go out with you. by all meanswe must defend ourselves. forward with the garbage! go ahead!" his eyes were almost hysterically scornfulas he waited for joe to leave. joe did not like it at all, but there was nothing to dobut get out. he found the chief with a net bag filled withemptied tin cans. haney had another. there were two more, carried by members of the platform'sfour-man crew. they were donning their space suits when joe came upon them. mike was grotesquein the cut-down outfit built for him. actually, the only difference was in the size of thefabric suit and the length of the arms and legs. he could carry a talkie outfit withits batteries, and the oxygen tank for breathing

as well as anybody, since out here weightdid not count at all. there were plastic ropes, resistant to extremes of temperature. joe got into his own space suit. it was nosuch self-contained space craft in itself as the fantastic story tellers dreamed of.it was not much more than an altitude suit, aluminized to withstand the blazing heat ofsunshine in emptiness, and with extravagantly insulated soles to the magnetic boots. intheory, there simply is no temperature in space. in practice, a metal hull heats upin sunshine to very much more than any record-hot-day temperature on earth. in shadow, too, a metalhull will drop very close to minus 250 degrees centigrade, which is something like 400 degreesfahrenheit below zero. but mainly the space

boots were insulated against the almost dull-red-heattemperatures of long-continued sunshine. a crewman named corey moved into an airlockwith one of the bags of empty tin cans. brent watched in a routine fashion through a glassin the lock-door. the pumps began to exhaust the air from the airlock. corey's space suitinflated visibly. presently the pump stopped. corey opened the outer door. he went out,paying plastic rope behind him. an instant later he reappeared and removed the rope.he'd made his line fast outside. he closed the outer lock-door. air surged into the lockand haney crowded in. again the pumping. then haney went out, and was anchored to the platformnot only by his magnetic boots but by a rope fastened to a hand-hold. brent went out. mike.joe came next.

they stood on the hull of the space platform,waiting in the incredible harsh sunshine of emptiness. the bright steel plates of thehull swelled and curved away on every hand. there were myriads of stars and the vast roundbulk of earth seemed farther away to a man in a space suit than to a man looking outa port. where shadows cut across the platform's irregular surface, there was utter blackness.also there was horrible frigidity. elsewhere it was blindingly bright. the men were specksof humanity standing on a shining metal hull, and all about them there was the desolationof nothingness. but joe felt strangely proud. the seventhman came out of the lock-door. they tied their plastic ropes together and spread out in along line which went almost around the platform.

the man next to the lock was anchored to asteel hand-hold. the third man of the line also anchored himself. the fifth. the seventh.they were a straggling line of figures with impossibly elongated shadows, held togetherby ropes. they were peculiarly like a party of weirdly costumed mountaineers on a glacierof gleaming silver. but no mountain climbers ever had a backgroundof ten thousand million stars, peering up from below them as well as from overhead.nor did any ever have a mottled greenish planet rolling by 4,000 miles beneath them, nor ablazing sun glaring down at them from a sky such as this. in particular, perhaps, no other explorersever set out upon an expedition whose purpose

was to throw tin cans and dried refuse atall the shining cosmos. they set to work. the space suits were inevitablyclumsy. it was not easy to throw hard with only magnetism to hold one to his feet. itwas actually more practical to throw straight up with an underhand gesture. but even thatwould send the tin cans an enormous distance, in time. there was no air to slow them. the tin cans twinkled as they left the platform'ssteel expanse. they moved away at a speed of possibly 20 to 30 miles an hour. they floatedoff in all possible directions. they would never reach earth, of course. they sharedthe platform's orbital speed, and they would circle the earth with it forever. but whenthey were thrown away, their orbits were displaced

a little. each can thrown downward just now,for example, would always be between the platform and the earth on this side of its orbit. buton the other side of earth it would be above the platform. the platform, in fact, becamethe center of a swarm, a cluster, a cloud of infinitesimal objects which would alwaysaccompany it and always be in motion with regard to it. together, they should make upa screen no proximity fuse bomb could pierce without exploding. joe heard clankings, transmitted to his bodythrough his feet. "what's that?" he demanded sharply. "it soundslike the airlock!" voices mingled in his ears. the other walkie-talkiesallowed everybody to speak at once. most of

them did. then joe heard someone laugh. itwas sanford's voice. sandford's aluminized, space-suited figurecame clanking around the curve of the small metal world. the antenna of his walkie-talkieglittered above his head. he seemed to swagger against the background of many-colored stars. brent spoke quickly, before anyone else couldquestion sanford. his tone was mild and matter of fact, but joe somehow knew the tensionbehind it. "hello, sanford. you came out? was it wise?shouldn't there be someone inside the platform?" sanford laughed again. "it was very wise.we're going to be killed, as you fellows know perfectly well. it's futile to try to avoidit. so very sensibly i've decided to spare

myself the nuisance of waiting to be killed.i came out." there was silence in the ear-phones of joe'sspace suit radio. he heard his own heart beating loudly and steadily in the absolute stillness. "incidentally," said sanford with almost hystericalamusement, "i fixed it so that none of us can get back in. it would be useless, anyhow.everything's futility. so i've put an end to our troubles for good. i've locked us allout." he laughed yet again. and joe knew that insanford's madness it was perfectly possible for him to have done exactly what he said. there were eight human beings on the platform.all were now outside it, on its outer skin.

they wore space suits with from half an hourto an hour's oxygen supply. they had no tools with which to break back into the satellite.and no help could possibly reach them in less than three weeks. if they couldn't get back inside the platform,sanford, laughing proudly, had killed them all. chapter 4 there was a babbling of angry, strained, tensevoices in joe's headphones. then the chief roared for silence. it fell, save for sanford'squiet, hysterical chuckling. joe found himself rather absurdly thinking that sanford wasnot actually insane, except as any man may

be who believes only in his own cleverness.sooner or later it is bound to fail him. on earth, sanford's pride in his own intellecthad been useful. he had been brilliant because he accepted every problem and every difficultyas a challenge. but with the platform's situation seemingly hopeless, he'd been starkly unableto face the fact that he wasn't clever or brilliant or intelligent enough. if joe'ssolution to the proximity fuse bombs had been offered before his emotional collapse, hecould have accepted it grandly, and in so doing have made it his own. but it was toolate for that now. he'd given up and worked up a frantic scorn for the universe he couldnot cope with. for joe's trick to work would have made him inferior even to joe in hisown view. and he couldn't have that! even

to die, with the prospect that others wouldsurvive him, was an intolerable prospect. he had to be smarter than anybody else. so he chuckled. the chief roared wrathfullyinto his transmitter: "quiet! this crazy fool's tried to commit suicide for all of us! howabout it? why can't we get back in? how many locks——" joe found himself thinking hard. he couldbe angry later. now there wasn't time. thirty or forty minutes of breathing. no tools. asteel hull. the airlocks were naturally arranged for the greatest possible safety under normalconditions. in every airlock it had naturally been arranged so that the door to space andthe door to the interior could not be open

at the same time. that was to save lives.to save air, it would naturally be arranged that the door to space couldn't be openeduntil the lock was pumped empty. that in itself could be an answer. joe saidsharply, "hold it, chief! somebody watch sanford! all we've got to do is find which lock hecame out of. he couldn't get out until he pumped it empty—and that unlocks the outerdoor!" but sanford laughed once more. he soundedlike someone in the highest of high good humor. "heroic again, eh? but i took a compressedair bottle in the lock with me. when the outer door was open, i opened the stopcock and shutthe door. the air bottle filled the lock behind me. naturally i'd fasten the door after icame out! one must be intelligent!"

joe heard brent muttering, "yes, he'd do that!" "somebody check it!" snapped joe. "make sure!it might amuse him to watch us die while he knew we could get back in if we were as smartas he is." there were clankings on the hull. men moved,unfastening the lines which held them to the hull to get freedom of movement, but not breakingthe links which bound them to each other. joe saw haney go grimly back to the task ofthrowing away the stuff that they had brought out for the purpose. then mike's voice, brittleand cagey: "haney! quit it!" sanford's voice again, horribly amused. "byall means! don't throw away our garbage! we may need it!"

a voice snapped, "this lock's fastened." anothervoice: "and this...." other voices, with increasing desperation, verified that every airlock wasimplacably sealed fast by the presence of air pressure inside the lock itself. time was passing. joe had never noticed, before,the minute noises of the air pressure apparatus strapped to his back. his exhaled breath wentto a tiny pump that forced it through a hygroscopic filter which at once extracted excess moistureand removed carbon dioxide. the same pump carefully measured a volume of oxygen equalto the removed co2 and added it to the air it released. the pump made very small soundsindeed, and the valves were almost noiseless, but joe could hear their clickings.

something burned him. he had been standingperfectly still while trying to concentrate on a way out. sunshine had shone uninterruptedlyon one side of his space suit for as long as five minutes. despite the insulation inside,that was too long. he turned quickly to expose another part of himself to the sunlight. heknew abstractedly that the metal underfoot would sear bare flesh that touched it. a fewyards away, in the shadow, the metal of the hull would be cold enough to freeze hydrogen.but here it was fiercely hot. it would melt solder. it might— mike was fumbling tin cans out of the netbag from which haney had been throwing them away. he was a singular small figure, standingon shining steel, looking at one tin can after

another and impatiently putting them aside. he found one that seemed to suit him. it wasa large can. he knelt with it, pressing a part of it to the hot metal of the satellite'shull. a moment later he was ripping it apart. the solder had softened. he unrolled a sortof cylinder, then bent again, using the curved inner surface to concentrate the intolerablesunshine. joe caught his breath at the implication.concentrated sunshine can be incredibly hot. starting with unshielded, empty-space sunshine,practically any imaginable temperature is possible with a large enough mirror. mikedidn't have a concave mirror. he had only a cylindrical one. he couldn't reflect lightto a point, but only to a line. mike couldn't

hope to do more than double or triple thetemperature of a given spot. but considering what he wore on his back—! joe made his way clumsily to the spot wheremike now gesticulated to haney, trying to convey his meaning by gestures since sanfordwould overhear any spoken word. "i get it, mike," said joe. "i'll help." headded: "chief! you watch sanford. the rest of you try to flatten out some tin cans orfind some with flat round ends!" he reached the spot where mike bent over theplating. his hand moved to cast a shadow where the light had played. "i need more reflectors," mike said brusquely,"but we can do it!"

joe beckoned. there were more, hurried clankings.space-suited figures gathered about. the platform rolled on through space. whereit was bright it was very, very bright, and where it was dark it was blackness. off inemptiness the many-colored mass of earth shone hugely, rolling past. innumerable incuriousstars looked on. the sun flamed malevolently. the moon floated abstractedly far away. mike was bent above a small round airlockdoor. he had a distorted half-cylinder of sheet tin between his space-gloved hands.it reflected a line of intensified sunlight to the edge of the airlock seal. haney rippedfiercely at other tin cans. joe held another strip of polished metal. it focused crudely—verycrudely—on top of mike's line of reflected

sunshine. someone else held the end of a tincan to reflect more sunshine. someone else had a larger disk of tin. they stood carefully still. it looked completelyfoolish. there were six men in frozen attitudes, trying to reflect sunshine down to a singleblindingly-bright spot on an airlock door. they seemed breathlessly tense. they ignoredthe glories of the firmament. they were utterly absorbed in trying to make a spot of unbearablebrightness glow more brightly still. mike moved his hand to cast a shadow. thesteel was a little more than red-hot for the space of an inch. it would not melt, of course.it could not. and they had no tools to bend or pierce the presumably softened metal. butmike said fiercely:

"keep it hot!" he squirmed. his space suit was fabric, likethe rest, but it had been cut down to permit him to use it. it was bulkier on him thanthe suits of the others. he shifted his shoulder pack. the brass valve-nipple by which theoxygen tank was filled.... he jammed a ragged fragment of tin in place.he pressed down fiercely. a blazing jet of fierce, scintillating, streaking sparks leapedup from the spot where the metal glowed brightly. a hollow in the metal plate appeared. themetal disintegrated in gushing flecks of light.... white-hot iron in pure oxygen happens to beinflammable. iron is not incombustible at all. powdered steel, ground fine enough, willburn if simply exposed to air. really fine

steel wool will make an excellent blaze ifa match is touched to it. white-hot iron, with a jet of oxygen played upon it, explodesto steaming sparks. technically, mike had used the perfectly well-known trick of anoxygen lance to pierce the airlock door, let the air out of the lock, and so allow theouter door to be opened. there was a rush of vapor. the door was drilledthrough. haney picked mike up bodily, joe heaved the door open, and haney climbed intoit, practically carrying mike by the scruff of the neck. joe panted, "plug the hole fromthe inside. sit on it if you have to!" and slammed the door shut. they waited. sanford's voice came in the ear-phones.it was higher in pitch than it had been.

"you fools!" he raged. "it's useless! it'sstupid to do useless things! it's stupid to do anything at all—" there were sudden scuffling clankings. joeswung about. the chief and sanford were struggling. sanford flailed his arms about, trying tobreak the chief's faceplate while he screamed furious things about futility. the chief got exactly the hold he wanted.he lifted sanford from the metal deck. he could have thrown him away to emptiness, then,but he did not. he set sanford in mid-space as if upon a shelf.the raging man hung in the void an exact man-height above the platform's surface. the chief drewback and left him there, sanford could writhe

there for a century before the platform'sinfinitesimal gravity brought him down. "huh!" said the chief wrathfully. "how's haneyand mike making out?" almost on the instant, twenty yards away,a tiny airlock door thrust out from the surface of glittering metal, and helmet and antennaappeared. "you guys can come in now," said haney's voicein joe's headphones. "it's all okay. mike's pumping out the other locks too, so you cancome in at any of 'em." the space-suited figures clumped loudly toairlock doors. there were a dozen or more small airlocks in various parts of the hull,besides the great door to admit supply ships. the chief growled and moved toward sanfordnow raging like the madman his helplessness

made him. "no," said joe shortly. "he'd fight again.go inside. that's an order, chief." the chief grunted and obeyed. joe went tothe nearest airlock and entered the great steel hull. sanford floated in emptiness, two yards fromthe space platform he would have turned into a derelict. he did not move farther away.he did not fall toward it. there was nobody to listen to him. he cried out in blood-curdlingfury because other men were smarter than he was. other men had solved problems he couldnot solve. other men were his superiors. he screamed his rage.

presently the platform revolved slowly beneathhim. it was turned, of course, by the monster gyros which in turn were controlled by thepilot gyros joe and haney and the chief and mike had repaired when saboteurs smashed them. the platform rotated sedately. a great gapappeared in it. the door of the supply ship lock moved until sanford, floating helplessly,was opposite its mouth. a rod with a rounded object at its end appearedpast the docked supply ship. it reached out and touched sanford's helmet. it was the magneticgrapple which drew space ships into their dock. it drew sanford, squirming and streaming,into the great lock. the outer doors closed.

before air was admitted to the inside, sanfordwent suddenly still. when they took him out of his suit he wasapparently unconscious. he could not be roused. freed, he drew his knees up to his chin inthe position in which primitive peoples bury their dead. he seemed to sleep. brent examinedhim carefully. "catatonia," he said distastefully. "he spenthis life thinking he was smarter than anybody else—smarter, probably, than all the universe.he believed it. he couldn't face the fact that he was wrong. he couldn't stay consciousand not know it. so he's blacked out. he refuses to be anything unless he can be smartest.we'll have to do artificial feeding and all that until we can get him down to earth toa hospital." he shrugged.

"we'd better report this down to earth," joesaid. "by the way, better not describe our screen of tin cans on radio waves. not evenmicrowaves. it might leak. and we want to see if it works." just forty-two hours later they found outthat it did work. a single rocket came climbing furiously out from earth. it came from thenight-side, and they could not see where it was launched, though they could make excellentguesses. they got a single guided missile ready to crash it if necessary. it wasn't necessary. the bomb from earth detonated300 miles below the artificial satellite. its proximity fuse, sending out small radar-typewaves, had them reflected back by an empty

sardine can thrown away from the platformby mike scandia forty-some hours ago. the sardine can had been traveling in its ownprivate orbit ever since. the effect of mike's muscles had not been to send it back to earth,but to change the center of the circular orbit in which it floated. sometimes it floatedabove the platform—that was on one side of earth—and sometimes below it. it wasabout 300 miles under the platform when it reflected urgent, squealing radar frequencywaves to a complex proximity fuse in the climbing rocket. the rocket couldn't tell the differencebetween a sardine can and a space platform. it exploded with a blast of pure brightnesslike that of the sun. the platform went on its monotonous roundabout the planet from which it had risen only

weeks before. sanford was strapped in a bunkand fed through a tube, and on occasion massaged and variously tended to keep him alive. themen on the platform worked. they made telephoto maps of earth. they took highly magnified,long-exposure photographs of mars, pictures that could not possibly be made with suchdistinctness from the bottom of earth's turbulent ocean of air. there was a great deal of official businessto be done. weather observations of the form and distribution of cloud masses were an importantmatter. the platform could make much more precise measurements of the solar constantthan could be obtained below. the flickering radar was gathering information for studiesof the frequency and size of meteoric particles

outside the atmosphere. there was the extremelyimportant project for securing and sealing in really good vacua in various electronicdevices brought up by joe and his crew in the supply ship. but sometimes joe managed to talk to sally. it was very satisfying to see her on the televisionscreen in personal conversation. their talk couldn't be exactly private, because it couldbe picked up elsewhere. it probably was. but she told joe how she felt, and she wantedto read him the newspaper stories based on the reports brent had sent down. brent wasin command of the platform now that sanford lay in a resolute coma in his bunk. but joediscouraged such waste of time.

"how's the food?" asked sally. "are you peoplegetting any fresh vegetables from the hydroponic garden?" they were, and joe told her so. the huge chamberin which sun-lamps glowed for a measured number of hours in each twenty-four produced incrediblyluxuriant vegetation. it kept the air of the ship breathable. it even changed the smellof it from time to time, so that there was no feeling of staleness. "and the cooking system's really good?" shewanted to know. sally was partly responsible for that, too. "and how about the bunks?" "i sleep now," joe admitted.

that had been difficult. it was possible toget used to weightlessness while awake. one would slip, sometimes, and find himself suddenlytense and panicky because he'd abruptly noticed all over again that he was falling. but—andyet again sally was partly responsible—the bunks were designed to help in that difficulty.each bunk had an inflatable top blanket. one crawled in and settled down, and turned thepetcock that inflated the cover. then it held one quite gently but reassuringly in place.it was possible to stir and to turn over, but the feeling of being held fast was verycomforting. with a little care about what one thought of before going to sleep, onecould get a refreshing eight hours' rest. the bunks were luxury.

sally said: "the date and time's a secret,of course, because it might be overheard, but there'll be another ship up before toolong. it's bringing landing rockets for you to come back with." "that's good!" said joe. it would feel goodto set foot on solid ground again. he looked at sally and said eagerly, "we've got a datethe evening i get back?" "we've got a date," she said, nodding. but it couldn't very well be a definite date.there were people with ideas that ran counter to plans for joe to get back to earth anda date with sally holt. the space platform was not admired uniformly by all the nationsof earth. the united states had built it because

the united nations couldn't, and one of theattractions of the idea had been that once it got out to space and was armed, peace mustreign upon earth because it could smack down anybody who made war. the trouble was that it wasn't armed wellenough. six guided missiles couldn't defend it indefinitely. it looked as helpless asisolated berlin did before the first airlift proved what men and planes could do in theway of transport. and the platform's enemies didn't intend for it to be saved by a rocketlift.they would try to smash it before such a lift could get started. a week after joe got to it with the guidedmissiles, three rockets attacked. they went

up from somewhere in the middle of the pacific.one blew up 250 miles below the platform. another detonated 190 miles away. for safety'ssake the third was crashed—at the cost of one guided missile—when it had come within50 miles. the screen of tin cans worked, but it wasn'tthick enough. the occupants of the platform went about hunting for sheet metal that couldbe spared. they pulled out minor partitions here and there, and went out on the surfaceand threw away thousands of small glittering scraps of metal in all directions. two weeks later, there was another attack.it could be calculated that joe couldn't have carried up more than six guided missiles.there might be as few as two of them left.

so eight rockets came up together—and thefirst of them went off 400 miles from the platform. only one got as close as 200 miles.no guided missiles were expended in defense. the platform's enemies tried once more. thistime the rockets arched up above the platform's orbit and dived on the satellite from above.there were two of them. they went off at 180 and 270 miles from the platform. joe's trashscreen would not work on earth, but in space it was an adequate defense against anythingequipped with proximity fuses. it could be assumed that in a full-scale space-war nuts,bolts, rusty nails and beer bottle caps would become essential military equipment. three days after this last attack, a secondsupply ship took off from earth. lieutenant

commander brown was a passenger. its startwas just like the one joe's ship had made. pushpots lifted it, jatos hurled it on, andthen the furious, flaming take-off rockets drove it valiantly out toward the stars. joe's ship had been moved out of the landinglock and was moored against the platform's hull. the second ship made contact in twohours and seventeen minutes from take-off. it arrived with its own landing rockets intact,and it brought a set of forty-foot metal tubes for joe's ship to get back to earth with.but those landing rockets and lieutenant commander brown constituted all its payload. it couldn'tbring up anything else. and lieutenant commander brown called a veryformal meeting in the huge living space at

the platform's center. he stood up grandlyin full uniform—and had to hook his feet around a chair leg to keep from floating absurdlyin mid-air. this detracted slightly from the dignity of his stance, but not from the officialvoice with which he read two documents aloud. the first paper detached lieutenant commanderbrown from his regular naval duties and assigned him pro tem to service with the space explorationproject. the second was an order directing him to take command and assume direction ofthe space platform. having read his orders, he cleared his throatand said cordially, "i am honored to serve here with you. frankly, i expect to learnmuch from you and to have very few orders to give. i expect merely to exercise suchauthority as experience at sea has taught

me is necessary for a tight and happy ship.i trust this will be one." he beamed. nobody was impressed. it was perfectlyobvious that he'd simply been sent up to acquire experience in space for later naval use, andthat he'd been placed in command because it was unthinkable that he serve under anyonewithout official rank and authority. and he quite honestly believed that his coming, withexperience in command, was a blessing to the platform. in fact, there was no danger thatthis commander of the platform would crack up under stress as sanford had. but it was too bad that he hadn't broughtsome long-range guided missiles with him. joe's ship had brought up twenty tons of cargoand twenty tons of landing rockets. the second

ship brought up twenty tons of landing rocketsfor joe, and twenty tons of landing rockets for itself. that was all. the second tripout to the space platform was a rescue mission and nothing else. arithmetic wouldn't letit be anything else. and there couldn't be any idea of noble self-sacrifice and stayingout at the platform, either, because only four ships like joe's had been begun, andonly two were even near completion. joe's had taken off the instant it was finished.the second had done the same. the second pair of spaceships wouldn't be ready for two monthsor more. the ships that could be used had to be used. so, only thirty-six hours after the arrivalof the second rocketship at the platform,

the two of them took off together to returnto earth. joe's ship left the airlock first. sanford was loaded in the cabin of the othership as cargo. lieutenant commander brown stayed out at the platform to replace him. obviously, in order to get back to earth theyheaded away from it in fleet formation. they pointed their rounded noses toward the milkyway. the upward course was an application of theprinciple that made the screen of tin cans and oddments remain about the platform. eachof those small objects had had the platform's own velocity and orbit. thrown away from it,the centers of their orbits changed. in theory, the center of the platform's orbit was thecenter of earth. but the centers of the orbits

of the thrown-away objects were pushed a fewmiles—twenty—fifty—a hundred—away from the center of earth. the returning space ships also had the orbitand speed of the platform. they wanted to shift the centers of their orbits by verynearly 4,000 miles, so that at one point they would just barely graze earth's atmosphere,lose some speed to it, and then bounce out to empty space again before they melted. cooledoff, they'd make another grazing bounce. after eight such bounces they'd stay in the air,and the stubby fins would give them a sort of gliding angle and controllability, whilethe landing rockets would let them down to solid ground. or so it was hoped.

meanwhile they headed out instead of in towardearth. they went out on their steering-rockets only, using the liquid fuel that had not beenneeded for course correction on the way out. at 4,000 miles up, the force of gravity isjust one-fourth of that at the earth's surface. it still exists; it is merely canceled outin an orbit. the ships could move outward at less cost in fuel than they could movein. so they went out and out on parallel courses,and the platform dwindled behind them. night flowed below until the hull of the artificialsatellite shone brightly against a background of seeming sheer nothingness. the twilight zone of earth's shadow reachedthe platform. it glowed redly, glowed crimson,

glowed the deepest possible color that couldbe seen, and winked out. the ships climbed on, using their tiny steering rockets. nothing happened. the ships drew away fromeach other for safety. they were 50, then 60 miles apart. one glowed red and vanishedin the shadow of the earth. the other was extinguished in the same way. then they wenthurtling through the blackness of the night side of earth. microwaves from the groundplayed upon them—radar used by friend and foe alike—and the friendly radar guidedtight-beam communicator waves to them with comforting assurance that their joint courseand height and speed were exactly the calculated optimum. but they could not be seen at all.

when they appeared again they were still fartherout from earth than the platform's orbit, but no farther from each other. and they weredescending. the centers of their orbits had been displaced very, very far indeed. going out, naturally, the ships had lost angularspeed as they gained in height. descending, they gained in angular velocity as they lostheight. they were not quite 30 miles apart as they sped with increasing, headlong speedand rushed toward the edge of the world's disk. when they were only 2,000 miles high,the earth's surface under them moved much faster than it had on the way up. when theywere only 1,000 miles high, the seas and continents seemed to flow past like a rushing river.at 500 miles, mountains and plains were just

distinguishable as they raced past underneath.at 200 miles there was merely a churning, hurtling surface on which one could not focusone's eyes because of the speed of its movement. they missed the solid surface of earth bybarely 40 miles. they were moving at a completely impossible speed. the energy of their position4,000 miles high had been transformed into kinetic energy of motion. and at 40 milesthere is something very close to a vacuum, compared to sea-level. but compared to trueemptiness, and at the speed of meteors, the thin air had a violent effect. a thin humming sound began. it grew louder.the substance of the ship was responding to the impact of the thin air upon it. the soundrose to a roar, to a bellow, to a thunderous

tumult. the ship quivered and trembled. itshook. a violent vibration set up and grew more and more savage. the whole ship shookwith a dreadful persistence, each vibration more monstrous, more straining, more ominousthan before. the four in the space ship cabin knew torture.weight returned to them, weight more violent than the six gravities they had known fora bare fourteen seconds at take-off. but that, at least, had been smoothly applied. thiswas deceleration at a higher figure yet, and accompanied by the shaking of bodies whichweighed seven times as much as ever before—and bodies, too, which for weeks past had beensubject to no weight at all. they endured. nothing at all could be done.at so many miles per second no possible human

action could be determined upon and attemptedin time to have any effect upon the course of the ship. joe could see out a quartziteport. the ground 40 miles below was merely a blur. there was a black sky overhead, whichdid not seem to stir. but cloud-masses rushed at express-train speed below him, and hisbody weighed more than half a ton, and the ship made the sound of innumerable thundersand shook, and shook and shook.... and then, when it seemed that it must flyutterly to pieces, the thunder diminished gradually to a bellow, and the bellow to aroar, and the roaring.... and the unthinkable weight oppressing him grew less. the earth was farther away and moving fartherstill. they were 100 miles high. they were

200 miles high.... there was no longer any sound at all, excepttheir gaspings for breath. their muscles had refused to lift their chests at all duringthe most brutal of the deceleration period. presently joe croaked a question. he lookedat the hull-temperature indicators. they were very, very high. he found that he was bruisedwhere he had strapped himself in. the places where each strap had held his heavy body againstthe ship's vibrations were deeply black-and-blue. the chief said thickly: "joe, somehow i don'tthink this is going to work. when do we hit again?" "three hours plus or minus something," saidjoe, dry-throated. "we'll hear from the ground."

mike said in a cracked voice: "radar reportswe went a little bit too low. they think we weren't tilted up far enough. we didn't bounceas soon as we should." joe unstrapped himself. "how about the other ship?" "it did better than we did," said mike. "it'sa good 200 miles ahead. down at the shed, they're recalculating for us. we'll have toland with six grazes instead of eight. we lost too much speed." joe went staggering, again weightless, tolook out a port for the other ship. he should have known better. one does not spot an eighty-footspace ship with the naked eye when it is 200

miles away. but he saw something, though for seconds hedidn't know what it was. now the little ship was 300 miles high andstill rising. joe was dazed and battered by the vibration of the ship in the graze justpast. the sister space ship hadn't lost speed so fast. it would be traveling faster. itwould be leaving him farther behind every second. it was rising more sharply. it wouldrise higher. joe stared numbly out of a port, thinkingconfusedly that his hull would be dull red on its outer surface, though the heating hadbeen so fast that the inner surfaces of the plating might still be cold. he saw the vastarea which was the curve of the edge of the

world. he saw the sunlight upon clouds belowand glimpses of the surface of the earth itself. and he saw something rising out of the mistsat the far horizon. it was a thread of white vapor. the other rocketship was a speck, amote, invisible because of its size and distance. this thread of vapor was already 100 mileslong, and it expanded to a column of whiteness half a mile across before it seemed to dissipate.it rose and rose, as if following something which sped upward. it was a rocket trail.the violence of its writhings proved the fury with which the rocket climbed. it was on its way to meet the other spaceship. it did. joe saw the thread of vapor extendand grow until it was higher than he was.

he never saw the other ship, which was toosmall. but he saw the burst of flame, bright as the sun itself, which was the explosionof a proximity fuse bomb. he knew, then, that nothing but incandescent, radioactive gasremained of the other ship and its crew. then he saw the trail of the second rocket.it was rising to meet him. chapter 5 the four of them watched through the portsas the thread of vapor sped upward. they hated the rocket and the people who had built it.joe said between his teeth, "we could spend our landing-rockets and make it chase us,but it'll have fuel for that!" the chief muttered in mohawk. the words soundedas if they ought to have blue fire at their

edges and smell of sulphur. mike the midgetsaid crackling things in his small voice. haney stared, his eyes burning. their ship was a little over 400 miles up,now. the rocket was 100 or better. the rendezvous would be probably 200 miles ahead and correspondinglyhigher. the rocket was accelerating furiously. it had farther to travel, but its rate ofclimb was already enormous and it increased every second. the ship could swing to right or left on steeringrockets, but the war rocket could swerve also. it was controlled from the ground. it didnot need to crash the small ship from space. within a limited number of miles the blastof its atomic warhead would vaporize any substance

that could exist. and of course the ship couldnot turn back. even the expenditure of all its landing-rockets could not bring twentytons of ship to a halt. they could speed it up, so it would pass the calculated meetingplace ahead of the war rocket. but the bomb would simply follow in a stern chase. in anycase, the ship could not stop. but neither could the rocket. joe never knew how he saw the significanceof that fact. on land or sea, of course, an automobile or a ship moves in the directionin which it is pointed. even an airplane needs to make only minor corrections for air currentswhich affect it. but an object in space moves on a course which is the sum of all its previousspeeds and courses. joe's ship was moving

eastward above the earth at so many milesper second. if he drove north—at a right angle to his present course—the ship wouldnot cease to move to the east. it would simply move northward in addition to moving east.if the rocket from earth turned north or east it would continue to move up and merely addthe other motion to its vertical rise. joe stared at the uncoiling thread of vaporwhich was the murder rocket's trail. he hated it so fiercely that he wanted to escape iteven at the cost of destruction, merely to foil its makers. at one moment, he was hardlyaware of anything but his own fury and the frantic desire to frustrate the rocket atany cost. the next instant, somehow, he was not angry at all. because somehow his brainhad dredged up the fact that the war rocket

could no more turn back than he could—andhe saw its meaning. "mike!" he snapped sharply. "get set! reportwhat we do! everybody set for acceleration! steering rockets ready, chief! get set tohelp, haney! i don't know whether we'll get out of this alive, but we'd better get intoour space suits." then he literally dived back to his accelerationchair and strapped in in feverish haste. the ship was then a quarter of the way to themeeting place and the rocket had very much farther to go. but it was rising faster. the ship's gyros whined and squealed as joejammed on their controls. the little ship spun in emptiness. its bow turned and pointeddown. the steering rockets made their roarings.

joe found himself panting. "the—rocket'srising faster—than we are. it's been gaining—altitude maybe—two minutes. it's lighter than when—itstarted but—it can't stop—less than a minute, anyhow so we duck under it——" he did not make computations. there was notime. the war rocket might have started at four or five gravities acceleration, but itwould speed up as its fuel burned. it might be accelerating at fifteen gravities now,and have an attained velocity of four miles a second and still increasing. if the littleship ducked under it, it could not kill that rate-of-climb in time to follow in a sternchase. "haney!" panted joe. "watch out the port!are we going to make it?"

haney crawled forward. joe had forgotten theradar because he'd seen the rocket with his own eyes. it seemed to need eyes to watchit. mike spoke curtly into the microphone broadcasting to ground. he was reporting eachaction and order as it took place and was given. there was no time to explain anything.but mike thought of the radar. he watched it. it showed the vast curve of earth's surface,400 miles down. it showed a moving pip, much too much nearer, which was the war rocket.mike made a dot on the screen with a grease pencil where the pip showed. it moved. hemade another dot. the pip continued to move. he made other dots.

they formed a curving line—curved becausethe rocket was accelerating—which moved inexorably toward the center of the radarscreen. the curve would cut the screen's exact center. that meant collision. "too close, joe!" said mike shrilly. "we maymiss it, but not enough!" "then hold fast," yelled joe. "landing rocketsfiring, three—two—one!" the bellowing of the landing-rockets smotetheir ears. weight seized upon them, three gravities of acceleration toward the rushingflood of clouds and solidity which was the earth. the ship plunged downward with allits power. it was intolerable—and ten times worse because they had been weightless solong and were still shaken and sore and bruised

from the air-graze only minutes back. mike took acceleration better than the others,but his voice was thin when he gasped, "looks—like this does it, joe!" seconds later he gaspedagain, "right! the rocket's above us and still going away!" the gyros squealed again. the ship plungedinto vapor which was the trail of the enemy rocket. for an instant the flowing confusionwhich was earth was blotted out. then it was visible again. the ship was plunging downward,but its sidewise speed was undiminished and much greater than its rate of fall. "mike," panted joe. "get the news out. whatwe did—and why. i'm—going to turn the

ship's head back on our—course. we can'tslow enough but—i'd rather crash on earth than let them blast us——" the ship turned again. it pointed back inthe direction from which it had come. with the brutal sternward pressure produced bythe landing-rockets, it felt as if it were speeding madly back where it had come from.it was the sensation they'd felt when the ship took off from earth, so long before.but then the cloud masses and the earth beneath had flowed toward the ship and under it. nowthey flowed away. the appearance was that of an unthinkably swift wake left behind bya ship at sea. the earth's surface fled away and fled away from them.

"crazy, this!" joe muttered thickly. "if theship were lighter—or we had more power—we could land! i'm sorry, but i'd rather——" haney turned his head from where he clungnear the bow-ports. his features changed slowly as he talked because of acceleration-drivenblood engorging his lips and bloating his cheeks. after one instant he closed his eyesfiercely. they felt as if they would pop out of his head. he gasped, "yes! get down toair-resistance. a chance—not good but a chance—ejection seats—with space suits—mightmake it...." he began to let himself back toward his accelerationchair. he could not possibly have climbed forward. it was a horrible task to let himselfdown, with triple his normal weight pulling

at him and after the beating taken a littlewhile ago. sweat stood out on his skin as he loweredhimself sternward. once his grip on a hand-line slipped and he had to sustain the drag ofnearly six hundred pounds by a single hand and arm. it would not be a good idea to fallat three gravities. the landing rockets roared and roared, andjoe tilted the bow down a little farther, so that the streaming flood of clouds drewnearer. haney got to his acceleration chair. he lethimself into it and his eyes closed. mike's sharp voice barked: "what's the chance,haney?" haney's mouth opened, and closed, and openedagain. "rocket flames," he gasped, "pushed

back—wind—splash on hull—may melt—lightenweight—hundred to one against——" the odds were worse than that. the ship couldn'tland because its momentum was too great for the landing rockets to cancel out. if it hadweighed five tons instead of twenty, landing might have been possible. haney was sayingthat if the ship were to be lowered into air while rushing irresistibly sternward despiteits rockets, that the rocket flames might be splashed out by the wind. instead of streakingastern in a lance-like shape, they might be pushed out like a rocket blast when it hitsthe earth in a guided missile take-off. such a blast spreads out flat in all directions.here the rocket flames might be spread by wind until they played upon the hull of theship. if they did, they might melt it as they

melted their own steel cases in firing. andthree-fourths or more of the hull might be torn loose from the cabin bow section. somuch was unlikely, but it was possible. the impossible odds were that the four couldsurvive even if the cabin were detached. they were decelerating at three gravities now.if part of the ship burned or melted or was torn away, the rocket thrust might speed thecabin up to almost any figure. and there is a limit to the number of gravities a man cantake, even in an acceleration chair. nevertheless, that was what haney proposed.they were due to be killed anyhow. joe tried he dived into atmosphere. at 60 miles altitudea thin wailing seemed to develop without reason. at 40 miles, the ship had lost more than twomiles per second of its speed since the landing-rockets

were ignited, and there was a shuddering inall its fabric—though because of the loss of speed it was not as bad as the atmosphere-graze.at 30 it began to shake and tremble. at 25 miles high there was as horrible a vibrationand as deadly a deceleration as at the air-graze. at 12 miles above the surface of the earththe hull temperature indicators showed the hind part of the hull at red heat. the shiphappened to be traveling backward at several times the speed of sound, and air could notmove away from before it. it was compressed to white heat at the entering surface, andthe metal plating went to bright red heat at that point. but the hull just aft of therocket mouths was hotter still. there the splashing rocket flames bathed it in intolerableincandescence. hull plates, braces and beams

glared white—— the tip of the tail caved in. the ship's emptycargo space was instantly filled with air at intolerable pressure and heat. the hull exploded outward where the rocketflames played. there was a monstrous, incredible jerking of the cabin that remained. that fractionof the ship received the full force of the rocket thrust. they could decelerate it ata rate of fifteen gravities or more. they did. joe lost consciousness as instantly and aspeacefully as if he had been hit on the jaw. an unknown but brief time later, he foundhimself listening with a peculiar astonishment.

the rockets had burned out. they had lastedonly seconds after the separation of the ship into two fragments. radars on the ground areauthority for this. those few seconds were extremely important. the cabin lost an additionalhalf-mile per second of velocity, which was enough to make the difference between thecabin heating up too, and the cabin being not quite destroyed. the cabin remnant was heavy, of course, butit was an irregular object, some twenty feet across. it was below orbital velocity, andwind-resistance slowed it. even so, it traveled 47 miles to the east in falling the last 10miles to earth. it hit a hillside and dug itself a 70-foot crater in the ground.

but there was nobody in it, then. a littleover a month before, it had seemed to joe that ejection seats were the most uselessof all possible pieces of equipment to have in a space ship. he'd been as much mistakenas anybody could be. with an ejection seat, a jet pilot can be shot out of a plane travelingover mach one, and live to tell about it. this crumpling cabin fell fast, but joe stuffedmike in an ejection seat and shot him out. he and the chief dragged haney to a seat,and then the chief shoved joe off—and the four of them, one by one, were flung out intoa screaming stream of air. but the ribbon-parachutes did not burst. they nearly broke the necksof their passengers, but they let them down almost gently.

and it was quite preposterous, but all fourlanded intact. mike, being lightest and first to be ejected, came down by himself in a furybecause he'd been treated with special favor. the chief and joe landed almost together.after a long time, joe staggered out of his space suit and harness and tried to help thechief, and they held each other up as they stumbled off together in search of haney. when they found him he was sleeping heavily,exhausted, in a canebrake. he hadn't even bothered to disengage his parachute harnessor take off his suit. chapter 6 a good deal of that landing remained confusedin joe's mind. while it was going on he was

much too busy to be absorbing impressions.when he landed, he was as completely exhausted as anybody wants to be. it was only duringthe next day that he even tried to sort out his recollections. then he woke up suddenly, with a muffled roaringgoing on all about him. he blinked his eyes open and listened. presently he realized whatthe noise was, and wondered that he hadn't realized before. it was the roaring of themotors of a multi-engined plane. he knew, without remembering the details at the moment,that he and the other three were on a plane bound across the pacific for america. he wasin a bunk—and he felt extraordinarily heavy. he tried to move, and it was an enormous effortto move his arm. he struggled to turn over,

and found straps holding his body down. he fumbled at them. they had readily releasableclasps, and he loosened them easily. after a bit he struggled to sit upright. he washorribly heavy or horribly weak. he couldn't tell which. and each separate muscle in hiswhole body ached. twinges of pain accompanied every movement. he sat up, swaying a littlewith the slow movements of the plane, and gradually, things came back. the landing in the ribbon-chute. they'd comedown somewhere on the west coast of india, not too far from the sea. he remembered crashinginto the edge of a thin jungle and finding the chief, and the two of them searching outhaney and stumbling to open ground. after

laying out a signal for air searchers, theywent off into worn-out slumber while they waited. he remembered that there'd been a patrol ofamerican destroyers in the arabian sea, as everywhere under the orbit of the platform.their radar had reported the destruction of one space ship and the frantic diving of theother, its division into two parts, and then the tiny objects, which flew out from thesmaller cabin section, which had descended as only ejection-seat parachutes could possiblyhave done. two destroyers steamed onward underneath those drifting specks, to pick them up whenthey should come down. but the other nearby destroyers had other business in hand.

the two trailing destroyers reached goa harborwithin hours of the landing of the four from space. a helicopter found the first threeof them within hours after that. they were twenty miles inland and thirty south fromgoa. mike wasn't located until the next day. he'd been shot out of the ship's cabin earlierand higher; he was lighter, and he'd floated farther. but things—satisfying things—had happenedin the interval. sitting almost dizzily on the bunk in the swiftly roaring plane whileblood began sluggishly to flow through his body, joe remembered the gleeful, unofficialnews passed around on the destroyers. they waited for mike to be brought in. but theyrejoiced vengefully.

the report was quite true, but it never reachedthe newspapers. nobody would ever admit it, but the rockets aimed at the returning spaceships had been spotted by navy radar as they went up from the arabian sea. and the shipsof the radar patrol couldn't do anything about the rockets, but they could and did convergesavagely upon the places from which they had been launched. planes sped out to spot andbomb. destroyers arrived. somewhere there was a navy department thatcould write off two modern submarines with rocket-launching equipment, last heard fromwest of india. american naval men would profess bland ignorance of any such event, but therewere acres of dead fish floating on the ocean where depth-bombs had hunted down and killedtwo shapes much too big to be fish, which

didn't float when they were killed and whichwould never report back how they'd destroyed two space ships. there'd be seagulls feastingover that area, and there'd be vague tales about the happening in the bazaars of hadhramaut.but nobody would ever admit knowing anything for certain. but joe knew. he got to his feet, wobblinga little bit in the soaring plane. he ached everywhere. his muscles protested the strainof holding him erect. he held fast, summoning strength. before his little ship broke uphe'd been shaken intolerably, and his body had weighed half a ton. where his safety-belthad held him, his body was one wide bruise. there'd been that killing acceleration whenthe ship split in two. the others—except

mike—were in as bad a case or worse. haneyand the chief were like men who'd been rolled down mount everest in a barrel. all of themhad slept for fourteen hours straight before they even woke up for food. even now, joedidn't remember boarding this plane or getting into the bunk. he'd probably been carriedin. joe stood up, doggedly, until enough strengthcame to him to justify his sitting down again. he began to dress. it was astonishing howmany places about his body were sore to the touch. it was startling how heavy his armsand legs felt, and how much of an effort even sitting erect was. but he began to remembermike's adventure, and managed to grin feebly. it was the only thing worth a smile in allthe things that had happened.

because mike's landing had been quite unlikethe others. joe and the chief landed near the edge of a jungle. haney landed in a canebrake.but mike came floating down from the sky, swaying splendidly, into the estate of a minorgodling. he was relatively unharmed by the shaking-uphe'd had. the strength of muscles depends on their cross-section, but their weight dependson their volume. the strength of a man depends on the square of his size, but his weighton the cube. so mike had taken the deceleration and the murderous vibration almost in hisstride. he floated longer and landed more gently than the rest. joe grinned painfully at the memory of mike'stale. he'd come on board the rescue destroyer

in a towering, explosive rage. when his ribbon-parachutelet him down out of the sky, it deposited him gently on ploughed fields not far froma small and primitive hindu village. he'd been seen to descend from the heavens. hewas a midget—not as other men—and he was dressed in a space suit with glittering metalharness. the pagan villagers greeted him with rapture. when the searching-party found mike, theywere just in time to prevent a massacre—by mike. adoring natives had seized upon him,conveyed him in high state to a red mud temple, seemingly tried to suffocate him with evidencesof their pride and joy at his arrival, and dark-skinned maidens were trying hopefullyto win his approval of their dancing. but

the rescue-party found him with a club inhis hand and blood in his eye, setting out furiously to change the tone of his reception. joe still didn't know all the details, buthe tried to concentrate on what he did know as he put his uniform on again. he didn'twant to think how little it meant, now. the silver space ship badge didn't mean a thing,any more. there weren't any more space ships. the platform wasn't a ship, but a satellite.there'd never been but two ships. both had ceased to exist. joe walked painfully forward in the huge,roaring plane. the motors made a constant, humming thunder in his ears. it was not easyto walk. he held on to handholds as he moved.

but he progressed past the bunk space. andthere was mike, sitting at a table and stuffing himself with good honest food. there was aglass port beside him, and joe caught a glimpse of illimitable distances filled with cloudand sky and sea. mike nodded. he didn't offer to help joe walk.that wouldn't have been practical. he waited until joe sank into a seat opposite. "good sleep?" asked mike. "i guess so," said joe. he added ruefully,"it hurts to nod, and i think it would hurt worse to shake my head. what's the matterwith me, mike? i didn't get banged up in the landing!"

"you got banged up before you landed," saidmike. "worse than that, you spent better than six weeks out of gravity, where in an averageday you took less actual exercise than a guy in bed with two broken legs!" joe eased himself back into his chair. hefelt about 600 years old. somebody poked a head into view and withdrew it. joe liftedhis arm and regarded it. "weighty! i guess you're right, mike." "i know i'm right!" said mike. "if you spentsix weeks in bed you'd expect to feel wobbly when you tried to walk. up on the platformyou didn't even use energy to stand up! we didn't realize it, but we were living likeinvalids! we'll get our strength back, but

next time we'll take measures. huh! take atrip to mars in free fall, and by the time a guy got there his muscles'd be so flabbyhe couldn't stand up in half-gravity! something's got to be done about that, joe!" joe said sombrely, "something's got to bedone about space ships before that comes up again!" somebody appeared with a tray. there was foodon it. smoking hot food. joe looked at it and knew that his appetite, anyhow, was backto earth normal. "thanks!" he mumbled appreciatively, and attackedthe food. mike drank his coffee. then he said, "joe,do you know anything about powder metallurgy?"

joe shrugged. it hurt. "powder metallurgy?yes, i've seen it used, at my father's plant. they've made small precision parts with it.why?" "d'you know if anybody ever made a weld withit?" asked mike. joe chewed. then he said: "i think so. yes. at the plant they did. theyhad trouble getting the surfaces properly cleaned for welding. but they managed it.why?" "one more question," said mike tensely. "howmuch portland cement is used to make a cubic yard of concrete?" "i wouldn't know," admitted joe. "why? what'sall this about?"

"haney and the chief. those two big apes havebeen kidding me—as long as they could stay awake—for what happened to me when i landed.those infernal savages—" mike seethed. "they got my clothes off and they had me smearedall over with butter and forty-'leven necklaces around my neck and flowers in my hair! theythought i was some kind of heathen god! hanuman, somebody told me. the hindu monkey-god!" heraged. "and those two big apes think it's funny! joe, i never knew i knew all the wordsfor the cussings i gave those heathen before our fellas found me! and haney and the chiefwill drive me crazy if i can't slap 'em down! powder metallurgy does the trick, from whatyou told me. that's okay, then." he stood up and stalked toward the front ofthe plane. joe roused himself with an effort.

he turned to look about him. haney lay slumpedin a reclining chair, on the other side of the plane cabin. his eyes were closed. thechief lay limply in another chair. he smiled faintly at joe, but he didn't try to talk.he was too tired. the return to normal gravity bothered him, as it did joe. joe looked out the window. in neat, geometricspacing on either side of the transport there were fighter jets. there was another flightabove and farther away. joe saw, suddenly, a peeling-off of planes from the farther formation.they dived down through the clouds. he never knew what they went to look for or what theyfound. he went groggily back to his bunk in a strange and embarrassing weakness.

he woke when the plane landed. he didn't knowwhere it might be. it was, he knew, an island. he could see the wide, sun-baked white ofthe runways. he could see sea-birds in clouds over at the edge. the plane trundled and lurchedslowly to a stop. a service-truck came growling up, and somebody led cables from it up intothe engines. somebody watched dials, and waved a hand. there was silence. there was stillness. joeheard voices and footsteps. presently he heard the dull booming of surf. the plane seemed to wait for a very long time.then there was a faint, faint distant whine of jets, and a plane came from the east. itwas first a dot and then a vague shape, and

then an infinitely graceful dark object whichswooped down and landed at the other end of the strip. it came taxiing up alongside thetransport ship and stopped. an officer in uniform climbed out, waved hishand, and walked over to the transport. he climbed up the ladder and the pilot and co-pilotfollowed him. they took their places. the door closed. one by one, the jets chugged,then roared to life. the officer talked to the pilot and co-pilotfor a moment. he came down the aisle toward joe. mike the midget regarded him suspiciously. the plane stirred. the newly arrived officersaid pleasantly, "the navy department's sent me out here, kenmore, to be briefed on whatyou know and to do a little briefing in turn."

the transport plane turned clumsily and beganto taxi down the runway. it jolted and bumped over the tarmac, then lifted, and joe sawthat the island was nearly all airfield. there were a few small buildings and distance-dwarfedhangars. beyond the field proper there was a ring of white surf. that was all. the restwas ocean. "i haven't much briefing to do," admittedjoe. then he looked at the briefcase the otherman opened. it had sheets and sheets of paper in it—hundreds, it seemed. they were filledwith questions. he'd be called on to find answers for most of them, and to admit hedidn't know the answers to the rest. when he was through with this questioning, everypossible useful fact he knew would be on file

for future use. and now he wrily recognizedthat this was part payment for the efficiency and speed with which the navy had trailedthem on their landing, and for the use of a transport plane to take them back to theunited states. "i'll try to answer what i can," he said cautiously."but what're you to brief me about?" "that you're not back on earth yet," saidthe officer curtly, pulling out the first sheaf of questions. "officially you haven'teven started back. ostensibly you're still on the platform." joe blinked at him. "if your return were known," continued thelieutenant, "the public would want to make

heroes of you. first space travelers, andso on. they'd want you on television—all of you—telling about your adventures andyour return. inevitably, what happened to your ship would leak out. and if the publicknew you'd been waylaid and shot down there'd be demands that the government take violentaction to avenge the attack. it'd be something like the tumult over the sinking of the maine,or the lusitania—or even pearl harbor. it's much better for your return to be a secretfor now." joe said wrily: "i don't think any of us wantto be ridden around to have ticker-tape dumped on us. that part's all right. i'm sure theothers will agree." "good! one more difficulty. we had two spaceships. now we have none. our most likely enemies

haven't only been building rockets, they'vegot a space fleet coming along. intelligence just found out they're nearly ready for trialtrips. they've been yelling to high heaven that we were building a space fleet to conquerthe world. we weren't. they were. and it looks very much as if they may have beaten us." the lieutenant got out the dreary mass ofpapers, intended to call for every conscious or unconscious observation joe might havemade in space. it was the equivalent of the interviews extracted from fliers after a bombingraid, and it was necessary, but joe was very tired. wearily, he said, "start your questions. i'lltry to answer them."

they arrived in bootstrap some forty-six hoursafter the crashing of their ship. joe, at least, had slept nearly thirty of those hours.so while he was still wobbly on his feet and would be for days to come, his dispositionwas vastly improved. there was nobody waiting on the airfield bythe town of bootstrap, but as they landed a black car came smoothly out and stoppedclose by the transport. joe got down and climbed into it. sally holt was inside. she took bothhis hands and cried, and he was horribly embarrassed when the chief came blundering into the carafter him. but the chief growled, "if he didn't kiss you, sally, i'm going to kick his pantsfor him." "he—he did," said sally, gulping. "and i'mglad you're back, chief. and haney. and mike."

mike grinned as he climbed in the back too.haney crowded in after him. they filled the rear of the car entirely. it started off swiftlyacross the field, swerving to the roadway that led to the highway out of bootstrap tothe shed. it sped out that long white concrete ribbon, and the desert was abruptly all aroundthem. far ahead, the great round half-dome of the shed looked like a cherry-pit on thehorizon. "it's good to be back!" said the chief warmly."i feel like i weigh a ton, but it's good to be back! mike's the only one who was happierout yonder. he figures he belongs there. i got a story to tell you, sally——" "chief!" said mike fiercely. "shut up!"

"won't," said the chief amiably. "sally, thisguy mike——" mike went pale. "you're too big to kill,"he said bitterly, "but i'll try it!" the chief grunted at him. "quit being modest.sally——" mike flung himself at the chief, literallysnarling. his small fist hit the chief's face—and mike was small but he was not puny. the "crack"of the impact was loud in the car. haney grabbed. there was a moment's frenzied struggling.then mike was helplessly wrapped in haney's arms, incoherent with fury and shame. "crazy fool!" grunted the chief, feeling hisjaw. "what's the matter with you? don't you feel good?"

he was angry, but he was more concerned. mikewas white and raging. "you tell that," he panted shrilly, "and sohelp me——" "what's got into you?" demanded haney anxiously."i'd be bragging, i would, if i'd got a brainstorm like you did! that guy sanford woulda wipedus all out——" the chief said angrily, between unease andpuzzlement: "i never knew you to go off your nut likethis before! what's got into you, anyway?" mike gulped suddenly. haney still held himfirmly, but both haney and the chief were looking at him with worried eyes. and mikesaid desperately: "you were going to tell sally——"

the chief snorted. "huh! you fool little runt! no! i was goingto tell her about you opening up that airlock when sanford locked us out! sure i kiddedyou about what you're talking about! sure! i'm going to do it again! but that's amongstus! i don't tell that outside!" haney made an inarticulate exclamation. heunderstood, and he was relieved. but he looked disgusted. he released mike abruptly, rumblingto himself. he stared out the window. and mike stood upright, an absurd small figure.his face worked a little. "okay," said mike, with a little difficulty."i was dumb. only, chief, you owe me a sock on the jaw when you feel like it. i'll takeit."

he swallowed. sally was watching wide-eyed. "sally," said mike bitterly, "i'm a biggerfool than i look. i thought the chief was going to tell you what happened when i landed.i—i floated down in a village over there in india, and those crazy savages'd neverseen a parachute, and they began to yell and make gestures, and first thing i knew theyhad a sort of litter and were piling me in it, and throwing flowers all over me, andthere was a procession——" sally listened blankly. mike told the taleof his shame with the very quintessence of bitter resentment. when he got to his installationin a red-painted mud temple, and the reverent and forcible removal of his clothes so hecould be greased with butter, sally's lips

began to twitch. at the picture of mike ina red loincloth, squirming furiously while brown-skinned admirers zestfully sang hispraises, howling his rage while they celebrated some sort of pious festival in honor of hisarrival, sally broke down and laughed helplessly. mike stared at her, aghast. he felt that he'dhated the chief when he thought the chief was going to tell the tale on him as a joke.he'd told it on himself as a penance, in the place of the blow he'd given the chief andwhich the chief wouldn't return. to mike it was still tragedy. it was still an outrageto his dignity. but sally was laughing. she rocked back and forth next to joe, helplesswith mirth. "oh, mike!" she gasped. "it's beautiful! theymust have been saying such lovely, respectful

things, while you were calling them namesand wanting to kill them! they'd have been bragging to each other about how you were—visitingthem because they'd been such good people, and—this was the reward of well-spent lives,and you—you——" she leaned against joe and shook. the carwent on. the chief chuckled. haney grinned. joe watched mike as this new aspect of hisdisgrace got into his consciousness. it hadn't occurred to mike, before, that anybody buthimself had been ridiculous. it hadn't occurred to him, until he lost his temper, that haneyand the chief would ride him mercilessly among themselves, but would not dream of lettinganybody outside the gang do so. presently mike managed to grin a little. itwas a twisty grin, and not altogether mirthful.

"yeah," he said wrily. "i see it. they werecrazy too. i should've had more sense than to get mad." then his grin grew a trifle twistier."i didn't tell you that the thing that made me maddest was when they wanted to put earringson me. i grabbed a club then and—uh—persuaded them i didn't like the idea." sally chortled. the picture of the small,truculent mike in frenzied revolt with a club against the idea of being decked with jewelry....mike turned to the two big men and shoved at them imperiously. "move over!" he growled. "if you two big lummoxeshad dropped in on those crazy goofs instead of me, they'd've thought you were elephantsand set you to work hauling logs!"

he squirmed to a seat between them. he stilllooked ashamed, but it was shame of a different sort. now he looked as if he wished he hadn'tmistrusted his friends for even a moment. and he included sally. "anyhow," he said suddenly in a differenttone, "maybe it did do some good for me to get all worked up! i got kind of frantic.i figured somebody'd made a fool of me, and i was going to put something over on you." "mike!" said sally reproachfully. "not like you think, sally," said mike, grinninga little. "i made up my mind to beat these lummoxes at their own game. i asked joe aboutmy brainstorm in the plane. he didn't know

what i was driving at, but he said what ihoped was so. so i'm telling you—and," he added fiercely, "if it's any good everybodygets credit for it, because all of us four—even two big apes who try kidding—are responsiblefor it!" he glared at them. joe asked. "what is it,mike?" "i think," said mike, "i think i've got atrick to make space ships quicker than anybody ever dreamed of. joe says you can make a weldwith powder metallurgy. and i think we can use that trick to make one-piece ships—lighterand stronger and tighter—and fast enough to make your head swim! and you guys are inon it!" the black car braked by the entrance to thesecurity offices outside the shed. it looked

completely deserted. there was only a skeletonforce here since the platform had been launched three months before. there was almost nobodyto be seen, but mike pressed his lips pugnaciously together as they got out of the car and wentinside. the four of them, with sally, went along theempty corridors to the major's office. he was waiting for them. he shook hands all around.but it was not possible for major holt to give an impression of cordiality. "i'm very glad to see all of you back," hesaid curtly. "it didn't look like you'd make it. joe, you will be able to reach your fatherby long-distance telephone as soon as you finish here. i—ah—thought it would notbe indiscreet to tell him you had landed safely,

though i did ask him to keep the fact to himself." "thank you, sir," said joe. "you answered most of the questions you neededto answer on the plane," added the major, grimly, "and now you may want to ask some.you know there is no ship for you. you know that the enemies of the platform copied ourrocket fuel. you know they've made rockets with it. you've met them! and intelligencesays they're building a fleet of space ships—not for space exploration, but simply to smashthe platform and get set for an ultimatum to the united states to backwater or be bombardedfrom space." mike said crisply: "how long before they cando it?"

major holt turned uncordial eyes upon him."it's anybody's guess. why?" "we've been working something out," said mike,firmly but in part untruthfully. he stood sturdily before the major's desk, which hebarely topped. "the four of us have been working it out. joe says they've done powder metallurgywelds, back at his father's plant. joe and haney and the chief and me, we've been workingout an idea." major holt waited. his hands moved nervouslyon his desk. joe looked at mike. haney and the chief regarded him warily. the chief cockedhis head on one side. "it'll take a minute to get it across," saidmike. "you have to think of concrete first. when you want to make a cubic yard of concrete,you take a cubic yard of gravel. then you

add some sand—just enough to fill in thecracks between the gravel. then you put in some cement. it goes in the cracks betweenthe grains of sand. a little bit of cement makes a lot of concrete. see?" major holt frowned. but he knew these four."i see, but i don't understand." "you can weld metals together with powder-metallurgypowder at less than red heat. you can take steel filings for sand and steel turningsfor gravel and powdered steel for cement—" joe jolted erect. he looked startledly athaney and the chief. and haney's mouth was dropping open. a great, dreamy light seemedto be bursting upon him. the chief regarded mike with very bright eyes. and mike sturdily,forcefully, coldly, made a sort of speech

in his small and brittle voice. things could be made of solid steel, he saidsharply, without rolling or milling or die-casting the metal, and without riveting or arc-weldingthe parts together. the trick was powder metallurgy. very finely powdered metal, packed tightlyand heated to a relatively low temperature—"sintered" is the word—becomes a solid mass. even alloyscan be made by mixing powdered metals. the process had been used only for small objects,but—there was the analogy to concrete. a very little powder could weld much metal,in the form of turnings and smaller bits. and the result would be solid steel! then mike grew impassioned. there was a woodenmockup of a space ship in the shed, he said.

it was an absolutely accurate replica, inwood, of the ships that had been destroyed. but one could take castings of it, and usethem for molds, and fill them with powder and filings and turnings, and heat them noteven red-hot and there would be steel hulls in one piece. solid steel hulls! needing noriveting nor anything else—and one could do it fast! while the first hull was fittingout a second could be molded—— the chief roared: "you fool little runt!"he bellowed. "tryin' to give us credit for that! you got more sense than any of us! youworked that out in your own head——" haney rubbed his hands together. he said softly,"i like that! i do like that!" major holt turned his eyes to joe. "what'syour opinion?"

"i think it's the sort of thing, sir, thata professional engineer would say was a good idea but not practical. he'd mean it wouldbe a lot of trouble to get working. but i'd like to ask my father. they have done powderwelding at the plant back home, sir." major holt nodded. "call your father. if itlooks promising, i'll pull what wires i can." joe went out, with the others. mike was sweating.all unconsciously, he twisted his hands one within the other. he had had many humiliationsbecause he was small, but lately he had humiliated himself by not believing in his friends. nowhe needed desperately to do something that would reflect credit on them as well as himself. joe made the phone call. as he closed thedoor of the booth, he heard the chief kidding

mike blandly. "hey, einstein," said the chief. "how aboutputting that brain of yours to work on a faster-than-light drive?" but then he began to struggle with the longdistance operator. it took minutes to get the plant, and then it took time to get tothe point, because his father insisted on asking anxiously how he was and if he washurt in any way. personal stuff. but joe finally managed to explain that this call dealt withthe desperate need to do something about a space fleet. his father said grimly, "yes. the situationdoesn't look too good right now, joe."

"try this on for size, sir," said joe. heoutlined mike's scheme. his father interrupted only to ask crisp questions about the mockupof the tender, already in existence though made of wood. then he said, "go on, son!" joe finished. he heard his father speakingto someone away from the phone. questions and answers, and then orders. his father spoketo him direct. "it looks promising, joe," said his father."right here at the plant we've got the gang that can do it if anybody can. i'm gettinga plane and coming out there, fast! get major holt to clear things for me. this is no timefor red tape! if he has trouble, i'll pull some wires myself!"

"then i can tell mike it's good stuff?" "it's not good stuff," said his father. "thereare about forty-seven things wrong with it at first glance, but i know how to take careof one or two, and we'll lick the rest. you tell your friend mike i want to shake himby the hand. i hope to do it tonight!" he hung up, and joe went out of the phonebooth. mike looked at him with yearning eyes. joe lied a little, because mike rated it. "my father's on the way here to help makeit work," he told mike. then he added untruthfully: "he said he thought he knew all the big menin his line, and where've you been that he hasn't heard of you?"

he turned away as the chief whooped with glee.he hurried back to major holt as the chief and haney began zestfully to manhandle mikein celebration of his genius. the major held up his hand as joe entered.he was using the desk phone. joe waited. when he hung up, joe reported. the major seemedunsurprised. "yes, i had washington on the wire," he saiddetachedly. "i talked to a personal friend who's a three-star general. there will beaction started at the pentagon. when you came in i was arranging with the largest producersof powder-metallurgy products in the country to send their best men here by plane. theywill start at once. now i have to get in touch with some other people."

joe gaped at him. the major moved impatiently,waiting for joe to leave. joe gulped. "excuse me, sir, but—my father didn't say it wascertain. he just thinks it can be made to work. he's not sure." "i didn't even wait for that, something hasto turn up to take care of this situation!" said the major with asperity. "it has to!this particular scheme may not work, but if it doesn't, something will come out of thework on it! you should look at a twenty-five cent piece occasionally, joe!" he moved impatiently, and joe went out. sallywas smiling in the outer office. there were whoopings in the corridor beyond. the chiefand haney were celebrating mike's brainstorm

with salutary indignity, because if they didn'tmake a joke of it he might cry with joy. "things look better?" "they do," said joe. "if it only works...." then he hunted in his pocket. he found a quarterand examined it curiously. on one side he found nothing the major could have referredto. on the other side, though, just by george washington's chin—— he put the quarter away and took sally's arm. "it'll be all right," he said slowly. but there were times when it seemed in doubt.joe's father arrived by plane at sunset of

that same day, and he and three men from thekenmore precision tool company instantly closeted themselves with mike in major holt's quarters.the powder metallurgy men turned up an hour later, and a three-star general from washington.they joined the highly technical discussion. joe waited around outside, feeling left outof things. he sat on the porch with sally while the moon rose over the desert and starsshone down. inside, matters of high importance were being battled over with the informalityand heat with which practical men get things settled. but joe wasn't in on it. he saidannoyedly, "you'd think my father'd have something to say to me, in all this mess! after all,i have been—well, i have been places! but all he said was, 'how are you, son? where'sthis mike you talked about?'"

sally said calmly, "i know just how you feel.you've made me feel that way." she looked up at the moon. "i thought about you all thetime you were gone, and i—prayed for you, joe. and now you're back and not even busy!but you don't—— it would be nice for you to think about me for a while!" "i am thinking about you!" said joe indignantly. "now what," said sally interestedly, "in theworld could you be thinking about me?" he wanted to scowl at her. but he grinnedinstead. chapter 7 time passed. hours, then days. things beganto happen. trucks appeared, loaded down with

sacks of white powder. the powder was verymessily mixed with water and smeared lavishly over the now waterproofed wooden mockup ofa space ship. it came off again in sections of white plaster, which were numbered andset to dry in warm chambers that were constructed with almost magical speed. more trucks arrived,bearing such diverse objects as loads of steel turnings, a regenerative helium-cooling plantfrom a gaswell—it could cool metal down to the point where it crumbled to impalpablepowder at a blow—and assorted fuel tanks, dynamos, and electronic machinery. ten days after mike's first proposal of concretedsteel as a material for space ship construction, the parts of the first casting of the mockupwere assembled. they were a mold for the hull

of a space ship. there were more plaster sectionsfor a second mold ready to be dried out now, but meanwhile vehicles like concrete mixersmixed turnings and filings and powder in vast quantities and poured the dry mass here andthere in the first completed mold. then men began to wrap the gigantic object with ironwire. presently that iron wire glowed slightly, and the whole huge mold grew hotter and hotterand hotter. and after a time it was allowed to cool. but that did not mean a ceasing of activity.the plaster casts had been made while the concreting process was worked out. the concretingprocess—including the heating—was in action while fittings were being flown to the shed.but other hulls were being formed by metal-concrete

formation even before the first mold was takendown. when the plaster sections came off, therewas a long, gleaming, frosty-sheened metal hull waiting for the fittings. it was a replacementof one of the two shot-down space craft, ready for fitting out some six weeks ahead of schedule.next day there was a second metal hull, still too hot to touch. the day after that therewas another. then they began to be turned out at the rateof two a day, and all the vast expanse of the shed resounded with the work on them.drills drilled and torches burned and hammers hammered. small diesels rumbled. disk sawscut metal like butter by the seemingly impractical method of spinning at 20,000 revolutions perminute. convoys of motor busses rolled out

from bootstrap at change-shift time, and therewere again security men at every doorway, moving continually about. but it still didn't look too good. there isapparently no way to beat arithmetic, and a definitely grim problem still remained.ten days after the beginning of the new construction program, joe and sally looked down from agallery high up in the outward-curving wall of the shed. acres of dark flooring lay beneaththem. there was a spiral ramp that wound round and round between the twin skins of the fifty-story-highdome. it led finally to the communications room at the very top of the shed itself. where joe and sally looked down, the floorwas 300 feet below. welding arcs glittered.

rivet guns chattered. trucks came in the doorwayswith materials, and there was already a gleaming row of eighty-foot hulls. there were elevenof them already uncovered, and small trucks ran up to their sides to feed the fitting-outcrews such items as air tanks and gyro assemblies and steering rocket piping and motors, andshort wave communicators and control boards. exit doors were being fitted. the last twohulls to be uncovered were being inspected with portable x-ray outfits, in search offlaws. and there were still other ungainly white molds, which were other hulls in processof formation—the metal still pouring into the molds in powder form, or being tampeddown, or being sintered to solidity. joe leaned on the gallery-railing and saidunhappily, "i can't help worrying, even though

the platform hasn't been shot at since welanded." that wasn't an expression of what he was thinking.he was thinking about matters the enemies of the platform would have liked to know about.sally knew these matters too. but top secret information isn't talked about by the peoplewho know it, unless they are actively at work on it. at all other times one pretends evento himself that he doesn't know it. that is the only possible way to avoid leaks. the top secret information was simply thatit was still impossible to supply the platform. ships could be made faster than had ever beendreamed of before, but so long as any ship that went up could be destroyed on the waydown, the supply of the platform was impractical.

but the ships were being built regardless,against the time when a way to get them down again was thought of. as of the moment ithadn't been thought of yet. but building the ships anyhow was unconsciousgenius, because nobody but americans could imagine anything so foolish. the enemies ofthe platform and of the united states knew that full-scale production of ships by somefantastic new method was in progress. the fact couldn't be hidden. but nobody in a countrywhere material shortages were chronic could imagine building ships before a way to usethem was known. so the platform's enemies were convinced that the united states hadsomething wholly new and very remarkable, and threatened their spies with unspeakablefates if they didn't find out what it was.

they didn't find out. the rulers of the enemynations knew, of course, that if a new—say—space-drive had been invented, they would very soon haveto change their tune. so there were no more attacks on the platform. it floated serenelyoverhead, sending down astronomical observations and solar-constant measurements and weathermaps, while about it floated a screen of garbage and discarded tin cans. but joe and sally looked down where the shipswere being built while the problem of how to use them was debated. "it's a tough nut to crack," said joe dourly. it haunted him. ships going up had to havecrews. crews had to come down again because

they had to leave supplies at the platform,not consume them there. getting a ship up to orbit was easier than getting it down again. "the navy's been working on light guided missiles,"said sally. "no good," snapped joe. it wasn't. he'd been asked for advice. coulda space ship crew control guided missiles and fight its way back to ground with them?the answer was that it could. but guided missiles used to fight one's way down would have tobe carried up first. and they would weigh as much as all the cargo a ship could carry.a ship that carried fighting rockets couldn't carry cargo. cargo at the platform was thething desired.

"all that's needed," said sally, watchingjoe's face, "is a slight touch of genius. there's been genius before now. burning yourcabin free with landing-rocket flames——" "haney's idea," growled joe dispiritedly. "and making more ships in a hurry with metal-concrete——" "mike did that," said joe ruefully. "but you made the garbage-screen for the platform,"insisted sally. "sanford had made a wisecrack," said joe."and it just happened that it made sense that he hadn't noticed." he grimaced. "you saysomething like that, now...." sally looked at him with soft eyes. it wasn'treally his job, this worrying. the top-level

brains of the armed forces were strugglingwith it. they were trying everything from redesigned rocket motors to really radicalnotions. but there wasn't anything promising yet. "what's really needed," said sally regretfully,"is a way for ships to go up to the platform and not have to come back." "sure!" said joe ironically. then he said,"let's go down!" they started down the long, winding ramp whichled between the two skins of the shed's wall. it was quite empty, this long, curving, descendingcorridor. it was remarkably private. in a place like the shed, with frantic activitygoing on all around, and even at major holt's

quarters where sally lived and joe was a guest,there wasn't often a chance for them to talk in any sort of actual privacy. but joe went on, scowling. sally went withhim. if she seemed to hang back a little at first, he didn't notice. presently she shruggedher shoulders and ceased to try to make him notice that nobody else happened to be around.they made a complete circuit of the shed within its wall, joe staring ahead without words. then he stopped abruptly. his expression wasunbelieving. sally almost bumped into him. "what's the matter?" "you had it, sally!" he said amazedly. "youdid it! you said it!"

"what?" "the touch of genius!" he almost babbled."ships that can go up to the platform and not have to come back! sally, you did it!you did it!" she regarded him helplessly. he took her bythe shoulders as if to shake her into comprehension. but he kissed her exuberantly instead. "come on!" he said urgently. "i've got totell the gang!" he grabbed her hand and set off at a run forthe bottom of the ramp. and sally, with remarkably mingled emotions showing on her face, wasdragged in his wake. he was still pulling her after him when hefound the chief and haney and mike in the

room at security where they were practicallyself-confined, lest their return to earth become too publicly known. mike was stalkingup and down with his hands clasped behind his back, glum as a miniature napoleon andtalking bitterly. the chief was sprawled in a chair. haney sat upright regarding his knuckleswith a thoughtful air. joe stepped inside the door. mike continuedwithout a pause: "i tell you, if they'll only use little guys like me, the cabin and suppliesand crew can be cut down by tons! even the instruments can be smaller and weigh less!four of us in a smaller cabin, less grub and air and water—we'll save tons in cabin-weightalone! why can't you big lummoxes see it?" "we see it, mike," haney said mildly. "you'reright. but people won't do it. it's not fair,

but they won't." joe said, beaming, "besides, mike, it'd bustup our gang! and sally's just gotten the real answer! the answer is for ships to go up tothe platform and not come back!" he grinned at them. the chief raised his eyebrows.haney turned his head to stare. joe said exuberantly: "they've been talking about arming ships withguided missiles to fight with. too heavy, of course. but—if we could handle guidedmissiles, why couldn't we handle drones?" the three of them gaped at him. sally said,startled, "but—but, joe, i didn't——" "we've got plenty of hulls!" said joe. somehowhe still looked astonished at what he'd made of sally's perfectly obvious comment. "mike'sarranged for that! make—say—six of 'em

into drones—space barges. remote-controlledships. control them from one manned ship—the tug! we'll ride that! take 'em up to the platformexactly like a tug tows barges. the tow-line will be radio beams. we'll have a space-towup, and not bother to bring the barges back! there won't be any landing rockets! they'llcarry double cargo! that's the answer! a space tug hauling a tow to the platform!" "but, joe," insisted sally, "i didn't thinkof——" the chief heaved himself up. haney's voicecut through what the chief was about to say. haney said drily: "sally, if joe hadn't kissedyou for thinking that up, i would. makes me feel mighty dumb."

mike swallowed. then he said loyally, "yeah.me too. i'd've made a two-ton cargo possible—maybe. but this adds up. what does the major say?" "i—haven't talked to him. i'd better, rightaway." joe grinned. "i wanted to tell you first." the chief grunted. "good idea. but hold everything!"he fumbled in his pocket. "the arithmetic is easy enough, joe. cut out the crew andair and you save something." he felt in another pocket. "leave off the landing rockets, andyou save plenty more. count in the cargo you could take anyhow"—— he searched anotherpocket still——"and you get forty-two tons of cargo per space barge, delivered at theplatform. six drones—that's 252 tons in

one tow! here!" he'd found what he wanted.it was a handkerchief. he thrust it upon joe. "wipe that lipstick off, joe, before you gotalk to the major. he's sally's father and he might not like it." joe wiped at his face. sally, her eyes shining,took the handkerchief from him and finished the job. she displayed that remarkable insensitivityof females in situations productive of both pride and embarrassment. when a girl or awoman is proud, she is never embarrassed. she and joe went away, and sally rushed rightinto her father's office. in fifteen minutes technical men began to arrive for conferences,summoned by telephone. within forty-five minutes, messengers carried orders out to the shedfloor and stopped the installation of certain

types of fittings in all but one of the hulls.in an hour and a half, top technical designers were doing the work of foremen and gettingthings done without benefit of blueprints. the proposal was beautifully simple to putinto practice. guided-missile control systems were already in mass production. they couldsimply be adjusted to take care of drones. within twelve hours there were truck-loadsof new sorts of supplies arriving at the shed. some were air force supplies and some wereordnance, and some were strictly quartermaster. these were not component parts of space ships.they were freight for the platform. and, just forty-eight hours after joe andsally looked dispiritedly down upon the floor of the shed, there were seven gleaming hullsin launching cages and the unholy din of landing

pushpots outside the shed. they came withhysterical cries from their airfield to the south, and they flopped flat with extravagantcrashings on the desert outside the eastern door. by the time the pushpots had been hauled in,one by one, and had attached themselves to the launching cages, joe and haney and thechief and mike had climbed into the cabin of the one ship which was not a drone. therewere now seven cages in all to be hoisted toward the sky. a great double triangulargore had been jacked out and rolled aside to make an exit in the side of the shed. nearlyas many pushpots, it seemed, were involved in this launching as in the take-off of theplatform itself.

the routine test before take-off set the pushpotmotors to roaring inside the shed. the noise was the most sustained and ghastly tumultthat had been heard on earth since the departure of the platform. but this launching was not so impressive.it was definitely untidy, imprecise, and unmilitary. there were seven eighty-foot hulls in cagessurrounded by clustering, bellowing, preposterous groups of howling objects that looked likeover-sized black beetles. one of the seven hulls had eyes. the others were blind—butthey were equipped with radio antennae. the ship with eyes had several small basket-typeradar bowls projecting from its cabin plating. the seven objects rose one by one and wentbellowing and blundering out to the open air.

at 40 and 50 feet above the ground, they jockeyedinto some sort of formation, with much wallowing and pitching and clumsy maneuvering. then, without preliminary, they started up.they rose swiftly. the noise of their going diminished from a bellow to a howl, and froma howl to a moaning noise, and then to a faint, faint, ever-dwindling hum. presently that faded out, too. chapter 8 all the sensations were familiar, the smallfleet of improbable objects rose and rose. of all flying objects ever imagined by man,the launching cages supported by pushpots

were most irrational. the squadron, though, went bumbling upward.in the manned ship, joe was more tense than on his other take-off—if such a thing waspossible. his work was harder this trip. before, he'd had mike at communications and the chiefat the steering rockets while haney kept the pushpots balanced for thrust. now joe flewthe manned ship alone. headphones and a mike gave him communications with the shed direct,and the pushpots were balanced in groups, which cost efficiency but helped on control.he would have, moreover, to handle his own steering rockets during acceleration and whenhe could—and dared—he should supervise the others. because each of the other threehad two drone-ships to guide. true, they had

only to keep their drones in formation, butjoe had to navigate for all. the four of them had been assigned this flight because of itsimportance. they happened to be the only crew alive who had ever flown a space ship designedfor maneuvering, and their experience consisted of a single trip. the jet stream was higher this time than onthat other journey now two months past. they blundered into it at 36,000 feet. joe's headphonesbuzzed tinnily. radar from the ground told him his rate-of-rise, his ground speed, hisorbital speed, and added comments on the handling of the drones. the last was not a precision job. on the wayup joe protested, "somebody's ship—number

four—is lagging! snap it up!" mike said crisply, "got it, joe. coming up!" "the shed says three separate ships are gettingout of formation. and we need due east pointing. check it." the chief muttered, "something whacky here... come round, you! okay, joe." joe had no time for reflection. he was incharge of the clumsiest operation ever designed for an exact result. the squadron went wallowingtoward the sky. the noise was horrible. a tinny voice in his headphones: "you are at 65,000 feet. your rate-of-climbcurve is flattening. you should fire your

jatos when practical. you have some leewayin rocket power." joe spoke into the extraordinary maze of noisewaves and pressure systems in the air of the cabin. "we should blast. i'm throwing in the seriescircuit for jatos. try to line up. we want the drones above us and with a spread, remember!go to it!" he watched his direction indicator and thesmall graphic indicators telling of the drones. the sky outside the ports was dark purple.the launching cage responded sluggishly. its open end came around toward the east. it wobbledand wavered. it touched the due-east point. joe stabbed the firing-button.

nothing happened. he hadn't expected it. theseven ships had to keep in formation. they had to start off on one course—with a slightspread as a safety measure—and at one time. so the firing-circuits were keyed to relaysin series. only when all seven firing-keys were down at the same time would any of thejatos fire. then all would blast together. the pilots in the cockpit-bubbles of the pushpotshad an extraordinary view of the scene. at something over twelve miles height, sevenaggregations of clumsy black things clung to frameworks of steel, pushing valorously.far below there were clouds and there was earth. there was a horizon, which waveredand tilted. the pushpots struggled with seeming lack of purpose. one of the seven seemed todrop below the others. they pointed vaguely

this way and that—all of them. but graduallythey seemed to arrive at an uncertain unanimity. joe pushed the firing-button again as hisown ship touched the due-east mark. again nothing happened. out of the corner of hiseye he saw haney pressing down both buttons. the chief's finger lifted. mike pushed downone button and held off the other. roarings and howlings of pushpots. wobblingsand heart-breaking clumsinesses of the drone-ships. they hung in the sky while the pushpots usedup their fuel. "we've got to make it soon," said joe grimly."we've got forty seconds. or we'll have to go down and try again." there was a clock dial with a red sweep-handwhich moved steadily and ominously toward

a deadline time for firing. up to that deadline,the pushpots could let the ships back down to earth without crashing them. after it,they'd run out of fuel before a landing could be made. the deadline came closer and closer. joe snapped: "take a degree leeway. we've got ten seconds." he had the manned ship nearly steady. he helddown the firing-button, holding aim by infinitesimal movements of the controls. haney pushed bothhands down, raised one, pushed again. the chief had one finger down. mike had both firingbuttons depressed.... the chief pushed down his second button, quietly.

there was a monstrous impact. every jato inevery pushpot about every launching cage fired at once. joe felt himself flung back intohis acceleration chair. six gravities. he began the horrible fight to stay alive, whilethe blood tried to drain from the conscious forepart of his brain, and while every buttonof his garments pressed noticeably against him, and objects in his pockets pushed. thesides of his mouth dragged back, and his cheeks sagged, and his tongue strove to sink backinto his throat and strangle him. it was very bad. it seemed to last for centuries. then the jatos burned out. there was thatghastly feeling of lunging forward to weightlessness. one instant, joe's body weighed half a ton.the next instant, it weighed less than a dust

grain. his head throbbed twice as if his skullwere about to split open and let his brains run out. but these things he had experiencedbefore. there were pantings in the cabin about him.the ship fell. it happened to be going up, but the sensation and the fact was free fall.joe had been through this before, too. he gasped for breath and croaked, "drones?" "right," said haney. mike panted anxiously, "four's off course.i'll fix it." the chief grunted guttural mohawk. his handsstirred on the panel for remote control of the drones he had to handle.

"crazy!" he growled. "got it now, joe. firewhen ready." "okay, mike?" a half-second pause. "okay!" joe pressed the firing-button for the take-offrockets. and he was slammed back into his acceleration chair again. but this was threegravities only. pressed heavily against the acceleration cushions, he could perform thenavigation for the fleet. he did. the mother-ship had to steer a true course, regardless ofthe vagaries of its rockets. the drones had simply to be kept in formation with it. thesecond task was simpler. but joe was relieved,

this time, of the need to report back instrument-readings.a telemetering device took care of that. the take-off rockets blasted and blasted andblasted. the mere matter of staying alive grew very tedious. the ordeal seemed to lastfor centuries. actually it could be measured only in minutes. but it seemed millennia beforethe headphones said, staccato fashion: "you are on course and will reach speed in fourteenseconds. i will count for you." "relays for rocket release," panted joe. "throw'em over!" three hands moved to obey. joe could releasethe drive rockets on all seven ships at will. the voice counted: "ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six... five ... four ... three ... two ... one

joe pressed the master-key. the remnants ofthe solid-fuel take-off rockets let go. they flashed off into nothingness at unbelievablespeed, consuming themselves as they went. there was again no weight. this time there was no resting. no eager gazingout the cabin ports. now they weren't curious. they'd had over a month in space, and somethinglike sixteen days back on earth, and now they were back in space again. mike and haney and the chief worked doggedlyat their control boards. the radar bowls outside the cabin shifted and moved and quivered.the six drone ships showed on the screens. but they also had telemetering apparatus.they faithfully reported their condition and

the direction in which their bows pointed.the radars plotted their position with relation to each other and the mother-ship. presently joe cast a glance out of a portand saw that the dark line of sunset was almost below. the take-off had been timed to getthe ships into earth's shadow above the area from which war rockets were most likely torise. it wouldn't prevent bombing, of course. but there was a gadget.... joe spoke into the microphone: "reportingeverything all right so far. but you know it." the voice from solid ground said, "reportacknowledged."

the ships went on and on and on. the chiefmuttered to himself and made very minute adjustments of the movement of one of his drones. mikefussed with his. haney regarded the controls of his drones with a profound calm. nothing happened, except that they seemedto be falling into a bottomless pit and their stomach-muscles knotted and cramped in purelyreflex response to the sensation. even that grew tedious. the headphones said, "you will enter earth'sshadow in three minutes. prepare for combat." joe said drily, "we're to prepare for combat." the chief growled. "i'd like to do just that!"

the phrasing, of course, was intentional—incase enemy ears were listening. actually, the small fleet was to use a variant on thetin can shield which protected the platform. it would be most effective if visual observationwas impossible. the fleet was seven ships in very ragged formation. most improbably,after the long three-gravity acceleration, they were still within a fifty-mile globeof space. number four loitered behind, but was being brought up by judicious bursts ofsteering-rocket fire. number two was some distance ahead. the others were simply scattered.they went floating on like a group of meteors. out the ports, two of them were visible. theothers might be picked out by the naked eye—but it wasn't likely.

drone two, far ahead and clearly visible,turned from a shining steel speck to a reddish pin-point of light. the red color deepened.it winked out. the sunlight in the ports of the mother-ship turned red. then it blackedout. "shoot the ghosts," said joe. the three drone-handlers pushed their buttons.nothing happened that anybody could see. actually, though, a small gadget outside the hull beganto cough rhythmically. similar devices on the drones coughed, too. they were small,multiple-barreled guns. rifle shells fired two-pound missiles at random targets in emptiness.they wouldn't damage anything they hit. they'd go varying distances, explode and shoot smalllead shot ahead to check their missile-velocity,

and then emit dense masses of aluminum foil.there was no air resistance. the shredded foil would continue to move through emptinessat the same rate as the convoy-fleet. the seven ships had fired a total of eighty-foursuch objects away into the blackness of earth's shadow. there were, then, seven ships andeighty-four masses of aluminum foil moving through emptiness. they could not be seenby telescopes. and radars could not tell ships from massesof aluminum foil. if enemy radars came probing upward, theyreported ninety-one space ships in ragged but coherent formation, soaring through emptinesstoward the platform. and a fleet like that was too strong to attack.

the radar operators had been prepared to forwarddetails of the speed and course of a single ship to waiting rocket-launching submarineshalf-way across the pacific. but they reported to very high authority instead. he received the report of an armada—an incrediblefleet—in space. he didn't believe it. but he didn't dare disbelieve it. so the fleet swam peacefully through the darknessthat was earth's shadow, and no attempt at attack was made. they came out into sunlightto look down at the western shore of america itself. with seven ships to get on an exactcourse, at an exact speed, at an exact moment, time was needed. so the fleet made almosta complete circuit of the earth before reaching

the height of the platform's orbit. they joined it. a single man in a space suit,anchored to its outer plates, directed a plastic hose which stretched out impossibly far andclamped to one drone with a magnetic grapple. he maneuvered it to the hull and made it fast.he captured a second, which was worked delicately within reach by coy puffs of steering-rocketvapor. one by one, the drones were made fast. thenthe manned ship went in the lock and the great outer door closed, and the plastic-fabricwalls collapsed behind their nets, and air came in. lieutenant commander brown was the one tocome into the lock to greet them. he shook

hands all around—and it again seemed strangeto all the four from earth to find themselves with their feet more or less firmly plantedon a solid floor, but their bodies wavering erratically to right and left and before andback, because there was no up or down. "just had reports from earth," brown toldjoe comfortably. "the news of your take-off was released to avoid panic in europe. buteverybody who doesn't like us is yelling blue murder. somebody—you may guess who—isannouncing that a fleet of ninety-one war rockets took off from the united states andnow hangs poised in space while the decadent american war-mongers prepare an ultimatumto all the world. everybody's frightened." "if they'll only stay scared until we getunloaded," said joe in some satisfaction,

"the government back home can tell them howmany we were and what we came up for. but we'll probably make out all right, anyhow." "my crew will unload," said brown, in consciousthoughtfulness. "you must have gotten pretty well exhausted by that acceleration." joe shook his head. "i think we can handlethe freight faster. we found out a few things by going back to earth." a section of plating at the top of the lock—atleast it had been the top when the platform was built on earth—opened up as on the firstjourney here. a face grinned down. but from this point on, the procedure was changed.haney and joe went into the cargo-section

of the rocketship and heaved its contentssmoothly through weightlessness to the storage chamber above. the chief and mike stowed itthere. the speed and precision of their work was out of all reason. brown stared incredulously. the fact was simply that on their first tripto the platform, joe and his crew didn't know how to use their strength where there wasno weight. by the time they'd learned, their muscles had lost all tone. now they were freshfrom earth, with earth-strength muscles—and they knew how to use them. "when we got back," joe told brown, "we werepractically invalids. no exercise up here. this time we've brought some harness to wear.we've some for you, too."

they moved out of the airlock, and the shipwas maneuvered to a mooring outside, and a drone took its place. brown's eyes blinkedat the unloading of the drone. but he said, "navy style work, that!" "out here," said joe, "you take no more exercisethan an invalid on earth—in fact, not as much. by now the original crew would havetrouble standing up on a trip back to earth. you'd feel pretty heavy, yourself." brown frowned. "hm. i—ah—i shall ask for instructionson the matter." he stood erect. he didn't waver on his feetas the others did. but he wore the same magnetic-soled

shoes. joe knew, with private amusement, thatbrown must have worked hard to get a dignified stance in weightlessness. "mr. kenmore," said brown suddenly. "haveyou been assigned a definite rank as yet?" "not that i know of," said joe without interest."i skipper the ship i just brought up. but——" "your ship has no rating!" protested brownirritably. "the skipper of a navy ship may be anything from a lieutenant junior gradeto a captain, depending on the size and rating of the ship. in certain circumstances evena noncommissioned officer. are you an enlisted man?" "again, not that i know of," joe told him."nor my crew, either."

brown looked at once annoyed and distressed. "it isn't regular!" he objected. "it isn'tshipshape! i should know whether you are under my command or not! for discipline! for organization!it should be cleared up! i shall put through an urgent inquiry." joe looked at him incredulously. lieutenantcommander brown was a perfectly amiable man, but he had to have things in a certain patternfor him to recognize that they were in a pattern at all. he was more excited over the factthat he didn't know whether he ranked joe, than over the much more important matter ofphysical deterioration in the absence of gravity. yet he surely understood their relative importance.the fact was, of course, that he could confidently

expect exact instructions about the last,while he had to settle matters of discipline and routine for himself. "i shall ask for clarification of your status,"he said worriedly. "it shouldn't have been left unclear. i'd better attend to it at once." he looked at joe as if expecting a salute.he didn't get it. he clanked away, his magnetic shoe-soles beating out a singularly martialrhythm. he must have practised that walk, in private. joe got out of the airlock as another of thespace barges was warped in. brent, the crew's psychologist, joined him when he went to unload.brent nodded in a friendly fashion to joe.

"quite a change, eh?" he said drily. "sanfordturned out to be a crackpot with his notions of grandeur. i'm not sure that brown's notionsof discipline aren't worse." joe said, "i've something rather importantto pass on," and told about the newly discovered physical effects of a long stay where therewas no gravity. the doctors now predicted that anybody who spent six months withoutweight would suffer a deterioration of muscle tone which could make a return to earth impossiblewithout a long preliminary process of retraining. one's heart would adjust to the absence ofany need to pump blood against gravity. "which," said joe, "means that you're goingto have to be relieved before too long. but we brought up some gravity-simulator harnessthat may help."

brent said desolately: "and i was so pleased!we all had trouble with insomnia, at first, but lately we've all been sleeping well! nowi see why! normally one sleeps because he's tired. we had trouble sleeping until our musclesgot so weak we tired anyhow!" another drone came in and was unloaded. andanother and another. but the last of them wasn't only unloaded. haney took over theplatform's control board and—grinning to himself—sent faint, especially-tuned shortwave impulses to the steering-rockets of the drone. the liquid-fuel rockets were designedto steer a loaded ship. with the airlock door open, the silvery ship leaped out of the docklike a frightened horse. the liquid-fuel rocket had a nearly empty hull to accelerate. itresponded skittishly.

joe watched out a port as it went hurtlingaway. the vast earth rolled beneath it. it sped on and vanished. its fumes ceased tobe visible. joe told brent: "another nice job, that! we sent it backward,slowing it a little. it'll have a new orbit, independent of ours and below it. but comesixty hours it will be directly underneath. we'll haul it up and refuel it. and our friendsthe enemy will hate it. it's a radio repeater. it'll pick up short-wave stuff beamed to it,and repeat it down to earth. and they can try to jam that!" it was a mildly malicious trick to play. behindthe iron curtain, broadcasts from the free world couldn't be heard because of stationsbuilt to emit pure noise and drown them out.

but the jamming stations were on the enemynations' borders. if radio programs came down from overhead, jamming would be ineffectiveat least in the center of the nations. populations would hear the truth, even though their governmentsobjected. but that was a minor matter, after all. withspace ship hulls coming into being by dozens, and with one convoy of hundreds of tons ofequipment gotten aloft, the whole picture of supply for the platform had changed. part of the new picture was two devices thathaney and the chief were assembling. they were mostly metal backbone and a series oftanks, with rocket motors mounted on ball and socket joints. they looked like huge redinsects, but they were officially rocket recovery

vehicles, and joe's crew referred to themas space wagons. they had no cabin, but something like a saddle. before it there was a control-boardcomplete with radar-screens. and there were racks to which solid-fuel rockets of diverssizes could be attached. they were literally short-range tow craft for travel in space.they had the stripped, barren look of farm machinery. so the name "space wagon" fitted.there were two of them. "we're putting the pair together," the chieftold joe. "looks kinda peculiar." "it's only for temporary use," said joe. "there'sa bigger and better one being built with a regular cabin and hull. but some experiencewith these two will be useful in running a regular space tug."

the chief said with a trace too much of casualness:"i'm kind of looking forward to testing this." "no," said joe doggedly. "i'm responsible.i take the first chance. but we should all be able to handle them. when this is assembledyou can stand by with the second one. if the first one works all right, we'll try the second." the chief grimaced, but he went back to theassembly of the spidery device. joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses.he showed brent how they worked. brown hadn't official instructions to order their use,but joe put one on himself, set for full earth-gravity simulation. he couldn't imitate actual gravity,of course. only the effect of gravity on one's muscles. there were springs and elastic webbingpulling one's shoulders and feet together,

so that it was as much effort to stand extended—withone's legs straight out—as to stand upright on earth. joe felt better with a pull on hisbody. brent was upset when he found that to himmore than a tenth of normal gravity was unbearable. but he kept it on at that. if he increasedthe pull a very little every day, he might be able to return to earth, in time. now itwould be a very dangerous business indeed. he went off to put the other members of thecrew in the same sort of harness. after ten hours, a second drone broadcasterwent off into space. by that time the articulated red frameworks were assembled. they lookedmore than ever like farm machinery, save that their bulging tanks made them look insectile,too. they were actually something between

small tow-boats and crash-wagons. a man ina space suit could climb into the saddle of one of these creations, plug in the air-lineof his suit to the crash-wagon's tanks, and travel in space by means of the space wagon'srockets. these weird vehicles had remarkably powerful magnetic grapples. they were equippedwith steering rockets as powerful as those of a ship. they had banks of solid-fuel rocketsof divers power and length of burning. and they even mounted rocket missiles, small guidedrockets which could be used to destroy what could not be recovered. they were intendedto handle unmanned rocket shipments of supplies to the platform. there were reasons why thetrick should be economical, if it should happen to work at all.

when they were ready for testing, they seemedvery small in the great space lock. joe and the chief very carefully checked an extremelylong list of things that had to work right or nothing would work at all. that part ofthe job wasn't thrilling, but joe no longer looked for thrills. he painstakingly did thethings that produced results. if a sense of adventure seemed to disappear, the sensationsof achievement more than made up for it. they got into space suits. they were in anodd position on the platform. lieutenant commander brown had avoided joe as much as possiblesince his arrival. so far he'd carefully avoided giving him direct orders, because joe wasnot certainly and officially his subordinate. lacking exact information, the only thinga conscientious rank-conscious naval officer

could do was exercise the maximum of tactand insistently ask authority for a ruling on joe's place in the hierarchy of rank. joe flung a leg over his eccentric, red-paintedmount. he clipped his safety-belt, plugged in his suit air-supply to the space wagon'stanks, and spoke into his helmet transmitter. "okay to open the lock. chief, you keep watch.if i make out all right, you can join me. if i get in serious trouble, come after mein the ship we rode up. but only if it's practical! not otherwise!" the chief said something in mohawk. he soundedindignant. the plastic walls of the lock swelled inward,burying and overwhelming them. pumps pounded

briefly, removing what air was left. thenthe walls drew back, straining against their netting, and joe waited for the door to opento empty space. instead, there came a sharp voice in his helmet-phones.it was brown. "radar says there's a rocket on the way up! it's over at what is the edgeof the world from here. three gravities only. better not go out!" joe hesitated. brown still issued no order.but defense against a single rocket would be a matter of guided missiles—brown's business—ifthe tin can screen didn't handle it. joe would have no part in it. he wouldn't be needed.he couldn't help. and there'd be all the elaborate business of checking to go through again.he said uncomfortably:

"it'll be a long time before it gets here—andthree gravities is low! maybe it's a defective job. there have been misfires and so on. itwon't take long to try this wagon, anyhow. they're anxious to send up a robot ship fromthe shed and these have to be tested first. give me ten minutes." he heard the chief grumbling to himself. butone tested space wagon was better than none. the airlock doors opened. huge round valvesswung wide. bright, remote, swarming stars filled the opening. joe cracked the controlof his forward liquid-fuel rockets. the lock filled instantly with swirling fumes. andinstantly the tiny space wagon moved. it did not have to lift from the lock floor. oncethe magnetic clamps were released it was free

of the floor. but it did have mass. one briefpush of the rockets sent it floating out of the lock. it was in space. it kept on. joe felt a peculiar twinge of panic. nobodywho is accustomed only to earth can quite realize at the beginning the conditions ofhandling vehicles in space. but joe cracked the braking rockets. he stopped. he hung seeminglymotionless in space. the platform was a good half-mile away. he tried the gyros, and the space wagon wentinto swift spinning. he reversed them and straightened out—almost. the vastness ofall creation seemed still to revolve slowly about him. the monstrous globe which was earthmoved sedately from above his head to under

his feet and continued the slow revolution.the platform rotated in a clockwise direction. he was drifting very slowly away. "chief," he said wrily, "you can't do worsethan i'm doing, and we're rushed for time. you might come out. but listen! you don'trun your rockets! on earth you keep a motor going because when it stops, you do. but outhere you have to use your motor to stop, but not to keep on going. get it? when you docome out, don't burn your rockets more than half a second at a time." the chief's voice came booming: "right, joe! here i come!"

there was a billowing of frantically writhingfumes, which darted madly in every direction until they ceased to be. the chief in hisinsect-like contraption came bolting out of the hole which was the airlock. he was a goodhalf-mile away. the rocket fumes ceased. he kept on going. joe heard him swear. the chieffelt the utterly helpless sensation of a man in a car when his brakes don't work. but amoment later the braking rockets did flare briefly, yet still too long. the chief wasnot only stopped, but drifting backwards toward the platform. he evidently tried to turn,and he spun as dizzily as joe had done. but after a moment he stopped—almost. therewere, then, two red-painted things in space, somewhat like giant water-spiders floatingforlornly in emptiness. they seemed very remote

from the great bright steel platform and thatgigantic ball which was earth, turning very slowly and filling a good fourth of all thatcould be seen. "suppose you head toward me, chief," saidjoe absorbedly. "aim to pass, and remember that what you have to estimate is not wherei am, but where you have to put on the brakes to stop close by. that's where you use yourbraking-rockets." the chief tried it. he came to a stop a quarter-milepast joe. "i'm heavy-handed," said his voice disgustedly. "i'll try to join you," said joe. he did try. he stopped a little short. thetwo weird objects drifted almost together.

the chief was upside down with regard to joe.presently he was sidewise on. "this takes thinking," said joe ruefully. a voice in his headphones, from the platform,said: "that rocket from earth is still accelerating.still at three gravities. it looks like it isn't defective. it might be carrying a man.hadn't you better come in?" the chief growled: "we won't be any saferthere! i want to get the hang of this." then his voice changed sharply. "joe! d'you getthat?" joe heard his own voice, very cold. "i didn't. i do now. brown, i'd suggest aguided missile at that rocket coming up. if

there's a man in it, he's coming up to takeover guided missiles that'll overtake him, and try to smash the platform by direct control,since proximity fuses don't work. i'd smash him as far away as possible." brown's voice came very curt and worried."right." there was an eruption of rocket fumes fromthe side of the platform. something went foaming away toward earth. it dwindled with incrediblerapidity. then joe said: "chief, i think we'd better go down and meetthat rocket. we'll learn to handle these wagons on the way. i think we're going to have afight on our hands. whoever's in that rocket isn't coming up just to shake hands with us."

he steadied the small red vehicle and pointedit for earth. he added: "i'm firing a six-two solid-fuel job, chief.counting three. three—two—one." his mount vanished in rocket fumes. but aftersix seconds at two gravities acceleration the rocket burned out. the chief had fireda matching rocket. they were miles apart, but speeding earthward on very nearly identicalcourses. the platform grew smaller. that was theironly proof of motion. a very, very long time passed. the chief firedhis steering rockets to bring him closer to joe. it did not work. he had to aim for joeand fire a blast to move noticeably nearer. presently he would have to blast again tokeep from passing.

joe made calculations in his head. he worried.he and the chief were speeding earthward—away from the platform—at more than four milesa minute, but it was not enough. the manned rocket was accelerating at a great deal morethan that rate. and if the platform's enemies down on earth had sent a manned rocket upto destroy the platform, the man in it would have ways of defending himself. he would expectguided missiles—but he probably wouldn't expect to be attacked by space wagons. joe said suddenly: "chief! i'm going to burn a twelve-two. we'vegot to match velocities coming back. join me? three—two—one."

he fired a twelve-two. twelve seconds burning,two gravities acceleration. it built up his speed away from the platform to a rate whichwould have been breathless, on earth. but here there was no sensation of motion, andthe distances were enormous. things which happen in space happen with insensate violenceand incredible swiftness. but long, long, long intervals elapse between events. thetwelve-two rocket burned out. the chief had matched that also. brown's voice in the headphones said, "therocket's cut acceleration. it's floating up, now. it should reach our orbit fifty milesbehind us. but our missile should hit it in forty seconds."

"i wouldn't bet on that," said joe coldly."figure interception data for the chief and me. make it fast!" he spotted the chief, a dozen miles away andburning his steering rockets to close, again. the chief had the hang of it, now. he didn'ttry to steer. he drove toward joe. but nothing happened. and nothing happened.and nothing happened. the two tiny space wagons were 90 miles from the platform, which wasnow merely a glittering speck, hardly brighter than the brightest stars. there was a flare of light to earthward. itwas brighter than the sun. the light vanished. brown's voice came in the headphones, "ourmissile went off 200 miles short! he sent

an interceptor to set it off!" "then he's dangerous," said joe. "there'llbe war rockets coming up any second now for him to control from right at hand. we won'tbe fighting rockets controlled from 4,000 miles away! they've found proximity fusesdon't work, so he's going to work in close. give us our course and data, quick! the chiefand i have got to try to smash things!" the two tiny space wagons—like stick-insectsin form, absurdly painted a brilliant red—seemed inordinately lonely. it was hardly possibleto pick out the platform with the naked eyes. the earth was thousands of miles below. joeand the chief, in space suits, rode tiny metal frameworks in an emptiness more vast, morelonely, more terrible than either could have

imagined. then the war rockets started up. there wereeight of them. they came out to do murder at ten gravities acceleration. chapter 9 but even at ten gravities' drive it takestime to travel 4,000 miles. at three, and coasting a great deal of the way, it takesmuch longer. the platform circled earth in four hours and a little more. anything intendinginterception and rising straight up needed to start skyward long before the platformwas overhead. a three-g rocket would start while the platform was still below the westernhorizon from its launching-spot. especially

if it planned to coast part of its journey—anda three-gravity rocket would have to coast most of the way. so there was time. coasting, the rising mannedrocket would be losing speed. if it planned to go no higher than the platform's orbit,its upward velocity would be zero there. if it were intercepted 500 miles down, it wouldbe rising at an almost leisurely rate, and joe and the chief could check their earthwardplunge and match its rising rate. this they did. but what they couldn't do wasmatch its orbital velocity, which was zero. they had the platform's eastward speed tostart with—over 200 miles a minute. no matter how desperately they fired braking-rockets,they couldn't stop and maneuver around the

rising control-ship. inevitably they wouldsimply flash past it in the fraction of an instant. to fire their tiny guided missileson ahead would be almost to assure that they would miss. also, the enemy ship was manned.it could fight back. but joe had been on the receiving end of oneattack in space. it wasn't much experience, but it was more than anybody but he and hisown crew possessed. "chief," said joe softly into his helmet-mike,as if by speaking softly he could keep from being overheard, "get close enough to me tosee what i do, and do it too. i can't tell you more. whoever's running this rocket mightknow english." there was a flaring of vapor in space. thechief was using his steering-rockets to draw

near. joe spun his little space wagon about, sothat it pointed back in the direction from which he had come. he had four guided missiles,demolition type. very deliberately, he fired the four of them astern—away from the risingrocket. they were relatively low-speed missiles, intended to blow up a robot ship that couldn'tbe hooked onto, because it was traveling too much faster or slower than the platform itwas intended to reach. the missiles went away. then joe faced about again in the directionof his prospective target. the chief fumed—joe heard him—but he duplicated joe's maneuver.he faced his own eccentric vessel in the direction of its line of flight.

then his fuming suddenly ceased. joe's headphonesbrought his explosive grunt when he suddenly saw the idea. "joe! i wish you could talk indian! i couldkiss you for this trick!" brown's voice said anxiously: "i'm going tolet that manned rocket have a couple more shots." "let us get by first," said joe. "then maybeyou can use them on the bombs coming up." he could see the trails of war-rockets onthe way out from earth. they were infinitesimal threads of vapor. they were the thinnest possiblefilaments of gossamer white. but they enlarged as they rose. they were climbing at betterthan two miles per second, now, and still

increasing their speed. but the arena in which this conflict tookplace was so vast that everything seemed to take place in slow motion. there was timeto reason out not only the method of attack from earth, but the excuse for it. if theplatform vanished from space, no matter from what cause, its enemies would announce vociferouslythat it had been destroyed by its own atomic bombs, exploding spontaneously. even in theface of proof of murder, enemy nations would stridently insist that bombs intended forthe enslavement of humanity—in the platform—had providentially detonated and removed thatinstrument of war-mongering scoundrelly imperialists from the skies. there might be somebody, somewhere,who would believe it.

joe and the chief were steadied now nearlyon a line to intercept the rising manned rocket. they had already fired their missiles, whichtrailed them. they went into battle, not prepared to shoot, but with their ammunition expended.for which there was excellent reason. something came foaming toward them from thenearby man-carrying rocket. it seemed like a side-spout from the column of vapor risingfrom earth. actually it was a guided missile. "now we dodge," said joe cheerfully. "rememberthe trick of this maneuvering business!" it was simple. speeding toward the risingassassin, and with his missiles rushing toward them, the relative speeds of the wagons andthe missiles were added together. if the space wagons dodged, the missile operator had lesstime to swing his guided rockets to match

the change of target course. and besides,the attacker hadn't made a single turn in space. not yet. he might know that a rocketdoesn't go where it's pointed, as a matter of theory. he might even know intellectuallythat the final speed and course of a rocket is the sum of all its previous speeds andcourses. but he hadn't used the knowledge joe and the chief had. something rushed at them. they went into evasiveaction. and they didn't merely turn the noses of their space wagons. they flung them aboutend-for-end, and blasted. they used wholly different accelerations at odd angles. joeshot away from earth on steering rocket thrust, and touched off a four-three while he facedtoward earth's north pole, and halfway along

that four-second rush he flipped his craftin a somersault and the result was nearly a right-angled turn. when the four-three burnedout he set off a twelve-two, and halfway through its burning fired a three-two with it, sothat at the beginning he had two gravities acceleration, then four gravities for threeseconds, and then two again. with long practice, a man might learn marksmanshipin space. but all a man's judgment of speeds is learned on earth, where things always,always, always move steadily. nobody making his first space-flight could possibly hitsuch targets as joe and the chief made of themselves. the man in the enemy rocket wasmaking his first flight. also, joe and the chief had an initial velocity of 200 milesa minute toward him. the marksman in the rising

rocket hadn't a chance. he fired four moremissiles and tried desperately to home them in. but—— they flashed past his rising course. and thenthey were quite safe from his fire, because it would take a very long time indeed foranything he shot after them to catch up. but their missiles had still to pass him—andjoe and the chief could steer them without any concern about their own safety or anythingelse but a hit. they made a hit. two of the eight little missiles flashed luridly,almost together, where the radar-pips showed the rocket to be. then there were two partsto the rocket, separating. one was small and

one was fairly large. another demolition-missilehit the larger section. still another exploded as that was going to pieces. the smaller fragmentceased to be important. the explosions weren't atomic bombs, of course. they were only demolition-charges.but they demolished the manned rocket admirably. brown's voice came in the headphones, stilltense. "you got it! how about the others?" joe felt a remarkable exhilaration. laterhe might think about the poor devil—there could have been only one—who had been destroyedsome 3,700 miles above the surface of the earth. he might think unhappily of that manas a victim of hatred rather than as a hater. he might become extremely uncomfortable aboutthis, but at the moment he felt merely that he and the chief had won a startling victory.

"i think," he said, "that you can treat themwith silent contempt. they won't have proximity fuses. those friends of ours who want so badlyto kill us have found that proximity fuses don't work. unless one is on a collision coursei don't think you need to do anything about them." the chief was muttering to himself in mohawk,twenty miles away. joe said: "chief, how about getting back to the platform?" the chief growled. "my great-grandfather woulddisown me! winning a fight and no scalp to show! not even counting coup! he'd disownme!" but joe saw his rockets flare, away off againstthe stars.

the war rockets were very near, now. theystill emitted monstrous jettings of thick white vapor. they climbed up with incrediblespeed. one went by joe at a distance of little more than a mile, and its fumes eddied outto half that before they thinned to nothingness. they went on and on and on.... they burned out somewhere. it would be a longtime before they fell back to earth. hours, probably. then they would be meteors. they'dvaporize before they touched solidity. they wouldn't even explode. but joe and the chief rode back to the platform.it was surprising how hard it was to match speed with it again, to make a good entranceinto the giant lock. they barely made it before

the platform made its plunge into that horribleblackness which was the earth's shadow. and joe was very glad they did make it beforethen. he wouldn't have liked to be merely astride a skinny framework in that ghastlydarkness, with the monstrous blackness of the abyss seeming to be trying to devour him. haney met them in the airlock. he grinned. "nice job, joe! nice job, chief!" he saidwarmly. "uh—the lieutenant commander wants you to report to him, joe. right away." joe cocked an eyebrow at him. "what for?"

haney spread out his hands. the chief grunted."that guy bothers me. i'll bet, joe, he's going to explain you shouldn't've gone outwhen he didn't want you to. me, i'm keeping away from him!" the chief shed his space suit and swaggeredaway, as well as anyone could swagger while walking on what happened to be the ceiling,from joe's point of view. joe put his space gear in its proper place. he went to the smallcubbyhole that brown had appropriated for the office of the platform commander. joewent in, naturally without saluting. brown sat in a fastened-down chair with thighgrips holding him in place. he was writing. on joe's entry, he carefully put the pen downon a magnetized plate that would hold it until

he wanted it again. otherwise it could havefloated anywhere about the room. "mr. kenmore," said brown awkwardly, "youdid a very nice piece of work. it's too bad you aren't in the navy." joe said: "it did work out pretty fortunately.it's lucky the chief and i were out practicing, but now we can take off when a rocket's reported,any time." brown cleared his throat. "i can thank youpersonally," he said unhappily, "and i do. but—really this situation is intolerable!how can i report this affair? i can't suggest commendation, or a promotion, or—anything!i don't even know how to refer to you! i am going to ask you, mr. kenmore, to put througha request that your status be clarified. i

would imagine that your status would meana rank—hm—about equivalent to a lieutenant junior grade in the navy." joe grinned. "i have—ah—prepared a draft you mightfind helpful," said brown earnestly. "it's necessary for something to be done. it's urgent!it's important!" "sorry," said joe. "the important thing tome is getting ready to load up the platform with supplies from earth. excuse me." he went out of the office. he made his wayto the quarters assigned himself and his crew. mike greeted him with reproachful eyes. joewaved his hand.

"don't say it, mike! the answer is yes. seethat the tanks are refilled, and new rockets put in place. then you and haney go out andpractice. but no farther than ten miles from the platform. understand?" "no!" said mike rebelliously. "it's a dirtytrick!" "which," joe assured him, "i commit only becausethere's a robot ship from bootstrap coming up any time now. and we'll need to pick itup and tow it here." he went to the control-room to see if he couldget a vision connection to earth. he got the beam, and he got sally on the screen.a report of the attack on the platform had evidently already gone down to earth. sally'sexpression was somehow drawn and haunted.

but she tried to talk lightly. "derring-do and stuff, joe?" she asked. "howdoes it feel to be a victorious warrior?" "it feels rotten," he told her. "there musthave been somebody in the rocket we blew up. he felt like a patriot, i guess, trying tomurder us; but i feel like a butcher." "maybe you didn't do it," she said. "maybethe chief's bombs——" "maybe," said joe. he hesitated. "hold upyour hand." she held it up. his ring was still on it.she nodded. "still there. when will you be back?" he shook his head. he didn't know. it wascurious that one wanted so badly to talk to

a girl after doing something that was blood-stirring—andleft one rather sickish afterward. this business of space travel and even space battle waswhat he'd dreamed of, and he still wanted it. but it was very comforting to talk tosally, who hadn't had to go through any of "write me a letter, will you?" he asked. "wecan't tie up this beam very long." "i'll write you all the news that's allowedto go out," she assured him. "be seeing you, joe." her image faded from the screen. and, thinkingit over, he couldn't see that either of them had said anything of any importance at all.but he was very glad they'd talked together. the first robot ship came up some eight hourslater—two revolutions after the television

call. mike was ready hours in advance, fidgeting.the robot ship started up while the platform was over the middle of the pacific. it didn'ttry to make a spiral approach as all other ships had done. it came straight up, and itstarted from the ground. no pushpots. its take-off rockets were monsters. they pushedupward at ten gravities until it was out of atmosphere, and then they stepped up to fifteen.much later, the robot turned on its side and fired orbital speed rockets to match velocitywith the platform. there were two reasons for the vertical rise,and the high acceleration. if a robot ship went straight up, it wouldn't pass over enemyterritory until it was high enough to be protected by the platform. and—it costs fuel to carryfuel to be burned. so if the rocketship could

get up speed for coasting to orbit in thefirst couple of hundred miles, it needn't haul its fuel so far. it was economical toburn one's fuel fast and get an acceleration that would kill a human crew. hence robots. the landing of the first robot ship at theplatform was almost as matter-of-fact as if it had been done a thousand times before.from the platform its dramatic take-off couldn't be seen, of course. it first appeared aloftas a pip on a radar screen. then mike prepared to go out and hook on to it and tow it in.he was in his space suit and in the landing lock, though his helmet faceplate was stillopen. a loudspeaker boomed suddenly in brown's voice: "evacuate airlock and prepare to takeoff!"

joe roared: "hold that!" brown's voice, very official, came: "withholdexecution of that order. you should not be in the airlock, mr. kenmore. you will pleasemake way for operational procedure." "we're checking the space wagon," snappedjoe. "that's operational procedure!" the loudspeaker said severely: "the checkingshould have been done earlier!" there was silence. mike and joe, together,painstakingly checked over the very many items that had to be made sure. every rocket hadto have its firing circuit inspected. the tanks' contents and pressure verified. theair connection to mike's space suit. the air pressure. the device that made sure that airgoing to mike's space suit was neither as

hot as metal in burning sunlight, nor coldas the chill of a shadow in space. everything checked. mike straddled his red-paintedmount. joe left the lock and said curtly: "okay to pump the airlock. okay to open airlockdoors when ready. go ahead." mike went out, and joe watched from a portin the platform's hull. the drone from earth was five miles behind the platform in itsorbit, and twenty miles below, and all of ten miles off-course. joe saw mike scoot thered space wagon to it, stop short with a sort of cocky self-assurance, hook on to the tow-ringin the floating space-barge's nose, and blast off back toward the platform with it in tow. mike had to turn about and blast again tocheck his motion when he arrived. and then

he and haney—haney in the other space wagon—nudgedat it and tugged at it and got it in the great spacelock. they went in after it and the lockdoors closed. neither mike nor haney were out of their spacesuits when kent brought joe a note. a note was an absurdity in the platform. but thiswas a formal communication from brown. "from: lt. comdr. brown to: mr. kenmore subject: cooperation and courtesy in rocketrecovery vehicle launchings. there is a regrettable lack of coordinationand courtesy in the launching of rocket-recovery vehicles (space wagons) in the normal operationof the platform.

the maintenance of discipline and efficiencyrequires that the commanding officer maintain overall control of all operations at all times.hereafter when a space vehicle of any type is to be launched, the commanding officerwill be notified in writing not less than one hour before such launching.the time of such proposed launching will be given in such notification in hours and minutesand seconds, greenwich mean time. all commands for launching will be given bythe commanding officer or an officer designated by him." joe received the memo as he was in the actof writing a painstaking report on the maneuver mike had carried out. mike was radiant ashe discussed possible improvements with later

and better equipment. after all, this hadbeen a lucky landing. for a robot to end up no more than 30 miles from its target, aftera journey of 4,000 miles, and with a difference in velocity that was almost immeasurable—suchgood fortune couldn't be expected as a regular thing. the space wagons were tiny. if theyhad to travel long distances to recover erratic ships coming up from earth—— joe forgot all about lieutenant commanderbrown and his memo when the mail was distributed. joe had three letters from sally. he readthem in the great living compartment of the platform with its sixty-foot length and itscarpet on floor and ceiling, and the galleries without stairs outside the sleeping cabins.he sat in a chair with thigh grips to hold

him in place, and he wore a gravity simulationharness. it was necessary. the regular crew of the platform, by this time, couldn't havehandled space wagons in action against enemy manned rockets. joe meant to stay able totake acceleration. it was just as he finished his mail that brentcame in. "big news!" said brent. "they're buildinga big new ship of new design—almost half as big as the platform. with concreted metalthey can do it in weeks." "what's it for?" demanded joe. "it'll be a human base on the moon," saidbrent relievedly. "an expedition will start in six weeks, according to plan. as long aswe're the only american base in space, we're

going to be shot at. but a base on the moonwill be invulnerable. so they're going ahead with it." joe said hopefully: "any orders for me to join it?" brent shook his head. "we're to be loadedup with supplies for the moon expedition. we're to be ready to take a robot ship everyround. actually, they can't hope to send us more than two a day for a while, but eventhat'll be eighty tons of supplies to be stored away." the chief grumbled, but somehow his grumblingdid not sound genuine. "they're going to the

moon—and leave us here to do stevedore stuff?"his tone was odd. he looked at a letter he'd been reading and gave up pretense. he saidself-consciously: "listen, you guys.... my tribe's got all excited. i just got a letterfrom the council. they've been having an argument about me. wanna hear?" he was a little amused, and a little embarrassed,but something had happened to make him feel good. "let's have it," said joe. mike was very stillin another chair. he didn't look up, though he must have heard. haney cocked an interestedear. the chief said awkwardly, "you know—us mohawksare kinda proud. we got something to be proud

of. we were one of the five nations, whenthat was a sort of united nations and all europe was dog-eat-dog. my tribe had a bigpow-wow about me. there's a tribe member that's a professor of anthropology out in chicago.he was there. and a couple of guys that do electronic research, and doctors and farmersand all sorts of guys. all mohawks. they got together in tribal council." he stopped and flushed under his dark skin."i wouldn't tell you, only you guys are in on it." still he hesitated. joe found a curious pictureforming in his mind. he'd known the chief a long time, and he knew that part of thetribe lived in brooklyn, and individual members

were widely scattered. but still there wasa certain remote village which to all the tribesmen was home. everybody went back therefrom time to time, to rest from the strangeness of being indians in a world of pale-skinnedfolk. joe could almost imagine the council. there'dbe old, old men who could nearly remember the days of the tribe's former glory, who'dheard stories of forest warfare and zestful hunts, and scalpings and heroic deeds fromtheir grandfathers. but there were also doctors and lawyers and technical men in that councilwhich met to talk about the chief. "it's addressed to me," said the chief withsudden clumsiness, "in the world-by-itself canoe. that's the platform here. and it says—i'llhave to translate, because it's in mohawk."

he took a deep breath. "it says, 'we yourtribesmen have heard of your journeyings off the earth where men have never traveled before.this has given us great pride, that one of our tribe and kin had ventured so valiantly.'"the chief grinned abashedly. he went on. "'in full assembly, the elders of the tribe haveheld counsel on a way to express their pride in you, and in the friends you have made whoaccompanied you. it was proposed that you be given a new name to be borne by your sonsafter you. it was proposed that the tribe accept from each of its members a gift tobe given you in the name of the tribe. but these were not considered great enough. thereforethe tribe, in full council, has decreed that your name shall be named at every tribal councilof the mohawks from this day to the end of

time, as one the young braves would do wellto copy in all ways. and the names of your friends joe kenmore, mike scandia, and thomashaney shall also be named as friends whose like all young braves should strive to seekout and to be.'" the chief sweated a little, but he lookedenormously proud. joe went over to him and shook hands warmly. the chief almost brokehis fingers. it was, of course, as high an honor as could be paid to anybody by the peoplewho paid it. haney said awkwardly, "lucky they don't knowme like you do, chief. but it's swell!" which it was. but mike hadn't said a word.the chief said exuberantly: "did you hear that, mike? every mohawk forten thousand years is gonna be told that you

were a swell guy! crazy, huh?" mike said in an odd voice: "yeah. i didn'tmean that, chief. it's fine! but i—i got a letter. i—never thought to get a letterlike this." he looked unbelievingly at the paper in hishands. "mash note?" asked the chief. his tone wasa little bit harsh. mike was a midget. and there were women who were fools. it wouldbe unbearable if some half-witted female had written mike the sort of gushing letter thatsome half-witted females might write. mike shook his head, with an odd, quick smile. "not what you think, chief. but it is froma girl. she sent me her picture. it's a—swell

letter. i'm—going to answer it. you canlook at her picture. she looks kind of—nice." he handed the chief a snapshot. the chief'sface changed. haney looked over his shoulder. he passed the picture to joe and said ferociously:"you mike! you doggoned don juan! the chief and me have got to warn her what kinda guyyou are! stealing from blind men! fighting cops——" joe looked at the picture. it was a very sweetsmall face, and the eyes that looked out of the photograph were very honest and yearning.and joe understood. he grinned at mike. because this girl had the distinctive look that mikehad. she was a midget, too. "she's—thirty-nine inches tall," said mike,almost stunned. "she's just two inches shorter

than me. and—she says she doesn't mind beinga midget so much since she heard about me. i'm going to write her." but it would be, of course, a long time beforethere was a way for mail to get down to earth. it was a long time. now it was possible tosend up robot rockets to the platform. they came up. when the second arrived, haney wentout to pull it in. joe forgot to notify brown, in writing, an hour before launching a rocketrecovery vehicle (space wagon) according to paragraph 3 of the formal memo, nor the timeof launching in hours, minutes, etc., by greenwich mean time (paragraph 4), nor was the testingof all equipment made before moving it into the airlock. this was because the testingequipment was in the airlock, where it belonged.

and the commands for launching were not givenby brown or an officer designated by him, because joe forgot all about it. brown made a stormy scene about the matter,and joe was honestly apologetic, but the chief and haney and mike glared venomously. the result was completely inconclusive. joehad not been put under brown's command. he and his crew were the only people on the platformphysically in shape to operate the space wagons, considering the acceleration involved. brentand the others were wearing gravity simulators, and were building back to strength. but theyweren't up to par as yet. they'd been in space too long.

so there was nothing brown could do. he retreatedinto icily correct, outraged dignity. and the others hauled in and unloaded rocketsas they arrived. they came up fast. the processes of making them had been improved. they couldbe made faster, heated to sintering temperature faster, and the hulls cooled to usefulnessin a quarter of the former time. the production of space ship hulls went up to four a day,while the molds for the moonship were being worked even faster. the moonship, actually,was assembled from precast individual cells which then were welded together. it wouldhave features the platform lacked, because it was designed to be a base for explorationand military activities in addition to research. but only twenty days after the recovery anddocking of the first robot ship to rise, a

new sort of ship entirely came blindly upas a robot. the little space wagons hauled it to the airlock and inside. they unloadedit—and it was no longer a robot. it was a modified hull designed for the duties ofa tug in space. it could carry a crew of four, and its cargohold was accessible from thecabin. it had an airlock. more, it carried a cargo of solid-fuel rockets which couldbe shifted to firing racks outside its hull. starting from the platform, where it had noeffective weight, it was capable of direct descent to the earth without spiralling oratmospheric braking. to make that descent it would, obviously, expend four-fifths ofits loaded weight in rockets. and since it had no weight at the platform, but only mass,it was capable of far-ranging journeying.

it could literally take off from the platformand reach the moon and land on it, and then return to the platform. but that had to wait. "sure we could do it," agreed joe, when mikewistfully pointed out the possibility. "it would be good to try it. but unfortunately,space exploration isn't a stunt. we've gotten this far because—somebody wanted to do something.but——" then he said, "it could be done and the united nations wouldn't do it. sothe united states had to, or—somebody else would have. you can figure who that wouldbe, and what use they'd make of space travel! so it's important. it's more important thanstunt flights we could make!"

"nobody could stop us if we wanted to takeoff!" mike said rebelliously. "true," joe said. "but we four can stand threegravities acceleration and handle any more manned rockets that start out here. we'velived through plenty more than that! but brent and the others couldn't put up a fight inspace. they're wearing harness now, and they're coming back to strength. but we're going tostay right here and do stevedoring—and fighting too, if it comes to that—until the job isdone." and that was the way it was, too. of stevedoringthere was plenty. two robot ships a day for weeks on end. three ships a day for a time.four. sometimes things went smoothly, and the little space wagons could go out and bringback the great, rocket-scarred hulls from

earth. but once in three times the robotswere going too fast or too slow. the space wagons couldn't handle them. then the newship, the space tug, went out and hooked onto the robot with a chain and used the powerit had to bring them to their destination. and sometimes the robots didn't climb straight.at least once the space tug captured an erratic robot 400 miles from its destination and hauledit in. it used some heavy solid-fuel rockets on that trip. the platform had become, in fact, a port inspace, though so far it had had only arrivals and no departures. its storage compartmentsalmost bulged with fuel stores and food stores and equipment of every imaginable variety.it had a stock of rockets which were enough

to land it safely on earth, though there wassurely no intention of doing so. it had food and air for centuries. it had repair partsfor all its own equipment. and it had weapons. it contained, in robot hulls anchored to itssides, enough fissionable material to conduct a deadly war—which was only stored for transferto the moon base when that should be established. and it had communication with earth of highquality. so far the actual mail was only a one-way service, but even entertainment cameup, and news. once there was a television shot of the interior of the shed. it was carefullyscrambled before transmission, but it was a heartening sight. the shed on the tv screenappeared a place of swarming activity. robot hulls were being made. they were even improved,fined down to ten tons of empty weight apiece,

and their controls were assembly line productsnow. and there was the space flight simulator with men practicing in it, although for thetime being only robots were taking off from earth. and there was the moonship. it didn't look like the platform, but ratherlike something a child might have put together out of building blocks. it was built up outof welded-together cells with strengthening members added. it was 60 feet high from thefloor and twice as long, and it did not weigh nearly what it seemed to. already it was beingclad in that thick layer of heat insulation it would need to endure the two-week-longlunar night. it could take off very soon now. the pictured preparations back on earth meantround-the-clock drudgery for joe and the others.

they wore themselves out. but the storagespace on the platform filled up. days and weeks went by. then there came a time whenliterally nothing else could be stored, so joe and his crew made ready to go back toearth. they ate hugely and packed a very small cargoin their ship. they picked up one bag of mail and four bags of scientific records and photographswhich had only been transmitted by facsimile tv before. they got into the space tug. itfloated free. "you will fire in ten seconds," said a crispvoice in joe's headphones. "ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ... three... two ... one ... fire!" joe crooked his index finger. there was anexplosive jolt. rockets flamed terribly in

emptiness. the space tug rushed toward thewest. the platform seemed to dwindle with startling suddenness. it seemed to rush awayand become lost in the myriads of stars. the space tug accelerated at four gravities inthe direction opposed to its orbital motion. as the acceleration built up, it dropped towardearth and home like a tumbled stone. chapter 10 there was bright sunshine at the shed, nota single cloud in all the sky. the radar bowls atop the roof—they seemed almost invisiblysmall compared with its vastness—wavered and shifted and quivered. completely invisiblebeams of microwaves lanced upward. atop the shed, in the communication room, there wasthe busy quiet of absolute intentness. signals

came down and were translated into visiblerecords which fed instantly into computers. then the computers clicked and hummed andperformed incomprehensible integrations, and out of their slot-mouths poured billowingribbons of printed tape. men read those tapes and talked crisply into microphones, and theirwords went swiftly aloft again. down by the open eastern door of the shedat the desert's edge, sally holt and joe's father waited together, watching the sky.sally was white and scared. joe's father patted her shoulder reassuringly. "he'll make it, all right," said sally, dry-throated. joe's father nodded. "of course he will!"but his voice was not steady.

"nothing could happen to him now!" said sallyfiercely. "of course not," said joe's father. a loudspeaker close to them said abruptly:"nineteen miles." there was a tiny, straggling thread of whitevisible in the now. it thinned out to nothingness, but its nearest part flared out and flaredout and flared out. it grew larger, came closer with a terrifying speed. "twelve miles," said the speaker harshly."rockets firing." the downward-hurtling trail of smoke was likea crippled plane falling flaming from the sky, except that no plane ever fell so fast.

at seven miles the white-hot glare of therocket flames was visible even in broad daylight. at three miles the light was unbearably bright.at two, the light winked out. sally saw something which glittered come plummeting toward theground, unsupported. it fell almost half a mile before rocket fumesflung furiously out again. then it checked. visibly, its descent was slowed. it droppedmore slowly, and more slowly, and more slowly still.... it hung in mid-air a quarter-mile up. thenthere was a fresh burst of rocket fumes, more monstrous than ever, and it went steadilydownward, touched the ground, and stayed there spurting terrible incandescent flames forseconds. then the bottom flame went out. an

instant later there were no more flames atall. sally began to run toward the ship. she stopped.a procession of rumbling, clanking, earth-moving machinery moved out of the shed and towardthe upright space tug. prosaically, a bulldozer lowered its wide blade some fifty yards fromthe ship. it pushed a huge mass of earth before it, covering over the scorched and impossiblyhot sand about the rocket's landing place. other bulldozers began to circle methodicallyaround and around, overturning the earth and burying the hot surface stuff. water truckssprayed, and thin steam arose. but also an exit-port opened and joe stoodin the opening. then sally began to run again.

joe sat at dinner in the major's quarters.major holt was there, and joe's father, and sally. "it feels good," said joe warmly, "to usea knife and fork again, and to pick food up from a plate where it stays until it's pickedup!" "the crew of the platform——" major holtbegan. "they're all right," said joe, with his mouthfull. "they're wearing gravity simulator harness. brent's got his up to three-quarters gravity.they get tired, wearing the harness. they sleep better. everything's fine! they canhandle the space wagons we left and they've got guided missiles to spare! they're allright!"

joe's father said unsteadily, "you'll stayon earth a while now, son?" sally moved quickly. she looked up, tense.but joe said, "they're going to get the moonship up, sir. we came back—my gang and me—tohelp train the crew. we only have a week to do it in, but we've got some combat tacticsto show them on the training gadget in the shed." he added anxiously, "and, sir—they'llhave to take the moonship off in a spiral orbit. she can't go straight up! that meansshe's got to pass over enemy territory, and—we've got to have a real escort for her. a fightingescort. it's planned for the space tug to take off a few minutes after the moonshipand blast along underneath. we'll dump guided missiles out—like drones—and if anythingcomes along we can start their rockets and

fight our way through. and we four have hadmore experience than anybody else. we're needed!" "you've done enough, surely!" sally cried. "the united states," said joe awkwardly, "isgoing to take over the moon. i—can't miss having a hand in that! not if it's at allpossible!" "i'm afraid you will miss it, joe," majorholt said detachedly. "the occupation of the moon will be a navy enterprise. space explorationproject facilities are being used to prepare for it, but the navy won the latest battleof the pentagon. the navy takes over the moon." joe looked startled. "but——" "you're space exploration personnel," saidthe major with the same coolness. "you will

be used to instruct naval personnel, and yourspace tug will be asked to go along to the platform as an auxiliary vessel. for purposesof assisting in the landing of the moonship at the platform, you understand. you'll haulher away from the platform when she's refueled and supplied, so she can start off for themoon. but the occupation of the moon will be strictly navy." joe's expression became carefully unreadable."i think," he said evenly, "i'd better not comment." major holt nodded. "very wise—not that we'drepeat anything you did say. but the point is, joe, that just one day before the moonshipdoes take off, the united nations will be

informed that it is a united states navalvessel. the doctrine of the freedom of space—like the freedom of the seas—will be promulgated.and the united states will say that a united states naval task force is starting off intospace on an official mission. to attack a space exploration ship is one thing. that'slike a scientific expedition. but to fire on an american warship on official businessis a declaration of war. especially since that ship can shoot back—and will." joe listened. he said, "it's daring somebodyto try another pearl harbor?" "exactly," said the major. "it's time forus to be firm—now that we can back it up. i don't think the moonship will be fired on."

"but they'll need me and my gang just thesame," said joe slowly, "for tugboat work at the platform?" "exactly," said the major. "then," joe said doggedly, "they get us. mygang will gripe about being edged out of the trip. they won't like it. but they'd likebacking out still less. we'll play it the way it's dealt—but we won't pretend to likeit." major holt's expression did not change atall, but joe had an odd feeling that the major approved of him. "yes. that's right, joe," his father added."you—you'll have to go aloft once more,

son. after that, we'll talk it over." sally hadn't said a word during the discussion,but she'd watched joe every second. later, out on the porch of the major's quarters,she had a great deal to say. but that couldn't affect the facts. the world at large, of course, received noinkling of the events in preparation. the shed and the town of bootstrap and all thedesert for a hundred-mile circle round about, were absolutely barred to all visitors. anybodywho came into that circle stayed in. most people were kept out. all that anyone outsidecould discover was that enormous quantities of cryptic material had poured and still werepouring into the shed. but this time security

was genuinely tight. educated guesses couldbe made, and they were made; but nobody outside the closed-in area save a very few top-rankingofficials had any real knowledge. the world only knew that something drastic and remarkablewas in prospect. mike, though, was able to write a letter tothe girl who'd written him. major holt arranged it. mike wrote his letter on paper suppliedby security, with ink supplied by security, and while watched by security officers. hisletter was censored by major holt himself, and it did not reveal that mike was back onearth. but it did invite a reply—and mike sweated as he waited for one. the others had plenty to sweat about. joeand haney and the chief were acting as instructors

to the moonship's crew. they taught practicalspace navigation. at first they thought they hadn't much to pass on, but they found outotherwise. they had to pass on data on everything from how to walk to how to drink coffee, howto eat, sleep, why one should wear gravity harness, and the manners and customs of shipsin space. they had to show why in space fighting a ship might send missiles on before it, butwould really expect to do damage with those it left behind. they had to warn of the dangersof unshielded sunshine, and the equal danger of standing in shadow for more than five minutes,and—— they had material for six months of instructioncourses, but there was barely a week to pass it on. joe was run ragged, but in spite ofeverything he managed to talk at some length

with sally. he found himself curiously anxiousto discuss any number of things with his father, too, who suddenly appeared to be much moreintelligent than joe had ever noticed before. he was almost unhappy when it was certainthat the moonship would take off for space on the following day. he talked about it withsally the night before take-off. "look," he said awkwardly. "as far as i'mconcerned this has turned out a pretty sickly business. but when we have got a base on themoon, it'll be a good job done. there will be one thing that nobody can stop! everybody'sbeen living in terror of war. if we hold the moon the cold war will be ended. you can'tkick on my wanting to help end that!" sally smiled at him in the moonlight.

"and—meanwhile," said joe clumsily, "well—wheni come back we can do some serious talking about—well—careers and such things. untilthen—no use. right?" sally's smile wavered. "very sensible," sheagreed wrily. "and awfully silly, joe. i know what kind of a career i want! what other fascinatingtopic do you know to talk about, joe?" "i don't know of any. oh, yes! mike got aletter from his girl. i don't know what she said, but he's walking on air." "but it isn't funny!" said sally indignantly."mike's a person! a fine person! if he'll let me, i'll write to his girl myself and—tryto make friends with her so when you come back i—maybe i can be a sort of match-maker."

"that, i like!" joe said warmly. "you're swellsometimes, sally!" sally looked at him enigmatically in the moonlight. "there are times when it seems to escape yourattention," she observed. the next morning she cried a little when heleft her, to climb in the space tug which was so small a part of today's activity. joeand his crew were the only living men who had ever made a round trip to the platformand back. but now there was the moonship to go farther than they'd been allowed. it waseven clumsier in design than the platform, though it was smaller. but it wasn't designedto stay in space. it was to rest on the powdery floor of a ring-mountain's central plain.

let it get off into space, and somehow getto the platform to reload. then let it replace the rockets it would burn in this take-offand it could go on out to emptiness. it would make history as the first serious attemptby human beings to reach the moon. joe and his followers would go along simplyto handle guided missiles if it came to a fight, and to tow the moonship to its wharf—theplatform—and out into midstream again when it resumed its journey. and that was all. the moonship lifted from the floor of theshed to the sound of hundreds of pushpot engines. then the space tug roared skyward. her take-offrockets here substituted for the pushpots. her second-stage rockets were also of thenonpoisonous variety, because she fired them

at a bare 60,000 feet. they were substitutesfor the jatos the pushpots carried. she was out in space when the third-stagerockets roared dully outside her hull. when the moonship crossed the west coast ofafrica, the space tug was 400 miles below and 500 miles behind. when the moonship crossedarabia, the difference was 200 miles vertically and less than 100 in line. then the moonship released small objects,steadied by gyroscopes and flung away by puffs of compressed air. the small objects spreadout. haney and mike and the chief had reloaded the firing racks from inside the ship, andnow were intent upon control boards and radar. they pressed buttons. one by one, little puffsof smoke appeared in space. they had armed

the little space missiles, setting off tinyflares which had no function except to prove that each missile was ready for use. by the time the two space craft floated towardindia, above an area from which war rockets had been known to rise, there were more littleweapons floating with them. one screen of missiles hurtled on before the space tug,and another behind. anything that came up from earth would instantly be attacked bydozens of midget ships bent upon suicide. radar probed the space formation, but enemiesof the fleet and the platform very wisely did no more than probe. the moonship and itsattendants went across the pacific, still rising. above the longitude of washington,the space tug left its former post and climbed,

nudging the moonship this way and that. andfrom behind, the platform came floating splendidly. tiny figures in space suits extended the incrediblystraight lines which were plastic hoses filled with air. very, very gently indeed, the great,bulbous platform and the squat, flat moonship came together and touched. they moored incontact. and then the inert small missiles that hadfloated below, all the way up, flared simultaneously. their rockets emitted smoke. in fine alignment,they plunged forward through emptiness, swerved with a remarkable precision, and headed outfor emptiness beyond the platform's orbit. their function had been to protect the moonshipon its way out. that function was performed. there were too many of them to recover, sothey went out toward the stars.

when their rockets burned out they vanished.but a good hour later, when it was considered that they were as far out as they were likelyto go, they began to blow up. specks of flame, like the tiniest of new stars, flickered againstthe background of space. but joe and the others were in the platformby then. they'd brought up mail for the crew. and they were back on duty. the platform seemed strange with the moonship'screw aboard. it had been a gigantic artificial world with very few inhabitants. with twenty-fivenaval ratings about, plus the four of its regular crew, plus the space tug's complement,it seemed excessively crowded. and it was busy. there were twenty-five newmen to be guided as they applied what they'd

been taught aground about life in space. itwas three full earthdays before the stores intended for the journey to the moon and themaintenance of a base there really began to move. the tug and the space wagons had tobe moored outside and reached only by space suits through small personnel airlocks. and there was the matter of discipline. lieutenantcommander brown had been put in command of the platform for experience in space. he wasconsidered to be prepared for command of the moonship by that experience. so now he turnedover command of the platform to brent—he made a neat ceremony of it—and took overthe ship that would go out to the moon. he made another ceremony out of that.

in command of the moonship, his manner tojoe was absolutely correct. he followed regulations to the letter—to a degree that left joeblankly uncomprehending. but he wouldn't have gotten along in the navy if he hadn't. he'dtried to do the same thing in the platform, and it wasn't practical. but he ignored alldifferences between joe and himself. he made no overtures of friendship, but that was natural.unintentionally, joe had defied him. he now deliberately overlooked all that, and joeapproved of him—within limits. but mike and haney and the chief did not.they laid for him. and they considered that they got him. when he took over the moonship,lieutenant commander brown naturally maintained naval discipline and required snappy, officialnaval salutes on all suitable occasions, even

in the platform. and joe's gang privatelytipped off the noncommissioned personnel of the moonship. thereafter, no enlisted manever saluted lieutenant brown without first gently detaching his magnet-soled shoes fromthe floor. when a man was free, a really snappy salute gave a diverting result. the man'sbody tilted forward to meet his rising arm, the upward impetus was one-sided, and everyman who saluted brown immediately made a spectacular kowtow which left him rigidly at salute floatingsomewhere overhead with his back to lieutenant brown. with a little practice, it was possibleto add a somersault to the other features. on one historic occasion, brown walked clankinginto a storeroom where a dozen men were preparing supplies for transfer to the moonship. a voicecried, "shun!" and instantly twelve men went

floating splendidly about the storeroom, turningleisurely somersaults, all rigidly at salute, and all wearing regulation poker faces. an order abolishing salutes in weightlessnessfollowed shortly after. it took four days to get the transfer of suppliesproperly started. it took eight to finish the job. affixing fresh rockets to the outsideof the moonship's hull alone called for long hours in space suits. during this time mikefloated nearby in a space wagon. one of the navy men was a trifle overcourageous. he affectedto despise safety lines. completing the hook-on of a landing rocket, he straightened up tooabruptly and went floating off toward the milky way.

mike brought him back. after that there wasless trouble. even so, the moonship and the platform werelinked together for thirteen full days, during which the platform seemed extraordinarilycrowded. on the fourteenth day the two ships sealed off and separated. joe and his crewin the space tug hauled the moonship a good five miles from the platform. the space tug returned to the platform. ablinker signal came across the five-mile interval. it was a very crisp, formal, navy-like message. then the newly-affixed rockets on the moonship'shull spurted their fumes. the big ship began to move. not outward from earth, of course.that was where it was going. but it had the

platform's 12,000 miles per hour of orbitalspeed. if the bonds of gravitation could have been snapped at just the proper instant, thatspeed alone would have carried the moonship all the way to its destination. but they couldn't.so the moonship blasted to increase its orbital speed. it would swing out and out, and asthe earth's pull grew weaker with distance the same weight of rockets would move thesame mass farther and farther toward the moon. the moonship's course would be a sort of slowlyflattening curve, receding from earth and becoming almost a straight line where earth'sand the moon's gravitational fields cancelled each other. from there, the moonship would have only tobrake its fall against a gravity one-sixth

that of earth, and reaching out a vastly shorterdistance. joe and the others watched the roiling massesof rocket fumes as the ship seemed to grow infinitely small. "we should've been in that ship," said haneyheavily when the naked eye could no longer pick it out. "we could've beat her to themoon!" joe said nothing. he ached a little inside.but he reflected that the men who'd guided the platform to its orbit had been overshadowedby himself and haney and the chief and mike. a later achievement always makes an earlierone look small. now the four of them would be forgotten. history would remember the commanderof the moonship.

forgotten? yes, perhaps. but the names ofthe four of them, joe and haney and the chief and mike, would still be remembered in a languagejoe couldn't speak, in a small village he couldn't name, on those occasions when themohawk tribe met in formal council. the chief grumbled. mike stared out the portwith bitter envy. "it was a dirty trick," growled the chief."we shoulda been part of the first gang ever to land on the moon!" joe grimaced. his crew needed to be curedof feeling the same way he did. "i wouldn't say this outside of our gang,"said joe carefully, "but if it hadn't been for us four that ship wouldn't be on the wayat all. haney figured the trick that got us

back to earth the first time, or else we'dhave been killed. if we had been killed, mike wouldn't have figured out the metal-concretebusiness. but for him, that moonship wouldn't even be a gleam in anybody's eye. and if thechief hadn't blown up that manned rocket we fought in the space wagons, there wouldn'tbe any platform up here to reload and refuel the moonship. so they left us behind! butjust among the four of us i think we can figure that if it hadn't been for us they couldn'thave made it!" haney grinned slowly at joe. the chief regardedhim with irony. mike said, "yeah. haney, and me, and the chief. we did it all." "uh-huh," said the chief sardonically. "usthree. just us three. joe didn't do anything.

just a bum, he is. we oughta tell sally he'sno good and she oughta pick herself out a guy that'll amount to something some day."he hit joe between the shoulders. "sure! just a bum, joe! that's all! but we got a weaknessfor you. we'll let you hang around with us just the same! come on, guys! let's get somethingto eat!" the four of them marched down a steel-flooredcorridor, their magnetic-soled shoes clanking on the plates. their progress was uncertainand ungainly and altogether undignified. suddenly the chief began to bawl a completely irrelevantsong to the effect that the inhabitants of the kingdom of siam were never known to washtheir dishes. haney chimed in, and mike. they were all very close together, and they werenot at all impressive. but it hit joe very

hard, this sudden knowledge that the othersdidn't really care. it was the first time it had occurred to him that haney and mikeand the chief would rather be left behind with him, as a gang, than go on to individualhigh 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 sequenceand timing of its rocket blasts were worked out on earth, and checked by visual and radarobservation. the computations were done by

electronic brains the moonship could not possiblyhave carried. and everything worked out. the ship was on course and its firings were onschedule. but then the unexpected happened. it was anerror which no machine could ever have predicted, for which statistics and computations couldnever 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—thereason didn't matter. after years of planning and working and dreaming, one human fingerhad made a mistake. and the mistake was fatal! when the mistake was realized, they'd hadsense enough to cut loose the still-firing

rockets. but the damage had been done. theship was still plunging on. it would reach the moon. but it wouldn't land in aristarchuscrater as planned. it would crash. if every rocket remaining mounted on the hull wereto be fired at the best possible instant, the moonship would hit near copernicus, andit would land with a terminal velocity of 800 feet per second—540 miles an hour. it could even be calculated that when themoonship landed, the explosion ought to be visible from earth with a fairly good telescope.it was due to take place in thirty-two hours plus or minus a few minutes. chapter 11

the others got the space tug into the platform'slock and did things to it, in the way of loading, that its designers never intended, while joewas calling earth for calculations. the result was infuriating. the moonship had taken offfor the moon on the other side of the platform's orbit, when it had a velocity of more than12,000 miles an hour in the direction it wished to go. the platform and of course the spacetug was now on the reverse side of the platform's orbit. and of course they now had a velocityof more than 12,000 miles per hour away from the direction in which it was urgently necessaryfor the space tug to go. they could wait for two hours to take off, said earth, or wastethe time and fuel they'd need to throw away to duplicate the effect of waiting.

"but we can't wait!" raged joe. then he snapped."look here! suppose we take off from here, dive at earth, make a near-graze, and letits gravity curve our course! like a cometary path! figure that! that's what we've got todo!" he kicked off his magnetic-soled shoes andwent diving down to the airlock. over his shoulder he panted an order for the radar-dutyman to relay anything from earth down to him there. he arrived to find haney and mike inhot argument over whether it was possible to load on an extra ton or two of mass. hestopped it. they would. "everything's loaded?" he demanded. "okay!space suits! all set? let's get out of this lock and start blasting!"

he drove them into the space tug. he climbedin himself. he closed the entrance port. the plastic walls of the lock bulged out, pulledback fast, and the steering rockets jetted. the space tug came out of the lock. it spunabout. it aimed for earth and monstrous bursts of rocket-trail spread out behind it. it dived. naturally! when a ship from the platform wantedto reach earth for atmosphere-deceleration, it was more economical to head away from it.now that it was the most urgent of all possible necessities to get away from earth, in theopposite direction to the space tug's present motion, it was logical to dive toward it.the ship would plunge toward earth, and earth's gravity would help its rockets in the attainmentof frenzied speed. but the tug still possessed

its orbital speed. so it would not actuallystrike the earth, but would be carried eastward past its disk, even though aimed for earth'smid-bulge. yet earth would continue to pull. as the space tug skimmed past, its path wouldbe curved by the pull of gravity. at the nearest possible approach to earth, the tug wouldfire its heaviest rockets for maximum acceleration. and it would swing around earth's atmosphereperhaps no more than 500 miles high—just barely beyond the measurable presence of air—andcome out of that crazy curve a good hour ahead of the platform for a corresponding position,and with a greater velocity than could be had in any other way. traced on paper, thecourse of the tug would be a tight parabola. the ship dived. and it happened that it hadleft the platform and plunged deep in earth's

shadow, so that the look and feel of thingswas that of an utterly suicidal plunge into oblivion. there was the seeming of a vastsack of pure blackness before the nose of the space tug. she started for it at fourgravities acceleration, and joe got his headphones to his ears and lay panting while he waitedfor the figures and information he had to have. he got them. when the four-gravity rocketsburned out, the tug's crew painstakingly adjusted the ship's nose to a certain position. theyflung themselves back into the acceleration chairs and joe fired a six-g blast. they cameout of that, and he fired another. the three blasts gave the ship a downward speed of amile and a half a second, and earth's pull

added to it steadily. the earth itself wasdrawing them down most of a 4,000-mile fall, which added to the speed their rockets builtup. down on earth, radar-bowls wavered dizzily,hunting for them to feed them observations of position and data for their guidance. backon the platform, members of the crew feverishly made their own computations. when the fourin the space tug were half-way to earth, they were traveling faster than any humans hadever traveled before, relative to the earth or the platform itself. when they were a thousandmiles from earth, it was certain they would clear its edge. joe proposed and receivedan okay to fire a salvo of mark tens to speed the ship still more. when they burned to therelease-point and flashed away past the ports,

the chief and haney panted up from their chairsand made their way aft. "going to reload the firing-frames," gaspedthe chief. they vanished. the space tug could take rocketsfrom its cargo and set them outside its hull for firing. no other ship could. haney and the chief came back. there was deadsilence in the ship, save for a small, tinny voice in joe's headphones. "we'll pass earth 600 miles high," said joein a flat voice. "maybe closer. i'm going to try to make it 450. we'll be smack overenemy territory, but i doubt they could hit us. we'll be hitting better than six milesa second. if we wanted to, we could spend

some more rockets and hit escape velocity.but we want to stop, later. we'll ride it out." silence. stillness. speed. out the ports toearthward there was purest blackness. on the other side, a universe of stars. but the blacknessgrew and grew and grew until it neatly bisected the cosmos itself, and half of everythingthat was, was blackness. half was tiny colored stars. then there was a sound. a faint sound. itwas a moan. it was a howl. it was a shriek.... and then it was a mere thin moan again. thenit was not. "we touched air," said joe calmly, "at sixand a quarter miles per second. pretty thin,

though. at that, we may have left a meteor-trailfor the populace to admire." nobody said anything at all. in a little whilethere was light ahead. there was brightness. instantly, it seemed, they were out of nightand there was a streaming tumult of clouds flashing past below—but they were 800 milesup now—and joe's headphones rattled and he said: "now we can give a touch of course-correction,and maybe a trace of speed...." rockets droned and boomed and roared outsidethe hull. the earth fell away and away and presently it was behind. and they were plungingon after the moonship which was very, very, very far on before them.

it was actually many hours before they reachedit. they couldn't afford to overtake it gradually, because they had to have time to work in aftercontact. but overtaking it swiftly cost extra fuel, and they hadn't too much. so they compromised,and came up behind the moonship at better than 2,000 feet per second difference in speed—theyapproached it as fast as most rifle-bullets travel—and all creation was blotted outby the fumes of the rockets they fired for deceleration. then the space tug came cautiously close tothe moonship. mike climbed out on the outside of the tug's hull, with the chief also inspace equipment, paying out mike's safety-line. mike leaped across two hundred yards of emptinesswith light-years of gulf beneath him. his

metal soles clanked on the moonship's hull. then the vision-screen on the tug lightedup. lieutenant commander brown looked out of it, quietly grim. joe flicked on his owntransmitter. he nodded. "mr. kenmore," said brown evenly, "i did notcontact you before because i was not certain that contact could be made. how many passengerscan you take back to the platform?" "i haven't any idea," he said. "but i'm goingto hitch on and use our rockets to land you." "i do not think it practicable," said browncalmly. "i believe the only result of such a course will be the loss of both ships withall hands. i will give you a written authorization to return on my order. but since all my crewcan't return, how many can you take? i have

ten married men aboard. six have children.can you take six? or all ten?" then he said without a trace of emphasis, "of course, noneof them will be officers." "if i tried to turn back now, i think my crewwould mutiny," joe said coldly. "i'd hate to think they wouldn't, anyhow! we're goingto hook on and play this out the way it lies!" there was a pause. then brown spoke again."mr. kenmore, i was hoping you'd say that. actually—er—not to be quoted, you understand—actually,intelligent defiance has always been in the traditions of the navy. of course, you'renot in the navy, kenmore, but right now it looks like the navy is in your hands. likea battleship in the hands of a tug. good luck, kenmore."

joe flicked off the screen. "you know," hesaid, winking at mike, "i guess brown isn't such a bad egg after all. let's go!" in minutes, the space tug had a line madefast. in half an hour, the two space craft were bound firmly together, but far enoughapart for the rocket blasts to dissipate before they reached the moonship. mike returned tothe tug. a pair of the big mark twenty rockets burned frenziedly in emptiness. the moonship was slowed by a fraction of itsspeed. the deceleration was hardly perceptible. there were more burnings. back on earth therewere careful measurements. a tight beam tends to attenuate when it is thrown a hundred thousandmiles. it tends to! when speech is conducted

over it, the lag between comment and replyis perceptible. it's not great—just over half a second. but one notices it. that lagwas used to measure the speed and distance of the two craft. the prospect didn't looktoo good. the space tug burned rocket after rocket afterrocket. there was no effect that joe could detect, of course. it would have been likenoticing the effect of single oar-strokes in a rowboat miles from shore. but the instrumentson earth found a difference. they made very, very, very careful computations. and the electronicbrains did the calculations which battalions of mathematicians would have needed yearsto work out. the electronic calculations which could not make a mistake said—that it wasa toss-up.

the moon came slowly to float before the twolinked ships. it grew slowly, slowly larger. the word from earth was that considering therockets still available in the space tug, and those that should have been fired butweren't on the moonship, there must be no more blasts just yet. the two ships must passtogether through the neutral-point where the gravities of earth and moon exactly cancelout. they must fall together toward the moon. forty miles above the lunar surface such-and-suchrockets were to be fired. at twenty miles, such-and-such others. at five miles the moonshipitself must fire its remaining fuel-store. with luck, it was a toss-up. safety or a smash. but there was a long time to wait. joe andhis crew relaxed in the space tug. the chief

looked out a port and observed: "i can see the ring-mountains now. naked-eyestuff, too! i wonder if anybody ever saw that before!" "not likely," said joe. mike stared out a port. haney looked, also. "how're we going to get back, joe?" "the moonship has rockets on board," joe toldhim. "only they can't stick them in the firing-racks outside. they're stowed away, all shipshape,navy fashion. after we land, we'll ask politely for rockets to get back to the platform with.it'll be a tedious run. mostly coasting—falling

free. but we'll make it." "if everything doesn't blow when we land,"said the chief. joe said uncomfortably: "it won't. not thatsomebody won't try." then he stopped. after a moment he said awkwardly: "look! it's necessarythat we humans get to the stars, or ultimately we'll crowd the earth until we won't be ableto stay human. we'd have to have wars and plagues and such things to keep our numbersdown. it—it seems to me, and i—think it's been said before, that it looks like there'ssomething, somewhere, that's afraid of us humans. it doesn't want us to reach the stars.it didn't want us to fly. before that it didn't want us to learn how to cure disease, or havesteam, or—anything that makes men different

from the beasts." haney turned his head. he listened intently. "maybe it sounds—superstitious," said joeuneasily, "but there's always been somebody trying to smash everything the rest of uswanted. as if—as if something alien and hateful went around whispering hypnoticallyinto men's ears while they slept, commanding them irresistibly to do things to smash alltheir own hopes." the chief grunted. "huh! d'you think that'snew stuff, joe?" "n-no," admitted joe. "but it's true. somethingfights us. you can make wild guesses. maybe—things on far planets that know that if ever we reachthere.... there's something that hates men

and it tries to make us destroy ourselves." "sure," said haney mildly. "i learned aboutthat in sunday school, joe." "maybe i mean that," said joe helplessly."but anyhow there's something we fight—and there's something that fights with us. soi think we're going to get the moonship down all right." mike said sharply: "you mean you think thisis all worked out in advance. that we'd be here, we'd get here——" the chief said impatiently, "it's figuredout so we can do it if we got the innards. we got the chance. we can duck it. but ifwe duck it, it's bad, and somebody else has

to have the chance later. i know what joe'ssaying. us men, we got to get to the stars. there's millions of 'em, and we need the planetsthey've got swimming around 'em." haney said, "some of them have planets. that'sknown. yeah." "those planets ain't going to go on foreverwith nobody using 'em," grunted the chief. "it don't make sense. and things in generaldo make sense. all but us humans," he finished with a grin. "and i like us, anyhow. joe'sright. we'll get by this time. and if we don't—some other guys'll have to do the job of landingon the moon. but it'll be done—as a starter." "i can see lots of mountains down there. plain,"mike said quietly. "what's the radar say?"

joe looked. back at the platform it had shownthe curve of the surface of earth. here a dim line was beginning to show on the vertical-planescreen. it was the curve of the surface of the moon. "we might as well get set," said joe. "we'vegot time but we might as well. space suits on. i'll tighten up the chain. steering rockets'lldo that. then we'll take a last look. all firing racks loaded outside?" "yeah," said haney. he grinned wrily. "youknow, joe, i know what i know, but still i'm scared." "me, too," said joe.

but there were things to do. they took theirplaces. they watched out the ports. the moon had seemed a vast round ball a little whileback. now it appeared to be flattening. its edges still curved away beyond a surprisinglynearby horizon. the ring-mountains were amazingly distinct. there were incredibly wide, smoothspaces with mottled colorings. but the mountains.... when the ships were 40 miles high the spacetug blasted valorously, and all the panorama of the moon's surface was momentarily hiddenby the racing clouds of mist. the rockets burned out. haney and the chief replaced the burned-outrockets. they were gigantic, heavy-bore tubes which they couldn't have stirred on earth.now they loaded them into the curious locks

which conveyed them outside the hull intofiring position. the ring-mountains were gigantic when theyblasted again! they were only 20 miles up, then, and some of the peaks rose four milesfrom their inner crater floors. the ships were still descending fast. joespoke into his microphone. "calling moonship! calling——" he stoppedand said matter-of-factly, "i suggest we fire our last blast together. shall i give theword? right!" the surface of the moon came toward them.craters, cracks, frozen fountains of stone, swelling undulations of ground interruptedwithout rhyme or reason by the gigantic splashings of missiles from the sky a hundred thousandmillion years ago. the colorings were unbelievable.

there were reds and browns and yellows. therewere grays and dusty deep-blues and streaks of completely impossible tints in combination. but joe couldn't watch that. he kept his eyeson a very special gadget which was a radar range-finder. he hadn't used it about theplatform because there were too many tin cans and such trivia floating about. it wouldn'tbe dependable. but it did measure the exact distance to the nearest solid object. "prepare for firing on a count of five," saidjoe quietly. "five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... fire!" the space tug's rockets blasted. for the firsttime since they overtook the moonship, the

tug now had help. the remaining rockets outsidethe moonship's hull blasted furiously. out the ports there was nothing but hurtling whitenesses.the rockets droned and rumbled and roared.... the main rockets burned out. the steeringrockets still boomed. joe had thrown them on for what good their lift might do. "joe!" said haney in a surprised tone. "ifeel weight! not much, but some! and the main rockets are off!" joe nodded. he watched the instruments beforehim. he shifted a control, and the space tug swayed. it swayed over to the limit of thetow-chain it had fastened to the moonship. joe shifted his controls again.

there was a peculiar, gritty contact somewhere.joe cut the steering rockets and it was possible to look out. there were more gritty noises.the space tug settled a little and leaned a little. it was still. then there was nonoise at all. "yes," said joe. "we've got some weight. we'reon the moon." they went out of the ship in a peculiarlysolemn procession. about them reared cliffs such as no man had ever looked on before savein dreams. above their heads hung a huge round greenish globe, with a white polar ice-capplainly visible. it hung in mid-sky and was four times the size of the moon as seen fromearth. if one stood still and looked at it, it would undoubtedly be seen to be revolving,once in some twenty-four hours.

mike scuffled in the dust in which he walked.nobody had emerged from the moonship yet. the four of them were literally the firsthuman beings ever to set foot on the surface of the moon. but none of them mentioned thefact, though all were acutely aware of it. mike kicked up dust. it rose in a curiouslyliquid-like fashion. there was no air to scatter it. it settled deliberately back again. mike spoke with an odd constraint. "no greencheese," he said absurdly. "no," agreed joe. "let's go over to the moonship.it looks all right. it couldn't have landed hard." they went toward the bulk of the ship fromearth, which now was a base for the military

occupation of a globe with more land-areathan all earth's continents put together—but not a drop of water. the moonship was tiltedslightly askew, but it was patently unharmed. there were faces at every port in the hull. the chief stopped suddenly. a sizable boulderrose from the dust. the chief struck it smartly with his space-gloved hand. "i'm counting coup on the moon!" he said zestfully"tie that, you guys!" then he joined the others on their way tothe moonship's main lock. "shall we knock?" asked mike humorously. "idoubt they've got a door-bell!" but the lock-door was opening to admit them.they crowded inside.

commander brown was waiting for them withan out-stretched hand. "glad to have you aboard." and there was a genuine smile creeping acrosshis face. joe talked with careful distinctness intoa microphone. his voice took a little over a second to reach its destination. then therewas a pause of the same length before the first syllable of sally's reply came to himfrom earth. "i've reported to your father," said joe carefully,"and the moonship has reported to the navy. in a couple of hours haney and the chief andmike and i will be taking off to go back to the platform. we got rockets from the storesof the moonship." sally's voice was surprisingly clear. it wavereda little, but there was no sound of static

to mar reception. "then what, joe?" "i'm bringing written reports and photographsand first specimens of geology from the moon," joe told her. "i'm a mailman. it'll probablybe sixty hours back to the platform—free fall most of the way—and then we'll refueland i'll come down to earth to deliver the reports and such." pause. one second and a little for his voiceto go. another second and something over for her voice to return. "and then?"

"that's what i'm trying to find out," saidjoe. "what day is today?" "tuesday," said sally after the inevitablepause. "it's ten o'clock tuesday morning at the shed." joe made calculations in his mind. then hesaid: "i ought to land on earth some time next monday." pause. "yes?" said sally.

"i wondered," said joe. "how about a datethat night?" another pause. then sally's voice. she sounded glad.

"it's a date, joe. and—do you know, i mustbe the first girl in the world to make a date with the man in the moon?"

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