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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Space Platform, by Murray Leinster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Space Platform
+
+Author: Murray Leinster
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2008 [EBook #25051]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPACE PLATFORM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Louise Blyton and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                    Transcriber's Note
+
+Despite extensive research, no evidence was found that U.S. copyright
+                 on this book was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+_Space Platform_
+
+
+_Murray Leinster_
+
+
+
+
+_POCKET BOOKS, INC. NEW YORK, N. Y._
+
+
+
+_Reaching for the Stars...._
+
+
+_Ever_ since ancient man first gazed in wonder at the stars, humanity
+has dreamed of traveling to outer space. Now scientists agree that
+space-flight may very soon become a reality.
+
+_Space Platform_ tells of man's first step into outer space ... of the
+difficulties and dangers of reaching for the stars. It is also an
+exciting adventure. When young Joe Kenmore came to Bootstrap to install
+pilot gyros in the Platform he hadn't bargained for sabotage or murder
+or love. But Joe learned that ruthless agents were determined to wreck
+the project. He found that the beautiful girl he loved, and men like The
+Chief, a rugged Indian steelworker, and Mike, a midget who made up for
+his size by brains, would have to fight with their bare hands to make
+man's age old dream of space travel come true!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_This science-fiction novel was originally published by Shasta
+Publishers._
+
+
+_Of other books by Murray Leinster, the following are science-fiction:_
+
+SIDEWISE IN TIME
+
+MURDER MADNESS
+
+THE LAST SPACE SHIP
+
+THE LAWS OF CHANCE (Anthology)
+
+GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION (editor)
+
+
+This Pocket Book includes every word contained in the original,
+higher-priced edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made from
+completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SPACE PLATFORM
+
+Shasta edition published February, 1953
+
+Pocket Book edition published March, 1953
+
+1st printing                 January, 1953
+
+All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be
+reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher,
+except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
+For information, address: SHASTA PUBLISHERS, 5525 South Blackstone
+Avenue, Chicago, 37, Illinois.
+
+_Copyright, 1953, by Will F. Jenkins. This POCKET BOOK edition is
+published by arrangement with Shasta Publishers. Printed in the U.S.A._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Pocket Book]
+
+_Notice_: POCKET BOOK editions are published in the United States by
+Pocket Books, Inc., in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada, Ltd., and in
+England by News of the World, Registered User of the Trade Marks. Trade
+Marks registered in the United States and British Patent Offices by
+Pocket Books, Inc., and registered in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada,
+Ltd.
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
+
+
+This acknowledgment is necessary if I am to say thanks to some experts
+to whom I am indebted. There is Captain Charles Benjamin, who read over
+the aviation parts of this book with pursed lips and a belligerent
+attitude toward questionable statements of fact or observation. There is
+Dr. John Drury Clark, whose authoritative knowledge of rocket fuels was
+the basis for admitted but not extravagant extrapolation on my part.
+There is the crew of a four-engined transport ship, who argued over my
+manuscript and settled the argument by a zestful, full-scale
+crash-landing drill--repeat, "drill"--expressly to make sure I had
+described all the procedure just right. There is Willy Ley, whom I would
+like to exempt from responsibility for any statement in the book, while
+I acknowledge the value of personal talks with him and the pleasure
+anybody who has ever read his books will recognize. And there is Dr.
+Hugh S. Rice of the Hayden Planetarium, who will probably be surprised
+to find that I feel I owe him gratitude. They are in great part
+responsible for the factual matter in this book.
+
+I think I may add, though, that I worked on it too.
+
+
+                                        MURRAY LEINSTER
+"Ardudwy"
+Gloucester, Va.
+
+
+
+
+_Space Platform_
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+There wasn't anything underneath but clouds, and there wasn't anything
+overhead but sky. Joe Kenmore looked out the plane window past the
+co-pilot's shoulder. He stared ahead to where the sky and cloud bank
+joined--it was many miles away--and tried to picture the job before him.
+Back in the cargo space of the plane there were four big crates. They
+contained the pilot gyros for the most important object then being built
+on Earth, and it wouldn't work properly without them. It was Joe's job
+to take that highly specialized, magnificently precise machinery to its
+destination, help to install it, and see to its checking after it was
+installed.
+
+He felt uneasy. Of course the pilot and co-pilot--the only two other
+people on the transport plane--knew their stuff. Every imaginable
+precaution would be taken to make sure that a critically essential
+device like the pilot gyro assembly would get safely where it belonged.
+It would be--it was being--treated as if it were a crate of eggs instead
+of massive metal, smoothed and polished and lapped to a precision
+practically unheard of. But just the same Joe was worried. He'd seen the
+pilot gyro assembly made. He'd helped on it. He knew how many times a
+thousandth of an inch had been split in machining its bearings, and the
+breath-weight balance of its moving parts. He'd have liked to be back in
+the cargo compartment with it, but only the pilot's cabin was
+pressurized, and the ship was at eighteen thousand feet, flying west by
+south.
+
+He tried to get his mind off that impulse by remembering that at
+eighteen thousand feet a good half of the air on Earth was underneath
+him, and by hoping that the other half would be as easy to rise above
+when the gyros were finally in place and starting out for space. The
+gyros, of course, were now on their way to be installed in the
+artificial satellite to be blasted up and set in an orbit around the
+Earth as the initial stage of that figurative stepladder by which men
+would make their first attempt to reach the stars. Until that Space
+Platform left the ground, the gyros were Joe's responsibility.
+
+The plane's co-pilot leaned back in his chair and stretched luxuriously.
+He loosened his safety belt and got up. He stepped carefully past the
+column between the right- and left-hand pilot seats. That column
+contained a fraction of the innumerable dials and controls the pilots of
+a modern multi-engine plane have to watch and handle. The co-pilot went
+to the coffeepot and flipped a switch. Joe fidgeted again on his
+improvised seat. Again he wished that he could be riding in back with
+the crates. But it would be silly to insist on perching somewhere in the
+freight compartment.
+
+There was a steady roaring in the cabin--the motors. One's ears got
+accustomed to it, and by now the noise sounded as if it were heard
+through cushions. Presently the coffeepot bubbled, unheard. The co-pilot
+lighted a cigarette. Then he drew a paper cup of coffee and handed it to
+the pilot. The pilot seemed negligently to contemplate some dozens of
+dials, all of which were duly duplicated on the right-hand, co-pilot's
+side. The co-pilot glanced at Joe.
+
+"Coffee?"
+
+"Thanks," said Joe. He took the paper cup.
+
+The co-pilot said: "Everything okay with you?"
+
+"I'm all right," said Joe. He realized that the co-pilot felt talkative.
+He explained: "Those crates I'm traveling with----. The family firm's
+been working on that machinery for months. It was finished with the
+final grinding done practically with feather dusters. I can't help
+worrying about it. There was four months' work in just lapping the
+shafts and balancing rotors. We made a telescope mounting once, for an
+observatory in South Africa, but compared to this gadget we worked on
+that one blindfolded!"
+
+"Pilot gyros, eh?" said the co-pilot. "That's what the waybill said. But
+if they were all right when they left the plant, they'll be all right
+when they are delivered."
+
+Joe said ruefully: "Still I'd feel better riding back there with them."
+
+"Sabotage bad at the plant?" asked the co-pilot. "Tough!"
+
+"Sabotage? No. Why should there be sabotage?" demanded Joe.
+
+The co-pilot said mildly: "Not quite everybody is anxious to see the
+Space Platform take off. Not everybody! What on earth do you think is
+the biggest problem out where they're building it?"
+
+"I wouldn't know," admitted Joe. "Keeping the weight down? But there is
+a new rocket fuel that's supposed to be all right for sending the
+Platform up. Wasn't that the worst problem? Getting a rocket fuel with
+enough power per pound?"
+
+The co-pilot sipped his coffee and made a face. It was too hot.
+
+"Fella," he said drily, "that stuff was easy! The slide-rule boys did
+that. The big job in making a new moon for the Earth is keeping it from
+being blown up before it can get out to space! There are a few gentlemen
+who thrive on power politics. They know that once the Platform's
+floating serenely around the Earth, with a nice stock of atom-headed
+guided missiles on board, power politics is finished. So they're doing
+what they can to keep the world as it's always been--equipped with just
+one moon and many armies. And they're doing plenty, if you ask me!"
+
+"I've heard----" began Joe.
+
+"You haven't heard the half of it," said the co-pilot. "The Air
+Transport has lost nearly as many planes and more men on this particular
+airlift than it did in Korea while that was the big job. I don't know
+how many other men have been killed. But there's a strictly local hot
+war going on out where we're headed. No holds barred! Hadn't you heard?"
+
+It sounded exaggerated. Joe said politely: "I heard there was
+cloak-and-dagger stuff going on."
+
+The pilot drained his cup and handed it to the co-pilot. He said: "He
+thinks you're kidding him." He turned back to the contemplation of the
+instruments before him and the view out the transparent plastic of the
+cabin windows.
+
+"He does?" The co-pilot said to Joe, "You've got security checks around
+your plant. They weren't put there for fun. It's a hundred times worse
+where the whole Platform's being built."
+
+"Security?" said Joe. He shrugged. "We know everybody who works at the
+plant. We've known them all their lives. They'd get mad if we started to
+get stuffy. We don't bother."
+
+"That I'd like to see," said the co-pilot skeptically. "No barbed wire
+around the plant? No identity badges you wear when you go in? No
+security officer screaming blue murder every five minutes? What do you
+think all that's for? You built these pilot gyros! You had to have that
+security stuff!"
+
+"But we didn't," insisted Joe. "Not any of it. The plant's been in the
+same village for eighty years. It started building wagons and plows, and
+now it turns out machine tools and precision machinery. It's the only
+factory around, and everybody who works there went to school with
+everybody else, and so did our fathers, and we know one another!"
+
+The co-pilot was unconvinced. "No kidding?"
+
+"No kidding," Joe assured him. "In World War Two the only spy scare in
+the village was an FBI man who came around looking for spies. The
+village cop locked him up and wouldn't believe in his credentials. They
+had to send somebody from Washington to get him out of jail."
+
+The co-pilot grinned reluctantly. "I guess there are such places," he
+said enviously. "You should've built the Platform! It's plenty different
+on this job! We can't even talk to a girl without security clearance for
+an interview beforehand, and we can't speak to strange men or go out
+alone after dark--."
+
+The pilot grunted. The co-pilot's tone changed. "Not quite that bad," he
+admitted, "but it's bad! It's really bad! We lost three planes last
+week. I guess you'd call it in action against saboteurs. One flew to
+pieces in mid-air. Sabotage. Carrying critical stuff. One crashed on
+take-off, carrying irreplaceable instruments. Somebody'd put a detonator
+in a servo-motor. And one froze in its landing glide and flew smack-dab
+into its landing field. They had to scrape it up. When this ship got a
+major overhaul two weeks ago, we flew it with our fingers crossed for
+four trips running. Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works.
+But I won't look forward to a serene old age until the Platform's out of
+atmosphere! Not me!"
+
+He went to put the pilot's empty cup in the disposal slot.
+
+The plane went on. There wasn't anything underneath but clouds, and
+there wasn't anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down,
+and the sky was simply up. Joe looked down and saw a faint spot of
+racing brightness with a hint of colors around it. It was the sort of
+nimbus that substitutes for a shadow when a plane is high enough above
+the clouds. It raced madly over the irregular upper surface of the cloud
+layer. The plane flew and flew. Nothing happened at all. This was two
+hours from the field from which it had taken off with the pilot gyro
+cases as its last item of collected cargo. Joe remembered how grimly the
+two crew members had prevented anybody from even approaching it on the
+ground, except those who actually loaded the cases, and how one of the
+two had watched them every second.
+
+Joe fidgeted. He didn't quite know how to take the co-pilot's talk. The
+Kenmore Precision Tool plant was owned by his family, but it wasn't so
+much a family as a civic enterprise. The young men of the village grew
+up to regard fanatically fine workmanship with the casual
+matter-of-factness elsewhere reserved for plowing or deep-sea fishing.
+Joe's father owned it, and some day Joe might head it, but he couldn't
+hope to keep the respect of the men in the plant unless he could handle
+every tool on the place and split a thousandth at least five ways. Ten
+would be better! But as long as the feeling at the plant stayed as it
+was now, there'd never be a security problem there.
+
+If the co-pilot was telling the truth, though--.
+
+Joe found a slow burn beginning inside him. He had a picture in his mind
+that was practically a dream. It was of something big and bright and
+ungainly swimming silently in emptiness with a field of stars behind it.
+The stars were tiny pin points of light. They were unwinking and
+distinct because there was no air where this thing floated. The
+blackness between them was absolute because this was space itself. The
+thing that floated was a moon. A man-made moon. It was an artificial
+satellite of Earth. Men were now building it. Presently it would float
+as Joe dreamed of it, and where the sun struck it, it would be
+unbearably bright, and where there were shadows, they would be abysmally
+black--except, perhaps, when earthshine from the planet below would
+outline it in a ghostly fashion.
+
+There would be men in the thing that floated in space. It swam in a
+splendid orbit about the world that had built it. Sometimes there were
+small ships that--so Joe imagined--would fight their way up to it,
+panting great plumes of rocket smoke, and bringing food and fuel to its
+crew. And presently one of those panting small ships would refill its
+fuel tanks to the bursting point from the fuel other ships had
+brought--and yet the ship would have no weight. So it would drift away
+from the greater floating thing in space, and suddenly its rockets would
+spout flame and fumes, and it would head triumphantly out and away from
+Earth. And it would be the first vessel ever to strike out for the
+stars!
+
+That was the picture Joe had of the Space Platform and its meaning.
+Maybe it was romantic, but men were working right now to make that
+romance come true. This transport plane was flying to a small town
+improbably called Bootstrap, carrying one of the most essential devices
+for the Platform's equipment. In the desert near Bootstrap there was a
+gigantic construction shed. Inside that shed men were building exactly
+the monstrous object that Joe pictured to himself. They were trying to
+realize a dream men have dreamed for decades--the necessary space
+platform that would be the dock, the wharf, the starting point from
+which the first of human space explorers could start for infinity. The
+idea that anybody could want to halt such an undertaking made Joe
+Kenmore burn.
+
+The co-pilot painstakingly crushed out his cigarette. The ship flew with
+more steadiness than a railroad car rolls on rails. There was the oddly
+cushioned sound of the motors. It was all very matter-of-fact.
+
+But Joe said angrily: "Look! Is any of what you said--well--kidding?"
+
+"I wish it were, fella," said the co-pilot. "I can talk to you about it,
+but most of it's hushed up. I tell you----"
+
+"Why can you talk to me?" demanded Joe suspiciously. "What makes it all
+right for you to talk to me?"
+
+"You've got passage on this ship. That means something!"
+
+"Does it?" asked Joe.
+
+The pilot turned in his seat to glance at Joe.
+
+"Do you think we carry passengers regularly?" he asked mildly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Pilot and co-pilot looked at each other.
+
+"Tell him," said the pilot.
+
+"About five months ago," said the co-pilot, "there was an Army colonel
+wangled a ride to Bootstrap on a cargo plane. The plane took off. It
+flew all right until twenty miles from Bootstrap. Then it stopped
+checking. It dove straight for the Shed the Platform's being built in.
+It was shot down. When it hit, there was an explosion." The co-pilot
+shrugged. "You won't believe me, maybe. But a week later they found the
+colonel's body back east. Somebody'd murdered him."
+
+Joe blinked.
+
+"It wasn't the colonel who rode as a passenger," said the co-pilot. "It
+was somebody else. Twenty miles from Bootstrap he'd shot the pilots and
+taken the controls. That's what they figure, anyhow. He meant to dive
+into the construction Shed. Because--very, very cleverly--they'd managed
+to get a bomb in the plane disguised as cargo. They got the men who'd
+done that, later, but it was rather late."
+
+Joe said dubiously: "But would one bomb destroy the Shed and the
+Platform?"
+
+"This one would," said the co-pilot. "It was an atom bomb. But it wasn't
+a good one. It didn't detonate properly. It was a fizz-off."
+
+Joe saw the implications. Cranks and crackpots couldn't get hold of the
+materials for atom bombs. It took the resources of a large nation for
+that. But a nation that didn't quite dare start an open war might try to
+sneak in one atom bomb to destroy the space station. Once the Platform
+was launched no other nation could dream of world domination. The United
+States wouldn't go to war if the Platform was destroyed. But there could
+be a strictly local hot war.
+
+The pilot said sharply: "Something down below!"
+
+The co-pilot fairly leaped into his right-hand seat, his safety belt
+buckled in half a heartbeat.
+
+"Check," he said in a new tone. "Where?"
+
+The pilot pointed.
+
+"I saw something dark," he said briefly, "where there was a deep dent in
+the cloud."
+
+The co-pilot threw a switch. Within seconds a new sound entered the
+cabin. _Beep-beep-beep-beep._ They were thin squeaks, spaced a full
+half-second apart, that rose to inaudibility in pitch in the fraction of
+a second they lasted. The co-pilot snatched a hand phone from the wall
+above his head and held it to his lips.
+
+"Flight two-twenty calling," he said crisply. "Something's got a radar
+on us. We saw it. Get a fix on us and come a-running. We're at eighteen
+thousand and"--here the floor of the cabin tilted markedly--"now we're
+climbing. Get a fix on us and come a-running. Over!"
+
+He took the phone from his lips and said conversationally: "Radar's a
+giveaway. This is no fly-way. You wouldn't think he'd take that much of
+a chance, would you?"
+
+Joe clenched his hands. The pilot did things to the levers on the column
+between the two pilots' seats. He said curtly: "Arm the jatos."
+
+The co-pilot did something mysterious and said: "Check."
+
+All this took place in seconds. The pilot said, "I see something!" and
+instantly there was swift, tense teamwork in action. A call by radio,
+asking for help. The plane headed up for greater clearance between it
+and the clouds. The jatos made ready for firing. They were the
+jet-assisted take-off rockets which on a short or rough field would
+double the motors' thrust for a matter of seconds. In straightaway
+flight they should make the plane leap ahead like a scared rabbit. But
+they wouldn't last long.
+
+"I don't like this," said the co-pilot in a flat voice. "I don't see
+what he could do----"
+
+Then he stopped. Something zoomed out of a cloud. The action was
+completely improbable. The thing that appeared looked absolutely
+commonplace. It was a silver-winged private plane, the sort that cruises
+at one hundred and seventy-five knots and can hit nearly two-fifty if
+pushed. It was expensive, but not large. It came straight up out of the
+cloud layer and went lazily over on its back and dived down into the
+cloud layer again. It looked like somebody stunting for his own private
+lunatic pleasure--the kind of crazy thing some people do, and for which
+there is no possible explanation.
+
+But there was an explanation for this.
+
+At the very top of the loop, threads of white smoke appeared. They
+should have been unnoticeable against the cloud. But for the fraction of
+an instant they were silhouetted against the silver wings. And they were
+not misty wisps of vapor. They were dense, sharply defined rocket
+trails.
+
+They shot upward, spreading out. They unreeled with incredible,
+ever-increasing velocity.
+
+The pilot hit something with the heel of his hand. There was a
+heart-stopping delay. Then the transport leaped forward with a force to
+stop one's breath. The jatos were firing furiously, and the ship jumped.
+There was a bellowing that drowned out the sound of the engines. Joe was
+slammed back on the rear wall of the cabin. He struggled against the
+force that pushed him tailward. He heard the pilot saying calmly: "That
+plane shot rockets at us. If they're guided we're sunk."
+
+Then the threads of smoke became the thickness of cables, of columns!
+They should have ringed the transport plane in. But the jatos had jumped
+it crazily forward and were still thrusting fiercely to make it go
+faster than any prop-plane could. The acceleration made the muscles at
+the front of Joe's throat ache as he held his head upright against it.
+
+"They'll be proximity----"
+
+Then the plane bucked. Very probably, at that moment, it was stretched
+far past the limit of strain for which even its factor of safety was
+designed. One rocket had let go. The others went with it. The rockets
+had had proximity fuses. If they had ringed the transport ship and gone
+off with it enclosed, it would now be a tumbling mass of wreckage. But
+the jatos had thrown the plane out ahead of the target area. Suddenly
+they cut off, and it seemed as if the ship had braked. But the pilot
+dived steeply, for speed.
+
+The co-pilot was saying coldly into the microphone: "He shot rockets.
+Looked like Army issue three point fives with proximities. They missed.
+And we're mighty lonely!"
+
+The transport tore on, both pilots grimly watching the cloud bank below.
+They moved their bodies as they stared out the windows, so that by no
+possibility could any part of the plane mask something that they should
+see. As they searched, the co-pilot spoke evenly into the microphone at
+his lips: "He wouldn't carry more than four rockets, and he's dumping
+his racks and firing equipment now. But he might have a friend with him.
+Better get here quick if you want to catch him. He'll be the innocentest
+private pilot you ever saw in no time!"
+
+Then the pilot grunted. Something was streaking across the cloud
+formation far, far ahead. Three things. They were jet planes, and they
+seemed not so much to approach as to swell in size. They were coming at
+better than five hundred knots--ten miles a minute--and the transport
+was heading for them at its top speed of three hundred knots. The
+transport and the flight of jets neared each other at the rate of a mile
+in less than four seconds.
+
+The co-pilot said crisply: "Silver Messner with red wing-tips. The
+number began----" He gave the letter and first digits of the vanished
+plane's official designation, without which it could not take off from
+or be serviced at any flying field.
+
+Joe heard an insistent, swift _beep-beep-beep-beep_ which would be the
+radars of the approaching jets. He could not hear any answers that might
+reach the co-pilot as he talked to unseen persons who would relay his
+words to the jet fighters.
+
+One of them peeled off and sank into the cloud layer. The others came
+on. They set up in great circles about the transport, crossing before
+it, above it, around it, which gave the effect of flying around an
+object not in motion at all.
+
+The pilot flew on, frowning. The co-pilot said: "Yes. Sure! I'm
+listening!" There was a pause. Then he said: "Check. Thanks."
+
+He hung the instrument back where it belonged, above his head and behind
+him. He thoughtfully mopped his brow. He looked at Joe.
+
+"Maybe," he said mildly, "you believe me when I tell you there's a sort
+of hot war on, to keep the Platform from taking off."
+
+The pilot grunted. "Here's the third jet coming up."
+
+It was true. The jet that had dived into the clouds came up out of the
+cloud formation with somehow an air of impassive satisfaction.
+
+"Did they spot the guy?"
+
+"Yeah," said the co-pilot. "He must've picked up my report. He didn't
+dump his radar. He stayed in the cloud bank. When the jet came for
+him--spotting him with its night-fighter stuff--he tried to ram. Tried
+for a collision. So the jet gave him the works. Blew him apart. Couldn't
+make him land. Maybe they'll pick up something from the wreckage."
+
+Joe wet his lips.
+
+"I--saw what happened," he said. "He tried to smash us with rockets.
+Where'd he get them? How were they smuggled in?"
+
+The co-pilot shrugged. "Maybe smuggled in. Maybe stolen. They coulda
+been landed from a sub anywhere on a good many thousand miles of coast.
+They coulda been hauled anywhere in a station wagon. The plane was a
+private-type ship. Plenty of them flying around. It could've been bought
+easily enough. All they'd need would be a farm somewhere where it could
+land and they could strap on a rocket rack and put in a radar. And
+they'd need information. Probably be a good lead, this business. Only
+just so many people could know what was coming on this ship, and what
+course it was flying, and so on. Security will have to check back from
+that angle."
+
+A shadow fell upon the transport ship. A jet shot past from above it. It
+waggled its wings and changed course.
+
+"We've got to land and be checked for damage," said the co-pilot
+negligently. "These guys will circle us and lead the way--as if we
+needed it!"
+
+Joe subsided. He still had in his mind the glamorous and infinitely
+alluring picture of the Space Platform floating grandly in its orbit,
+with white-hot sunshine on it and a multitude of stars beyond. He had
+been completely absorbed in that aspect of the job that dealt with the
+method of construction and the technical details by which the Platform
+could be made to work.
+
+Now he had a side light on the sort of thing that has to be done when
+anything important is achieved. Figuring out how a thing can be done is
+only part of the job. Overcoming the obstacles to the apparently
+commonplace steps is nine-tenths of the difficulty. It had seemed to him
+that the most dramatic aspect of building the Space Platform had been
+the achievement of a design that would work in space, that could be
+gotten up into space, and that could be lived in under circumstances
+never before experienced. Now he saw that getting the materials to the
+spot where they were needed called for nearly as much brains and effort.
+Screening out spies and destructionists--that would be an even greater
+achievement!
+
+He began to feel a tremendous respect and solicitude for the people who
+were doing ordinary jobs in the building of the Platform. And he worried
+about his own share more than ever.
+
+Presently the transport ship sank toward the clouds. It sped through
+them, stone-blind from the mist. And then there was a small airfield
+below, and the pilot and co-pilot began a pattern of ritualistic
+conversation.
+
+"Pitot and wing heaters?" asked the pilot.
+
+The co-pilot put his hand successively on two controls.
+
+"Off."
+
+"Spark advance?"
+
+The co-pilot moved his hands.
+
+"Take-off and climb?" said the co-pilot.
+
+"Blowers?"
+
+"Low."
+
+"Fuel selectors?"
+
+The co-pilot moved his hands again to the appropriate controls,
+verifying that they were as he reported them.
+
+"Main on," he said matter-of-factly, "crossfeed off."
+
+The transport plane slanted down steeply for the landing field that had
+looked so small at first, but expanded remarkably as they drew near.
+
+Joe found himself frowning. He began to see how really big a job it was
+to get a Space Platform even ready to take off for a journey that in
+theory should last forever. It was daunting to think that before a space
+ship could be built and powered and equipped with machinery there had to
+be such wildly irrelevant plans worked out as a proper check of controls
+for the piston-engine ships that flew parts to the job. The details were
+innumerable!
+
+But the job was still worth doing. Joe was glad he was going to have a
+share in it.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+It was a merely misty day. The transport plane stood by the door of a
+hangar on this military field, and mechanics stood well back from it and
+looked it over. A man crawled over the tail assembly and found one small
+hole in the fabric of the stabilizer. A shell fragment had gone through
+when the war rockets exploded nearby. The pilot verified that the
+fragment had hit no strengthening member inside. He nodded. The mechanic
+made very neat fabric patches over the two holes, upper and lower. He
+began to go over the fuselage. The pilot turned away.
+
+"I'll go talk to Bootstrap," he told the co-pilot. "You keep an eye on
+things."
+
+"I'll keep two eyes on them," said the co-pilot.
+
+The pilot went toward the control tower of the field. Joe looked around.
+The transport ship seemed very large, standing on the concrete apron
+with its tricycle landing gear let down. It curiously resembled a
+misshapen insect, standing elaborately high on inadequate supporting
+legs. Its fuselage, in particular, did not look right for an aircraft.
+The top of the cargo section went smoothly back to the stabilizing fins,
+but the bottom did not taper. It ended astern in a clumsy-looking bulge
+that was closed by a pair of huge clamshell doors, opening straight
+astern. It was built that way, of course, so that large objects could be
+loaded direct into the cargo hold, but it was neither streamlined nor
+graceful.
+
+"Did anything get into the cargo hold?" asked Joe in sudden anxiety.
+"Did the cases I'm with get hit?"
+
+After all, four rockets had exploded deplorably near the ship. If one
+fragment had struck, others might have.
+
+"Nothing big, anyhow," the co-pilot told him. "We'll know presently."
+
+But examination showed no other sign of the ship's recent nearness to
+destruction. It had been overstressed, certainly, but ships are built to
+take beatings. A spot check on areas where excessive flexing of the
+wings would have shown up--a big ship's wings are not perfectly rigid:
+they'd come to pieces in the air if they were--presented no evidence of
+damage. The ship was ready to take off again.
+
+The co-pilot watched grimly until the one mechanic went back to the side
+lines. The mechanic was not cordial. He and all the others regarded the
+ship and Joe and the co-pilot with disfavor. They worked on jets, and to
+suggest that men who worked on fighter jets were not worthy of complete
+confidence did not set well with them. The co-pilot noticed it.
+
+"They think I'm a suspicious heel," he said sourly to Joe, "but I have
+to be. The best spies and saboteurs in the world have been hired to mess
+up the Platform. When better saboteurs are made, they'll be sent over
+here to get busy!"
+
+The pilot came back from the control tower.
+
+"Special flight orders," he told his companion. "We top off with fuel
+and get going."
+
+Mechanics got out the fuel hose, dragging it from the pit. One man
+climbed up on the wing. Other men handed up the hose. Joe was moved to
+comment, but the co-pilot was reading the new flight instructions. It
+was one of those moments of inconsistency to which anybody and everybody
+is liable. The two men of the ship's crew had it in mind to be
+infinitely suspicious of anybody examining their ship. But fueling it
+was so completely standard an operation that they merely stood by
+absently while it went on. They had the orders to read and memorize,
+anyhow.
+
+One wing tank was full. A big, grinning man with sandy hair dragged the
+hose under the nose of the plane to take it to the other wing tank.
+Close by the nose wheel he slipped and steadied himself by the shaft
+which reaches down to the wheel's hub. His position for a moment was
+absurdly ungraceful. When he straightened up, his arm slid into the
+wheel well. But he dragged the hose the rest of the way and passed it on
+up. Then that tank was full and capped. The refueling crew got down to
+the ground and fed the hose back to the pit which devoured it. That was
+all. But somehow Joe remembered the sandy-haired man and his arm going
+up inside the wheel well for a fraction of a second.
+
+The pilot read one part of the flight orders again and tore them
+carefully across. One part he touched his pocket lighter to. It burned.
+He nodded yet again to the co-pilot, and they swung up and in the
+pilots' doorway. Joe followed.
+
+They settled in their places in the cabin. The pilot threw a switch and
+pressed a knob. One motor turned over stiffly, and caught. The second.
+Third. Fourth. The pilot listened, was satisfied, and pulled back on the
+multiple throttle. The plane trundled away. Minutes later it faced the
+long runway, a tinny voice from the control tower spoke out of a
+loud-speaker under the instruments, and the plane roared down the field.
+In seconds it lifted and swept around in a great half-circle.
+
+"Okay," said the pilot. "Wheels up."
+
+The co-pilot obeyed. The telltale lights that showed the wheels
+retracted glowed briefly. The men relaxed.
+
+"You know," said the co-pilot, "there was the devil of a time during the
+War with sabotage. Down in Brazil there was a field planes used to take
+off from to fly to Africa. But they'd take off, head out to sea, get a
+few miles offshore, and then blow up. We must've lost a dozen planes
+that way! Then it broke. There was a guy--a sergeant--in the maintenance
+crew who was sticking a hand grenade up in the nose wheel wells. German,
+he was, and very tidy about it, and nobody suspected him. Everything
+looked okay and tested okay. But when the ship was well away and the
+crew pulled up the wheels, that tightened a string and it pulled the pin
+out of the grenade. It went off.... The master mechanic finally caught
+him and nearly killed him before the MPs could stop him. We've got to be
+plenty careful, whether the ground crews like it or not."
+
+Joe said drily: "You were, except when they were topping off. You took
+that for granted." He told about the sandy-haired man. "He hadn't time
+to stick anything in the wheel well, though," he added.
+
+The co-pilot blinked. Then he looked annoyed. "Confound it! I didn't
+watch! Did you?"
+
+The pilot shook his head, his lips compressed.
+
+The co-pilot said bitterly: "And I thought I was security-conscious!
+Thanks for telling me, fella. No harm done this time, but that was a
+slip!"
+
+He scowled at the dials before him. The plane flew on.
+
+This was the last leg of the trip, and now it should be no more than an
+hour and a half before they reached their destination. Joe felt a lift
+of elation. The Space Platform was a realization--or the beginning of
+it--of a dream that had been Joe's since he was a very small boy. It was
+also the dream of most other small boys at the time. The Space Platform
+would make space travel possible. Of course it wouldn't make journeys to
+the moon or planets itself, but it would sail splendidly about the Earth
+in an orbit some four thousand miles up, and it would gird the world in
+four hours fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. It would carry
+atom-headed guided missiles, and every city in the world would be
+defenseless against it. Nobody could even hope for world domination so
+long as it floated on its celestial round. Which, naturally, was why
+there were such desperate efforts to destroy it before its completion.
+
+But Joe, thinking about the Platform, did not think about it as a
+weapon. It was the first rung on the stepladder to the stars. From it
+the moon would be reached, certainly. Mars next, most likely. Then
+Venus. In time the moons of Saturn, and the twilight zone of Mercury,
+and some day the moons of Jupiter. Possibly a landing could be dared on
+that giant planet itself, despite its gravity.
+
+The co-pilot spoke suddenly. "How do you rate this trip by cargo plane?"
+he asked curiously. "Mostly even generals have to go on the ground. You
+rate plenty. How?"
+
+Joe pulled his thoughts back from satisfied imagining. It hadn't
+occurred to him that it was remarkable that he should be allowed to
+accompany the gyros from the plant to their destination. His family firm
+had built them, so it had seemed natural to him. He wasn't used to the
+idea that everybody looked suspicious to a security officer concerned
+with the safety of the Platform.
+
+"Connections? I haven't any," said Joe. Then he said, "I do know
+somebody on the job. There's a Major Holt out there. He might have
+cleared me. Known my family for years."
+
+"Yeah," said the co-pilot drily. "He might. As a matter of fact, he's
+the senior security officer for the whole job. He's in charge of
+everything, from the security guards to the radar screens and the
+jet-plane umbrella and the checking of the men who work in the Shed. If
+he says you're all right, you probably are."
+
+Joe hadn't meant to seem impressive. He explained: "I don't know him too
+well. He knows my father, and his daughter Sally's been kicking around
+underfoot most of my life. I taught her how to shoot, and she's a better
+shot than I am. She was a nice kid when she was little. I got to like
+her when she fell out of a tree and broke her arm and didn't even
+whimper. That shows how long ago it was!" He grinned. "She was trying to
+act grown-up last time I saw her."
+
+The co-pilot nodded. There was a brisk chirping sound somewhere. The
+pilot reached ahead to the course-correction knob. The plane changed
+course. Sunshine shifted as it poured into the cabin. The ship was
+running on automatic pilot well above the cloud level, and at an
+even-numbered number of thousands of feet altitude, as was suitable for
+planes traveling south or west. Now it droned on its new course,
+forty-five degrees from the original. Joe found himself guessing that
+one of the security provisions for planes approaching the Platform might
+be that they should not come too near on a direct line to it, lest they
+give information to curious persons on the ground.
+
+Time went on. Joe slipped gradually back to his meditations about the
+Platform. There was always, in his mind, the picture of a man-made thing
+shining in blinding sunlight between Earth and moon. But he began to
+remember things he hadn't paid too much attention to before.
+
+Opposition to the bare idea of a Space Platform, for instance, from the
+moment it was first proposed. Every dictator protested bitterly. Even
+politicians out of office found it a subject for rabble-rousing
+harangues. The nationalistic political parties, the peddlers of hate,
+the entrepreneurs of discord--every crank in the world had something to
+say against the Platform from the first. When they did not roundly
+denounce it as impious, they raved that it was a scheme by which the
+United States would put itself in position to rule all the Earth. As a
+matter of fact, the United States had first proposed it as a United
+Nations enterprise, so that denunciations that politicians found good
+politics actually made very poor sense. But it did not get past the
+General Assembly. The proposal was so rabidly attacked on every side
+that it was not even passed up to the Council--where it would certainly
+have been vetoed anyhow.
+
+But it was exactly that furious denunciation which put the Platform
+through the United States Congress, which had to find the money for its
+construction.
+
+In Joe's eyes and in the eyes of most of those who hoped for it from the
+beginning, the Platform's great appeal was that it was the necessary
+first step toward interplanetary travel, with star ships yet to come.
+But most scientists wanted it, desperately, for their own ends. There
+were low-temperature experiments, electronic experiments, weather
+observations, star-temperature measurements, astronomical
+observations.... Any man in any field of science could name reasons for
+it to be built. Even the atom scientists had one, and nearly the best.
+Their argument was that there were new developments of nuclear theory
+that needed to be tried out, but should not be tried out on Earth. There
+were some reactions that ought to yield unlimited power for all the
+world from really abundant materials. But there was one chance in fifty
+that they wouldn't be safe, just because the materials were so abundant.
+No sane man would risk a two-per-cent chance of destroying Earth and all
+its people, yet those reactions should be tried. In a space ship some
+millions of miles out in emptiness they could be. Either they'd be safe
+or they would not. But the only way to get a space ship a safe enough
+distance from Earth was to make a Space Platform as a starting point.
+Then a ship could shoot away from Earth with effectively zero gravity
+and full fuel tanks. The Platform should be built so civilization could
+surge ahead to new heights!
+
+But despite these excellent reasons, it was the Platform's enemies who
+really got it built. The American Congress would never have appropriated
+funds for a Platform for pure scientific research, no matter what
+peacetime benefits it promised. It was the vehemence of those who hated
+it that sold it to Congress as a measure for national defense. And in a
+sense it was.
+
+These were ironic aspects Joe hadn't thought about before, just as he
+hadn't thought about the need to defend the Platform while it was being
+built. Defending it was Sally's father's job, and he wouldn't have a
+popular time. Joe wondered idly how Sally liked living out where the
+most important job on Earth was being done. She was a nice kid. He
+remembered appreciatively that she'd grown up to be a very good-looking
+girl. He tended to remember her mostly as the tomboy who could beat him
+swimming, but the last time he'd seen her, come to think of it, he'd
+been startled to observe how pretty she'd grown. He didn't know anybody
+who ought to be better-looking.... She was a really swell girl....
+
+He came to himself again. There was a change in the look of the sky
+ahead. There was no actual horizon, of course. There was a white haze
+that blended imperceptibly into the cloud layer so that it was
+impossible to tell where the sky ended and the clouds or earth began.
+But presently there were holes in the clouds. The ship droned on, and
+suddenly it floated over the edge of such a hole, and looking down was
+very much like looking over the edge of a cliff at solid earth
+illimitably far below.
+
+The holes increased in number. Then there were no holes at all, but only
+clouds breaking up the clear view of the ground beneath. And presently
+again even the clouds were left behind and the air was clear--but still
+there was no horizon--and there was brownish earth with small green
+patches and beyond was sere brown range. At seventeen thousand feet
+there were simply no details.
+
+Soon the clouds were merely a white-tipped elevation of the white haze
+to the sides and behind. And then there came a new sound above the
+droning roar of the motors. Joe heard it--and then he saw.
+
+Something had flashed down from nowhere. It flashed on ahead and banked
+steeply. It was a fighter jet, and for an instant Joe saw the distant
+range seem to ripple and dance in its exhaust blast. It circled
+watchfully.
+
+The transport pilot manipulated something. There was a change in the
+sound of the motors. Joe followed the co-pilot's eyes. The jet fighter
+was coming up astern, dive brakes extended to reduce its speed. It
+overhauled the transport very slowly. And then the transport's pilot
+touched one of the separate prop-controls gently, and again, and again.
+Joe, looking at the jet, saw it through the whirling blades. There was
+an extraordinary stroboscopic effect. One of the two starboard
+propellers, seen through the other, abruptly took on a look which was
+not that of mistiness at all, but of writhing, gyrating solidity. The
+peculiar appearance vanished, and came again, and vanished and appeared
+yet again before it disappeared completely.
+
+The jet shot on ahead. Its dive brakes retracted. It made a graceful,
+wallowing, shallow dive, and then climbed almost vertically. It went out
+of sight.
+
+"Visual check," said the co-pilot drily, to Joe. "We had a signal to
+give. Individual to this plane. We didn't tell it to you. You couldn't
+duplicate it."
+
+Joe worked it out painfully. The visual effect of one propeller seen
+through another--that was identification. It was not a type of signaling
+an unauthorized or uninformed passenger would expect.
+
+"Also," said the co-pilot, "we have a television camera in the
+instrument board yonder. We've turned it on now. The interior of the
+cabin is being watched from the ground. No more tricks like the phony
+colonel and the atom bomb that didn't 'explode.'"
+
+Joe sat quite still. He noticed that the plane was slanting gradually
+downward. His eyes went to the dial that showed descent at somewhere
+between two and three hundred feet a minute. That was for his benefit.
+The cabin was pressurized, though it did not attempt to simulate
+sea-level pressure. It was a good deal better than the outside air,
+however, and yet too quick a descent meant discomfort. Two to three
+hundred feet per minute is about right.
+
+The ground took on features. Small gulleys. Patches of coloration too
+small to be seen from farther up. The feeling of speed increased. After
+long minutes the plane was only a few thousand feet up. The pilot took
+over manual control from the automatic pilot. He seemed to wait. There
+was a plaintive, mechanical _beep-beep_ and he changed course.
+
+"You'll see the Shed in a minute or two," said the co-pilot. He added
+vexedly, as if the thing had been bothering him, "I wish I hadn't missed
+that sandy-haired guy putting his hand in the wheel well! Nothing
+happened, but I shouldn't have missed it!"
+
+Joe watched. Very, very far away there were mountains, but he suddenly
+realized the remarkable flatness of the ground over which they were
+flying. From the edge of the world, behind, to the very edge of these
+far-distant hills, the ground was flat. There were gullies and
+depressions here and there, but no hills. It was flat, flat, flat....
+
+The plane flew on. There was a tiny glimmer of sunlight. Joe strained
+his eyes. The sunlight glinted from the tiniest possible round pip on
+the brown earth. It grew as the plane flew on. It was half a cherry
+stone. It was half an orange, with gores. It was the top section of a
+sphere that was simply too huge to have been made by men.
+
+There was a thin thread of white that ran across the dun-colored range
+and reached that half-ball and then ended. It was a highway. Joe
+realized that the half-globe was the Shed, the monstrous building made
+for the construction of the Space Platform. It was gigantic. It was
+colossal. It was the most stupendous thing that men had ever created.
+
+Joe saw a tiny projection near the base of it. It was an office building
+for clerks and timekeepers and other white-collar workers. He strained
+his eyes again and saw a motor truck on the highway. It looked
+extraordinarily flat. Then he saw that it wasn't a single truck but a
+convoy of them. A long way back, the white highway was marked by a tiny
+dot. That was a motor bus.
+
+There was no sign of activity anywhere, because the scale was so great.
+Movement there was, but the things that moved were too small to be seen
+by comparison with the Shed. The huge, round, shining half-sphere of
+metal stood tranquilly in the midst of emptiness.
+
+It was bigger than the pyramids.
+
+The plane went on, descending. Joe craned his neck, and then he was
+ashamed to gawk. He looked ahead, and far away there were white speckles
+that would be buildings: Bootstrap, the town especially built for the
+men who built the Space Platform. In it they slept and ate and engaged
+in the uproarious festivity that men on a construction job crave on
+their time off.
+
+The plane dipped noticeably.
+
+"Airfield off to the right," said the co-pilot. "That's for the town and
+the job. The jets--there's an air umbrella overhead all the time--have a
+field somewhere else. The pushpots have a field of their own, too, where
+they're training pilots."
+
+Joe didn't know what a pushpot was, but he didn't ask. He was thinking
+about the Shed, which was the greatest building ever put up, and had
+been built merely to shelter the greatest hope for the world's peace
+while it was put together. He'd be in the Shed presently. He'd work
+there, setting up the contents of the crates back in the cargo space,
+and finally installing them in the Platform itself.
+
+The pilot said: "Pitot and wing heaters?"
+
+"Off," said the co-pilot.
+
+"Spark and advance----"
+
+Joe didn't listen. He looked down at the sprawling small town with
+white-painted barracks and a business section and an obvious, carefully
+designed recreation area that nobody would ever use. The plane was
+making a great half-circle. The motor noise dimmed as Joe became
+absorbed in his anticipation of seeing the Space Platform and having a
+hand in its building.
+
+The co-pilot said sharply: "Hold everything!"
+
+Joe jerked his head around. The co-pilot had his hand on the wheel
+release. His face was tense.
+
+"It don't feel right," he said very, very quietly. "Maybe I'm crazy, but
+there was that sandy-haired guy who put his hand up in the wheel well
+back at that last field. And this don't feel right!"
+
+The plane swept on. The airfield passed below it. The co-pilot very
+cautiously let go of the wheel release, which when pulled should let the
+wheels fall down from their wells to lock themselves in landing
+position. He moved from his seat. His lips were pinched and tight. He
+scrabbled at a metal plate in the flooring. He lifted it and looked
+down. A moment later he had a flashlight. Joe saw the edge of a mirror.
+There were two mirrors down there, in fact. One could look through both
+of them into the wheel well.
+
+The co-pilot made quite sure. He stood up, leaving the plate off the
+opening in the floor.
+
+"There's something down in the wheel well," he said in a brittle tone.
+"It looks to me like a grenade. There's a string tied to it. At a guess,
+that sandy-haired guy set it up like that saboteur sergeant down in
+Brazil. Only--it rolled a little. And this one goes off when the wheels
+go down. I think, too, if we belly-land----Better go around again, huh?"
+
+The pilot nodded. "First," he said evenly, "we get word down to the
+ground about the sandy-haired guy, so they'll get him regardless."
+
+He picked up the microphone hanging above and behind him and began to
+speak coldly into it. The transport plane started to swing in wide,
+sweeping circles over the desert beyond the airport while the pilot
+explained that there was a grenade in the nose wheel well, set to
+explode if the wheel were let down or, undoubtedly, if the ship came in
+to a belly landing.
+
+Joe found himself astonishingly unafraid. But he was filled with a
+pounding rage. He hated the people who wanted to smash the pilot gyros
+because they were essential to the Space Platform. He hated them more
+completely than he had known he could hate anybody. He was so filled
+with fury that it did not occur to him that in any crash or explosive
+landing that would ruin the gyros, he would automatically be killed.
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+The pilot made an examination down the floor-plate hole, with a
+flashlight to see by and two mirrors to show him the contents of a spot
+he could not possibly reach with any instrument. Joe heard his report,
+made to the ground by radio.
+
+"It's a grenade," he said coldly. "It took time to fix it the way it is.
+At a guess, the ship was booby-trapped at the time of its last overhaul.
+But it was arranged that the booby trap had to be set, the trigger
+cocked, by somebody doing something very simple at a different place and
+later on. We've been flying with that grenade in the wheel well for two
+weeks. But it was out of sight. Today, back at the airfield, a
+sandy-haired man reached up and pulled a string he knew how to find.
+That loosened a slipknot. The grenade rolled down to a new position. Now
+when the wheel goes down the pin is pulled. You can figure things out
+from that."
+
+It was an excellent sabotage device. If a ship blew up two weeks after
+overhaul, it would not be guessed that the bomb had been placed so long
+before. Every search would be made for a recent opportunity for the
+bomb's placing. A man who merely reached in and pulled a string that
+armed the bomb and made it ready for firing would never be suspected.
+There might be dozens of planes, now carrying their own destruction
+about with them.
+
+The pilot said into the microphone: "Probably...." He listened. "Very
+well, sir."
+
+He turned away and nodded to the co-pilot, now savagely keeping the ship
+in wide, sweeping circles, the rims of which barely touched the
+farthermost corner of the airport on the ground below.
+
+"We've authority to jump," he said briefly. "You know where the chutes
+are. But there _is_ a chance I can belly-land without that grenade
+blowing. I'm going to try that."
+
+The co-pilot said angrily: "I'll get him a chute." He indicated Joe, and
+said furiously, "They've been known to try two or three tricks, just to
+make sure. Ask if we should dump cargo before we crash-land!"
+
+The pilot held up the microphone again. He spoke. He listened.
+
+"Okay to dump stuff to lighten ship."
+
+"You won't dump my crates," snapped Joe. "And I'm staying to see you
+don't! If you can ride this ship down, so can I!"
+
+The co-pilot got up and scowled at him.
+
+"Anything I can move out, goes. Will you help?"
+
+Joe followed him through the door into the cargo compartment.
+
+The space there was very considerable, and bitterly cold. The crates
+from the Kenmore plant were the heaviest items of cargo. Other objects
+were smaller. The co-pilot made his way to the rear and pulled a lever.
+Great, curved doors opened at the back of the plane. Instantly there was
+such a bellowing of motors that all speech was impossible. The co-pilot
+pulled out a clip of colored-paper slips and checked one with the
+nearest movable parcel. He painstakingly made a check mark and began to
+push the box toward the doors.
+
+It was not a conspicuously sane operation. So near the ground, the plane
+tended to waver. The air was distinctly bumpy. To push a massive box out
+a doorway, so it would tumble down a thousand feet to desert sands, was
+not so safe a matter as would let it become tedious. But Joe helped.
+They got the box to the door and shoved it out. It went spinning down.
+The co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watched it land. He chose
+another box. He checked it. And another. Joe helped. They got them out
+of the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness. The plane soared on
+in circles. The desert, as seen through the opened clamshell doors,
+reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt, and reeled away again. Joe
+and the co-pilot labored furiously. But the co-pilot checked each item
+before he jettisoned it.
+
+It was a singularly deliberate way to dump cargo to destruction. A
+metal-bound box. Over the edge of the cargo space floor. A piece of
+machinery, visible through its crate. A box marked _Instruments_.
+_Fragile_. Each one checked off. Each one dumped to drop a thousand feet
+or more. A small crated dynamo. This item and that. A crate marked
+_Stationery_. It would be printed forms for the timekeepers, perhaps.
+But it wasn't.
+
+It dropped out. The plane bellowed on. And suddenly there was a burst of
+blue-white flame on the desert below. The box that should have contained
+timecards had contained something very much more explosive. As the plane
+roared on--rocking from the shock wave of the explosion--Joe saw a
+crater and a boiling cloud of smoke and flying sand.
+
+The co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously, in the blasting uproar of
+the motors. He vengefully marked the waybill of the parcel that had
+exploded. But then they went back to the job of dumping cargo. They
+worked well as a team now. In no more than minutes everything was out
+except the four crates that were the gyros. The co-pilot regarded them
+dourly, and Joe clenched his fists. The co-pilot closed the clamshell
+doors, and it became possible to hear oneself think again.
+
+"Ship's lighter, anyhow," reported the co-pilot, back in the cabin.
+"Tell 'em this is what exploded."
+
+The pilot took the slip. He plucked down the microphone--exactly like
+somebody picking up an interoffice telephone--and reported the waybill
+number and description of the case that had been an extra bomb. The ship
+carrying the pilot gyros had been booby-trapped--probably with a number
+of other ships--and a bomb had been shipped on it, and a special
+saboteur with a private plane had shot at it with rockets. The pilot
+gyros were critical devices. They had to be on board the Platform when
+it took off, and they took months to make and balance. There had been
+extra pains taken to prevent their arrival!
+
+"I'm dumping gas now," said the pilot into the microphone, "and then
+coming in for a belly landing."
+
+The ship flew straightaway. It flew more lightly, and it bounced a
+little. When gas is dumped one has to slow to not more than one hundred
+and seventy-five knots and fly level. Then one is supposed to fly five
+minutes after dumping with the chutes in the drain position--and even
+then there is forty-five minutes of flying fuel still in the tanks.
+
+The ship swept around and headed back for the now far-distant field. It
+went slowly lower and lower and lower until it seemed barely to skim the
+minor irregularities in the ground. And low like this, the effect of
+speed was terrific.
+
+The co-pilot thought of something. Quickly he went back into the cargo
+space. He returned with an armful of blankets. He dumped them on the
+floor.
+
+"If that grenade does go!" he said sourly.
+
+Joe helped. In the few minutes before Bootstrap loomed near, they filled
+the bottom of the cabin with blankets. Especially around the pilots'
+chairs. And there was a mound of blanketing above the actual place where
+the grenade might be. It made sense. Soft stuff like blankets would
+absorb an explosion better than anything else. But the pilot thought the
+grenade might not blow.
+
+"Hold fast!" snapped the pilot.
+
+The wing flaps were down. That slowed the ship a little. It had been
+lightened. That helped. They went in over the edge of the field less
+than man-height high. Joe found his hands closing convulsively on a
+handgrip. He saw a crash wagon starting out from the side of the runway.
+A fire truck started for the line the plane followed.
+
+Four feet above the rushing sand. Three. The pilot eased back the stick.
+His face was craggy and very grim and very hard. The ship's tail went
+down and dragged. It bumped. Then the plane careened and slid and
+half-whirled crazily, and then the world seemed to come to an end.
+Crashes. Bangs. Shrieks of torn metal. Bumps, thumps and grindings. Then
+a roaring.
+
+Joe pulled himself loose from where he had been flung--it seemed to him
+that he peeled himself loose--and found the pilot struggling up, and he
+grabbed him to help, and the co-pilot hauled at them both, and abruptly
+all three of them were in the open air and running at full speed away
+from the ship.
+
+The roar abruptly became a bellowing. There was an explosion. Flames
+sprouted everywhere. The three men ran stumblingly. But even as they
+ran, the co-pilot swore.
+
+"We left something!" he panted.
+
+Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something
+else exploded dully. But he should be far enough away by now.
+
+He turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckage immersed in roaring
+flames. The flames were monstrous. They rose sky-high, it seemed--more
+flames than forty-five minutes of gasoline should have produced. As he
+looked, something blew up shatteringly, and fire raged even more
+furiously. Of course in such heat the delicately adjusted gyros would be
+warped and ruined even if the crash hadn't wrecked them beforehand. Joe
+made thick, incoherent sounds of rage.
+
+The plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton, licked through by
+flames. The crash wagon roared to a stop beside them.
+
+"Anybody hurt? Anybody left inside?"
+
+Joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairing rage. The fog wagon
+roared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles. Its tanks contained
+water treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest of
+droplets when sprayed at four hundred pounds pressure. It drenched the
+burning wreck with that heavy mist, in which a man would drown. No fire
+could possibly sustain itself. In seconds, it seemed, there were only
+steam and white vapor and fumes of smoldering substances that gradually
+lessened.
+
+But then there was a roaring of motorcycles racing across the field with
+a black car trailing them. The car pulled up beside the fog wagon, then
+sped swiftly to where Joe was coming out of wild rage and sinking into
+sick, black depression. He'd been responsible for the pilot gyros and
+their safe arrival. What had happened wasn't his fault, but it was not
+his job merely to remain blameless. It was his job to get the gyros
+delivered and set up in the Space Platform. He had failed.
+
+The black car braked to a stop. There was Major Holt. Joe had seen him
+six months before. He'd aged a good deal. He looked grimly at the two
+pilots.
+
+"What happened?" he demanded. "You dumped your fuel! What burned like
+this?"
+
+Joe said thickly: "Everything was dumped but the pilot gyros. They
+didn't burn! They were packed at the plant!"
+
+The co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent sound of rage. "I've got it!"
+he said hoarsely. "I know----"
+
+"What?" snapped Major Holt.
+
+"They--planted that grenade at the--major overhaul!" panted the
+co-pilot, too enraged even to swear. "They--fixed it so--any trouble
+would mean a wreck! And I--pulled the fire-extinguisher releases just as
+we hit! For all compartments! To flood everything with CO_2! But it
+wasn't CO_2! That's what burned!"
+
+Major Holt stared sharply at him. He held up his hand. Somebody
+materialized beside him. He said harshly: "Get the extinguisher bottles
+sealed and take them to the laboratory."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+A man went running toward the wreck. Major Holt said coldly: "That's a
+new one. We should have thought of it. You men get yourselves attended
+to and report to Security at the Shed."
+
+The pilot and co-pilot turned away. Joe turned to go with them. Then he
+heard Sally's voice, a little bit wobbly: "Joe! Come with us, please!"
+
+Joe hadn't seen her, but she was in the car. She was pale. Her eyes were
+wide and frightened.
+
+Joe said stiffly: "I'll be all right. I want to look at those
+crates----"
+
+Major Holt said curtly: "They're already under guard. There'll have to
+be photographs made before anything can be touched. And I want a report
+from you, anyhow. Come along!"
+
+Joe looked. The motorcycles were abandoned, and there were already armed
+guards around the still-steaming wreck, grimly watching the men of the
+fog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparks or flame. It was
+noticeable that now nobody moved toward the wreck. There were figures
+walking back toward the edge of the field. What civilians were about,
+even to the mechanics on duty, had started out to look at the debris at
+close range. But the guards were on the job. Nobody could approach. The
+onlookers went back to their proper places.
+
+"Please, Joe!" said Sally shakily.
+
+Joe got drearily into the car. The instant he seated himself, it was in
+motion again. It went plunging back across the field and out the
+entrance. Its horn blared and it went streaking toward the town and
+abruptly turned to the left. In seconds it was on a broad white highway
+that left the town behind and led toward the emptiness of the desert.
+
+But not quite emptiness. Far, far away there was a great half-globe
+rising against the horizon. The car hummed toward it, tires singing. And
+Joe looked at it and felt ashamed, because this was the home of the
+Space Platform, and he hadn't brought to it the part for which he alone
+was responsible.
+
+Sally moistened her lips. She brought out a small box. She opened it.
+There were bandages and bottles.
+
+"I've a first-aid kit, Joe," she said shakily. "You're burned. Let me
+fix the worst ones, anyhow!"
+
+Joe looked at himself. One coat sleeve was burned to charcoal. His hair
+was singed on one side. A trouser leg was burned off around the ankle.
+When he noticed, his burns hurt.
+
+Major Holt watched her spread a salve on scorched skin. He showed no
+emotion whatever.
+
+"Tell me what happened," he commanded. "All of it!"
+
+Somehow, there seemed very little to tell, but Joe told it baldly as the
+car sped on. The great half-ball of metal loomed larger and larger but
+did not appear to grow nearer as Sally practiced first aid. They came to
+a convoy of trucks, and the horn blared, and they turned out and passed
+it. Once they met a convoy of empty vehicles on the way back to
+Bootstrap. They passed a bus. They went on.
+
+Joe finished drearily: "The pilots did everything anybody could. Even
+checked off the packages as they were dumped. We reported the one that
+blew up."
+
+Major Holt said uncompromisingly: "Those were orders. In a sense we've
+gained something even by this disaster. The pilots are probably right
+about the plane's having been booby-trapped after its last overhaul, and
+the traps armed later. I'll have an inspection made immediately, and
+we'll see if we can find how it was done.
+
+"There's the man you think armed the trap on this plane. An order for
+his arrest is on the way now. I told my secretary. And--hm.... That
+CO_2----"
+
+"I didn't understand that," said Joe drearily.
+
+"Planes have CO_2 bottles to put fires out," said the Major impatiently.
+"A fire in flight lights a red warning light on the instrument panel,
+telling where it is. The pilot pulls a handle, and CO_2 floods the
+compartment, putting it out. And this ship was coming in for a crash
+landing so the pilot--according to orders--flooded all compartments with
+CO_2. Only it wasn't."
+
+Sally said in horror: "Oh, no!"
+
+"The CO_2 bottles were filled with an inflammable or an explosive gas,"
+said her father, unbending. "Instead of making a fire impossible, they
+made it certain. We'll have to watch out for that trick now, too."
+
+Joe was too disheartened for any emotion except a bitter depression and
+a much more bitter hatred of those who were ready to commit any
+crime--and had committed most--in the attempt to destroy the Platform.
+
+The Shed that housed it rose and rose against the skyline. It became
+huge. It became monstrous. It became unbelievable. But Joe could have
+wept when the car pulled up at an angular, three-story building built
+out from the Shed's base. From the air, this substantial building had
+looked like a mere chip. The car stopped. They got out. A sentry saluted
+as Major Holt led the way inside. Joe and Sally followed.
+
+The Major said curtly to a uniformed man at a desk: "Get some clothes
+for this man. Get him a long-distance telephone connection to the
+Kenmore Precision Tool Company. Let him talk. Then bring him to me
+again."
+
+He disappeared. Sally tried to smile at Joe. She was still quite pale.
+
+"That's Dad, Joe. He means well, but he's not cordial. I was in his
+office when the report of sabotage to your plane came through. We
+started for Bootstrap. We were on the way when we saw the first
+explosion. I--thought it was your ship." She winced a little at the
+memory. "I knew you were on board. It was--not nice, Joe."
+
+She'd been badly scared. Joe wanted to thump her encouragingly on the
+back, but he suddenly realized that that would no longer be appropriate.
+So he said gruffly: "I'm all right."
+
+He followed the uniformed man. He began to get out of his scorched and
+tattered garments. The sergeant brought him more clothes, and he put
+them on. He was just changing his personal possessions to the new
+pockets when the sergeant came back again.
+
+"Kenmore plant on the line, sir."
+
+Joe went to the phone. On the way he discovered that the banging around
+he'd had when the plane landed had made a number of places on his body
+hurt.
+
+He talked to his father.
+
+Afterward, he realized that it was a queer conversation. He felt guilty
+because something had happened to a job that had taken eight months to
+do and that he alone was escorting to its destination. He told his
+father about that. But his father didn't seem concerned. Not nearly so
+much concerned as he should have been. He asked urgent questions about
+Joe himself. If he was hurt. How much? Where? Joe was astonished that
+his father seemed to think such matters more important than the pilot
+gyros. But he answered the questions and explained the exact situation
+and also a certain desperate hope he was trying to cherish that the
+gyros might still be repairable. His father gave him advice.
+
+Sally was waiting again when he came out. She took him into her father's
+office, and introduced him to her father's secretary. Compared to Sally
+she was an extraordinarily plain woman. She wore a sorrowful expression.
+But she looked very efficient.
+
+Joe explained carefully that his father said for him to hunt up Chief
+Bender--working on the job out here--because he was one of the few men
+who'd left the Kenmore plant to work elsewhere, and he was good. He and
+the Chief, between them, would estimate the damage and the possibility
+of repair.
+
+Major Holt listened. He was military and official and harassed and curt
+and tired. Joe'd known Sally and therefore her father all his life, but
+the Major wasn't an easy man to be relaxed with. He spoke into thin air,
+and immediately his sad-seeming secretary wrote out a pass for Joe. Then
+Major Holt gave crisp orders on a telephone and asked questions, and
+Sally said: "I know. I'll take him there. I know my way around."
+
+Her father's expression did not change. He simply included Sally in his
+orders on the phone.
+
+He hung up and said briefly: "The plane will be surveyed and taken apart
+as soon as possible. By the time you find your man you can probably
+examine the crates. I'll have you cleared for it."
+
+His secretary reached in a drawer for order forms to fill out and hand
+him to sign. Sally tugged at Joe's arm. They left.
+
+Outside, she said: "There's no use arguing with my father, Joe. He has a
+terrible job, and it's on his mind all the time. He hates being a
+Security officer, too. It's a thankless job--and no Security officer
+ever gets to be more than a major. His ability never shows. What he does
+is never noticed unless it fails. So he's frustrated. He's got poor Miss
+Ross--his secretary, you know--so she just listens to what he says must
+be done and she writes it out. Sometimes he goes days without speaking
+to her directly. But really it's pretty bad! It's like a war with no
+enemy to fight except spies! And the things they do! They've been known
+even to booby-trap a truck after an accident, so anybody who tries to
+help will be blown up! So everything has to be done in a certain way or
+everything will be ruined!"
+
+She led him to an office with a door that opened directly into the Shed.
+In spite of his bitterness, Joe was morosely impatient to see inside.
+But Sally had to identify him formally as the Joe Kenmore who was the
+subject of her father's order, and his fingerprints had to be taken, and
+somebody had him stand for a moment before an X-ray screen. Then she led
+him through the door, and he was in the Shed where the Space Platform
+was under construction.
+
+It was a vast cavern of metal sheathing and spidery girders, filled with
+sound and detail. It took him seconds to begin to absorb what he saw and
+heard. The Shed was five hundred feet high in the middle, and it was all
+clear space without a single column or interruption. There were arc
+lamps burning about its edges, and high up somewhere there were strips
+of glass which let in a pale light. All of it resounded with many noises
+and clanging echoes of them.
+
+There were rivet guns at work, and there were the grumblings of motor
+trucks moving about, and the oddly harsh roar of welding torches. But
+the torch flames looked only like marsh fires, blue-white and eerie
+against the mass of the thing that was being built.
+
+It was not too clear to the eye, this incomplete Space Platform. There
+seemed to be a sort of mist, a glamour about it, which was partly a
+veiling mass of scaffolding. But Joe gazed at it with an emotion that
+blotted out even his aching disappointment and feeling of shame.
+
+It was gigantic. It had the dimensions of an ocean liner. It was
+strangely shaped. Partly obscured by the fragile-seeming framework about
+it, there was bright plating in swelling curves, and the plating reached
+up irregularly and followed a peculiar pattern, and above the plating
+there were girders--themselves shining brightly in the light of many arc
+lamps--and they rose up and up toward the roof of the Shed itself. The
+Platform was ungainly and it was huge, and it rested under a hollow
+metal half-globe that could have doubled for a sky. It was more than
+three hundred feet high, itself, and there were men working on the bare
+bright beams of its uppermost parts--and the men were specks. The far
+side of the Shed's floor had other men on it, and they were merely
+jerkily moving motes. You couldn't see their legs as they walked. The
+Shed and the Platform were monstrous!
+
+Joe felt Sally's eyes upon him. Somehow, they looked proud. He took a
+deep breath.
+
+She said: "Come on."
+
+They walked across acres of floor neatly paved with shining wooden
+blocks. They moved toward the thing that was to take mankind's first
+step toward the stars. As they walked centerward, a big sixteen-wheel
+truck-and-trailer outfit backed out of an opening under the lacy haze of
+scaffolds. It turned clumsily, and carefully circled the scaffolding,
+and moved toward a sidewall of the Shed. A section of the wall--it
+seemed as small as a rabbit hole--lifted inward like a flap, and the
+sixteen-wheeler trundled out into the blazing sunlight. Four other
+trucks scurried out after it. Other trucks came in. The sidewall section
+closed.
+
+There was the smell of engine fumes and hot metal and of ozone from
+electric sparks. There was that indescribable smell a man can get
+homesick for, of metal being worked by men. Joe walked like someone in a
+dream, with Sally satisfiedly silent beside him, until the
+scaffolds--which had looked like veiling--became latticework and he saw
+openings.
+
+They walked into one such tunnel. The bulk of the Platform above them
+loomed overhead with a crushing menace. There were trucks rumbling all
+around underneath, here in this maze of scaffold columns. Some carried
+ready-loaded cages waiting to be snatched up by hoists. Crane grips came
+down, and snapped fast on the cages, and lifted them up and up and out
+of sight. There was a Diesel running somewhere, and a man stood and
+stared skyward and made motions with his hands, and the Diesel adjusted
+its running to his signals. Then some empty cages came down and landed
+in a waiting truck body with loud clanking noises. Somebody cast off the
+hooks, and the truck grumbled and drove away.
+
+Sally spoke to a preoccupied man in shirt sleeves with a badge on an arm
+band near his shoulder. He looked carefully at the passes she carried,
+using a flashlight to make sure. Then he led them to a shaft up which a
+hoist ran. It was very noisy here. A rivet gun banged away overhead, and
+the plates of the Platform rang with the sound, and the echoes
+screeched, and to Joe the bedlam was infinitely good to hear. The man
+with the arm band shouted into a telephone transmitter, and a hoist cage
+came down. Joe and Sally stepped on it. Joe took a firm grip on her
+shoulder, and the hoist shot upward.
+
+The hugeness of the Shed and the Platform grew even more apparent as the
+hoist accelerated toward the roof. The flooring seemed to expand.
+Spidery scaffold beams dropped past them. There were things being built
+over by the sidewall. Joe saw a crawling in-plant tow truck moving past
+those enigmatic objects. It was a tiny truck, no more than four feet
+high and with twelve-inch wheels. It dragged behind it flat plates of
+metal with upturned forward edges. They slid over the floor like
+sledges. Cryptic loads were carried on those plates, and the tow truck
+stopped by a mass of steel piping being put together, and began to
+unload the plates.
+
+Then the hoist slowed abruptly and Sally winced a little. The hoist
+stopped.
+
+Here--two hundred feet up--a welding crew worked on the skin of the
+Platform itself. The plating curved in and there was a wide flat space
+parallel to the ground. There was also a great gaping hole beyond.
+Though girders rose roofward even yet, this was as high as the plating
+had gone. That opening--Joe guessed--would ultimately be the door of an
+air lock, and this flat surface was designed for a tender rocket to
+anchor to by magnets. When a rocket came up from Earth with supplies or
+reliefs for the Platform's crew, or with fuel to be stored for an
+exploring ship's later use, it would anchor here and then inch toward
+that doorway....
+
+There were half a dozen men in the welding crew. They should have been
+working. But two men battered savagely at each other, their tools thrown
+down. One was tall and lean, with a wrinkled face and an expression of
+intolerable fury. The other was squat and dark with a look of
+desperation. A third man was in the act of putting down his welding
+torch--he'd carefully turned it off first--to try to interfere. Another
+man gaped. Still another was climbing up by a ladder from the scaffold
+level below.
+
+Joe put Sally's hand on the hoist upright, instinctively freeing himself
+for action.
+
+The lanky man lashed out a terrific roundhouse blow. It landed, but the
+stocky man bored in. Joe had an instant's clear sight of his face. It
+was not the face of a man enraged. It had the look of a man both
+desperate and despairing.
+
+Then the lanky man's foot slipped. He lost balance, and the stocky man's
+fist landed. The thin man reeled backward. Sally cried out, choking. The
+lanky man teetered on the edge of the flat place. Behind him, the
+plating curved down. Below him there were two hundred feet of fall
+through the steel-pipe maze of scaffolds. If he took one step back he
+was gone inexorably down a slope on which he could never stop.
+
+He took that step. The stocky man's face abruptly froze in horror. The
+lanky man stiffened convulsively. He couldn't stop. He knew it. He'd go
+back and on over the rounded edge, and fall. He might touch the
+scaffolding. It would not stop him. It would merely set his body
+spinning crazily as it dropped and crashed again and again before it
+landed two hundred feet below.
+
+It was horror in slow motion, watching the lean man stagger backward to
+his death.
+
+Then Joe leaped.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+For an instant, in mid-air, Joe was incongruously aware of all the
+noises in the Shed. The murky, girdered ceiling still three hundred feet
+above him. The swelling, curving, glittering surface of steel
+underneath. Then he struck. He landed beside the lean man, with his left
+arm outstretched to share his impetus with him. Alone, he would have had
+momentum enough to carry himself up the slope down which the man had
+begun to descend. But now he shared it. The two of them toppled forward
+together. Their arms were upon the flat surface, while their bodies
+dangled. The feel of gravity pulling them slantwise and downward was
+purest nightmare.
+
+But then, as Joe's innards crawled, the same stocky man who had knocked
+the lean man back was dragging frantically at both of them to pull them
+to safety.
+
+Then there were two men pulling. The stocky man's face was gray. His
+horror was proof that he hadn't intended murder. The man who'd put down
+his welding torch pulled. The man who'd been climbing the ladder put his
+weight to the task of getting them back to usable footing. They reached
+safety. Joe scrambled to his feet, but he felt sick at the pit of his
+stomach. The stocky man began to shake horribly. The lanky one advanced
+furiously upon him.
+
+"I didn' mean to keel you, Haney!" the dark one panted.
+
+The lanky one snapped: "Okay. You didn't. But come on, now! We finish
+this----"
+
+He advanced toward the workman who had so nearly caused his death. But
+the other man dropped his arms to his sides.
+
+"I don' fight no more," he said thickly. "Not here. You keel me is okay.
+I don' fight."
+
+The lanky man--Haney--growled at him.
+
+"Tonight, then, in Bootstrap. Now get back to work!"
+
+The stocky man picked up his tools. He was trembling.
+
+Haney turned to Joe and said ungraciously: "Much obliged. What's up?"
+
+Joe still felt queasy. There is rarely any high elation after one has
+risked his life for somebody else. He'd nearly plunged two hundred feet
+to the floor of the Shed with Haney. But he swallowed.
+
+"I'm looking for Chief Bender. You're Haney? Foreman?"
+
+"Gang boss," said Haney. He looked at Joe and then at Sally who was
+holding convulsively to the upright Joe had put her hand on. Her eyes
+were closed. "Yeah," said Haney. "The Chief took off today. Some kind of
+Injun stuff. Funeral, maybe. Want me to tell him something? I'll see him
+when I go off shift."
+
+There was an obscure movement somewhere on this part of the Platform. A
+tiny figure came out of a crevice that would someday be an air lock. Joe
+didn't move his eyes toward it. He said awkwardly: "Just tell him Joe
+Kenmore's in town and needs him. He'll remember me, I think. I'll hunt
+him up tonight."
+
+"Okay," said Haney.
+
+Joe's eyes went to the tiny figure that had come out from behind the
+plating. It was a midget in baggy, stained work garments like the rest
+of the men up here. He wore a miniature welding shield pushed back on
+his head. Joe could guess his function, of course. There'd be corners a
+normal-sized man couldn't get into, to buck a rivet or weld a joint.
+There'd be places only a tiny man could properly inspect. The midget
+regarded Joe without expression.
+
+Joe turned to the hoist to go down to the floor again. Haney waved his
+hand. The midget lifted his, in grave salutation.
+
+The hoist dropped down the shaft. Sally opened her eyes.
+
+"You--saved that man's life, Joe," she said unsteadily. "But you scared
+me to death!"
+
+Joe tried to ignore the remark, but he still seemed to feel slanting
+metal under him and a drop of two hundred feet below. It had been a
+nightmarish sensation.
+
+"I didn't think," he said uncomfortably. "It was a crazy thing to do.
+Lucky it worked out."
+
+Sally glanced at him. The hoist still dropped swiftly. Levels of
+scaffolding shot upward past them. If Joe had slipped down that rolling
+curve of metal, he'd have dropped past all these. It was not good to
+think about. He swallowed again. Then the hoist checked in its descent.
+It stopped. Joe somewhat absurdly helped Sally off to solid ground.
+
+"It--looks to me," said Sally, "as if you're bound to make me see
+somebody killed. Joe, would you mind leading a little bit less
+adventurous life for a while? While I'm around?"
+
+He managed to grin. But he still did not feel right.
+
+"Nothing I can do until I can look at the plane," he said, changing the
+subject, "and I can't find the Chief until tonight. Could we sightsee a
+little?"
+
+She nodded. They went out from under the intricate framework that upheld
+the Platform. They went, in fact, completely under that colossal
+incomplete object. Sally indicated the sidewall.
+
+"Let's go look at the pushpots. They're fascinating!"
+
+She led the way. The enormous spaciousness of the Shed again became
+evident. There was a catwalk part way up the inward curving wall.
+Someone leaned on its railing and surveyed the interior of the Shed. He
+would probably be a security man. Maybe the fist fight up on the
+Platform had been seen, or maybe not. The man on the catwalk was hardly
+more than a speck, and it occurred to Joe that there must be other
+watchers' posts high up on the outer shell where men could search the
+sunlit desert outside for signs of danger.
+
+But he turned and looked yearningly back at the monstrous thing under
+the mist of scaffolding. For the first time he could make out its shape.
+It was something like an egg, but a great deal more like something he
+couldn't put a name to. Actually it was exactly like nothing in the
+world but itself, and when it was out in space there would be nothing
+left on Earth like it.
+
+It would be in a fashion a world in itself, independent of the Earth
+that made it. There would be hydroponic tanks in which plants would grow
+to purify its air and feed its crew. There would be telescopes with
+which men would be able to study the stars as they had never been able
+to do from the bottom of Earth's ocean of turbulent air. But it would
+serve Earth.
+
+There would be communicators. They would pick up microwave messages and
+retransmit them to destinations far around the curve of the planet, or
+else store them and retransmit them to the other side of the world an
+hour or two hours later.
+
+It would store fuel with which men could presently set out for the
+stars--and out to emptiness for nuclear experiments that must not be
+made on Earth. And finally it would be armed with squat, deadly atomic
+missiles that no nation could possibly defy. And so this Space Platform
+would keep peace on Earth.
+
+But it could not make good will among men.
+
+Sally walked on. They reached the mysterious objects being manufactured
+in a row around half the sidewall of the Shed. They were of simple
+design and, by comparison, not unduly large. The first objects were
+merely frameworks of metal pipe, which men were welding together
+unbreakably. They were no bigger than--say--half of a six-room house. A
+little way on, these were filled with intricate arrays of tanks and
+piping, and still farther--there was a truck and hoist unloading a
+massive object into place right now--there were huge engines fitting
+precisely into openings designed to hold them. Others were being plated
+in with metallic skins.
+
+At the very end of this assembly line a crane was loading a finished
+object onto a flat-bed trailer. As it swung in the air, Joe realized
+what it was. It might be called a jet plane, but it was not of any type
+ever before used. More than anything else, it looked like a beetle. It
+would not be really useful for anything but its function at the end of
+Operation Stepladder. Then hundreds of these ungainly objects would
+cluster upon the Platform's sides, like swarming bees. They would thrust
+savagely up with their separate jet engines. They would lift the
+Platform from the foundation on which it had been built. Tugging,
+straining, panting, they would get it out of the Shed. But their work
+would not end there. Holding it aloft, they would start it eastward,
+lifting effortfully. They would carry it as far and as high and as fast
+as their straining engines could work. Then there would be one last
+surge of fierce thrusting with oversize jato rockets, built separately
+into each pushpot, all firing at once.
+
+Finally the clumsy things would drop off and come bumbling back home,
+while the Platform's own rockets flared out their mile-long flames--and
+it headed up for emptiness.
+
+But the making of these pushpots and all the other multitudinous
+activities of the Shed would have no meaning if the contents of four
+crates in the wreckage of a burned-out plane could not be salvaged and
+put to use again.
+
+Joe said restlessly: "I want to see all this, Sally, and maybe anything
+else I do is useless, but I've got to find out what happened to the
+gyros I was bringing here!"
+
+Sally said nothing. She turned, and they moved across the long, long
+space of wood-block flooring toward the doorway by which they had
+entered. And now that he had seen the Space Platform, all of Joe's
+feeling of guilt and despondency came back. It seemed unbearable. They
+went out through the guarded door, Sally surrendered the pass, and Joe
+was again checked carefully before he was free to go.
+
+Then Sally said: "You don't want me tagging around, do you?"
+
+Joe said honestly: "It isn't exactly that, Sally, but if the stuff is
+really smashed, I'd--rather not have anybody see me. Please don't be
+angry, but--"
+
+Sally said quietly: "I know. I'll get somebody to drive you over."
+
+She vanished. She came back with the uniformed man who'd driven Major
+Holt. She put her hand momentarily on Joe's arm.
+
+"If it's really bad, Joe, tell me. You won't let yourself cry, but I'll
+cry for you." She searched his eyes. "Really, Joe!"
+
+He grinned feebly and went out to the car.
+
+The feeling on the way to the airfield was not a good one. It was
+twenty-odd miles from the Shed, but Joe dreaded what he was going to
+see. The black car burned up the road. It turned to the right off the
+white highway, onto the curved short cut--and there was the field.
+
+And there was the wreck of the transport plane, still where it had
+crashed and burned. There were still armed guards about it, but men were
+working on the wreck, cutting it apart with torches. Already some of it
+was dissected.
+
+Joe went to the remains of the four crates.
+
+The largest was bent askew by the force of the crash or an explosion,
+Joe didn't know which. The smallest was a twisted mass of charcoal. Joe
+gulped, and dug into them with borrowed tools.
+
+The pilot gyros of the Space Platform would apply the torque that would
+make the main gyros shift it to any desired position, or else hold it
+absolutely still. They were to act, in a sense, as a sort of steering
+engine on the take-off and keep a useful function out in space. If a
+star photograph was to be made, it was essential that the Platform hold
+absolutely still while the exposure lasted. If a guided missile was to
+be launched, it must be started right, and the pilot gyros were needed.
+To turn to receive an arriving rocket from Earth....
+
+The pilot gyros were the steering apparatus of the Space Platform. They
+had to be more than adequate. They had to be perfect! On the take-off
+alone, they were starkly necessary. The Platform couldn't hope to reach
+its orbit without them.
+
+Joe chipped away charred planks. He pulled off flame-eaten timbers. He
+peeled off carbonized wrappings--but some did not need to be peeled:
+they crumbled at a touch--and in twenty minutes he knew the whole story.
+The rotor motors were ruined. The couplers--pilot-to-main-gyro
+connections--had been heated red hot and were no longer hardened steel;
+their dimensions had changed and they would no longer fit. But these
+were not disastrous items. They were serious, but not tragic.
+
+The tragedy was the gyros themselves. On their absolute precision and
+utterly perfect balance the whole working of the Platform would depend.
+And the rotors were gashed in one place, and the shafts were bent. Being
+bent and nicked, the precision of the apparatus was destroyed. Its
+precision lost, the whole device was useless. And it had taken four
+months' work merely to get it perfectly balanced!
+
+It had been the most accurate piece of machine work ever done on Earth.
+It was balanced to a microgram--to a millionth of the combined weight of
+three aspirin tablets. It would revolve at 40,000 revolutions per
+minute. It had to balance perfectly or it would vibrate intolerably. If
+it vibrated at all it would shake itself to pieces, or, failing that,
+send aging sound waves through all the Platform's substance. If it
+vibrated by the least fraction of a ten-thousandth of an inch, it would
+wear, and vibrate more strongly, and destroy itself and possibly the
+Platform. It needed the precision of an astronomical telescope's
+lenses--multiplied! And it was bent. It was exactly as useless as if it
+had never been made at all.
+
+Joe felt as a man might feel if the mirror of the greatest telescope on
+earth, in his care, had been smashed. As if the most priceless picture
+in the world, in his charge, had been burned. But he felt worse. Whether
+it was his fault or not--and it wasn't--it was destroyed.
+
+A truck rolled up and was stopped by a guard. There was talk, and the
+guard let it through. A small crane lift came over from the hangars. Its
+normal use was the lifting of plane motors in and out of their nacelles.
+Now it was to pick up the useless pieces of equipment on which the best
+workmen and the best brains of the Kenmore Precision Tool Company had
+worked unceasingly for eight calendar months, and which now was junk.
+
+Joe watched, numbed by disaster, while the crane hook went down to
+position above the once-precious objects. Men shored up the heavy things
+and ran planks under them, and then deftly fitted rope slings for them
+to be lifted by. It was late afternoon by now. Long shadows were
+slanting as the crane truck's gears whined, and the slack took up, and
+the first of the four charred objects lifted and swung, spinning slowly,
+to the truck that had come from the Shed.
+
+Joe froze, watching. He watched the second. The third did not spin. It
+merely swayed. But the fourth.... The lines up to the crane hook were
+twisted. As the largest of the four crates lifted from its bed, it
+twisted the lines toward straightness. It spun. It spun more and more
+rapidly, and then more and more slowly, and stopped, and began to spin
+back.
+
+Then Joe caught his breath. It seemed that he hadn't breathed in
+minutes. The big crate wasn't balanced. It was spinning. It wasn't
+vibrating. It spun around its own center of gravity, unerringly revealed
+by its flexible suspension.
+
+He watched until it was dropped into the truck. Then he went stiffly
+over to the driver of the car that had brought him.
+
+"Everything's all right," he said, feeling a queer astonishment at his
+own words. "I'm going to ride back to the Shed with the stuff I brought.
+It's not hurt too much. I'll be able to fix it with a man or two I can
+pick up out here. But I don't want anything else to happen to it!"
+
+So he rode back out to the Shed on the tailboard of the truck that
+carried the crates. The sun set as he rode. He was smudged and
+disheveled. The reek of charred wood and burnt insulation and scorched
+wrappings was strong in his nostrils. But he felt very much inclined to
+sing.
+
+It occurred to Joe that he should have sent Sally a message that she
+didn't need to cry as a substitute for him. He felt swell! He knew how
+to do the job that would let the Space Platform take off! He'd tell her,
+first chance.
+
+It was very good to be alive.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+There was nobody in the world to whom the Space Platform was
+meaningless. To Joe and a great many people like him, it was a dream
+long and stubbornly held to and now doggedly being made a reality. To
+some it was the prospect of peace and the hope of a quiet life: children
+and grandchildren and a serene look forward to the future. Some people
+prayed yearningly for its success, though they could have no other share
+in its making. And of course there were those men who had gotten into
+power and could not stay there without ruthlessness. They knew what the
+Platform would mean to their kind. For, once world peace was certain,
+they would be killed by the people they ruled over. So they sent grubby,
+desperate men to wreck it at any cost. They were prepared to pay for or
+to commit any crime if the Space Platform could be smashed and turmoil
+kept as the norm of life on Earth.
+
+And there were the people who were actually doing the building.
+
+Joe rode a bus into Bootstrap that night with some of them. The middle
+shift--two to ten o'clock--was off. Fleets of busses rolled out from the
+small town twenty miles away, their headlights making a procession of
+paired flames in the darkness. They rolled into the unloading area and
+disgorged the late shift--ten to six--to be processed by security and
+admitted to the Shed. Then, quite empty, the busses went trundling
+around to where Joe waited with the released shift milling around him.
+
+The busses stopped and opened their doors. The waiting men stormed in,
+shoving zestfully, calling to each other, scrambling for seats or merely
+letting themselves be pushed on board. The bus Joe found himself on was
+jammed in seconds. He held on to a strap and didn't notice. He was
+absorbed in the rapt contemplation of his idea for the repair of the
+pilot gyros. The motors could be replaced easily enough. The foundation
+of his first despair had been the belief that everything could be
+managed but one thing; that the all-important absolute accuracy was the
+only thing that couldn't be achieved. Getting that accuracy, back at the
+plant, had consumed four months of time. Each of the gyros was four feet
+in diameter and weighed five hundred pounds. Each spun at 40,000 r.p.m.
+It had to be machined from a special steel to assure that it would not
+fly to pieces from sheer centrifugal force. Each was plated with iridium
+lest a speck of rust form and throw it off balance. If the shaft and
+bearings were not centered exactly at the center of gravity of the
+rotors--five hundred pounds of steel off balance at 40,000 r.p.m. could
+raise the devil. They could literally wreck the Platform itself. And
+"exactly at the center of gravity" meant exactly. There could be no
+error by which the shaft was off center by the thousandth of an inch, or
+a ten-thousandth, or even the tenth of a ten-thousandth. The accuracy
+had to be absolute.
+
+Gloating over the solution he'd found, Joe could have hugged himself.
+Hanging to a strap in the waiting bus, he saw another bus start off with
+a grinding of gears and a spouting of exhaust smoke. It trundled to the
+highway and rolled away. Another and another followed it. Joe's bus fell
+in line. They headed for Bootstrap in a convoy, a long, long string of
+lighted vehicles running one behind the other.
+
+It was dark outside. The Shed was alone, for security. It was twenty
+miles from the town where its work force slept and ate and made merry.
+That was security too. One shift came off, and went through a security
+check, and during that time the Shed was empty save for the security
+officers who roamed it endlessly, looking for trouble. Sometimes they
+found it. The shift coming on also passed through a security check.
+Nobody could get into the Shed without being identified past question.
+The picture-badge stage was long since passed on the Space Platform job.
+Security was tight!
+
+The long procession of busses rolled through the night. Outside was dark
+desert. Overhead were many stars. Inside the jammed bus were swaying
+figures crowded in the aisle, and every seat was filled. There was the
+smell of sweat, and oil, and tobacco. Somebody still had garlic on his
+breath from lunch. There was the noise of many voices. There was an
+argument two seats up the aisle. There was the rumble of the motor, and
+the peculiar whine of spinning tires. Men had to raise their voices to
+be heard above the din.
+
+A swaying among the crowded figures more pronounced than that caused by
+the motion of the bus caught Joe's eye. Somebody was crowding his way
+from the back toward the front. The aisle was narrow. Joe clung to his
+strap, thinking hard and happily about the rebalancing of the gyros.
+There could be no tolerance. It had to be exact. There had to be no
+vibration at all....
+
+Figures swayed away from him. A hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Hiya."
+
+He swung around. It was the lean man, Haney, whom he'd kept from being
+knocked off the level place two hundred feet up.
+
+Joe said: "Hello."
+
+"I thought you were big brass," said Haney, rumbling in his ear. "But
+big brass don't ride the busses."
+
+"I'm going in to try to hunt up the Chief," said Joe.
+
+Haney grunted. He looked estimatingly at Joe. His glance fell to Joe's
+hands. Joe had been digging further into the crates, and afterward he'd
+washed up, but packing grease is hard to get off. When mixed with soot
+and charcoal it leaves signs. Haney relaxed.
+
+"We mostly eat together," he observed, satisfied that Joe was regular
+because his hands weren't soft and because mechanic's soap had done an
+incomplete job on them. "The Chief's a good guy. Join us?"
+
+"Sure!" said Joe. "And thanks."
+
+A brittle voice sounded somewhere around Haney's knees. Joe looked down,
+startled. The midget he'd seen up on the Platform nodded up at him. He'd
+squirmed through the press in Haney's wake. He seemed to bristle a
+little out of pure habit. Joe made room for him.
+
+"I'm okay," said the midget pugnaciously.
+
+Haney made a formal introduction.
+
+"Mike Scandia." He thumbed at Joe. "Joe Kenmore. He's eating with us.
+Wants to find the Chief."
+
+There had been no reference to the risk Joe had run in keeping Haney
+from a two-hundred-foot fall. But now Haney said approvingly: "I wanted
+to say thanks anyhow for keeping your mouth shut. New here?"
+
+Joe nodded. The noise in the bus made any sort of talk difficult. Haney
+appeared used to it.
+
+"Saw you with--uh--Major Holt's daughter," he observed again. "That's
+why I thought you were brass. Figured one or the other'd tell on Braun.
+You didn't, or somebody'd've raised Cain. But I'll handle it."
+
+Braun would be the man Haney had been fighting. If Haney wanted to
+handle it his way, it was naturally none of Joe's business. He said
+nothing.
+
+"Braun's a good guy," said Haney. "Crazy, that's all. He picked that
+fight. Picked it! Up there! Coulda been him knocked off--and I'd ha'
+been in a mess! I'll see him tonight."
+
+The midget said something biting in his peculiarly cracked and brittle
+voice.
+
+The bus rolled and rolled and rolled. It was a long twenty miles to
+Bootstrap. The desert outside the bus windows was utterly black and
+featureless, but once a convoy of trucks passed, going to the Shed.
+
+Presently, though, lights twinkled in the night. Again the bus slowed,
+in column with the others. Then there were barrackslike buildings,
+succeeding each other, and then there was a corner and suddenly the
+outside was ablaze with light. The busses drew up to the curb and
+stopped, and everybody was immediately in a great hurry to get out,
+shoving unnecessarily, and Joe let himself be carried along by the
+crowd.
+
+He found himself on the sidewalk with bright neon signs up and down the
+street. He was in the midst of the crowd which was the middle shift
+released. It eddied and dispersed without seeming to lessen. Most of the
+figures in sight were men. There were very, very few women. The neon
+signs proclaimed that here one could buy beer, and that this was Fred's
+Place, and that was Sid's Steak Joint. Bowling. Pool. A store--still
+open for this shift's trade--sold fancy shirts and strictly practical
+work clothes and highly eccentric items of personal adornment. A movie
+house. A second. A third. Somewhere a record shop fed repetitious music
+to the night air. There was movement and crowding and jostling, but the
+middle of the street was almost empty save for the busses. There were
+some bicycles, but practically no other wheeled traffic. After all,
+Bootstrap was strictly a security town. A man could leave whenever he
+chose, but there were formalities, and personal cars weren't practical.
+
+"Chief'll be yonder," said Haney in Joe's ear. "Come along."
+
+They shouldered their way along the sidewalk. The passers-by were of a
+type--construction men. Somebody here had taken part in the building of
+every skyscraper and bridge and dam put up in Joe's lifetime. They could
+have been kept away from the Space Platform job only by a flat refusal
+by security to let them be hired.
+
+Haney and Joe moved toward Sid's Steak Joint, with Mike the midget
+marching truculently between them. Men nodded to them as they passed.
+Joe marshaled in his mind what he was going to tell the Chief. He had a
+trick for fixing the pilot gyros. A speck of rust would spoil them, and
+they had been through a plane crash and a fire and explosions, but his
+trick would do, in ten days or less, what the plant back home had needed
+four months to accomplish. The trick was something to gloat over.
+
+Into Sid's Steak Joint. A juke box was playing. Over in a booth, four
+men ate hungrily, with a slot TV machine in the wall beside them showing
+wrestling matches out in San Francisco. A waiter carried a huge tray
+from which steam and fragrant odors arose.
+
+There was the Chief, dark and saturnine to look at, with his straight
+black hair gleaming in the light. He was a Mohawk, and he and his tribe
+had taken to steel construction work a long time back. They were good.
+There were not many big construction jobs on which the Chief's tribesmen
+were not to be found working. Forty of them had died together in the
+worst construction accident in history, when a bridge on its way to
+completion collapsed in the making, but there were a dozen or more at
+work on the Space Platform now. The Chief had essayed machine-tool work
+at the Kenmore plant, and he'd been good. He'd pitched on the plant
+baseball team, and he'd sung bass in the church choir, but there had
+been nobody else around who talked Indian, and he'd gotten lonely. At
+that, though, he'd left because the Space Platform began and wild horses
+couldn't have kept him away from a job like that!
+
+He'd held a table for Haney and Mike, but his eyes widened when he saw
+Joe. Then he grinned and almost upset the table to stand up and greet
+him.
+
+"Son-of-a-gun!" he said warmly. "What you doin' here?"
+
+"Right now," said Joe. "I'm looking for you. I've got a job for you."
+
+The Chief, still grinning, shook his head.
+
+"Not me, I'm here till the Platform's done."
+
+"It's on the job," said Joe. "I've got to get a crew together to repair
+something I brought out here today and that got smashed in the landing."
+
+The four of them sat down. Mike's chin was barely above the table top.
+The Chief waved to a waiter. "Steaks all around!" he bellowed. Then he
+bent toward Joe. "Shoot it!"
+
+Joe told his story. Concisely. The pilot gyros, which had to be perfect,
+had been especially gunned at by saboteurs. An attack with possibly
+stolen proximity-fused rockets. The plane was booby-trapped, and
+somebody at an airfield had had a chance to spring the trap. So it was
+wreckage. Crashed and burned on landing.
+
+The Chief growled. Haney pressed his lips together. The eyes of Mike
+were burning.
+
+"Plenty of that sabotage stuff," growled the Chief. "Hard to catch the
+so-and-sos. Smash the gyros and the take-off'd have to wait till new
+ones got made--and that's more time for more sabotage."
+
+Joe said carefully: "I think it can be licked. Listen a minute, will
+you?"
+
+The Chief fixed his eyes upon him.
+
+"The gyros have to be rebalanced," said Joe. "They have to spin on their
+own center of gravity. At the plant, they set them up, spun them, and
+found which side was heavy. They took metal off till it ran smoothly at
+five hundred r.p.m. Then they spun it at a thousand. It vibrated. They
+found imbalance that was too small to show up before. They fixed that.
+They speeded it up. And so on. They tried to make the center of gravity
+the center of the shaft by trimming off the weight that put the center
+of gravity somewhere else. Right?"
+
+The Chief said irritably: "No other way to do it! No other way!"
+
+"I saw one," said Joe. "When they cleaned up the wreck at the airfield,
+they heaved up the crates with a crane. The slings were twisted. Every
+crate spun as it rose. But not one wobbled! They found their own centers
+of gravity and spun around them!"
+
+The Chief scowled, deep in thought. Then his face went blank.
+
+"By the holy mud turtle!" he grunted. "I get it!"
+
+Joe said, with very great pains not to seem triumphant, "Instead of
+spinning the shaft and trimming the rotor, we'll spin the rotor and trim
+the shaft. We'll form the shaft around the center of gravity, instead of
+trying to move the center of gravity to the middle of the shaft. We'll
+spin the rotors on a flexible bearing base. I think it'll work."
+
+Surprisingly, it was Mike the midget who said warmly, "You got it! Yes,
+sir, you got it!"
+
+The Chief took a deep breath. "Yeah! And d'you know how I know? The
+Plant built a high-speed centrifuge once. Remember?" He grinned with the
+triumph Joe concealed. "It was just a plate with a shaft in the middle.
+There were vanes on the plate. It fitted in a shaft hole that was much
+too big. They blew compressed air up the shaft hole. It floated the
+plate up, the air hit the vanes and spun the plate--and it ran as sweet
+as honey! Balanced itself and didn't wobble a bit! We'll do something
+like that! Sure!"
+
+"Will you work on it with me?" asked Joe. "We'll need a sort of
+crew--three or four altogether. Have to figure out the stuff we need. I
+can ask for anybody I want. I'm asking for you. You pick the others."
+
+The Chief grinned broadly. "Any objections, Haney? You and Mike and me
+and Joe here? Look!"
+
+He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. He started to draw on the plastic
+table top, and then took a paper napkin instead.
+
+"Something like this----"
+
+The steaks came, sizzling on the platters they'd been cooked in. The
+outside was seared, and the inside was hot and deliciously rare.
+Intellectual exercises like the designing of a machine-tool operation
+could not compete with such aromas and sights and sounds. The four of
+them fell to.
+
+But they talked as they ate. Absorbed and often with their mouths full,
+frequently with imperfect articulation, but with deepening satisfaction
+as the steaks vanished and the method they'd use took form in their
+minds. It wouldn't be wholly simple, of course. When the rotors were
+spinning about their centers of gravity, trimming off the shaft would
+change the center of gravity. But the change would be infinitely less
+than trimming off the rotors' rims. If they spun the rotors and used an
+abrasive on the high side of the shaft as it turned....
+
+"Going to have precession!" warned Mike. "Have to have a polishing
+surface. Quarter turn behind the cutter. That'll hold it."
+
+Joe only remembered afterward to be astonished that Mike would know gyro
+theory. At the moment he merely swallowed quickly to get the words out.
+
+"Right! And if we cut too far down we can plate the bearing up to
+thickness and cut it down again----"
+
+"Plate it up with iridium," said the Chief. He waved a steak knife.
+"Man! This is gonna be fun! No tolerance you say, Joe?"
+
+"No tolerance," agreed Joe. "Accurate within the limits of measurement."
+
+The Chief beamed. The Platform was a challenge to all of humanity. The
+pilot gyro was essential to the functioning of the Platform. To provide
+that necessity against impossible obstacles was a challenge to the four
+who were undertaking it.
+
+"Some fun!" repeated the Chief, blissfully.
+
+They ate their steaks, talking. They consumed huge slabs of apple pie
+with preposterous mounds of ice cream on top, still talking urgently.
+They drank coffee, interrupting each other to draw diagrams. They used
+up all the paper napkins, and were still at it when someone came heavily
+toward the table. It was the stocky man who had fought with Haney on the
+Platform that day. Braun.
+
+He tapped Haney on the shoulder. The four at the table looked up.
+
+"We hadda fight today," said Braun in a queer voice. He was oddly pale.
+"We didn't finish. You wanna finish?"
+
+Haney growled.
+
+"That was a fool business," he said angrily. "That ain't any place to
+fight, up on the job! You know it!"
+
+"Yeah," said Braun in the same odd voice. "You wanna finish it now?"
+
+Haney said formidably: "I'm not dodgin' any fight. I didn't dodge it
+then. I'm not dodgin' it now. You picked it. It was crazy! But if you
+got over the craziness----"
+
+Braun smiled a remarkably peculiar smile. "I'm still crazy. We finish,
+huh?"
+
+Haney pushed back his chair and stood up grimly. "Okay, we finish it!
+You coulda killed me. I coulda killed you too, with that fall ready for
+either of us."
+
+"Sure! Too bad nobody got killed," said Braun.
+
+"You fellas wait," said Haney angrily to Joe and the rest. "There's a
+storeroom out back. Sid'll let us use it."
+
+But the Chief pushed back his chair.
+
+"Uh-uh," he said, shaking his head. "We're watchin' this."
+
+Haney spoke with elaborate courtesy: "You mind, Braun? Want to get some
+friends of yours, too?"
+
+"I got no friends," said Braun. "Let's go."
+
+The Chief went authoritatively to the owner of Sid's Steak Joint. He
+paid the bill, talking. The owner of the place negligently jerked his
+thumb toward the rear. This was not an unparalleled request--for the use
+of a storeroom so that two men could batter each other undisturbed.
+Bootstrap was a law-abiding town, because to get fired from work on the
+Platform was to lose a place in the most important job in history. So it
+was inevitable that the settlement of quarrels in private should become
+commonplace.
+
+The Chief leading, they filed through the kitchen and out of doors. The
+storeroom lay beyond. The Chief went in and switched on the light. He
+looked about and was satisfied. It was almost empty, save for stacked
+cartons in one corner. Braun was already taking off his coat.
+
+"You want rounds and stuff?" demanded the Chief.
+
+"I want fight," said Braun thickly.
+
+"Okay, then," snapped the Chief. "No kickin' or gougin'. A man's down,
+he has a chance to get up. That's all the rules. Right?"
+
+Haney, stripping off his coat in turn, grunted an assent. He handed his
+coat to Joe. He faced his antagonist.
+
+It was a curious atmosphere for a fight. There were merely the plank
+walls of the storeroom with a single dangling light in the middle and an
+unswept floor beneath. The Chief stood in the doorway, scowling. This
+didn't feel right. There was not enough hatred in evidence to justify
+it. There was doggedness and resolution enough, but Braun was deathly
+white and if his face was contorted--and it was--it was not with the
+lust to batter and injure and maim. It was something else.
+
+The two men faced each other. And then the stocky, swarthy Braun swung
+at Haney. The blow had sting in it but nothing more. It almost looked as
+if Braun were trying to work himself up to the fight he'd insisted on
+finishing. Haney countered with a roundhouse blow that glanced off
+Braun's cheek. And then they bore in at each other, slugging without
+science or skill.
+
+Joe watched. Braun launched a blow that hurt, but Haney sent him reeling
+back. He came in doggedly again, and swung and swung, but he had no idea
+of boxing. His only idea was to slug. He did slug. Haney had been
+peevish rather than angry. Now he began to glower. He began to take the
+fight to Braun.
+
+He knocked Braun down. Braun staggered up and rushed. A wildly flailing
+fist landed on Haney's ear. He doubled Braun up with a wallop to the
+midsection. Braun came back, fists swinging.
+
+Haney closed one eye for him. He came back. Haney shook him from head to
+foot with a chest blow. He came back. Haney split his lip and loosened a
+tooth. He came back.
+
+The Chief said sourly: "This ain't a fight. Quit it, Haney! He don't
+know how!"
+
+Haney tried to draw away, but Braun swarmed on him, striking fiercely
+until Haney had to floor him again. He dragged himself up and rushed at
+Haney--and was knocked down again. Haney stood over him, panting
+furiously.
+
+"Quit it, y'fool! What's the matter with you?"
+
+Braun started to get up again. The Chief interfered and held him, while
+Haney glared.
+
+"He ain't going to fight any more, Braun," pronounced the Chief firmly.
+"You ain't got a chance. This fight's over. You had enough."
+
+Braun was bloody and horribly battered, but he panted: "He's got
+enough?"
+
+"Are you out o' your head?" demanded the Chief. "He ain't got a mark on
+him!"
+
+"I ain't--got enough," panted Braun, "till he's got--enough!"
+
+His breath was coming in soblike gasps, the result of body blows. It
+hadn't been a fight but a beating, administered by Haney. But Braun
+struggled to get up.
+
+Mike the midget said brittlely: "You got enough, Haney. You're
+satisfied. Tell him so."
+
+"Sure I'm satisfied," snorted Haney. "I don't want to hit him any more.
+I got enough of that!"
+
+Braun panted: "Okay! Okay!"
+
+The Chief let him get to his feet. He went groggily to his coat. He
+tried to put himself into it. Mike caught Joe's eye and nodded
+meaningfully. Joe helped Braun into the coat. There was silence, save
+for Braun's heavy, labored breathing.
+
+He moved unsteadily toward the door. Then he stopped.
+
+"Haney," he said effortfully, "I don't say I'm sorry for fighting you
+today. I fight first. But now I say I am sorry. You are good guy, Haney.
+I was crazy. I--got reason."
+
+He stumbled out of the door and was gone. The four who were left behind
+stared at each other.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" demanded Haney blankly.
+
+"He's nuts," said the Chief. "If he was gonna apologize----"
+
+Mike shook his head.
+
+"He wouldn't apologize," he said brittlely, "because he thought you
+might think he was scared. But when he'd proved he wasn't scared of a
+beating--then he could say he was sorry." He paused. "I've seen guys I
+liked a lot less than him."
+
+Haney put on his coat, frowning.
+
+"I don't get it," he rumbled. "Next time I see him----"
+
+"You won't," snapped Mike. "None of us will. I'll bet on it."
+
+But he was wrong. The others went out of the storeroom and back into
+Sid's Steak Joint, and the Chief politely thanked the proprietor for the
+loan of his storeroom for a private fight. Then they went out into the
+neon-lighted business street of Bootstrap.
+
+"What do we do now?" asked Joe.
+
+"Where you sleeping?" asked the Chief hospitably. "I can get you a room
+at my place."
+
+"I'm staying out at the Shed," Joe told him awkwardly. "My family's
+known Major Holt a long time. I'm staying at his house behind the Shed."
+
+Haney raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
+
+"Better get out there then," said the Chief. "It's midnight, and they
+might want to lock up. There's your bus."
+
+A lighted bus was waiting by the curb. Its doors were open, but it was
+empty of passengers. Single busses ran out to the Shed now and then, but
+they ran in fleets at shift-change time. Joe went over and climbed
+aboard the bus.
+
+"We'll turn up early," said the Chief. "This won't be a shift job. We'll
+look things over and lay out what we want and then get to work, eh?"
+
+"Right," said Joe. "And thanks."
+
+"We'll be there with our hair in braids," said Mike, in his cracked
+voice. "Now a glass of beer and so to bed. 'Night."
+
+Haney waved his hand. The three of them marched off, the two huge
+figures of Haney and the Chief, with Mike trotting truculently between
+them, hardly taller than their knees. They were curiously colorful with
+all the many-tinted neon signs upon them. They turned into a diner.
+
+Joe sat in the bus, alone. The driver was off somewhere. The sounds of
+Bootstrap were distinctive by night. Footsteps, and the jangling of
+bicycle bells, and voices, and a radio blaring somewhere and a
+record-shop loud-speaker somewhere else, and a sort of underriding noise
+of festivity.
+
+There was a sharp rap on the glass by Joe's window. He started and
+looked out. Braun--battered, and bleeding from the corner of his
+mouth--motioned urgently for him to come to the door of the bus. Joe
+went.
+
+Braun stared up at him in a new fashion. Now he was neither dogged nor
+fierce nor desperate to look at. Despite the beating he'd taken, he
+seemed completely and somehow frighteningly tranquil. He looked like
+somebody who has come to the end of torment and is past any feeling but
+that of relief from suffering.
+
+"You--" said Braun. "That girl you were with today. Her pop is Major
+Holt, eh?"
+
+Joe frowned, and reservedly said that he was.
+
+"You tell her pop," said Braun detachedly, "this is hot tip. Hot tip.
+Look two kilometers north of Shed tomorrow. He find something bad. Hot!
+You tell him. Two kilometers."
+
+"Y-yes," said Joe, his frown increasing. "But look here----"
+
+"Be sure say hot," repeated Braun.
+
+Rather incredibly, he smiled. Then he turned and walked quickly away.
+
+Joe went back to his seat in the empty bus, and sat there and waited for
+it to start, and tried to figure out what the message meant. Since it
+was for Major Holt, it had something to do with security. And security
+meant defense against sabotage. And "hot" might mean merely
+_significant_, or--in these days--it might mean _something else_. In
+fact, it might mean something to make your hair stand on end when
+thought of in connection with the Space Platform.
+
+Joe waited for the bus to take off. He became convinced that Braun's use
+of the word "hot" did not mean merely "significant." The other meaning
+was what he had in mind.
+
+Joe's teeth tried to chatter.
+
+He didn't let them.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+Major Holt wasn't to be found when Joe got out to the Shed. And he
+wasn't in the house in the officers'-quarters area behind it. There was
+only the housekeeper, who yawned pointedly as she let Joe in. Sally was
+presumably long since asleep. And Joe didn't know any way to get hold of
+the Major. He assured himself that Braun was a good guy--if he weren't
+he wouldn't have insisted on taking a licking before he apologized--and
+he hadn't said there was any hurry. Tomorrow, he'd said. So Joe uneasily
+let himself be led to a room with a cot, and he was asleep in what
+seemed seconds. But just the same he was badly worried.
+
+In fact, next morning Joe woke at a practically unearthly hour with
+Braun's message pounding on his brain. He was downstairs waiting when
+the housekeeper appeared. She looked startled.
+
+"Major Holt?" he asked.
+
+But the Major was gone. He must have done with no more than three or
+four hours' sleep. There was an empty coffee cup whose contents he'd
+gulped down before going back to the security office.
+
+Joe trudged to the barbed-wire enclosure around the officers'-quarters
+area and explained to the sentry where he wanted to go. A sleepy driver
+whisked him around the half-mile circle to the security building and he
+found his way to Major Holt's office.
+
+The plain and gloomy secretary was already on the job, too. She led him
+in to face Major Holt. He blinked at the sight of Joe.
+
+"Hm.... I have some news," he observed. "We back-tracked the parcel that
+exploded when it was dumped from the plane."
+
+Joe had almost forgotten it. Too many other things had happened since.
+
+"We've got two very likely prisoners out of that affair," said the
+Major. "They may talk. Also, an emergency inspection of other transport
+planes has turned up three other grenades tucked away in front-wheel
+wells. Ah--CO_2 bottles have turned out to have something explosive in
+them. A very nice bit of work, that! The sandy-haired man who fueled
+your plane--ah--disappeared. That is bad!"
+
+Joe said politely: "That's fine, sir."
+
+"All in all, you've been the occasion of our forestalling a good deal of
+sabotage," said the Major. "Bad for you, of course.... Did you find the
+men you were looking for?"
+
+"I've found them, but--."
+
+"I'll have them transferred to work under your direction," said the
+Major briskly. "Their names?"
+
+Joe gave the names. The Major wrote them down.
+
+"Very good. I'm busy now----"
+
+"I've a tip for you," said Joe. "I think it should be checked right
+away. I don't feel too good about it."
+
+The Major waited impatiently. And Joe explained, very carefully, about
+the fight on the Platform the day before, Braun's insistence on
+finishing the fight in Bootstrap, and then the tip he'd given Joe after
+everything was over. He repeated the message exactly, word for word.
+
+The Major, to do him justice, did not interrupt. He listened with an
+expression that varied between grimness and weariness. When Joe ended he
+picked up a telephone. He talked briefly. Joe felt a reluctant sort of
+approval. Major Holt was not a man one could ever feel very close to,
+and the work he was in charge of was not likely to make him popular, but
+he did think straight--and fast. He didn't think "hot" meant
+"significant," either. When he'd hung up the phone he said curtly: "When
+will your work crew get here?"
+
+"Early--but not yet," said Joe. "Not for some time yet."
+
+"Go with the pilot," said the Major. "You'd recognize what Braun meant
+as soon as anybody. See what you see."
+
+Joe stood up.
+
+"You--think the tip is straight?"
+
+"This isn't the first time," said Major Holt detachedly, "that a man has
+been blackmailed into trying sabotage. If he's got a family somewhere
+abroad, and they're threatened with death or torture unless he does
+such-and-such here, he's in a bad fix. It's happened. Of course he can't
+tell me! He's watched. But he sometimes finds an out."
+
+Joe was puzzled. His face showed it.
+
+"He can try to do the sabotage," said the Major precisely, "or he can
+arrange to be caught trying to do it. If he's caught--he tried; and the
+blackmail threat is no threat at all so long as he keeps his mouth shut.
+Which he does. And--ah--you would be surprised how often a man who
+wasn't born in the United States would rather go to prison for sabotage
+than commit it--here."
+
+Joe blinked.
+
+"If your friend Braun is caught," said the Major, "he will be punished.
+Severely. Officially. But privately, someone will--ah--mention this tip
+and say 'thanks.' And he'll be told that he will be released from prison
+just as soon as he thinks it's safe. And he will be. That's all."
+
+He turned to his papers. Joe went out. On the way to meet the pilot
+who'd check on his tip, he thought things over. He began to feel a sort
+of formless but very definite pride. He wasn't quite sure what he was
+proud of, but it had something to do with being part of a country toward
+which men of wholly different upbringing could feel deep loyalty. If a
+man who was threatened unless he turned traitor, a man who might not
+even be a citizen, arranged to be caught and punished for an apparent
+crime against a country rather than commit it--that wasn't bad. There
+can be a lot of things wrong with a nation, but if somebody from another
+one entirely can come to feel that kind of loyalty toward it--well--it's
+not too bad a country to belong to.
+
+Joe had a security guard with him this time, instead of Sally, as he
+went across the vast, arc-lit interior of the Shed and past the
+shimmering growing monster that was the Platform. He went all the way to
+the great swinging doors that let in materials trucks. And there were
+guards there, and they checked each driver very carefully before they
+admitted his truck. But somehow it wasn't irritating. It wasn't scornful
+suspicion. There'd be snide and snappy characters in the Security force,
+of course, swaggering and throwing their weight about. But even they
+were guarding something that men--some men--were willing to throw away
+their lives for.
+
+Joe and his guard reached one of the huge entrances as a ten-wheeler
+truck came in with a load of shining metal plates. Joe's escort went
+through the opening with him and they waited outside. The sun had barely
+risen. It looked huge but very far away, and Joe suddenly realized why
+just this spot had been chosen for the building of the Platform.
+
+The ground was flat. All the way to the eastern horizon there wasn't
+even a minor hillock rising above the plain. It was bare, arid,
+sun-scorched desert. It was featureless save for sage and mesquite and
+tall thin stalks of yucca. But it was flat. It could be a runway. It was
+a perfect place for the Platform to start from. The Platform shouldn't
+touch ground at all, after it was out of the Shed, but at least it
+wouldn't run into any obstacles on its way toward the horizon.
+
+A light plane came careening around the great curved outer surface of
+the Shed. It landed and taxied up to the door. It swung smartly around
+and its side door opened. A bandaged hand waved at Joe. He climbed in.
+The pilot of this light, flimsy plane was the co-pilot of the transport
+of yesterday. He was the man Joe had helped to dump cargo.
+
+Joe climbed in and settled himself. The small motor pop-popped
+valiantly, the plane rushed forward over hard-packed desert earth, and
+went swaying up into the air.
+
+The co-pilot--pilot now--shouted cheerfully above the din: "Hiya. You
+couldn't sleep either? Burns hurt?"
+
+Joe shook his head.
+
+"Bothered," he shouted in reply. Then he added, "Do I do something to
+help, or am I along just for the ride?"
+
+"First we take a look," the pilot called over the motor racket. "Two
+kilometers due north of the Shed, eh?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"We'll see what's there," the pilot told him.
+
+The small plane went up and up. At five hundred feet--nearly level with
+the roof of the Shed--it swung away and began to make seemingly erratic
+dartings out over the spotty desert land, and then back. Actually, it
+was a search pattern. Joe looked down from his side of the small
+cockpit. This was a very small plane indeed, and in consequence its
+motor made much more noise inside its cabin than much more powerful
+engines in bigger ships.
+
+"Those burns I got," shouted the pilot, staring down, "kept me awake. So
+I got up and was just walking around when the call came for somebody to
+drive one of these things. I took over."
+
+Back and forth, and back and forth. From five hundred feet in the early
+morning the desert had a curious appearance. The plane was low enough
+for each smallest natural feature to be visible, and it was early enough
+for every shrub or hummock to cast a long, slender shadow. The ground
+looked streaked, but all the streaks ran the same way, and all were
+shadows.
+
+Joe shouted: "What's that?"
+
+The plane banked at a steep angle and ran back. It banked again. The
+pilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a button. There
+was a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw a
+puff of smoke in the air.
+
+The pilot shouted: "It's a man. He looks dead."
+
+He swung directly over the small prone object and there was a second
+puff of smoke.
+
+"They've got range finders on us from the Shed," he called across the
+two-foot space separating him from Joe. "This marks the spot. Now we'll
+see if there's anything to the hot part of that tip."
+
+He reached over behind his seat and brought out a stubby pole like a
+fishpole with a very large reel. There was also a headset, and something
+very much like a large aluminum fish on the end of the line.
+
+"You know Geiger counters?" called the pilot. "Stick on these headphones
+and listen!"
+
+Joe slipped on the headset. The pilot threw a switch and Joe heard
+clickings. They had no pattern and no fixed frequency. They were
+clickings at strictly random intervals, but there was an average
+frequency, at that.
+
+"Let the counter out the window," called the pilot, "and listen. Tell me
+if the noise goes up."
+
+Joe obeyed. The aluminum fish dangled. The line slanted astern from the
+wind. It made a curve between the pole and the aluminum plummet, which
+was hollow in the direction of the plane's motion. The pilot squinted
+down and began to swing in a wide circle around the spot where an
+apparently dead man had been sighted, and above which puffs of smoke now
+floated.
+
+Three-quarters of the way around, the random clickings suddenly became a
+roar.
+
+Joe said: "Hey!"
+
+The pilot swung the plane about and flew back. He pointed to the button
+he'd pushed.
+
+"Poke that when you hear it again."
+
+The clickings.... They roared. Joe pushed the button. He felt the tiny
+impact.
+
+"Once more," said the pilot.
+
+He swung in nearer where the dead man lay. Joe had a sickening idea of
+who the dead man might be. A sudden rush of noise in the headphones and
+he pushed the button again.
+
+"Reel in now!" shouted the pilot. "Our job's done."
+
+Joe reeled in as the plane winged steadily back toward the Shed. There
+were puffs of smoke floating in the air behind. They had been ranged on
+at the instant they appeared. Somebody back at the Shed knew that
+something that needed to be investigated was at a certain spot, and the
+two later puffs of smoke had said that radioactivity was notable in the
+air along the line the two puffs made. Not much more information would
+be needed. The meaning of Braun's warning that his tip was "hot" was
+definite. It was "hot" in the sense that it dealt with radioactivity!
+
+The plane dipped down and landed by the great doors again. It taxied up
+and the pilot killed the motor.
+
+"We've been using Geigers for months," he said pleasedly, "and never got
+a sign before. This is one time we were set for something."
+
+"What?" asked Joe. But he knew.
+
+"Atomic dust is one good guess," the pilot told him. "It was talked of
+as a possible weapon away back in the Smyth Report. Nobody's ever tried
+it. We thought it might be tried against the Platform. If somebody
+managed to spread some really hot radioactive dust around the Shed, all
+three shifts might get fatally burned before it was noticed. _They'd_
+think so, anyhow! But the guy who was supposed to dump it opened up the
+can for a look. And it killed him."
+
+He climbed out of the plane and went to the doorway. He took a telephone
+from a guard and talked crisply into it. He hung up.
+
+"Somebody coming for you," he said amiably. "Wait here. Be seeing you."
+
+He went out, the motor kicked over and caught, and the tiny plane raced
+away. Seconds later it was aloft and winging southward.
+
+Joe waited. Presently a door opened and something came clanking out. It
+was a tractor with surprisingly heavy armor. There were men in it, also
+wearing armor of a peculiar sort, which they were still adjusting. The
+tractor towed a half-track platform on which there were a crane and a
+very considerable lead-coated bin with a top. It went briskly off into
+the distance toward the north.
+
+Joe was amazed, but comprehending. The vehicle and the men were armored
+against radioactivity. They would approach the dead man from upwind, and
+they would scoop up his body and put it in the lead-lined bin, and with
+it all deadly radioactive material near him. This was the equipment that
+must have been used to handle the dud atom bomb some months back. It had
+been ready for that. It was ready for this emergency. Somebody had tried
+to think of every imaginable situation that could arise in connection
+with the Platform.
+
+But in a moment a guard came for Joe and took him to where the Chief and
+Haney and Mike waited by the still incompletely-pulled-away crates. They
+had some new ideas about the job on hand that were better than the
+original ones in some details. All four of them set to work to make a
+careful survey of damage--of parts that would have to be replaced and of
+those that needed to be repaired. The discoveries they made would have
+appalled Joe earlier. Now he merely made notes of parts necessary to be
+replaced by new ones that could be had within the repair time for
+rebalancing the rotors.
+
+"This is sure a mess," said Haney mournfully, as they worked. "It's two
+days just getting things cleaned up!"
+
+The Chief eyed the rotors. There were two of them, great four-foot disks
+with extraordinary short and stubby shafts that were brought to
+beautifully polished conical ends to fit in the bearings. The bearings
+were hollowed to fit the shaft ends, but they were intricately scored to
+form oil channels. In operation, a very special silicone oil would be
+pumped into the bearings under high pressure. Distributed by the
+channels, the oil would form a film that by its pressure would hold the
+cone end of the bearing away from actual contact with the metal. The
+rotors, in fact, would be floated in oil just as the high-speed
+centrifuge the Chief had mentioned had floated on compressed air. But
+they had to be perfectly balanced, because any imbalance would make the
+shaft pierce the oil film and touch the metal of the bearing--and when a
+shaft is turning at 40,000 r.p.m. it is not good for it to touch
+anything. Shaft and bearing would burn white-hot in fractions of a
+second and there would be several devils to pay.
+
+"We've got to spin it in a lathe," said the Chief profoundly, "to hold
+the chucks. The chucks have got to be these same bearings, because
+nothing else will stand the speed. And we got to cut out the bed plate
+of any lathe we find. Hm. We got to do our spinning with the shaft lined
+up with the earth's axis, too."
+
+Mike nodded wisely, and Joe knew he'd pointed that out. It was true
+enough. A high-speed gyro could only be run for minutes in one single
+direction if its mount were fixed. If a precisely mounted gyro had its
+shaft pointed at the sun, for example, while it ran, its axis would try
+to follow the sun. It would try not to turn with the earth, and it would
+wreck itself. They had to use the cone bearings, but in order to protect
+the fine channellings for oil they'd have to use cone-shaped shims at
+the beginning while running at low speed. The cone ends of the shaft
+would need new machining to line them up. The bearings had to be fixed,
+yet flexible. The----
+
+They had used many paper napkins the night before, merely envisioning
+these details. New problems turned up as the apparatus itself was being
+uncovered and cleaned.
+
+They worked for hours, clearing away soot and charred material. Joe's
+list of small parts to be replaced from the home plant was as long as
+his arm. The motors, of course, had to be scrapped and new ones
+substituted. Considering their speed--the field strength at operating
+rate was almost imperceptible--they had to be built new, which would
+mean round-the-clock work at Kenmore.
+
+A messenger came for Joe. The security office wanted him. Major Holt's
+gloomy secretary did not even glance up as he entered. Major Holt
+himself looked tired.
+
+"There was a man out there," he said curtly. "I think it is your friend
+Braun. I'll get you to look and identify."
+
+Joe had suspected as much. He waited.
+
+"He'd opened a container of cobalt powder. It was in a beryllium case.
+There was half a pound of it. It killed him."
+
+"Radioactive cobalt," said Joe.
+
+"Definitely," said the Major grimly. "Half a pound of it gives off the
+radiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium. One can guess that he
+had been instructed to get up as high as he could in the Shed and dump
+the powder into the air. It would diffuse--scatter as it sifted down. It
+would have contaminated the whole Shed past all use for years--let alone
+killing everybody in it."
+
+Joe swallowed.
+
+"He was burned, then."
+
+"He had the equivalent of two hundred and fifty pounds of radium within
+inches of his body," the Major said unbendingly, "and naturally it was
+not healthy. For that matter, the container itself was not adequate
+protection for him. Once he'd carried it in his pocket for a very few
+minutes, he was a dead man, even though he was not conscious of the
+fact."
+
+Joe knew what was wanted of him.
+
+"You want me to look at him," he said.
+
+The Major nodded.
+
+"Yes. Afterward, get a radiation check on yourself. It is hardly likely
+that he was--ah--carrying the stuff with him last night, in Bootstrap.
+But if he was--ah--you may need some precautionary treatment--you and
+the men who were with you."
+
+Joe realized what that meant. Braun had been given a relatively small
+container of the deadliest available radioactive material on Earth.
+Milligrams of it, shipped from Oak Ridge for scientific use, were
+encased in thick lead chests. He'd carried two hundred and fifty grams
+in a container he could put in his pocket. He was not only dead as he
+walked, under such circumstances. He was also death to those who walked
+near him.
+
+"Somebody else may have been burned in any case," said the Major
+detachedly. "I am going to issue a radioactivity alarm and check every
+man in Bootstrap for burns. It is--ah--very likely that the man who
+delivered it to this man is burned, too. But you will not mention this,
+of course."
+
+He waved his hand in dismissal. Joe turned to go. The Major added
+grimly: "By the way, there is no doubt about the booby-trapping of
+planes. We've found eight, so far, ready to be crashed when a string was
+pulled while they were serviced. But the men who did the booby-trapping
+have vanished. They disappeared suddenly during last night. They were
+warned! Have you talked to anybody?"
+
+"No sir," said Joe.
+
+"I would like to know," said the Major coldly, "how they knew we'd found
+out their trick!"
+
+Joe went out. He felt very cold at the pit of his stomach. He was to
+identify Braun. Then he was to get a radiation check on himself. In that
+order of events. He was to identify Braun first, because if Braun had
+carried a half-pound of radioactive cobalt on him in Sid's Steak Joint
+the night before, Joe was going to die. And so were Haney and the Chief
+and Mike, and anybody else who'd passed near him. So Joe was to do the
+identification before he was disturbed by the information that he was
+dead.
+
+He made the identification. Braun was very decently laid out in a
+lead-lined box, with a lead-glass window over his face. There was no
+sign of any injury on him except from his fight with Haney. The
+radiation burns were deep, but they'd left no marks of their own. He'd
+died before outer symptoms could occur.
+
+Joe signed the identification certificate. He went to be checked for his
+own chances of life. It was a peculiar sensation. The most peculiar was
+that he wasn't afraid. He was neither confident that he was not burned
+inside, nor sure that he was. He simply was not afraid. Nobody really
+ever believes that he is going to die--in the sense of ceasing to exist.
+The most arrant coward, stood before a wall to be shot, or strapped in
+an electric chair, finds that astoundingly he does not believe that what
+happens to his body is going to kill him, the individual. That is why a
+great many people die with reasonable dignity. They know it is not worth
+making too much of a fuss over.
+
+But when the Geiger counters had gone over him from head to foot, and
+his body temperature was normal, and his reflexes sound--when he was
+assured that he had not been exposed to dangerous radiation--Joe felt
+distinctly weak in the knees. And that was natural, too.
+
+He went trudging back to the wrecked gyros. His friends were gone,
+leaving a scrawled memo for him. They had gone to pick out the machine
+tools for the work at hand.
+
+He continued to check over the wreckage, thinking with a detached
+compassion of that poor devil Braun who was the victim of men who hated
+the idea of the Space Platform and what it would mean to humanity. Men
+of that kind thought of themselves as superior to humanity, and of human
+beings as creatures to be enslaved. So they arranged for planes to crash
+and burn and for men to be murdered, and they practiced blackmail--or
+rewarded those who practiced it for them. They wanted to prevent the
+Platform from existing because it would keep them from trying to pull
+the world down in ruins so they could rule over the wreckage.
+
+Joe--who had so recently thought it likely that he would die--considered
+these actions with an icy dislike that was much deeper than anger. It
+was backed by everything he believed in, everything he had ever wanted,
+and everything he hoped for. And anger could cool off, but the way he
+felt about people who would destroy others for their own purposes could
+not cool off. It was part of him. He thought about it as he worked, with
+all the noises of the Shed singing in his ears.
+
+A voice said: "Joe."
+
+He started and turned. Sally stood behind him, looking at him very
+gravely. She tried to smile.
+
+"Dad told me," she said, "about the check-up that says you're all right.
+May I congratulate you on your being with us for a while?--on the
+cobalt's not getting near you?--or the rest of us?"
+
+Joe did not know exactly what to say.
+
+"I'm going inside the Platform," she told him. "Would you like to come
+along?"
+
+He wiped his hands on a piece of waste.
+
+"Naturally! My gang is off picking out tools. I can't do much until they
+come back."
+
+He fell into step beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it
+was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge
+beyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size.
+Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it.
+There was always a faint bluish mist in the air, and there were the
+marsh-fire lights of welding torches playing here and there. The sounds
+of the Shed were a steady small tumult in Joe's ears. He was getting
+accustomed to them, though.
+
+"How is it you can go around so freely?" he asked abruptly. "I have to
+be checked and rechecked."
+
+"You'll get a full clearance," she told him. "It has to go through
+channels. Me--I have influence. I always come in through security, and I
+have the door guards trained. And I do have business in the Platform."
+
+He turned his head to look at her.
+
+"Interior decoration," she explained. "And don't laugh! It isn't
+prettifying. It's psychology. The Platform was designed by engineers and
+physicists and people with slide rules. They made a beautiful
+environment for machinery. But there will be men living in it, and they
+aren't machines."
+
+"I don't see----"
+
+"They designed the hydroponic garden," said Sally with a certain scorn.
+"They calculated very neatly that eleven square feet of leaf surface of
+a pumpkin plant will purify all the air a resting man uses, and so much
+more will purify the air a man uses when he's working hard. So they
+designed the gardens for the most efficient production of the greatest
+possible leaf surface--of pumpkin plants! They figured food would be
+brought up by the tender rockets! But can you imagine the men in the
+Platform, floating among the stars, living on dehydrated food and
+stuffing themselves hungrily with pumpkins because that is the only
+fresh food they have?"
+
+Joe saw the irony.
+
+"They're thinking of mechanical efficiency," said Sally indignantly. "I
+don't know anything about machinery, but I've wasted an awful lot of
+time at school and otherwise if I don't know something about human
+beings! I argued, and the garden now isn't as mechanically efficient,
+but it'll be a nice place for a man to go into. He won't smell pumpkin
+plants all the time, either. I've even gotten them to include some
+flowers!"
+
+They were very near the Platform. And it was very near to completion.
+Joe looked at it hungrily, and he felt a great sense of urgency. He
+tried to strip away the scaffolding in his mind and see it floating
+proudly free in emptiness, with white-hot sunshine glinting from it, and
+only a background of unwinking stars.
+
+Sally's voice went on: "And I've really put up an argument about the
+living quarters. They had every interior wall painted aluminum! I argued
+that in space or out of it, where people have to live, it's
+housekeeping. This is going to be their home. And they ought to feel
+human in it!"
+
+They passed into one of the openings in the maze of uprights. All about
+them there were trucks, and puffing engines, and hoists. Joe dragged
+Sally aside as a monstrous truck-and-trailer came from where it had
+delivered some gigantic item of interior use. It rumbled past them, and
+she led the way to a flight of temporary wooden stairs with two security
+guards at the bottom. Sally talked severely to them, and they grinned
+and waved for Joe to go ahead. He went up the steps--which would be
+pulled down before the Platform's launching--and went actually inside
+the Space Platform for the first time.
+
+It was a moment of extreme vividness for him. Within the past hour he'd
+come to think detachedly of the possibility of death for himself, and
+then had learned that he would live for a while yet. He knew that Sally
+had been scared on his account, and that her matter-of-fact manner was
+partly assumed. She was at least as much wrought up as he was.
+
+And this was the first time he was going into what would be the first
+space ship ever to leave the Earth on a non-return journey.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+Nobody could have gone through the changes of emotion Joe had
+experienced that morning and remained quite matter-of-fact. Seeing a
+dead man who had more or less deliberately killed himself so that he
+wouldn't have to kill Joe--for one--had its effect. Knowing that it was
+certainly possible the man hadn't killed himself in time had another.
+Being checked over for radiation burns which would mean that he'd die
+quite comfortably within three or four days, and then learning that no
+burns existed, was something of an ordeal. And Sally--of course her
+feelings shouldn't have been as vivid as his own, but the fact that
+she'd been scared for him held some significance. When, on top of all
+the rest, he went into the Space Platform for the first time, Joe was
+definitely keyed up.
+
+But he talked technology. He examined the inner skin and its lining
+before going beyond the temporary entrance. The plating of the Platform
+was actually double. The outer layer was a meteor-bumper against which
+particles of cosmic dust would strike and explode without damage to the
+inner skin. They could even penetrate it without causing a leak of air.
+Inside the inner skin there was a layer of glass wool for heat
+insulation. Inside the glass wool was a layer of material serving
+exactly the function of the coating of a bulletproof gasoline tank. No
+meteor under a quarter-inch size could hope to make a puncture, even at
+the forty-five-mile-per-second speed that is the theoretical maximum for
+meteors. And if one did, the selfsealing stuff would stop the leak
+immediately. Joe could explain the protection of the metal skins. He
+did.
+
+"When a missile travels fast enough," he said absorbedly, "it stops
+acquiring extra puncturing ability. Over a mile a second, impact can't
+be transmitted from front to rear. The back end of the thing that hits
+has arrived at the hit place before the shock of arrival can travel back
+to it. It's like a train in a collision which doesn't stop all at once.
+A meteor hitting the Platform will telescope on itself like the cars of
+a railroad train that hits another at full speed."
+
+Sally listened enigmatically.
+
+"So," said Joe, "the punching effect isn't there. A meteor hitting the
+Platform won't punch. It'll explode. Part of it will turn to
+vapor--metallic vapor if it's metal, and rocky vapor if it's stone.
+It'll blow a crater in the metal plate. It'll blow away as much weight
+of the skin as it weighs itself. Mass for mass. So that weight for
+weight, pea soup would be just as effective armor against meteors as
+hardened steel."
+
+Sally said: "Dear me! You must read the newspapers!"
+
+"The odds figure out, the odds are even that the Platform won't get an
+actual meteor puncture in the first twenty thousand years it's floating
+round the Earth."
+
+"Twenty thousand two seventy, Joe," said Sally. She was trying to tease
+him, but her face showed a little of the strain. "I read the magazine
+articles too. In fact I sometimes show the tame article writers around,
+when they're cleared to see the Platform."
+
+Joe winced a little. Then he grinned wryly.
+
+"That cuts me down to size, eh?"
+
+She smiled at him. But they both felt queer. They went on into the
+interior of the huge space ship.
+
+"Lots of space," said Joe. "This could've been smaller."
+
+"It'll be nine-tenths empty when it goes up," said Sally. "But you know
+about that, don't you?"
+
+Joe did know. The reasons for the streamlining of rockets to be fired
+from the ground didn't apply to the Platform. Not with the same urgency,
+anyhow. Rockets had to burn their fuel fast to get up out of the dense
+air near the ground. They had to be streamlined to pierce the thick,
+resisting part of the atmosphere. The Platform didn't. It wouldn't climb
+by itself. It would be carried necessarily at slow speed up to the point
+where jet motors were most efficient, and then it would be carried
+higher until they ceased to be efficient. Only when it was up where air
+resistance was a very small fraction of ground-level drag would its own
+rockets fire. It wouldn't gain much by being shaped to cut thin air, and
+it would lose a lot. For one thing, the launching process planned for
+the Platform allowed it to be built complete so far as its hull was
+concerned. Once it got out into its orbit there would be no more
+worries. There wouldn't be any gamble on the practicability of
+assembling a great structure in a weightless "world."
+
+The two of them--and the way they both felt, it seemed natural for Joe
+to be helping Sally very carefully through the corridors of the
+Platform--the two of them came to the engine room. This wasn't the place
+where the drive of the Platform was centered. It was where the service
+motors and the air-circulation system and the fluid pumps were powered.
+Off the engine room the main gyros were already installed. They waited
+only for the pilot gyros to control them as a steering engine controls
+an Earth ship's rudder. Joe looked very thoughtfully at the gyro
+assembly. That was familiar, from the working drawings. But he let Sally
+guide him on without trying to stop and look closely.
+
+She showed him the living quarters. They centered in a great open space
+sixty feet long and twenty wide and high. There were bookshelves, and
+two balconies, and chairs. Private cabins opened from it on different
+levels, but there were no steps to them. Yet there were comfortable
+chairs with straps so that when a man was weightless he could fasten
+himself in them. There were ash trays, ingeniously designed to look like
+exactly that and nothing else. But ashes would not fall into them, but
+would be drawn into them by suction. There was unpatterned carpet on the
+floor _and_ on the ceiling.
+
+"It's going to feel queer," said Sally, oddly quiet, "when all this is
+out in space, but it will look fairly normal. I think that's important.
+This room will look like a big private library more than anything else.
+One won't be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he's
+living in a strictly synthetic environment. He won't feel cramped. If
+all the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. At
+least this way he can pretend that things are normal."
+
+Her mind was not wholly on her words. She'd been frightened for Joe. And
+he was acutely aware of it, because he felt a peculiar after-effect
+himself.
+
+"Normal," he said drily, "except that he doesn't weigh anything."
+
+"I've worried about that," said Sally. "Sleeping's going to be a big
+problem."
+
+"It'll take getting used to," Joe agreed.
+
+There was a momentary pause. They were simply looking about the great
+room. Sally stirred uneasily.
+
+"Tell me what you think," she said. "You've been in an elevator that
+started to drop like a plummet. When the Platform is orbiting it'll be
+like that all the time, only worse. No weight. Joe, if you were in an
+elevator that seemed to be dropping and dropping and dropping for hours
+on end--do you think you could go to sleep?"
+
+Joe hadn't thought about it. And he was acutely conscious of Sally, just
+then, but the idea startled him.
+
+"It might be hard to adjust to," he admitted.
+
+"It'll be hard to adjust to, awake," said Sally. "But getting adjusted
+to it asleep should be worse. You've waked up from a dream that you're
+falling?"
+
+"Sure," said Joe. Then he whistled. "Oh-oh! I see! You'd drop off to
+sleep, and you'd be falling. So you'd wake up. Everybody in the Platform
+will be falling around the Earth in the Platform's orbit! Every time
+they doze off they'll be falling and they'll wake up!"
+
+He managed to think about it. It was true enough. A man awake could
+remind himself that he only thought and felt that he was falling, and
+that there was no danger. But what would happen when he tried to sleep?
+Falling is the first fear a human being ever knows. Everybody in the
+world has at one time waked up gasping from a dream of precipices down
+which he plunged. It is an inborn terror. And no matter how thoroughly a
+man might know in his conscious mind that weightlessness was normal in
+emptiness, his conscious mind would go off duty when he went to sleep. A
+completely primitive subconscious would take over then, and it would not
+be satisfied. It might wake him frantically at any sign of dozing until
+he cracked up from sheer insomnia ... or else let him sleep only when
+exhaustion produced unconsciousness rather than restful slumber.
+
+"That's a tough one!" he said disturbedly, and noticed that she still
+showed signs of her recent distress. "There's not much to be done about
+it, either!"
+
+"I suggested something," said Sally, "and they built it in. I hope it
+works!" she explained uncomfortably. "It's a sort of blanket with a top
+that straps down, and an inflatable underside. When a man wants to
+sleep, he'll inflate this thing, and it will hold him in his bunk. It
+won't touch his head, of course, and he can move, but it will press
+against him gently."
+
+Joe thought over what Sally had just explained. He noticed that they
+were quite close together, but he put his mind on her words.
+
+"It'll be like a man swimming?" he asked. "One can go to sleep floating.
+There's no sensation of weight, but there's the feeling of pressure all
+about. A man might be able to sleep if he felt he were floating. Yes,
+that's a good idea, Sally! It'll work! A man will think he's floating,
+rather than falling!"
+
+Sally flushed a little.
+
+"I thought of it another way," she said awkwardly. "When we go to sleep,
+we go way back. We're like babies, with all a baby's fears and needs. It
+_might_ feel like floating. But--I tried one of those bunks. It feels
+like--it feels sort of dreamy, as if someone were--holding one quite
+safe. It feels as if one were a baby and--beautifully secure. But of
+course I haven't tried it weightless. I just--hope it works."
+
+As if embarrassed, she turned abruptly and showed him the kitchen. Every
+pan was covered. The top of the stove was alnico-magnet strips, arranged
+rather like the top of a magnetic chuck. Pans would cling to it. And the
+covers had a curious flexible lining which Joe could not understand.
+
+"It's a flexible plastic that's heatproof," said Sally. "It inflates and
+holds the food down to the hot bottom of the pan. They expected the crew
+to eat ready-prepared food. I said that it would be bad enough to have
+to drink out of plastic bottles instead of glasses. They hung one of
+these stoves upside down, for me, and I cooked bacon and eggs and
+pancakes with the cover of the pan pointing to the floor. They said the
+psychological effect would be worth while."
+
+Joe was stirred. He followed her out of the kitchen and said warmly--the
+more warmly because these contributions to the Space Platform came on
+top of a personal anxiety on his own account: "You must be the first
+girl in the world who thought about housekeeping in space!"
+
+"Girls will be going into space, won't they?" she asked, not looking at
+him. "If there are colonies on the other planets, they'll have to. And
+some day--to the stars...."
+
+She stood quite still, and Joe wanted to do something about her and the
+world and the way he felt. The interior of the Platform was very silent.
+Somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulation was incomplete, the
+sound of workmen was audible, but the inner corridors of the Platform
+were not resonant. They were lined with a material to destroy reminders
+that this was merely a metal shell, an artificial world that would swim
+in emptiness. Here and now, Joe and Sally seemed very private and alone,
+and he felt a sense of urgency.
+
+He looked at her yearningly. Her color was a little higher than usual.
+She was not just a nice kid, she was swell! And she was good to look at.
+Joe had noticed that before, but now with the memory of her fright
+because he'd been in danger, her worry because he might have been
+killed, he thought of her very absurd but honest offer to cry for him.
+
+Joe found himself twisting at the ring on his finger. He got it off, and
+there was some soot and grease on it from the work he'd been doing. He
+knew that she saw what he was about, but she looked away.
+
+"Look, Sally," he said awkwardly, "we've known each other a long time.
+I've--uh--liked you a lot. And I've got some things to do first,
+but----" He stopped. He swallowed. She turned and smiled at him. "Look,"
+he said desperately, "what's a good way to ask if you'd like to wear
+this?"
+
+She nodded, her eyes shining a little.
+
+"That was a good way, Joe. I'd like it a lot."
+
+There was an interlude, then, during which she very ridiculously cried
+and explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life so
+much! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. It
+was the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppy
+ululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed and
+wailed and wailed.
+
+"That's the alarm," exclaimed Sally. She was still misty-eyed.
+"Everybody out of the Shed. Come on, Joe."
+
+They started back the way they'd come in. And Sally looked up at Joe and
+grinned suddenly.
+
+"When I have grandchildren," she told him, "I'm going to brag that I was
+the very first girl in all the world ever to be kissed in a space ship!"
+
+But before Joe could do anything about the comment, she was out on the
+stairs, in plain view and going down. So he followed her.
+
+The Shed was emptying. The bare wood-block floor was dotted with figures
+moving steadily toward the security exit. There was no hurry, because
+security men were shouting that this was not an alarm but a
+precautionary measure, and there was no need for haste. Each security
+man had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkie he wore. By it
+every guard could be told anything he needed to know, either on the
+floor of the Shed, or on the catwalks aloft or even in the Platform
+itself.
+
+Trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go out the swing-up doors. Men
+came down from the scaffolds after putting their tools in proper
+between-shifts positions--for counting and inspection--and other men
+were streaming quietly from the pushpot assembly line. Except for the
+gigantic object in the middle, and for the fact that every man was in
+work clothes, the scene was surprisingly like the central waiting room
+of a very large railroad station, with innumerable people moving briskly
+here and there.
+
+"No hurry," said Joe, catching the word from a security man as he passed
+it on. "I'll go see what my gang found out."
+
+The trio--Haney and Mike and the Chief--were just arriving by the piles
+of charred but now uncovered wreckage. Sally flushed ever so slightly
+when she saw the Chief eye Joe's ring on her finger.
+
+"Rest of the day off, huh?" said the Chief. "Look! We found most of the
+stuff we need. They're gonna give us a shop to work in. We'll move this
+stuff there. We're gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe we
+picked, an' then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in between
+the chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line."
+
+That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel to the axis of the
+earth. Joe nodded.
+
+"We'll be able to get set up in the mornin'," added Haney, "and get
+started. You got the parts list off to the plant for your folks to get
+busy on?"
+
+Sally said quickly: "He's sending that by facsimile now. Then----"
+
+The Chief beamed in benign mockery. "What you goin' to do after that,
+Joe? If we got the rest of the day off----?"
+
+Sally said hurriedly: "We were--he was going off on a picnic with me. To
+Red Canyon Lake. Do you really need to talk business--all afternoon?"
+
+The Chief laughed. He'd known Sally, at least by sight, back at the
+Kenmore plant.
+
+"No, ma'am!" he told her. "Just askin'. I worked on that Red Canyon dam
+job, years back. That dam that made the lake. It ought to be right
+pretty around there now. Okay, Joe. See you as soon as work starts up.
+In the mornin', most likely."
+
+Joe started away with Sally. Mike the midget called hoarsely: "Joe! Just
+a minute!"
+
+Joe drew back. The midget's seamed face was very earnest. He said in his
+odd voice: "Here's something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard
+to keep you from getting those gyros here. They might work hard to keep
+them from getting repaired. That's why we asked for a special shop to
+work in. It's occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would
+be to stop us. Not everybody would've figured out how to rebalance this
+thing. You get me?"
+
+"Sure!" said Joe. "You three had better look out for yourselves."
+
+Mike stared at him and grimaced.
+
+"You don't get it," he said brittlely. "All right. I may be crazy, at
+that."
+
+Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but he
+approved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to the
+security building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm and
+efficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stop
+all work. As they went toward Major Holt's office, Joe heard somebody
+dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: "... this attempt at atomic
+sabotage was defeated outside the Shed, but it never had a chance of
+success. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt to
+smuggle radioactive material into the Shed...."
+
+Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.
+
+"That's for a publicity release?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It's true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without passing
+close to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though they
+don't set the sirens to screaming."
+
+Joe said: "I'll get my order for new parts off on the facsimile
+machine."
+
+But he had to get Major Holt's secretary to show him where to feed in
+the list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and then
+be rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set the
+machine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of the
+document. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.
+
+"You and Sally," remarked Sally's father's secretary with a morose sigh,
+"can go and relax this afternoon. But there's no relaxation for Major
+Holt. Or for me."
+
+Joe said unhopefully: "I'm sure Sally'd be glad if you came with us."
+
+Major Holt's plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.
+
+"I haven't had a day off since the work began here," she said frowning.
+"The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You're going
+to Red Canyon Lake?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Joe. "Sally thought it might be pleasant."
+
+"It's terribly dry and arid here," said Miss Ross sadly. "That's the
+only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it's pretty there.
+I've never seen it."
+
+She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An
+exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence
+more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore
+Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no
+question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!
+
+Sally came out, smiled at her father's secretary, and led Joe down to
+the entrance.
+
+"I have the car," she said cheerfully, "and there'll be a lunch basket
+waiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold for
+swimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it's nice to look at."
+
+They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were just
+beginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black car
+was waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. She
+regarded the men swarming on the busses.
+
+"There'll be bulletins all over Bootstrap," she observed, "saying that
+Braun tried to dust-bomb the Shed. They'll say that he may have carried
+the cobalt about with him, and so he may have burned other people--in a
+restaurant, a movie theater, anywhere--while he was carrying the dust
+and dying without knowing it. So everybody's supposed to report to the
+hospital for a check-up for radiation burns. Some people may really have
+them. But Dad thinks that since you weren't burned, Braun didn't carry
+it around. If anyone is burned, it'll be the person who brought the
+cobalt here to give him. And--well--he'll turn up because everybody
+does, and because he's burned he'll be asked plenty of questions."
+
+Joe stepped on the starter. Then he pressed the accelerator and the car
+sped forward.
+
+They stopped at the house in the officers'-quarters area on the other
+side of the Shed. Sally picked up the lunch basket that her father's
+housekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions. They drove away.
+
+Red Canyon was eighty miles from the Shed, and the only way to get there
+was through Bootstrap, because the only highway away from the Shed led
+to that small, synthetic town. It was irritating, though they had no
+schedule, to find that the long line of busses was ahead of them on that
+twenty-mile stretch. The busses ran nose to tail and filled the road for
+a half-mile or more. It was not possible to pass so long a string of
+close-packed vehicles. There was just enough traffic in the opposite
+direction to make that impracticable.
+
+They had to trail the line of busses as far as Bootstrap and crawl
+through the crowded streets. Once beyond the town they came to a
+security stop. Here Sally's pass was good. Then they went rolling on and
+on through an empty, arid, sun-baked terrain toward the hills to the
+west. It looked remarkably lonely. Joe thought for the first time about
+gas. He looked carefully at the fuel gauge. Sally shook her head.
+
+"Don't worry. Plenty of gas. Security takes care of that. When I said
+where we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everything
+checked. If I live through this, I'll bet I stay a fanatic about
+cautiousness all my life!"
+
+Joe said distastefully: "I suppose it gets everybody. Mike--the midget,
+you know--called me back just now to suggest that the people who tried
+to spoil the gyros might try to harm the four of us to hinder their
+repair!"
+
+"It's not just foolishness," Sally admitted. "The strain is pretty bad,
+especially when you know things. You've noticed that Dad's getting gray.
+That's strain. And Miss Ross is about as tense. Things leak out in the
+most remarkable way--and Dad can't find out how. Once there was a case
+of sabotage and he could have sworn that nobody had the information that
+permitted it but himself and Miss Ross. She had hysterics. She insisted
+that she wanted to be locked up somewhere so she couldn't be suspected
+of telling anybody anything. She'd resign tomorrow if she could. It's
+ghastly." Then she hesitated and smiled faintly: "In fact, so Dad
+wouldn't worry about me this afternoon----"
+
+He took his eyes off the road to glance at her.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I promised we wouldn't go swimming and----" Then she said awkwardly:
+"There are two pistols in the glove compartment. Dad knows you. So I
+promised you'd put one in your pocket up at the lake."
+
+Joe drew a deep breath. She opened the glove compartment and handed him
+a pistol. He looked at it: .38, hammerless. A good safe weapon. He
+slipped it in his coat pocket. But he frowned.
+
+"I was looking forward to--not worrying for a while," he said wryly.
+"But now I'll have to remember to keep looking over my shoulder all the
+time!"
+
+"Maybe," said Sally, "you can look over my shoulder and I'll look over
+yours, and we can glance at each other occasionally."
+
+She laughed, and he managed to smile. But the trace of a frown remained
+on his forehead.
+
+Joe drove and drove and drove. Once they came to a very small town. It
+may have contained a hundred people. There were gas pumps and a
+restaurant and two or three general stores, which were certainly too
+many for the permanent residents. But there were cow ponies hitched
+before the stores, and automobiles were also in view. The ground here
+was slightly rolling. The mountains had grown to good-sized ramparts
+against the sky. Joe drove carefully down the single street, turning out
+widely once to dodge a dog sleeping placidly in an area normally
+reserved for traffic.
+
+Finally they came to the foothills, and then the road curved and
+recurved as it wound among them. And two hours from Bootstrap they
+reached Red Canyon. They first saw the dam from downstream. It was a
+monstrous structure of masonry, alone in the mountains. From its top a
+plume of falling water jetted out.
+
+"The dam's for irrigation," said Sally professionally, "and the Shed
+gets all its power from here. One of Dad's nightmares is that somebody
+may blow up this dam and leave Bootstrap and the Shed without power."
+
+Joe said nothing. He drove on up the trail as it climbed the canyon wall
+in hairpin slants. It was ticklish driving. But then, quite suddenly,
+they reached the top of the canyon wall and the top of the dam and the
+level of the lake at once. Here there was a sheet of water that reached
+back among the barren hillsides for miles and miles. It twisted out of
+sight. There were small waves on its surface, and grass at its edge.
+There were young trees. The powerhouse was a small squat structure in
+the middle of the dam. Not a person was visible anywhere.
+
+"Here we are," said Sally, when Joe stopped the car.
+
+He got out and went around to open the door for her. But she was already
+stepping out with the lunch basket in her hand when he arrived. He
+reached for it, and she held on, and they moved companionably away from
+the car carrying the basket between them.
+
+"There's a nice place," said Sally, pointing.
+
+A small ridge of rock stretched out into the lake, and rose, and spread,
+and formed what was almost a miniature island some fifty feet across.
+There were some young trees on it. Sally and Joe climbed down the slope
+and out the rocky isthmus that connected it with the shore.
+
+Sally let down the lunch box on a stone and laughed for no reason at all
+as the wind blew her hair. It was a cool wind from over the water. And
+Joe realized with a shock of surprise that the air felt different and
+smelled different when it blew over open water like this. Up to now he
+hadn't thought of the dryness of the air in Bootstrap and the Shed.
+
+The lunch basket was tilted a little. Joe picked it up and settled it
+more solidly. Then he said: "Hungry?"
+
+There was literally nothing on his mind at the moment but the luxurious,
+satisfied feeling of being off somewhere with grass and a lake and
+Sally, and a good part of the afternoon to throw away. It felt good. So
+he lifted the lid of the lunch basket.
+
+There was a revolver there. It was the other one from the glove
+compartment of the car. Sally hadn't left it behind. Joe regarded it and
+said ironically: "Happy, carefree youth--that's us! Which are the ham
+sandwiches, Sally?"
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+Nevertheless, the afternoon began splendidly. Joe dunked the bottled
+soft drinks in the lake to cool. Then he and Sally ate and talked and
+laughed. Joe, in particular, had more than the usual capacity for
+enjoyment today. He'd been through twenty-four hours of turmoil but now
+things began to look better. And there was the arrangement with Sally,
+which had a solid satisfactoriness about it. Sally was swell! If she'd
+been homely, Joe would have liked her just the same--to talk to and to
+be with. But she was pretty--and she was wearing his ring. She'd wrapped
+some string around the inside of the band to make it fit.
+
+The only trouble was that Joe was occasionally conscious of the heavy
+weight in his right-hand coat pocket.
+
+But they spent at least an hour in contented, satisfying, meaningless
+loafing that nobody can describe but that everybody likes to remember
+afterward. From time to time Joe looked ashore, when the weight in his
+pocket reminded him of danger.
+
+But he didn't look often enough. He was pulling the chilled soft-drink
+bottles out of the lake when he saw a movement out of the corner of his
+eye. He whirled, his hand in his pocket....
+
+It was the Chief, with Haney and Mike the midget. They were striding
+across the rocky small peninsula.
+
+Haney called sharply: "Everything okay?"
+
+"Sure!" said Joe. "Everything's fine! What's the matter?"
+
+"Mike had a hunch," said the Chief. "And--uh--I remembered I worked on
+the job when this dam was built twelve-fifteen years ago." He looked
+about him. "It looked different then."
+
+Then he caught Joe's eye and jerked his head almost imperceptibly to one
+side. Joe caught the signal.
+
+"I'll see about some more soft drinks," he said. "Come help me fish up
+the bottles."
+
+Sally smiled at the other two. She was already inspecting the lunch
+basket.
+
+"We still have some sandwiches," she said hospitably, "and some cake."
+
+Haney came forward awkwardly. Mike advanced toward her with something of
+truculence. Joe knew what was in his mind. If Sally treated him like a
+freak.... But Joe knew with deep satisfaction that she wouldn't. He went
+down to the water's edge.
+
+"What's up, Chief?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+"Mike hadda hunch," rumbled the Chief. "Somebody tried to smash the
+stuff you brought. They did. But we started gettin' set to mend it. So
+what would they do? Polish us off. If they were set to atom-dust the
+whole Shed an' everybody in it, they wouldn't stop at four more
+murders."
+
+Joe fished for a pop bottle.
+
+"Mike said something like that back at the Shed," he observed.
+
+"Yeah. But you were the one who figured things out. You'd be first
+target. Haney and Mike and me--we'd be hard to knock off in a crowd in
+Bootstrap. But you and her headed off by y'selves. Mike figured you
+mightn't be safe. So we checked."
+
+Joe brought up one bottle and then another.
+
+"We're all right. Haven't seen a soul."
+
+"Don't mean a soul hasn't seen you," growled the Chief. "A car left
+Bootstrap less than twenty minutes behind you. There were three guys in
+it. It's parked down below the dam, outa sight. We saw it. And when we
+came up, careful, we spotted three guys hidin' out behind the rocks
+yonder. They look to me like they're waiting for somebody to go
+strolling back from the shoreline, so's--uh--maybe folks out at the
+powerhouse can't see 'em. That'd be you and her, huh?"
+
+Joe went cold. Not for himself. For Sally.
+
+"There's nobody else around," said the Chief. "Who'd they be waiting for
+but you two? Suppose they got a chance to kill you. They'd take the car
+keys. They'd drop your two bodies somewheres Gawdknowswhere. There'd be
+considerable of a hunt for you two. Major Holt would be upset plenty.
+Security might get loosened up. There might be breaks for guys who
+wanted to do a little extra sabotage--besides maybe hamperin' the
+repairin' of the pilot gyros. Then they could try for Haney and Mike and
+me."
+
+Joe said coldly: "I've got a pistol and so has Sally. Shall we take
+those pistols and go ask those three if they want to start something?"
+
+The Chief snorted.
+
+"Use sense! It's good you got the pistols, though. I snagged a
+twenty-two rifle from a shooting gallery. It was all I could get in a
+hurry. But go huntin' trouble? Fella, I want to see that Platform go up!
+I'll take care of things now. Good layout here. They got to come across
+the open to get near. Don't say anything to Sally. But we'll keep our
+eyes open."
+
+Joe nodded. He carried the chilled, dripping bottles back to where Haney
+solemnly ate a sandwich, sitting crosslegged with his back to the lake
+and regarding the shore. The Chief dragged a .22 repeating rifle from
+inside his belt, where it had hung alongside his thigh. He casually
+strolled over to Mike and dropped the rifle.
+
+"You said you felt like target practice," he remarked blandly. "Here's
+your armament. Any more sandwiches, ma'am?"
+
+Sally smilingly passed him the last. She left the top of the basket
+open. The pistol that had been there was gone. Then Sally's eyes met
+Joe's and she was aware that his three friends had not come here merely
+to crash a picnic. But she took it in stride. It was an additional
+reason for Joe to approve of Sally.
+
+"Me," said the Chief largely, "I'm goin' to swim. I haven't had any more
+water around me than a shower bath for so long that I crave to soak and
+splash. I'll go yonder and dunk myself."
+
+He wandered off, taking bites from the sandwich as he went. He vanished.
+Haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyes roving about the shoreline
+and the rocks and brush behind it.
+
+Mike was talking in his crackling, high-pitched voice.
+
+"But just the same it's crazy! Fighting sabotage when we little guys
+could take over in a week and make sabotage just plain foolish! We could
+do the whole job while the saboteurs weren't looking!"
+
+Sally said with interest: "Have you got the figures? Were they ever
+passed on?"
+
+"I spent a month's pay once," said Mike sardonically, "hiring a math
+shark to go over them. He found one mistake. It raised the margin of
+what we could do!"
+
+Sally answered: "Joe! Listen to this! Mike says he has the real answer
+to sabotage, and, in a way, to space travel! Listen!"
+
+Joe dropped to the ground.
+
+"Shoot it," he said.
+
+He was grimly alert, just the same. There were men waiting for them to
+start back to the car. These saboteurs were armed, and they intended to
+murder Sally and himself. Joe's jaws clamped tautly shut at the grim
+ideas that came into his mind.
+
+But Mike was beginning to speak.
+
+"Forget about the Platform a minute," he said, standing up to
+gesticulate, because he was only three and a half feet high. "Just
+figure on a rocket straight to the moon. With old-style rockets they'd
+a' had to have a mass ratio of a hundred and twenty to one. You'd have
+to burn a hundred and twenty tons of old-style fuel to land one ton on
+the moon. Now it could be done with sixty, and when the Platform's up,
+that figure'll drop again! Okay! You're gonna land a man on the moon. He
+weighs two hundred pounds. He uses up twenty pounds of food and drink
+and oxygen a day. Give him grub and air for two months--twelve hundred
+pounds. A cabin seven feet high and ten feet across. Sixteen hundred
+pounds, counting insulation an' braces for strength. That makes a pay
+load of a ton an' a half, and you'd have to burn a hundred an' eighty
+tons of fuel--old-style--to take it to the moon, and another hundred an'
+twenty for every ton the rocket ship weighed. You might get a man to the
+moon with a twelve-hundred-ton rocket--maybe. That's with the old fuels.
+He'd get there, an' he'd live two months, an' then he'd die for lack of
+air. With the new fuels you'd need ninety tons of fuel to carry the guy
+there, and sixty more for every ton the ship weighed itself. Call it six
+hundred tons for the rocket to carry one man to the moon."
+
+Sally nodded absorbedly.
+
+"I've seen figures like that," she agreed.
+
+"But take a guy like me!" said Mike the midget bitterly. "I weigh
+forty-five pounds, not two hundred! I use four pounds of food and air a
+day. A cabin for me to live in would be four feet high an' five across.
+Bein' smaller, it wouldn't need so much bracing. You could do it for two
+hundred pounds. Three hundred for grub and air, fifty for me. Me on the
+moon supplied for two months would come to five-fifty pounds. Sixteen
+tons of fuel to get me to the moon direct! To carry the weight of the
+ship--it's smaller!--fifty tons maximum!"
+
+"I--see...," said Sally, frowning.
+
+He looked at her suspiciously, but there was no mockery in her face.
+
+"It'd take a six-hundred-ton rocket to get a full-sized man to the
+moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "but a guy my size could do the
+same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it'd
+be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land,
+take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back--all in a
+sixty-ton rocket. That's just ten per cent of what it'd cost to take a
+full-sized man one way!"
+
+He stamped his foot. Then he said coldly: "Haney, sittin' still you're a
+sittin' duck!"
+
+The comment was just. Joe knew that Sally was on the lakeward side of
+this small island, and that there were impenetrable rocks between her
+and the mainland. But Haney sat crosslegged where he could watch the
+mainland, and he hadn't moved in a long while. If someone did intend to
+commit murder from a distance, Haney was offering a chance for a very
+fine target. He moved.
+
+"Yeah!" said Mike with fine irony, reverting to his topic. "I could show
+you plenty of figures! There are other guys like me! We've got as much
+brains as full-sized people! If the big brass had figured on us small
+guys, they coulda made the Platform the size of a four-family house an'
+it'd ha' been up in the sky right now, with guys like me running it.
+Guys my size could man the ferry rockets bringin' up fuel for storage,
+and four of us could take a six-hundred-ton rocket an' slide out to Mars
+an' be back by springtime--next springtime!--with all the facts and the
+photographs to prove 'em! By golly----"
+
+Then he made a raging, helpless gesture.
+
+"But that's just the big picture," he said bitterly. "Right now, right
+at this minute, we could make it easy to finish the Platform the way
+it's building in the Shed! There are ferry rockets building somewhere
+else. You know about them?"
+
+Sally said apologetically: "Yes. I know there'll be smaller rocket ships
+going up to the Platform. They'll carry fuel and stores and exchanges
+for the crew. Yes, I know there are ferry rockets building."
+
+"Those ferry rockets," said Mike sardonically, "carry four men, plus two
+replacements for the crew. They'll carry air for ten days. But put four
+of us small guys in a ferry rocket! _We'd_ have air and grub for two
+months, almost! Pull out the pay load and put in a hydroponic garden and
+communicators and we'd _be_ a Platform, right then! Send up another
+ferry rocket to join us, and it could bring guided missiles! The ferry
+rockets could be finished quicker than the Platform! Send up three ferry
+rockets with midgets as crews, an' we could weld 'em together and have a
+Space Platform in orbit and working--and what'd be the use of sabotaging
+the big Platform then? The job would be done! There'd be no sense
+sabotaging the big Platform because the little one could do anything the
+big one could! It'd be up there and working! But," he demanded bitterly,
+"do you think anybody'll do anything as sensible as that?"
+
+His small features were twisted in angry rebellion. And he was quite
+right in all his reasoning. Mankind could have made the journey to the
+planets in a hurry, and it could have had its Space Platform in the sky
+much more quickly, if only it could have consented to be represented by
+people like Mike--who would have represented mankind very valiantly.
+
+Sally said distressedly: "Oh, Mike, it's all true and I'm so sorry!"
+
+And she meant it. Joe liked Sally especially right then, because she
+didn't patronize Mike, or try to reason him out of his heartbreak.
+
+Then Haney said abruptly: "Somebody's spotted the Chief."
+
+Joe mentally kicked himself. The Chief had said he was going to swim.
+Now--but only now--Joe looked to see what he was doing.
+
+He was far out from shore, swimming unhurriedly to the powerhouse at the
+middle of the dam. He would reach it, and swing up the ladder that could
+just be seen going down the lake side of the dam's top, and he would
+explain the situation on shore. A telephone call to Bootstrap would
+bring security men rushing at eighty miles an hour, and parachute
+troopers a good deal faster. But even before they arrived the Chief
+would lead the powerhouse crew ashore armed with the shotguns they kept
+for shooting waterfowl in and out of season.
+
+The men on shore might or might not consider the Chief's swim to be
+proof that he knew their intentions. They were probably discussing the
+matter in some agitation right now. But they couldn't know that the
+party on the semi-island was armed.
+
+Suddenly Mike said crisply: "We're goin' to have visitors."
+
+He lay down carefully on the ground, fifteen feet uphill from Sally,
+where he could look over the ridge. He snuggled the .22 target rifle
+professionally to his shoulder. He drew a bead.
+
+Three men very casually strolled out of the brushwood on the shore. They
+moved nonchalantly toward the strand of rocks that led out to the picnic
+spot. They looked like anybody else from Bootstrap. Casual, rough work
+clothing.... Haney bent down and picked up four good throwing stones.
+His expression was pained.
+
+Joe said: "We've got pistols, Haney, and Sally's a good shot."
+
+The men came on. Their manner was elaborately casual. Joe stepped up
+into view.
+
+"No visitors!" he called. "We don't want company!"
+
+One of the men held his hand to his ear, as if not understanding. They
+came on. They made no threatening gestures.
+
+Then Joe took his hand out of his pocket, the pistol Sally'd given him
+gripped tightly.
+
+"I mean that!" he said harshly. "Stand back!"
+
+One of the three spoke sharply. On that instant three snub-nosed pistols
+appeared. Bullets whined as the men hurtled forward. The purpose was not
+so much murder at this moment as the demoralizing effect of bullets
+flying overhead while the three assassins got close enough to do their
+bloody job with precision.
+
+A stone whizzed by Joe--Haney had thrown it--and the small target rifle
+in Mike's hands coughed twice. Joe held his fire. He had only six
+bullets and three targets to hit. With a familiar revolver he'd have
+started shooting now, but thirty yards is a long range with a strange
+pistol at a moving target.
+
+One of the three killers stumbled and crashed to the ground. A second
+seemed suddenly to be grinning widely on one side of his face. A .22
+bullet had slashed his cheek. The third ran head on into a rock thrown
+by Haney. It knocked the breath out of him and his pistol fell from his
+hand.
+
+Joe fired deliberately at the widely grinning man and saw him spin
+around. Mike's target rifle spat again and the man Joe had hit wheeled
+and ran heavily, making incoherent yells. The one who'd tumbled
+scrambled to his feet and fled, hopping crazily, favoring one leg.
+Deserted, the third man turned and ran too, still doubled over and still
+gasping.
+
+Mike's voice crackled. He was in a towering rage because of the way the
+target rifle shot. It threw high and to the right. The shooting gallery
+paid off in cigarettes for high scores--so the guns didn't shoot
+straight.
+
+Until this moment Joe had been relatively calm, because he had something
+to do. But just then he heard Sally say "Oh!" in a queer voice. He
+whirled. Unknown to him, she had not been waiting under cover, but
+standing with her pistol out and ready. And her face was very white, and
+she was plucking at her hair. A strand came away in her fingers. A
+bullet had clipped it just above her shoulder.
+
+Then Joe went sick ... weak ... trembling, and he disgraced himself by
+half-hysterically grabbing Sally and demanding to know if she was hurt,
+and raging at her for exposing herself to fire, while his throat tried
+to close and shut off his breath from horror.
+
+There came loud pop-pop-popping noises. With the peculiar reverberation
+of sound over water, two motorcycles started from the powerhouse along
+the crest of the dam. They streaked for the shore carrying five men, one
+of whom was the Chief, with a red-checked tablecloth about his middle,
+brandishing a fire axe in default of other weapons.
+
+The danger was over.
+
+But the assassins couldn't be followed immediately. They still had at
+least two pistols. Eight men and a girl, counting Mike, with an armament
+of only two pistols, a .22 rifle, two shotguns and a fire axe were not a
+properly equipped posse to hunt down killers. Also by now it was close
+to sunset.
+
+So the victors did the sensible thing. Joe and Sally and Haney and the
+Chief--his clothes retrieved--plus Mike headed back for Bootstrap. Joe
+and Sally rode in the Major's black car, and the other three in the
+jalopy they'd rented for the afternoon. On the way into the canyon below
+the dam, they stopped at the parked car their would-be assassins had
+come in. They removed its distributor and fan belt. The other men
+returned to the powerhouse with their shotguns and the fire axe, and
+telephoned to Bootstrap. The three gunmen who had planned murder became
+fugitives, with no means of transportation but their legs. They had a
+good many thousand square miles of territory to hide in, but it wasn't
+likely that they had food or any competence to find it in the wilds. Two
+were certainly hurt. With dogs and planes and organization, it should be
+possible to catch them handily, come morning.
+
+So Joe and Sally drove back to Bootstrap with the other car following
+closely through all the miles that had to be covered in the dark.
+Halfway back, they met a grim search party in cars, heading for the dam
+to begin their man hunt in the morning. After that, Joe felt better. But
+his teeth still tended to chatter every time he thought of Sally's
+startled, scared expression as she pulled away a lock of her hair that
+had been severed by a bullet.
+
+When they got back to the Shed, Major Holt looked tired and old. Sally
+explained breathlessly that her danger was her own fault. Joe'd thought
+she was safely under cover....
+
+"It was my fault," said the Major detachedly. "I let you go away from
+the Shed. I do not blame Joe at all."
+
+But he did not look kindly. Joe wet his lips, ready to agree that any
+disgrace he might be subjected to was justified, since he had caused
+Sally to be shot at.
+
+"I blame myself a great deal, sir," he said grimly. "But I can promise
+I'll never take Sally away from safety again. Not until the Platform's
+up and there's no more reason for her to be in danger."
+
+The Major said remotely: "I shall have to arrange for more than that. I
+shall put you in touch with your father by telephone. You will explain
+to him, in detail, exactly how the repair of your apparatus is planned.
+I understand that the gyros can be duplicated more quickly by the method
+you have worked out?"
+
+Joe said: "Yes, sir. The balancing of the gyros can, which was the
+longest single job. But anything can be made quicker the second time.
+The patterns for the castings are all made, and the bugs worked out of
+the production process."
+
+"You will explain that to your father," said the Major heavily. "Your
+father's plant will begin to duplicate these--ah--pilot gyros at once.
+Meanwhile your--ah--work crew will start to repair the one that is
+here."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And," said the Major, "I am sending you to the pushpot airfield. I
+intend to scatter the targets the saboteurs might aim at. You are one of
+them. Your crew is another. From time to time you will confer with them
+and verify their work. If any of them should be--disposed of, you will
+be able to instruct others."
+
+"It's really the other way about, sir," objected Joe. "The Chief and
+Haney are pretty good, and Mike's got brains----"
+
+The Major moved impatiently.
+
+"I am looking at this from a security standpoint," he said. "I am trying
+to make it plainly useless to attack the gyros again. Duplicates will be
+in production at your father's plant. There will be three men repairing
+the smashed ones. There will be another man in another place--and this
+will be you--who can instruct new workmen in the repair procedure if
+anything should happen. Thus there will have to be three separate
+successful coups if the pilot gyros are not to be ready when the
+Platform needs them. Saboteurs might try one. Possibly two. But I think
+they will look for another weak spot to attack."
+
+Joe did not like the idea of being moved away. He wanted to be on the
+job repairing the device that was primarily his responsibility. Besides,
+he had a feeling about Sally. If she were in danger, he wanted to be on
+hand.
+
+"About Sally, sir----"
+
+"Sally," said the Major tiredly, "is going to have to restrict herself
+to the point where she'll feel that jail would be preferable. But she
+will see the need for it. She will be guarded a good deal more carefully
+than before--and you may not know it, but she has been guarded rather
+well."
+
+Joe saw Sally smiling ruefully at him. What the Major had said was
+unpleasant, but he was right. This was one of those arrangements that
+nobody likes, an irritating, uncomfortable, disappointing necessity. But
+such necessities are a part of every actual achievement. The difference
+between things that get done and things that don't get done is often
+merely the difference between patience and impatience with tedious
+details. This arrangement would mean that Joe couldn't see Sally very
+often. It would mean that the Chief and Haney and Mike would do the
+actual work of getting the gyros ready. It would take all the glamour
+out of Joe's contribution. These deprivations shouldn't be necessary.
+But they were.
+
+"All right, sir," said Joe gloomily. "When do I go over to the field?"
+
+"Right away," said the Major. "Tonight." Then he added detachedly:
+"Officially, the excuse for your presence there will be that you have
+been useful in uncovering sabotage methods. You have. After all, through
+you a number of planes that would have been blown up have now had their
+booby traps removed. I know you do not claim credit for the fact, but it
+is an excuse for keeping you where I want you to be for another reason
+entirely. So it will be assumed that you are at the pushpot field for
+counter-sabotage inspection."
+
+The Major nodded dismissal with an indefinable air of irony, and Joe
+went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length.
+His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a
+place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new
+set of pilot gyros at once.
+
+A little later Sally came out of her father's office.
+
+"I'm sorry, Joe!"
+
+He grinned unhappily.
+
+"So am I. I don't feel very heroic, but if this is what has to be done
+to get the Platform out of the Shed and on the way up--it's what has to
+be done. I suppose I can phone you?"
+
+"You can," said Sally. "And you'd better!"
+
+They had talked a long time that afternoon, very satisfyingly and
+without any cares at all. Neither could have remembered much of what had
+been said. It probably was not earth-shaking in importance. But now
+there seemed to be a very great deal of other similar conversation
+urgently needing to be gone through.
+
+"I'll call you!" said Joe.
+
+Then somebody approached to take him to the pushpot airfield. They
+separated very formally under the eyes of the impersonal security
+officer who would drive Joe to his destination.
+
+It was a tedious journey through the darkness. This particular security
+officer was not companionable. He was one of those conscientious people
+who think that if they keep their mouths shut it will make up for their
+inability to keep their eyes open. Socially he treated Joe as if he were
+a highly suspect person. It could be guessed that he treated everybody
+that way.
+
+Joe went to sleep in the car.
+
+He was only half-awake when he arrived, and he didn't bother to rouse
+himself completely when he was shown to a cubbyhole in the officers'
+barracks. He went to bed, making a half-conscious note to buy himself
+some clothes--especially fresh linen--in the morning.
+
+Then he knew nothing until he was awaked in the early morning by what
+sounded exactly like the crack of doom.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+It was not, however, the crack of doom. When Joe stared out the window
+by the head of his cot, he saw gray-red dawn breaking over the landing
+field. There were low, featureless structures silhouetted against the
+sunrise. As the crimson light grew brighter, Joe realized that the
+angular shapes were hangars. Improbable crane poles loomed above them.
+One was in motion, handling something he could not make out, but the
+noise that had awakened him was less, now. It seemed to circle overhead,
+and it had an angry, droning, buzzing quality that was not natural in
+any motor he had ever heard before.
+
+Joe shivered, standing at the window. It was cold and dank in the dawn
+light at this altitude, but he wanted to know what that completely
+unbelievable roar had been. A crane beam by the hangars tilted down,
+slowly, and then lifted as if released of a great weight. The light was
+growing slowly brighter. Joe saw something on the ground. Rather, it was
+not quite on the ground. It rested on something on the ground.
+
+Suddenly that unholy uproar began again. Something moved. It ran heavily
+out from the masking dark of the hangars. It picked up speed. It
+acquired a reasonable velocity--forty or fifty miles an hour. As it
+scuttled over the dimly lighted field, it made a din like all the boiler
+factories in the world and all the backfiring motors in creation trying
+to drown each other's noise out--and all of them being very successful.
+
+It was a pushpot. Joe recognized it with incredulity. It was one of
+those utterly ungainly creations that were built around one half of the
+sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of
+a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled
+vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a
+blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome
+flirtings from side to side.
+
+The pushpot lifted from the vehicle on which it rode, and the vehicle
+put on speed and got away from under it with frantic agility. The
+vehicle swerved to one side, and Joe stared with amazed eyes at the
+pushpot, some twenty feet aloft. It had a flat underside, and a topside
+that still looked to him like the rounded top half of a loaf of baker's
+bread. It hung in the air at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and
+it howled like a panic-stricken dragon--Joe was getting his metaphors
+mixed by this time--and it swung and wobbled and slowly gained altitude,
+and then suddenly it seemed to get the knack of what it was supposed to
+do. It started to circle around, and then it began abruptly to climb
+skyward. Until it began to climb it looked heavy and clumsy and wholly
+unimpressive. But when it climbed, it really moved!
+
+Joe found his head out the window, craning up to look at it. Its
+unearthly din took on the indignant quality of an irritated beehive. But
+it climbed! It went up without grace but with astonishing speed. And it
+was huge, but it became lost in the red-flecked dawn sky while Joe still
+gaped.
+
+Joe flung on his clothes. He went out the door through resonant empty
+corridors, hunting for somebody to tell him something. He blundered into
+a mess hall. There were many tables, but the chairs around them were
+pushed back as if used and then left behind by people in a hurry to be
+somewhere else. There were exactly two people still visible over in a
+corner.
+
+Another din like the wailing of a baby volcano with a toothache. It
+began, and moved, and went through the series of changes that ended in a
+climbing, droning hum. Another. Another. The launching of pushpots for
+their morning flight was evidently getting well under way.
+
+Joe hesitated in the nearly empty mess hall. Then he recognized the two
+seated figures. They were the pilot and co-pilot, respectively, of the
+fateful plane that had brought him to Bootstrap.
+
+He went over to their table. The pilot nodded matter-of-factly. The
+co-pilot grinned. Both still wore bandages on their hands, which would
+account for their remaining here.
+
+"Fancy seeing you!" said the co-pilot cheerfully. "Welcome to the Hotel
+de Gink! But don't tell me you're going to fly a pushpot!"
+
+"I hadn't figured on it," admitted Joe. "Are you?"
+
+"Perish forbid," said the co-pilot amiably. "I tried it once, for the
+devil of it. Those things fly with the grace of a lady elephant on ice
+skates! Did you, by any chance, notice that they haven't got any wings?
+And did you notice where their control surfaces were?"
+
+Joe shook his head. He saw the remnants of ham and eggs and coffee. He
+was hungry.
+
+There was the uproar to be expected of a basso-profundo banshee in pain.
+Another pushpot was taking off.
+
+"How do I get breakfast?" he asked.
+
+The co-pilot pointed to a chair. He rapped sharply on a drinking glass.
+A door opened, he pointed at Joe, and the door closed.
+
+"Breakfast coming up," said the co-pilot. "Look! I know you're Joe
+Kenmore. I'm Brick Talley and this is Captain--no less than
+Captain!--Thomas J. Walton. Impressed?"
+
+"Very much," said Joe. He sat down. "What about the control surfaces on
+pushpots?"
+
+"They're in the jet blast!" said the co-pilot, now identified as Brick
+Talley. "Like the V Two rockets when the Germans made 'em. Vanes in the
+exhaust blast, no kidding! Landing, and skidding in on their tails like
+they do, they haven't speed enough to give wing flaps a grip on the air,
+even if they had wings to put wing flaps on. Those dinkuses are things
+to have bad dreams about!"
+
+Again, a door opened and a man in uniform with an apron in front came
+marching in with a tray. There was tomato juice and ham and eggs and
+coffee. He served Joe briskly and marched out again.
+
+"That's Hotel de Gink service," said Talley. "No wasted motion, no
+sloppy civilities. He was about to eat that himself, he gave it to you,
+and now he'll cook himself a double portion of everything. What are you
+doing here, anyhow?"
+
+Joe shrugged. It occurred to him that it would neither be wise nor
+creditable to say that he'd been sent here to split up a target at which
+saboteurs might shoot.
+
+"I guess I'm attached for rations," he observed. "There'll be orders
+along about me presently, I suppose. Then I'll know what it's all
+about."
+
+He fell to on his breakfast. The thunderous noises of the pushpots
+taking off made the mess hall quiver. Joe said between mouthfuls: "Funny
+way for anything to take off, riding on--it looked like a truck."
+
+"It is a truck," said Talley. "A high-speed truck. Fifty of them
+specially made to serve as undercarriages so pushpot pilots can
+practice. The pushpots are really only expected to work once, you know."
+
+Joe nodded.
+
+"They aren't to take off," Talley explained. "Not in theory. They hang
+on to the Platform and heave. They go up with it, pushing. When they get
+it as high as they can, they'll shoot their jatos, let go, and come
+bumbling back home. So they have to practice getting back home and
+landing. For practicing it doesn't matter how they get aloft. When they
+get down, a big straddle truck on caterpillar treads picks them up--they
+land in the doggonedest places, sometimes!--and brings 'em back. Then a
+crane heaves them up on a high-speed truck and they do it all over
+again."
+
+Joe considered while he ate. It made sense. The function of the pushpots
+was to serve as the first booster stage of a multiple-stage rocket.
+Together, they would lift the Platform off the ground and get it as high
+as their jet motors would take it traveling east at the topmost speed
+they could manage. Then they'd fire their jatos simultaneously, and in
+doing that they'd be acting as the second booster stage of a
+multiple-stage rocket. Then their work would be done, and their only
+remaining purpose would be to get their pilots back to the ground alive,
+while the Platform on its own third stage shot out to space.
+
+"So," said Talley, "since their pilots need to practice landings, the
+trucks get them off the ground. They go up to fifty thousand feet, just
+to give their oxygen tanks a chance to conk out on them; then they barge
+around up there a while. The advanced trainees shoot off a jato at top
+speed. It's gauged to build them up to the speed they'll give the
+Platform. And then if they come out of that and get back down to ground
+safely, they uncross their fingers. A merry life those guys lead! When a
+man's made ten complete flights he retires. One flight a week thereafter
+to keep in practice only, until the big day for the Platform's take-off.
+Those guys sweat!"
+
+"Is it that bad?"
+
+The pilot grunted. The co-pilot--Talley--spread out his hands.
+
+"It is that bad! Every so often one of them comes down untidily. There's
+something the matter with the motors. They've got a little too much
+power, maybe. Sometimes--occasionally--they explode."
+
+"Jet motors?" asked Joe. "Explode? That's news!"
+
+"A strictly special feature," said Talley drily. "Exclusive with
+pushpots for the Platform. They run 'em and run 'em and run 'em, on
+test. Nothing happens. But occasionally one blows up in flight. Once it
+happened warming up. That was a mess! The field's been losing two pilots
+a week. Lately more."
+
+"It doesn't sound exactly reasonable," said Joe slowly. He put a last
+forkful in his mouth.
+
+"It's also inconvenient," said Talley, "for the pilots."
+
+The pilot--Walton--opened his mouth.
+
+"It'd be sabotage," he said curtly, "if there was any way to do it. Four
+pilots killed this week."
+
+He lapsed into silence again.
+
+Joe considered. He frowned.
+
+A pushpot, outside the building, hysterically bellowed its way across
+the runway and its noise changed and it was aloft. It went spiraling up
+and up. Joe stirred his coffee.
+
+There were thin shoutings outside. A screaming, whistling noise! A
+crash! Something metallic shrieked and died. Then silence.
+
+Talley, the co-pilot, looked sick. Then he said: "Correction. It's been
+five pushpots exploded and five pilots killed this week. It's getting a
+little bit serious." He looked sharply at Joe. "Better drink your coffee
+before you go look. You won't want to, afterward."
+
+He was right.
+
+Joe saw the crashed pushpot half an hour later. He found that his
+ostensible assignment to the airfield for the investigation of sabotage
+was quaintly taken at face value there. A young lieutenant solemnly
+escorted him to the spot where the pushpot had landed, only ten feet
+from a hangar wall. The impact had carried parts of the pushpot five
+feet into the soil, and the splash effect had caved in the hangar
+wall-footing. There'd been a fire, which had been put out.
+
+The ungainly flying thing was twisted and torn. Entrails of steel tubing
+were revealed. The plastic cockpit cover was shattered. There were only
+grisly stains where the pilot had been.
+
+The motor had exploded. The jet motor. And jet motors do not explode.
+But this one had. It had burst from within, and the turbine vanes of the
+compressor section were revealed, twisted intolerably where the barrel
+of the motor was ripped away. The jagged edges of the tear testified to
+the violence of the internal explosion.
+
+Joe looked wise and felt ill. The young lieutenant very politely looked
+away as Joe's face showed how he felt. But of course there were the
+orders that said he was a sabotage expert. And Joe felt angrily that he
+was sailing under false colors. He didn't know anything about sabotage.
+He believed that he was probably the least qualified of anybody that
+security had ever empowered to look into methods of destruction.
+
+Yet, in a sense, that very fact was an advantage. A man may be set to
+work to contrive methods of sabotage. Another man may be trained to
+counter him. The training of the second man is essentially a study of
+how the first man's mind works. Then it can be guessed what this
+saboteur will think and do. But such a trained security man will often
+be badly handicapped if he comes upon the sabotage methods of a second
+man--an entirely different saboteur who thinks in a new fashion. The
+security man may be hampered in dealing with the second man's sabotage
+just because he knows too much about the thinking of the first.
+
+Joe went off and scowled at a wall, while the young lieutenant waited
+hopefully nearby.
+
+He was in a false position. But he could see that there was something
+odd here. There was a sort of pattern in the way the other sabotage
+incidents had been planned. It was hard to pick out, but it was there.
+Joe thought of the trick of booby-trapping a plane during its major
+overhaul, and then arming the traps at a later date.... A private plane
+had been fitted to deliver proximity rockets in mid-air when the
+transport ship flew past. There was the explosion of the cargo parcel
+which was supposed to contain requisition forms and stationery. And the
+attempt to smash the entire Platform by getting an atomic bomb into a
+plane and having a saboteur shoot the crew and then deliver the bomb at
+the Shed in an officially harmless aircraft....
+
+The common element in all those sabotage tricks was actually clear
+enough, but Joe wasn't used to thinking in such terms. He did know,
+though, that there was a pattern in those devices which did not exist in
+the blowing up of jet motors from inside.
+
+He scowled and scowled, racking his brains, while the young lieutenant
+watched respectfully, waiting for Joe to have an inspiration. Had Joe
+known it, the lieutenant was deeply impressed by his attempt at
+concentration on the problem it had not been Major Holt's intention for
+Joe to consider. When Joe temporarily gave up, the young lieutenant
+eagerly showed him over the whole field and all its workings.
+
+In mid-morning another pushpot fell screaming from the skies. That made
+six pushpots and six pilots for this week--two today. The things had no
+wings. They had no gliding angle. Pointed up, they could climb
+unbelievably. While their engines functioned, they could be controlled
+after a fashion. But they were not aircraft in any ordinary meaning of
+the word. They were engines with fuel tanks and controls in their
+exhaust blast. When their engines failed, they were so much junk falling
+out of the sky.
+
+Joe happened to see the second crash, and he didn't go to noon mess at
+all. He hadn't any appetite. Instead, he gloomily let himself be packed
+full of irrelevant information by the young lieutenant who considered
+that since Joe had been sent by security to look into sabotage, he must
+be given every possible opportunity to evaluate--that would be the word
+the young lieutenant would use--the situation.
+
+But all the time that Joe followed him about, his mind fumbled with a
+hunch. The idea was that there was a pattern of thinking in sabotage,
+and if you could solve it, you could outguess the saboteur. But the
+trouble was to figure out the similarity he felt existed in--say--a
+private plane shooting rockets and overhaul mechanics planting booby
+traps and faked shippers getting bombs on planes--and come to think of
+it, there was Braun....
+
+Braun was the key! Braun had been an honest man, with an honest loyalty
+to the United States which had given him refuge. But he had been
+blackmailed into accepting a container of atomic death to be released in
+the Shed. Radioactive cobalt did not belong in the Shed. That was the
+key to the pattern of sabotage. Braun was not to use any natural thing
+that belonged in the Shed. He was to be only the means by which
+something extraneous and deadly was to have been introduced.
+
+That was it! Somebody was devising ingenious ways to get well-known
+destructive devices into places where they did not belong, but where
+they would be effective. Rockets. Bombs. Even radioactive cobalt dust.
+All were perfectly well-known means of destruction. The minds that
+planned those tricks said, in effect: "These things will destroy. How
+can we get them to where they will destroy something?" It was a strict
+pattern.
+
+But the pushpot sabotage--and Joe was sure it was nothing else--was not
+that sort of thing. Making motors explode.... Motors don't explode. One
+couldn't put bombs in them. There wasn't room. The explosions Joe had
+seen looked as if they'd centered in the fire basket--technically the
+combustion area--behind the compressor and before the drive vanes. A jet
+motor whirled. Its front vanes compressed air, and a flame burned
+furiously in the compressed air, which swelled enormously and poured out
+past other vanes that took power from it to drive the compressor. The
+excess of blast poured out astern in a blue-white flame, driving the
+ship.
+
+But one couldn't put a bomb in a fire basket. The temperature would melt
+anything but the refractory alloys of which a jet motor has to be built.
+A bomb placed there would explode the instant a motor was started. It
+couldn't resist until the pushpot took off. It couldn't....
+
+This was a different kind of sabotage. There was a different mind at
+work.
+
+In the afternoon Joe watched the landings, while the young lieutenant
+followed him patiently about. A pushpot landing was quite unlike the
+landing of any other air-borne thing. It came flying down with
+incredible clumsiness, making an uproar out of all proportion to its
+landing speed. Pushpots came in with their tail ends low, crudely and
+cruelly clumsy in their handling. They had no wings or fins. They had to
+be balanced by their jet blasts. They had to be steered the same way.
+When a jet motor conked out there was no control. The pushpot fell.
+
+He carefully watched one landing now. It came down low, and swung in
+toward the field, and seemed to reach its stern down tentatively to
+slide on the earth, and the flame of its exhaust scorched the field, and
+it hesitated, pointing up at an ever steeper angle--and it touched and
+its nose tilted forward--and leaped up as the jet roared more loudly,
+and then touched again....
+
+The goal was for pushpots to touch ground finally with the whole weight
+of the flying monstrosity supported by the vertical thrust of the jet,
+and while it was moving forward at the lowest possible rate of speed.
+When that goal was achieved, they flopped solidly flat, slid a few feet
+on their metal bellies, and lay still. Some hit hard and tried to dig
+into the earth with their blunt noses. Joe finally saw one touch with no
+forward speed at all. It seemed to try to settle down vertically, as a
+rocket takes off. That one fell over backward and wallowed with its
+belly plates in the air before it rolled over on its side and rocked
+there.
+
+The last of a flight touched down and flopped, and the memory of the
+wreckage had been overlaid by these other sights and Joe could think of
+his next meal without aversion. When it was evening-mess time he went
+doggedly back to the mess hall. There was a sort of itchy feeling in his
+mind. He knew something he didn't know he knew. There was something in
+his memory that he couldn't recall.
+
+Talley and Walton were again at mess. Joe went to their table. Talley
+looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"Yes, I saw both crashes," said Joe gloomily, "and I didn't want any
+lunch. It was sabotage, though. Only it was different in kind--it was
+different in principle--from the other tricks. But I can't figure out
+what it is!"
+
+"Mmmmmm," said Talley, amiably. "You'd learn something if you could talk
+to the Resistance fighters and saboteurs in Europe. The Poles were
+wonderful at it! They had one chap who could get at the tank cars that
+took aviation gasoline from the refinery to the various Nazi airfields.
+He used to dump some chemical compound--just a tiny bit--into each
+carload of gas. It looked all right, smelled all right, and worked all
+right. But at odd moments Hitler's planes would crash. The valves would
+stick and the engine'd conk out."
+
+Joe stared at him. And it was just as simple as that. He saw.
+
+"The Nazis lost a lot of planes that way," said Talley. "Those that
+didn't crash from stuck valves in flight--they had to have their valves
+reground. Lost flying time. Wonderful! And when the Nazis did uncover
+the trick, they had to re-refine every drop of aviation gas they had!"
+
+Joe said: "That's it!"
+
+"That's it? And _it_ is what?"
+
+Then Joe said disgustedly: "Surely! It's the trick of loading CO_2
+bottles with explosive gas, too! Excuse me!"
+
+He got up from the table and hurried out. He found a phone booth and got
+the Shed, and then the security office, and at long last Major Holt. The
+Major's tone was curt.
+
+"Yes?... Joe?... The three men from the affair of the lake were tracked
+this morning. When they were cornered they tried to fight. I am afraid
+we'll get no information from them, if that's what you wanted to know."
+
+The Major's manner seemed to disapprove of Joe as expressing curiosity.
+His words meant, of course, that the three would-be murderers had been
+fatally shot.
+
+Joe said carefully: "That wasn't what I called about, sir. I think I've
+found out something about the pushpots. How they're made to crash. But
+my hunch needs to be checked."
+
+The Major said briefly: "Tell me."
+
+Joe said: "All the tricks but one, that were used on the plane I came
+on, were the same kind of trick. They were all arrangements for getting
+regular destructive items--bombs or rockets or whatever--where they
+could explode and smash things. The saboteurs were adding destructive
+items to various states of things. But there was one trick that was
+different."
+
+"Yes?" said the Major, on the telephone.
+
+"Putting explosive gas in the CO_2 bottles," said Joe painstakingly,
+"wasn't adding a new gadget to a situation. It was changing something
+that was already there. The saboteurs took something that belonged in a
+plane and changed it. They did not put something new into a plane--or a
+situation--that didn't belong there. It was a special kind of thinking.
+You see, sir?"
+
+The Major, to do him justice, had the gift of listening. He waited.
+
+"The pushpots," said Joe, very carefully, "naturally have their fuel
+stored in different tanks in different places, as airplanes do. The
+pilots switch on one tank or another just like plane pilots. In the
+underground storage and fueling pits, where all the fuel for the
+pushpots is kept in bulk, there are different tanks too. Naturally! At
+the fuel pump, the attendant can draw on any of those underground tanks
+he chooses."
+
+The Major said curtly: "Obviously! What of it?"
+
+"The pushpot motors explode," said Joe. "And they shouldn't. No bomb
+could be gotten into them without going off the instant they started,
+and they don't blow that way. I make a guess, sir, that one of the
+underground storage tanks--just one--contains doctored fuel. I'm
+guessing that as separate tanks in a pushpot are filled up, one by one,
+_one_ is filled from a particular underground storage tank that contains
+doctored fuel. The rest will have normal fuel. And the pushpot is going
+to crash when that tank, and only that tank, is used!"
+
+Major Holt was very silent.
+
+"You see, sir?" said Joe uneasily. "The pushpots could be fueled a
+hundred times over with perfectly good fuel, and then one tank in one of
+them would explode when drawn on. There'd be no pattern in the
+explosions...."
+
+Major Holt said coldly: "Of course I see! It would need only one tank of
+doctored fuel to be delivered to the airfield, and it need not be used
+for weeks. And there would be no trace in the wreckage, after the fire!
+You are telling me there is one underground storage tank in which the
+fuel is highly explosive. It is plausible. I will have it checked
+immediately."
+
+He hung up, and Joe went back to his meal. He felt uneasy. There
+couldn't be any way to make a jet motor explode unless you fed it
+explosive fuel. Then there couldn't be any way to stop it. And
+then--after the wreck had burned--there couldn't be any way to prove it
+was really sabotage. But the feeling of having reported only a guess was
+not too satisfying. Joe ate gloomily. He didn't pay much attention to
+Talley. He had that dogged, uncomfortable feeling a man has when he
+knows he doesn't qualify as an expert, but feels that he's hit on
+something the experts have missed.
+
+Half an hour after the evening mess--near sunset--a security officer
+wearing a uniform hunted up Joe at the airfield.
+
+"Major Holt sent me over to bring you back to the Shed," he said
+politely.
+
+"If you don't mind," said Joe with equal politeness, "I'll check that."
+
+He went to the phone booth in the barracks. He got Major Holt on the
+wire. And Major Holt hadn't sent anybody to get him.
+
+So Joe stayed in the telephone booth--on orders--while the Major did
+some fast telephoning. It was comforting to know he had a pistol in his
+pocket, and it was frustrating not to be allowed to try to capture the
+fake security officer himself. The idea of murdering Joe had not been
+given up, and he'd have liked to take part personally in protecting
+himself. But it was much more important for the fake security man to be
+captured than for Joe to have the satisfaction of attempting it himself.
+
+As a matter of fact, the fake officer started his getaway the instant
+Joe went to check on his orders. The officer knew they'd be found faked.
+It had not been practical for him to shoot Joe down where he was. There
+were too many people around for this murderer to have a chance at a
+getaway.
+
+But he didn't get away, at that. Twenty minutes later, while Joe still
+waited fretfully in the phone booth, the phone bell rang and Major Holt
+was again on the wire. And this time Joe was instructed to come back to
+the Shed. He had exact orders whom to come with, and they had orders
+which identified them to Joe.
+
+Some eight miles from the airfield--it was just dusk--Joe came upon a
+wrecked car with motorcycle security guards working on it. They stopped
+Joe's escort. Joe's phone call had set off an alarm. A plane had spotted
+this car tearing away from the airfield, and motorcyclists were guided
+in pursuit by the plane. When it wouldn't stop--when the fake Security
+officer in it tried to shoot his way clear--the plane strafed him. So he
+was dead and his car was a wreck, and the motorcycle men were trying to
+get some useful information from his body and the car.
+
+Joe went to the Major's house in the officers'-quarters area. The Major
+looked even more tired than before, but he nodded approvingly at Joe.
+Sally was there too, and she regarded Joe with a look which was a good
+deal warmer than her father's.
+
+"You did very well," said the Major detachedly. "I don't have too high
+an opinion of the brains of anybody your age, Joe. When you are my age,
+you won't either. But whether you have brains or simply luck, you are
+turning out to be very useful."
+
+Joe said: "I'm getting security conscious, sir. I want to stay alive."
+
+The Major regarded him with irony.
+
+"I was thinking of the fact that when you worked out the matter of the
+doctored pushpot fuel, you did not try to be a hero and prove it
+yourself. You referred it to me. That was the proper procedure. You
+could have been killed, investigating--it's clear that the saboteurs
+would be pleased to have a good chance to murder you--and your
+suspicions might never have reached me. They were correct, by the way.
+One storage tank underground was half-full of doctored fuel. Rather more
+important, another _was_ full, not yet drawn on."
+
+The Major went on, without apparent cordiality: "It seems probable that
+if this particular sabotage trick had not been detected--it seems likely
+that on the Platform's take-off, all or most of the pushpots would have
+been fueled to explode at some time after the Platform was aloft, and
+before it could possibly get out to space."
+
+Joe felt queer. The Major was telling him, in effect, that he might have
+kept the Platform from crashing on take-off. It was a good but upsetting
+sensation. It was still more important to Joe that the Platform get out
+to space than that he be credited with saving it. And it was not
+reassuring to hear that it might have been wrecked.
+
+"Your reasoning," added the Major coldly, "was soundly based. It seems
+certain that there is not one central authority directing all the
+sabotage against the Platform. There are probably several sabotage
+organizations, all acting independently and probably hating each other,
+but all hating the Platform more."
+
+Joe blinked. He hadn't thought of that. It was disheartening.
+
+"It will really be bad," said the Major, "if they ever co-operate!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Joe.
+
+"But I called you back from the airfield," the Major told him without
+warmth, "to say that you have done a good job. I have talked to
+Washington. Naturally, you deserve a reward."
+
+"I'm doing all right, sir," said Joe awkwardly. "I want to see the
+Platform go up and stay up!"
+
+The Major nodded impatiently.
+
+"Naturally! But--ah--one of the men selected and trained for the crew of
+the Platform has been--ah--taken ill. In strict confidence, because of
+sabotage it has been determined to close in the Platform and get it
+aloft at the earliest possible instant, even if its interior
+arrangements are incomplete. So--ah--in view of your usefulness, I said
+to Washington that I believed the greatest reward you could be offered
+was--ah--to be trained as an alternate crew member, to take this man's
+place if he does not recover in time."
+
+The room seemed to reel around Joe. Then he gulped and said: "Yes, sir!
+I mean--that's right. I mean, I'd rather have that, than all the money
+in the world!"
+
+"Very well." The Major turned to leave the room. "You'll stay here, be
+guarded a good deal more closely than before, and take instructions. But
+you understand that you are still only an alternate for a crew member!
+The odds are definitely against your going!"
+
+"That's--that's all right, sir," said Joe unsteadily. "That's quite all
+right!"
+
+The Major went out. Joe stood still, trying to realize what all this
+might mean to him. Then Sally stirred.
+
+"You might say thanks, Joe."
+
+Her eyes were shining, but she looked proud, too.
+
+"I put it in Dad's head that that was what you'd like better than
+anything else," she told him. "If I can't go up in the Platform
+myself--and I can't--I wanted you to. Because I knew you wanted to."
+
+She smiled at him as he tried incoherently to talk. With a quiet
+maternal patience, she led him out on the porch of her father's house
+and sat there and listened to him. It was a long time before he realized
+that she was humoring him. Then he stopped short and looked at her
+suspiciously. He found that in his enthusiastic gesticulations he had
+been gesticulating with _her_ hand as well as his own.
+
+"I guess I'm pretty crazy," he said ruefully. "Shooting off my mouth
+about myself up there in space.... You're pretty decent to stand me the
+way I am, Sally."
+
+He paused. Then he said humbly: "I'm plain lucky. But knowing you
+and--having you like me reasonably much is pretty lucky too!"
+
+She looked at him noncommittally.
+
+He added painfully: "And not only because you spoke to your father and
+told him just the right thing, either. You're--sort of swell, Sally!"
+
+She let out her breath. Then she grinned at him.
+
+"That's the difference between us, Joe," she told him. "To me, what you
+just said is the most important thing anybody's said tonight."
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+The world turned over on its axis with unfailing regularity, and nights
+followed mornings and mornings followed nights according to
+well-established precedent. One man turned up in Bootstrap with
+radiation burns, but he had not offered himself for check over at the
+hospital. He was found dead in his lodging. Since nobody else appeared
+to have suffered any burns at all, it was assumed that he was the
+messenger who had brought the radioactive cobalt to Braun, who also had
+been doomed by possession of the deadly stuff, but who had broken the
+chain of fatality by not dumping it free into the air of the Shed. Under
+the circumstances, then, three-shift work on the Platform was resumed,
+and three times in each twenty-four hours fleets of busses rolled out of
+Bootstrap carrying men to work in the Shed, and rolled back again loaded
+with men who had just stopped working there.
+
+Trucks carried materials to the Shed, and swing-up doors opened in the
+great dome's eastern wall, and the trucks went in and unloaded. Then the
+trucks went out of the same doors and trundled back for more materials.
+In the Shed, shining plates of metal swung aloft, and welding torches
+glittered in the maze of joists and upright pipes that still covered the
+monster shape. Each day it was a little more nearly complete. In a
+separate, guarded workshop by a sidewall, the Chief and Haney and Mike
+the midget labored mightily to accomplish the preposterous. They grew
+lean and red-eyed from fatigue, and short of temper and ever more
+fanatical--and security men moved about in seeming uselessness but
+never-ceasing vigilance.
+
+There were changes, though. The assembly line of pushpots grew shorter,
+and the remaining monstrosities around the sidewall were plainly near to
+completion. There came a day, indeed, when only five ungainly objects
+remained on that line, and even they were completely plated in and
+needed only a finishing touch. It was at this time that more crates and
+parcels arrived from the Kenmore Precision Tool plant, and Joe dropped
+his schoolroomlike instruction course in space flight for work of
+greater immediate need. He and his allies worked twice around the clock
+to assemble the replaced parts with the repaired elements of the pilot
+gyros. They grew groggy from the desperate need both for speed and for
+absolute accuracy, but they put the complex device together, and
+adjusted it, and surveyed the result through red-rimmed eyes, and were
+too weary to rejoice.
+
+Then Joe threw a switch and the reconstituted pilot gyro assembly began
+to hum quietly, and the humming rose to a whine, and the whine went
+deliberately up the scale until it ceased to be audible at all.
+Presently a dial announced the impossible, and they gazed at a device
+that seemed to be doing nothing whatever. The gyros appeared quite
+motionless. They spun with such incredible precision that it was not
+possible to detect that they moved a hairbreadth. And the whole complex
+device looked very simple and useless.
+
+But the four of them gazed at it--now that it worked--with a sudden
+passionate satisfaction. Joe moved a control, and the axis of the device
+moved smoothly to a new place and stayed there. He moved the control
+again, and it moved to another position and stayed there. And to another
+and another and another.
+
+Then the Chief took Joe's place, and under his hand the seemingly static
+disks--which were actually spinning at forty thousand revolutions per
+minute--turned obediently and without any appearance of the spectacular.
+Then Haney worked the controls. And Mike put the device through its
+paces.
+
+Mike left the gyros spinning so that the main axis pointed at the sun,
+invisible beyond the Shed's roof. And then all four of them watched. It
+took minutes for this last small test to show its results. But visibly
+and inexorably the pilot gyros followed the unseen sun, and they would
+have resisted with a force of very many tons any attempt to move them
+aside by so little as one-tenth of a second of arc, which would mean
+something like one three-hundred-thousandth of a right angle. And these
+pilot gyros would control the main gyros with just this precision, and
+after the Platform was out in space could hold the Platform itself with
+the steadiness needed for astronomical observation past achievement from
+the surface of the Earth.
+
+The pilot gyros, in a word, were ready for installation.
+
+Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike were not beautiful to look at. They
+were begrimed from head to toe, and their eyes were bloodshot, and they
+were exhausted to the point where they did not even notice any longer
+that they were weary. And their mental processes were not at all normal,
+so that they were quarrelsome and arbitrary and arrogant to the men with
+the flat-bed trailer who came almost reverently to move their work. They
+went jealously with the thing they had rebuilt, and they were rude to
+engineers and construction workers and supervisors, and they shouted
+angrily at each other as it was hoisted up a shaft that had been left in
+the Platform for its entrance, and they were very far from tactful as
+they watched with hot, anxious eyes as it was bolted into place.
+
+It would be welded later, but first it was tried out. And it moved the
+main gyros! They weighed many times what the pilot gyros did, but even
+when they were spinning the pilot gyros stirred them. Of course the
+main-gyro linkage to the fabric of the Shed had to be broken for this
+test, or the gyros would have twisted the giant upon its support and all
+the scaffolding around it would have been broken and the men on it
+killed.
+
+But the gyros worked! They visibly and unquestionably worked! They
+controlled the gigantic wheels that would steer the Platform in its
+take-off, and later would swing it to receive the cargo rockets coming
+up from Earth. The pilot instrument worked! There was no vibration. In
+its steering apparatus the Platform was ready for space!
+
+Then the Chief yawned, and his eyes glazed as he stood in the huge gyro
+room. And Haney's knees wobbled, and he sat down and was instantly
+asleep. Then Joe vaguely saw somebody--it was Major Holt--holding Mike
+in his arms as if Mike were a baby. Mike would have resented it
+furiously if he had been awake. And then suddenly Joe didn't know what
+was going on around him, either.
+
+There was a definite hiatus in his consciousness. He came back to
+awareness very slowly. He was half-awake and half-asleep for a long
+time. He only knew contentedly that his job was finished. Then, slowly,
+he realized that he was in a bunk in one of the Platform sleeping
+cabins, and the inflated cover that was Sally's contribution to the
+Platform held him very gently in place. Somehow it was infinitely
+soothing, and he had an extraordinary sensation of peacefulness and
+relaxation and fulfillment. The pilot gyros were finished and in
+position. His responsibility to them was ended. And he had slept the
+clock around three times. He'd slept for thirty-six hours. He was
+starving.
+
+Sally had evidently constituted herself a watch over Joe as he slept,
+because she faced him immediately when he went groggily out of the cabin
+to look for a place to wash. He was still covered with the grime of past
+labor, and he had been allowed to sleep with only his shoes removed. He
+was not an attractive sight. But Sally regarded him with an approval
+that her tone belied.
+
+"You can get a shower," she told him firmly, "and then I'll have some
+breakfast for you. Fresh clothes are waiting, too."
+
+Joe said peacefully: "The gyros are finished and they work!"
+
+"Don't I know?" demanded Sally. "Go get washed and come back for
+breakfast. The Chief and Haney and Mike are already awake. And because
+of the four of you, they've been able to advance the Platform's take-off
+time--to just two days off! It leaked out, and now it's official. And
+you made it possible!"
+
+This was a slight exaggeration, but it was pardonable because of Sally's
+partiality for Joe. He went groggily into the special shower arrangement
+in the Platform. In orbit, there would be no gravity, so a tub bath was
+unthinkable. The shower cabinet was a cubbyhole with handgrips on all
+four sides and straps into which one could slip his feet. When Joe
+turned handles, needle sprays sprang at him from all sides, and
+simultaneously a ventilator fan began to run. When in space that fan
+could draw out what would otherwise become an inchoate mixture of air
+and quite weightless water-drops. In space a man might drown in his own
+shower bath without the fan. The apparatus for collecting the water
+again was complex, but Joe didn't think about that at the moment. He
+considered ruefully that however convenient this system might be out in
+the Platform's orbit, it left something to be desired on Earth.
+
+But there were clean clothes waiting when he came out. He dressed and
+felt brand new and utterly peaceful and rested, and it seemed to him
+very much like the way he had often felt on a new spring morning. It was
+very, very good!
+
+Then he smelled coffee and became ravenous.
+
+There were the others in the Platform's kitchen, sitting in the chairs
+that had straps on them so the crew needn't float about because of
+weightlessness. There was an argument in progress. The Chief grinned at
+Joe. Mike the midget looked absorbed. Haney was thinking something out,
+rather painfully. Sally was busy at the Platform's very special stove.
+She had ham and eggs and pancakes ready for Joe to eat.
+
+"Gentlemen," she said, "you are about to eat the first meal ever cooked
+in a space ship--and like it!"
+
+She served them and sat companionably down with them all. But her eyes
+were very warm when she looked at Joe.
+
+"Leavin' aside what we were arguin' about," said the Chief blissfully,
+"Sally here--mind if I call you Sally, ma'am?--she says the slide-rule
+guys have given our job the works and they say it's a better job than
+they designed. Take a bow, Joe."
+
+Sally said firmly: "When the technical journals are through talking
+about the job you did, you'll all four be famous for precision-machining
+technique and improvements on standard practices."
+
+"Which," said the Chief sarcastically, "is gonna make us feel fine when
+we're back to welding and stuff!"
+
+"No more welding," Sally told him. "Not on this job. The Platform's
+closed in. They've started to take down the scaffolding."
+
+The Chief looked startled. Haney asked: "Laying off men yet?"
+
+"Not you," Sally assured him. "Definitely not you. You four have the
+very top super-special security rating there is! I think you're the only
+four people in the world my father is sure can't be reached, somehow, to
+make you harm the Platform."
+
+Mike said abruptly: "Yeah. The Major thought he had headaches before.
+Now he's really got 'em!"
+
+Mike hadn't seemed to be listening. He'd acted as if he were feverishly
+absorbing the feel of being inside the Platform--not as a workman
+building it, but as a man whose proper habitat it would become. But Joe
+suddenly realized that his comment was exact. There'd been plenty of
+sabotage to prevent the Platform from reaching completion. But now it
+was ready to take off in two days. If it was to be stopped, it would
+have to be stopped within forty-eight hours by people with plenty of
+resources, who for their own evil ends needed it to be stopped. These
+last two days would contain the last-ditch, most desperate, most
+completely ruthless stepped-up attempts at destruction that could
+possibly be made. And Major Holt had to handle them.
+
+But the four at table--five, with Sally--were peculiarly relaxed. The
+matter they'd handled had been conspicuous, perhaps, but it was still
+only one of thousands that had to be accomplished before the Platform
+could take off. But they had the infinitely restful feeling of a job
+well done.
+
+"No more welding," said Haney meditatively, "and our job on the gyros
+finished. What are we gonna do?"
+
+The Chief said forcefully: "Me, I'm gonna sweep floors or something, but
+I'm sure gonna stick around and watch the take-off!"
+
+Joe said nothing. He looked at Sally. She became very busy, making
+certain the others did not want more to eat. After a long time Joe said,
+with very careful casualness, "Come to think of it, I was getting loaded
+up with astrogation theory when I had to stop and pitch in on the gyros.
+How's that sick crew member, Sally?"
+
+"I--wouldn't know," answered Sally unconvincingly. "Have some more
+coffee?"
+
+Joe made his face go completely expressionless. There was nothing else
+to do. Sally hadn't said that his chances looked bad for making the crew
+of the Platform when it went out to space. But Sally had ways of knowing
+things. She would be sure to keep informed on a matter like that,
+because she was wearing Joe's ring and it would have taken a great deal
+of discouragement to keep her from finding out good news to tell him.
+She didn't have any good news. So it must be bad.
+
+Joe drank his coffee, trying to make himself believe that he'd known all
+along he wasn't going to make the crew. He'd started late to learn the
+things a crew member ought to know. He'd stopped at the most crucial
+part of his training to work on the gyros, which were more crucial
+still. He'd slept a day and a half. The platform would take off in
+forty-eight hours. He tried to reason carefully that it was common sense
+to use a man who was fully trained from the beginning for a place in the
+crew, rather than a latecomer like himself. But it wasn't easy to take.
+
+Mike the midget said suddenly: "I got a hunch."
+
+"Shoot it," said the Chief, amiably.
+
+"I got a hunch I know what kind of sabotage will be tried next--and
+when," said Mike.
+
+The others looked at him--all but Joe, who stared at the wall.
+
+"There hasn't been one set of guys trying to smash the Platform," said
+Mike excitedly. "There's been four or five. Joe found a gang sabotaging
+the pushpots that didn't think like the gang that blackmailed Braun. And
+the gang that tried to kill us up at Red Canyon may be another. There
+could be others: fascists and commies and nationalists and crackpots of
+all kinds. And they all know they've got to work fast, even if they have
+to help each other. Get it?"
+
+Haney growled.
+
+"I'll buy what you've said so far," said the Chief. "Sure! Those
+so-and-sos will all pile in everything they got at the last minute.
+They'll even pull together to smash the Platform--and then double-cross
+each other afterward. But what'll they do, an' when?"
+
+"This time they'll try outright violence," said Mike coldly, "instead of
+sneaking. They'll try something really rough. For sneaking, one time's
+as good as another, but for really rough stuff, there's just one time
+when the Platform hasn't got plenty of guys around ready to fight for
+it."
+
+The Chief whistled softly.
+
+"You mean change-shift time! Which one?"
+
+"The first one possible," said Mike briefly. "After every shift, things
+will get tighter. So my guess is the next shift, if they can. And if one
+gang starts something, the others will have to jump right in. You see?"
+
+That made sense. One attempt at actual violence, defeated, would create
+a rigidity of defense that would make others impossible. If a successful
+attempt at violent sabotage was to be made, the efforts of all groups
+would have to be timed to the first, or abandoned.
+
+"I could--uh--set up a sort of smoke screen," said Mike. "We'll fake
+we're going to smash something--and let those saboteurs find it out.
+They'll see it as a chance to do their stuff with us to run interference
+for them.--Sally, does your father sure-enough trust us?"
+
+Sally nodded.
+
+"He doesn't talk very cordially, but he trusts you."
+
+"Okay," said Mike. "You tell him, private, that I'm setting up something
+tricky. He can laugh off anything his security guys report that I'm
+mixed up in. Joe'll see that he gets the whole picture beforehand. But
+he ain't to tell anybody--not _any_body--that something is getting
+framed up. Right?"
+
+"I'll ask him," said Sally. "He is pretty desperate. He's sure some
+last-minute frantic assault on the Platform will be made. But----"
+
+"We'll tip him in plenty of time," said Mike with authority. "In time
+for him to play along, but not for a leak to spoil things. Okay?"
+
+"I'll make the bargain," Sally assured him, "if it can be made."
+
+Mike nodded. He drained his coffee cup and slipped down from his chair.
+
+"Come on, Chief! C'mon, Haney!"
+
+He led them out of the room.
+
+Joe fiddled with his spoon a moment, and then said: "The crewman I was
+to have subbed for if he didn't get well--he did, didn't he?"
+
+Sally answered reluctantly: "Y-yes."
+
+Joe said measuredly: "Well, then--that's that! I guess it will be all
+right for me to stick around and watch the take-off?"
+
+Sally's eyes were misty.
+
+"Of course it will, Joe! I'm so sorry!"
+
+Joe grinned, but even to himself his face seemed like a mask.
+
+"Into each life some rain must fall. Let's go out and see what's been
+accomplished since I went to sleep. All right?"
+
+They went out of the Platform together. And as soon as they reached the
+floor of the Shed it was plain that the stage had been set for stirring
+events.
+
+The top five or six levels of scaffolding had already been removed, and
+more of the girders and pipes were coming down in bundles on lines from
+giraffelike cranes. There were some new-type trucks in view, too, giants
+of the kind that carry ready-mixed concrete through city streets. They
+were pouring a doughy white paste into huge buckets that carried it
+aloft, where it vanished into the mouths of tubes that seemed to replace
+the scaffolding along the Platform's sides.
+
+"Lining the rockets," said Sally in a subdued voice.
+
+Joe watched. He knew about this, too. It had been controversial for a
+time. After the pushpots and their jatos had served as the first two
+stages of a multiple-rocket aggregation, the Platform carried rocket
+fuel as the third stage. But the Platform was a highly special ballistic
+problem. It would take off almost horizontally--a great advantage in
+fueling matters. This was practical simply because the Platform could be
+lifted far beyond effective air resistance, and already have
+considerable speed before its own rockets flared.
+
+Moreover, it was not a space ship in the sense of needing rockets for
+landing purposes. It wouldn't land. Not ever. And again there was the
+fact that men would be riding in it. That ruled out the use of eight- and
+ten- and fifteen-gravity acceleration. It had to make use of a long
+period of relatively slow acceleration rather than a brief terrific
+surge of power. So its very special rockets had been designed as the
+answer.
+
+They were solid-fuel rockets, though solid fuels had been long abandoned
+for long-range missiles. But they were entirely unlike other solid-fuel
+drives. The pasty white compound being hauled aloft was a self-setting
+refractory compound with which the rocket tubes would be lined, with the
+solid fuel filling the center. The tubes themselves were thin
+steel--absurdly thin--but wound with wire under tension to provide
+strength against bursting, like old-fashioned rifle cannon.
+
+When the fuel was fired, it would be at the muzzle end of the rocket
+tube, and the fuel would burn forward at so many inches per second. The
+refractory lining would resist the rocket blast for a certain time and
+then crumble away. Crumbling, the refractory particles would be hurled
+astern and so serve as reaction mass. When the steel outer tubes were
+exposed, they would melt and be additional reaction mass.
+
+In effect, as the rocket fuel was exhausted, the tubes that contained it
+dissolved into their own blast and added to the accelerating thrust,
+even as they diminished the amount of mass to be accelerated. Then the
+quantity of fuel burned could diminish--the tubes could grow smaller--so
+the rate of speed gain would remain constant. Under the highly special
+conditions of this particular occasion, there was a notable gain in
+efficiency over a liquid-fuel rocket design. For one item, the Platform
+would certainly have no use for fuel pumps and fuel tanks once it was in
+its orbit. In this way, it wouldn't have them. Their equivalent in mass
+would have been used to gain velocity. And when the Platform finally
+rode in space, it would have expended every ounce of the driving
+apparatus used to get it there.
+
+Now the rocket tubes were being lined and loaded. The time to take-off
+was growing short indeed.
+
+Joe watched a while and turned away. He felt very good because he'd
+finished his job and lived up to the responsibility he'd had. But he
+felt very bad because he'd had an outside chance to be one of the first
+men ever to make a real space journey--and now it was gone. He couldn't
+resent the decision against him. If it had been put up to him, he'd
+probably have made the same hard decision himself. But it hurt to have
+had even a crazy hope taken away.
+
+Sally said, trying hard to interest him, "These rockets hold an awful
+lot of fuel, Joe! And it's better than scientists thought a chemical
+fuel could ever be!"
+
+"Yes," said Joe.
+
+"Fluorine-beryllium," said Sally urgently. "It fits in with the
+pushpots' having pressurized cockpits. Rockets like that couldn't be
+used on the ground! The fumes would be poisonous!"
+
+But Joe only nodded in agreement. He was apathetic. He was uninterested.
+He was still thinking of that lost trip in space. He realized that Sally
+was watching his face.
+
+"Joe," she said unhappily, "I wish you wouldn't look like that!"
+
+"I'm all right," he told her.
+
+"You act as if you didn't care about anything," she protested, "and you
+do!"
+
+"I'm all right," he repeated.
+
+"I'd like to go outside somewhere," she said abruptly, "but after what
+happened up at the lake, I mustn't. Would you like to go up to the top
+of the Shed?"
+
+"If you want to," he agreed without enthusiasm.
+
+He followed when she went to a doorway--with a security guard beside
+it--in the sidewall. She flashed her pass and the guard let them
+through. They began to walk up an inclined, endless, curving ramp. It
+was between the inner and outer skins of the Shed. There had to be two
+skins because the Shed was too big to be ventilated properly, and the
+hot desert sunshine on one side would have made "weather" inside.
+There'd have been a convection-current motion of the air in the enclosed
+space, and minor whirlwinds, and there could even be miniature
+thunderclouds and lightning. Joe remembered reading that such things had
+happened in a shed built for Zeppelins before he was born.
+
+They came upon an open gallery, and there was a security man looking
+down at the floor and the Platform. He had a very good view of all that
+went on.
+
+They went around another long circuit of the slanting gallery, dimly
+lighted with small electric bulbs. They came to a second gallery, and
+saw the Platform again. There was another guard here.
+
+They were halfway up the globular wall now, and were visibly suspended
+over emptiness. The view of the Platform was impressive. There were an
+astonishing number of rocket tubes being fastened to the outside of that
+huge object. Three giant cranes, working together, hoisted a tube to the
+last remaining level of scaffolding, and men swarmed on it and fastened
+it to the swelling hull. As soon as it was fast, other men hurried into
+it with the white pasty stuff to line it from end to end. The tubes
+would nearly hide the structure they were designed to propel. But they'd
+all be burned away when it reached its destination.
+
+"Wonderful, isn't it?" asked Sally hopefully.
+
+Joe looked, and said without warmth, "It's the most wonderful thing that
+anybody ever even tried to do."
+
+Which was true enough, but the zest of it had unreasonably departed for
+Joe for the time being. His disappointment was new.
+
+Halfway around again, Sally opened a door, and Joe was almost surprised
+out of his lethargy. Here was a watching post on the outside of the
+monstrous half-globe. There were two guards here, with fifty-caliber
+machine guns under canvas hoods. Their duties were tedious but
+necessary. They watched the desert. From this height it stretched out
+for miles, and Bootstrap could be seen as a series of white specks far
+away with hills behind it.
+
+Ultimately Sally and Joe came to the very top of the Shed into the open
+air. From here the steep plating curved down and away in every
+direction. The sunshine was savagely bright and shining, but there was a
+breeze. And here there was a considerable expanse fenced in--almost an
+acre, it seemed. There were metal-walled small buildings with
+innumerable antennae of every possible shape for the reception of every
+conceivable wave length. There were three radar bowl reflectors turning
+restlessly to scan the horizon, and a fourth which went back and forth,
+revolving, to scan the sky itself. Sally told Joe that in the very
+middle--where there was a shed with a domelike roof which wasn't
+metal--there was a wave-guide radar that could spot a plane within three
+feet vertically, and horizontally at a distance of thirty miles, with
+greater distances in proportion.
+
+There were guns down in pits so their muzzles wouldn't interfere with
+the radar. There were enough non-recoil anti-aircraft guns to defend the
+Shed against anything one could imagine.
+
+"And there are jet planes overhead too," said Sally. "Dad asked to have
+them reinforced, and two new wings of jet fighters landed yesterday at a
+field somewhere over yonder. There are plenty of guards!"
+
+The Platform was guarded as no object in all history had ever been
+guarded. It was ironic that it had to be protected so, because it was
+actually the only hope of escape from atomic war. But that was why some
+people hated the Platform, and their hatred had made it seem obviously
+an item of national defense. Ironically that was the reason the money
+had been provided for its construction. But the greatest irony of all
+was that its most probable immediate usefulness would be the help it
+would give in making nuclear experiments that weren't safe enough to
+make on Earth.
+
+That was pure irony. Because if those experiments were successful, they
+should mean that everybody in the world would in time become rich beyond
+envy.
+
+But Joe couldn't react to the fact. He was drained and empty of emotion
+because his job was done and he'd lost a very flimsy hope to be one of
+the Platform's first crew.
+
+He didn't really feel better until late that night, when suddenly he
+realized that life was real and life was earnest, because a panting man
+was trying to strangle Joe with his bare hands. Joe was hampered in his
+self-defense because a large number of battling figures trampled over
+him and his antagonist together. They were underneath the Platform, and
+Joe expected to be blown to bits any second.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+Joe sat on the porch of Major Holt's quarters in the area next to the
+Shed. It was about eight-thirty, and dark, but there was a moon. And Joe
+had come to realize that his personal disappointment was only his
+personal disappointment, and that he hadn't any right to make a nuisance
+of himself about it. Therefore he didn't talk about the thing nearest in
+his mind, but something else that was next nearest or farther away
+still. Yet, with the Shed filling up a full quarter of the sky, and a
+gibbous moon new-risen from the horizon, it was not natural for a young
+man like Joe to speak purely of earthly things.
+
+"It'll come," he said yearningly, staring at the moon. "If the Platform
+gets up day after tomorrow, it's going to take time to ferry up the
+equipment it ought to have. But still, somebody ought to land on the
+moon before too long."
+
+He added absorbedly: "Once the Platform is fully equipped, it won't take
+many rocket pay loads to refill a ship's tanks at the Platform, before
+it can head on out."
+
+Mathematically, a rocket ship that could leave the Platform with full
+fuel tanks should have fuel to reach the moon and land on it, and take
+off again and return to the Platform. The mathematical fact had a
+peculiar nagging flavor. When a dream is subjected to statistical
+analysis and the report is in its favor, a dreamer's satisfaction is
+always diluted by a subconscious feeling that the report is only part of
+the dream. Everybody worries a little when a cherished dream shows a
+likelihood of coming true. Some people take firm steps to stop things
+right there, so a romantic daydream won't be spoiled by transmutation
+into prosaic fact. But Joe said doggedly: "Twenty ferry trips to pile up
+fuel, and the twenty-first ship should be able to refuel and go on out.
+And then somebody will step out on the moon!"
+
+He was disappointed now. He wouldn't be the one to do it. But somebody
+would.
+
+"You might try for the ferry service," said Sally uneasily.
+
+"I will," said Joe grimly, "but I won't be hoping too much. After all,
+there are astronomers and physics sharks and such things, who'll be glad
+to learn to run rockets in order to practice their specialties out of
+atmosphere."
+
+Sally said mournfully: "I can't seem to say anything to make you feel
+better!"
+
+"But you do," said Joe. He added grandiloquently, "But for your
+unflagging faith in me, I would not have the courage to bear the burdens
+of everyday life."
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+"Stop it!"
+
+"All right." But he said quietly, "You are a good kid, Sally. You know,
+it's not too bright of me to mourn."
+
+She drew a deep breath.
+
+"That's better! Now, I want----"
+
+There was a gangling figure walking down the concrete path between the
+trim, monotonous cottages that were officers' quarters at the Shed.
+
+Joe said sharply: "That's Haney! What's he doing here?" He called,
+"Haney!"
+
+Haney's manner took on purpose. He came across the grass--the lawns
+around the officers' quarters contained the only grass in twenty miles.
+
+"Hiya," said Haney uncomfortably. He spoke politely to Sally. "Hiya.
+Uh--you want to get in on the party, Joe?"
+
+"What kind?"
+
+"The party Mike was talkin' about," said Haney. "He's set it up. He
+wants me to get you and a kinda--uh--undercover tip-off to Major Holt."
+
+Joe stirred. Sally said hospitably: "Sit down. You've noticed that my
+father gave you full security clearance, so you can go anywhere?"
+
+Haney perched awkwardly on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Yeah. That's helped with the party. It's how I got here, as far as that
+goes. Mike's on top of the world."
+
+"Shoot it," said Joe.
+
+"Y'know he's been pretty bitter about things," said Haney carefully.
+"He's been sayin' that little guys like him ought to be the spacemen.
+There's half a dozen other little guys been working on the Platform too.
+They can get in cracks an' buck rivets an' so on. Useful. He's had 'em
+all hopped up on the fact that the Platform coulda been finished months
+ago if it'd been built for them, an' they could get to the moon an' back
+while full-sized guys couldn't an' so on. Remember?"
+
+"I remember," said Sally.
+
+"They've all been beefin' about it," explained Haney. "People know how
+they feel. So today Mike went and talked to one or two of 'em. An' they
+started actin' mysterious, passin' messages back an' forth an' so on.
+Little guys, actin' important. Security guys wouldn't notice 'em much.
+Y'don't take a guy Mike's size serious, unless you know him. Then he's
+the same as anybody else. So the security guys didn't pay any attention
+to him. But some other guys did. Some special other guys. They saw those
+little fellas actin' like they were cookin' up somethin' fancy. An' they
+bit."
+
+"Bit?" asked Sally.
+
+"They got curious. So Mike an' his gang got confidential. An' they're
+going to have help sabotagin' the Platform when the next shift changes.
+The midgets gettin' even for bein' laughed at, see? They're pretending
+their plan is that when the Platform's sabotaged--not smashed, but just
+messed up so it can't take off--the big brass will let 'em take a ferry
+rocket up in a hurry, an' get it in orbit, an' use it for a Platform
+until the big Platform can be mended an' sent up. Once they're up there,
+there's no use tryin' to stop the big Platform. So it can go ahead."
+
+Joe said dubiously: "I think I see...."
+
+"Mike and his gang of little guys are bein' saps--on purpose. If
+anybody's goin' to pull some fast stuff, next shift change--that's the
+time everybody's got to! Last chance! Mike and his gang don't know
+what's gonna happen, but they sure know when! They're invitin' the real
+saboteurs to make fools of 'em. And what'll happen?"
+
+Joe said drily: "The logical thing would be to feel sorry for the big
+guys who think they're smarter than Mike."
+
+"Uh-huh," said Haney, deadly serious. "Mike's story is there's half a
+dozen rocket tubes already loaded. They're goin' to fire those rockets
+between shifts. The Platform gets shoved off its base an' maybe dented,
+and so on. Mike's gang say they got the figures to prove they can go up
+in a ferry rocket an' be a Platform, and the big brass won't have any
+choice but to let 'em."
+
+Sally said: "I don't think they know how the big brass thinks."
+
+Haney and Joe said together, "No!" and Joe added: "Mike's not crazy! He
+knows better! But it's a good story for somebody who doesn't know Mike."
+
+Haney said in indignation: "I came out here to ask the Major to help us.
+The Chief's gettin' a gang together, too. There's some Indians of his
+tribe that work here. We can count on them for plenty of rough stuff.
+And there's Joe and me. The point is that Mike's stunt makes it certain
+that everything busts loose at a time we can know in advance. If the
+Major gives us a free hand, and then in the last five minutes takes his
+own measures--so they can't leak out ahead of time and tip off the gangs
+we want to get--we oughta knock off all the expert saboteurs who know
+the weak spots in the Platform. For instance those who know that
+thermite in the gyros would mess everything up all over again."
+
+Joe said quietly: "But Major Holt has to be told well in advance about
+all this! That's absolute!"
+
+"Yeah," agreed Haney. "But also he has got to keep quiet--not tell
+anybody else! There've been too many leaks already about too many
+things. You know that!"
+
+Joe said: "Sally, see if you can get your father to come here and talk.
+Haney's right. Not in his office. Right here."
+
+Sally got up and went inside the house. She came back with an uneasy
+expression on her face.
+
+"He's coming. But I couldn't very well tell him what was wanted,
+and--I'm not sure he's going to be in a mood to listen."
+
+When the Major arrived he was definitely not in a mood to listen. He was
+a harried man, and he was keyed up to the limit by the multiplied strain
+due to the imminence of the Platform's take-off. He came back to his
+house from a grim conference on exactly the subject of how to make
+preparations against any possible sabotage incidents--and ran into a
+proposal to stimulate them! He practically exploded. Even if provocation
+should be given to saboteurs to lure them into showing their hands, this
+was no time for it! And if it were, it would be security business. It
+should not be meddled in by amateurs!
+
+Joe said grimly: "I don't mean to be disrespectful, sir, but there's a
+point you've missed. It isn't thinkable that you'll be able to prevent
+something from being tried at a time the saboteurs pick. They've got
+just so much time left, and they'll use it! But Mike's plan would offer
+them a diversion under cover of which they could pull their own stuff!
+And besides that, you know your office leaks! You couldn't set up a
+trick like this through security methods. And for a third fact, this is
+the one sort of thing no saboteur would expect from your security
+organization! We caught the saboteurs at the pushpot field by guessing
+at a new sort of thinking for sabotage. Here's a chance to catch the
+saboteurs who'll work their heads off in the next twenty-four hours or
+so, by using a new sort of thinking for security!"
+
+Major Holt was not an easy man to get along with at any time, and this
+was the worst of all times to differ with him. But he did think
+straight. He stared furiously at Joe, growing crimson with anger at
+being argued with. But after he had stared a full minute, the angry
+flush went slowly away. Then he nodded abruptly.
+
+"There you have a point," he said curtly. "I don't like it. But it is a
+point. It would be completely the reverse of anything my antagonists
+could possibly expect. So I accept the suggestion. Now--let us make the
+arrangements."
+
+He settled down for a quick, comprehensive, detailed plan. In careful
+consultation with Haney, Joe worked it out. The all-important point was
+that the Major's part was to be done in completely unorthodox fashion.
+He would take measures to mesh his actions with those of Mike, the
+Chief, Haney, and Joe. Each action the Major took and each order he gave
+he would attend to personally. His actions would be restricted to the
+last five minutes or less before shift-change time. His orders would be
+given individually to individuals, and under no circumstances would he
+transmit any order through anybody else. In every instance, his order
+would be devised to mean nothing intelligible to its recipient until the
+time came for obedience.
+
+It was not an easy scheme for the Major to bind himself to. It ran
+counter to every principle of military thinking save one, which was that
+it was a good idea to outguess the enemy. At the end he said detachedly:
+"This is distinctly irregular. It is as irregular as anything could
+possibly be! But that is why I have agreed to it. It will be at
+least--unexpected--coming from me!"
+
+Then he smiled without mirth and nodded to Joe and to Haney, and went
+striding away down the concrete walk to where his car waited.
+
+Haney left a moment later to carry the list of arrangements to the Chief
+and to Mike. And Joe went into the Shed to do his part.
+
+There was little difference in the appearance of the Shed by night. In
+the daytime there were long rows of windows in the roof, which let in a
+vague, dusky, inadequate twilight. At night those windows were
+shuttered. This meant that the shadows were a little sharper and the
+contrasts of light and shade a trifle more abrupt. All other changes
+that Joe could see were the normal ones due to the taking down of
+scaffolding and the fastening up of rocket tubes. It was clear that the
+shape of the Platform proper would be obscure when all its rocket tubes
+were fast in place.
+
+Joe went to look at the last pushpots, and they were ready to be taken
+over to their own field for their flight test before use. There were
+extras, anyhow, beyond the number needed to lift the Platform. He found
+himself considering the obvious fact that after the Platform was aloft,
+they would be used to launch the ferry rockets, too.
+
+Then he moved toward the center of the Shed. A whole level of
+scaffolding came apart and its separate elements were bundled together
+as he watched. Slings lowered the bundles down to waiting trucks which
+would carry them elsewhere. There were mixing trucks still pouring out
+their white paste for the lining of the rocket tubes, and their product
+went up and vanished into the gaping mouths of the giant wire-wound
+pipes.
+
+Presently Joe went into the maze of piers under the Space Platform
+itself. He came to the temporary stairs he had reason to remember. He
+nodded to the two guards there.
+
+"I want to take another look at that gadget we installed," he said.
+
+One of the guards said good-naturedly: "Major Holt said to pass you any
+time."
+
+He ascended and went along the curious corridor--it had handgrips on the
+walls so a man could pull himself along it when there was no weight--and
+went to the engine room. He heard voices. They were speaking a
+completely unintelligible language. He tensed.
+
+Then the Chief grinned at him amiably. He was in the engine room and
+with him were no fewer than eight men of his own coppery complexion.
+
+"Here's some friends of mine," he explained, and Joe shook hands with
+black-haired, dark-skinned men who were named Charley Spotted Dog and
+Sam Fatbelly and Luther Red Cow and other exotic things. The Chief said
+exuberantly, "Major Holt told the guards to let me pass in some Indian
+friends, so I took my gang on a guided tour of the Platform. None of 'em
+had ever been inside before. And----"
+
+"I heard you talking Indian," said Joe.
+
+"You're gonna hear some more," said the Chief. "We're the first war
+party of my tribe in longer'n my grandpa woulda thought respectable!"
+
+Joe found it difficult to restrain a smile. The Chief took him off to
+one side.
+
+"Fella," he said kindly, "it bothers you, this business, because it
+ain't organized. That's what this world needs, Joe. Everything figured
+out by slide rules an' such--it's civilized, but it ain't human! What
+everybody oughta be is a connoisseur of chaos, like me. Quit worryin'
+an' get outside and pick up that security guy the Major was gonna send
+to meet you!"
+
+He gave Joe an amiable shove and rejoined his fellow Mohawks, each of
+whom, Joe noticed suddenly, had somewhere on his person a twelve-inch
+Stillson wrench or a reasonable facsimile to serve as a substitute
+tomahawk. They grinned at him as he departed.
+
+At the bottom of the flight of narrow wooden steps there was a third
+security man. He greeted Joe.
+
+"Major Holt told me to pick you up," he observed.
+
+Joe walked to one side with him. Major Holt had promised to send a
+first-class man to meet Joe at this place, with orders to take
+instructions from Joe. Joe said curtly: "You're to snag as many Security
+men as you can, place them more or less out of sight under the Platform
+here, and tell them to turn off their walkie-talkies and wait. No matter
+what happens, they're to wait right here until they're needed, right
+here!"
+
+He looked harassedly around him. The Security man nodded and moved
+casually away. This was close timing. Something made Joe look up. He saw
+the catwalk gallery nearly overhead. The expected guard was there.
+Haney, though, was with him. There was nothing else in sight. Not yet.
+But Haney was on the job. Joe saw a Security man step out of sight in
+the scaffolding. He saw his own assigned security man speak to another,
+who wandered casually toward the Platform's base.
+
+Minutes passed. Only Joe could have noticed, because he was watching for
+it. There were eight or nine Security men posted within call. They had
+their walkie-talkies turned off and would be subject only to his orders
+if an emergency arose.
+
+Gongs began to ring all around the edge of the Shed. They set up a
+horrendous clanging. This was not an alarm, but simply the notice of
+change-of-shift time.
+
+There was a marked change in the noises overhead. A crane pulled back.
+Hammerings dwindled and stopped. There were the sounds of pipes,
+combined to form the scaffolds, being taken apart for removal. A
+sling-load of pipe touched the floor and stayed there. The crane's
+internal-combustion motor stopped. Its operator stepped down to the
+floor and headed for the exit. Hoists descended and men moved across the
+floor. Other men scrambled down ladders. The floor became dotted with
+figures moving toward the doors through which men went out to get on the
+busses for Bootstrap.
+
+Nothing happened. More long minutes passed. The shift brought out by the
+busses was going through the check-over process in the incoming screen
+room. Joe knew that Major Holt had, within the past five minutes,
+gathered together a tight-knit bunch of armed security men to be
+available for anything that might turn up. The men doing the normal
+shift-change screening were shorthanded in consequence.
+
+The floor next to the exits became crowded, but the central area of the
+floor was cleared. One truck was stalled at the swing-up truck doors.
+Its driver ground the starter insistently.
+
+Suddenly there was a high-pitched yell away up on the Platform. Then
+there was a shot. Its echoes rang horribly in the resonant interior of
+the Shed. Joe's own special security man hurried to him, his face tense.
+
+"What about that?"
+
+"Hold everything," said Joe grimly. "That's taken care of."
+
+It was. That was Mike's gang--miniature humans popping out of hiding to
+offer battle with missiles carefully prepared beforehand against their
+alleged associates in sabotage. One of the associates had drawn a gun
+and fired. But Mike's gang had help. Out of small air locks devised to
+make the Platform's skin accessible to its crew on every side--provided
+they wore space suits--dark-skinned men appeared.
+
+The security man's walkie-talkie under his shoulder made a buzzing
+sound. He reached for it.
+
+"Forget it!" snapped Joe. "That's not for you! You've got your orders!
+Stay here!"
+
+There was a sudden growling uproar where men were crowding to get out of
+the Shed. Thick, billowing smoke appeared. There was a crashing
+explosion. The men eddied and milled crazily.
+
+The motor of the stalled truck caught. It moved toward the door, which
+opened, swinging up and high. Two trucks came roaring in. They raced for
+the Platform. And as they raced inside, their camouflaged loads
+clattered off and men showed instead. The guards by the doorway began to
+shoot.
+
+"That's what we've got to stop!" snapped Joe.
+
+He began to run, his pistol out. There was suddenly a small
+army--gathered by his orders--which materialized in the dim space under
+the Platform. It raced to guard against this evidently well-planned
+invasion.
+
+The harsh, tearing rattle of a machine gun sounded from somewhere high
+up. Joe knew what it was. Mike's whole scheme had been intended to force
+all sabotage efforts to take place at a single instant. Part of the
+preparation was authority for Haney to drag in two machine guns from an
+outer watching-post and mount them to cover the interior of the Shed
+when the general attack began.
+
+Those machine guns were shooting at the trucks. Splinters sprang up from
+the wood-block floor. Then, abruptly, one of the trucks vanished in a
+monstrous, actinic flash of blue-white flame and a roar so horrible that
+it was not sound but pure concussion. The other truck keeled over and
+crashed from the blast, but did not explode. Men jumped from it. There
+must have been screamed orders, but Joe could hear nothing at all. He
+only saw men waving their arms, and others seized things from the
+toppled load and rushed toward him, and he began to shoot as he ran to
+meet them.
+
+Now, belatedly, the sirens of the Shed screamed their alarm, and choppy
+yappings set up as the siren wails rose in pitch. Over by the exit
+pistols cracked. Something fell with a ghastly crash not ten feet from
+where Joe ran. It was a man's body, toppled from somewhere high up on
+the structure that was the most important man-made thing in all the
+world. A barbaric war whoop sounded among the echoes of other tumult.
+
+A Security man shot, and one of the running figures toppled and slid,
+his burden--which must certainly be a bomb--rolling ridiculously. There
+had been two trucks that plunged through the swing-up door. They had
+raced for the spaces under the Platform at the exact time when the floor
+would be clear, because all work had stopped. Under the Platform, the
+trucks were to have been detonated. At the very least, they would have
+rent and torn it horribly. They might have broken its back. And surely
+one truck should have made it. But there should not have been machine
+guns ready trained to shoot. Now the load of desperate men from the
+overturned survivor scurried for the Platform with parts of its cargo.
+If they could fight their way inside the Platform, they could blast its
+hull open, or demolish its controls or shatter its air pumps and its
+gyros and turn its air tanks into sieves. Anything that could be damaged
+would delay the take-off and so expose the Platform to further and
+perhaps more successful attack.
+
+There were more pistol shots. A group of men fought their way out of the
+incoming screening rooms and raced for the center of the Shed. (Later,
+it would be found they had slabs of explosive inside their garments, and
+detonation caps to set them off.) Somewhere another door opened, and
+Security men came out with flickering pistols, Major Holt leading them.
+He had started out to fight off the truck-borne attack, but he was bound
+to be too late. Joe's followers were trying to take care of that. The
+scuttling men from the incoming rooms were Major Holt's first prey. They
+were shot as they ran.
+
+Joe stumbled and fell and he heard guns crackling. As he scrambled up he
+pitched into a running figure that snarled as Joe hit him. And then he
+was fighting for his life.
+
+This was under the Platform and in the middle of confusion many times
+confounded. Joe caught a wrist that held a gun. He knew his assailant
+had a bomb slung over one shoulder and right now had one hand free for
+combat. Joe instinctively tried to batter his enemy with his own pistol,
+instead of pushing the muzzle against the man's body and pulling the
+trigger. He struck a flailing blow, and his hand and the weapon struck a
+metal brace. The blow cut his knuckles and paralyzed his fingers.
+Despairingly he felt the pistol slipping from his grasp. Then his
+assailant brought up his knee viciously, but it hit Joe's thigh instead
+of his groin, and Joe flung his weight furiously forward and they
+toppled to the ground together.
+
+There was fighting all around him. The machine guns rasped again--there
+was a burst of tracer-bullet fire. The panicked men by the exit tried to
+surge out through the swinging doors. But the tracers marked a line they
+must not cross. They checked. Once a gun flashed so close by Joe's eyes
+that it blinded him. And once somebody fell over both himself and his
+antagonist, who writhed like an eel possessed of desperate strength past
+belief.
+
+Joe could really know only his private part in the struggle down in the
+murky tangle of the scaffold base. But there was fighting up on the
+Platform itself. A savagely grinning Mohawk wrestled furiously with a
+man on one of the rocket tubes. An incendiary device in the saboteur's
+pocket ignited, and it flamed red-hot and he screamed as it burned its
+way out of his garments. The Mohawk flung the man fiercely clear, to
+crash horribly on the far-distant floor, and then kicked the incendiary
+off. It fell after the man and hit and burst, and it was thermite which
+surrounded itself with a column of acrid smoke from seared wood blocks.
+
+There was fighting by the exit doors. There was an ululating uproar in
+the incoming screening room, and a war whoop from the top of the
+Platform. A saboteur tried to crawl into an air-lock entrance, and he
+got his head and shoulders in, but a copper-skinned Indian held his
+forehead still and chopped down with the side of his hand on that man's
+neck. Underneath the Platform was panting chaos, with pistol shots and
+hand-to-hand struggles everywhere. The force Joe had gathered fought
+valiantly, but four invaders got to the foot of the wooden steps, where
+there were two guards. Then there were only two saboteurs left to
+scramble desperately up the steps over the dead guards' bodies and head
+toward the Platform door, but the Chief appeared swinging a twelve-inch
+Stillson. He let it go, precisely like a skillfully flung tomahawk, and
+leaped down sixteen steps squarely onto the body of the other man. A gun
+flashed, but then there was only squirming struggle on the floor.
+
+Mike the midget, inside the Platform, found one bloodied, panting,
+sobbing man who somehow had gotten inside. And Mike brought down a
+spanner from a ladder step, and swarmed upon his half-conscious victim,
+and hit him again, and then stayed on guard until somebody arrived who
+was big enough to carry the saboteur away.
+
+And all this while, Joe struggled with only one man. It was a horrible
+struggle, because the man had a bomb and he might manage to set it off
+or it might go off of itself. It was a ghastly struggle, because the man
+had the strength and desperation of a maniac--and practiced the tactics.
+Joe pounded the hand that held the gun upon the floor, and it hit
+something and exploded smokily and fell clear. But that made things
+worse. While struggling to kill Joe with the revolver, his antagonist
+had had only five fingers with which to gouge out Joe's eyes or tear
+away his ears or rend his flesh. But with no pistol he had ten, and he
+fought like a wild beast. He even breathed like an animal. He began to
+pant--thick, guttural pantings that had the quality of hellish hate. And
+then there was a surging of bodies--Major Holt's reserve was arriving
+very late in the center of the Shed--and then a struggling group
+trampled all over the pair who squirmed and fought on the ground, and a
+heavy boot jammed down Joe's head and he felt teeth sink in his throat.
+They dug into his flesh, worrying and tearing....
+
+Joe used his knee in a frenzy of revulsion--used his knee as the other
+man had tried to use his in the first instant of battle. The man beneath
+him screamed as an animal would scream, and Joe jerked his bleeding
+throat free. In hysterical horror he pounded his antagonist's head on
+the floor until the man went limp....
+
+And then he heard a grim voice saying: "Quit it or you get your head
+blown off! Quit it----" And Joe panted: "It's about time you guys got
+here! This man came in on that truck. Watch out for that bomb he's got
+slung on him...."
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+The incoming shift had a messy clean-up job to do. It was accomplished
+only because security men abruptly took over the work of gang bosses,
+and all ordinary labor on the Platform was put aside until normal
+operations were again possible. Even that would not have been feasible
+but for the walkie-talkies the security men wore. As the situation was
+sorted out, it was explained to them, and they relayed the news for the
+satisfaction of the curiosity of those who worked under them. No
+work--no explanation. It produced immediate and satisfactory
+co-operation all around.
+
+There had been four separate and independent attempts to wreck the
+Platform at the same time. One was, of course, the plan of those
+sympathetic characters who had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win
+the status of spacemen by firing the Platform's rockets. There were not
+many of them, and they had lost heavily. They'd had thermite bombs to
+destroy the Platform's vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely,
+if morosely, and that was that.
+
+There had been a particularly ungifted attempt to cause panic in the
+incoming shift in the rooms where its members were screened before
+admission to work. Somebody had tried to establish complete confusion
+there by firing revolver shots in the crowd, expecting the workers to
+break through to the floor and assigned gentlemen with slabs of
+explosive to get to the Platform with them. The gentlemen with the
+explosives had run into Major Holt's security reserve, and they got
+nowhere. The creators of panic with revolver shots were finally rescued
+from their shift-mates and more or less scraped up from the
+screening-room floor--they were in very bad shape--and carted off to be
+patched up for questioning. The members of this group had been
+impractical idealists, and besides, some of them had lost their nerve,
+as was evidenced by the discovery of abandoned explosives and detonators
+in the locker room and men's room of the Shed.
+
+The most dangerous attempt was, of course, that perfectly planned and
+co-ordinated assault which had been merely carried out at its original
+time, without either being hastened or delayed by Mike's activities.
+That plan had been beautifully contrived, and it would certainly have
+been successful but for the machine-gun bullets from the gallery and the
+fight Joe's followers put up underneath the Platform.
+
+The exact instant when the whole Shed would be most nearly empty had
+been fixed upon, and three separate units had worked in perfect timing.
+There'd been the man in the stalled truck. He'd delayed his exit from
+the Shed to the precise fraction of a second to get the doors open at
+the perfect instant. The explosive-laden trucks had raced in at the
+exact second when they were most certain to get underneath the Platform
+and detonate their cargoes. There'd been a perfect diversion planned for
+that, too. Smoke bombs and explosions in the outgoing screening rooms
+had created real panic, and but for Joe's order for his group's
+walkie-talkies to be turned off would have drawn every security man on
+duty to that spot.
+
+Mike's trick, then, had brought some saboteurs into the open, but had
+merely happened to coincide with the most dangerous and well-organized
+coup of all. However, it was due to his trick that the Platform was not
+now a wreck.
+
+There was also another break that was sheer coincidence. It was a
+discovery that could not possibly have turned up save in a situation of
+pure chaos artificially induced. Joe had had to react in a personal and
+vengeful way to the manner in which his especial antagonist had fought
+him. One expects a man to fight fair by instinct, and to turn to
+fouls--if he does--in desperation only. But Joe's personal opponent
+hadn't tried a single fair trick. It was as if he'd never heard of a
+fist blow, but only of murder and mayhem. Joe felt an individual enmity
+toward him.
+
+Joe didn't consider himself the most urgent of the injured, when doctors
+and nurses took up the work of patching, but Sally was there to help,
+and she went deathly pale when she saw his bloodstained throat. She
+dragged him quickly to a doctor. And the doctor looked at Joe and
+dropped everything else.
+
+But it wasn't too serious. The antiseptics hurt, and the stitching was
+unpleasant, but Joe was more worried by the knowledge that Sally was
+standing there and suffering for him. When he got up from the emergency
+operating table, the doctor nodded grimly to him.
+
+"That was close!" said the doctor. "Whoever chewed you was working for
+your jugular vein, and he was halfway through the wall when he stopped.
+A fraction of an inch more, and he'd have had you!"
+
+"Thanks," said Joe. His neck felt clumsy with bandages, and when he
+tried to turn his head the stitches hurt.
+
+Sally's hand trembled in his when she led him away.
+
+"I didn't think I'd ever dislike anybody so much," said Joe angrily, "as
+I did that man while he was chewing my throat. We were trying to kill
+each other, of course, but--confound it, people don't bite!"
+
+"Did you--kill him?" asked Sally in a shaky voice. "Not that I'll mind!
+I would have hated the thought ordinarily, but----"
+
+Joe halted. There was a row of stretchers--not too long, at that--in the
+emergency-hospital space. He looked down at the unconscious man who'd
+fought him.
+
+"There he is!" he said irritably. "I banged him pretty hard. I don't
+like to hate anybody, but the way he fought----"
+
+Sally's teeth chattered suddenly. She called to one of the security men
+standing guard by the stretchers.
+
+"I--think my--father is going to want to talk to him," she said
+unsteadily. "Don't--let him be taken away to the hospital until Dad
+knows, please."
+
+She started away, her face dead-white and her hand stone-cold.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Joe.
+
+"S-sabotage," said Sally in an indescribable tone that had a suggestion
+of heartbreak.
+
+She went into her father's office alone. She came out again with him,
+and her father looked completely stricken. Miss Ross, his secretary, was
+with him, too. Her face was like a mask of marble. She had always been a
+plain woman, a gloomy one, a morbid one. But at the new and horrible
+look on her face Joe turned his eyes away.
+
+Then Sally was crying beside him, and he put his arm clumsily around her
+and let her sob on his shoulder, completely puzzled.
+
+He didn't find out until later what the trouble was. The man who'd tried
+so earnestly to kill him was Miss Ross's fiancé. She had met this man
+during a vacation, as a government secretary, and he was a refugee with
+an exotic charm that would have fascinated a much more personable and
+beautiful woman than Miss Ross. They had a whirlwind romance. He
+confided to her his terror of emissaries from his native country who
+might kill him. And of course she was more fascinated still. When he
+asked her to marry him she accepted his proposal. Then, just two weeks
+before her assignment to the Space Platform project, he vanished. Miss
+Ross was desperate and lovesick.
+
+One day her telephone rang and his anguished voice told her he'd been
+abducted, and if she told the police he would be tortured to death. He
+begged her not to do anything to cause him more torment than was already
+his.
+
+She'd been trying to keep him alive ever since. Once, when she couldn't
+bring herself to carry out an order she'd been given--with threats of
+torment to him if she failed--she'd received a human finger in the mail,
+and a scrawled and blood-stained note which cried out of unspeakable
+torment and begged her not to doom him to more.
+
+So Miss Ross, who was Major Holt's secretary and one of his most trusted
+assistants, had been giving information to one group of saboteurs all
+the while. She was the most dangerous security leak in the whole
+Platform project.
+
+But her fiancé wasn't a captive. He was the head of that group of
+saboteurs. He'd made love to her and proposed to her merely to prepare
+her to supply the information he wanted. He needed only to write a
+sufficiently agonized note, or gasp tormented pleas on a telephone, to
+get what he wanted.
+
+Incidentally, he still had all his fingers when Joe knocked him cold.
+
+Sally had recognized him as the subject of a snapshot she'd once seen
+Miss Ross crying over. Miss Ross had hidden it hastily and told her it
+was someone she had once loved, now dead. And this inadvertent
+disclosure that Miss Ross was the security leak the Major had never had
+a clue to could only have come about through such confusion as Mike had
+instigated and Haney and the Chief and Joe had organized. But Joe
+learned those facts only later.
+
+At the moment, there was still the Platform to be gotten aloft. And
+there was plenty of work to do. There were two small rips in the
+plating, caused by fragments of the exploded truck. There were some
+bullet holes. The Platform could resist small meteorites at forty-five
+miles a second, but a high-velocity small-arm projectile could puncture
+it. Those scars of battle had to be welded shut. The rest of the
+scaffolding had to come down and the rest of the rocket tubes had to be
+affixed. And there was cleaning up to be done.
+
+These things occupied the shift that came on at the time of the multiple
+sabotage assaults. At first the work was ragged. But the policy of
+turning the Security men into news broadcasters worked well. After all,
+the Platform was a construction job and the men who worked on it were
+not softies. Most of them had seen men killed before. Before the shift
+was half over, a definite work rhythm was evident. Men had begun to take
+an even greater pride in the thing they had built, because it had been
+assailed and not destroyed. And the job was almost over.
+
+Sally went back to her father's quarters, to try to sleep. Joe stayed in
+the Shed. His throat was painful enough so that he didn't want to go to
+bed until he was genuinely tired, and he was thoroughly wrought up.
+
+Mike the midget had gone peacefully to sleep again, curled up in a
+corner of the outgoing screening room. His fellow midgets talked
+satisfiedly among themselves. Presently, to show their superiority to
+mere pitched battles, two of them brought out a miniature pack of cards
+and started a card game while they waited for a bus to take them back to
+Bootstrap.
+
+The Chief's Indian associates loafed comfortably while waiting for the
+same busses. Later they would put in for overtime--and get it. Haney
+mourned that he had been remote from the scene of action, and was merely
+responsible for the presence and placing and firing of the machine guns
+that had certainly kept the Platform from being blown up from below.
+
+It seemed that nothing else would happen to bother anybody. But there
+was one thing more.
+
+That thing happened just two hours before it was time for the shift to
+change once again, and when normal work was back in progress in the
+Shed. Everything seemed fully organized and serene. Everything in the
+Shed had settled down, and nothing had happened outside.
+
+There was ample exterior protection, of course, but the outside-guard
+system hadn't had anything to do for a very long time. Men at radar
+screens were bored and sleepy from sheer inactivity and silence. Pilots
+in jet planes two miles and five miles and eight miles high had long
+since grown weary of the splendid view below them. After all, one can
+get very used to late, slanting moonlight on cloud masses far
+underneath, and bright and hostile-seeming stars overhead.
+
+So the thing was well timed.
+
+A Canadian station noticed the pip on its radar screen first. The radar
+observer was puzzled by it. It could have been a meteor, and the
+Canadian observer at first thought it was. But it wasn't going quite
+fast enough, and it lasted too long. It was traveling six hundred
+seventy-two miles an hour, and it was headed due south at sixty thousand
+feet. The speed could have been within reason--provided it didn't stay
+constant. But it did. There was something traveling south at eleven
+miles a minute or better. A mile in five-plus seconds. It didn't slow.
+It didn't drop.
+
+The Canadian radarman debated painfully. He stopped his companion from
+the reading of a magazine article about chinchilla breeding in the home.
+He showed him the pip, still headed south and almost at the limit of
+this radar instrument's range. They discussed the thing dubiously. They
+decided to report it.
+
+They had a little trouble getting the call through. The night
+long-distance operators were sleepy. Because of the difficulty of making
+the call, the radarmen became obstinate and insisted on putting it
+through. They reported to Ottawa that some object flying at sixty
+thousand feet and six hundred seventy-two miles an hour was crossing
+Canada headed for the United States.
+
+There was a further time loss. Somebody in authority had to be awakened,
+and somebody had to decide that a further report was justified. Then the
+trick had to be accomplished, and a sleepy man in a bathrobe and
+slippers listened and said sleepily, "Oh, of course you'll tell the
+Americans. It's only neighborly!" and padded back to his bed to go to
+sleep again. Then he waked up suddenly and began to sweat. He'd realized
+that this might be the beginning of atomic war. So he set phone bells to
+jangling furiously all over Canada, and jet planes began to boom in the
+darkness.
+
+But there was only one object in the sky. Over the Dakotas it went
+higher. It went to seventy thousand feet, and then eighty. How this was
+managed is not completely known, because there are still some details of
+that flight that have never been completely explained. But certainly
+jatos flared briefly at some point, and the object reached ninety
+thousand feet where a jet motor would certainly be useless. And then,
+almost certainly, rockets flared once more and well south of the Dakotas
+it started down in a trajectory like that of an artillery shell, but
+with considerably higher speed than most artillery shells achieve.
+
+It was at about this time that the siren in the Shed began its choppy,
+hiccoughing series of warm-up notes. The news from Canada arrived, as a
+matter of fact, some thirty seconds after the outer-perimeter radar
+screen around the Platform gave its warning. Then there was no
+hesitation or delay at all. Men were already tumbling out of bed at
+three airfields, buckling helmets and hoping their oxygen tanks would
+function properly. Then the radars atop the Shed itself picked up the
+moving speck. And small blue-white flames began to rise from the ground
+and go streaking away in the darkness in astonishing numbers.
+
+The covers of the guns at the top of the Shed slid aside. Miles away,
+jet planes shot skyward, and newly wakened pilots looked at their
+night-fighting instruments and swore unbelievingly at the speed they
+were told the plunging object was making. The jet pilots gave their
+motors everything they could take, but it didn't look good.
+
+The planes of the jet umbrella over the Shed stopped cruising and
+sprinted. And they were the only ones likely to get in front of the
+object in time.
+
+Inside the Shed, the siren howled dismally and all the Security men were
+snapping: "Radar alarm! All out! Radar alarm! All out!"
+
+And men were moving fast, too. Some came down from the Platform on
+hoists, dropping with reckless speed to the floor level. Some didn't
+wait for a turn at that. They slid down one upright, swung around the
+crosspiece on the level below, and slid down another vertical pipe. For
+a minute or more it looked as if the scaffolds oozed black droplets
+which slid down its pipes. But the drops were men. The floor became
+speckled and spotted with dots running for its exits.
+
+The siren ceased its wailing and its noise went down and down in pitch
+until it was a baritone moan that dropped to bass and ceased. Then there
+was no sound but the men moving to get out of the Shed. There were
+trucks, too. Those that had been loading with dismantled scaffolding
+roared for the doors to get out and away. Some men jumped on board as
+they passed. The exit doors swung up to let them go.
+
+But it was very quiet in the Shed, at that. There was no noise but a few
+fleeing trucks, and the murmur which was the voices of the Security men
+hurrying the work crew out. There was less to hear than went on
+ordinarily. And it was a long distance across the floor of the Shed.
+
+Joe stood with his fists clenched absurdly. This could only be an air
+attack. An air attack could only mean an atom-bomb attack. And if there
+was an atom bomb dropped on the Shed, there'd be no use getting outside.
+It wouldn't be merely a fission bomb. It would be a hell bomb--a bomb
+which used the kind of bomb that shattered Hiroshima only as a primer
+for the real explosive. Nobody could hope to get beyond the radius of
+its destruction before it hit!
+
+Joe heard himself raging. He'd thought of Sally. She'd be in the range
+of annihilation, too. And Joe knew such fury and hatred--because of
+Sally--that he forgot everything else.
+
+He didn't run. He couldn't escape. He couldn't fight back. But because
+he hated, he had to do something to defy.
+
+He found himself moving toward the Platform, his jaws clenched. It was
+pure, blind, instinctive defiance.
+
+He was not the only one to have that reaction. Men running toward the
+sidewall exits began to get out of breath from their running. They
+slowed. Presently they stopped. They scowled and raged, like Joe. Some
+of them looked with burning eyes up at the roof of the Shed, though
+their thoughts went on beyond it. The security guards repeated, "Radar
+alarm! All out! Radar alarm! All out!"
+
+Someone snarled, "Nuts to that!"
+
+Joe saw a man walking in the same direction as himself. He was walking
+deliberately back to the Platform. Somebody else was headed back too....
+
+Very peculiarly, almost all the men on the floor had ceased to run. They
+began to gather in little groups. They knew flight was useless. They
+talked briefly. Profanely. Here and there men started disgustedly back
+toward the Platform. Their lips moved in expressions of furious scorn.
+Their scorn was of themselves.
+
+There was a gathering of men about the base of the framework that still
+partly veiled the Platform. They tended to face outward, angrily, and to
+clench their fists.
+
+Then somebody started an engine. A man began to climb furiously back to
+where he had been at work. Quite unreasonably, other men followed him.
+
+Hammers began defiantly and enragedly to sound.
+
+The work crew in the Shed went defiantly and furiously back to work. A
+clamor was set up that was almost the normal working noise. It was the
+only possible way in which those men could express the raging contempt
+they felt for those who would destroy the thing they worked on.
+
+But there were some other men who could do more. There were three levels
+of jet planes above the Shed, and they could dive. The highest one got
+first to the line along which the missile from an unknown place was
+plunging toward the Shed. That plane steadied on a collision course and
+let go its wing load of rockets. It peeled off and got out of the way.
+Seconds later the others from the jet umbrella were arriving. A tiny
+spray of proximity-fused rockets blazed furiously toward the invisible
+thing from the heights.
+
+Other planes and yet others came hurtling to the line their radars
+briskly computed for them. There were more rockets....
+
+The black-painted thing with more than the speed of an artillery shell
+plunged into a miniature hail of rockets. They flamed viciously. Half a
+dozen--a dozen--explosions that were pure futility.
+
+Then there was an explosion that was not. Nobody saw it, because its
+puny detonation was instantly wiped out in a blaze of such incredible
+incandescence that the aluminum paint on jet planes still miles away was
+scorched and blistered instantly. The light of that flare was seen for
+hundreds of miles. The sound--later on--was heard farther still. And the
+desert vegetation miles below the hell bomb showed signs of searing when
+the morning came.
+
+But the thing from the north was vaporized, utterly, some forty-five
+miles from its target. The damage it did was negligible.
+
+The work on the preparation for the Platform's take-off went on. When
+the all-clear signal sounded inside the Shed, nobody paid any attention.
+They were too busy.
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+On the day of the take-off there were a number of curious side-effects
+from the completion of the Space Platform. There was a very small
+country on the other side of the world which determined desperately to
+risk its existence on the success of the Platform's flight. It had to
+choose between abject submission to a powerful neighbor, or the
+possibility of a revolution in which its neighbor's troops would take on
+the semblance of citizens for street-fighting purposes. If the Platform
+got aloft, it could defy its neighbor. And in a grim gamble, it did.
+
+There was also a last-ditch fight in the United Nations, wherein the
+Platform was denounced and a certain block of associated countries
+issued an ultimatum, threatening to bolt the international organization
+if the Platform went aloft. And again there had to be a grim gamble. If
+the Platform did not take to space and so furnish ultimately a guarantee
+of peace, the United Nations would face the alternatives of becoming a
+military alliance for atomic war, or something less than an
+international debating society.
+
+Of course there were less significant results. There were already
+fourteen popular songs ready for broadcast, orchestrated and rehearsed
+with singers ready to saturate the ears of the listening public. They
+ranged from _We've Got a Warship in the Sky_, which was more or less
+jingoistic, to a boy-and-girl melody entitled _We'll Have a Moon Just
+for Us Two_. The latter tune had been stolen from a hit of four years
+before, which in turn had been stolen from a hit of six years before
+that, and it had been stolen from a still earlier bit of Bach, so it was
+a rather pretty melody.
+
+And of course there was a super-colossal motion picture epic in color
+and with musical numbers, champing in its film cans for simultaneous
+first-run showings in eight different key cities. It was titled _To the
+Stars_, and three separate endings had been filmed, of which the
+appropriate one would of course be used in the eight separate world
+_premières_. One ending had the Platform fail due to sabotage, and the
+hero--played by an actor who had interrupted his seventh honeymoon to
+play the part--splendidly prepared to build it all over again. The
+second ending closed with the Platform headed for Alpha Centaurus--which
+was hardly the intention of anybody outside of filmdom. The third ending
+was secret, but it was said that hard-boiled motion-picture executives
+had cried like babies when it was thrown on preview screens.
+
+These, of course, were merely sidelights. They were not very important
+in the Shed. There, work went on at a feverish rate although there was
+no longer any construction work to be done. In theory, therefore, the
+members of welders and pipe-fitters and steel-construction and
+electrical and other unions should have retired gracefully to Bootstrap.
+Members of building-maintenance and rigging and wrecking and other
+assorted unions should have been gathered together in far cities,
+screened by security, and brought to Bootstrap and paid overtime to pull
+up wood-block flooring and unbolt and jack out the proper sections of
+the Shed's eastern wall.
+
+But if there had been anything of that sort tried, it would have
+produced bloodshed. The men who'd built the Platform were going to see
+it depart this Earth or else. They'd never have a second chance. It
+would work the first time or it wouldn't work at all.
+
+So the Platform was made ready for its take-off by the men who had made
+it. A gigantic section--two full gores--of the Shed's wall was unbolted
+in two pieces, and each piece thrust outward at the top and bottom, so
+that they were offset from the rest of the huge half-globe. There were
+hundreds of wheels at their bottom which for the first time touched the
+sixteen lines of rails laid with unbelievable solidity around the
+outside of the Shed. And then the monstrous sections were rolled aside.
+A vast opening resulted, and morning sunlight smote for the first time
+mankind's very first space craft.
+
+Joe saw the sunlight strike, and his first sensation was of
+disappointment. The normal shape of the Platform was ungainly, but now
+it was practically hidden by the solid-fuel rockets which would consume
+themselves in their firing. Also, the floor of the Shed looked strange.
+It was littered with the clumsy shapes of pushpots, trucked to this
+place in an unending stream all night long. A very young lieutenant from
+the pushpot airfield hunted up Joe and assured him that every drop of
+fuel in every pushpot's tanks had been tested twice--once in the storage
+tanks, and again in the pushpots. Joe thanked him very politely.
+
+There was no longer any scaffolding. There were no trucks left except
+two gigantic cranes, which could handle the pushpots like so many toys.
+And the effect of sunlight pouring into the Shed seemed strange indeed.
+
+Outside, there were carpenters hammering professionally upon a hasty
+grandstand of timber. Most of the carpenters would have been handier
+with rivet guns or welding torches, but it would have been indiscreet to
+comment. As fast as a final timber was spiked in place, somebody hastily
+wound it with very tawdry bunting. Men were stringing wires to the
+grandstand, and other men were setting up television and movie cameras.
+Two Security men grimly stood by each camera amid a glittering
+miscellany of microphones.
+
+Joe was lucky. Or perhaps Sally pulled wires. Anyhow, the two of them
+had a vantage point for which many other people would have paid
+astonishing sums. They waited where the circular ramp between the two
+skins of the Shed was broken by the removal of the doorway. They were
+halfway up the curve of the Shed's roof, at the edge of the great
+opening, and they could see everything, from the pushpot pilots as they
+were checked into their contraptions, to the sedate arrival of the big
+brass at the grandstand below.
+
+There was a reverberant humming from the Shed now. It might have been
+the humming of wind blowing across its open section. Joe and Sally saw a
+grim knot of Security men escorting four crew members to a flight of
+wooden steps that led up to a lower air-lock door--Joe had reason to
+remember that door--and watched them enter and close the air lock behind
+them. Then the security men pulled away the wooden stairs and hauled
+them completely away. There were a very few highly trusted men making
+final inspections of the Platform's exterior. One of them was nearly on
+a level with Joe and Sally. Other men were already lowering themselves
+down on ropes that they later jerked free, but this last man on top did
+a very human thing. When he'd finished his check-up to the last least
+detail, he pulled something out of his hip pocket. It was a tobacco can
+full of black paint. There was a brush with it. He painted his name on
+the silvery plates of the Platform, "C. J. Adams, Jr.," and satisfiedly
+began his descent to the ground. His name would go up with the Platform
+and be visible for uncounted generations--if all went well. He reached
+the ground and walked away, contented.
+
+The cranes began their task. Each one reached down deliberately and
+picked up a pushpot. They swung the pushpots to vertical positions and
+presented them precisely to the Platform's side. They clung there
+ridiculously. Magnetic grapples, of course. Joe and Sally, at the end of
+the corridor in the wall, could see the heads of the pushpot pilots in
+their plastic domes.
+
+Music blared from behind the grandstand. The seats were being filled.
+But naturally, the least important personages were arriving first. There
+were women in costumes to which they had given infinite thought--and
+nobody looked at them except other women. There was khaki. There were
+gray business suits--slide-rule men, these, who had done the brain-work
+behind the Platform's design. Then black broadcloth. Politicians, past
+question. There is nothing less impressive from a height of two hundred
+feet than a pot-bellied man in black broadcloth walking on the ground.
+
+There were men in uniforms which were not of the United States armed
+forces. They ran heavily to medals, which glittered. There were more
+arrivals, and more, and more. The newsreel and TV cameras nosed around.
+
+The cranes worked methodically. They dipped, and deftly picked up a
+thing shaped like the top half of a loaf of bread. They swung that metal
+thing to the Platform's side. Each time it clung fast, like a snail or
+slug to the surface on which it crawls. Many pushpots clung even to the
+rocket tubes--the same tubes that would presently burn away and vanish.
+So Joe and Sally saw the pushpots in a new aspect: blunt metal slugs
+with gaping mouths which were their air scoops.
+
+The tinny music from below cut off. Somebody began an oration. The men
+who had built the Platform were not interested in fine phrases, but this
+event was broadcast everywhere, and some people might possibly tune to
+the channels that carried the speakers and their orations rather than
+the channels that showed the huge, bleak, obscured shape of the monster
+that was headed either for empty space or pure disaster.
+
+The speaker stopped, and another took his place. Then another. One man
+spoke for less than a minute, and the stands went wild! But the one who
+followed made splendid gestures. He talked and talked and talked. The
+cranes cleaned up the last of the waiting pushpots, and the Platform
+itself was practically invisible.
+
+The cranes backed off and went away, clanking. The orator raised his
+voice. It made small echoes in the vast cavern that was the Shed.
+Somebody plucked the speaker's arm. He ended abruptly and sat down,
+wiping his forehead with a huge blue handkerchief.
+
+There was a roar. A pushpot had started its motor. Another roar.
+Another. One by one, the multitude of clustering objects added to the
+din. In the open a single jet was appalling. Here, the noise became a
+sound which was no longer a sound. It became a tumult which by pure
+volume ceased to be anything one's ears could understand. It reached a
+peak and held there. Then, abruptly, all the motors slackened in unison,
+and then roared more loudly. The group controls within the Platform were
+being tested. Three--four--five times the tumult faded to the merely
+unbearable and went up to full volume again.
+
+Joe felt Sally plucking at his arm. He turned, and saw a jet plane's
+underbelly, very close, and its swept-back wings. It was climbing
+straight up. Then he saw another jet plane streaking for the great
+dome's open door. It moved with incredible velocity. It jerked upward
+and climbed over the Shed's curve and was gone. But there were others
+and others and others.
+
+These were the fighter ships of the jet-plane guard. For months on end
+they had flown above the Shed, protecting it. Now they were going aloft
+to relieve the present watchers. They were rising to spread out as an
+interceptor screen for hundreds of miles in every direction, in case
+somebody should be so foolish as to try again the exploit of the night
+before. They would not see the monster in the Shed again. So in a single
+line which reached to the horizon, they made this roaring run for the
+one last glimpse which was their right. Joe saw tiny specks come
+streaking down out of the sky to queue up for this privileged view of
+the Platform before it rose.
+
+Suddenly they were gone, and Joe felt that tingling sense of pride which
+never comes from the sensation of sharing in mere power or splendor or
+pompous might, but is so certain when the human touch modifies
+magnificence.
+
+And then the roaring of the pushpot engines achieved an utterly
+impossible volume. The whole interior of the Shed was misty now, but
+shining in the morning light.
+
+And the Platform moved.
+
+At first it was a mere stirring. It turned ever so slightly to one side,
+pivoting on the ways that had supported it during building. It turned
+back and to the other side. The vapor thickened. From each jet motor a
+blast of blue-white flame poured down, and the moisture in the earth was
+turning into steam and stray wood-blocks into acrid smoke. The Platform
+turned precisely and exactly back to its original position, and Joe's
+heart pounded in his throat, because he knew that the turning had been
+done with the gyros, and they had been handled by the pilot gyros for
+which he was responsible.
+
+Then the Platform moved again. It lifted by inches and swayed forward.
+It checked, and lurched again, and went staggering toward the great
+opening before it. A part of its base gouged a deep furrow in the
+earthen floor.
+
+The noise increased from the incredible to the inconceivable. It seemed
+as if all the thunders since time began had returned to bellow because
+the Platform moved.
+
+And it floated and bumped out of the Shed. It staggered toward the east.
+Its keel was perhaps, at this point, as much as three feet above the
+ground, but the jet motors cast up blinding clouds of dust and smoke and
+even those afoot could not be sure.
+
+There was confusion. The smoke and vapor splashed out in every possible
+direction. Joe saw frantic movement, and he realized that the uniforms
+and the frock coats were scrambling to escape the fumes. The
+khaki-tinted specks which were men seemed to run. The frock coats ran.
+The carefully-thought-out brighter specks which were women ran gasping
+and choking from the smoke. One stout figure toppled, scrambled up, and
+scuttled frantically for safety.
+
+But the Platform was in motion now. It was a hundred yards beyond the
+Shed wall. Two hundred. Three.... It slowly gathered speed. A half-mile
+from the Shed it was definitely clear of the ground. It left a trail of
+scorched, burnt desert behind....
+
+It moved almost swiftly, now. Two miles from the Shed it was fifteen
+feet above the earth. Three miles, and a clear strip of sunlight showed
+beneath it. And it was still accelerating. At four miles and five and
+six....
+
+It was aloft, climbing with seemingly infinite slowness, with all the
+hundreds of straining, thrusting, clumsy pushpots clinging to it and
+pushing it ever ahead and upward.
+
+It went smoothly toward the east. It continued to gain speed. It did not
+seem to dip toward the horizon at all. It went on and on, dwindling from
+a giant to a spot and then to a little dark speck in the sky that still
+went on and on until even Joe could not pretend to himself that he still
+saw it. Even then there was probably a tiny droning noise in the air,
+but nobody who had watched the take-off could possibly hear it.
+
+Then Joe looked at Sally and she at him. And Joe was grinning like an
+ape with excitement and relief and triumph which was at once his own and
+that of all his dreams. Sally's eyes were shining and exultant. She
+hugged him in purest exuberance, crying that the Space Platform was up,
+was up, was up....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At sundown they were waiting on the porch of the Major's quarters behind
+the Shed. The Major was there, and Haney and the Chief and Mike and Joe.
+The Major's whole look had changed. He seemed to have shrunk, and he
+looked more tired than any man should ever be allowed to get. But his
+job was done, and the reaction was enough to explain everything. He sat
+in an easy chair with a glass beside him, and he looked as if nothing on
+earth could make him move a finger. But nevertheless he was waiting.
+
+Sally came out with a tray. She gravely passed around the glasses and
+the cakes that went with them. Then she sat down on the porch steps
+beside Joe. She looked at him and nodded in friendly fashion. And Joe
+was inordinately approving of Sally, but he felt awkward at showing it
+too plainly in her father's presence.
+
+Mike said defiantly: "But still it woulda been easier to get it up there
+if it'd been built for guys like me!"
+
+Nobody contradicted him. He was right. Anyhow every one of them felt too
+much relaxed and relieved to enter into argument.
+
+Haney said dreamily: "Everything broke right. Everything! They got in a
+jet stream like they expected, and it gave 'em three hundred miles extra
+east-speed. They were eight miles up when the pushpots fired their
+jatos, an' twelve miles up when the pushpots let go--they musta near
+broke their pilots' necks when they caught their motors again! And the
+Platform's rockets fired just right, makin' flames a mile long, an' they
+were goin' then--what were they makin'?"
+
+"Who cares?" asked the Chief peacefully. "Plenty!"
+
+"Six hundred from the pushpots," murmured Haney, frowning, "an' three
+hundred from the jet stream, and then there was the jatos that all let
+go at once, an' then there was eight hundred from the earth
+rotatin'----"
+
+"They had ten per cent of their rockets unfired when they got into their
+orbit," said Mike authoritatively. "They were two thousand miles up when
+they passed over India and now they're four thousand miles up and the
+orbit's stable. This is their third round, isn't it?"
+
+"Will be," said the Chief.
+
+Joe and Sally sat watching the west. The Space Platform went around the
+Earth from west to east, like Earth's natural moon, but because of its
+speed it would rise in the west and set in the east six times in every
+twenty-four hours.
+
+Major Holt spoke suddenly. The austerity had gone out of his manner with
+his energy. He said quietly: "You four--you gave me the worst scare I've
+ever had in my life. But do you realize that that sabotage attempt with
+the two truck-loads of explosive--do you realize that they'd have gotten
+the Platform if it hadn't been for that crazy trick you four planned,
+and the precautions we took because of it?"
+
+Joe said depreciatingly: "It was just luck that they happened to pick
+the same time, and that Haney was up there with those machine-gunners at
+the right moment. It was good luck, but it was luck."
+
+The Major said effortfully: "There are people called accident prones.
+Accidents happen all around them, and nobody knows why. You
+four--perhaps Joe especially--are not accident prones. You seem to be
+something antithetic to accidents. I would hesitate to credit your
+usefulness to your brains. Especially Joe's brains. I have known him too
+long. But--ah--Washington does not look at it in exactly the same way."
+
+Sally touched Joe warningly. But her face was very bright and proud. Joe
+felt queer.
+
+"Joe," said the Major tiredly, "was an alternate for membership in the
+Platform's crew. But for penicillin, or something of the sort that made
+a sick man get well quickly, Joe would be up there in the Platform's
+orbit now. His--ah--record in the instruction he did take was
+satisfactory. And--ah--all four of you were very useful in the last
+stages of the building of the Platform. Again Joe especially.
+His--ah--co-operation with higher authorities has produced--ah--very
+favorable comments. So it is felt that he should have some recognition.
+All of you, of course, but Joe especially. So----"
+
+Joe felt himself going white.
+
+"Joe," said the Major, "is to be offered an appointment as skipper of
+a ferry rocket, carrying supplies and crew reliefs to the Platform.
+His rocket will carry a crew of four, including himself.
+His--ah--recommendations for membership in his crew will have
+considerable weight."
+
+There was a buzzing in Joe's ears. He wanted to cry and to dance, and
+especially right then he would have liked very much to kiss Sally. It
+would have been the only really appropriate way to express his emotions.
+
+Mike said in a fierce, strained voice: "Joe! I can do anything a big
+elephant of a guy can do, and I only use a quarter of the grub and air!
+You've got to take me, Joe! You've got to!"
+
+The Chief said benignly: "H'm.... I'm gonna be in charge of the engine
+room, an' Haney'll be bos'n--let Joe try to take off without us!--an'
+that don't leave you a rating, Mike, unless you're willin' to be just
+plain crew!"
+
+Slowly Sally turned her face away from Joe and looked up.
+
+Then they all saw it. A telescope, maybe, would have shown it as the
+thing they'd worked on and fought for. But it didn't look like that to
+the naked eye. It was just a tiny speck of incandescence gliding with
+grave deliberation across the sky. It was a sliver of sunlight, moving
+as they watched.
+
+There were a good many millions of people watching it, just then, as it
+floated aloft in emptiness. To some it meant peace and hope and
+confidence of a serene old age and a life worth living for their
+children and their children's children. To some it was a fascinating
+technical achievement. To a few it meant that if wars had ended, and
+turmoil was no longer the norm of life on earth, this thing would be
+their destruction. But it meant something to everybody in the world. To
+the people who had been unable to do anything to help it except to pray
+for it, perhaps it meant most of all.
+
+Joe said quietly: "We'll be going up there to visit it. All of us."
+
+He realized that Sally's hand was tightly clasped in his. She said: "Me
+too, Joe?"
+
+"Some day," said Joe, "you too."
+
+He stood up to watch more closely. Sally stood beside him. The others
+came to look. They made a group on the lawn, as people were grouped
+everywhere in all the world to gaze up at it.
+
+The Space Platform, a tiny sliver of sunshine, an infinitesimal speck of
+golden light, moved sedately across the deepening blue toward the east.
+Toward the night.
+
+
+
+
+THESE SYMBOLS GUARANTEE THE BEST IN READING
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+POCKET BOOKS, INC. is the largest publisher of books in the world today
+in terms of the number of copies it has sold and is currently selling.
+Over 400,000,000 copies have carried the symbol of "Gertrude," the
+little kangaroo which is the colophon of POCKET BOOKS, INC. This firm
+also publishes CARDINAL EDITIONS, a newer series of books of exceptional
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+
+Only genuine POCKET BOOK and CARDINAL editions carry these symbols. The
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+They are your guarantee of the best in reading at the lowest possible
+price.
+
+
+
+
+TOP SECRET
+
+
+In the little desert town of Bootstrap stands a huge metal shed. In the
+shed men are building an object that can change the history of mankind.
+It is a Space Platform. Propelled to an orbit 4000 miles from Earth this
+platform will serve as the starting place for man's exploration of
+mysterious outer space.
+
+SPACE PLATFORM tells the exciting story of a young man helping to build
+this first station. With scientific accuracy and imagination Murray
+Leinster, one of the world's top science-fiction writers, describes the
+building and launching of the platform. Here is a fast-paced story of
+sabotage and murder directed against a project more secret and valuable
+than the atom bomb!
+
+Cover illustration by Earle Bergey
+
+THIS IS A GENUINE
+POCKET BOOK
+ROCKEFELLER CENTER NEW YORK 20, N. Y.
+25¢
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+
+                      Transcriber's Note
+
+The chemical symbol for carbon dioxide is shown as
+CO_2 to represent subscript 2.
+
+In the following compound words, the hyphen was
+removed to conform to majority use in text:
+      exhaust-blast     exhaust blast
+      jet-motors        jet motors
+      jet-planes        jet planes
+      pilot-gyros       pilot gyros
+      space-travel      space travel
+      wing-flaps        wing flaps
+
+The following compounds, with and without a hyphen, were
+left as found because of equal prevalence of both forms:
+      blood-stained     bloodstained
+      wood-blocks       wood blocks
+
+One compound was split since joined it suggested an
+inapposite meaning:
+      cherrystone       cherry stone
+
+A host of compounds were left both hyphenated and separate
+depending on their part of speech, for example:
+      science-fiction   science fiction
+      (adjective)       (noun)
+
+One typo was corrected:
+      spendid            splendid
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Space Platform, by Murray Leinster
+
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Space Platform, by Murray Leinster.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Space Platform, by Murray Leinster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Space Platform
+
+Author: Murray Leinster
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2008 [EBook #25051]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPACE PLATFORM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Louise Blyton and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h4>Transcriber&#8217;s note</h4>
+
+<p>Despite extensive research, no evidence was found that U.S. copyright
+on this book was renewed.</p>
+</div>
+
+<table summary="Space Platform by Murray Leinster" cellpadding="10" width="90%">
+  <tbody><tr>
+    <td><div class="figleft" style="width: 214px;">
+<a id="sp"></a>
+   <a href="images/sp_big.jpg" >
+      <img src="images/sp_thum.jpg" alt="cover illustration" height="400"
+     width="214" title="Space Platform by Murray Leinster" />
+   </a>
+</div></td>
+    <td><h1>SPACE</h1>
+    <h1>PLATFORM</h1>
+
+    <h4>by</h4>
+
+    <h2>Murray Leinster</h2>
+
+</td></tr></tbody></table>
+
+<h4><i><b>Reaching for the Stars....</b></i></h4>
+
+<p><i><b>Ever</b></i> since ancient man first gazed in wonder at the stars, humanity
+has dreamed of traveling to outer space. Now scientists agree that
+space-flight may very soon become a reality.</p>
+
+<p><i><b>Space Platform</b></i> tells of man&#8217;s first step into outer space ... of the
+difficulties and dangers of reaching for the stars. It is also an
+exciting adventure. When young Joe Kenmore came to Bootstrap to install
+pilot gyros in the Platform he hadn&#8217;t bargained for sabotage or murder
+or love. But Joe learned that ruthless agents were determined to wreck
+the project. He found that the beautiful girl he loved, and men like The
+Chief, a rugged Indian steelworker, and Mike, a midget who made up for
+his size by brains, would have to fight with their bare hands to make
+man&#8217;s age old dream of space travel come true!</p>
+
+<p><small>This Pocket Book includes every word contained in the original,
+higher-priced edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made from
+completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type.</small></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h4>SPACE PLATFORM</h4>
+<p class="center">Shasta edition published February, 1953<br />
+<br />
+Pocket Book edition published March, 1953<br />
+<br />1st printing&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;January, 1953<br />
+</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><small>All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be
+reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher,
+except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
+For information, address: <span class="smcap">Shasta Publishers</span>, 5525 South Blackstone
+Avenue, Chicago, 37, Illinois.</small></p>
+
+<p><small><i>Copyright, 1953, by Will F. Jenkins. This</i> <span class="smcap">Pocket Book</span> <i>edition
+is published by arrangement with Shasta Publishers. Printed in the U.S.A.</i></small></p>
+
+<h4><i>POCKET BOOKS, INC. NEW YORK, N. Y.</i></h4>
+
+<p><span class="figleft" style="width: 95px;">
+<img src="images/pocketbook.png" width="95" height="94" alt="Pocket Book Logo" title="Pocket Book Logo" />
+</span><i>Notice</i>: <span class="smcap">Pocket Book</span> editions are published in the United States
+by Pocket Books, Inc., in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada, Ltd., and in
+England by News of the World, Registered User of the Trade Marks. Trade
+Marks registered in the United States and British Patent Offices by
+Pocket Books, Inc., and registered in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada,
+Ltd.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center">
+<i><b>Of other books by Murray Leinster,
+the following are science-fiction:</b></i><br />
+<br />
+SIDEWISE IN TIME<br />
+<br />
+MURDER MADNESS<br />
+<br />
+THE LAST SPACE SHIP<br />
+<br />
+THE LAWS OF CHANCE (Anthology)<br />
+<br />
+GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION (editor)<br />
+</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</h3>
+
+<p>This acknowledgment is necessary if I am to say thanks to some experts
+to whom I am indebted. There is Captain Charles Benjamin, who read over
+the aviation parts of this book with pursed lips and a belligerent
+attitude toward questionable statements of fact or observation. There is
+Dr. John Drury Clark, whose authoritative knowledge of rocket fuels was
+the basis for admitted but not extravagant extrapolation on my part.
+There is the crew of a four-engined transport ship, who argued over my
+manuscript and settled the argument by a zestful, full-scale
+crash-landing drill&mdash;repeat, &#8220;drill&#8221;&mdash;expressly to make sure I had
+described all the procedure just right. There is Willy Ley, whom I would
+like to exempt from responsibility for any statement in the book, while
+I acknowledge the value of personal talks with him and the pleasure
+anybody who has ever read his books will recognize. And there is Dr.
+Hugh S. Rice of the Hayden Planetarium, who will probably be surprised
+to find that I feel I owe him gratitude. They are in great part
+responsible for the factual matter in this book.</p>
+
+<p>I think I may add, though, that I worked on it too.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;"><span class="smcap">Murray Leinster</span></span><br />
+&#8220;Ardudwy&#8221;<br />
+Gloucester, Va.<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+<div style="margin-left: 15%"><ul>
+<li><a href="#c1"><b>Chapter 1</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c2"><b>Chapter 2</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c3"><b>Chapter 3</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c4"><b>Chapter 4</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c5"><b>Chapter 5</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c6"><b>Chapter 6</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c7"><b>Chapter 7</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c8"><b>Chapter 8</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c9"><b>Chapter 9</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c10"><b>Chapter 10</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c11"><b>Chapter 11</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c12"><b>Chapter 12</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></span></li>
+<li><a href="#c13"><b>Chapter 13</b></a><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></span></li>
+</ul></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>Space Platform</i></h2>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg&nbsp;1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c1" id="c1"></a><i>1</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>There wasn&#8217;t anything underneath but clouds, and there wasn&#8217;t anything
+overhead but sky. Joe Kenmore looked out the plane window past the
+co-pilot&#8217;s shoulder. He stared ahead to where the sky and cloud bank
+joined&mdash;it was many miles away&mdash;and tried to picture the job before him.
+Back in the cargo space of the plane there were four big crates. They
+contained the pilot gyros for the most important object then being built
+on Earth, and it wouldn&#8217;t work properly without them. It was Joe&#8217;s job
+to take that highly specialized, magnificently precise machinery to its
+destination, help to install it, and see to its checking after it was
+installed.</p>
+
+<p>He felt uneasy. Of course the pilot and co-pilot&mdash;the only two other
+people on the transport plane&mdash;knew their stuff. Every imaginable
+precaution would be taken to make sure that a critically essential
+device like the pilot gyro assembly would get safely where it belonged.
+It would be&mdash;it was being&mdash;treated as if it were a crate of eggs instead
+of massive metal, smoothed and polished and lapped to a precision
+practically unheard of. But just the same Joe was worried. He&#8217;d seen the
+pilot gyro assembly made. He&#8217;d helped on it. He knew how many times a
+thousandth of an inch had been split in machining its bearings, and the
+breath-weight balance of its moving parts. He&#8217;d have liked to be back in
+the cargo compartment with it, but only the pilot&#8217;s cabin was
+pressurized, and the ship was at eighteen thousand feet, flying west by
+south.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to get his mind off that impulse by remembering that at
+eighteen thousand feet a good half of the air on Earth was underneath
+him, and by hoping that the other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg&nbsp;2]</a></span>half would be as easy to rise above
+when the gyros were finally in place and starting out for space. The
+gyros, of course, were now on their way to be installed in the
+artificial satellite to be blasted up and set in an orbit around the
+Earth as the initial stage of that figurative stepladder by which men
+would make their first attempt to reach the stars. Until that Space
+Platform left the ground, the gyros were Joe&#8217;s responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>The plane&#8217;s co-pilot leaned back in his chair and stretched luxuriously.
+He loosened his safety belt and got up. He stepped carefully past the
+column between the right- and left-hand pilot seats. That column
+contained a fraction of the innumerable dials and controls the pilots of
+a modern multi-engine plane have to watch and handle. The co-pilot went
+to the coffeepot and flipped a switch. Joe fidgeted again on his
+improvised seat. Again he wished that he could be riding in back with
+the crates. But it would be silly to insist on perching somewhere in the
+freight compartment.</p>
+
+<p>There was a steady roaring in the cabin&mdash;the motors. One&#8217;s ears got
+accustomed to it, and by now the noise sounded as if it were heard
+through cushions. Presently the coffeepot bubbled, unheard. The co-pilot
+lighted a cigarette. Then he drew a paper cup of coffee and handed it to
+the pilot. The pilot seemed negligently to contemplate some dozens of
+dials, all of which were duly duplicated on the right-hand, co-pilot&#8217;s
+side. The co-pilot glanced at Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Coffee?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thanks,&#8221; said Joe. He took the paper cup.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot said: &#8220;Everything okay with you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m all right,&#8221; said Joe. He realized that the co-pilot felt talkative.
+He explained: &#8220;Those crates I&#8217;m traveling with&mdash;&mdash;. The family firm&#8217;s
+been working on that machinery for months. It was finished with the
+final grinding done practically with feather dusters. I can&#8217;t help
+worrying about it. There was four months&#8217; work in just lapping the
+shafts and balancing rotors. We made a telescope mounting once, for an
+observatory in South Africa, but compared to this gadget we worked on
+that one blindfolded!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg&nbsp;3]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Pilot gyros, eh?&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;That&#8217;s what the waybill said. But
+if they were all right when they left the plant, they&#8217;ll be all right
+when they are delivered.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said ruefully: &#8220;Still I&#8217;d feel better riding back there with them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sabotage bad at the plant?&#8221; asked the co-pilot. &#8220;Tough!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sabotage? No. Why should there be sabotage?&#8221; demanded Joe.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot said mildly: &#8220;Not quite everybody is anxious to see the
+Space Platform take off. Not everybody! What on earth do you think is
+the biggest problem out where they&#8217;re building it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t know,&#8221; admitted Joe. &#8220;Keeping the weight down? But there is
+a new rocket fuel that&#8217;s supposed to be all right for sending the
+Platform up. Wasn&#8217;t that the worst problem? Getting a rocket fuel with
+enough power per pound?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot sipped his coffee and made a face. It was too hot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fella,&#8221; he said drily, &#8220;that stuff was easy! The slide-rule boys did
+that. The big job in making a new moon for the Earth is keeping it from
+being blown up before it can get out to space! There are a few gentlemen
+who thrive on power politics. They know that once the Platform&#8217;s
+floating serenely around the Earth, with a nice stock of atom-headed
+guided missiles on board, power politics is finished. So they&#8217;re doing
+what they can to keep the world as it&#8217;s always been&mdash;equipped with just
+one moon and many armies. And they&#8217;re doing plenty, if you ask me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve heard&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; began Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You haven&#8217;t heard the half of it,&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;The Air
+Transport has lost nearly as many planes and more men on this particular
+airlift than it did in Korea while that was the big job. I don&#8217;t know
+how many other men have been killed. But there&#8217;s a strictly local hot
+war going on out where we&#8217;re headed. No holds barred! Hadn&#8217;t you heard?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It sounded exaggerated. Joe said politely: &#8220;I heard there was
+cloak-and-dagger stuff going on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg&nbsp;4]</a></span></p><p>The pilot drained his cup and handed it to the co-pilot. He said: &#8220;He
+thinks you&#8217;re kidding him.&#8221; He turned back to the contemplation of the
+instruments before him and the view out the transparent plastic of the
+cabin windows.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He does?&#8221; The co-pilot said to Joe, &#8220;You&#8217;ve got security checks around
+your plant. They weren&#8217;t put there for fun. It&#8217;s a hundred times worse
+where the whole Platform&#8217;s being built.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Security?&#8221; said Joe. He shrugged. &#8220;We know everybody who works at the
+plant. We&#8217;ve known them all their lives. They&#8217;d get mad if we started to
+get stuffy. We don&#8217;t bother.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That I&#8217;d like to see,&#8221; said the co-pilot skeptically. &#8220;No barbed wire
+around the plant? No identity badges you wear when you go in? No
+security officer screaming blue murder every five minutes? What do you
+think all that&#8217;s for? You built these pilot gyros! You had to have that
+security stuff!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But we didn&#8217;t,&#8221; insisted Joe. &#8220;Not any of it. The plant&#8217;s been in the
+same village for eighty years. It started building wagons and plows, and
+now it turns out machine tools and precision machinery. It&#8217;s the only
+factory around, and everybody who works there went to school with
+everybody else, and so did our fathers, and we know one another!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot was unconvinced. &#8220;No kidding?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No kidding,&#8221; Joe assured him. &#8220;In World War Two the only spy scare in
+the village was an FBI man who came around looking for spies. The
+village cop locked him up and wouldn&#8217;t believe in his credentials. They
+had to send somebody from Washington to get him out of jail.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot grinned reluctantly. &#8220;I guess there are such places,&#8221; he
+said enviously. &#8220;You should&#8217;ve built the Platform! It&#8217;s plenty different
+on this job! We can&#8217;t even talk to a girl without security clearance for
+an interview beforehand, and we can&#8217;t speak to strange men or go out
+alone after dark&mdash;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot grunted. The co-pilot&#8217;s tone changed. &#8220;Not quite that bad,&#8221; he
+admitted, &#8220;but it&#8217;s bad! It&#8217;s really bad! We lost three planes last
+week. I guess you&#8217;d call it in action against saboteurs. One flew to
+pieces in mid-air. Sabotage. Carrying critical stuff. One crashed on
+take-off, carrying irreplaceable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg&nbsp;5]</a></span>instruments. Somebody&#8217;d put a detonator
+in a servo-motor. And one froze in its landing glide and flew smack-dab
+into its landing field. They had to scrape it up. When this ship got a
+major overhaul two weeks ago, we flew it with our fingers crossed for
+four trips running. Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works.
+But I won&#8217;t look forward to a serene old age until the Platform&#8217;s out of
+atmosphere! Not me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He went to put the pilot&#8217;s empty cup in the disposal slot.</p>
+
+<p>The plane went on. There wasn&#8217;t anything underneath but clouds, and
+there wasn&#8217;t anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down,
+and the sky was simply up. Joe looked down and saw a faint spot of
+racing brightness with a hint of colors around it. It was the sort of
+nimbus that substitutes for a shadow when a plane is high enough above
+the clouds. It raced madly over the irregular upper surface of the cloud
+layer. The plane flew and flew. Nothing happened at all. This was two
+hours from the field from which it had taken off with the pilot gyro
+cases as its last item of collected cargo. Joe remembered how grimly the
+two crew members had prevented anybody from even approaching it on the
+ground, except those who actually loaded the cases, and how one of the
+two had watched them every second.</p>
+
+<p>Joe fidgeted. He didn&#8217;t quite know how to take the co-pilot&#8217;s talk. The
+Kenmore Precision Tool plant was owned by his family, but it wasn&#8217;t so
+much a family as a civic enterprise. The young men of the village grew
+up to regard fanatically fine workmanship with the casual
+matter-of-factness elsewhere reserved for plowing or deep-sea fishing.
+Joe&#8217;s father owned it, and some day Joe might head it, but he couldn&#8217;t
+hope to keep the respect of the men in the plant unless he could handle
+every tool on the place and split a thousandth at least five ways. Ten
+would be better! But as long as the feeling at the plant stayed as it
+was now, there&#8217;d never be a security problem there.</p>
+
+<p>If the co-pilot was telling the truth, though&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>Joe found a slow burn beginning inside him. He had a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg&nbsp;6]</a></span>picture in his mind
+that was practically a dream. It was of something big and bright and
+ungainly swimming silently in emptiness with a field of stars behind it.
+The stars were tiny pin points of light. They were unwinking and
+distinct because there was no air where this thing floated. The
+blackness between them was absolute because this was space itself. The
+thing that floated was a moon. A man-made moon. It was an artificial
+satellite of Earth. Men were now building it. Presently it would float
+as Joe dreamed of it, and where the sun struck it, it would be
+unbearably bright, and where there were shadows, they would be abysmally
+black&mdash;except, perhaps, when earthshine from the planet below would
+outline it in a ghostly fashion.</p>
+
+<p>There would be men in the thing that floated in space. It swam in a
+splendid orbit about the world that had built it. Sometimes there were
+small ships that&mdash;so Joe imagined&mdash;would fight their way up to it,
+panting great plumes of rocket smoke, and bringing food and fuel to its
+crew. And presently one of those panting small ships would refill its
+fuel tanks to the bursting point from the fuel other ships had
+brought&mdash;and yet the ship would have no weight. So it would drift away
+from the greater floating thing in space, and suddenly its rockets would
+spout flame and fumes, and it would head triumphantly out and away from
+Earth. And it would be the first vessel ever to strike out for the
+stars!</p>
+
+<p>That was the picture Joe had of the Space Platform and its meaning.
+Maybe it was romantic, but men were working right now to make that
+romance come true. This transport plane was flying to a small town
+improbably called Bootstrap, carrying one of the most essential devices
+for the Platform&#8217;s equipment. In the desert near Bootstrap there was a
+gigantic construction shed. Inside that shed men were building exactly
+the monstrous object that Joe pictured to himself. They were trying to
+realize a dream men have dreamed for decades&mdash;the necessary space
+platform that would be the dock, the wharf, the starting point from
+which the first of human space explorers could start for infinity. The
+idea that anybody <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg&nbsp;7]</a></span>could want to halt such an undertaking made Joe
+Kenmore burn.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot painstakingly crushed out his cigarette. The ship flew with
+more steadiness than a railroad car rolls on rails. There was the oddly
+cushioned sound of the motors. It was all very matter-of-fact.</p>
+
+<p>But Joe said angrily: &#8220;Look! Is any of what you said&mdash;well&mdash;kidding?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish it were, fella,&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;I can talk to you about it,
+but most of it&#8217;s hushed up. I tell you&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why can you talk to me?&#8221; demanded Joe suspiciously. &#8220;What makes it all
+right for you to talk to me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got passage on this ship. That means something!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does it?&#8221; asked Joe.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot turned in his seat to glance at Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you think we carry passengers regularly?&#8221; he asked mildly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pilot and co-pilot looked at each other.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell him,&#8221; said the pilot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;About five months ago,&#8221; said the co-pilot, &#8220;there was an Army colonel
+wangled a ride to Bootstrap on a cargo plane. The plane took off. It
+flew all right until twenty miles from Bootstrap. Then it stopped
+checking. It dove straight for the Shed the Platform&#8217;s being built in.
+It was shot down. When it hit, there was an explosion.&#8221; The co-pilot
+shrugged. &#8220;You won&#8217;t believe me, maybe. But a week later they found the
+colonel&#8217;s body back east. Somebody&#8217;d murdered him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe blinked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t the colonel who rode as a passenger,&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;It
+was somebody else. Twenty miles from Bootstrap he&#8217;d shot the pilots and
+taken the controls. That&#8217;s what they figure, anyhow. He meant to dive
+into the construction Shed. Because&mdash;very, very cleverly&mdash;they&#8217;d managed
+to get a bomb in the plane disguised as cargo. They got the men who&#8217;d
+done that, later, but it was rather late.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said dubiously: &#8220;But would one bomb destroy the Shed and the
+Platform?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg&nbsp;8]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;This one would,&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;It was an atom bomb. But it wasn&#8217;t
+a good one. It didn&#8217;t detonate properly. It was a fizz-off.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw the implications. Cranks and crackpots couldn&#8217;t get hold of the
+materials for atom bombs. It took the resources of a large nation for
+that. But a nation that didn&#8217;t quite dare start an open war might try to
+sneak in one atom bomb to destroy the space station. Once the Platform
+was launched no other nation could dream of world domination. The United
+States wouldn&#8217;t go to war if the Platform was destroyed. But there could
+be a strictly local hot war.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot said sharply: &#8220;Something down below!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot fairly leaped into his right-hand seat, his safety belt
+buckled in half a heartbeat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Check,&#8221; he said in a new tone. &#8220;Where?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot pointed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I saw something dark,&#8221; he said briefly, &#8220;where there was a deep dent in
+the cloud.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot threw a switch. Within seconds a new sound entered the
+cabin. <i>Beep-beep-beep-beep.</i> They were thin squeaks, spaced a full
+half-second apart, that rose to inaudibility in pitch in the fraction of
+a second they lasted. The co-pilot snatched a hand phone from the wall
+above his head and held it to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Flight two-twenty calling,&#8221; he said crisply. &#8220;Something&#8217;s got a radar
+on us. We saw it. Get a fix on us and come a-running. We&#8217;re at eighteen
+thousand and&#8221;&mdash;here the floor of the cabin tilted markedly&mdash;&#8220;now we&#8217;re
+climbing. Get a fix on us and come a-running. Over!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took the phone from his lips and said conversationally: &#8220;Radar&#8217;s a
+giveaway. This is no fly-way. You wouldn&#8217;t think he&#8217;d take that much of
+a chance, would you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe clenched his hands. The pilot did things to the levers on the column
+between the two pilots&#8217; seats. He said curtly: &#8220;Arm the jatos.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot did something mysterious and said: &#8220;Check.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All this took place in seconds. The pilot said, &#8220;I see something!&#8221; and
+instantly there was swift, tense teamwork in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg&nbsp;9]</a></span>action. A call by radio,
+asking for help. The plane headed up for greater clearance between it
+and the clouds. The jatos made ready for firing. They were the
+jet-assisted take-off rockets which on a short or rough field would
+double the motors&#8217; thrust for a matter of seconds. In straightaway
+flight they should make the plane leap ahead like a scared rabbit. But
+they wouldn&#8217;t last long.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like this,&#8221; said the co-pilot in a flat voice. &#8220;I don&#8217;t see
+what he could do&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he stopped. Something zoomed out of a cloud. The action was
+completely improbable. The thing that appeared looked absolutely
+commonplace. It was a silver-winged private plane, the sort that cruises
+at one hundred and seventy-five knots and can hit nearly two-fifty if
+pushed. It was expensive, but not large. It came straight up out of the
+cloud layer and went lazily over on its back and dived down into the
+cloud layer again. It looked like somebody stunting for his own private
+lunatic pleasure&mdash;the kind of crazy thing some people do, and for which
+there is no possible explanation.</p>
+
+<p>But there was an explanation for this.</p>
+
+<p>At the very top of the loop, threads of white smoke appeared. They
+should have been unnoticeable against the cloud. But for the fraction of
+an instant they were silhouetted against the silver wings. And they were
+not misty wisps of vapor. They were dense, sharply defined rocket
+trails.</p>
+
+<p>They shot upward, spreading out. They unreeled with incredible,
+ever-increasing velocity.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot hit something with the heel of his hand. There was a
+heart-stopping delay. Then the transport leaped forward with a force to
+stop one&#8217;s breath. The jatos were firing furiously, and the ship jumped.
+There was a bellowing that drowned out the sound of the engines. Joe was
+slammed back on the rear wall of the cabin. He struggled against the
+force that pushed him tailward. He heard the pilot saying calmly: &#8220;That
+plane shot rockets at us. If they&#8217;re guided we&#8217;re sunk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then the threads of smoke became the thickness of cables, of columns!
+They should have ringed the transport plane in. But the jatos had jumped
+it crazily forward and were still <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg&nbsp;10]</a></span>thrusting fiercely to make it go
+faster than any prop-plane could. The acceleration made the muscles at
+the front of Joe&#8217;s throat ache as he held his head upright against it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll be proximity&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then the plane bucked. Very probably, at that moment, it was stretched
+far past the limit of strain for which even its factor of safety was
+designed. One rocket had let go. The others went with it. The rockets
+had had proximity fuses. If they had ringed the transport ship and gone
+off with it enclosed, it would now be a tumbling mass of wreckage. But
+the jatos had thrown the plane out ahead of the target area. Suddenly
+they cut off, and it seemed as if the ship had braked. But the pilot
+dived steeply, for speed.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot was saying coldly into the microphone: &#8220;He shot rockets.
+Looked like Army issue three point fives with proximities. They missed.
+And we&#8217;re mighty lonely!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The transport tore on, both pilots grimly watching the cloud bank below.
+They moved their bodies as they stared out the windows, so that by no
+possibility could any part of the plane mask something that they should
+see. As they searched, the co-pilot spoke evenly into the microphone at
+his lips: &#8220;He wouldn&#8217;t carry more than four rockets, and he&#8217;s dumping
+his racks and firing equipment now. But he might have a friend with him.
+Better get here quick if you want to catch him. He&#8217;ll be the innocentest
+private pilot you ever saw in no time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then the pilot grunted. Something was streaking across the cloud
+formation far, far ahead. Three things. They were jet planes, and they
+seemed not so much to approach as to swell in size. They were coming at
+better than five hundred knots&mdash;ten miles a minute&mdash;and the transport
+was heading for them at its top speed of three hundred knots. The
+transport and the flight of jets neared each other at the rate of a mile
+in less than four seconds.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot said crisply: &#8220;Silver Messner with red wing-tips. The
+number began&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; He gave the letter and first digits of the vanished
+plane&#8217;s official designation, without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg&nbsp;11]</a></span>which it could not take off from
+or be serviced at any flying field.</p>
+
+<p>Joe heard an insistent, swift <i>beep-beep-beep-beep</i> which would be the
+radars of the approaching jets. He could not hear any answers that might
+reach the co-pilot as he talked to unseen persons who would relay his
+words to the jet fighters.</p>
+
+<p>One of them peeled off and sank into the cloud layer. The others came
+on. They set up in great circles about the transport, crossing before
+it, above it, around it, which gave the effect of flying around an
+object not in motion at all.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot flew on, frowning. The co-pilot said: &#8220;Yes. Sure! I&#8217;m
+listening!&#8221; There was a pause. Then he said: &#8220;Check. Thanks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He hung the instrument back where it belonged, above his head and behind
+him. He thoughtfully mopped his brow. He looked at Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe,&#8221; he said mildly, &#8220;you believe me when I tell you there&#8217;s a sort
+of hot war on, to keep the Platform from taking off.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot grunted. &#8220;Here&#8217;s the third jet coming up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was true. The jet that had dived into the clouds came up out of the
+cloud formation with somehow an air of impassive satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did they spot the guy?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yeah,&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;He must&#8217;ve picked up my report. He didn&#8217;t
+dump his radar. He stayed in the cloud bank. When the jet came for
+him&mdash;spotting him with its night-fighter stuff&mdash;he tried to ram. Tried
+for a collision. So the jet gave him the works. Blew him apart. Couldn&#8217;t
+make him land. Maybe they&#8217;ll pick up something from the wreckage.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe wet his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;saw what happened,&#8221; he said. &#8220;He tried to smash us with rockets.
+Where&#8217;d he get them? How were they smuggled in?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot shrugged. &#8220;Maybe smuggled in. Maybe stolen. They coulda
+been landed from a sub anywhere on a good many thousand miles of coast.
+They coulda been hauled anywhere <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg&nbsp;12]</a></span>in a station wagon. The plane was a
+private-type ship. Plenty of them flying around. It could&#8217;ve been bought
+easily enough. All they&#8217;d need would be a farm somewhere where it could
+land and they could strap on a rocket rack and put in a radar. And
+they&#8217;d need information. Probably be a good lead, this business. Only
+just so many people could know what was coming on this ship, and what
+course it was flying, and so on. Security will have to check back from
+that angle.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A shadow fell upon the transport ship. A jet shot past from above it. It
+waggled its wings and changed course.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got to land and be checked for damage,&#8221; said the co-pilot
+negligently. &#8220;These guys will circle us and lead the way&mdash;as if we
+needed it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe subsided. He still had in his mind the glamorous and infinitely
+alluring picture of the Space Platform floating grandly in its orbit,
+with white-hot sunshine on it and a multitude of stars beyond. He had
+been completely absorbed in that aspect of the job that dealt with the
+method of construction and the technical details by which the Platform
+could be made to work.</p>
+
+<p>Now he had a side light on the sort of thing that has to be done when
+anything important is achieved. Figuring out how a thing can be done is
+only part of the job. Overcoming the obstacles to the apparently
+commonplace steps is nine-tenths of the difficulty. It had seemed to him
+that the most dramatic aspect of building the Space Platform had been
+the achievement of a design that would work in space, that could be
+gotten up into space, and that could be lived in under circumstances
+never before experienced. Now he saw that getting the materials to the
+spot where they were needed called for nearly as much brains and effort.
+Screening out spies and destructionists&mdash;that would be an even greater
+achievement!</p>
+
+<p>He began to feel a tremendous respect and solicitude for the people who
+were doing ordinary jobs in the building of the Platform. And he worried
+about his own share more than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the transport ship sank toward the clouds. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg&nbsp;13]</a></span>sped through
+them, stone-blind from the mist. And then there was a small airfield
+below, and the pilot and co-pilot began a pattern of ritualistic
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pitot and wing heaters?&#8221; asked the pilot.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot put his hand successively on two controls.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Off.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Spark advance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot moved his hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take-off and climb?&#8221; said the co-pilot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Blowers?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Low.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fuel selectors?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot moved his hands again to the appropriate controls,
+verifying that they were as he reported them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Main on,&#8221; he said matter-of-factly, &#8220;crossfeed off.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The transport plane slanted down steeply for the landing field that had
+looked so small at first, but expanded remarkably as they drew near.</p>
+
+<p>Joe found himself frowning. He began to see how really big a job it was
+to get a Space Platform even ready to take off for a journey that in
+theory should last forever. It was daunting to think that before a space
+ship could be built and powered and equipped with machinery there had to
+be such wildly irrelevant plans worked out as a proper check of controls
+for the piston-engine ships that flew parts to the job. The details were
+innumerable!</p>
+
+<p>But the job was still worth doing. Joe was glad he was going to have a
+share in it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg&nbsp;14]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c2" id="c2"></a><i>2</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>It was a merely misty day. The transport plane stood by the door of a
+hangar on this military field, and mechanics stood well back from it and
+looked it over. A man crawled over the tail assembly and found one small
+hole in the fabric of the stabilizer. A shell fragment had gone through
+when the war rockets exploded nearby. The pilot verified that the
+fragment had hit no strengthening member inside. He nodded. The mechanic
+made very neat fabric patches over the two holes, upper and lower. He
+began to go over the fuselage. The pilot turned away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go talk to Bootstrap,&#8221; he told the co-pilot. &#8220;You keep an eye on
+things.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll keep two eyes on them,&#8221; said the co-pilot.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot went toward the control tower of the field. Joe looked around.
+The transport ship seemed very large, standing on the concrete apron
+with its tricycle landing gear let down. It curiously resembled a
+misshapen insect, standing elaborately high on inadequate supporting
+legs. Its fuselage, in particular, did not look right for an aircraft.
+The top of the cargo section went smoothly back to the stabilizing fins,
+but the bottom did not taper. It ended astern in a clumsy-looking bulge
+that was closed by a pair of huge clamshell doors, opening straight
+astern. It was built that way, of course, so that large objects could be
+loaded direct into the cargo hold, but it was neither streamlined nor
+graceful.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did anything get into the cargo hold?&#8221; asked Joe in sudden anxiety.
+&#8220;Did the cases I&#8217;m with get hit?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After all, four rockets had exploded deplorably near the ship. If one
+fragment had struck, others might have.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg&nbsp;15]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Nothing big, anyhow,&#8221; the co-pilot told him. &#8220;We&#8217;ll know presently.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But examination showed no other sign of the ship&#8217;s recent nearness to
+destruction. It had been overstressed, certainly, but ships are built to
+take beatings. A spot check on areas where excessive flexing of the
+wings would have shown up&mdash;a big ship&#8217;s wings are not perfectly rigid:
+they&#8217;d come to pieces in the air if they were&mdash;presented no evidence of
+damage. The ship was ready to take off again.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot watched grimly until the one mechanic went back to the side
+lines. The mechanic was not cordial. He and all the others regarded the
+ship and Joe and the co-pilot with disfavor. They worked on jets, and to
+suggest that men who worked on fighter jets were not worthy of complete
+confidence did not set well with them. The co-pilot noticed it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They think I&#8217;m a suspicious heel,&#8221; he said sourly to Joe, &#8220;but I have
+to be. The best spies and saboteurs in the world have been hired to mess
+up the Platform. When better saboteurs are made, they&#8217;ll be sent over
+here to get busy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot came back from the control tower.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Special flight orders,&#8221; he told his companion. &#8220;We top off with fuel
+and get going.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mechanics got out the fuel hose, dragging it from the pit. One man
+climbed up on the wing. Other men handed up the hose. Joe was moved to
+comment, but the co-pilot was reading the new flight instructions. It
+was one of those moments of inconsistency to which anybody and everybody
+is liable. The two men of the ship&#8217;s crew had it in mind to be
+infinitely suspicious of anybody examining their ship. But fueling it
+was so completely standard an operation that they merely stood by
+absently while it went on. They had the orders to read and memorize,
+anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>One wing tank was full. A big, grinning man with sandy hair dragged the
+hose under the nose of the plane to take it to the other wing tank.
+Close by the nose wheel he slipped and steadied himself by the shaft
+which reaches down to the wheel&#8217;s hub. His position for a moment was
+absurdly ungraceful. When he straightened up, his arm slid into the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg&nbsp;16]</a></span>wheel well. But he dragged the hose the rest of the way and passed it on
+up. Then that tank was full and capped. The refueling crew got down to
+the ground and fed the hose back to the pit which devoured it. That was
+all. But somehow Joe remembered the sandy-haired man and his arm going
+up inside the wheel well for a fraction of a second.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot read one part of the flight orders again and tore them
+carefully across. One part he touched his pocket lighter to. It burned.
+He nodded yet again to the co-pilot, and they swung up and in the
+pilots&#8217; doorway. Joe followed.</p>
+
+<p>They settled in their places in the cabin. The pilot threw a switch and
+pressed a knob. One motor turned over stiffly, and caught. The second.
+Third. Fourth. The pilot listened, was satisfied, and pulled back on the
+multiple throttle. The plane trundled away. Minutes later it faced the
+long runway, a tinny voice from the control tower spoke out of a
+loud-speaker under the instruments, and the plane roared down the field.
+In seconds it lifted and swept around in a great half-circle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Okay,&#8221; said the pilot. &#8220;Wheels up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot obeyed. The telltale lights that showed the wheels
+retracted glowed briefly. The men relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know,&#8221; said the co-pilot, &#8220;there was the devil of a time during the
+War with sabotage. Down in Brazil there was a field planes used to take
+off from to fly to Africa. But they&#8217;d take off, head out to sea, get a
+few miles offshore, and then blow up. We must&#8217;ve lost a dozen planes
+that way! Then it broke. There was a guy&mdash;a sergeant&mdash;in the maintenance
+crew who was sticking a hand grenade up in the nose wheel wells. German,
+he was, and very tidy about it, and nobody suspected him. Everything
+looked okay and tested okay. But when the ship was well away and the
+crew pulled up the wheels, that tightened a string and it pulled the pin
+out of the grenade. It went off.... The master mechanic finally caught
+him and nearly killed him before the MPs could stop him. We&#8217;ve got to be
+plenty careful, whether the ground crews like it or not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said drily: &#8220;You were, except when they were topping <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg&nbsp;17]</a></span>off. You took
+that for granted.&#8221; He told about the sandy-haired man. &#8220;He hadn&#8217;t time
+to stick anything in the wheel well, though,&#8221; he added.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot blinked. Then he looked annoyed. &#8220;Confound it! I didn&#8217;t
+watch! Did you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot shook his head, his lips compressed.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot said bitterly: &#8220;And I thought I was security-conscious!
+Thanks for telling me, fella. No harm done this time, but that was a
+slip!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He scowled at the dials before him. The plane flew on.</p>
+
+<p>This was the last leg of the trip, and now it should be no more than an
+hour and a half before they reached their destination. Joe felt a lift
+of elation. The Space Platform was a realization&mdash;or the beginning of
+it&mdash;of a dream that had been Joe&#8217;s since he was a very small boy. It was
+also the dream of most other small boys at the time. The Space Platform
+would make space travel possible. Of course it wouldn&#8217;t make journeys to
+the moon or planets itself, but it would sail splendidly about the Earth
+in an orbit some four thousand miles up, and it would gird the world in
+four hours fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. It would carry
+atom-headed guided missiles, and every city in the world would be
+defenseless against it. Nobody could even hope for world domination so
+long as it floated on its celestial round. Which, naturally, was why
+there were such desperate efforts to destroy it before its completion.</p>
+
+<p>But Joe, thinking about the Platform, did not think about it as a
+weapon. It was the first rung on the stepladder to the stars. From it
+the moon would be reached, certainly. Mars next, most likely. Then
+Venus. In time the moons of Saturn, and the twilight zone of Mercury,
+and some day the moons of Jupiter. Possibly a landing could be dared on
+that giant planet itself, despite its gravity.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot spoke suddenly. &#8220;How do you rate this trip by cargo plane?&#8221;
+he asked curiously. &#8220;Mostly even generals have to go on the ground. You
+rate plenty. How?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe pulled his thoughts back from satisfied imagining. It hadn&#8217;t
+occurred to him that it was remarkable that he should <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg&nbsp;18]</a></span>be allowed to
+accompany the gyros from the plant to their destination. His family firm
+had built them, so it had seemed natural to him. He wasn&#8217;t used to the
+idea that everybody looked suspicious to a security officer concerned
+with the safety of the Platform.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Connections? I haven&#8217;t any,&#8221; said Joe. Then he said, &#8220;I do know
+somebody on the job. There&#8217;s a Major Holt out there. He might have
+cleared me. Known my family for years.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yeah,&#8221; said the co-pilot drily. &#8220;He might. As a matter of fact, he&#8217;s
+the senior security officer for the whole job. He&#8217;s in charge of
+everything, from the security guards to the radar screens and the
+jet-plane umbrella and the checking of the men who work in the Shed. If
+he says you&#8217;re all right, you probably are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe hadn&#8217;t meant to seem impressive. He explained: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know him too
+well. He knows my father, and his daughter Sally&#8217;s been kicking around
+underfoot most of my life. I taught her how to shoot, and she&#8217;s a better
+shot than I am. She was a nice kid when she was little. I got to like
+her when she fell out of a tree and broke her arm and didn&#8217;t even
+whimper. That shows how long ago it was!&#8221; He grinned. &#8220;She was trying to
+act grown-up last time I saw her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot nodded. There was a brisk chirping sound somewhere. The
+pilot reached ahead to the course-correction knob. The plane changed
+course. Sunshine shifted as it poured into the cabin. The ship was
+running on automatic pilot well above the cloud level, and at an
+even-numbered number of thousands of feet altitude, as was suitable for
+planes traveling south or west. Now it droned on its new course,
+forty-five degrees from the original. Joe found himself guessing that
+one of the security provisions for planes approaching the Platform might
+be that they should not come too near on a direct line to it, lest they
+give information to curious persons on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Time went on. Joe slipped gradually back to his meditations about the
+Platform. There was always, in his mind, the picture of a man-made thing
+shining in blinding sunlight <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg&nbsp;19]</a></span>between Earth and moon. But he began to
+remember things he hadn&#8217;t paid too much attention to before.</p>
+
+<p>Opposition to the bare idea of a Space Platform, for instance, from the
+moment it was first proposed. Every dictator protested bitterly. Even
+politicians out of office found it a subject for rabble-rousing
+harangues. The nationalistic political parties, the peddlers of hate,
+the entrepreneurs of discord&mdash;every crank in the world had something to
+say against the Platform from the first. When they did not roundly
+denounce it as impious, they raved that it was a scheme by which the
+United States would put itself in position to rule all the Earth. As a
+matter of fact, the United States had first proposed it as a United
+Nations enterprise, so that denunciations that politicians found good
+politics actually made very poor sense. But it did not get past the
+General Assembly. The proposal was so rabidly attacked on every side
+that it was not even passed up to the Council&mdash;where it would certainly
+have been vetoed anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>But it was exactly that furious denunciation which put the Platform
+through the United States Congress, which had to find the money for its
+construction.</p>
+
+<p>In Joe&#8217;s eyes and in the eyes of most of those who hoped for it from the
+beginning, the Platform&#8217;s great appeal was that it was the necessary
+first step toward interplanetary travel, with star ships yet to come.
+But most scientists wanted it, desperately, for their own ends. There
+were low-temperature experiments, electronic experiments, weather
+observations, star-temperature measurements, astronomical
+observations.... Any man in any field of science could name reasons for
+it to be built. Even the atom scientists had one, and nearly the best.
+Their argument was that there were new developments of nuclear theory
+that needed to be tried out, but should not be tried out on Earth. There
+were some reactions that ought to yield unlimited power for all the
+world from really abundant materials. But there was one chance in fifty
+that they wouldn&#8217;t be safe, just because the materials were so abundant.
+No sane man would risk a two-per-cent chance of destroying Earth and all
+its people, yet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg&nbsp;20]</a></span>those reactions should be tried. In a space ship some
+millions of miles out in emptiness they could be. Either they&#8217;d be safe
+or they would not. But the only way to get a space ship a safe enough
+distance from Earth was to make a Space Platform as a starting point.
+Then a ship could shoot away from Earth with effectively zero gravity
+and full fuel tanks. The Platform should be built so civilization could
+surge ahead to new heights!</p>
+
+<p>But despite these excellent reasons, it was the Platform&#8217;s enemies who
+really got it built. The American Congress would never have appropriated
+funds for a Platform for pure scientific research, no matter what
+peacetime benefits it promised. It was the vehemence of those who hated
+it that sold it to Congress as a measure for national defense. And in a
+sense it was.</p>
+
+<p>These were ironic aspects Joe hadn&#8217;t thought about before, just as he
+hadn&#8217;t thought about the need to defend the Platform while it was being
+built. Defending it was Sally&#8217;s father&#8217;s job, and he wouldn&#8217;t have a
+popular time. Joe wondered idly how Sally liked living out where the
+most important job on Earth was being done. She was a nice kid. He
+remembered appreciatively that she&#8217;d grown up to be a very good-looking
+girl. He tended to remember her mostly as the tomboy who could beat him
+swimming, but the last time he&#8217;d seen her, come to think of it, he&#8217;d
+been startled to observe how pretty she&#8217;d grown. He didn&#8217;t know anybody
+who ought to be better-looking.... She was a really swell girl....</p>
+
+<p>He came to himself again. There was a change in the look of the sky
+ahead. There was no actual horizon, of course. There was a white haze
+that blended imperceptibly into the cloud layer so that it was
+impossible to tell where the sky ended and the clouds or earth began.
+But presently there were holes in the clouds. The ship droned on, and
+suddenly it floated over the edge of such a hole, and looking down was
+very much like looking over the edge of a cliff at solid earth
+illimitably far below.</p>
+
+<p>The holes increased in number. Then there were no holes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg&nbsp;21]</a></span>at all, but only
+clouds breaking up the clear view of the ground beneath. And presently
+again even the clouds were left behind and the air was clear&mdash;but still
+there was no horizon&mdash;and there was brownish earth with small green
+patches and beyond was sere brown range. At seventeen thousand feet
+there were simply no details.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the clouds were merely a white-tipped elevation of the white haze
+to the sides and behind. And then there came a new sound above the
+droning roar of the motors. Joe heard it&mdash;and then he saw.</p>
+
+<p>Something had flashed down from nowhere. It flashed on ahead and banked
+steeply. It was a fighter jet, and for an instant Joe saw the distant
+range seem to ripple and dance in its exhaust blast. It circled
+watchfully.</p>
+
+<p>The transport pilot manipulated something. There was a change in the
+sound of the motors. Joe followed the co-pilot&#8217;s eyes. The jet fighter
+was coming up astern, dive brakes extended to reduce its speed. It
+overhauled the transport very slowly. And then the transport&#8217;s pilot
+touched one of the separate prop-controls gently, and again, and again.
+Joe, looking at the jet, saw it through the whirling blades. There was
+an extraordinary stroboscopic effect. One of the two starboard
+propellers, seen through the other, abruptly took on a look which was
+not that of mistiness at all, but of writhing, gyrating solidity. The
+peculiar appearance vanished, and came again, and vanished and appeared
+yet again before it disappeared completely.</p>
+
+<p>The jet shot on ahead. Its dive brakes retracted. It made a graceful,
+wallowing, shallow dive, and then climbed almost vertically. It went out
+of sight.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Visual check,&#8221; said the co-pilot drily, to Joe. &#8220;We had a signal to
+give. Individual to this plane. We didn&#8217;t tell it to you. You couldn&#8217;t
+duplicate it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe worked it out painfully. The visual effect of one propeller seen
+through another&mdash;that was identification. It was not a type of signaling
+an unauthorized or uninformed passenger would expect.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Also,&#8221; said the co-pilot, &#8220;we have a television camera in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg&nbsp;22]</a></span>the
+instrument board yonder. We&#8217;ve turned it on now. The interior of the
+cabin is being watched from the ground. No more tricks like the phony
+colonel and the atom bomb that didn&#8217;t &#8216;explode.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe sat quite still. He noticed that the plane was slanting gradually
+downward. His eyes went to the dial that showed descent at somewhere
+between two and three hundred feet a minute. That was for his benefit.
+The cabin was pressurized, though it did not attempt to simulate
+sea-level pressure. It was a good deal better than the outside air,
+however, and yet too quick a descent meant discomfort. Two to three
+hundred feet per minute is about right.</p>
+
+<p>The ground took on features. Small gulleys. Patches of coloration too
+small to be seen from farther up. The feeling of speed increased. After
+long minutes the plane was only a few thousand feet up. The pilot took
+over manual control from the automatic pilot. He seemed to wait. There
+was a plaintive, mechanical <i>beep-beep</i> and he changed course.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll see the Shed in a minute or two,&#8221; said the co-pilot. He added
+vexedly, as if the thing had been bothering him, &#8220;I wish I hadn&#8217;t missed
+that sandy-haired guy putting his hand in the wheel well! Nothing
+happened, but I shouldn&#8217;t have missed it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe watched. Very, very far away there were mountains, but he suddenly
+realized the remarkable flatness of the ground over which they were
+flying. From the edge of the world, behind, to the very edge of these
+far-distant hills, the ground was flat. There were gullies and
+depressions here and there, but no hills. It was flat, flat, flat....</p>
+
+<p>The plane flew on. There was a tiny glimmer of sunlight. Joe strained
+his eyes. The sunlight glinted from the tiniest possible round pip on
+the brown earth. It grew as the plane flew on. It was half a cherry
+stone. It was half an orange, with gores. It was the top section of a
+sphere that was simply too huge to have been made by men.</p>
+
+<p>There was a thin thread of white that ran across the dun-colored range
+and reached that half-ball and then ended. It was a highway. Joe
+realized that the half-globe was the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg&nbsp;23]</a></span>Shed, the monstrous building made
+for the construction of the Space Platform. It was gigantic. It was
+colossal. It was the most stupendous thing that men had ever created.</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw a tiny projection near the base of it. It was an office building
+for clerks and timekeepers and other white-collar workers. He strained
+his eyes again and saw a motor truck on the highway. It looked
+extraordinarily flat. Then he saw that it wasn&#8217;t a single truck but a
+convoy of them. A long way back, the white highway was marked by a tiny
+dot. That was a motor bus.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sign of activity anywhere, because the scale was so great.
+Movement there was, but the things that moved were too small to be seen
+by comparison with the Shed. The huge, round, shining half-sphere of
+metal stood tranquilly in the midst of emptiness.</p>
+
+<p>It was bigger than the pyramids.</p>
+
+<p>The plane went on, descending. Joe craned his neck, and then he was
+ashamed to gawk. He looked ahead, and far away there were white speckles
+that would be buildings: Bootstrap, the town especially built for the
+men who built the Space Platform. In it they slept and ate and engaged
+in the uproarious festivity that men on a construction job crave on
+their time off.</p>
+
+<p>The plane dipped noticeably.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Airfield off to the right,&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;That&#8217;s for the town and
+the job. The jets&mdash;there&#8217;s an air umbrella overhead all the time&mdash;have a
+field somewhere else. The pushpots have a field of their own, too, where
+they&#8217;re training pilots.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe didn&#8217;t know what a pushpot was, but he didn&#8217;t ask. He was thinking
+about the Shed, which was the greatest building ever put up, and had
+been built merely to shelter the greatest hope for the world&#8217;s peace
+while it was put together. He&#8217;d be in the Shed presently. He&#8217;d work
+there, setting up the contents of the crates back in the cargo space,
+and finally installing them in the Platform itself.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot said: &#8220;Pitot and wing heaters?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Off,&#8221; said the co-pilot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Spark and advance&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg&nbsp;24]</a></span></p><p>Joe didn&#8217;t listen. He looked down at the sprawling small town with
+white-painted barracks and a business section and an obvious, carefully
+designed recreation area that nobody would ever use. The plane was
+making a great half-circle. The motor noise dimmed as Joe became
+absorbed in his anticipation of seeing the Space Platform and having a
+hand in its building.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot said sharply: &#8220;Hold everything!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe jerked his head around. The co-pilot had his hand on the wheel
+release. His face was tense.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It don&#8217;t feel right,&#8221; he said very, very quietly. &#8220;Maybe I&#8217;m crazy, but
+there was that sandy-haired guy who put his hand up in the wheel well
+back at that last field. And this don&#8217;t feel right!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The plane swept on. The airfield passed below it. The co-pilot very
+cautiously let go of the wheel release, which when pulled should let the
+wheels fall down from their wells to lock themselves in landing
+position. He moved from his seat. His lips were pinched and tight. He
+scrabbled at a metal plate in the flooring. He lifted it and looked
+down. A moment later he had a flashlight. Joe saw the edge of a mirror.
+There were two mirrors down there, in fact. One could look through both
+of them into the wheel well.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot made quite sure. He stood up, leaving the plate off the
+opening in the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s something down in the wheel well,&#8221; he said in a brittle tone.
+&#8220;It looks to me like a grenade. There&#8217;s a string tied to it. At a guess,
+that sandy-haired guy set it up like that saboteur sergeant down in
+Brazil. Only&mdash;it rolled a little. And this one goes off when the wheels
+go down. I think, too, if we belly-land&mdash;&mdash;Better go around again, huh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot nodded. &#8220;First,&#8221; he said evenly, &#8220;we get word down to the
+ground about the sandy-haired guy, so they&#8217;ll get him regardless.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the microphone hanging above and behind him and began to
+speak coldly into it. The transport plane started to swing in wide,
+sweeping circles over the desert beyond the airport while the pilot
+explained that there was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg&nbsp;25]</a></span>a grenade in the nose wheel well, set to
+explode if the wheel were let down or, undoubtedly, if the ship came in
+to a belly landing.</p>
+
+<p>Joe found himself astonishingly unafraid. But he was filled with a
+pounding rage. He hated the people who wanted to smash the pilot gyros
+because they were essential to the Space Platform. He hated them more
+completely than he had known he could hate anybody. He was so filled
+with fury that it did not occur to him that in any crash or explosive
+landing that would ruin the gyros, he would automatically be killed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg&nbsp;26]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c3" id="c3"></a><i>3</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>The pilot made an examination down the floor-plate hole, with a
+flashlight to see by and two mirrors to show him the contents of a spot
+he could not possibly reach with any instrument. Joe heard his report,
+made to the ground by radio.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a grenade,&#8221; he said coldly. &#8220;It took time to fix it the way it is.
+At a guess, the ship was booby-trapped at the time of its last overhaul.
+But it was arranged that the booby trap had to be set, the trigger
+cocked, by somebody doing something very simple at a different place and
+later on. We&#8217;ve been flying with that grenade in the wheel well for two
+weeks. But it was out of sight. Today, back at the airfield, a
+sandy-haired man reached up and pulled a string he knew how to find.
+That loosened a slipknot. The grenade rolled down to a new position. Now
+when the wheel goes down the pin is pulled. You can figure things out
+from that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was an excellent sabotage device. If a ship blew up two weeks after
+overhaul, it would not be guessed that the bomb had been placed so long
+before. Every search would be made for a recent opportunity for the
+bomb&#8217;s placing. A man who merely reached in and pulled a string that
+armed the bomb and made it ready for firing would never be suspected.
+There might be dozens of planes, now carrying their own destruction
+about with them.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot said into the microphone: &#8220;Probably....&#8221; He listened. &#8220;Very
+well, sir.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned away and nodded to the co-pilot, now savagely keeping the ship
+in wide, sweeping circles, the rims of which barely touched the
+farthermost corner of the airport on the ground below.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg&nbsp;27]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve authority to jump,&#8221; he said briefly. &#8220;You know where the chutes
+are. But there <i>is</i> a chance I can belly-land without that grenade
+blowing. I&#8217;m going to try that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot said angrily: &#8220;I&#8217;ll get him a chute.&#8221; He indicated Joe, and
+said furiously, &#8220;They&#8217;ve been known to try two or three tricks, just to
+make sure. Ask if we should dump cargo before we crash-land!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot held up the microphone again. He spoke. He listened.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Okay to dump stuff to lighten ship.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You won&#8217;t dump my crates,&#8221; snapped Joe. &#8220;And I&#8217;m staying to see you
+don&#8217;t! If you can ride this ship down, so can I!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot got up and scowled at him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anything I can move out, goes. Will you help?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe followed him through the door into the cargo compartment.</p>
+
+<p>The space there was very considerable, and bitterly cold. The crates
+from the Kenmore plant were the heaviest items of cargo. Other objects
+were smaller. The co-pilot made his way to the rear and pulled a lever.
+Great, curved doors opened at the back of the plane. Instantly there was
+such a bellowing of motors that all speech was impossible. The co-pilot
+pulled out a clip of colored-paper slips and checked one with the
+nearest movable parcel. He painstakingly made a check mark and began to
+push the box toward the doors.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a conspicuously sane operation. So near the ground, the plane
+tended to waver. The air was distinctly bumpy. To push a massive box out
+a doorway, so it would tumble down a thousand feet to desert sands, was
+not so safe a matter as would let it become tedious. But Joe helped.
+They got the box to the door and shoved it out. It went spinning down.
+The co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watched it land. He chose
+another box. He checked it. And another. Joe helped. They got them out
+of the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness. The plane soared on
+in circles. The desert, as seen through the opened clamshell doors,
+reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt, and reeled <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg&nbsp;28]</a></span>away again. Joe
+and the co-pilot labored furiously. But the co-pilot checked each item
+before he jettisoned it.</p>
+
+<p>It was a singularly deliberate way to dump cargo to destruction. A
+metal-bound box. Over the edge of the cargo space floor. A piece of
+machinery, visible through its crate. A box marked <i>Instruments</i>.
+<i>Fragile</i>. Each one checked off. Each one dumped to drop a thousand feet
+or more. A small crated dynamo. This item and that. A crate marked
+<i>Stationery</i>. It would be printed forms for the timekeepers, perhaps.
+But it wasn&#8217;t.</p>
+
+<p>It dropped out. The plane bellowed on. And suddenly there was a burst of
+blue-white flame on the desert below. The box that should have contained
+timecards had contained something very much more explosive. As the plane
+roared on&mdash;rocking from the shock wave of the explosion&mdash;Joe saw a
+crater and a boiling cloud of smoke and flying sand.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously, in the blasting uproar of
+the motors. He vengefully marked the waybill of the parcel that had
+exploded. But then they went back to the job of dumping cargo. They
+worked well as a team now. In no more than minutes everything was out
+except the four crates that were the gyros. The co-pilot regarded them
+dourly, and Joe clenched his fists. The co-pilot closed the clamshell
+doors, and it became possible to hear oneself think again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ship&#8217;s lighter, anyhow,&#8221; reported the co-pilot, back in the cabin.
+&#8220;Tell &#8217;em this is what exploded.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot took the slip. He plucked down the microphone&mdash;exactly like
+somebody picking up an interoffice telephone&mdash;and reported the waybill
+number and description of the case that had been an extra bomb. The ship
+carrying the pilot gyros had been booby-trapped&mdash;probably with a number
+of other ships&mdash;and a bomb had been shipped on it, and a special
+saboteur with a private plane had shot at it with rockets. The pilot
+gyros were critical devices. They had to be on board the Platform when
+it took off, and they took months to make and balance. There had been
+extra pains taken to prevent their arrival!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg&nbsp;29]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m dumping gas now,&#8221; said the pilot into the microphone, &#8220;and then
+coming in for a belly landing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The ship flew straightaway. It flew more lightly, and it bounced a
+little. When gas is dumped one has to slow to not more than one hundred
+and seventy-five knots and fly level. Then one is supposed to fly five
+minutes after dumping with the chutes in the drain position&mdash;and even
+then there is forty-five minutes of flying fuel still in the tanks.</p>
+
+<p>The ship swept around and headed back for the now far-distant field. It
+went slowly lower and lower and lower until it seemed barely to skim the
+minor irregularities in the ground. And low like this, the effect of
+speed was terrific.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot thought of something. Quickly he went back into the cargo
+space. He returned with an armful of blankets. He dumped them on the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If that grenade does go!&#8221; he said sourly.</p>
+
+<p>Joe helped. In the few minutes before Bootstrap loomed near, they filled
+the bottom of the cabin with blankets. Especially around the pilots&#8217;
+chairs. And there was a mound of blanketing above the actual place where
+the grenade might be. It made sense. Soft stuff like blankets would
+absorb an explosion better than anything else. But the pilot thought the
+grenade might not blow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hold fast!&#8221; snapped the pilot.</p>
+
+<p>The wing flaps were down. That slowed the ship a little. It had been
+lightened. That helped. They went in over the edge of the field less
+than man-height high. Joe found his hands closing convulsively on a
+handgrip. He saw a crash wagon starting out from the side of the runway.
+A fire truck started for the line the plane followed.</p>
+
+<p>Four feet above the rushing sand. Three. The pilot eased back the stick.
+His face was craggy and very grim and very hard. The ship&#8217;s tail went
+down and dragged. It bumped. Then the plane careened and slid and
+half-whirled crazily, and then the world seemed to come to an end.
+Crashes. Bangs. Shrieks of torn metal. Bumps, thumps and grindings. Then
+a roaring.</p>
+
+<p>Joe pulled himself loose from where he had been flung&mdash;it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg&nbsp;30]</a></span>seemed to him
+that he peeled himself loose&mdash;and found the pilot struggling up, and he
+grabbed him to help, and the co-pilot hauled at them both, and abruptly
+all three of them were in the open air and running at full speed away
+from the ship.</p>
+
+<p>The roar abruptly became a bellowing. There was an explosion. Flames
+sprouted everywhere. The three men ran stumblingly. But even as they
+ran, the co-pilot swore.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We left something!&#8221; he panted.</p>
+
+<p>Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something
+else exploded dully. But he should be far enough away by now.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckage immersed in roaring
+flames. The flames were monstrous. They rose sky-high, it seemed&mdash;more
+flames than forty-five minutes of gasoline should have produced. As he
+looked, something blew up shatteringly, and fire raged even more
+furiously. Of course in such heat the delicately adjusted gyros would be
+warped and ruined even if the crash hadn&#8217;t wrecked them beforehand. Joe
+made thick, incoherent sounds of rage.</p>
+
+<p>The plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton, licked through by
+flames. The crash wagon roared to a stop beside them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anybody hurt? Anybody left inside?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairing rage. The fog wagon
+roared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles. Its tanks contained
+water treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest of
+droplets when sprayed at four hundred pounds pressure. It drenched the
+burning wreck with that heavy mist, in which a man would drown. No fire
+could possibly sustain itself. In seconds, it seemed, there were only
+steam and white vapor and fumes of smoldering substances that gradually
+lessened.</p>
+
+<p>But then there was a roaring of motorcycles racing across the field with
+a black car trailing them. The car pulled up beside the fog wagon, then
+sped swiftly to where Joe was coming out of wild rage and sinking into
+sick, black depression. He&#8217;d been responsible for the pilot gyros and
+their safe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg&nbsp;31]</a></span>arrival. What had happened wasn&#8217;t his fault, but it was not
+his job merely to remain blameless. It was his job to get the gyros
+delivered and set up in the Space Platform. He had failed.</p>
+
+<p>The black car braked to a stop. There was Major Holt. Joe had seen him
+six months before. He&#8217;d aged a good deal. He looked grimly at the two
+pilots.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What happened?&#8221; he demanded. &#8220;You dumped your fuel! What burned like
+this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said thickly: &#8220;Everything was dumped but the pilot gyros. They
+didn&#8217;t burn! They were packed at the plant!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent sound of rage. &#8220;I&#8217;ve got it!&#8221;
+he said hoarsely. &#8220;I know&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What?&#8221; snapped Major Holt.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&mdash;planted that grenade at the&mdash;major overhaul!&#8221; panted the
+co-pilot, too enraged even to swear. &#8220;They&mdash;fixed it so&mdash;any trouble
+would mean a wreck! And I&mdash;pulled the fire-extinguisher releases just as
+we hit! For all compartments! To flood everything with CO<sub>2</sub>! But it
+wasn&#8217;t CO<sub>2</sub>! That&#8217;s what burned!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt stared sharply at him. He held up his hand. Somebody
+materialized beside him. He said harshly: &#8220;Get the extinguisher bottles
+sealed and take them to the laboratory.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A man went running toward the wreck. Major Holt said coldly: &#8220;That&#8217;s a
+new one. We should have thought of it. You men get yourselves attended
+to and report to Security at the Shed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot and co-pilot turned away. Joe turned to go with them. Then he
+heard Sally&#8217;s voice, a little bit wobbly: &#8220;Joe! Come with us, please!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe hadn&#8217;t seen her, but she was in the car. She was pale. Her eyes were
+wide and frightened.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said stiffly: &#8220;I&#8217;ll be all right. I want to look at those
+crates&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt said curtly: &#8220;They&#8217;re already under guard. There&#8217;ll have to
+be photographs made before anything can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg&nbsp;32]</a></span>be touched. And I want a report
+from you, anyhow. Come along!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe looked. The motorcycles were abandoned, and there were already armed
+guards around the still-steaming wreck, grimly watching the men of the
+fog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparks or flame. It was
+noticeable that now nobody moved toward the wreck. There were figures
+walking back toward the edge of the field. What civilians were about,
+even to the mechanics on duty, had started out to look at the debris at
+close range. But the guards were on the job. Nobody could approach. The
+onlookers went back to their proper places.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please, Joe!&#8221; said Sally shakily.</p>
+
+<p>Joe got drearily into the car. The instant he seated himself, it was in
+motion again. It went plunging back across the field and out the
+entrance. Its horn blared and it went streaking toward the town and
+abruptly turned to the left. In seconds it was on a broad white highway
+that left the town behind and led toward the emptiness of the desert.</p>
+
+<p>But not quite emptiness. Far, far away there was a great half-globe
+rising against the horizon. The car hummed toward it, tires singing. And
+Joe looked at it and felt ashamed, because this was the home of the
+Space Platform, and he hadn&#8217;t brought to it the part for which he alone
+was responsible.</p>
+
+<p>Sally moistened her lips. She brought out a small box. She opened it.
+There were bandages and bottles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve a first-aid kit, Joe,&#8221; she said shakily. &#8220;You&#8217;re burned. Let me
+fix the worst ones, anyhow!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe looked at himself. One coat sleeve was burned to charcoal. His hair
+was singed on one side. A trouser leg was burned off around the ankle.
+When he noticed, his burns hurt.</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt watched her spread a salve on scorched skin. He showed no
+emotion whatever.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me what happened,&#8221; he commanded. &#8220;All of it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, there seemed very little to tell, but Joe told it baldly as the
+car sped on. The great half-ball of metal loomed larger and larger but
+did not appear to grow nearer as Sally <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg&nbsp;33]</a></span>practiced first aid. They came to
+a convoy of trucks, and the horn blared, and they turned out and passed
+it. Once they met a convoy of empty vehicles on the way back to
+Bootstrap. They passed a bus. They went on.</p>
+
+<p>Joe finished drearily: &#8220;The pilots did everything anybody could. Even
+checked off the packages as they were dumped. We reported the one that
+blew up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt said uncompromisingly: &#8220;Those were orders. In a sense we&#8217;ve
+gained something even by this disaster. The pilots are probably right
+about the plane&#8217;s having been booby-trapped after its last overhaul, and
+the traps armed later. I&#8217;ll have an inspection made immediately, and
+we&#8217;ll see if we can find how it was done.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s the man you think armed the trap on this plane. An order for
+his arrest is on the way now. I told my secretary. And&mdash;hm.... That
+CO<sub>2</sub>&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t understand that,&#8221; said Joe drearily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Planes have CO<sub>2</sub> bottles to put fires out,&#8221; said the Major impatiently.
+&#8220;A fire in flight lights a red warning light on the instrument panel,
+telling where it is. The pilot pulls a handle, and CO<sub>2</sub> floods the
+compartment, putting it out. And this ship was coming in for a crash
+landing so the pilot&mdash;according to orders&mdash;flooded all compartments with
+CO<sub>2</sub>. Only it wasn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said in horror: &#8220;Oh, no!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The CO<sub>2</sub> bottles were filled with an inflammable or an explosive gas,&#8221;
+said her father, unbending. &#8220;Instead of making a fire impossible, they
+made it certain. We&#8217;ll have to watch out for that trick now, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe was too disheartened for any emotion except a bitter depression and
+a much more bitter hatred of those who were ready to commit any
+crime&mdash;and had committed most&mdash;in the attempt to destroy the Platform.</p>
+
+<p>The Shed that housed it rose and rose against the skyline. It became
+huge. It became monstrous. It became unbelievable. But Joe could have
+wept when the car pulled up at an angular, three-story building built
+out from the Shed&#8217;s base. From the air, this substantial building had
+looked like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg&nbsp;34]</a></span>a mere chip. The car stopped. They got out. A sentry saluted
+as Major Holt led the way inside. Joe and Sally followed.</p>
+
+<p>The Major said curtly to a uniformed man at a desk: &#8220;Get some clothes
+for this man. Get him a long-distance telephone connection to the
+Kenmore Precision Tool Company. Let him talk. Then bring him to me
+again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He disappeared. Sally tried to smile at Joe. She was still quite pale.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s Dad, Joe. He means well, but he&#8217;s not cordial. I was in his
+office when the report of sabotage to your plane came through. We
+started for Bootstrap. We were on the way when we saw the first
+explosion. I&mdash;thought it was your ship.&#8221; She winced a little at the
+memory. &#8220;I knew you were on board. It was&mdash;not nice, Joe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She&#8217;d been badly scared. Joe wanted to thump her encouragingly on the
+back, but he suddenly realized that that would no longer be appropriate.
+So he said gruffly: &#8220;I&#8217;m all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He followed the uniformed man. He began to get out of his scorched and
+tattered garments. The sergeant brought him more clothes, and he put
+them on. He was just changing his personal possessions to the new
+pockets when the sergeant came back again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Kenmore plant on the line, sir.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe went to the phone. On the way he discovered that the banging around
+he&#8217;d had when the plane landed had made a number of places on his body
+hurt.</p>
+
+<p>He talked to his father.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward, he realized that it was a queer conversation. He felt guilty
+because something had happened to a job that had taken eight months to
+do and that he alone was escorting to its destination. He told his
+father about that. But his father didn&#8217;t seem concerned. Not nearly so
+much concerned as he should have been. He asked urgent questions about
+Joe himself. If he was hurt. How much? Where? Joe was astonished that
+his father seemed to think such matters more important than the pilot
+gyros. But he answered the questions and explained the exact situation
+and also a certain desperate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg&nbsp;35]</a></span>hope he was trying to cherish that the
+gyros might still be repairable. His father gave him advice.</p>
+
+<p>Sally was waiting again when he came out. She took him into her father&#8217;s
+office, and introduced him to her father&#8217;s secretary. Compared to Sally
+she was an extraordinarily plain woman. She wore a sorrowful expression.
+But she looked very efficient.</p>
+
+<p>Joe explained carefully that his father said for him to hunt up Chief
+Bender&mdash;working on the job out here&mdash;because he was one of the few men
+who&#8217;d left the Kenmore plant to work elsewhere, and he was good. He and
+the Chief, between them, would estimate the damage and the possibility
+of repair.</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt listened. He was military and official and harassed and curt
+and tired. Joe&#8217;d known Sally and therefore her father all his life, but
+the Major wasn&#8217;t an easy man to be relaxed with. He spoke into thin air,
+and immediately his sad-seeming secretary wrote out a pass for Joe. Then
+Major Holt gave crisp orders on a telephone and asked questions, and
+Sally said: &#8220;I know. I&#8217;ll take him there. I know my way around.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her father&#8217;s expression did not change. He simply included Sally in his
+orders on the phone.</p>
+
+<p>He hung up and said briefly: &#8220;The plane will be surveyed and taken apart
+as soon as possible. By the time you find your man you can probably
+examine the crates. I&#8217;ll have you cleared for it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His secretary reached in a drawer for order forms to fill out and hand
+him to sign. Sally tugged at Joe&#8217;s arm. They left.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, she said: &#8220;There&#8217;s no use arguing with my father, Joe. He has a
+terrible job, and it&#8217;s on his mind all the time. He hates being a
+Security officer, too. It&#8217;s a thankless job&mdash;and no Security officer
+ever gets to be more than a major. His ability never shows. What he does
+is never noticed unless it fails. So he&#8217;s frustrated. He&#8217;s got poor Miss
+Ross&mdash;his secretary, you know&mdash;so she just listens to what he says must
+be done and she writes it out. Sometimes he goes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg&nbsp;36]</a></span>days without speaking
+to her directly. But really it&#8217;s pretty bad! It&#8217;s like a war with no
+enemy to fight except spies! And the things they do! They&#8217;ve been known
+even to booby-trap a truck after an accident, so anybody who tries to
+help will be blown up! So everything has to be done in a certain way or
+everything will be ruined!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She led him to an office with a door that opened directly into the Shed.
+In spite of his bitterness, Joe was morosely impatient to see inside.
+But Sally had to identify him formally as the Joe Kenmore who was the
+subject of her father&#8217;s order, and his fingerprints had to be taken, and
+somebody had him stand for a moment before an X-ray screen. Then she led
+him through the door, and he was in the Shed where the Space Platform
+was under construction.</p>
+
+<p>It was a vast cavern of metal sheathing and spidery girders, filled with
+sound and detail. It took him seconds to begin to absorb what he saw and
+heard. The Shed was five hundred feet high in the middle, and it was all
+clear space without a single column or interruption. There were arc
+lamps burning about its edges, and high up somewhere there were strips
+of glass which let in a pale light. All of it resounded with many noises
+and clanging echoes of them.</p>
+
+<p>There were rivet guns at work, and there were the grumblings of motor
+trucks moving about, and the oddly harsh roar of welding torches. But
+the torch flames looked only like marsh fires, blue-white and eerie
+against the mass of the thing that was being built.</p>
+
+<p>It was not too clear to the eye, this incomplete Space Platform. There
+seemed to be a sort of mist, a glamour about it, which was partly a
+veiling mass of scaffolding. But Joe gazed at it with an emotion that
+blotted out even his aching disappointment and feeling of shame.</p>
+
+<p>It was gigantic. It had the dimensions of an ocean liner. It was
+strangely shaped. Partly obscured by the fragile-seeming framework about
+it, there was bright plating in swelling curves, and the plating reached
+up irregularly and followed a peculiar pattern, and above the plating
+there were girders&mdash;themselves shining brightly in the light of many arc
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg&nbsp;37]</a></span>lamps&mdash;and they rose up and up toward the roof of the Shed itself. The
+Platform was ungainly and it was huge, and it rested under a hollow
+metal half-globe that could have doubled for a sky. It was more than
+three hundred feet high, itself, and there were men working on the bare
+bright beams of its uppermost parts&mdash;and the men were specks. The far
+side of the Shed&#8217;s floor had other men on it, and they were merely
+jerkily moving motes. You couldn&#8217;t see their legs as they walked. The
+Shed and the Platform were monstrous!</p>
+
+<p>Joe felt Sally&#8217;s eyes upon him. Somehow, they looked proud. He took a
+deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>She said: &#8220;Come on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They walked across acres of floor neatly paved with shining wooden
+blocks. They moved toward the thing that was to take mankind&#8217;s first
+step toward the stars. As they walked centerward, a big sixteen-wheel
+truck-and-trailer outfit backed out of an opening under the lacy haze of
+scaffolds. It turned clumsily, and carefully circled the scaffolding,
+and moved toward a sidewall of the Shed. A section of the wall&mdash;it
+seemed as small as a rabbit hole&mdash;lifted inward like a flap, and the
+sixteen-wheeler trundled out into the blazing sunlight. Four other
+trucks scurried out after it. Other trucks came in. The sidewall section
+closed.</p>
+
+<p>There was the smell of engine fumes and hot metal and of ozone from
+electric sparks. There was that indescribable smell a man can get
+homesick for, of metal being worked by men. Joe walked like someone in a
+dream, with Sally satisfiedly silent beside him, until the
+scaffolds&mdash;which had looked like veiling&mdash;became latticework and he saw
+openings.</p>
+
+<p>They walked into one such tunnel. The bulk of the Platform above them
+loomed overhead with a crushing menace. There were trucks rumbling all
+around underneath, here in this maze of scaffold columns. Some carried
+ready-loaded cages waiting to be snatched up by hoists. Crane grips came
+down, and snapped fast on the cages, and lifted them up and up and out
+of sight. There was a Diesel running somewhere, and a man stood and
+stared skyward and made motions with his hands, and the Diesel adjusted
+its running to his signals. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg&nbsp;38]</a></span>Then some empty cages came down and landed
+in a waiting truck body with loud clanking noises. Somebody cast off the
+hooks, and the truck grumbled and drove away.</p>
+
+<p>Sally spoke to a preoccupied man in shirt sleeves with a badge on an arm
+band near his shoulder. He looked carefully at the passes she carried,
+using a flashlight to make sure. Then he led them to a shaft up which a
+hoist ran. It was very noisy here. A rivet gun banged away overhead, and
+the plates of the Platform rang with the sound, and the echoes
+screeched, and to Joe the bedlam was infinitely good to hear. The man
+with the arm band shouted into a telephone transmitter, and a hoist cage
+came down. Joe and Sally stepped on it. Joe took a firm grip on her
+shoulder, and the hoist shot upward.</p>
+
+<p>The hugeness of the Shed and the Platform grew even more apparent as the
+hoist accelerated toward the roof. The flooring seemed to expand.
+Spidery scaffold beams dropped past them. There were things being built
+over by the sidewall. Joe saw a crawling in-plant tow truck moving past
+those enigmatic objects. It was a tiny truck, no more than four feet
+high and with twelve-inch wheels. It dragged behind it flat plates of
+metal with upturned forward edges. They slid over the floor like
+sledges. Cryptic loads were carried on those plates, and the tow truck
+stopped by a mass of steel piping being put together, and began to
+unload the plates.</p>
+
+<p>Then the hoist slowed abruptly and Sally winced a little. The hoist
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Here&mdash;two hundred feet up&mdash;a welding crew worked on the skin of the
+Platform itself. The plating curved in and there was a wide flat space
+parallel to the ground. There was also a great gaping hole beyond.
+Though girders rose roofward even yet, this was as high as the plating
+had gone. That opening&mdash;Joe guessed&mdash;would ultimately be the door of an
+air lock, and this flat surface was designed for a tender rocket to
+anchor to by magnets. When a rocket came up from Earth with supplies or
+reliefs for the Platform&#8217;s crew, or with fuel to be stored for an
+exploring ship&#8217;s later <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg&nbsp;39]</a></span>use, it would anchor here and then inch toward
+that doorway....</p>
+
+<p>There were half a dozen men in the welding crew. They should have been
+working. But two men battered savagely at each other, their tools thrown
+down. One was tall and lean, with a wrinkled face and an expression of
+intolerable fury. The other was squat and dark with a look of
+desperation. A third man was in the act of putting down his welding
+torch&mdash;he&#8217;d carefully turned it off first&mdash;to try to interfere. Another
+man gaped. Still another was climbing up by a ladder from the scaffold
+level below.</p>
+
+<p>Joe put Sally&#8217;s hand on the hoist upright, instinctively freeing himself
+for action.</p>
+
+<p>The lanky man lashed out a terrific roundhouse blow. It landed, but the
+stocky man bored in. Joe had an instant&#8217;s clear sight of his face. It
+was not the face of a man enraged. It had the look of a man both
+desperate and despairing.</p>
+
+<p>Then the lanky man&#8217;s foot slipped. He lost balance, and the stocky man&#8217;s
+fist landed. The thin man reeled backward. Sally cried out, choking. The
+lanky man teetered on the edge of the flat place. Behind him, the
+plating curved down. Below him there were two hundred feet of fall
+through the steel-pipe maze of scaffolds. If he took one step back he
+was gone inexorably down a slope on which he could never stop.</p>
+
+<p>He took that step. The stocky man&#8217;s face abruptly froze in horror. The
+lanky man stiffened convulsively. He couldn&#8217;t stop. He knew it. He&#8217;d go
+back and on over the rounded edge, and fall. He might touch the
+scaffolding. It would not stop him. It would merely set his body
+spinning crazily as it dropped and crashed again and again before it
+landed two hundred feet below.</p>
+
+<p>It was horror in slow motion, watching the lean man stagger backward to
+his death.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joe leaped.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg&nbsp;40]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c4" id="c4"></a><i>4</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>For an instant, in mid-air, Joe was incongruously aware of all the
+noises in the Shed. The murky, girdered ceiling still three hundred feet
+above him. The swelling, curving, glittering surface of steel
+underneath. Then he struck. He landed beside the lean man, with his left
+arm outstretched to share his impetus with him. Alone, he would have had
+momentum enough to carry himself up the slope down which the man had
+begun to descend. But now he shared it. The two of them toppled forward
+together. Their arms were upon the flat surface, while their bodies
+dangled. The feel of gravity pulling them slantwise and downward was
+purest nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>But then, as Joe&#8217;s innards crawled, the same stocky man who had knocked
+the lean man back was dragging frantically at both of them to pull them
+to safety.</p>
+
+<p>Then there were two men pulling. The stocky man&#8217;s face was gray. His
+horror was proof that he hadn&#8217;t intended murder. The man who&#8217;d put down
+his welding torch pulled. The man who&#8217;d been climbing the ladder put his
+weight to the task of getting them back to usable footing. They reached
+safety. Joe scrambled to his feet, but he felt sick at the pit of his
+stomach. The stocky man began to shake horribly. The lanky one advanced
+furiously upon him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217; mean to keel you, Haney!&#8221; the dark one panted.</p>
+
+<p>The lanky one snapped: &#8220;Okay. You didn&#8217;t. But come on, now! We finish
+this&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He advanced toward the workman who had so nearly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg&nbsp;41]</a></span>caused his death. But
+the other man dropped his arms to his sides.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217; fight no more,&#8221; he said thickly. &#8220;Not here. You keel me is okay.
+I don&#8217; fight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The lanky man&mdash;Haney&mdash;growled at him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tonight, then, in Bootstrap. Now get back to work!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The stocky man picked up his tools. He was trembling.</p>
+
+<p>Haney turned to Joe and said ungraciously: &#8220;Much obliged. What&#8217;s up?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe still felt queasy. There is rarely any high elation after one has
+risked his life for somebody else. He&#8217;d nearly plunged two hundred feet
+to the floor of the Shed with Haney. But he swallowed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m looking for Chief Bender. You&#8217;re Haney? Foreman?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gang boss,&#8221; said Haney. He looked at Joe and then at Sally who was
+holding convulsively to the upright Joe had put her hand on. Her eyes
+were closed. &#8220;Yeah,&#8221; said Haney. &#8220;The Chief took off today. Some kind of
+Injun stuff. Funeral, maybe. Want me to tell him something? I&#8217;ll see him
+when I go off shift.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was an obscure movement somewhere on this part of the Platform. A
+tiny figure came out of a crevice that would someday be an air lock. Joe
+didn&#8217;t move his eyes toward it. He said awkwardly: &#8220;Just tell him Joe
+Kenmore&#8217;s in town and needs him. He&#8217;ll remember me, I think. I&#8217;ll hunt
+him up tonight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Okay,&#8221; said Haney.</p>
+
+<p>Joe&#8217;s eyes went to the tiny figure that had come out from behind the
+plating. It was a midget in baggy, stained work garments like the rest
+of the men up here. He wore a miniature welding shield pushed back on
+his head. Joe could guess his function, of course. There&#8217;d be corners a
+normal-sized man couldn&#8217;t get into, to buck a rivet or weld a joint.
+There&#8217;d be places only a tiny man could properly inspect. The midget
+regarded Joe without expression.</p>
+
+<p>Joe turned to the hoist to go down to the floor again. Haney waved his
+hand. The midget lifted his, in grave salutation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg&nbsp;42]</a></span></p><p>The hoist dropped down the shaft. Sally opened her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;saved that man&#8217;s life, Joe,&#8221; she said unsteadily. &#8220;But you scared
+me to death!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe tried to ignore the remark, but he still seemed to feel slanting
+metal under him and a drop of two hundred feet below. It had been a
+nightmarish sensation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t think,&#8221; he said uncomfortably. &#8220;It was a crazy thing to do.
+Lucky it worked out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally glanced at him. The hoist still dropped swiftly. Levels of
+scaffolding shot upward past them. If Joe had slipped down that rolling
+curve of metal, he&#8217;d have dropped past all these. It was not good to
+think about. He swallowed again. Then the hoist checked in its descent.
+It stopped. Joe somewhat absurdly helped Sally off to solid ground.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&mdash;looks to me,&#8221; said Sally, &#8220;as if you&#8217;re bound to make me see
+somebody killed. Joe, would you mind leading a little bit less
+adventurous life for a while? While I&#8217;m around?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He managed to grin. But he still did not feel right.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing I can do until I can look at the plane,&#8221; he said, changing the
+subject, &#8220;and I can&#8217;t find the Chief until tonight. Could we sightsee a
+little?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. They went out from under the intricate framework that upheld
+the Platform. They went, in fact, completely under that colossal
+incomplete object. Sally indicated the sidewall.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go look at the pushpots. They&#8217;re fascinating!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She led the way. The enormous spaciousness of the Shed again became
+evident. There was a catwalk part way up the inward curving wall.
+Someone leaned on its railing and surveyed the interior of the Shed. He
+would probably be a security man. Maybe the fist fight up on the
+Platform had been seen, or maybe not. The man on the catwalk was hardly
+more than a speck, and it occurred to Joe that there must be other
+watchers&#8217; posts high up on the outer shell where men could search the
+sunlit desert outside for signs of danger.</p>
+
+<p>But he turned and looked yearningly back at the monstrous thing under
+the mist of scaffolding. For the first time he could make out its shape.
+It was something like an egg, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg&nbsp;43]</a></span>a great deal more like something he
+couldn&#8217;t put a name to. Actually it was exactly like nothing in the
+world but itself, and when it was out in space there would be nothing
+left on Earth like it.</p>
+
+<p>It would be in a fashion a world in itself, independent of the Earth
+that made it. There would be hydroponic tanks in which plants would grow
+to purify its air and feed its crew. There would be telescopes with
+which men would be able to study the stars as they had never been able
+to do from the bottom of Earth&#8217;s ocean of turbulent air. But it would
+serve Earth.</p>
+
+<p>There would be communicators. They would pick up microwave messages and
+retransmit them to destinations far around the curve of the planet, or
+else store them and retransmit them to the other side of the world an
+hour or two hours later.</p>
+
+<p>It would store fuel with which men could presently set out for the
+stars&mdash;and out to emptiness for nuclear experiments that must not be
+made on Earth. And finally it would be armed with squat, deadly atomic
+missiles that no nation could possibly defy. And so this Space Platform
+would keep peace on Earth.</p>
+
+<p>But it could not make good will among men.</p>
+
+<p>Sally walked on. They reached the mysterious objects being manufactured
+in a row around half the sidewall of the Shed. They were of simple
+design and, by comparison, not unduly large. The first objects were
+merely frameworks of metal pipe, which men were welding together
+unbreakably. They were no bigger than&mdash;say&mdash;half of a six-room house. A
+little way on, these were filled with intricate arrays of tanks and
+piping, and still farther&mdash;there was a truck and hoist unloading a
+massive object into place right now&mdash;there were huge engines fitting
+precisely into openings designed to hold them. Others were being plated
+in with metallic skins.</p>
+
+<p>At the very end of this assembly line a crane was loading a finished
+object onto a flat-bed trailer. As it swung in the air, Joe realized
+what it was. It might be called a jet plane,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg&nbsp;44]</a></span> but it was not of any type
+ever before used. More than anything else, it looked like a beetle. It
+would not be really useful for anything but its function at the end of
+Operation Stepladder. Then hundreds of these ungainly objects would
+cluster upon the Platform&#8217;s sides, like swarming bees. They would thrust
+savagely up with their separate jet engines. They would lift the
+Platform from the foundation on which it had been built. Tugging,
+straining, panting, they would get it out of the Shed. But their work
+would not end there. Holding it aloft, they would start it eastward,
+lifting effortfully. They would carry it as far and as high and as fast
+as their straining engines could work. Then there would be one last
+surge of fierce thrusting with oversize jato rockets, built separately
+into each pushpot, all firing at once.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the clumsy things would drop off and come bumbling back home,
+while the Platform&#8217;s own rockets flared out their mile-long flames&mdash;and
+it headed up for emptiness.</p>
+
+<p>But the making of these pushpots and all the other multitudinous
+activities of the Shed would have no meaning if the contents of four
+crates in the wreckage of a burned-out plane could not be salvaged and
+put to use again.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said restlessly: &#8220;I want to see all this, Sally, and maybe anything
+else I do is useless, but I&#8217;ve got to find out what happened to the
+gyros I was bringing here!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said nothing. She turned, and they moved across the long, long
+space of wood-block flooring toward the doorway by which they had
+entered. And now that he had seen the Space Platform, all of Joe&#8217;s
+feeling of guilt and despondency came back. It seemed unbearable. They
+went out through the guarded door, Sally surrendered the pass, and Joe
+was again checked carefully before he was free to go.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sally said: &#8220;You don&#8217;t want me tagging around, do you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said honestly: &#8220;It isn&#8217;t exactly that, Sally, but if the stuff is
+really smashed, I&#8217;d&mdash;rather not have anybody see me. Please don&#8217;t be
+angry, but&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said quietly: &#8220;I know. I&#8217;ll get somebody to drive you over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She vanished. She came back with the uniformed man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg&nbsp;45]</a></span>who&#8217;d driven Major
+Holt. She put her hand momentarily on Joe&#8217;s arm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s really bad, Joe, tell me. You won&#8217;t let yourself cry, but I&#8217;ll
+cry for you.&#8221; She searched his eyes. &#8220;Really, Joe!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He grinned feebly and went out to the car.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling on the way to the airfield was not a good one. It was
+twenty-odd miles from the Shed, but Joe dreaded what he was going to
+see. The black car burned up the road. It turned to the right off the
+white highway, onto the curved short cut&mdash;and there was the field.</p>
+
+<p>And there was the wreck of the transport plane, still where it had
+crashed and burned. There were still armed guards about it, but men were
+working on the wreck, cutting it apart with torches. Already some of it
+was dissected.</p>
+
+<p>Joe went to the remains of the four crates.</p>
+
+<p>The largest was bent askew by the force of the crash or an explosion,
+Joe didn&#8217;t know which. The smallest was a twisted mass of charcoal. Joe
+gulped, and dug into them with borrowed tools.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot gyros of the Space Platform would apply the torque that would
+make the main gyros shift it to any desired position, or else hold it
+absolutely still. They were to act, in a sense, as a sort of steering
+engine on the take-off and keep a useful function out in space. If a
+star photograph was to be made, it was essential that the Platform hold
+absolutely still while the exposure lasted. If a guided missile was to
+be launched, it must be started right, and the pilot gyros were needed.
+To turn to receive an arriving rocket from Earth....</p>
+
+<p>The pilot gyros were the steering apparatus of the Space Platform. They
+had to be more than adequate. They had to be perfect! On the take-off
+alone, they were starkly necessary. The Platform couldn&#8217;t hope to reach
+its orbit without them.</p>
+
+<p>Joe chipped away charred planks. He pulled off flame-eaten timbers. He
+peeled off carbonized wrappings&mdash;but some did not need to be peeled:
+they crumbled at a touch&mdash;and in twenty minutes he knew the whole story.
+The rotor motors were ruined. The couplers&mdash;pilot-to-main-gyro
+connections&mdash;had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg&nbsp;46]</a></span>been heated red hot and were no longer hardened steel;
+their dimensions had changed and they would no longer fit. But these
+were not disastrous items. They were serious, but not tragic.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedy was the gyros themselves. On their absolute precision and
+utterly perfect balance the whole working of the Platform would depend.
+And the rotors were gashed in one place, and the shafts were bent. Being
+bent and nicked, the precision of the apparatus was destroyed. Its
+precision lost, the whole device was useless. And it had taken four
+months&#8217; work merely to get it perfectly balanced!</p>
+
+<p>It had been the most accurate piece of machine work ever done on Earth.
+It was balanced to a microgram&mdash;to a millionth of the combined weight of
+three aspirin tablets. It would revolve at 40,000 revolutions per
+minute. It had to balance perfectly or it would vibrate intolerably. If
+it vibrated at all it would shake itself to pieces, or, failing that,
+send aging sound waves through all the Platform&#8217;s substance. If it
+vibrated by the least fraction of a ten-thousandth of an inch, it would
+wear, and vibrate more strongly, and destroy itself and possibly the
+Platform. It needed the precision of an astronomical telescope&#8217;s
+lenses&mdash;multiplied! And it was bent. It was exactly as useless as if it
+had never been made at all.</p>
+
+<p>Joe felt as a man might feel if the mirror of the greatest telescope on
+earth, in his care, had been smashed. As if the most priceless picture
+in the world, in his charge, had been burned. But he felt worse. Whether
+it was his fault or not&mdash;and it wasn&#8217;t&mdash;it was destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>A truck rolled up and was stopped by a guard. There was talk, and the
+guard let it through. A small crane lift came over from the hangars. Its
+normal use was the lifting of plane motors in and out of their nacelles.
+Now it was to pick up the useless pieces of equipment on which the best
+workmen and the best brains of the Kenmore Precision Tool Company had
+worked unceasingly for eight calendar months, and which now was junk.</p>
+
+<p>Joe watched, numbed by disaster, while the crane hook <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg&nbsp;47]</a></span>went down to
+position above the once-precious objects. Men shored up the heavy things
+and ran planks under them, and then deftly fitted rope slings for them
+to be lifted by. It was late afternoon by now. Long shadows were
+slanting as the crane truck&#8217;s gears whined, and the slack took up, and
+the first of the four charred objects lifted and swung, spinning slowly,
+to the truck that had come from the Shed.</p>
+
+<p>Joe froze, watching. He watched the second. The third did not spin. It
+merely swayed. But the fourth.... The lines up to the crane hook were
+twisted. As the largest of the four crates lifted from its bed, it
+twisted the lines toward straightness. It spun. It spun more and more
+rapidly, and then more and more slowly, and stopped, and began to spin
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joe caught his breath. It seemed that he hadn&#8217;t breathed in
+minutes. The big crate wasn&#8217;t balanced. It was spinning. It wasn&#8217;t
+vibrating. It spun around its own center of gravity, unerringly revealed
+by its flexible suspension.</p>
+
+<p>He watched until it was dropped into the truck. Then he went stiffly
+over to the driver of the car that had brought him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Everything&#8217;s all right,&#8221; he said, feeling a queer astonishment at his
+own words. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to ride back to the Shed with the stuff I brought.
+It&#8217;s not hurt too much. I&#8217;ll be able to fix it with a man or two I can
+pick up out here. But I don&#8217;t want anything else to happen to it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So he rode back out to the Shed on the tailboard of the truck that
+carried the crates. The sun set as he rode. He was smudged and
+disheveled. The reek of charred wood and burnt insulation and scorched
+wrappings was strong in his nostrils. But he felt very much inclined to
+sing.</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to Joe that he should have sent Sally a message that she
+didn&#8217;t need to cry as a substitute for him. He felt swell! He knew how
+to do the job that would let the Space Platform take off! He&#8217;d tell her,
+first chance.</p>
+
+<p>It was very good to be alive.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg&nbsp;48]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c5" id="c5"></a><i>5</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>There was nobody in the world to whom the Space Platform was
+meaningless. To Joe and a great many people like him, it was a dream
+long and stubbornly held to and now doggedly being made a reality. To
+some it was the prospect of peace and the hope of a quiet life: children
+and grandchildren and a serene look forward to the future. Some people
+prayed yearningly for its success, though they could have no other share
+in its making. And of course there were those men who had gotten into
+power and could not stay there without ruthlessness. They knew what the
+Platform would mean to their kind. For, once world peace was certain,
+they would be killed by the people they ruled over. So they sent grubby,
+desperate men to wreck it at any cost. They were prepared to pay for or
+to commit any crime if the Space Platform could be smashed and turmoil
+kept as the norm of life on Earth.</p>
+
+<p>And there were the people who were actually doing the building.</p>
+
+<p>Joe rode a bus into Bootstrap that night with some of them. The middle
+shift&mdash;two to ten o&#8217;clock&mdash;was off. Fleets of busses rolled out from the
+small town twenty miles away, their headlights making a procession of
+paired flames in the darkness. They rolled into the unloading area and
+disgorged the late shift&mdash;ten to six&mdash;to be processed by security and
+admitted to the Shed. Then, quite empty, the busses went trundling
+around to where Joe waited with the released shift milling around him.</p>
+
+<p>The busses stopped and opened their doors. The waiting men stormed in,
+shoving zestfully, calling to each other, scrambling for seats or merely
+letting themselves be pushed on board. The bus Joe found himself on was
+jammed in seconds. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg&nbsp;49]</a></span>He held on to a strap and didn&#8217;t notice. He was
+absorbed in the rapt contemplation of his idea for the repair of the
+pilot gyros. The motors could be replaced easily enough. The foundation
+of his first despair had been the belief that everything could be
+managed but one thing; that the all-important absolute accuracy was the
+only thing that couldn&#8217;t be achieved. Getting that accuracy, back at the
+plant, had consumed four months of time. Each of the gyros was four feet
+in diameter and weighed five hundred pounds. Each spun at 40,000 r.p.m.
+It had to be machined from a special steel to assure that it would not
+fly to pieces from sheer centrifugal force. Each was plated with iridium
+lest a speck of rust form and throw it off balance. If the shaft and
+bearings were not centered exactly at the center of gravity of the
+rotors&mdash;five hundred pounds of steel off balance at 40,000 r.p.m. could
+raise the devil. They could literally wreck the Platform itself. And
+&#8220;exactly at the center of gravity&#8221; meant exactly. There could be no
+error by which the shaft was off center by the thousandth of an inch, or
+a ten-thousandth, or even the tenth of a ten-thousandth. The accuracy
+had to be absolute.</p>
+
+<p>Gloating over the solution he&#8217;d found, Joe could have hugged himself.
+Hanging to a strap in the waiting bus, he saw another bus start off with
+a grinding of gears and a spouting of exhaust smoke. It trundled to the
+highway and rolled away. Another and another followed it. Joe&#8217;s bus fell
+in line. They headed for Bootstrap in a convoy, a long, long string of
+lighted vehicles running one behind the other.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark outside. The Shed was alone, for security. It was twenty
+miles from the town where its work force slept and ate and made merry.
+That was security too. One shift came off, and went through a security
+check, and during that time the Shed was empty save for the security
+officers who roamed it endlessly, looking for trouble. Sometimes they
+found it. The shift coming on also passed through a security check.
+Nobody could get into the Shed without being identified past question.
+The picture-badge stage was long since passed on the Space Platform job.
+Security was tight!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg&nbsp;50]</a></span></p><p>The long procession of busses rolled through the night. Outside was dark
+desert. Overhead were many stars. Inside the jammed bus were swaying
+figures crowded in the aisle, and every seat was filled. There was the
+smell of sweat, and oil, and tobacco. Somebody still had garlic on his
+breath from lunch. There was the noise of many voices. There was an
+argument two seats up the aisle. There was the rumble of the motor, and
+the peculiar whine of spinning tires. Men had to raise their voices to
+be heard above the din.</p>
+
+<p>A swaying among the crowded figures more pronounced than that caused by
+the motion of the bus caught Joe&#8217;s eye. Somebody was crowding his way
+from the back toward the front. The aisle was narrow. Joe clung to his
+strap, thinking hard and happily about the rebalancing of the gyros.
+There could be no tolerance. It had to be exact. There had to be no
+vibration at all....</p>
+
+<p>Figures swayed away from him. A hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hiya.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He swung around. It was the lean man, Haney, whom he&#8217;d kept from being
+knocked off the level place two hundred feet up.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;Hello.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought you were big brass,&#8221; said Haney, rumbling in his ear. &#8220;But
+big brass don&#8217;t ride the busses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going in to try to hunt up the Chief,&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>Haney grunted. He looked estimatingly at Joe. His glance fell to Joe&#8217;s
+hands. Joe had been digging further into the crates, and afterward he&#8217;d
+washed up, but packing grease is hard to get off. When mixed with soot
+and charcoal it leaves signs. Haney relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We mostly eat together,&#8221; he observed, satisfied that Joe was regular
+because his hands weren&#8217;t soft and because mechanic&#8217;s soap had done an
+incomplete job on them. &#8220;The Chief&#8217;s a good guy. Join us?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure!&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;And thanks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A brittle voice sounded somewhere around Haney&#8217;s knees. Joe looked down,
+startled. The midget he&#8217;d seen up on the Platform nodded up at him. He&#8217;d
+squirmed through the press <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg&nbsp;51]</a></span>in Haney&#8217;s wake. He seemed to bristle a
+little out of pure habit. Joe made room for him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m okay,&#8221; said the midget pugnaciously.</p>
+
+<p>Haney made a formal introduction.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mike Scandia.&#8221; He thumbed at Joe. &#8220;Joe Kenmore. He&#8217;s eating with us.
+Wants to find the Chief.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There had been no reference to the risk Joe had run in keeping Haney
+from a two-hundred-foot fall. But now Haney said approvingly: &#8220;I wanted
+to say thanks anyhow for keeping your mouth shut. New here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe nodded. The noise in the bus made any sort of talk difficult. Haney
+appeared used to it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Saw you with&mdash;uh&mdash;Major Holt&#8217;s daughter,&#8221; he observed again. &#8220;That&#8217;s
+why I thought you were brass. Figured one or the other&#8217;d tell on Braun.
+You didn&#8217;t, or somebody&#8217;d&#8217;ve raised Cain. But I&#8217;ll handle it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Braun would be the man Haney had been fighting. If Haney wanted to
+handle it his way, it was naturally none of Joe&#8217;s business. He said
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Braun&#8217;s a good guy,&#8221; said Haney. &#8220;Crazy, that&#8217;s all. He picked that
+fight. Picked it! Up there! Coulda been him knocked off&mdash;and I&#8217;d ha&#8217;
+been in a mess! I&#8217;ll see him tonight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The midget said something biting in his peculiarly cracked and brittle
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>The bus rolled and rolled and rolled. It was a long twenty miles to
+Bootstrap. The desert outside the bus windows was utterly black and
+featureless, but once a convoy of trucks passed, going to the Shed.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, though, lights twinkled in the night. Again the bus slowed,
+in column with the others. Then there were barrackslike buildings,
+succeeding each other, and then there was a corner and suddenly the
+outside was ablaze with light. The busses drew up to the curb and
+stopped, and everybody was immediately in a great hurry to get out,
+shoving unnecessarily, and Joe let himself be carried along by the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself on the sidewalk with bright neon signs <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg&nbsp;52]</a></span>up and down the
+street. He was in the midst of the crowd which was the middle shift
+released. It eddied and dispersed without seeming to lessen. Most of the
+figures in sight were men. There were very, very few women. The neon
+signs proclaimed that here one could buy beer, and that this was Fred&#8217;s
+Place, and that was Sid&#8217;s Steak Joint. Bowling. Pool. A store&mdash;still
+open for this shift&#8217;s trade&mdash;sold fancy shirts and strictly practical
+work clothes and highly eccentric items of personal adornment. A movie
+house. A second. A third. Somewhere a record shop fed repetitious music
+to the night air. There was movement and crowding and jostling, but the
+middle of the street was almost empty save for the busses. There were
+some bicycles, but practically no other wheeled traffic. After all,
+Bootstrap was strictly a security town. A man could leave whenever he
+chose, but there were formalities, and personal cars weren&#8217;t practical.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Chief&#8217;ll be yonder,&#8221; said Haney in Joe&#8217;s ear. &#8220;Come along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They shouldered their way along the sidewalk. The passers-by were of a
+type&mdash;construction men. Somebody here had taken part in the building of
+every skyscraper and bridge and dam put up in Joe&#8217;s lifetime. They could
+have been kept away from the Space Platform job only by a flat refusal
+by security to let them be hired.</p>
+
+<p>Haney and Joe moved toward Sid&#8217;s Steak Joint, with Mike the midget
+marching truculently between them. Men nodded to them as they passed.
+Joe marshaled in his mind what he was going to tell the Chief. He had a
+trick for fixing the pilot gyros. A speck of rust would spoil them, and
+they had been through a plane crash and a fire and explosions, but his
+trick would do, in ten days or less, what the plant back home had needed
+four months to accomplish. The trick was something to gloat over.</p>
+
+<p>Into Sid&#8217;s Steak Joint. A juke box was playing. Over in a booth, four
+men ate hungrily, with a slot TV machine in the wall beside them showing
+wrestling matches out in San Francisco. A waiter carried a huge tray
+from which steam and fragrant odors arose.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg&nbsp;53]</a></span></p><p>There was the Chief, dark and saturnine to look at, with his straight
+black hair gleaming in the light. He was a Mohawk, and he and his tribe
+had taken to steel construction work a long time back. They were good.
+There were not many big construction jobs on which the Chief&#8217;s tribesmen
+were not to be found working. Forty of them had died together in the
+worst construction accident in history, when a bridge on its way to
+completion collapsed in the making, but there were a dozen or more at
+work on the Space Platform now. The Chief had essayed machine-tool work
+at the Kenmore plant, and he&#8217;d been good. He&#8217;d pitched on the plant
+baseball team, and he&#8217;d sung bass in the church choir, but there had
+been nobody else around who talked Indian, and he&#8217;d gotten lonely. At
+that, though, he&#8217;d left because the Space Platform began and wild horses
+couldn&#8217;t have kept him away from a job like that!</p>
+
+<p>He&#8217;d held a table for Haney and Mike, but his eyes widened when he saw
+Joe. Then he grinned and almost upset the table to stand up and greet
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Son-of-a-gun!&#8221; he said warmly. &#8220;What you doin&#8217; here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Right now,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;I&#8217;m looking for you. I&#8217;ve got a job for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief, still grinning, shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not me, I&#8217;m here till the Platform&#8217;s done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s on the job,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;I&#8217;ve got to get a crew together to repair
+something I brought out here today and that got smashed in the landing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The four of them sat down. Mike&#8217;s chin was barely above the table top.
+The Chief waved to a waiter. &#8220;Steaks all around!&#8221; he bellowed. Then he
+bent toward Joe. &#8220;Shoot it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe told his story. Concisely. The pilot gyros, which had to be perfect,
+had been especially gunned at by saboteurs. An attack with possibly
+stolen proximity-fused rockets. The plane was booby-trapped, and
+somebody at an airfield had had a chance to spring the trap. So it was
+wreckage. Crashed and burned on landing.</p>
+
+<p>The Chief growled. Haney pressed his lips together. The eyes of Mike
+were burning.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg&nbsp;54]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Plenty of that sabotage stuff,&#8221; growled the Chief. &#8220;Hard to catch the
+so-and-sos. Smash the gyros and the take-off&#8217;d have to wait till new
+ones got made&mdash;and that&#8217;s more time for more sabotage.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said carefully: &#8220;I think it can be licked. Listen a minute, will
+you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief fixed his eyes upon him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The gyros have to be rebalanced,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;They have to spin on their
+own center of gravity. At the plant, they set them up, spun them, and
+found which side was heavy. They took metal off till it ran smoothly at
+five hundred r.p.m. Then they spun it at a thousand. It vibrated. They
+found imbalance that was too small to show up before. They fixed that.
+They speeded it up. And so on. They tried to make the center of gravity
+the center of the shaft by trimming off the weight that put the center
+of gravity somewhere else. Right?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief said irritably: &#8220;No other way to do it! No other way!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I saw one,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;When they cleaned up the wreck at the airfield,
+they heaved up the crates with a crane. The slings were twisted. Every
+crate spun as it rose. But not one wobbled! They found their own centers
+of gravity and spun around them!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief scowled, deep in thought. Then his face went blank.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By the holy mud turtle!&#8221; he grunted. &#8220;I get it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said, with very great pains not to seem triumphant, &#8220;Instead of
+spinning the shaft and trimming the rotor, we&#8217;ll spin the rotor and trim
+the shaft. We&#8217;ll form the shaft around the center of gravity, instead of
+trying to move the center of gravity to the middle of the shaft. We&#8217;ll
+spin the rotors on a flexible bearing base. I think it&#8217;ll work.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Surprisingly, it was Mike the midget who said warmly, &#8220;You got it! Yes,
+sir, you got it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief took a deep breath. &#8220;Yeah! And d&#8217;you know how I know? The
+Plant built a high-speed centrifuge once. Remember?&#8221; He grinned with the
+triumph Joe concealed. &#8220;It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg&nbsp;55]</a></span>was just a plate with a shaft in the middle.
+There were vanes on the plate. It fitted in a shaft hole that was much
+too big. They blew compressed air up the shaft hole. It floated the
+plate up, the air hit the vanes and spun the plate&mdash;and it ran as sweet
+as honey! Balanced itself and didn&#8217;t wobble a bit! We&#8217;ll do something
+like that! Sure!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you work on it with me?&#8221; asked Joe. &#8220;We&#8217;ll need a sort of
+crew&mdash;three or four altogether. Have to figure out the stuff we need. I
+can ask for anybody I want. I&#8217;m asking for you. You pick the others.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief grinned broadly. &#8220;Any objections, Haney? You and Mike and me
+and Joe here? Look!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. He started to draw on the plastic
+table top, and then took a paper napkin instead.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Something like this&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The steaks came, sizzling on the platters they&#8217;d been cooked in. The
+outside was seared, and the inside was hot and deliciously rare.
+Intellectual exercises like the designing of a machine-tool operation
+could not compete with such aromas and sights and sounds. The four of
+them fell to.</p>
+
+<p>But they talked as they ate. Absorbed and often with their mouths full,
+frequently with imperfect articulation, but with deepening satisfaction
+as the steaks vanished and the method they&#8217;d use took form in their
+minds. It wouldn&#8217;t be wholly simple, of course. When the rotors were
+spinning about their centers of gravity, trimming off the shaft would
+change the center of gravity. But the change would be infinitely less
+than trimming off the rotors&#8217; rims. If they spun the rotors and used an
+abrasive on the high side of the shaft as it turned....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Going to have precession!&#8221; warned Mike. &#8220;Have to have a polishing
+surface. Quarter turn behind the cutter. That&#8217;ll hold it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe only remembered afterward to be astonished that Mike would know gyro
+theory. At the moment he merely swallowed quickly to get the words out.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg&nbsp;56]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Right! And if we cut too far down we can plate the bearing up to
+thickness and cut it down again&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Plate it up with iridium,&#8221; said the Chief. He waved a steak knife.
+&#8220;Man! This is gonna be fun! No tolerance you say, Joe?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No tolerance,&#8221; agreed Joe. &#8220;Accurate within the limits of measurement.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief beamed. The Platform was a challenge to all of humanity. The
+pilot gyro was essential to the functioning of the Platform. To provide
+that necessity against impossible obstacles was a challenge to the four
+who were undertaking it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Some fun!&#8221; repeated the Chief, blissfully.</p>
+
+<p>They ate their steaks, talking. They consumed huge slabs of apple pie
+with preposterous mounds of ice cream on top, still talking urgently.
+They drank coffee, interrupting each other to draw diagrams. They used
+up all the paper napkins, and were still at it when someone came heavily
+toward the table. It was the stocky man who had fought with Haney on the
+Platform that day. Braun.</p>
+
+<p>He tapped Haney on the shoulder. The four at the table looked up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We hadda fight today,&#8221; said Braun in a queer voice. He was oddly pale.
+&#8220;We didn&#8217;t finish. You wanna finish?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney growled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was a fool business,&#8221; he said angrily. &#8220;That ain&#8217;t any place to
+fight, up on the job! You know it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yeah,&#8221; said Braun in the same odd voice. &#8220;You wanna finish it now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney said formidably: &#8220;I&#8217;m not dodgin&#8217; any fight. I didn&#8217;t dodge it
+then. I&#8217;m not dodgin&#8217; it now. You picked it. It was crazy! But if you
+got over the craziness&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Braun smiled a remarkably peculiar smile. &#8220;I&#8217;m still crazy. We finish,
+huh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney pushed back his chair and stood up grimly. &#8220;Okay, we finish it!
+You coulda killed me. I coulda killed you too, with that fall ready for
+either of us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure! Too bad nobody got killed,&#8221; said Braun.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg&nbsp;57]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You fellas wait,&#8221; said Haney angrily to Joe and the rest. &#8220;There&#8217;s a
+storeroom out back. Sid&#8217;ll let us use it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the Chief pushed back his chair.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Uh-uh,&#8221; he said, shaking his head. &#8220;We&#8217;re watchin&#8217; this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney spoke with elaborate courtesy: &#8220;You mind, Braun? Want to get some
+friends of yours, too?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I got no friends,&#8221; said Braun. &#8220;Let&#8217;s go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief went authoritatively to the owner of Sid&#8217;s Steak Joint. He
+paid the bill, talking. The owner of the place negligently jerked his
+thumb toward the rear. This was not an unparalleled request&mdash;for the use
+of a storeroom so that two men could batter each other undisturbed.
+Bootstrap was a law-abiding town, because to get fired from work on the
+Platform was to lose a place in the most important job in history. So it
+was inevitable that the settlement of quarrels in private should become
+commonplace.</p>
+
+<p>The Chief leading, they filed through the kitchen and out of doors. The
+storeroom lay beyond. The Chief went in and switched on the light. He
+looked about and was satisfied. It was almost empty, save for stacked
+cartons in one corner. Braun was already taking off his coat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You want rounds and stuff?&#8221; demanded the Chief.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want fight,&#8221; said Braun thickly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Okay, then,&#8221; snapped the Chief. &#8220;No kickin&#8217; or gougin&#8217;. A man&#8217;s down,
+he has a chance to get up. That&#8217;s all the rules. Right?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney, stripping off his coat in turn, grunted an assent. He handed his
+coat to Joe. He faced his antagonist.</p>
+
+<p>It was a curious atmosphere for a fight. There were merely the plank
+walls of the storeroom with a single dangling light in the middle and an
+unswept floor beneath. The Chief stood in the doorway, scowling. This
+didn&#8217;t feel right. There was not enough hatred in evidence to justify
+it. There was doggedness and resolution enough, but Braun was deathly
+white and if his face was contorted&mdash;and it was&mdash;it was not with the
+lust to batter and injure and maim. It was something else.</p>
+
+<p>The two men faced each other. And then the stocky, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg&nbsp;58]</a></span>swarthy Braun swung
+at Haney. The blow had sting in it but nothing more. It almost looked as
+if Braun were trying to work himself up to the fight he&#8217;d insisted on
+finishing. Haney countered with a roundhouse blow that glanced off
+Braun&#8217;s cheek. And then they bore in at each other, slugging without
+science or skill.</p>
+
+<p>Joe watched. Braun launched a blow that hurt, but Haney sent him reeling
+back. He came in doggedly again, and swung and swung, but he had no idea
+of boxing. His only idea was to slug. He did slug. Haney had been
+peevish rather than angry. Now he began to glower. He began to take the
+fight to Braun.</p>
+
+<p>He knocked Braun down. Braun staggered up and rushed. A wildly flailing
+fist landed on Haney&#8217;s ear. He doubled Braun up with a wallop to the
+midsection. Braun came back, fists swinging.</p>
+
+<p>Haney closed one eye for him. He came back. Haney shook him from head to
+foot with a chest blow. He came back. Haney split his lip and loosened a
+tooth. He came back.</p>
+
+<p>The Chief said sourly: &#8220;This ain&#8217;t a fight. Quit it, Haney! He don&#8217;t
+know how!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney tried to draw away, but Braun swarmed on him, striking fiercely
+until Haney had to floor him again. He dragged himself up and rushed at
+Haney&mdash;and was knocked down again. Haney stood over him, panting
+furiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quit it, y&#8217;fool! What&#8217;s the matter with you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Braun started to get up again. The Chief interfered and held him, while
+Haney glared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He ain&#8217;t going to fight any more, Braun,&#8221; pronounced the Chief firmly.
+&#8220;You ain&#8217;t got a chance. This fight&#8217;s over. You had enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Braun was bloody and horribly battered, but he panted: &#8220;He&#8217;s got
+enough?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you out o&#8217; your head?&#8221; demanded the Chief. &#8220;He ain&#8217;t got a mark on
+him!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t&mdash;got enough,&#8221; panted Braun, &#8220;till he&#8217;s got&mdash;enough!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His breath was coming in soblike gasps, the result of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg&nbsp;59]</a></span>body blows. It
+hadn&#8217;t been a fight but a beating, administered by Haney. But Braun
+struggled to get up.</p>
+
+<p>Mike the midget said brittlely: &#8220;You got enough, Haney. You&#8217;re
+satisfied. Tell him so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure I&#8217;m satisfied,&#8221; snorted Haney. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to hit him any more.
+I got enough of that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Braun panted: &#8220;Okay! Okay!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief let him get to his feet. He went groggily to his coat. He
+tried to put himself into it. Mike caught Joe&#8217;s eye and nodded
+meaningfully. Joe helped Braun into the coat. There was silence, save
+for Braun&#8217;s heavy, labored breathing.</p>
+
+<p>He moved unsteadily toward the door. Then he stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Haney,&#8221; he said effortfully, &#8220;I don&#8217;t say I&#8217;m sorry for fighting you
+today. I fight first. But now I say I am sorry. You are good guy, Haney.
+I was crazy. I&mdash;got reason.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stumbled out of the door and was gone. The four who were left behind
+stared at each other.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter with him?&#8221; demanded Haney blankly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s nuts,&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;If he was gonna apologize&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mike shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He wouldn&#8217;t apologize,&#8221; he said brittlely, &#8220;because he thought you
+might think he was scared. But when he&#8217;d proved he wasn&#8217;t scared of a
+beating&mdash;then he could say he was sorry.&#8221; He paused. &#8220;I&#8217;ve seen guys I
+liked a lot less than him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney put on his coat, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t get it,&#8221; he rumbled. &#8220;Next time I see him&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You won&#8217;t,&#8221; snapped Mike. &#8220;None of us will. I&#8217;ll bet on it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But he was wrong. The others went out of the storeroom and back into
+Sid&#8217;s Steak Joint, and the Chief politely thanked the proprietor for the
+loan of his storeroom for a private fight. Then they went out into the
+neon-lighted business street of Bootstrap.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do we do now?&#8221; asked Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where you sleeping?&#8221; asked the Chief hospitably. &#8220;I can get you a room
+at my place.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m staying out at the Shed,&#8221; Joe told him awkwardly. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg&nbsp;60]</a></span>&#8220;My family&#8217;s
+known Major Holt a long time. I&#8217;m staying at his house behind the Shed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney raised his eyebrows but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Better get out there then,&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;It&#8217;s midnight, and they
+might want to lock up. There&#8217;s your bus.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A lighted bus was waiting by the curb. Its doors were open, but it was
+empty of passengers. Single busses ran out to the Shed now and then, but
+they ran in fleets at shift-change time. Joe went over and climbed
+aboard the bus.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll turn up early,&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;This won&#8217;t be a shift job. We&#8217;ll
+look things over and lay out what we want and then get to work, eh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Right,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;And thanks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be there with our hair in braids,&#8221; said Mike, in his cracked
+voice. &#8220;Now a glass of beer and so to bed. &#8217;Night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney waved his hand. The three of them marched off, the two huge
+figures of Haney and the Chief, with Mike trotting truculently between
+them, hardly taller than their knees. They were curiously colorful with
+all the many-tinted neon signs upon them. They turned into a diner.</p>
+
+<p>Joe sat in the bus, alone. The driver was off somewhere. The sounds of
+Bootstrap were distinctive by night. Footsteps, and the jangling of
+bicycle bells, and voices, and a radio blaring somewhere and a
+record-shop loud-speaker somewhere else, and a sort of underriding noise
+of festivity.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sharp rap on the glass by Joe&#8217;s window. He started and
+looked out. Braun&mdash;battered, and bleeding from the corner of his
+mouth&mdash;motioned urgently for him to come to the door of the bus. Joe
+went.</p>
+
+<p>Braun stared up at him in a new fashion. Now he was neither dogged nor
+fierce nor desperate to look at. Despite the beating he&#8217;d taken, he
+seemed completely and somehow frighteningly tranquil. He looked like
+somebody who has come to the end of torment and is past any feeling but
+that of relief from suffering.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;&#8221; said Braun. &#8220;That girl you were with today. Her pop is Major
+Holt, eh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe frowned, and reservedly said that he was.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg&nbsp;61]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You tell her pop,&#8221; said Braun detachedly, &#8220;this is hot tip. Hot tip.
+Look two kilometers north of Shed tomorrow. He find something bad. Hot!
+You tell him. Two kilometers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Y-yes,&#8221; said Joe, his frown increasing. &#8220;But look here&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Be sure say hot,&#8221; repeated Braun.</p>
+
+<p>Rather incredibly, he smiled. Then he turned and walked quickly away.</p>
+
+<p>Joe went back to his seat in the empty bus, and sat there and waited for
+it to start, and tried to figure out what the message meant. Since it
+was for Major Holt, it had something to do with security. And security
+meant defense against sabotage. And &#8220;hot&#8221; might mean merely
+<i>significant</i>, or&mdash;in these days&mdash;it might mean <i>something else</i>. In
+fact, it might mean something to make your hair stand on end when
+thought of in connection with the Space Platform.</p>
+
+<p>Joe waited for the bus to take off. He became convinced that Braun&#8217;s use
+of the word &#8220;hot&#8221; did not mean merely &#8220;significant.&#8221; The other meaning
+was what he had in mind.</p>
+
+<p>Joe&#8217;s teeth tried to chatter.</p>
+
+<p>He didn&#8217;t let them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg&nbsp;62]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c6" id="c6"></a><i>6</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>Major Holt wasn&#8217;t to be found when Joe got out to the Shed. And he
+wasn&#8217;t in the house in the officers&#8217;-quarters area behind it. There was
+only the housekeeper, who yawned pointedly as she let Joe in. Sally was
+presumably long since asleep. And Joe didn&#8217;t know any way to get hold of
+the Major. He assured himself that Braun was a good guy&mdash;if he weren&#8217;t
+he wouldn&#8217;t have insisted on taking a licking before he apologized&mdash;and
+he hadn&#8217;t said there was any hurry. Tomorrow, he&#8217;d said. So Joe uneasily
+let himself be led to a room with a cot, and he was asleep in what
+seemed seconds. But just the same he was badly worried.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, next morning Joe woke at a practically unearthly hour with
+Braun&#8217;s message pounding on his brain. He was downstairs waiting when
+the housekeeper appeared. She looked startled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Major Holt?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>But the Major was gone. He must have done with no more than three or
+four hours&#8217; sleep. There was an empty coffee cup whose contents he&#8217;d
+gulped down before going back to the security office.</p>
+
+<p>Joe trudged to the barbed-wire enclosure around the officers&#8217;-quarters
+area and explained to the sentry where he wanted to go. A sleepy driver
+whisked him around the half-mile circle to the security building and he
+found his way to Major Holt&#8217;s office.</p>
+
+<p>The plain and gloomy secretary was already on the job, too. She led him
+in to face Major Holt. He blinked at the sight of Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hm.... I have some news,&#8221; he observed. &#8220;We back-tracked the parcel that
+exploded when it was dumped from the plane.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg&nbsp;63]</a></span></p><p>Joe had almost forgotten it. Too many other things had happened since.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got two very likely prisoners out of that affair,&#8221; said the
+Major. &#8220;They may talk. Also, an emergency inspection
+of other transport planes has turned up three other grenades tucked away
+in front-wheel wells. Ah&mdash;CO<sub>2</sub> bottles have turned out to have something
+explosive in them. A very nice bit of work, that! The sandy-haired man
+who fueled your plane&mdash;ah&mdash;disappeared. That is bad!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said politely: &#8220;That&#8217;s fine, sir.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All in all, you&#8217;ve been the occasion of our forestalling a good deal of
+sabotage,&#8221; said the Major. &#8220;Bad for you, of course.... Did you find the
+men you were looking for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve found them, but&mdash;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll have them transferred to work under your direction,&#8221; said the
+Major briskly. &#8220;Their names?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe gave the names. The Major wrote them down.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very good. I&#8217;m busy now&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve a tip for you,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;I think it should be checked right
+away. I don&#8217;t feel too good about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major waited impatiently. And Joe explained, very carefully, about
+the fight on the Platform the day before, Braun&#8217;s insistence on
+finishing the fight in Bootstrap, and then the tip he&#8217;d given Joe after
+everything was over. He repeated the message exactly, word for word.</p>
+
+<p>The Major, to do him justice, did not interrupt. He listened with an
+expression that varied between grimness and weariness. When Joe ended he
+picked up a telephone. He talked briefly. Joe felt a reluctant sort of
+approval. Major Holt was not a man one could ever feel very close to,
+and the work he was in charge of was not likely to make him popular, but
+he did think straight&mdash;and fast. He didn&#8217;t think &#8220;hot&#8221; meant
+&#8220;significant,&#8221; either. When he&#8217;d hung up the phone he said curtly: &#8220;When
+will your work crew get here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Early&mdash;but not yet,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;Not for some time yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go with the pilot,&#8221; said the Major. &#8220;You&#8217;d recognize what Braun meant
+as soon as anybody. See what you see.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe stood up.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg&nbsp;64]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You&mdash;think the tip is straight?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This isn&#8217;t the first time,&#8221; said Major Holt detachedly, &#8220;that a man has
+been blackmailed into trying sabotage. If he&#8217;s got a family somewhere
+abroad, and they&#8217;re threatened with death or torture unless he does
+such-and-such here, he&#8217;s in a bad fix. It&#8217;s happened. Of course he can&#8217;t
+tell me! He&#8217;s watched. But he sometimes finds an out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe was puzzled. His face showed it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He can try to do the sabotage,&#8221; said the Major precisely, &#8220;or he can
+arrange to be caught trying to do it. If he&#8217;s caught&mdash;he tried; and the
+blackmail threat is no threat at all so long as he keeps his mouth shut.
+Which he does. And&mdash;ah&mdash;you would be surprised how often a man who
+wasn&#8217;t born in the United States would rather go to prison for sabotage
+than commit it&mdash;here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe blinked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If your friend Braun is caught,&#8221; said the Major, &#8220;he will be punished.
+Severely. Officially. But privately, someone will&mdash;ah&mdash;mention this tip
+and say &#8216;thanks.&#8217; And he&#8217;ll be told that he will be released from prison
+just as soon as he thinks it&#8217;s safe. And he will be. That&#8217;s all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned to his papers. Joe went out. On the way to meet the pilot
+who&#8217;d check on his tip, he thought things over. He began to feel a sort
+of formless but very definite pride. He wasn&#8217;t quite sure what he was
+proud of, but it had something to do with being part of a country toward
+which men of wholly different upbringing could feel deep loyalty. If a
+man who was threatened unless he turned traitor, a man who might not
+even be a citizen, arranged to be caught and punished for an apparent
+crime against a country rather than commit it&mdash;that wasn&#8217;t bad. There
+can be a lot of things wrong with a nation, but if somebody from another
+one entirely can come to feel that kind of loyalty toward it&mdash;well&mdash;it&#8217;s
+not too bad a country to belong to.</p>
+
+<p>Joe had a security guard with him this time, instead of Sally, as he
+went across the vast, arc-lit interior of the Shed and past the
+shimmering growing monster that was the Platform. He went all the way to
+the great swinging doors that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg&nbsp;65]</a></span>let in materials trucks. And there were
+guards there, and they checked each driver very carefully before they
+admitted his truck. But somehow it wasn&#8217;t irritating. It wasn&#8217;t scornful
+suspicion. There&#8217;d be snide and snappy characters in the Security force,
+of course, swaggering and throwing their weight about. But even they
+were guarding something that men&mdash;some men&mdash;were willing to throw away
+their lives for.</p>
+
+<p>Joe and his guard reached one of the huge entrances as a ten-wheeler
+truck came in with a load of shining metal plates. Joe&#8217;s escort went
+through the opening with him and they waited outside. The sun had barely
+risen. It looked huge but very far away, and Joe suddenly realized why
+just this spot had been chosen for the building of the Platform.</p>
+
+<p>The ground was flat. All the way to the eastern horizon there wasn&#8217;t
+even a minor hillock rising above the plain. It was bare, arid,
+sun-scorched desert. It was featureless save for sage and mesquite and
+tall thin stalks of yucca. But it was flat. It could be a runway. It was
+a perfect place for the Platform to start from. The Platform shouldn&#8217;t
+touch ground at all, after it was out of the Shed, but at least it
+wouldn&#8217;t run into any obstacles on its way toward the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>A light plane came careening around the great curved outer surface of
+the Shed. It landed and taxied up to the door. It swung smartly around
+and its side door opened. A bandaged hand waved at Joe. He climbed in.
+The pilot of this light, flimsy plane was the co-pilot of the transport
+of yesterday. He was the man Joe had helped to dump cargo.</p>
+
+<p>Joe climbed in and settled himself. The small motor pop-popped
+valiantly, the plane rushed forward over hard-packed desert earth, and
+went swaying up into the air.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot&mdash;pilot now&mdash;shouted cheerfully above the din: &#8220;Hiya. You
+couldn&#8217;t sleep either? Burns hurt?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bothered,&#8221; he shouted in reply. Then he added, &#8220;Do I do something to
+help, or am I along just for the ride?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;First we take a look,&#8221; the pilot called over the motor racket. &#8220;Two
+kilometers due north of the Shed, eh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg&nbsp;66]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll see what&#8217;s there,&#8221; the pilot told him.</p>
+
+<p>The small plane went up and up. At five hundred feet&mdash;nearly level with
+the roof of the Shed&mdash;it swung away and began to make seemingly erratic
+dartings out over the spotty desert land, and then back. Actually, it
+was a search pattern. Joe looked down from his side of the small
+cockpit. This was a very small plane indeed, and in consequence its
+motor made much more noise inside its cabin than much more powerful
+engines in bigger ships.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Those burns I got,&#8221; shouted the pilot, staring down, &#8220;kept me awake. So
+I got up and was just walking around when the call came for somebody to
+drive one of these things. I took over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Back and forth, and back and forth. From five hundred feet in the early
+morning the desert had a curious appearance. The plane was low enough
+for each smallest natural feature to be visible, and it was early enough
+for every shrub or hummock to cast a long, slender shadow. The ground
+looked streaked, but all the streaks ran the same way, and all were
+shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Joe shouted: &#8220;What&#8217;s that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The plane banked at a steep angle and ran back. It banked again. The
+pilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a button. There
+was a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw a
+puff of smoke in the air.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot shouted: &#8220;It&#8217;s a man. He looks dead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He swung directly over the small prone object and there was a second
+puff of smoke.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve got range finders on us from the Shed,&#8221; he called across the
+two-foot space separating him from Joe. &#8220;This marks the spot. Now we&#8217;ll
+see if there&#8217;s anything to the hot part of that tip.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He reached over behind his seat and brought out a stubby pole like a
+fishpole with a very large reel. There was also a headset, and something
+very much like a large aluminum fish on the end of the line.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg&nbsp;67]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You know Geiger counters?&#8221; called the pilot. &#8220;Stick on these headphones
+and listen!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe slipped on the headset. The pilot threw a switch and Joe heard
+clickings. They had no pattern and no fixed frequency. They were
+clickings at strictly random intervals, but there was an average
+frequency, at that.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let the counter out the window,&#8221; called the pilot, &#8220;and listen. Tell me
+if the noise goes up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe obeyed. The aluminum fish dangled. The line slanted astern from the
+wind. It made a curve between the pole and the aluminum plummet, which
+was hollow in the direction of the plane&#8217;s motion. The pilot squinted
+down and began to swing in a wide circle around the spot where an
+apparently dead man had been sighted, and above which puffs of smoke now
+floated.</p>
+
+<p>Three-quarters of the way around, the random clickings suddenly became a
+roar.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;Hey!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot swung the plane about and flew back. He pointed to the button
+he&#8217;d pushed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poke that when you hear it again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The clickings.... They roared. Joe pushed the button. He felt the tiny
+impact.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Once more,&#8221; said the pilot.</p>
+
+<p>He swung in nearer where the dead man lay. Joe had a sickening idea of
+who the dead man might be. A sudden rush of noise in the headphones and
+he pushed the button again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Reel in now!&#8221; shouted the pilot. &#8220;Our job&#8217;s done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe reeled in as the plane winged steadily back toward the Shed. There
+were puffs of smoke floating in the air behind. They had been ranged on
+at the instant they appeared. Somebody back at the Shed knew that
+something that needed to be investigated was at a certain spot, and the
+two later puffs of smoke had said that radioactivity was notable in the
+air along the line the two puffs made. Not much more information would
+be needed. The meaning of Braun&#8217;s warning that his tip was &#8220;hot&#8221; was
+definite. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg&nbsp;68]</a></span>was &#8220;hot&#8221; in the sense that it dealt with radioactivity!</p>
+
+<p>The plane dipped down and landed by the great doors again. It taxied up
+and the pilot killed the motor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve been using Geigers for months,&#8221; he said pleasedly, &#8220;and never got
+a sign before. This is one time we were set for something.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What?&#8221; asked Joe. But he knew.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Atomic dust is one good guess,&#8221; the pilot told him. &#8220;It was talked of
+as a possible weapon away back in the Smyth Report. Nobody&#8217;s ever tried
+it. We thought it might be tried against the Platform. If somebody
+managed to spread some really hot radioactive dust around the Shed, all
+three shifts might get fatally burned before it was noticed. <i>They&#8217;d</i>
+think so, anyhow! But the guy who was supposed to dump it opened up the
+can for a look. And it killed him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He climbed out of the plane and went to the doorway. He took a telephone
+from a guard and talked crisply into it. He hung up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Somebody coming for you,&#8221; he said amiably. &#8220;Wait here. Be seeing you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He went out, the motor kicked over and caught, and the tiny plane raced
+away. Seconds later it was aloft and winging southward.</p>
+
+<p>Joe waited. Presently a door opened and something came clanking out. It
+was a tractor with surprisingly heavy armor. There were men in it, also
+wearing armor of a peculiar sort, which they were still adjusting. The
+tractor towed a half-track platform on which there were a crane and a
+very considerable lead-coated bin with a top. It went briskly off into
+the distance toward the north.</p>
+
+<p>Joe was amazed, but comprehending. The vehicle and the men were armored
+against radioactivity. They would approach the dead man from upwind, and
+they would scoop up his body and put it in the lead-lined bin, and with
+it all deadly radioactive material near him. This was the equipment that
+must have been used to handle the dud atom bomb some months back. It had
+been ready for that. It was ready for this emergency. Somebody had tried
+to think of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg&nbsp;69]</a></span>every imaginable situation that could arise in connection
+with the Platform.</p>
+
+<p>But in a moment a guard came for Joe and took him to where the Chief and
+Haney and Mike waited by the still incompletely-pulled-away crates. They
+had some new ideas about the job on hand that were better than the
+original ones in some details. All four of them set to work to make a
+careful survey of damage&mdash;of parts that would have to be replaced and of
+those that needed to be repaired. The discoveries they made would have
+appalled Joe earlier. Now he merely made notes of parts necessary to be
+replaced by new ones that could be had within the repair time for
+rebalancing the rotors.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is sure a mess,&#8221; said Haney mournfully, as they worked. &#8220;It&#8217;s two
+days just getting things cleaned up!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief eyed the rotors. There were two of them, great four-foot disks
+with extraordinary short and stubby shafts that were brought to
+beautifully polished conical ends to fit in the bearings. The bearings
+were hollowed to fit the shaft ends, but they were intricately scored to
+form oil channels. In operation, a very special silicone oil would be
+pumped into the bearings under high pressure. Distributed by the
+channels, the oil would form a film that by its pressure would hold the
+cone end of the bearing away from actual contact with the metal. The
+rotors, in fact, would be floated in oil just as the high-speed
+centrifuge the Chief had mentioned had floated on compressed air. But
+they had to be perfectly balanced, because any imbalance would make the
+shaft pierce the oil film and touch the metal of the bearing&mdash;and when a
+shaft is turning at 40,000 r.p.m. it is not good for it to touch
+anything. Shaft and bearing would burn white-hot in fractions of a
+second and there would be several devils to pay.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got to spin it in a lathe,&#8221; said the Chief profoundly, &#8220;to hold
+the chucks. The chucks have got to be these same bearings, because
+nothing else will stand the speed. And we got to cut out the bed plate
+of any lathe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg&nbsp;70]</a></span>we find. Hm. We got to do our spinning with the shaft lined
+up with the earth&#8217;s axis, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mike nodded wisely, and Joe knew he&#8217;d pointed that out. It was true
+enough. A high-speed gyro could only be run for minutes in one single
+direction if its mount were fixed. If a precisely mounted gyro had its
+shaft pointed at the sun, for example, while it ran, its axis would try
+to follow the sun. It would try not to turn with the earth, and it would
+wreck itself. They had to use the cone bearings, but in order to protect
+the fine channellings for oil they&#8217;d have to use cone-shaped shims at
+the beginning while running at low speed. The cone ends of the shaft
+would need new machining to line them up. The bearings had to be fixed,
+yet flexible. The&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>They had used many paper napkins the night before, merely envisioning
+these details. New problems turned up as the apparatus itself was being
+uncovered and cleaned.</p>
+
+<p>They worked for hours, clearing away soot and charred material. Joe&#8217;s
+list of small parts to be replaced from the home plant was as long as
+his arm. The motors, of course, had to be scrapped and new ones
+substituted. Considering their speed&mdash;the field strength at operating
+rate was almost imperceptible&mdash;they had to be built new, which would
+mean round-the-clock work at Kenmore.</p>
+
+<p>A messenger came for Joe. The security office wanted him. Major Holt&#8217;s
+gloomy secretary did not even glance up as he entered. Major Holt
+himself looked tired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There was a man out there,&#8221; he said curtly. &#8220;I think it is your friend
+Braun. I&#8217;ll get you to look and identify.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe had suspected as much. He waited.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;d opened a container of cobalt powder. It was in a beryllium case.
+There was half a pound of it. It killed him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Radioactive cobalt,&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Definitely,&#8221; said the Major grimly. &#8220;Half a pound of it gives off the
+radiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium. One can guess that he
+had been instructed to get up as high as he could in the Shed and dump
+the powder into the air. It would diffuse&mdash;scatter as it sifted down. It
+would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg&nbsp;71]</a></span>have contaminated the whole Shed past all use for years&mdash;let alone
+killing everybody in it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe swallowed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He was burned, then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He had the equivalent of two hundred and fifty pounds of radium within
+inches of his body,&#8221; the Major said unbendingly, &#8220;and naturally it was
+not healthy. For that matter, the container itself was not adequate
+protection for him. Once he&#8217;d carried it in his pocket for a very few
+minutes, he was a dead man, even though he was not conscious of the
+fact.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe knew what was wanted of him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You want me to look at him,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>The Major nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes. Afterward, get a radiation check on yourself. It is hardly likely
+that he was&mdash;ah&mdash;carrying the stuff with him last night, in Bootstrap.
+But if he was&mdash;ah&mdash;you may need some precautionary treatment&mdash;you and
+the men who were with you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe realized what that meant. Braun had been given a relatively small
+container of the deadliest available radioactive material on Earth.
+Milligrams of it, shipped from Oak Ridge for scientific use, were
+encased in thick lead chests. He&#8217;d carried two hundred and fifty grams
+in a container he could put in his pocket. He was not only dead as he
+walked, under such circumstances. He was also death to those who walked
+near him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Somebody else may have been burned in any case,&#8221; said the Major
+detachedly. &#8220;I am going to issue a radioactivity alarm and check every
+man in Bootstrap for burns. It is&mdash;ah&mdash;very likely that the man who
+delivered it to this man is burned, too. But you will not mention this,
+of course.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He waved his hand in dismissal. Joe turned to go. The Major added
+grimly: &#8220;By the way, there is no doubt about the booby-trapping of
+planes. We&#8217;ve found eight, so far, ready to be crashed when a string was
+pulled while they were serviced. But the men who did the booby-trapping
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg&nbsp;72]</a></span>have vanished. They disappeared suddenly during last night. They were
+warned! Have you talked to anybody?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No sir,&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would like to know,&#8221; said the Major coldly, &#8220;how they knew we&#8217;d found
+out their trick!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe went out. He felt very cold at the pit of his stomach. He was to
+identify Braun. Then he was to get a radiation check on himself. In that
+order of events. He was to identify Braun first, because if Braun had
+carried a half-pound of radioactive cobalt on him in Sid&#8217;s Steak Joint
+the night before, Joe was going to die. And so were Haney and the Chief
+and Mike, and anybody else who&#8217;d passed near him. So Joe was to do the
+identification before he was disturbed by the information that he was
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>He made the identification. Braun was very decently laid out in a
+lead-lined box, with a lead-glass window over his face. There was no
+sign of any injury on him except from his fight with Haney. The
+radiation burns were deep, but they&#8217;d left no marks of their own. He&#8217;d
+died before outer symptoms could occur.</p>
+
+<p>Joe signed the identification certificate. He went to be checked for his
+own chances of life. It was a peculiar sensation. The most peculiar was
+that he wasn&#8217;t afraid. He was neither confident that he was not burned
+inside, nor sure that he was. He simply was not afraid. Nobody really
+ever believes that he is going to die&mdash;in the sense of ceasing to exist.
+The most arrant coward, stood before a wall to be shot, or strapped in
+an electric chair, finds that astoundingly he does not believe that what
+happens to his body is going to kill him, the individual. That is why a
+great many people die with reasonable dignity. They know it is not worth
+making too much of a fuss over.</p>
+
+<p>But when the Geiger counters had gone over him from head to foot, and
+his body temperature was normal, and his reflexes sound&mdash;when he was
+assured that he had not been exposed to dangerous radiation&mdash;Joe felt
+distinctly weak in the knees. And that was natural, too.</p>
+
+<p>He went trudging back to the wrecked gyros. His friends <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg&nbsp;73]</a></span>were gone,
+leaving a scrawled memo for him. They had gone to pick out the machine
+tools for the work at hand.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to check over the wreckage, thinking with a detached
+compassion of that poor devil Braun who was the victim of men who hated
+the idea of the Space Platform and what it would mean to humanity. Men
+of that kind thought of themselves as superior to humanity, and of human
+beings as creatures to be enslaved. So they arranged for planes to crash
+and burn and for men to be murdered, and they practiced blackmail&mdash;or
+rewarded those who practiced it for them. They wanted to prevent the
+Platform from existing because it would keep them from trying to pull
+the world down in ruins so they could rule over the wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>Joe&mdash;who had so recently thought it likely that he would die&mdash;considered
+these actions with an icy dislike that was much deeper than anger. It
+was backed by everything he believed in, everything he had ever wanted,
+and everything he hoped for. And anger could cool off, but the way he
+felt about people who would destroy others for their own purposes could
+not cool off. It was part of him. He thought about it as he worked, with
+all the noises of the Shed singing in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>A voice said: &#8220;Joe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He started and turned. Sally stood behind him, looking at him very
+gravely. She tried to smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dad told me,&#8221; she said, &#8220;about the check-up that says you&#8217;re all right.
+May I congratulate you on your being with us for a while?&mdash;on the
+cobalt&#8217;s not getting near you?&mdash;or the rest of us?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe did not know exactly what to say.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going inside the Platform,&#8221; she told him. &#8220;Would you like to come
+along?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He wiped his hands on a piece of waste.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naturally! My gang is off picking out tools. I can&#8217;t do much until they
+come back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He fell into step beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it
+was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge
+beyond belief, though it was surely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg&nbsp;74]</a></span>not heavy in proportion to its size.
+Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it.
+There was always a faint bluish mist in the air, and there were the
+marsh-fire lights of welding torches playing here and there. The sounds
+of the Shed were a steady small tumult in Joe&#8217;s ears. He was getting
+accustomed to them, though.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How is it you can go around so freely?&#8221; he asked abruptly. &#8220;I have to
+be checked and rechecked.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll get a full clearance,&#8221; she told him. &#8220;It has to go through
+channels. Me&mdash;I have influence. I always come in through security, and I
+have the door guards trained. And I do have business in the Platform.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head to look at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Interior decoration,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;And don&#8217;t laugh! It isn&#8217;t
+prettifying. It&#8217;s psychology. The Platform was designed by engineers and
+physicists and people with slide rules. They made a beautiful
+environment for machinery. But there will be men living in it, and they
+aren&#8217;t machines.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They designed the hydroponic garden,&#8221; said Sally with a certain scorn.
+&#8220;They calculated very neatly that eleven square feet of leaf surface of
+a pumpkin plant will purify all the air a resting man uses, and so much
+more will purify the air a man uses when he&#8217;s working hard. So they
+designed the gardens for the most efficient production of the greatest
+possible leaf surface&mdash;of pumpkin plants! They figured food would be
+brought up by the tender rockets! But can you imagine the men in the
+Platform, floating among the stars, living on dehydrated food and
+stuffing themselves hungrily with pumpkins because that is the only
+fresh food they have?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw the irony.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re thinking of mechanical efficiency,&#8221; said Sally indignantly. &#8220;I
+don&#8217;t know anything about machinery, but I&#8217;ve wasted an awful lot of
+time at school and otherwise if I don&#8217;t know something about human
+beings! I argued, and the garden now isn&#8217;t as mechanically efficient,
+but it&#8217;ll be a nice place for a man to go into. He won&#8217;t smell pumpkin
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg&nbsp;75]</a></span>plants all the time, either. I&#8217;ve even gotten them to include some
+flowers!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were very near the Platform. And it was very near to completion.
+Joe looked at it hungrily, and he felt a great sense of urgency. He
+tried to strip away the scaffolding in his mind and see it floating
+proudly free in emptiness, with white-hot sunshine glinting from it, and
+only a background of unwinking stars.</p>
+
+<p>Sally&#8217;s voice went on: &#8220;And I&#8217;ve really put up an argument about the
+living quarters. They had every interior wall painted aluminum! I argued
+that in space or out of it, where people have to live, it&#8217;s
+housekeeping. This is going to be their home. And they ought to feel
+human in it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They passed into one of the openings in the maze of uprights. All about
+them there were trucks, and puffing engines, and hoists. Joe dragged
+Sally aside as a monstrous truck-and-trailer came from where it had
+delivered some gigantic item of interior use. It rumbled past them, and
+she led the way to a flight of temporary wooden stairs with two security
+guards at the bottom. Sally talked severely to them, and they grinned
+and waved for Joe to go ahead. He went up the steps&mdash;which would be
+pulled down before the Platform&#8217;s launching&mdash;and went actually inside
+the Space Platform for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>It was a moment of extreme vividness for him. Within the past hour he&#8217;d
+come to think detachedly of the possibility of death for himself, and
+then had learned that he would live for a while yet. He knew that Sally
+had been scared on his account, and that her matter-of-fact manner was
+partly assumed. She was at least as much wrought up as he was.</p>
+
+<p>And this was the first time he was going into what would be the first
+space ship ever to leave the Earth on a non-return journey.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg&nbsp;76]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c7" id="c7"></a><i>7</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>Nobody could have gone through the changes of emotion Joe had
+experienced that morning and remained quite matter-of-fact. Seeing a
+dead man who had more or less deliberately killed himself so that he
+wouldn&#8217;t have to kill Joe&mdash;for one&mdash;had its effect. Knowing that it was
+certainly possible the man hadn&#8217;t killed himself in time had another.
+Being checked over for radiation burns which would mean that he&#8217;d die
+quite comfortably within three or four days, and then learning that no
+burns existed, was something of an ordeal. And Sally&mdash;of course her
+feelings shouldn&#8217;t have been as vivid as his own, but the fact that
+she&#8217;d been scared for him held some significance. When, on top of all
+the rest, he went into the Space Platform for the first time, Joe was
+definitely keyed up.</p>
+
+<p>But he talked technology. He examined the inner skin and its lining
+before going beyond the temporary entrance. The plating of the Platform
+was actually double. The outer layer was a meteor-bumper against which
+particles of cosmic dust would strike and explode without damage to the
+inner skin. They could even penetrate it without causing a leak of air.
+Inside the inner skin there was a layer of glass wool for heat
+insulation. Inside the glass wool was a layer of material serving
+exactly the function of the coating of a bulletproof gasoline tank. No
+meteor under a quarter-inch size could hope to make a puncture, even at
+the forty-five-mile-per-second speed that is the theoretical maximum for
+meteors. And if one did, the selfsealing stuff would stop the leak
+immediately. Joe could explain the protection of the metal skins. He
+did.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When a missile travels fast enough,&#8221; he said absorbedly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg&nbsp;77]</a></span>&#8220;it stops
+acquiring extra puncturing ability. Over a mile a second, impact can&#8217;t
+be transmitted from front to rear. The back end of the thing that hits
+has arrived at the hit place before the shock of arrival can travel back
+to it. It&#8217;s like a train in a collision which doesn&#8217;t stop all at once.
+A meteor hitting the Platform will telescope on itself like the cars of
+a railroad train that hits another at full speed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally listened enigmatically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So,&#8221; said Joe, &#8220;the punching effect isn&#8217;t there. A meteor hitting the
+Platform won&#8217;t punch. It&#8217;ll explode. Part of it will turn to
+vapor&mdash;metallic vapor if it&#8217;s metal, and rocky vapor if it&#8217;s stone.
+It&#8217;ll blow a crater in the metal plate. It&#8217;ll blow away as much weight
+of the skin as it weighs itself. Mass for mass. So that weight for
+weight, pea soup would be just as effective armor against meteors as
+hardened steel.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said: &#8220;Dear me! You must read the newspapers!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The odds figure out, the odds are even that the Platform won&#8217;t get an
+actual meteor puncture in the first twenty thousand years it&#8217;s floating
+round the Earth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Twenty thousand two seventy, Joe,&#8221; said Sally. She was trying to tease
+him, but her face showed a little of the strain. &#8220;I read the magazine
+articles too. In fact I sometimes show the tame article writers around,
+when they&#8217;re cleared to see the Platform.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe winced a little. Then he grinned wryly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That cuts me down to size, eh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him. But they both felt queer. They went on into the
+interior of the huge space ship.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lots of space,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;This could&#8217;ve been smaller.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be nine-tenths empty when it goes up,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;But you know
+about that, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe did know. The reasons for the streamlining of rockets to be fired
+from the ground didn&#8217;t apply to the Platform. Not with the same urgency,
+anyhow. Rockets had to burn their fuel fast to get up out of the dense
+air near the ground. They had to be streamlined to pierce the thick,
+resisting part of the atmosphere. The Platform didn&#8217;t. It wouldn&#8217;t climb
+by itself. It would be carried necessarily at slow speed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg&nbsp;78]</a></span>up to the point
+where jet motors were most efficient, and then it would be carried
+higher until they ceased to be efficient. Only when it was up where air
+resistance was a very small fraction of ground-level drag would its own
+rockets fire. It wouldn&#8217;t gain much by being shaped to cut thin air, and
+it would lose a lot. For one thing, the launching process planned for
+the Platform allowed it to be built complete so far as its hull was
+concerned. Once it got out into its orbit there would be no more
+worries. There wouldn&#8217;t be any gamble on the practicability of
+assembling a great structure in a weightless &#8220;world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The two of them&mdash;and the way they both felt, it seemed natural for Joe
+to be helping Sally very carefully through the corridors of the
+Platform&mdash;the two of them came to the engine room. This wasn&#8217;t the place
+where the drive of the Platform was centered. It was where the service
+motors and the air-circulation system and the fluid pumps were powered.
+Off the engine room the main gyros were already installed. They waited
+only for the pilot gyros to control them as a steering engine controls
+an Earth ship&#8217;s rudder. Joe looked very thoughtfully at the gyro
+assembly. That was familiar, from the working drawings. But he let Sally
+guide him on without trying to stop and look closely.</p>
+
+<p>She showed him the living quarters. They centered in a great open space
+sixty feet long and twenty wide and high. There were bookshelves, and
+two balconies, and chairs. Private cabins opened from it on different
+levels, but there were no steps to them. Yet there were comfortable
+chairs with straps so that when a man was weightless he could fasten
+himself in them. There were ash trays, ingeniously designed to look like
+exactly that and nothing else. But ashes would not fall into them, but
+would be drawn into them by suction. There was unpatterned carpet on the
+floor <i>and</i> on the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s going to feel queer,&#8221; said Sally, oddly quiet, &#8220;when all this is
+out in space, but it will look fairly normal. I think that&#8217;s important.
+This room will look like a big private library more than anything else.
+One won&#8217;t be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he&#8217;s
+living in a strictly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg&nbsp;79]</a></span>synthetic environment. He won&#8217;t feel cramped. If
+all the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. At
+least this way he can pretend that things are normal.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her mind was not wholly on her words. She&#8217;d been frightened for Joe. And
+he was acutely aware of it, because he felt a peculiar after-effect
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Normal,&#8221; he said drily, &#8220;except that he doesn&#8217;t weigh anything.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve worried about that,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;Sleeping&#8217;s going to be a big
+problem.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll take getting used to,&#8221; Joe agreed.</p>
+
+<p>There was a momentary pause. They were simply looking about the great
+room. Sally stirred uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me what you think,&#8221; she said. &#8220;You&#8217;ve been in an elevator that
+started to drop like a plummet. When the Platform is orbiting it&#8217;ll be
+like that all the time, only worse. No weight. Joe, if you were in an
+elevator that seemed to be dropping and dropping and dropping for hours
+on end&mdash;do you think you could go to sleep?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe hadn&#8217;t thought about it. And he was acutely conscious of Sally, just
+then, but the idea startled him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It might be hard to adjust to,&#8221; he admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be hard to adjust to, awake,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;But getting adjusted
+to it asleep should be worse. You&#8217;ve waked up from a dream that you&#8217;re
+falling?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure,&#8221; said Joe. Then he whistled. &#8220;Oh-oh! I see! You&#8217;d drop off to
+sleep, and you&#8217;d be falling. So you&#8217;d wake up. Everybody in the Platform
+will be falling around the Earth in the Platform&#8217;s orbit! Every time
+they doze off they&#8217;ll be falling and they&#8217;ll wake up!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He managed to think about it. It was true enough. A man awake could
+remind himself that he only thought and felt that he was falling, and
+that there was no danger. But what would happen when he tried to sleep?
+Falling is the first fear a human being ever knows. Everybody in the
+world has at one time waked up gasping from a dream of precipices down
+which he plunged. It is an inborn terror. And no matter how thoroughly a
+man might know in his conscious mind that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg&nbsp;80]</a></span>weightlessness was normal in
+emptiness, his conscious mind would go off duty when he went to sleep. A
+completely primitive subconscious would take over then, and it would not
+be satisfied. It might wake him frantically at any sign of dozing until
+he cracked up from sheer insomnia ... or else let him sleep only when
+exhaustion produced unconsciousness rather than restful slumber.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a tough one!&#8221; he said disturbedly, and noticed that she still
+showed signs of her recent distress. &#8220;There&#8217;s not much to be done about
+it, either!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suggested something,&#8221; said Sally, &#8220;and they built it in. I hope it
+works!&#8221; she explained uncomfortably. &#8220;It&#8217;s a sort of blanket with a top
+that straps down, and an inflatable underside. When a man wants to
+sleep, he&#8217;ll inflate this thing, and it will hold him in his bunk. It
+won&#8217;t touch his head, of course, and he can move, but it will press
+against him gently.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe thought over what Sally had just explained. He noticed that they
+were quite close together, but he put his mind on her words.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be like a man swimming?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;One can go to sleep floating.
+There&#8217;s no sensation of weight, but there&#8217;s the feeling of pressure all
+about. A man might be able to sleep if he felt he were floating. Yes,
+that&#8217;s a good idea, Sally! It&#8217;ll work! A man will think he&#8217;s floating,
+rather than falling!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally flushed a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought of it another way,&#8221; she said awkwardly. &#8220;When we go to sleep,
+we go way back. We&#8217;re like babies, with all a baby&#8217;s fears and needs. It
+<i>might</i> feel like floating. But&mdash;I tried one of those bunks. It feels
+like&mdash;it feels sort of dreamy, as if someone were&mdash;holding one quite
+safe. It feels as if one were a baby and&mdash;beautifully secure. But of
+course I haven&#8217;t tried it weightless. I just&mdash;hope it works.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As if embarrassed, she turned abruptly and showed him the kitchen. Every
+pan was covered. The top of the stove was alnico-magnet strips, arranged
+rather like the top of a magnetic chuck. Pans would cling to it. And the
+covers had a curious flexible lining which Joe could not understand.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg&nbsp;81]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a flexible plastic that&#8217;s heatproof,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;It inflates and
+holds the food down to the hot bottom of the pan. They expected the crew
+to eat ready-prepared food. I said that it would be bad enough to have
+to drink out of plastic bottles instead of glasses. They hung one of
+these stoves upside down, for me, and I cooked bacon and eggs and
+pancakes with the cover of the pan pointing to the floor. They said the
+psychological effect would be worth while.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe was stirred. He followed her out of the kitchen and said warmly&mdash;the
+more warmly because these contributions to the Space Platform came on
+top of a personal anxiety on his own account: &#8220;You must be the first
+girl in the world who thought about housekeeping in space!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Girls will be going into space, won&#8217;t they?&#8221; she asked, not looking at
+him. &#8220;If there are colonies on the other planets, they&#8217;ll have to. And
+some day&mdash;to the stars....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stood quite still, and Joe wanted to do something about her and the
+world and the way he felt. The interior of the Platform was very silent.
+Somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulation was incomplete, the
+sound of workmen was audible, but the inner corridors of the Platform
+were not resonant. They were lined with a material to destroy reminders
+that this was merely a metal shell, an artificial world that would swim
+in emptiness. Here and now, Joe and Sally seemed very private and alone,
+and he felt a sense of urgency.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her yearningly. Her color was a little higher than usual.
+She was not just a nice kid, she was swell! And she was good to look at.
+Joe had noticed that before, but now with the memory of her fright
+because he&#8217;d been in danger, her worry because he might have been
+killed, he thought of her very absurd but honest offer to cry for him.</p>
+
+<p>Joe found himself twisting at the ring on his finger. He got it off, and
+there was some soot and grease on it from the work he&#8217;d been doing. He
+knew that she saw what he was about, but she looked away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Look, Sally,&#8221; he said awkwardly, &#8220;we&#8217;ve known each other a long time.
+I&#8217;ve&mdash;uh&mdash;liked you a lot. And I&#8217;ve got <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg&nbsp;82]</a></span>some things to do first,
+but&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; He stopped. He swallowed. She turned and smiled at him. &#8220;Look,&#8221;
+he said desperately, &#8220;what&#8217;s a good way to ask if you&#8217;d like to wear
+this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, her eyes shining a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was a good way, Joe. I&#8217;d like it a lot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was an interlude, then, during which she very ridiculously cried
+and explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life so
+much! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. It
+was the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppy
+ululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed and
+wailed and wailed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the alarm,&#8221; exclaimed Sally. She was still misty-eyed.
+&#8220;Everybody out of the Shed. Come on, Joe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They started back the way they&#8217;d come in. And Sally looked up at Joe and
+grinned suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I have grandchildren,&#8221; she told him, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to brag that I was
+the very first girl in all the world ever to be kissed in a space ship!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But before Joe could do anything about the comment, she was out on the
+stairs, in plain view and going down. So he followed her.</p>
+
+<p>The Shed was emptying. The bare wood-block floor was dotted with figures
+moving steadily toward the security exit. There was no hurry, because
+security men were shouting that this was not an alarm but a
+precautionary measure, and there was no need for haste. Each security
+man had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkie he wore. By it
+every guard could be told anything he needed to know, either on the
+floor of the Shed, or on the catwalks aloft or even in the Platform
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go out the swing-up doors. Men
+came down from the scaffolds after putting their tools in proper
+between-shifts positions&mdash;for counting and inspection&mdash;and other men
+were streaming quietly from the pushpot assembly line. Except for the
+gigantic object in the middle, and for the fact that every man was in
+work clothes, the scene was surprisingly like the central waiting room
+of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg&nbsp;83]</a></span>very large railroad station, with innumerable people moving briskly
+here and there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No hurry,&#8221; said Joe, catching the word from a security man as he passed
+it on. &#8220;I&#8217;ll go see what my gang found out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The trio&mdash;Haney and Mike and the Chief&mdash;were just arriving by the piles
+of charred but now uncovered wreckage. Sally flushed ever so slightly
+when she saw the Chief eye Joe&#8217;s ring on her finger.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Rest of the day off, huh?&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;Look! We found most of the
+stuff we need. They&#8217;re gonna give us a shop to work in. We&#8217;ll move this
+stuff there. We&#8217;re gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe we
+picked, an&#8217; then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in between
+the chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel to the axis of the
+earth. Joe nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be able to get set up in the mornin&#8217;,&#8221; added Haney, &#8220;and get
+started. You got the parts list off to the plant for your folks to get
+busy on?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said quickly: &#8220;He&#8217;s sending that by facsimile now. Then&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief beamed in benign mockery. &#8220;What you goin&#8217; to do after that,
+Joe? If we got the rest of the day off&mdash;&mdash;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said hurriedly: &#8220;We were&mdash;he was going off on a picnic with me. To
+Red Canyon Lake. Do you really need to talk business&mdash;all afternoon?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief laughed. He&#8217;d known Sally, at least by sight, back at the
+Kenmore plant.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, ma&#8217;am!&#8221; he told her. &#8220;Just askin&#8217;. I worked on that Red Canyon dam
+job, years back. That dam that made the lake. It ought to be right
+pretty around there now. Okay, Joe. See you as soon as work starts up.
+In the mornin&#8217;, most likely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe started away with Sally. Mike the midget called hoarsely: &#8220;Joe! Just
+a minute!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe drew back. The midget&#8217;s seamed face was very earnest. He said in his
+odd voice: &#8220;Here&#8217;s something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard
+to keep you from getting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg&nbsp;84]</a></span>those gyros here. They might work hard to keep
+them from getting repaired. That&#8217;s why we asked for a special shop to
+work in. It&#8217;s occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would
+be to stop us. Not everybody would&#8217;ve figured out how to rebalance this
+thing. You get me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure!&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;You three had better look out for yourselves.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mike stared at him and grimaced.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t get it,&#8221; he said brittlely. &#8220;All right. I may be crazy, at
+that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but he
+approved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to the
+security building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm and
+efficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stop
+all work. As they went toward Major Holt&#8217;s office, Joe heard somebody
+dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: &#8220;... this attempt at atomic
+sabotage was defeated outside the Shed, but it never had a chance of
+success. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt to
+smuggle radioactive material into the Shed....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s for a publicity release?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without passing
+close to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though they
+don&#8217;t set the sirens to screaming.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;I&#8217;ll get my order for new parts off on the facsimile
+machine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But he had to get Major Holt&#8217;s secretary to show him where to feed in
+the list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and then
+be rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set the
+machine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of the
+document. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You and Sally,&#8221; remarked Sally&#8217;s father&#8217;s secretary with a morose sigh,
+&#8220;can go and relax this afternoon. But there&#8217;s no relaxation for Major
+Holt. Or for me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg&nbsp;85]</a></span></p><p>Joe said unhopefully: &#8220;I&#8217;m sure Sally&#8217;d be glad if you came with us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt&#8217;s plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t had a day off since the work began here,&#8221; she said frowning.
+&#8220;The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You&#8217;re going
+to Red Canyon Lake?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; agreed Joe. &#8220;Sally thought it might be pleasant.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s terribly dry and arid here,&#8221; said Miss Ross sadly. &#8220;That&#8217;s the
+only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it&#8217;s pretty there.
+I&#8217;ve never seen it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An
+exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence
+more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore
+Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no
+question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!</p>
+
+<p>Sally came out, smiled at her father&#8217;s secretary, and led Joe down to
+the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have the car,&#8221; she said cheerfully, &#8220;and there&#8217;ll be a lunch basket
+waiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold for
+swimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it&#8217;s nice to look at.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were just
+beginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black car
+was waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. She
+regarded the men swarming on the busses.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;ll be bulletins all over Bootstrap,&#8221; she observed, &#8220;saying that
+Braun tried to dust-bomb the Shed. They&#8217;ll say that he may have carried
+the cobalt about with him, and so he may have burned other people&mdash;in a
+restaurant, a movie theater, anywhere&mdash;while he was carrying the dust
+and dying without knowing it. So everybody&#8217;s supposed to report to the
+hospital for a check-up for radiation burns. Some people may really have
+them. But Dad thinks that since you weren&#8217;t burned, Braun didn&#8217;t carry
+it around. If anyone is burned, it&#8217;ll be the person who brought the
+cobalt here to give him. And&mdash;well&mdash;he&#8217;ll turn up because everybody
+does, and because <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg&nbsp;86]</a></span>he&#8217;s burned he&#8217;ll be asked plenty of questions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe stepped on the starter. Then he pressed the accelerator and the car
+sped forward.</p>
+
+<p>They stopped at the house in the officers&#8217;-quarters area on the other
+side of the Shed. Sally picked up the lunch basket that her father&#8217;s
+housekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions. They drove away.</p>
+
+<p>Red Canyon was eighty miles from the Shed, and the only way to get there
+was through Bootstrap, because the only highway away from the Shed led
+to that small, synthetic town. It was irritating, though they had no
+schedule, to find that the long line of busses was ahead of them on that
+twenty-mile stretch. The busses ran nose to tail and filled the road for
+a half-mile or more. It was not possible to pass so long a string of
+close-packed vehicles. There was just enough traffic in the opposite
+direction to make that impracticable.</p>
+
+<p>They had to trail the line of busses as far as Bootstrap and crawl
+through the crowded streets. Once beyond the town they came to a
+security stop. Here Sally&#8217;s pass was good. Then they went rolling on and
+on through an empty, arid, sun-baked terrain toward the hills to the
+west. It looked remarkably lonely. Joe thought for the first time about
+gas. He looked carefully at the fuel gauge. Sally shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t worry. Plenty of gas. Security takes care of that. When I said
+where we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everything
+checked. If I live through this, I&#8217;ll bet I stay a fanatic about
+cautiousness all my life!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said distastefully: &#8220;I suppose it gets everybody. Mike&mdash;the midget,
+you know&mdash;called me back just now to suggest that the people who tried
+to spoil the gyros might try to harm the four of us to hinder their
+repair!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not just foolishness,&#8221; Sally admitted. &#8220;The strain is pretty bad,
+especially when you know things. You&#8217;ve noticed that Dad&#8217;s getting gray.
+That&#8217;s strain. And Miss Ross is about as tense. Things leak out in the
+most remarkable way&mdash;and Dad can&#8217;t find out how. Once there was a case
+of sabotage and he could have sworn that nobody had the information <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg&nbsp;87]</a></span>that
+permitted it but himself and Miss Ross. She had hysterics. She insisted
+that she wanted to be locked up somewhere so she couldn&#8217;t be suspected
+of telling anybody anything. She&#8217;d resign tomorrow if she could. It&#8217;s
+ghastly.&#8221; Then she hesitated and smiled faintly: &#8220;In fact, so Dad
+wouldn&#8217;t worry about me this afternoon&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took his eyes off the road to glance at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I promised we wouldn&#8217;t go swimming and&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; Then she said awkwardly:
+&#8220;There are two pistols in the glove compartment. Dad knows you. So I
+promised you&#8217;d put one in your pocket up at the lake.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe drew a deep breath. She opened the glove compartment and handed him
+a pistol. He looked at it: .38, hammerless. A good safe weapon. He
+slipped it in his coat pocket. But he frowned.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was looking forward to&mdash;not worrying for a while,&#8221; he said wryly.
+&#8220;But now I&#8217;ll have to remember to keep looking over my shoulder all the
+time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe,&#8221; said Sally, &#8220;you can look over my shoulder and I&#8217;ll look over
+yours, and we can glance at each other occasionally.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and he managed to smile. But the trace of a frown remained
+on his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Joe drove and drove and drove. Once they came to a very small town. It
+may have contained a hundred people. There were gas pumps and a
+restaurant and two or three general stores, which were certainly too
+many for the permanent residents. But there were cow ponies hitched
+before the stores, and automobiles were also in view. The ground here
+was slightly rolling. The mountains had grown to good-sized ramparts
+against the sky. Joe drove carefully down the single street, turning out
+widely once to dodge a dog sleeping placidly in an area normally
+reserved for traffic.</p>
+
+<p>Finally they came to the foothills, and then the road curved and
+recurved as it wound among them. And two hours from Bootstrap they
+reached Red Canyon. They first saw the dam from downstream. It was a
+monstrous structure <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg&nbsp;88]</a></span>of masonry, alone in the mountains. From its top a
+plume of falling water jetted out.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The dam&#8217;s for irrigation,&#8221; said Sally professionally, &#8220;and the Shed
+gets all its power from here. One of Dad&#8217;s nightmares is that somebody
+may blow up this dam and leave Bootstrap and the Shed without power.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said nothing. He drove on up the trail as it climbed the canyon wall
+in hairpin slants. It was ticklish driving. But then, quite suddenly,
+they reached the top of the canyon wall and the top of the dam and the
+level of the lake at once. Here there was a sheet of water that reached
+back among the barren hillsides for miles and miles. It twisted out of
+sight. There were small waves on its surface, and grass at its edge.
+There were young trees. The powerhouse was a small squat structure in
+the middle of the dam. Not a person was visible anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here we are,&#8221; said Sally, when Joe stopped the car.</p>
+
+<p>He got out and went around to open the door for her. But she was already
+stepping out with the lunch basket in her hand when he arrived. He
+reached for it, and she held on, and they moved companionably away from
+the car carrying the basket between them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a nice place,&#8221; said Sally, pointing.</p>
+
+<p>A small ridge of rock stretched out into the lake, and rose, and spread,
+and formed what was almost a miniature island some fifty feet across.
+There were some young trees on it. Sally and Joe climbed down the slope
+and out the rocky isthmus that connected it with the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Sally let down the lunch box on a stone and laughed for no reason at all
+as the wind blew her hair. It was a cool wind from over the water. And
+Joe realized with a shock of surprise that the air felt different and
+smelled different when it blew over open water like this. Up to now he
+hadn&#8217;t thought of the dryness of the air in Bootstrap and the Shed.</p>
+
+<p>The lunch basket was tilted a little. Joe picked it up and settled it
+more solidly. Then he said: &#8220;Hungry?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was literally nothing on his mind at the moment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg&nbsp;89]</a></span>but the luxurious,
+satisfied feeling of being off somewhere with grass and a lake and
+Sally, and a good part of the afternoon to throw away. It felt good. So
+he lifted the lid of the lunch basket.</p>
+
+<p>There was a revolver there. It was the other one from the glove
+compartment of the car. Sally hadn&#8217;t left it behind. Joe regarded it and
+said ironically: &#8220;Happy, carefree youth&mdash;that&#8217;s us! Which are the ham
+sandwiches, Sally?&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg&nbsp;90]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c8" id="c8"></a><i>8</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the afternoon began splendidly. Joe dunked the bottled
+soft drinks in the lake to cool. Then he and Sally ate and talked and
+laughed. Joe, in particular, had more than the usual capacity for
+enjoyment today. He&#8217;d been through twenty-four hours of turmoil but now
+things began to look better. And there was the arrangement with Sally,
+which had a solid satisfactoriness about it. Sally was swell! If she&#8217;d
+been homely, Joe would have liked her just the same&mdash;to talk to and to
+be with. But she was pretty&mdash;and she was wearing his ring. She&#8217;d wrapped
+some string around the inside of the band to make it fit.</p>
+
+<p>The only trouble was that Joe was occasionally conscious of the heavy
+weight in his right-hand coat pocket.</p>
+
+<p>But they spent at least an hour in contented, satisfying, meaningless
+loafing that nobody can describe but that everybody likes to remember
+afterward. From time to time Joe looked ashore, when the weight in his
+pocket reminded him of danger.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn&#8217;t look often enough. He was pulling the chilled soft-drink
+bottles out of the lake when he saw a movement out of the corner of his
+eye. He whirled, his hand in his pocket....</p>
+
+<p>It was the Chief, with Haney and Mike the midget. They were striding
+across the rocky small peninsula.</p>
+
+<p>Haney called sharply: &#8220;Everything okay?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure!&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;Everything&#8217;s fine! What&#8217;s the matter?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mike had a hunch,&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;And&mdash;uh&mdash;I remembered I worked on
+the job when this dam was built twelve-fifteen years ago.&#8221; He looked
+about him. &#8220;It looked different then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg&nbsp;91]</a></span></p><p>Then he caught Joe&#8217;s eye and jerked his head almost imperceptibly to one
+side. Joe caught the signal.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll see about some more soft drinks,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Come help me fish up
+the bottles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally smiled at the other two. She was already inspecting the lunch
+basket.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We still have some sandwiches,&#8221; she said hospitably, &#8220;and some cake.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney came forward awkwardly. Mike advanced toward her with something of
+truculence. Joe knew what was in his mind. If Sally treated him like a
+freak.... But Joe knew with deep satisfaction that she wouldn&#8217;t. He went
+down to the water&#8217;s edge.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s up, Chief?&#8221; he asked in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mike hadda hunch,&#8221; rumbled the Chief. &#8220;Somebody tried to smash the
+stuff you brought. They did. But we started gettin&#8217; set to mend it. So
+what would they do? Polish us off. If they were set to atom-dust the
+whole Shed an&#8217; everybody in it, they wouldn&#8217;t stop at four more
+murders.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe fished for a pop bottle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mike said something like that back at the Shed,&#8221; he observed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yeah. But you were the one who figured things out. You&#8217;d be first
+target. Haney and Mike and me&mdash;we&#8217;d be hard to knock off in a crowd in
+Bootstrap. But you and her headed off by y&#8217;selves. Mike figured you
+mightn&#8217;t be safe. So we checked.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe brought up one bottle and then another.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re all right. Haven&#8217;t seen a soul.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t mean a soul hasn&#8217;t seen you,&#8221; growled the Chief. &#8220;A car left
+Bootstrap less than twenty minutes behind you. There were three guys in
+it. It&#8217;s parked down below the dam, outa sight. We saw it. And when we
+came up, careful, we spotted three guys hidin&#8217; out behind the rocks
+yonder. They look to me like they&#8217;re waiting for somebody to go
+strolling back from the shoreline, so&#8217;s&mdash;uh&mdash;maybe folks out at the
+powerhouse can&#8217;t see &#8217;em. That&#8217;d be you and her, huh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg&nbsp;92]</a></span></p><p>Joe went cold. Not for himself. For Sally.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nobody else around,&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;Who&#8217;d they be waiting for
+but you two? Suppose they got a chance to kill you. They&#8217;d take the car
+keys. They&#8217;d drop your two bodies somewheres Gawdknowswhere. There&#8217;d be
+considerable of a hunt for you two. Major Holt would be upset plenty.
+Security might get loosened up. There might be breaks for guys who
+wanted to do a little extra sabotage&mdash;besides maybe hamperin&#8217; the
+repairin&#8217; of the pilot gyros. Then they could try for Haney and Mike and
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said coldly: &#8220;I&#8217;ve got a pistol and so has Sally. Shall we take
+those pistols and go ask those three if they want to start something?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief snorted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Use sense! It&#8217;s good you got the pistols, though. I snagged a
+twenty-two rifle from a shooting gallery. It was all I could get in a
+hurry. But go huntin&#8217; trouble? Fella, I want to see that Platform go up!
+I&#8217;ll take care of things now. Good layout here. They got to come across
+the open to get near. Don&#8217;t say anything to Sally. But we&#8217;ll keep our
+eyes open.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe nodded. He carried the chilled, dripping bottles back to where Haney
+solemnly ate a sandwich, sitting crosslegged with his back to the lake
+and regarding the shore. The Chief dragged a .22 repeating rifle from
+inside his belt, where it had hung alongside his thigh. He casually
+strolled over to Mike and dropped the rifle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You said you felt like target practice,&#8221; he remarked blandly. &#8220;Here&#8217;s
+your armament. Any more sandwiches, ma&#8217;am?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally smilingly passed him the last. She left the top of the basket
+open. The pistol that had been there was gone. Then Sally&#8217;s eyes met
+Joe&#8217;s and she was aware that his three friends had not come here merely
+to crash a picnic. But she took it in stride. It was an additional
+reason for Joe to approve of Sally.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Me,&#8221; said the Chief largely, &#8220;I&#8217;m goin&#8217; to swim. I haven&#8217;t had any more
+water around me than a shower bath for so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg&nbsp;93]</a></span>long that I crave to soak and
+splash. I&#8217;ll go yonder and dunk myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He wandered off, taking bites from the sandwich as he went. He vanished.
+Haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyes roving about the shoreline
+and the rocks and brush behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Mike was talking in his crackling, high-pitched voice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But just the same it&#8217;s crazy! Fighting sabotage when we little guys
+could take over in a week and make sabotage just plain foolish! We could
+do the whole job while the saboteurs weren&#8217;t looking!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said with interest: &#8220;Have you got the figures? Were they ever
+passed on?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I spent a month&#8217;s pay once,&#8221; said Mike sardonically, &#8220;hiring a math
+shark to go over them. He found one mistake. It raised the margin of
+what we could do!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally answered: &#8220;Joe! Listen to this! Mike says he has the real answer
+to sabotage, and, in a way, to space travel! Listen!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe dropped to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shoot it,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>He was grimly alert, just the same. There were men waiting for them to
+start back to the car. These saboteurs were armed, and they intended to
+murder Sally and himself. Joe&#8217;s jaws clamped tautly shut at the grim
+ideas that came into his mind.</p>
+
+<p>But Mike was beginning to speak.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Forget about the Platform a minute,&#8221; he said, standing up to
+gesticulate, because he was only three and a half feet high. &#8220;Just
+figure on a rocket straight to the moon. With old-style rockets they&#8217;d
+a&#8217; had to have a mass ratio of a hundred and twenty to one. You&#8217;d have
+to burn a hundred and twenty tons of old-style fuel to land one ton on
+the moon. Now it could be done with sixty, and when the Platform&#8217;s up,
+that figure&#8217;ll drop again! Okay! You&#8217;re gonna land a man on the moon. He
+weighs two hundred pounds. He uses up twenty pounds of food and drink
+and oxygen a day. Give him grub and air for two months&mdash;twelve hundred
+pounds. A cabin <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg&nbsp;94]</a></span>seven feet high and ten feet across. Sixteen hundred
+pounds, counting insulation an&#8217; braces for strength. That makes a pay
+load of a ton an&#8217; a half, and you&#8217;d have to burn a hundred an&#8217; eighty
+tons of fuel&mdash;old-style&mdash;to take it to the moon, and another hundred an&#8217;
+twenty for every ton the rocket ship weighed. You might get a man to the
+moon with a twelve-hundred-ton rocket&mdash;maybe. That&#8217;s with the old fuels.
+He&#8217;d get there, an&#8217; he&#8217;d live two months, an&#8217; then he&#8217;d die for lack of
+air. With the new fuels you&#8217;d need ninety tons of fuel to carry the guy
+there, and sixty more for every ton the ship weighed itself. Call it six
+hundred tons for the rocket to carry one man to the moon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally nodded absorbedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve seen figures like that,&#8221; she agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But take a guy like me!&#8221; said Mike the midget bitterly. &#8220;I weigh
+forty-five pounds, not two hundred! I use four pounds of food and air a
+day. A cabin for me to live in would be four feet high an&#8217; five across.
+Bein&#8217; smaller, it wouldn&#8217;t need so much bracing. You could do it for two
+hundred pounds. Three hundred for grub and air, fifty for me. Me on the
+moon supplied for two months would come to five-fifty pounds. Sixteen
+tons of fuel to get me to the moon direct! To carry the weight of the
+ship&mdash;it&#8217;s smaller!&mdash;fifty tons maximum!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;see...,&#8221; said Sally, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her suspiciously, but there was no mockery in her face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;d take a six-hundred-ton rocket to get a full-sized man to the
+moon,&#8221; he said with sudden flippancy, &#8220;but a guy my size could do the
+same job of stranglin&#8217; in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it&#8217;d
+be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land,
+take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back&mdash;all in a
+sixty-ton rocket. That&#8217;s just ten per cent of what it&#8217;d cost to take a
+full-sized man one way!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stamped his foot. Then he said coldly: &#8220;Haney, sittin&#8217; still you&#8217;re a
+sittin&#8217; duck!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The comment was just. Joe knew that Sally was on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg&nbsp;95]</a></span>lakeward side of
+this small island, and that there were impenetrable rocks between her
+and the mainland. But Haney sat crosslegged where he could watch the
+mainland, and he hadn&#8217;t moved in a long while. If someone did intend to
+commit murder from a distance, Haney was offering a chance for a very
+fine target. He moved.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yeah!&#8221; said Mike with fine irony, reverting to his topic. &#8220;I could show
+you plenty of figures! There are other guys like me! We&#8217;ve got as much
+brains as full-sized people! If the big brass had figured on us small
+guys, they coulda made the Platform the size of a four-family house an&#8217;
+it&#8217;d ha&#8217; been up in the sky right now, with guys like me running it.
+Guys my size could man the ferry rockets bringin&#8217; up fuel for storage,
+and four of us could take a six-hundred-ton rocket an&#8217; slide out to Mars
+an&#8217; be back by springtime&mdash;next springtime!&mdash;with all the facts and the
+photographs to prove &#8217;em! By golly&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he made a raging, helpless gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that&#8217;s just the big picture,&#8221; he said bitterly. &#8220;Right now, right
+at this minute, we could make it easy to finish the Platform the way
+it&#8217;s building in the Shed! There are ferry rockets building somewhere
+else. You know about them?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said apologetically: &#8220;Yes. I know there&#8217;ll be smaller rocket ships
+going up to the Platform. They&#8217;ll carry fuel and stores and exchanges
+for the crew. Yes, I know there are ferry rockets building.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Those ferry rockets,&#8221; said Mike sardonically, &#8220;carry four men, plus two
+replacements for the crew. They&#8217;ll carry air for ten days. But put four
+of us small guys in a ferry rocket! <i>We&#8217;d</i> have air and grub for two
+months, almost! Pull out the pay load and put in a hydroponic garden and
+communicators and we&#8217;d <i>be</i> a Platform, right then! Send up another
+ferry rocket to join us, and it could bring guided missiles! The ferry
+rockets could be finished quicker than the Platform! Send up three ferry
+rockets with midgets as crews, an&#8217; we could weld &#8217;em together and have a
+Space Platform in orbit and working&mdash;and what&#8217;d be the use of sabotaging
+the big <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg&nbsp;96]</a></span>Platform then? The job would be done! There&#8217;d be no sense
+sabotaging the big Platform because the little one could do anything the
+big one could! It&#8217;d be up there and working! But,&#8221; he demanded bitterly,
+&#8220;do you think anybody&#8217;ll do anything as sensible as that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His small features were twisted in angry rebellion. And he was quite
+right in all his reasoning. Mankind could have made the journey to the
+planets in a hurry, and it could have had its Space Platform in the sky
+much more quickly, if only it could have consented to be represented by
+people like Mike&mdash;who would have represented mankind very valiantly.</p>
+
+<p>Sally said distressedly: &#8220;Oh, Mike, it&#8217;s all true and I&#8217;m so sorry!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And she meant it. Joe liked Sally especially right then, because she
+didn&#8217;t patronize Mike, or try to reason him out of his heartbreak.</p>
+
+<p>Then Haney said abruptly: &#8220;Somebody&#8217;s spotted the Chief.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe mentally kicked himself. The Chief had said he was going to swim.
+Now&mdash;but only now&mdash;Joe looked to see what he was doing.</p>
+
+<p>He was far out from shore, swimming unhurriedly to the powerhouse at the
+middle of the dam. He would reach it, and swing up the ladder that could
+just be seen going down the lake side of the dam&#8217;s top, and he would
+explain the situation on shore. A telephone call to Bootstrap would
+bring security men rushing at eighty miles an hour, and parachute
+troopers a good deal faster. But even before they arrived the Chief
+would lead the powerhouse crew ashore armed with the shotguns they kept
+for shooting waterfowl in and out of season.</p>
+
+<p>The men on shore might or might not consider the Chief&#8217;s swim to be
+proof that he knew their intentions. They were probably discussing the
+matter in some agitation right now. But they couldn&#8217;t know that the
+party on the semi-island was armed.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mike said crisply: &#8220;We&#8217;re goin&#8217; to have visitors.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg&nbsp;97]</a></span></p><p>He lay down carefully on the ground, fifteen feet uphill from Sally,
+where he could look over the ridge. He snuggled the .22 target rifle
+professionally to his shoulder. He drew a bead.</p>
+
+<p>Three men very casually strolled out of the brushwood on the shore. They
+moved nonchalantly toward the strand of rocks that led out to the picnic
+spot. They looked like anybody else from Bootstrap. Casual, rough work
+clothing.... Haney bent down and picked up four good throwing stones.
+His expression was pained.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;We&#8217;ve got pistols, Haney, and Sally&#8217;s a good shot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The men came on. Their manner was elaborately casual. Joe stepped up
+into view.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No visitors!&#8221; he called. &#8220;We don&#8217;t want company!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One of the men held his hand to his ear, as if not understanding. They
+came on. They made no threatening gestures.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joe took his hand out of his pocket, the pistol Sally&#8217;d given him
+gripped tightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I mean that!&#8221; he said harshly. &#8220;Stand back!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One of the three spoke sharply. On that instant three snub-nosed pistols
+appeared. Bullets whined as the men hurtled forward. The purpose was not
+so much murder at this moment as the demoralizing effect of bullets
+flying overhead while the three assassins got close enough to do their
+bloody job with precision.</p>
+
+<p>A stone whizzed by Joe&mdash;Haney had thrown it&mdash;and the small target rifle
+in Mike&#8217;s hands coughed twice. Joe held his fire. He had only six
+bullets and three targets to hit. With a familiar revolver he&#8217;d have
+started shooting now, but thirty yards is a long range with a strange
+pistol at a moving target.</p>
+
+<p>One of the three killers stumbled and crashed to the ground. A second
+seemed suddenly to be grinning widely on one side of his face. A .22
+bullet had slashed his cheek. The third ran head on into a rock thrown
+by Haney. It knocked the breath out of him and his pistol fell from his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Joe fired deliberately at the widely grinning man and saw <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg&nbsp;98]</a></span>him spin
+around. Mike&#8217;s target rifle spat again and the man Joe had hit wheeled
+and ran heavily, making incoherent yells. The one who&#8217;d tumbled
+scrambled to his feet and fled, hopping crazily, favoring one leg.
+Deserted, the third man turned and ran too, still doubled over and still
+gasping.</p>
+
+<p>Mike&#8217;s voice crackled. He was in a towering rage because of the way the
+target rifle shot. It threw high and to the right. The shooting gallery
+paid off in cigarettes for high scores&mdash;so the guns didn&#8217;t shoot
+straight.</p>
+
+<p>Until this moment Joe had been relatively calm, because he had something
+to do. But just then he heard Sally say &#8220;Oh!&#8221; in a queer voice. He
+whirled. Unknown to him, she had not been waiting under cover, but
+standing with her pistol out and ready. And her face was very white, and
+she was plucking at her hair. A strand came away in her fingers. A
+bullet had clipped it just above her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joe went sick ... weak ... trembling, and he disgraced himself by
+half-hysterically grabbing Sally and demanding to know if she was hurt,
+and raging at her for exposing herself to fire, while his throat tried
+to close and shut off his breath from horror.</p>
+
+<p>There came loud pop-pop-popping noises. With the peculiar reverberation
+of sound over water, two motorcycles started from the powerhouse along
+the crest of the dam. They streaked for the shore carrying five men, one
+of whom was the Chief, with a red-checked tablecloth about his middle,
+brandishing a fire axe in default of other weapons.</p>
+
+<p>The danger was over.</p>
+
+<p>But the assassins couldn&#8217;t be followed immediately. They still had at
+least two pistols. Eight men and a girl, counting Mike, with an armament
+of only two pistols, a .22 rifle, two shotguns and a fire axe were not a
+properly equipped posse to hunt down killers. Also by now it was close
+to sunset.</p>
+
+<p>So the victors did the sensible thing. Joe and Sally and Haney and the
+Chief&mdash;his clothes retrieved&mdash;plus Mike headed back for Bootstrap. Joe
+and Sally rode in the Major&#8217;s black car, and the other three in the
+jalopy they&#8217;d rented for the afternoon. On the way into the canyon below
+the dam, they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg&nbsp;99]</a></span>stopped at the parked car their would-be assassins had
+come in. They removed its distributor and fan belt. The other men
+returned to the powerhouse with their shotguns and the fire axe, and
+telephoned to Bootstrap. The three gunmen who had planned murder became
+fugitives, with no means of transportation but their legs. They had a
+good many thousand square miles of territory to hide in, but it wasn&#8217;t
+likely that they had food or any competence to find it in the wilds. Two
+were certainly hurt. With dogs and planes and organization, it should be
+possible to catch them handily, come morning.</p>
+
+<p>So Joe and Sally drove back to Bootstrap with the other car following
+closely through all the miles that had to be covered in the dark.
+Halfway back, they met a grim search party in cars, heading for the dam
+to begin their man hunt in the morning. After that, Joe felt better. But
+his teeth still tended to chatter every time he thought of Sally&#8217;s
+startled, scared expression as she pulled away a lock of her hair that
+had been severed by a bullet.</p>
+
+<p>When they got back to the Shed, Major Holt looked tired and old. Sally
+explained breathlessly that her danger was her own fault. Joe&#8217;d thought
+she was safely under cover....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was my fault,&#8221; said the Major detachedly. &#8220;I let you go away from
+the Shed. I do not blame Joe at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But he did not look kindly. Joe wet his lips, ready to agree that any
+disgrace he might be subjected to was justified, since he had caused
+Sally to be shot at.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I blame myself a great deal, sir,&#8221; he said grimly. &#8220;But I can promise
+I&#8217;ll never take Sally away from safety again. Not until the Platform&#8217;s
+up and there&#8217;s no more reason for her to be in danger.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major said remotely: &#8220;I shall have to arrange for more than that. I
+shall put you in touch with your father by telephone. You will explain
+to him, in detail, exactly how the repair of your apparatus is planned.
+I understand that the gyros can be duplicated more quickly by the method
+you have worked out?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;Yes, sir. The balancing of the gyros can, which was the
+longest single job. But anything can be made quicker <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg&nbsp;100]</a></span>the second time.
+The patterns for the castings are all made, and the bugs worked out of
+the production process.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will explain that to your father,&#8221; said the Major heavily. &#8220;Your
+father&#8217;s plant will begin to duplicate these&mdash;ah&mdash;pilot gyros at once.
+Meanwhile your&mdash;ah&mdash;work crew will start to repair the one that is
+here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And,&#8221; said the Major, &#8220;I am sending you to the pushpot airfield. I
+intend to scatter the targets the saboteurs might aim at. You are one of
+them. Your crew is another. From time to time you will confer with them
+and verify their work. If any of them should be&mdash;disposed of, you will
+be able to instruct others.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really the other way about, sir,&#8221; objected Joe. &#8220;The Chief and
+Haney are pretty good, and Mike&#8217;s got brains&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major moved impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am looking at this from a security standpoint,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I am trying
+to make it plainly useless to attack the gyros again. Duplicates will be
+in production at your father&#8217;s plant. There will be three men repairing
+the smashed ones. There will be another man in another place&mdash;and this
+will be you&mdash;who can instruct new workmen in the repair procedure if
+anything should happen. Thus there will have to be three separate
+successful coups if the pilot gyros are not to be ready when the
+Platform needs them. Saboteurs might try one. Possibly two. But I think
+they will look for another weak spot to attack.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe did not like the idea of being moved away. He wanted to be on the
+job repairing the device that was primarily his responsibility. Besides,
+he had a feeling about Sally. If she were in danger, he wanted to be on
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;About Sally, sir&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sally,&#8221; said the Major tiredly, &#8220;is going to have to restrict herself
+to the point where she&#8217;ll feel that jail would be preferable. But she
+will see the need for it. She will be guarded a good deal more carefully
+than before&mdash;and you may not know it, but she has been guarded rather
+well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw Sally smiling ruefully at him. What the Major had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg&nbsp;101]</a></span>said was
+unpleasant, but he was right. This was one of those arrangements that
+nobody likes, an irritating, uncomfortable, disappointing necessity. But
+such necessities are a part of every actual achievement. The difference
+between things that get done and things that don&#8217;t get done is often
+merely the difference between patience and impatience with tedious
+details. This arrangement would mean that Joe couldn&#8217;t see Sally very
+often. It would mean that the Chief and Haney and Mike would do the
+actual work of getting the gyros ready. It would take all the glamour
+out of Joe&#8217;s contribution. These deprivations shouldn&#8217;t be necessary.
+But they were.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right, sir,&#8221; said Joe gloomily. &#8220;When do I go over to the field?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Right away,&#8221; said the Major. &#8220;Tonight.&#8221; Then he added detachedly:
+&#8220;Officially, the excuse for your presence there will be that you have
+been useful in uncovering sabotage methods. You have. After all, through
+you a number of planes that would have been blown up have now had their
+booby traps removed. I know you do not claim credit for the fact, but it
+is an excuse for keeping you where I want you to be for another reason
+entirely. So it will be assumed that you are at the pushpot field for
+counter-sabotage inspection.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major nodded dismissal with an indefinable air of irony, and Joe
+went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length.
+His father did not share Joe&#8217;s disappointment at being removed to a
+place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new
+set of pilot gyros at once.</p>
+
+<p>A little later Sally came out of her father&#8217;s office.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, Joe!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He grinned unhappily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So am I. I don&#8217;t feel very heroic, but if this is what has to be done
+to get the Platform out of the Shed and on the way up&mdash;it&#8217;s what has to
+be done. I suppose I can phone you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;And you&#8217;d better!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They had talked a long time that afternoon, very satisfyingly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg&nbsp;102]</a></span>and
+without any cares at all. Neither could have remembered much of what had
+been said. It probably was not earth-shaking in importance. But now
+there seemed to be a very great deal of other similar conversation
+urgently needing to be gone through.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll call you!&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>Then somebody approached to take him to the pushpot airfield. They
+separated very formally under the eyes of the impersonal security
+officer who would drive Joe to his destination.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tedious journey through the darkness. This particular security
+officer was not companionable. He was one of those conscientious people
+who think that if they keep their mouths shut it will make up for their
+inability to keep their eyes open. Socially he treated Joe as if he were
+a highly suspect person. It could be guessed that he treated everybody
+that way.</p>
+
+<p>Joe went to sleep in the car.</p>
+
+<p>He was only half-awake when he arrived, and he didn&#8217;t bother to rouse
+himself completely when he was shown to a cubbyhole in the officers&#8217;
+barracks. He went to bed, making a half-conscious note to buy himself
+some clothes&mdash;especially fresh linen&mdash;in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Then he knew nothing until he was awaked in the early morning by what
+sounded exactly like the crack of doom.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg&nbsp;103]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c9" id="c9"></a><i>9</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>It was not, however, the crack of doom. When Joe stared out the window
+by the head of his cot, he saw gray-red dawn breaking over the landing
+field. There were low, featureless structures silhouetted against the
+sunrise. As the crimson light grew brighter, Joe realized that the
+angular shapes were hangars. Improbable crane poles loomed above them.
+One was in motion, handling something he could not make out, but the
+noise that had awakened him was less, now. It seemed to circle overhead,
+and it had an angry, droning, buzzing quality that was not natural in
+any motor he had ever heard before.</p>
+
+<p>Joe shivered, standing at the window. It was cold and dank in the dawn
+light at this altitude, but he wanted to know what that completely
+unbelievable roar had been. A crane beam by the hangars tilted down,
+slowly, and then lifted as if released of a great weight. The light was
+growing slowly brighter. Joe saw something on the ground. Rather, it was
+not quite on the ground. It rested on something on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly that unholy uproar began again. Something moved. It ran heavily
+out from the masking dark of the hangars. It picked up speed. It
+acquired a reasonable velocity&mdash;forty or fifty miles an hour. As it
+scuttled over the dimly lighted field, it made a din like all the boiler
+factories in the world and all the backfiring motors in creation trying
+to drown each other&#8217;s noise out&mdash;and all of them being very successful.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pushpot. Joe recognized it with incredulity. It was one of
+those utterly ungainly creations that were built around one half of the
+sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg&nbsp;104]</a></span>upper part was like the top half of
+a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled
+vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a
+blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome
+flirtings from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>The pushpot lifted from the vehicle on which it rode, and the vehicle
+put on speed and got away from under it with frantic agility. The
+vehicle swerved to one side, and Joe stared with amazed eyes at the
+pushpot, some twenty feet aloft. It had a flat underside, and a topside
+that still looked to him like the rounded top half of a loaf of baker&#8217;s
+bread. It hung in the air at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and
+it howled like a panic-stricken dragon&mdash;Joe was getting his metaphors
+mixed by this time&mdash;and it swung and wobbled and slowly gained altitude,
+and then suddenly it seemed to get the knack of what it was supposed to
+do. It started to circle around, and then it began abruptly to climb
+skyward. Until it began to climb it looked heavy and clumsy and wholly
+unimpressive. But when it climbed, it really moved!</p>
+
+<p>Joe found his head out the window, craning up to look at it. Its
+unearthly din took on the indignant quality of an irritated beehive. But
+it climbed! It went up without grace but with astonishing speed. And it
+was huge, but it became lost in the red-flecked dawn sky while Joe still
+gaped.</p>
+
+<p>Joe flung on his clothes. He went out the door through resonant empty
+corridors, hunting for somebody to tell him something. He blundered into
+a mess hall. There were many tables, but the chairs around them were
+pushed back as if used and then left behind by people in a hurry to be
+somewhere else. There were exactly two people still visible over in a
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>Another din like the wailing of a baby volcano with a toothache. It
+began, and moved, and went through the series of changes that ended in a
+climbing, droning hum. Another. Another. The launching of pushpots for
+their morning flight was evidently getting well under way.</p>
+
+<p>Joe hesitated in the nearly empty mess hall. Then he recognized the two
+seated figures. They were the pilot and co-pilot, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg&nbsp;105]</a></span>respectively, of the
+fateful plane that had brought him to Bootstrap.</p>
+
+<p>He went over to their table. The pilot nodded matter-of-factly. The
+co-pilot grinned. Both still wore bandages on their hands, which would
+account for their remaining here.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fancy seeing you!&#8221; said the co-pilot cheerfully. &#8220;Welcome to the Hotel
+de Gink! But don&#8217;t tell me you&#8217;re going to fly a pushpot!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hadn&#8217;t figured on it,&#8221; admitted Joe. &#8220;Are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perish forbid,&#8221; said the co-pilot amiably. &#8220;I tried it once, for the
+devil of it. Those things fly with the grace of a lady elephant on ice
+skates! Did you, by any chance, notice that they haven&#8217;t got any wings?
+And did you notice where their control surfaces were?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe shook his head. He saw the remnants of ham and eggs and coffee. He
+was hungry.</p>
+
+<p>There was the uproar to be expected of a basso-profundo banshee in pain.
+Another pushpot was taking off.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do I get breakfast?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The co-pilot pointed to a chair. He rapped sharply on a drinking glass.
+A door opened, he pointed at Joe, and the door closed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Breakfast coming up,&#8221; said the co-pilot. &#8220;Look! I know you&#8217;re Joe
+Kenmore. I&#8217;m Brick Talley and this is Captain&mdash;no less than
+Captain!&mdash;Thomas J. Walton. Impressed?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very much,&#8221; said Joe. He sat down. &#8220;What about the control surfaces on
+pushpots?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re in the jet blast!&#8221; said the co-pilot, now identified as Brick
+Talley. &#8220;Like the V Two rockets when the Germans made &#8217;em. Vanes in the
+exhaust blast, no kidding! Landing, and skidding in on their tails like
+they do, they haven&#8217;t speed enough to give wing flaps a grip on the air,
+even if they had wings to put wing flaps on. Those dinkuses are things
+to have bad dreams about!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Again, a door opened and a man in uniform with an apron in front came
+marching in with a tray. There was tomato juice and ham and eggs and
+coffee. He served Joe briskly and marched out again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg&nbsp;106]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s Hotel de Gink service,&#8221; said Talley. &#8220;No wasted motion, no
+sloppy civilities. He was about to eat that himself, he gave it to you,
+and now he&#8217;ll cook himself a double portion of everything. What are you
+doing here, anyhow?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe shrugged. It occurred to him that it would neither be wise nor
+creditable to say that he&#8217;d been sent here to split up a target at which
+saboteurs might shoot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I guess I&#8217;m attached for rations,&#8221; he observed. &#8220;There&#8217;ll be orders
+along about me presently, I suppose. Then I&#8217;ll know what it&#8217;s all
+about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He fell to on his breakfast. The thunderous noises of the pushpots
+taking off made the mess hall quiver. Joe said between mouthfuls: &#8220;Funny
+way for anything to take off, riding on&mdash;it looked like a truck.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is a truck,&#8221; said Talley. &#8220;A high-speed truck. Fifty of them
+specially made to serve as undercarriages so pushpot pilots can
+practice. The pushpots are really only expected to work once, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They aren&#8217;t to take off,&#8221; Talley explained. &#8220;Not in theory. They hang
+on to the Platform and heave. They go up with it, pushing. When they get
+it as high as they can, they&#8217;ll shoot their jatos, let go, and come
+bumbling back home. So they have to practice getting back home and
+landing. For practicing it doesn&#8217;t matter how they get aloft. When they
+get down, a big straddle truck on caterpillar treads picks them up&mdash;they
+land in the doggonedest places, sometimes!&mdash;and brings &#8217;em back. Then a
+crane heaves them up on a high-speed truck and they do it all over
+again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe considered while he ate. It made sense. The function of the pushpots
+was to serve as the first booster stage of a multiple-stage rocket.
+Together, they would lift the Platform off the ground and get it as high
+as their jet motors would take it traveling east at the topmost speed
+they could manage. Then they&#8217;d fire their jatos simultaneously, and in
+doing that they&#8217;d be acting as the second booster stage of a
+multiple-stage rocket. Then their work would be done, and their only
+remaining purpose would be to get their pilots back to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg&nbsp;107]</a></span>the ground alive,
+while the Platform on its own third stage shot out to space.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So,&#8221; said Talley, &#8220;since their pilots need to practice landings, the
+trucks get them off the ground. They go up to fifty thousand feet, just
+to give their oxygen tanks a chance to conk out on them; then they barge
+around up there a while. The advanced trainees shoot off a jato at top
+speed. It&#8217;s gauged to build them up to the speed they&#8217;ll give the
+Platform. And then if they come out of that and get back down to ground
+safely, they uncross their fingers. A merry life those guys lead! When a
+man&#8217;s made ten complete flights he retires. One flight a week thereafter
+to keep in practice only, until the big day for the Platform&#8217;s take-off.
+Those guys sweat!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it that bad?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot grunted. The co-pilot&mdash;Talley&mdash;spread out his hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is that bad! Every so often one of them comes down untidily. There&#8217;s
+something the matter with the motors. They&#8217;ve got a little too much
+power, maybe. Sometimes&mdash;occasionally&mdash;they explode.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jet motors?&#8221; asked Joe. &#8220;Explode? That&#8217;s news!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A strictly special feature,&#8221; said Talley drily. &#8220;Exclusive with
+pushpots for the Platform. They run &#8217;em and run &#8217;em and run &#8217;em, on
+test. Nothing happens. But occasionally one blows up in flight. Once it
+happened warming up. That was a mess! The field&#8217;s been losing two pilots
+a week. Lately more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t sound exactly reasonable,&#8221; said Joe slowly. He put a last
+forkful in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s also inconvenient,&#8221; said Talley, &#8220;for the pilots.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot&mdash;Walton&mdash;opened his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;d be sabotage,&#8221; he said curtly, &#8220;if there was any way to do it. Four
+pilots killed this week.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He lapsed into silence again.</p>
+
+<p>Joe considered. He frowned.</p>
+
+<p>A pushpot, outside the building, hysterically bellowed its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg&nbsp;108]</a></span>way across
+the runway and its noise changed and it was aloft. It went spiraling up
+and up. Joe stirred his coffee.</p>
+
+<p>There were thin shoutings outside. A screaming, whistling noise! A
+crash! Something metallic shrieked and died. Then silence.</p>
+
+<p>Talley, the co-pilot, looked sick. Then he said: &#8220;Correction. It&#8217;s been
+five pushpots exploded and five pilots killed this week. It&#8217;s getting a
+little bit serious.&#8221; He looked sharply at Joe. &#8220;Better drink your coffee
+before you go look. You won&#8217;t want to, afterward.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was right.</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw the crashed pushpot half an hour later. He found that his
+ostensible assignment to the airfield for the investigation of sabotage
+was quaintly taken at face value there. A young lieutenant solemnly
+escorted him to the spot where the pushpot had landed, only ten feet
+from a hangar wall. The impact had carried parts of the pushpot five
+feet into the soil, and the splash effect had caved in the hangar
+wall-footing. There&#8217;d been a fire, which had been put out.</p>
+
+<p>The ungainly flying thing was twisted and torn. Entrails of steel tubing
+were revealed. The plastic cockpit cover was shattered. There were only
+grisly stains where the pilot had been.</p>
+
+<p>The motor had exploded. The jet motor. And jet motors do not explode.
+But this one had. It had burst from within, and the turbine vanes of the
+compressor section were revealed, twisted intolerably where the barrel
+of the motor was ripped away. The jagged edges of the tear testified to
+the violence of the internal explosion.</p>
+
+<p>Joe looked wise and felt ill. The young lieutenant very politely looked
+away as Joe&#8217;s face showed how he felt. But of course there were the
+orders that said he was a sabotage expert. And Joe felt angrily that he
+was sailing under false colors. He didn&#8217;t know anything about sabotage.
+He believed that he was probably the least qualified of anybody that
+security had ever empowered to look into methods of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, in a sense, that very fact was an advantage. A man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg&nbsp;109]</a></span>may be set to
+work to contrive methods of sabotage. Another man may be trained to
+counter him. The training of the second man is essentially a study of
+how the first man&#8217;s mind works. Then it can be guessed what this
+saboteur will think and do. But such a trained security man will often
+be badly handicapped if he comes upon the sabotage methods of a second
+man&mdash;an entirely different saboteur who thinks in a new fashion. The
+security man may be hampered in dealing with the second man&#8217;s sabotage
+just because he knows too much about the thinking of the first.</p>
+
+<p>Joe went off and scowled at a wall, while the young lieutenant waited
+hopefully nearby.</p>
+
+<p>He was in a false position. But he could see that there was something
+odd here. There was a sort of pattern in the way the other sabotage
+incidents had been planned. It was hard to pick out, but it was there.
+Joe thought of the trick of booby-trapping a plane during its major
+overhaul, and then arming the traps at a later date.... A private plane
+had been fitted to deliver proximity rockets in mid-air when the
+transport ship flew past. There was the explosion of the cargo parcel
+which was supposed to contain requisition forms and stationery. And the
+attempt to smash the entire Platform by getting an atomic bomb into a
+plane and having a saboteur shoot the crew and then deliver the bomb at
+the Shed in an officially harmless aircraft....</p>
+
+<p>The common element in all those sabotage tricks was actually clear
+enough, but Joe wasn&#8217;t used to thinking in such terms. He did know,
+though, that there was a pattern in those devices which did not exist in
+the blowing up of jet motors from inside.</p>
+
+<p>He scowled and scowled, racking his brains, while the young lieutenant
+watched respectfully, waiting for Joe to have an inspiration. Had Joe
+known it, the lieutenant was deeply impressed by his attempt at
+concentration on the problem it had not been Major Holt&#8217;s intention for
+Joe to consider. When Joe temporarily gave up, the young lieutenant
+eagerly showed him over the whole field and all its workings.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg&nbsp;110]</a></span></p><p>In mid-morning another pushpot fell screaming from the skies. That made
+six pushpots and six pilots for this week&mdash;two today. The things had no
+wings. They had no gliding angle. Pointed up, they could climb
+unbelievably. While their engines functioned, they could be controlled
+after a fashion. But they were not aircraft in any ordinary meaning of
+the word. They were engines with fuel tanks and controls in their
+exhaust blast. When their engines failed, they were so much junk falling
+out of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Joe happened to see the second crash, and he didn&#8217;t go to noon mess at
+all. He hadn&#8217;t any appetite. Instead, he gloomily let himself be packed
+full of irrelevant information by the young lieutenant who considered
+that since Joe had been sent by security to look into sabotage, he must
+be given every possible opportunity to evaluate&mdash;that would be the word
+the young lieutenant would use&mdash;the situation.</p>
+
+<p>But all the time that Joe followed him about, his mind fumbled with a
+hunch. The idea was that there was a pattern of thinking in sabotage,
+and if you could solve it, you could outguess the saboteur. But the
+trouble was to figure out the similarity he felt existed in&mdash;say&mdash;a
+private plane shooting rockets and overhaul mechanics planting booby
+traps and faked shippers getting bombs on planes&mdash;and come to think of
+it, there was Braun....</p>
+
+<p>Braun was the key! Braun had been an honest man, with an honest loyalty
+to the United States which had given him refuge. But he had been
+blackmailed into accepting a container of atomic death to be released in
+the Shed. Radioactive cobalt did not belong in the Shed. That was the
+key to the pattern of sabotage. Braun was not to use any natural thing
+that belonged in the Shed. He was to be only the means by which
+something extraneous and deadly was to have been introduced.</p>
+
+<p>That was it! Somebody was devising ingenious ways to get well-known
+destructive devices into places where they did not belong, but where
+they would be effective. Rockets. Bombs. Even radioactive cobalt dust.
+All were perfectly well-known means of destruction. The minds that
+planned those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg&nbsp;111]</a></span>tricks said, in effect: &#8220;These things will destroy. How
+can we get them to where they will destroy something?&#8221; It was a strict
+pattern.</p>
+
+<p>But the pushpot sabotage&mdash;and Joe was sure it was nothing else&mdash;was not
+that sort of thing. Making motors explode.... Motors don&#8217;t explode. One
+couldn&#8217;t put bombs in them. There wasn&#8217;t room. The explosions Joe had
+seen looked as if they&#8217;d centered in the fire basket&mdash;technically the
+combustion area&mdash;behind the compressor and before the drive vanes. A jet
+motor whirled. Its front vanes compressed air, and a flame burned
+furiously in the compressed air, which swelled enormously and poured out
+past other vanes that took power from it to drive the compressor. The
+excess of blast poured out astern in a blue-white flame, driving the
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>But one couldn&#8217;t put a bomb in a fire basket. The temperature would melt
+anything but the refractory alloys of which a jet motor has to be built.
+A bomb placed there would explode the instant a motor was started. It
+couldn&#8217;t resist until the pushpot took off. It couldn&#8217;t....</p>
+
+<p>This was a different kind of sabotage. There was a different mind at
+work.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon Joe watched the landings, while the young lieutenant
+followed him patiently about. A pushpot landing was quite unlike the
+landing of any other air-borne thing. It came flying down with
+incredible clumsiness, making an uproar out of all proportion to its
+landing speed. Pushpots came in with their tail ends low, crudely and
+cruelly clumsy in their handling. They had no wings or fins. They had to
+be balanced by their jet blasts. They had to be steered the same way.
+When a jet motor conked out there was no control. The pushpot fell.</p>
+
+<p>He carefully watched one landing now. It came down low, and swung in
+toward the field, and seemed to reach its stern down tentatively to
+slide on the earth, and the flame of its exhaust scorched the field, and
+it hesitated, pointing up at an ever steeper angle&mdash;and it touched and
+its nose tilted forward&mdash;and leaped up as the jet roared more loudly,
+and then touched again....</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg&nbsp;112]</a></span></p><p>The goal was for pushpots to touch ground finally with the whole weight
+of the flying monstrosity supported by the vertical thrust of the jet,
+and while it was moving forward at the lowest possible rate of speed.
+When that goal was achieved, they flopped solidly flat, slid a few feet
+on their metal bellies, and lay still. Some hit hard and tried to dig
+into the earth with their blunt noses. Joe finally saw one touch with no
+forward speed at all. It seemed to try to settle down vertically, as a
+rocket takes off. That one fell over backward and wallowed with its
+belly plates in the air before it rolled over on its side and rocked
+there.</p>
+
+<p>The last of a flight touched down and flopped, and the memory of the
+wreckage had been overlaid by these other sights and Joe could think of
+his next meal without aversion. When it was evening-mess time he went
+doggedly back to the mess hall. There was a sort of itchy feeling in his
+mind. He knew something he didn&#8217;t know he knew. There was something in
+his memory that he couldn&#8217;t recall.</p>
+
+<p>Talley and Walton were again at mess. Joe went to their table. Talley
+looked at him inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I saw both crashes,&#8221; said Joe gloomily, &#8220;and I didn&#8217;t want any
+lunch. It was sabotage, though. Only it was different in kind&mdash;it was
+different in principle&mdash;from the other tricks. But I can&#8217;t figure out
+what it is!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mmmmmm,&#8221; said Talley, amiably. &#8220;You&#8217;d learn something if you could talk
+to the Resistance fighters and saboteurs in Europe. The Poles were
+wonderful at it! They had one chap who could get at the tank cars that
+took aviation gasoline from the refinery to the various Nazi airfields.
+He used to dump some chemical compound&mdash;just a tiny bit&mdash;into each
+carload of gas. It looked all right, smelled all right, and worked all
+right. But at odd moments Hitler&#8217;s planes would crash. The valves would
+stick and the engine&#8217;d conk out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe stared at him. And it was just as simple as that. He saw.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Nazis lost a lot of planes that way,&#8221; said Talley. &#8220;Those that
+didn&#8217;t crash from stuck valves in flight&mdash;they had to have their valves
+reground. Lost flying time. Wonderful! <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg&nbsp;113]</a></span>And when the Nazis did uncover
+the trick, they had to re-refine every drop of aviation gas they had!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;That&#8217;s it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s it? And <i>it</i> is what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then Joe said disgustedly: &#8220;Surely! It&#8217;s the trick of loading CO<sub>2</sub>
+bottles with explosive gas, too! Excuse me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He got up from the table and hurried out. He found a phone booth and got
+the Shed, and then the security office, and at long last Major Holt. The
+Major&#8217;s tone was curt.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes?... Joe?... The three men from the affair of the lake were tracked
+this morning. When they were cornered they tried to fight. I am afraid
+we&#8217;ll get no information from them, if that&#8217;s what you wanted to know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major&#8217;s manner seemed to disapprove of Joe as expressing curiosity.
+His words meant, of course, that the three would-be murderers had been
+fatally shot.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said carefully: &#8220;That wasn&#8217;t what I called about, sir. I think I&#8217;ve
+found out something about the pushpots. How they&#8217;re made to crash. But
+my hunch needs to be checked.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major said briefly: &#8220;Tell me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;All the tricks but one, that were used on the plane I came
+on, were the same kind of trick. They were all arrangements for getting
+regular destructive items&mdash;bombs or rockets or whatever&mdash;where they
+could explode and smash things. The saboteurs were adding destructive
+items to various states of things. But there was one trick that was
+different.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes?&#8221; said the Major, on the telephone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Putting explosive gas in the CO<sub>2</sub> bottles,&#8221; said Joe painstakingly,
+&#8220;wasn&#8217;t adding a new gadget to a situation. It was changing something
+that was already there. The saboteurs took something that belonged in a
+plane and changed it. They did not put something new into a plane&mdash;or a
+situation&mdash;that didn&#8217;t belong there. It was a special kind of thinking.
+You see, sir?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major, to do him justice, had the gift of listening. He waited.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The pushpots,&#8221; said Joe, very carefully, &#8220;naturally have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg&nbsp;114]</a></span>their fuel
+stored in different tanks in different places, as airplanes do. The
+pilots switch on one tank or another just like plane pilots. In the
+underground storage and fueling pits, where all the fuel for the
+pushpots is kept in bulk, there are different tanks too. Naturally! At
+the fuel pump, the attendant can draw on any of those underground tanks
+he chooses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major said curtly: &#8220;Obviously! What of it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The pushpot motors explode,&#8221; said Joe. &#8220;And they shouldn&#8217;t. No bomb
+could be gotten into them without going off the instant they started,
+and they don&#8217;t blow that way. I make a guess, sir, that one of the
+underground storage tanks&mdash;just one&mdash;contains doctored fuel. I&#8217;m
+guessing that as separate tanks in a pushpot are filled up, one by one,
+<i>one</i> is filled from a particular underground storage tank that contains
+doctored fuel. The rest will have normal fuel. And the pushpot is going
+to crash when that tank, and only that tank, is used!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt was very silent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You see, sir?&#8221; said Joe uneasily. &#8220;The pushpots could be fueled a
+hundred times over with perfectly good fuel, and then one tank in one of
+them would explode when drawn on. There&#8217;d be no pattern in the
+explosions....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt said coldly: &#8220;Of course I see! It would need only one tank of
+doctored fuel to be delivered to the airfield, and it need not be used
+for weeks. And there would be no trace in the wreckage, after the fire!
+You are telling me there is one underground storage tank in which the
+fuel is highly explosive. It is plausible. I will have it checked
+immediately.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He hung up, and Joe went back to his meal. He felt uneasy. There
+couldn&#8217;t be any way to make a jet motor explode unless you fed it
+explosive fuel. Then there couldn&#8217;t be any way to stop it. And
+then&mdash;after the wreck had burned&mdash;there couldn&#8217;t be any way to prove it
+was really sabotage. But the feeling of having reported only a guess was
+not too satisfying. Joe ate gloomily. He didn&#8217;t pay much attention to
+Talley. He had that dogged, uncomfortable feeling a man has when he
+knows he doesn&#8217;t qualify as an expert, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg&nbsp;115]</a></span>but feels that he&#8217;s hit on
+something the experts have missed.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour after the evening mess&mdash;near sunset&mdash;a security officer
+wearing a uniform hunted up Joe at the airfield.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Major Holt sent me over to bring you back to the Shed,&#8221; he said
+politely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t mind,&#8221; said Joe with equal politeness, &#8220;I&#8217;ll check that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He went to the phone booth in the barracks. He got Major Holt on the
+wire. And Major Holt hadn&#8217;t sent anybody to get him.</p>
+
+<p>So Joe stayed in the telephone booth&mdash;on orders&mdash;while the Major did
+some fast telephoning. It was comforting to know he had a pistol in his
+pocket, and it was frustrating not to be allowed to try to capture the
+fake security officer himself. The idea of murdering Joe had not been
+given up, and he&#8217;d have liked to take part personally in protecting
+himself. But it was much more important for the fake security man to be
+captured than for Joe to have the satisfaction of attempting it himself.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the fake officer started his getaway the instant
+Joe went to check on his orders. The officer knew they&#8217;d be found faked.
+It had not been practical for him to shoot Joe down where he was. There
+were too many people around for this murderer to have a chance at a
+getaway.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn&#8217;t get away, at that. Twenty minutes later, while Joe still
+waited fretfully in the phone booth, the phone bell rang and Major Holt
+was again on the wire. And this time Joe was instructed to come back to
+the Shed. He had exact orders whom to come with, and they had orders
+which identified them to Joe.</p>
+
+<p>Some eight miles from the airfield&mdash;it was just dusk&mdash;Joe came upon a
+wrecked car with motorcycle security guards working on it. They stopped
+Joe&#8217;s escort. Joe&#8217;s phone call had set off an alarm. A plane had spotted
+this car tearing away from the airfield, and motorcyclists were guided
+in pursuit by the plane. When it wouldn&#8217;t stop&mdash;when the fake Security
+officer in it tried to shoot his way clear&mdash;the plane <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg&nbsp;116]</a></span>strafed him. So he
+was dead and his car was a wreck, and the motorcycle men were trying to
+get some useful information from his body and the car.</p>
+
+<p>Joe went to the Major&#8217;s house in the officers&#8217;-quarters area. The Major
+looked even more tired than before, but he nodded approvingly at Joe.
+Sally was there too, and she regarded Joe with a look which was a good
+deal warmer than her father&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You did very well,&#8221; said the Major detachedly. &#8220;I don&#8217;t have too high
+an opinion of the brains of anybody your age, Joe. When you are my age,
+you won&#8217;t either. But whether you have brains or simply luck, you are
+turning out to be very useful.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;I&#8217;m getting security conscious, sir. I want to stay alive.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major regarded him with irony.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was thinking of the fact that when you worked out the matter of the
+doctored pushpot fuel, you did not try to be a hero and prove it
+yourself. You referred it to me. That was the proper procedure. You
+could have been killed, investigating&mdash;it&#8217;s clear that the saboteurs
+would be pleased to have a good chance to murder you&mdash;and your
+suspicions might never have reached me. They were correct, by the way.
+One storage tank underground was half-full of doctored fuel. Rather more
+important, another <i>was</i> full, not yet drawn on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major went on, without apparent cordiality: &#8220;It seems probable that
+if this particular sabotage trick had not been detected&mdash;it seems likely
+that on the Platform&#8217;s take-off, all or most of the pushpots would have
+been fueled to explode at some time after the Platform was aloft, and
+before it could possibly get out to space.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe felt queer. The Major was telling him, in effect, that he might have
+kept the Platform from crashing on take-off. It was a good but upsetting
+sensation. It was still more important to Joe that the Platform get out
+to space than that he be credited with saving it. And it was not
+reassuring to hear that it might have been wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your reasoning,&#8221; added the Major coldly, &#8220;was soundly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg&nbsp;117]</a></span>based. It seems
+certain that there is not one central authority directing all the
+sabotage against the Platform. There are probably several sabotage
+organizations, all acting independently and probably hating each other,
+but all hating the Platform more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe blinked. He hadn&#8217;t thought of that. It was disheartening.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It will really be bad,&#8221; said the Major, &#8220;if they ever co-operate!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir,&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I called you back from the airfield,&#8221; the Major told him without
+warmth, &#8220;to say that you have done a good job. I have talked to
+Washington. Naturally, you deserve a reward.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m doing all right, sir,&#8221; said Joe awkwardly. &#8220;I want to see the
+Platform go up and stay up!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major nodded impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naturally! But&mdash;ah&mdash;one of the men selected and trained for the crew of
+the Platform has been&mdash;ah&mdash;taken ill. In strict confidence, because of
+sabotage it has been determined to close in the Platform and get it
+aloft at the earliest possible instant, even if its interior
+arrangements are incomplete. So&mdash;ah&mdash;in view of your usefulness, I said
+to Washington that I believed the greatest reward you could be offered
+was&mdash;ah&mdash;to be trained as an alternate crew member, to take this man&#8217;s
+place if he does not recover in time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The room seemed to reel around Joe. Then he gulped and said: &#8220;Yes, sir!
+I mean&mdash;that&#8217;s right. I mean, I&#8217;d rather have that, than all the money
+in the world!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very well.&#8221; The Major turned to leave the room. &#8220;You&#8217;ll stay here, be
+guarded a good deal more closely than before, and take instructions. But
+you understand that you are still only an alternate for a crew member!
+The odds are definitely against your going!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s&mdash;that&#8217;s all right, sir,&#8221; said Joe unsteadily. &#8220;That&#8217;s quite all
+right!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major went out. Joe stood still, trying to realize what all this
+might mean to him. Then Sally stirred.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg&nbsp;118]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;You might say thanks, Joe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were shining, but she looked proud, too.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I put it in Dad&#8217;s head that that was what you&#8217;d like better than
+anything else,&#8221; she told him. &#8220;If I can&#8217;t go up in the Platform
+myself&mdash;and I can&#8217;t&mdash;I wanted you to. Because I knew you wanted to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him as he tried incoherently to talk. With a quiet
+maternal patience, she led him out on the porch of her father&#8217;s house
+and sat there and listened to him. It was a long time before he realized
+that she was humoring him. Then he stopped short and looked at her
+suspiciously. He found that in his enthusiastic gesticulations he had
+been gesticulating with <i>her</i> hand as well as his own.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I guess I&#8217;m pretty crazy,&#8221; he said ruefully. &#8220;Shooting off my mouth
+about myself up there in space.... You&#8217;re pretty decent to stand me the
+way I am, Sally.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused. Then he said humbly: &#8220;I&#8217;m plain lucky. But knowing you
+and&mdash;having you like me reasonably much is pretty lucky too!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him noncommittally.</p>
+
+<p>He added painfully: &#8220;And not only because you spoke to your father and
+told him just the right thing, either. You&#8217;re&mdash;sort of swell, Sally!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She let out her breath. Then she grinned at him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the difference between us, Joe,&#8221; she told him. &#8220;To me, what you
+just said is the most important thing anybody&#8217;s said tonight.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg&nbsp;119]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c10" id="c10"></a><i>10</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>The world turned over on its axis with unfailing regularity, and nights
+followed mornings and mornings followed nights according to
+well-established precedent. One man turned up in Bootstrap with
+radiation burns, but he had not offered himself for check over at the
+hospital. He was found dead in his lodging. Since nobody else appeared
+to have suffered any burns at all, it was assumed that he was the
+messenger who had brought the radioactive cobalt to Braun, who also had
+been doomed by possession of the deadly stuff, but who had broken the
+chain of fatality by not dumping it free into the air of the Shed. Under
+the circumstances, then, three-shift work on the Platform was resumed,
+and three times in each twenty-four hours fleets of busses rolled out of
+Bootstrap carrying men to work in the Shed, and rolled back again loaded
+with men who had just stopped working there.</p>
+
+<p>Trucks carried materials to the Shed, and swing-up doors opened in the
+great dome&#8217;s eastern wall, and the trucks went in and unloaded. Then the
+trucks went out of the same doors and trundled back for more materials.
+In the Shed, shining plates of metal swung aloft, and welding torches
+glittered in the maze of joists and upright pipes that still covered the
+monster shape. Each day it was a little more nearly complete. In a
+separate, guarded workshop by a sidewall, the Chief and Haney and Mike
+the midget labored mightily to accomplish the preposterous. They grew
+lean and red-eyed from fatigue, and short of temper and ever more
+fanatical&mdash;and security men moved about in seeming uselessness but
+never-ceasing vigilance.</p>
+
+<p>There were changes, though. The assembly line of pushpots grew shorter,
+and the remaining monstrosities around <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg&nbsp;120]</a></span>the sidewall were plainly near to
+completion. There came a day, indeed, when only five ungainly objects
+remained on that line, and even they were completely plated in and
+needed only a finishing touch. It was at this time that more crates and
+parcels arrived from the Kenmore Precision Tool plant, and Joe dropped
+his schoolroomlike instruction course in space flight for work of
+greater immediate need. He and his allies worked twice around the clock
+to assemble the replaced parts with the repaired elements of the pilot
+gyros. They grew groggy from the desperate need both for speed and for
+absolute accuracy, but they put the complex device together, and
+adjusted it, and surveyed the result through red-rimmed eyes, and were
+too weary to rejoice.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joe threw a switch and the reconstituted pilot gyro assembly began
+to hum quietly, and the humming rose to a whine, and the whine went
+deliberately up the scale until it ceased to be audible at all.
+Presently a dial announced the impossible, and they gazed at a device
+that seemed to be doing nothing whatever. The gyros appeared quite
+motionless. They spun with such incredible precision that it was not
+possible to detect that they moved a hairbreadth. And the whole complex
+device looked very simple and useless.</p>
+
+<p>But the four of them gazed at it&mdash;now that it worked&mdash;with a sudden
+passionate satisfaction. Joe moved a control, and the axis of the device
+moved smoothly to a new place and stayed there. He moved the control
+again, and it moved to another position and stayed there. And to another
+and another and another.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Chief took Joe&#8217;s place, and under his hand the seemingly static
+disks&mdash;which were actually spinning at forty thousand revolutions per
+minute&mdash;turned obediently and without any appearance of the spectacular.
+Then Haney worked the controls. And Mike put the device through its
+paces.</p>
+
+<p>Mike left the gyros spinning so that the main axis pointed at the sun,
+invisible beyond the Shed&#8217;s roof. And then all four of them watched. It
+took minutes for this last small test to show its results. But visibly
+and inexorably the pilot gyros <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg&nbsp;121]</a></span>followed the unseen sun, and they would
+have resisted with a force of very many tons any attempt to move them
+aside by so little as one-tenth of a second of arc, which would mean
+something like one three-hundred-thousandth of a right angle. And these
+pilot gyros would control the main gyros with just this precision, and
+after the Platform was out in space could hold the Platform itself with
+the steadiness needed for astronomical observation past achievement from
+the surface of the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot gyros, in a word, were ready for installation.</p>
+
+<p>Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike were not beautiful to look at. They
+were begrimed from head to toe, and their eyes were bloodshot, and they
+were exhausted to the point where they did not even notice any longer
+that they were weary. And their mental processes were not at all normal,
+so that they were quarrelsome and arbitrary and arrogant to the men with
+the flat-bed trailer who came almost reverently to move their work. They
+went jealously with the thing they had rebuilt, and they were rude to
+engineers and construction workers and supervisors, and they shouted
+angrily at each other as it was hoisted up a shaft that had been left in
+the Platform for its entrance, and they were very far from tactful as
+they watched with hot, anxious eyes as it was bolted into place.</p>
+
+<p>It would be welded later, but first it was tried out. And it moved the
+main gyros! They weighed many times what the pilot gyros did, but even
+when they were spinning the pilot gyros stirred them. Of course the
+main-gyro linkage to the fabric of the Shed had to be broken for this
+test, or the gyros would have twisted the giant upon its support and all
+the scaffolding around it would have been broken and the men on it
+killed.</p>
+
+<p>But the gyros worked! They visibly and unquestionably worked! They
+controlled the gigantic wheels that would steer the Platform in its
+take-off, and later would swing it to receive the cargo rockets coming
+up from Earth. The pilot instrument worked! There was no vibration. In
+its steering apparatus the Platform was ready for space!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg&nbsp;122]</a></span></p><p>Then the Chief yawned, and his eyes glazed as he stood in the huge gyro
+room. And Haney&#8217;s knees wobbled, and he sat down and was instantly
+asleep. Then Joe vaguely saw somebody&mdash;it was Major Holt&mdash;holding Mike
+in his arms as if Mike were a baby. Mike would have resented it
+furiously if he had been awake. And then suddenly Joe didn&#8217;t know what
+was going on around him, either.</p>
+
+<p>There was a definite hiatus in his consciousness. He came back to
+awareness very slowly. He was half-awake and half-asleep for a long
+time. He only knew contentedly that his job was finished. Then, slowly,
+he realized that he was in a bunk in one of the Platform sleeping
+cabins, and the inflated cover that was Sally&#8217;s contribution to the
+Platform held him very gently in place. Somehow it was infinitely
+soothing, and he had an extraordinary sensation of peacefulness and
+relaxation and fulfillment. The pilot gyros were finished and in
+position. His responsibility to them was ended. And he had slept the
+clock around three times. He&#8217;d slept for thirty-six hours. He was
+starving.</p>
+
+<p>Sally had evidently constituted herself a watch over Joe as he slept,
+because she faced him immediately when he went groggily out of the cabin
+to look for a place to wash. He was still covered with the grime of past
+labor, and he had been allowed to sleep with only his shoes removed. He
+was not an attractive sight. But Sally regarded him with an approval
+that her tone belied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can get a shower,&#8221; she told him firmly, &#8220;and then I&#8217;ll have some
+breakfast for you. Fresh clothes are waiting, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said peacefully: &#8220;The gyros are finished and they work!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t I know?&#8221; demanded Sally. &#8220;Go get washed and come back for
+breakfast. The Chief and Haney and Mike are already awake. And because
+of the four of you, they&#8217;ve been able to advance the Platform&#8217;s take-off
+time&mdash;to just two days off! It leaked out, and now it&#8217;s official. And
+you made it possible!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was a slight exaggeration, but it was pardonable because <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg&nbsp;123]</a></span>of Sally&#8217;s
+partiality for Joe. He went groggily into the special shower arrangement
+in the Platform. In orbit, there would be no gravity, so a tub bath was
+unthinkable. The shower cabinet was a cubbyhole with handgrips on all
+four sides and straps into which one could slip his feet. When Joe
+turned handles, needle sprays sprang at him from all sides, and
+simultaneously a ventilator fan began to run. When in space that fan
+could draw out what would otherwise become an inchoate mixture of air
+and quite weightless water-drops. In space a man might drown in his own
+shower bath without the fan. The apparatus for collecting the water
+again was complex, but Joe didn&#8217;t think about that at the moment. He
+considered ruefully that however convenient this system might be out in
+the Platform&#8217;s orbit, it left something to be desired on Earth.</p>
+
+<p>But there were clean clothes waiting when he came out. He dressed and
+felt brand new and utterly peaceful and rested, and it seemed to him
+very much like the way he had often felt on a new spring morning. It was
+very, very good!</p>
+
+<p>Then he smelled coffee and became ravenous.</p>
+
+<p>There were the others in the Platform&#8217;s kitchen, sitting in the chairs
+that had straps on them so the crew needn&#8217;t float about because of
+weightlessness. There was an argument in progress. The Chief grinned at
+Joe. Mike the midget looked absorbed. Haney was thinking something out,
+rather painfully. Sally was busy at the Platform&#8217;s very special stove.
+She had ham and eggs and pancakes ready for Joe to eat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; she said, &#8220;you are about to eat the first meal ever cooked
+in a space ship&mdash;and like it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She served them and sat companionably down with them all. But her eyes
+were very warm when she looked at Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Leavin&#8217; aside what we were arguin&#8217; about,&#8221; said the Chief blissfully,
+&#8220;Sally here&mdash;mind if I call you Sally, ma&#8217;am?&mdash;she says the slide-rule
+guys have given our job the works and they say it&#8217;s a better job than
+they designed. Take a bow, Joe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said firmly: &#8220;When the technical journals are through talking
+about the job you did, you&#8217;ll all four be famous for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg&nbsp;124]</a></span>precision-machining
+technique and improvements on standard practices.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Which,&#8221; said the Chief sarcastically, &#8220;is gonna make us feel fine when
+we&#8217;re back to welding and stuff!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No more welding,&#8221; Sally told him. &#8220;Not on this job. The Platform&#8217;s
+closed in. They&#8217;ve started to take down the scaffolding.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief looked startled. Haney asked: &#8220;Laying off men yet?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not you,&#8221; Sally assured him. &#8220;Definitely not you. You four have the
+very top super-special security rating there is! I think you&#8217;re the only
+four people in the world my father is sure can&#8217;t be reached, somehow, to
+make you harm the Platform.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mike said abruptly: &#8220;Yeah. The Major thought he had headaches before.
+Now he&#8217;s really got &#8217;em!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mike hadn&#8217;t seemed to be listening. He&#8217;d acted as if he were feverishly
+absorbing the feel of being inside the Platform&mdash;not as a workman
+building it, but as a man whose proper habitat it would become. But Joe
+suddenly realized that his comment was exact. There&#8217;d been plenty of
+sabotage to prevent the Platform from reaching completion. But now it
+was ready to take off in two days. If it was to be stopped, it would
+have to be stopped within forty-eight hours by people with plenty of
+resources, who for their own evil ends needed it to be stopped. These
+last two days would contain the last-ditch, most desperate, most
+completely ruthless stepped-up attempts at destruction that could
+possibly be made. And Major Holt had to handle them.</p>
+
+<p>But the four at table&mdash;five, with Sally&mdash;were peculiarly relaxed. The
+matter they&#8217;d handled had been conspicuous, perhaps, but it was still
+only one of thousands that had to be accomplished before the Platform
+could take off. But they had the infinitely restful feeling of a job
+well done.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No more welding,&#8221; said Haney meditatively, &#8220;and our job on the gyros
+finished. What are we gonna do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief said forcefully: &#8220;Me, I&#8217;m gonna sweep floors or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg&nbsp;125]</a></span>something, but
+I&#8217;m sure gonna stick around and watch the take-off!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said nothing. He looked at Sally. She became very busy, making
+certain the others did not want more to eat. After a long time Joe said,
+with very careful casualness, &#8220;Come to think of it, I was getting loaded
+up with astrogation theory when I had to stop and pitch in on the gyros.
+How&#8217;s that sick crew member, Sally?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t know,&#8221; answered Sally unconvincingly. &#8220;Have some more
+coffee?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe made his face go completely expressionless. There was nothing else
+to do. Sally hadn&#8217;t said that his chances looked bad for making the crew
+of the Platform when it went out to space. But Sally had ways of knowing
+things. She would be sure to keep informed on a matter like that,
+because she was wearing Joe&#8217;s ring and it would have taken a great deal
+of discouragement to keep her from finding out good news to tell him.
+She didn&#8217;t have any good news. So it must be bad.</p>
+
+<p>Joe drank his coffee, trying to make himself believe that he&#8217;d known all
+along he wasn&#8217;t going to make the crew. He&#8217;d started late to learn the
+things a crew member ought to know. He&#8217;d stopped at the most crucial
+part of his training to work on the gyros, which were more crucial
+still. He&#8217;d slept a day and a half. The platform would take off in
+forty-eight hours. He tried to reason carefully that it was common sense
+to use a man who was fully trained from the beginning for a place in the
+crew, rather than a latecomer like himself. But it wasn&#8217;t easy to take.</p>
+
+<p>Mike the midget said suddenly: &#8220;I got a hunch.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shoot it,&#8221; said the Chief, amiably.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I got a hunch I know what kind of sabotage will be tried next&mdash;and
+when,&#8221; said Mike.</p>
+
+<p>The others looked at him&mdash;all but Joe, who stared at the wall.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There hasn&#8217;t been one set of guys trying to smash the Platform,&#8221; said
+Mike excitedly. &#8220;There&#8217;s been four or five. Joe found a gang sabotaging
+the pushpots that didn&#8217;t think like the gang that blackmailed Braun. And
+the gang that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg&nbsp;126]</a></span>tried to kill us up at Red Canyon may be another. There
+could be others: fascists and commies and nationalists and crackpots of
+all kinds. And they all know they&#8217;ve got to work fast, even if they have
+to help each other. Get it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney growled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll buy what you&#8217;ve said so far,&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;Sure! Those
+so-and-sos will all pile in everything they got at the last minute.
+They&#8217;ll even pull together to smash the Platform&mdash;and then double-cross
+each other afterward. But what&#8217;ll they do, an&#8217; when?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This time they&#8217;ll try outright violence,&#8221; said Mike coldly, &#8220;instead of
+sneaking. They&#8217;ll try something really rough. For sneaking, one time&#8217;s
+as good as another, but for really rough stuff, there&#8217;s just one time
+when the Platform hasn&#8217;t got plenty of guys around ready to fight for
+it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief whistled softly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You mean change-shift time! Which one?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The first one possible,&#8221; said Mike briefly. &#8220;After every shift, things
+will get tighter. So my guess is the next shift, if they can. And if one
+gang starts something, the others will have to jump right in. You see?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That made sense. One attempt at actual violence, defeated, would create
+a rigidity of defense that would make others impossible. If a successful
+attempt at violent sabotage was to be made, the efforts of all groups
+would have to be timed to the first, or abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I could&mdash;uh&mdash;set up a sort of smoke screen,&#8221; said Mike. &#8220;We&#8217;ll fake
+we&#8217;re going to smash something&mdash;and let those saboteurs find it out.
+They&#8217;ll see it as a chance to do their stuff with us to run interference
+for them.&mdash;Sally, does your father sure-enough trust us?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He doesn&#8217;t talk very cordially, but he trusts you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Okay,&#8221; said Mike. &#8220;You tell him, private, that I&#8217;m setting up something
+tricky. He can laugh off anything his security guys report that I&#8217;m
+mixed up in. Joe&#8217;ll see that he gets the whole picture beforehand. But
+he ain&#8217;t to tell anybody&mdash;not <i>any</i>body&mdash;that something is getting
+framed up. Right?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg&nbsp;127]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll ask him,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;He is pretty desperate. He&#8217;s sure some
+last-minute frantic assault on the Platform will be made. But&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll tip him in plenty of time,&#8221; said Mike with authority. &#8220;In time
+for him to play along, but not for a leak to spoil things. Okay?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll make the bargain,&#8221; Sally assured him, &#8220;if it can be made.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mike nodded. He drained his coffee cup and slipped down from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come on, Chief! C&#8217;mon, Haney!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He led them out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Joe fiddled with his spoon a moment, and then said: &#8220;The crewman I was
+to have subbed for if he didn&#8217;t get well&mdash;he did, didn&#8217;t he?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally answered reluctantly: &#8220;Y-yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said measuredly: &#8220;Well, then&mdash;that&#8217;s that! I guess it will be all
+right for me to stick around and watch the take-off?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally&#8217;s eyes were misty.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course it will, Joe! I&#8217;m so sorry!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe grinned, but even to himself his face seemed like a mask.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Into each life some rain must fall. Let&#8217;s go out and see what&#8217;s been
+accomplished since I went to sleep. All right?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They went out of the Platform together. And as soon as they reached the
+floor of the Shed it was plain that the stage had been set for stirring
+events.</p>
+
+<p>The top five or six levels of scaffolding had already been removed, and
+more of the girders and pipes were coming down in bundles on lines from
+giraffelike cranes. There were some new-type trucks in view, too, giants
+of the kind that carry ready-mixed concrete through city streets. They
+were pouring a doughy white paste into huge buckets that carried it
+aloft, where it vanished into the mouths of tubes that seemed to replace
+the scaffolding along the Platform&#8217;s sides.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lining the rockets,&#8221; said Sally in a subdued voice.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg&nbsp;128]</a></span></p><p>Joe watched. He knew about this, too. It had been controversial for a
+time. After the pushpots and their jatos had served as the first two
+stages of a multiple-rocket aggregation, the Platform carried rocket
+fuel as the third stage. But the Platform was a highly special ballistic
+problem. It would take off almost horizontally&mdash;a great advantage in
+fueling matters. This was practical simply because the Platform could be
+lifted far beyond effective air resistance, and already have
+considerable speed before its own rockets flared.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it was not a space ship in the sense of needing rockets for
+landing purposes. It wouldn&#8217;t land. Not ever. And again there was the
+fact that men would be riding in it. That ruled out the use of eight- and
+ten- and fifteen-gravity acceleration. It had to make use of a long
+period of relatively slow acceleration rather than a brief terrific
+surge of power. So its very special rockets had been designed as the
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>They were solid-fuel rockets, though solid fuels had been long abandoned
+for long-range missiles. But they were entirely unlike other solid-fuel
+drives. The pasty white compound being hauled aloft was a self-setting
+refractory compound with which the rocket tubes would be lined, with the
+solid fuel filling the center. The tubes themselves were thin
+steel&mdash;absurdly thin&mdash;but wound with wire under tension to provide
+strength against bursting, like old-fashioned rifle cannon.</p>
+
+<p>When the fuel was fired, it would be at the muzzle end of the rocket
+tube, and the fuel would burn forward at so many inches per second. The
+refractory lining would resist the rocket blast for a certain time and
+then crumble away. Crumbling, the refractory particles would be hurled
+astern and so serve as reaction mass. When the steel outer tubes were
+exposed, they would melt and be additional reaction mass.</p>
+
+<p>In effect, as the rocket fuel was exhausted, the tubes that contained it
+dissolved into their own blast and added to the accelerating thrust,
+even as they diminished the amount of mass to be accelerated. Then the
+quantity of fuel burned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg&nbsp;129]</a></span>could diminish&mdash;the tubes could grow smaller&mdash;so
+the rate of speed gain would remain constant. Under the highly special
+conditions of this particular occasion, there was a notable gain in
+efficiency over a liquid-fuel rocket design. For one item, the Platform
+would certainly have no use for fuel pumps and fuel tanks once it was in
+its orbit. In this way, it wouldn&#8217;t have them. Their equivalent in mass
+would have been used to gain velocity. And when the Platform finally
+rode in space, it would have expended every ounce of the driving
+apparatus used to get it there.</p>
+
+<p>Now the rocket tubes were being lined and loaded. The time to take-off
+was growing short indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Joe watched a while and turned away. He felt very good because he&#8217;d
+finished his job and lived up to the responsibility he&#8217;d had. But he
+felt very bad because he&#8217;d had an outside chance to be one of the first
+men ever to make a real space journey&mdash;and now it was gone. He couldn&#8217;t
+resent the decision against him. If it had been put up to him, he&#8217;d
+probably have made the same hard decision himself. But it hurt to have
+had even a crazy hope taken away.</p>
+
+<p>Sally said, trying hard to interest him, &#8220;These rockets hold an awful
+lot of fuel, Joe! And it&#8217;s better than scientists thought a chemical
+fuel could ever be!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fluorine-beryllium,&#8221; said Sally urgently. &#8220;It fits in with the
+pushpots&#8217; having pressurized cockpits. Rockets like that couldn&#8217;t be
+used on the ground! The fumes would be poisonous!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Joe only nodded in agreement. He was apathetic. He was uninterested.
+He was still thinking of that lost trip in space. He realized that Sally
+was watching his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Joe,&#8221; she said unhappily, &#8220;I wish you wouldn&#8217;t look like that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m all right,&#8221; he told her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You act as if you didn&#8217;t care about anything,&#8221; she protested, &#8220;and you
+do!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m all right,&#8221; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d like to go outside somewhere,&#8221; she said abruptly, &#8220;but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg&nbsp;130]</a></span>after what
+happened up at the lake, I mustn&#8217;t. Would you like to go up to the top
+of the Shed?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you want to,&#8221; he agreed without enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>He followed when she went to a doorway&mdash;with a security guard beside
+it&mdash;in the sidewall. She flashed her pass and the guard let them
+through. They began to walk up an inclined, endless, curving ramp. It
+was between the inner and outer skins of the Shed. There had to be two
+skins because the Shed was too big to be ventilated properly, and the
+hot desert sunshine on one side would have made &#8220;weather&#8221; inside.
+There&#8217;d have been a convection-current motion of the air in the enclosed
+space, and minor whirlwinds, and there could even be miniature
+thunderclouds and lightning. Joe remembered reading that such things had
+happened in a shed built for Zeppelins before he was born.</p>
+
+<p>They came upon an open gallery, and there was a security man looking
+down at the floor and the Platform. He had a very good view of all that
+went on.</p>
+
+<p>They went around another long circuit of the slanting gallery, dimly
+lighted with small electric bulbs. They came to a second gallery, and
+saw the Platform again. There was another guard here.</p>
+
+<p>They were halfway up the globular wall now, and were visibly suspended
+over emptiness. The view of the Platform was impressive. There were an
+astonishing number of rocket tubes being fastened to the outside of that
+huge object. Three giant cranes, working together, hoisted a tube to the
+last remaining level of scaffolding, and men swarmed on it and fastened
+it to the swelling hull. As soon as it was fast, other men hurried into
+it with the white pasty stuff to line it from end to end. The tubes
+would nearly hide the structure they were designed to propel. But they&#8217;d
+all be burned away when it reached its destination.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wonderful, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221; asked Sally hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>Joe looked, and said without warmth, &#8220;It&#8217;s the most wonderful thing that
+anybody ever even tried to do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Which was true enough, but the zest of it had unreasonably <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg&nbsp;131]</a></span>departed for
+Joe for the time being. His disappointment was new.</p>
+
+<p>Halfway around again, Sally opened a door, and Joe was almost surprised
+out of his lethargy. Here was a watching post on the outside of the
+monstrous half-globe. There were two guards here, with fifty-caliber
+machine guns under canvas hoods. Their duties were tedious but
+necessary. They watched the desert. From this height it stretched out
+for miles, and Bootstrap could be seen as a series of white specks far
+away with hills behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Ultimately Sally and Joe came to the very top of the Shed into the open
+air. From here the steep plating curved down and away in every
+direction. The sunshine was savagely bright and shining, but there was a
+breeze. And here there was a considerable expanse fenced in&mdash;almost an
+acre, it seemed. There were metal-walled small buildings with
+innumerable antennae of every possible shape for the reception of every
+conceivable wave length. There were three radar bowl reflectors turning
+restlessly to scan the horizon, and a fourth which went back and forth,
+revolving, to scan the sky itself. Sally told Joe that in the very
+middle&mdash;where there was a shed with a domelike roof which wasn&#8217;t
+metal&mdash;there was a wave-guide radar that could spot a plane within three
+feet vertically, and horizontally at a distance of thirty miles, with
+greater distances in proportion.</p>
+
+<p>There were guns down in pits so their muzzles wouldn&#8217;t interfere with
+the radar. There were enough non-recoil anti-aircraft guns to defend the
+Shed against anything one could imagine.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And there are jet planes overhead too,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;Dad asked to have
+them reinforced, and two new wings of jet fighters landed yesterday at a
+field somewhere over yonder. There are plenty of guards!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Platform was guarded as no object in all history had ever been
+guarded. It was ironic that it had to be protected so, because it was
+actually the only hope of escape from atomic war. But that was why some
+people hated the Platform, and their hatred had made it seem obviously
+an item <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg&nbsp;132]</a></span>of national defense. Ironically that was the reason the money
+had been provided for its construction. But the greatest irony of all
+was that its most probable immediate usefulness would be the help it
+would give in making nuclear experiments that weren&#8217;t safe enough to
+make on Earth.</p>
+
+<p>That was pure irony. Because if those experiments were successful, they
+should mean that everybody in the world would in time become rich beyond
+envy.</p>
+
+<p>But Joe couldn&#8217;t react to the fact. He was drained and empty of emotion
+because his job was done and he&#8217;d lost a very flimsy hope to be one of
+the Platform&#8217;s first crew.</p>
+
+<p>He didn&#8217;t really feel better until late that night, when suddenly he
+realized that life was real and life was earnest, because a panting man
+was trying to strangle Joe with his bare hands. Joe was hampered in his
+self-defense because a large number of battling figures trampled over
+him and his antagonist together. They were underneath the Platform, and
+Joe expected to be blown to bits any second.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg&nbsp;133]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c11" id="c11"></a><i>11</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>Joe sat on the porch of Major Holt&#8217;s quarters in the area next to the
+Shed. It was about eight-thirty, and dark, but there was a moon. And Joe
+had come to realize that his personal disappointment was only his
+personal disappointment, and that he hadn&#8217;t any right to make a nuisance
+of himself about it. Therefore he didn&#8217;t talk about the thing nearest in
+his mind, but something else that was next nearest or farther away
+still. Yet, with the Shed filling up a full quarter of the sky, and a
+gibbous moon new-risen from the horizon, it was not natural for a young
+man like Joe to speak purely of earthly things.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll come,&#8221; he said yearningly, staring at the moon. &#8220;If the Platform
+gets up day after tomorrow, it&#8217;s going to take time to ferry up the
+equipment it ought to have. But still, somebody ought to land on the
+moon before too long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He added absorbedly: &#8220;Once the Platform is fully equipped, it won&#8217;t take
+many rocket pay loads to refill a ship&#8217;s tanks at the Platform, before
+it can head on out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mathematically, a rocket ship that could leave the Platform with full
+fuel tanks should have fuel to reach the moon and land on it, and take
+off again and return to the Platform. The mathematical fact had a
+peculiar nagging flavor. When a dream is subjected to statistical
+analysis and the report is in its favor, a dreamer&#8217;s satisfaction is
+always diluted by a subconscious feeling that the report is only part of
+the dream. Everybody worries a little when a cherished dream shows a
+likelihood of coming true. Some people take firm steps to stop things
+right there, so a romantic daydream won&#8217;t be spoiled by transmutation
+into prosaic fact. But Joe said doggedly: &#8220;Twenty ferry trips to pile up
+fuel, and the twenty-first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg&nbsp;134]</a></span>ship should be able to refuel and go on out.
+And then somebody will step out on the moon!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was disappointed now. He wouldn&#8217;t be the one to do it. But somebody
+would.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You might try for the ferry service,&#8221; said Sally uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will,&#8221; said Joe grimly, &#8220;but I won&#8217;t be hoping too much. After all,
+there are astronomers and physics sharks and such things, who&#8217;ll be glad
+to learn to run rockets in order to practice their specialties out of
+atmosphere.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said mournfully: &#8220;I can&#8217;t seem to say anything to make you feel
+better!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you do,&#8221; said Joe. He added grandiloquently, &#8220;But for your
+unflagging faith in me, I would not have the courage to bear the burdens
+of everyday life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stamped her foot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stop it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right.&#8221; But he said quietly, &#8220;You are a good kid, Sally. You know,
+it&#8217;s not too bright of me to mourn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She drew a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s better! Now, I want&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a gangling figure walking down the concrete path between the
+trim, monotonous cottages that were officers&#8217; quarters at the Shed.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said sharply: &#8220;That&#8217;s Haney! What&#8217;s he doing here?&#8221; He called,
+&#8220;Haney!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney&#8217;s manner took on purpose. He came across the grass&mdash;the lawns
+around the officers&#8217; quarters contained the only grass in twenty miles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hiya,&#8221; said Haney uncomfortably. He spoke politely to Sally. &#8220;Hiya.
+Uh&mdash;you want to get in on the party, Joe?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What kind?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The party Mike was talkin&#8217; about,&#8221; said Haney. &#8220;He&#8217;s set it up. He
+wants me to get you and a kinda&mdash;uh&mdash;undercover tip-off to Major Holt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe stirred. Sally said hospitably: &#8220;Sit down. You&#8217;ve noticed that my
+father gave you full security clearance, so you can go anywhere?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney perched awkwardly on the edge of the porch.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg&nbsp;135]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Yeah. That&#8217;s helped with the party. It&#8217;s how I got here, as far as that
+goes. Mike&#8217;s on top of the world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shoot it,&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Y&#8217;know he&#8217;s been pretty bitter about things,&#8221; said Haney carefully.
+&#8220;He&#8217;s been sayin&#8217; that little guys like him ought to be the spacemen.
+There&#8217;s half a dozen other little guys been working on the Platform too.
+They can get in cracks an&#8217; buck rivets an&#8217; so on. Useful. He&#8217;s had &#8217;em
+all hopped up on the fact that the Platform coulda been finished months
+ago if it&#8217;d been built for them, an&#8217; they could get to the moon an&#8217; back
+while full-sized guys couldn&#8217;t an&#8217; so on. Remember?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I remember,&#8221; said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve all been beefin&#8217; about it,&#8221; explained Haney. &#8220;People know how
+they feel. So today Mike went and talked to one or two of &#8217;em. An&#8217; they
+started actin&#8217; mysterious, passin&#8217; messages back an&#8217; forth an&#8217; so on.
+Little guys, actin&#8217; important. Security guys wouldn&#8217;t notice &#8217;em much.
+Y&#8217;don&#8217;t take a guy Mike&#8217;s size serious, unless you know him. Then he&#8217;s
+the same as anybody else. So the security guys didn&#8217;t pay any attention
+to him. But some other guys did. Some special other guys. They saw those
+little fellas actin&#8217; like they were cookin&#8217; up somethin&#8217; fancy. An&#8217; they
+bit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bit?&#8221; asked Sally.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They got curious. So Mike an&#8217; his gang got confidential. An&#8217; they&#8217;re
+going to have help sabotagin&#8217; the Platform when the next shift changes.
+The midgets gettin&#8217; even for bein&#8217; laughed at, see? They&#8217;re pretending
+their plan is that when the Platform&#8217;s sabotaged&mdash;not smashed, but just
+messed up so it can&#8217;t take off&mdash;the big brass will let &#8217;em take a ferry
+rocket up in a hurry, an&#8217; get it in orbit, an&#8217; use it for a Platform
+until the big Platform can be mended an&#8217; sent up. Once they&#8217;re up there,
+there&#8217;s no use tryin&#8217; to stop the big Platform. So it can go ahead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said dubiously: &#8220;I think I see....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mike and his gang of little guys are bein&#8217; saps&mdash;on purpose. If
+anybody&#8217;s goin&#8217; to pull some fast stuff, next shift change&mdash;that&#8217;s the
+time everybody&#8217;s got to! Last chance! Mike and his gang don&#8217;t know
+what&#8217;s gonna happen, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg&nbsp;136]</a></span>they sure know when! They&#8217;re invitin&#8217; the real
+saboteurs to make fools of &#8217;em. And what&#8217;ll happen?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said drily: &#8220;The logical thing would be to feel sorry for the big
+guys who think they&#8217;re smarter than Mike.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Uh-huh,&#8221; said Haney, deadly serious. &#8220;Mike&#8217;s story is there&#8217;s half a
+dozen rocket tubes already loaded. They&#8217;re goin&#8217; to fire those rockets
+between shifts. The Platform gets shoved off its base an&#8217; maybe dented,
+and so on. Mike&#8217;s gang say they got the figures to prove they can go up
+in a ferry rocket an&#8217; be a Platform, and the big brass won&#8217;t have any
+choice but to let &#8217;em.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t think they know how the big brass thinks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney and Joe said together, &#8220;No!&#8221; and Joe added: &#8220;Mike&#8217;s not crazy! He
+knows better! But it&#8217;s a good story for somebody who doesn&#8217;t know Mike.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Haney said in indignation: &#8220;I came out here to ask the Major to help us.
+The Chief&#8217;s gettin&#8217; a gang together, too. There&#8217;s some Indians of his
+tribe that work here. We can count on them for plenty of rough stuff.
+And there&#8217;s Joe and me. The point is that Mike&#8217;s stunt makes it certain
+that everything busts loose at a time we can know in advance. If the
+Major gives us a free hand, and then in the last five minutes takes his
+own measures&mdash;so they can&#8217;t leak out ahead of time and tip off the gangs
+we want to get&mdash;we oughta knock off all the expert saboteurs who know
+the weak spots in the Platform. For instance those who know that
+thermite in the gyros would mess everything up all over again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said quietly: &#8220;But Major Holt has to be told well in advance about
+all this! That&#8217;s absolute!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yeah,&#8221; agreed Haney. &#8220;But also he has got to keep quiet&mdash;not tell
+anybody else! There&#8217;ve been too many leaks already about too many
+things. You know that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said: &#8220;Sally, see if you can get your father to come here and talk.
+Haney&#8217;s right. Not in his office. Right here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally got up and went inside the house. She came back with an uneasy
+expression on her face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s coming. But I couldn&#8217;t very well tell him what was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg&nbsp;137]</a></span>wanted,
+and&mdash;I&#8217;m not sure he&#8217;s going to be in a mood to listen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When the Major arrived he was definitely not in a mood to listen. He was
+a harried man, and he was keyed up to the limit by the multiplied strain
+due to the imminence of the Platform&#8217;s take-off. He came back to his
+house from a grim conference on exactly the subject of how to make
+preparations against any possible sabotage incidents&mdash;and ran into a
+proposal to stimulate them! He practically exploded. Even if provocation
+should be given to saboteurs to lure them into showing their hands, this
+was no time for it! And if it were, it would be security business. It
+should not be meddled in by amateurs!</p>
+
+<p>Joe said grimly: &#8220;I don&#8217;t mean to be disrespectful, sir, but there&#8217;s a
+point you&#8217;ve missed. It isn&#8217;t thinkable that you&#8217;ll be able to prevent
+something from being tried at a time the saboteurs pick. They&#8217;ve got
+just so much time left, and they&#8217;ll use it! But Mike&#8217;s plan would offer
+them a diversion under cover of which they could pull their own stuff!
+And besides that, you know your office leaks! You couldn&#8217;t set up a
+trick like this through security methods. And for a third fact, this is
+the one sort of thing no saboteur would expect from your security
+organization! We caught the saboteurs at the pushpot field by guessing
+at a new sort of thinking for sabotage. Here&#8217;s a chance to catch the
+saboteurs who&#8217;ll work their heads off in the next twenty-four hours or
+so, by using a new sort of thinking for security!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt was not an easy man to get along with at any time, and this
+was the worst of all times to differ with him. But he did think
+straight. He stared furiously at Joe, growing crimson with anger at
+being argued with. But after he had stared a full minute, the angry
+flush went slowly away. Then he nodded abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There you have a point,&#8221; he said curtly. &#8220;I don&#8217;t like it. But it is a
+point. It would be completely the reverse of anything my antagonists
+could possibly expect. So I accept the suggestion. Now&mdash;let us make the
+arrangements.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He settled down for a quick, comprehensive, detailed plan. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg&nbsp;138]</a></span>In careful
+consultation with Haney, Joe worked it out. The all-important point was
+that the Major&#8217;s part was to be done in completely unorthodox fashion.
+He would take measures to mesh his actions with those of Mike, the
+Chief, Haney, and Joe. Each action the Major took and each order he gave
+he would attend to personally. His actions would be restricted to the
+last five minutes or less before shift-change time. His orders would be
+given individually to individuals, and under no circumstances would he
+transmit any order through anybody else. In every instance, his order
+would be devised to mean nothing intelligible to its recipient until the
+time came for obedience.</p>
+
+<p>It was not an easy scheme for the Major to bind himself to. It ran
+counter to every principle of military thinking save one, which was that
+it was a good idea to outguess the enemy. At the end he said detachedly:
+&#8220;This is distinctly irregular. It is as irregular as anything could
+possibly be! But that is why I have agreed to it. It will be at
+least&mdash;unexpected&mdash;coming from me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he smiled without mirth and nodded to Joe and to Haney, and went
+striding away down the concrete walk to where his car waited.</p>
+
+<p>Haney left a moment later to carry the list of arrangements to the Chief
+and to Mike. And Joe went into the Shed to do his part.</p>
+
+<p>There was little difference in the appearance of the Shed by night. In
+the daytime there were long rows of windows in the roof, which let in a
+vague, dusky, inadequate twilight. At night those windows were
+shuttered. This meant that the shadows were a little sharper and the
+contrasts of light and shade a trifle more abrupt. All other changes
+that Joe could see were the normal ones due to the taking down of
+scaffolding and the fastening up of rocket tubes. It was clear that the
+shape of the Platform proper would be obscure when all its rocket tubes
+were fast in place.</p>
+
+<p>Joe went to look at the last pushpots, and they were ready to be taken
+over to their own field for their flight test before use. There were
+extras, anyhow, beyond the number needed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg&nbsp;139]</a></span>to lift the Platform. He found
+himself considering the obvious fact that after the Platform was aloft,
+they would be used to launch the ferry rockets, too.</p>
+
+<p>Then he moved toward the center of the Shed. A whole level of
+scaffolding came apart and its separate elements were bundled together
+as he watched. Slings lowered the bundles down to waiting trucks which
+would carry them elsewhere. There were mixing trucks still pouring out
+their white paste for the lining of the rocket tubes, and their product
+went up and vanished into the gaping mouths of the giant wire-wound
+pipes.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Joe went into the maze of piers under the Space Platform
+itself. He came to the temporary stairs he had reason to remember. He
+nodded to the two guards there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to take another look at that gadget we installed,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>One of the guards said good-naturedly: &#8220;Major Holt said to pass you any
+time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He ascended and went along the curious corridor&mdash;it had handgrips on the
+walls so a man could pull himself along it when there was no weight&mdash;and
+went to the engine room. He heard voices. They were speaking a
+completely unintelligible language. He tensed.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Chief grinned at him amiably. He was in the engine room and
+with him were no fewer than eight men of his own coppery complexion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s some friends of mine,&#8221; he explained, and Joe shook hands with
+black-haired, dark-skinned men who were named Charley Spotted Dog and
+Sam Fatbelly and Luther Red Cow and other exotic things. The Chief said
+exuberantly, &#8220;Major Holt told the guards to let me pass in some Indian
+friends, so I took my gang on a guided tour of the Platform. None of &#8217;em
+had ever been inside before. And&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I heard you talking Indian,&#8221; said Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re gonna hear some more,&#8221; said the Chief. &#8220;We&#8217;re the first war
+party of my tribe in longer&#8217;n my grandpa woulda thought respectable!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg&nbsp;140]</a></span></p><p>Joe found it difficult to restrain a smile. The Chief took him off to
+one side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fella,&#8221; he said kindly, &#8220;it bothers you, this business, because it
+ain&#8217;t organized. That&#8217;s what this world needs, Joe. Everything figured
+out by slide rules an&#8217; such&mdash;it&#8217;s civilized, but it ain&#8217;t human! What
+everybody oughta be is a connoisseur of chaos, like me. Quit worryin&#8217;
+an&#8217; get outside and pick up that security guy the Major was gonna send
+to meet you!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He gave Joe an amiable shove and rejoined his fellow Mohawks, each of
+whom, Joe noticed suddenly, had somewhere on his person a twelve-inch
+Stillson wrench or a reasonable facsimile to serve as a substitute
+tomahawk. They grinned at him as he departed.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the flight of narrow wooden steps there was a third
+security man. He greeted Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Major Holt told me to pick you up,&#8221; he observed.</p>
+
+<p>Joe walked to one side with him. Major Holt had promised to send a
+first-class man to meet Joe at this place, with orders to take
+instructions from Joe. Joe said curtly: &#8220;You&#8217;re to snag as many Security
+men as you can, place them more or less out of sight under the Platform
+here, and tell them to turn off their walkie-talkies and wait. No matter
+what happens, they&#8217;re to wait right here until they&#8217;re needed, right
+here!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked harassedly around him. The Security man nodded and moved
+casually away. This was close timing. Something made Joe look up. He saw
+the catwalk gallery nearly overhead. The expected guard was there.
+Haney, though, was with him. There was nothing else in sight. Not yet.
+But Haney was on the job. Joe saw a Security man step out of sight in
+the scaffolding. He saw his own assigned security man speak to another,
+who wandered casually toward the Platform&#8217;s base.</p>
+
+<p>Minutes passed. Only Joe could have noticed, because he was watching for
+it. There were eight or nine Security men posted within call. They had
+their walkie-talkies turned off and would be subject only to his orders
+if an emergency arose.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg&nbsp;141]</a></span></p><p>Gongs began to ring all around the edge of the Shed. They set up a
+horrendous clanging. This was not an alarm, but simply the notice of
+change-of-shift time.</p>
+
+<p>There was a marked change in the noises overhead. A crane pulled back.
+Hammerings dwindled and stopped. There were the sounds of pipes,
+combined to form the scaffolds, being taken apart for removal. A
+sling-load of pipe touched the floor and stayed there. The crane&#8217;s
+internal-combustion motor stopped. Its operator stepped down to the
+floor and headed for the exit. Hoists descended and men moved across the
+floor. Other men scrambled down ladders. The floor became dotted with
+figures moving toward the doors through which men went out to get on the
+busses for Bootstrap.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing happened. More long minutes passed. The shift brought out by the
+busses was going through the check-over process in the incoming screen
+room. Joe knew that Major Holt had, within the past five minutes,
+gathered together a tight-knit bunch of armed security men to be
+available for anything that might turn up. The men doing the normal
+shift-change screening were shorthanded in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>The floor next to the exits became crowded, but the central area of the
+floor was cleared. One truck was stalled at the swing-up truck doors.
+Its driver ground the starter insistently.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there was a high-pitched yell away up on the Platform. Then
+there was a shot. Its echoes rang horribly in the resonant interior of
+the Shed. Joe&#8217;s own special security man hurried to him, his face tense.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What about that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hold everything,&#8221; said Joe grimly. &#8220;That&#8217;s taken care of.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was. That was Mike&#8217;s gang&mdash;miniature humans popping out of hiding to
+offer battle with missiles carefully prepared beforehand against their
+alleged associates in sabotage. One of the associates had drawn a gun
+and fired. But Mike&#8217;s gang had help. Out of small air locks devised to
+make the Platform&#8217;s skin accessible to its crew on every side&mdash;provided
+they wore space suits&mdash;dark-skinned men appeared.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg&nbsp;142]</a></span></p><p>The security man&#8217;s walkie-talkie under his shoulder made a buzzing
+sound. He reached for it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Forget it!&#8221; snapped Joe. &#8220;That&#8217;s not for you! You&#8217;ve got your orders!
+Stay here!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden growling uproar where men were crowding to get out of
+the Shed. Thick, billowing smoke appeared. There was a crashing
+explosion. The men eddied and milled crazily.</p>
+
+<p>The motor of the stalled truck caught. It moved toward the door, which
+opened, swinging up and high. Two trucks came roaring in. They raced for
+the Platform. And as they raced inside, their camouflaged loads
+clattered off and men showed instead. The guards by the doorway began to
+shoot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve got to stop!&#8221; snapped Joe.</p>
+
+<p>He began to run, his pistol out. There was suddenly a small
+army&mdash;gathered by his orders&mdash;which materialized in the dim space under
+the Platform. It raced to guard against this evidently well-planned
+invasion.</p>
+
+<p>The harsh, tearing rattle of a machine gun sounded from somewhere high
+up. Joe knew what it was. Mike&#8217;s whole scheme had been intended to force
+all sabotage efforts to take place at a single instant. Part of the
+preparation was authority for Haney to drag in two machine guns from an
+outer watching-post and mount them to cover the interior of the Shed
+when the general attack began.</p>
+
+<p>Those machine guns were shooting at the trucks. Splinters sprang up from
+the wood-block floor. Then, abruptly, one of the trucks vanished in a
+monstrous, actinic flash of blue-white flame and a roar so horrible that
+it was not sound but pure concussion. The other truck keeled over and
+crashed from the blast, but did not explode. Men jumped from it. There
+must have been screamed orders, but Joe could hear nothing at all. He
+only saw men waving their arms, and others seized things from the
+toppled load and rushed toward him, and he began to shoot as he ran to
+meet them.</p>
+
+<p>Now, belatedly, the sirens of the Shed screamed their alarm, and choppy
+yappings set up as the siren wails rose in pitch. Over by the exit
+pistols cracked. Something fell <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg&nbsp;143]</a></span>with a ghastly crash not ten feet from
+where Joe ran. It was a man&#8217;s body, toppled from somewhere high up on
+the structure that was the most important man-made thing in all the
+world. A barbaric war whoop sounded among the echoes of other tumult.</p>
+
+<p>A Security man shot, and one of the running figures toppled and slid,
+his burden&mdash;which must certainly be a bomb&mdash;rolling ridiculously. There
+had been two trucks that plunged through the swing-up door. They had
+raced for the spaces under the Platform at the exact time when the floor
+would be clear, because all work had stopped. Under the Platform, the
+trucks were to have been detonated. At the very least, they would have
+rent and torn it horribly. They might have broken its back. And surely
+one truck should have made it. But there should not have been machine
+guns ready trained to shoot. Now the load of desperate men from the
+overturned survivor scurried for the Platform with parts of its cargo.
+If they could fight their way inside the Platform, they could blast its
+hull open, or demolish its controls or shatter its air pumps and its
+gyros and turn its air tanks into sieves. Anything that could be damaged
+would delay the take-off and so expose the Platform to further and
+perhaps more successful attack.</p>
+
+<p>There were more pistol shots. A group of men fought their way out of the
+incoming screening rooms and raced for the center of the Shed. (Later,
+it would be found they had slabs of explosive inside their garments, and
+detonation caps to set them off.) Somewhere another door opened, and
+Security men came out with flickering pistols, Major Holt leading them.
+He had started out to fight off the truck-borne attack, but he was bound
+to be too late. Joe&#8217;s followers were trying to take care of that. The
+scuttling men from the incoming rooms were Major Holt&#8217;s first prey. They
+were shot as they ran.</p>
+
+<p>Joe stumbled and fell and he heard guns crackling. As he scrambled up he
+pitched into a running figure that snarled as Joe hit him. And then he
+was fighting for his life.</p>
+
+<p>This was under the Platform and in the middle of confusion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg&nbsp;144]</a></span>many times
+confounded. Joe caught a wrist that held a gun. He knew his assailant
+had a bomb slung over one shoulder and right now had one hand free for
+combat. Joe instinctively tried to batter his enemy with his own pistol,
+instead of pushing the muzzle against the man&#8217;s body and pulling the
+trigger. He struck a flailing blow, and his hand and the weapon struck a
+metal brace. The blow cut his knuckles and paralyzed his fingers.
+Despairingly he felt the pistol slipping from his grasp. Then his
+assailant brought up his knee viciously, but it hit Joe&#8217;s thigh instead
+of his groin, and Joe flung his weight furiously forward and they
+toppled to the ground together.</p>
+
+<p>There was fighting all around him. The machine guns rasped again&mdash;there
+was a burst of tracer-bullet fire. The panicked men by the exit tried to
+surge out through the swinging doors. But the tracers marked a line they
+must not cross. They checked. Once a gun flashed so close by Joe&#8217;s eyes
+that it blinded him. And once somebody fell over both himself and his
+antagonist, who writhed like an eel possessed of desperate strength past
+belief.</p>
+
+<p>Joe could really know only his private part in the struggle down in the
+murky tangle of the scaffold base. But there was fighting up on the
+Platform itself. A savagely grinning Mohawk wrestled furiously with a
+man on one of the rocket tubes. An incendiary device in the saboteur&#8217;s
+pocket ignited, and it flamed red-hot and he screamed as it burned its
+way out of his garments. The Mohawk flung the man fiercely clear, to
+crash horribly on the far-distant floor, and then kicked the incendiary
+off. It fell after the man and hit and burst, and it was thermite which
+surrounded itself with a column of acrid smoke from seared wood blocks.</p>
+
+<p>There was fighting by the exit doors. There was an ululating uproar in
+the incoming screening room, and a war whoop from the top of the
+Platform. A saboteur tried to crawl into an air-lock entrance, and he
+got his head and shoulders in, but a copper-skinned Indian held his
+forehead still and chopped down with the side of his hand on that man&#8217;s
+neck. Underneath the Platform was panting chaos, with pistol <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg&nbsp;145]</a></span>shots and
+hand-to-hand struggles everywhere. The force Joe had gathered fought
+valiantly, but four invaders got to the foot of the wooden steps, where
+there were two guards. Then there were only two saboteurs left to
+scramble desperately up the steps over the dead guards&#8217; bodies and head
+toward the Platform door, but the Chief appeared swinging a twelve-inch
+Stillson. He let it go, precisely like a skillfully flung tomahawk, and
+leaped down sixteen steps squarely onto the body of the other man. A gun
+flashed, but then there was only squirming struggle on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Mike the midget, inside the Platform, found one bloodied, panting,
+sobbing man who somehow had gotten inside. And Mike brought down a
+spanner from a ladder step, and swarmed upon his half-conscious victim,
+and hit him again, and then stayed on guard until somebody arrived who
+was big enough to carry the saboteur away.</p>
+
+<p>And all this while, Joe struggled with only one man. It was a horrible
+struggle, because the man had a bomb and he might manage to set it off
+or it might go off of itself. It was a ghastly struggle, because the man
+had the strength and desperation of a maniac&mdash;and practiced the tactics.
+Joe pounded the hand that held the gun upon the floor, and it hit
+something and exploded smokily and fell clear. But that made things
+worse. While struggling to kill Joe with the revolver, his antagonist
+had had only five fingers with which to gouge out Joe&#8217;s eyes or tear
+away his ears or rend his flesh. But with no pistol he had ten, and he
+fought like a wild beast. He even breathed like an animal. He began to
+pant&mdash;thick, guttural pantings that had the quality of hellish hate. And
+then there was a surging of bodies&mdash;Major Holt&#8217;s reserve was arriving
+very late in the center of the Shed&mdash;and then a struggling group
+trampled all over the pair who squirmed and fought on the ground, and a
+heavy boot jammed down Joe&#8217;s head and he felt teeth sink in his throat.
+They dug into his flesh, worrying and tearing....</p>
+
+<p>Joe used his knee in a frenzy of revulsion&mdash;used his knee as the other
+man had tried to use his in the first instant of battle. The man beneath
+him screamed as an animal would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg&nbsp;146]</a></span>scream, and Joe jerked his bleeding
+throat free. In hysterical horror he pounded his antagonist&#8217;s head on
+the floor until the man went limp....</p>
+
+<p>And then he heard a grim voice saying: &#8220;Quit it or you get your head
+blown off! Quit it&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; And Joe panted: &#8220;It&#8217;s about time you guys got
+here! This man came in on that truck. Watch out for that bomb he&#8217;s got
+slung on him....&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg&nbsp;147]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c12" id="c12"></a><i>12</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>The incoming shift had a messy clean-up job to do. It was accomplished
+only because security men abruptly took over the work of gang bosses,
+and all ordinary labor on the Platform was put aside until normal
+operations were again possible. Even that would not have been feasible
+but for the walkie-talkies the security men wore. As the situation was
+sorted out, it was explained to them, and they relayed the news for the
+satisfaction of the curiosity of those who worked under them. No
+work&mdash;no explanation. It produced immediate and satisfactory
+co-operation all around.</p>
+
+<p>There had been four separate and independent attempts to wreck the
+Platform at the same time. One was, of course, the plan of those
+sympathetic characters who had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win
+the status of spacemen by firing the Platform&#8217;s rockets. There were not
+many of them, and they had lost heavily. They&#8217;d had thermite bombs to
+destroy the Platform&#8217;s vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely,
+if morosely, and that was that.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a particularly ungifted attempt to cause panic in the
+incoming shift in the rooms where its members were screened before
+admission to work. Somebody had tried to establish complete confusion
+there by firing revolver shots in the crowd, expecting the workers to
+break through to the floor and assigned gentlemen with slabs of
+explosive to get to the Platform with them. The gentlemen with the
+explosives had run into Major Holt&#8217;s security reserve, and they got
+nowhere. The creators of panic with revolver shots were finally rescued
+from their shift-mates and more or less scraped up from the
+screening-room floor&mdash;they were in very bad shape&mdash;and carted off to be
+patched up for questioning. The members of this group had been
+impractical idealists, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg&nbsp;148]</a></span>besides, some of them had lost their nerve,
+as was evidenced by the discovery of abandoned explosives and detonators
+in the locker room and men&#8217;s room of the Shed.</p>
+
+<p>The most dangerous attempt was, of course, that perfectly planned and
+co-ordinated assault which had been merely carried out at its original
+time, without either being hastened or delayed by Mike&#8217;s activities.
+That plan had been beautifully contrived, and it would certainly have
+been successful but for the machine-gun bullets from the gallery and the
+fight Joe&#8217;s followers put up underneath the Platform.</p>
+
+<p>The exact instant when the whole Shed would be most nearly empty had
+been fixed upon, and three separate units had worked in perfect timing.
+There&#8217;d been the man in the stalled truck. He&#8217;d delayed his exit from
+the Shed to the precise fraction of a second to get the doors open at
+the perfect instant. The explosive-laden trucks had raced in at the
+exact second when they were most certain to get underneath the Platform
+and detonate their cargoes. There&#8217;d been a perfect diversion planned for
+that, too. Smoke bombs and explosions in the outgoing screening rooms
+had created real panic, and but for Joe&#8217;s order for his group&#8217;s
+walkie-talkies to be turned off would have drawn every security man on
+duty to that spot.</p>
+
+<p>Mike&#8217;s trick, then, had brought some saboteurs into the open, but had
+merely happened to coincide with the most dangerous and well-organized
+coup of all. However, it was due to his trick that the Platform was not
+now a wreck.</p>
+
+<p>There was also another break that was sheer coincidence. It was a
+discovery that could not possibly have turned up save in a situation of
+pure chaos artificially induced. Joe had had to react in a personal and
+vengeful way to the manner in which his especial antagonist had fought
+him. One expects a man to fight fair by instinct, and to turn to
+fouls&mdash;if he does&mdash;in desperation only. But Joe&#8217;s personal opponent
+hadn&#8217;t tried a single fair trick. It was as if he&#8217;d never heard of a
+fist blow, but only of murder and mayhem. Joe felt an individual enmity
+toward him.</p>
+
+<p>Joe didn&#8217;t consider himself the most urgent of the injured, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg&nbsp;149]</a></span>when doctors
+and nurses took up the work of patching, but Sally was there to help,
+and she went deathly pale when she saw his bloodstained throat. She
+dragged him quickly to a doctor. And the doctor looked at Joe and
+dropped everything else.</p>
+
+<p>But it wasn&#8217;t too serious. The antiseptics hurt, and the stitching was
+unpleasant, but Joe was more worried by the knowledge that Sally was
+standing there and suffering for him. When he got up from the emergency
+operating table, the doctor nodded grimly to him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was close!&#8221; said the doctor. &#8220;Whoever chewed you was working for
+your jugular vein, and he was halfway through the wall when he stopped.
+A fraction of an inch more, and he&#8217;d have had you!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thanks,&#8221; said Joe. His neck felt clumsy with bandages, and when he
+tried to turn his head the stitches hurt.</p>
+
+<p>Sally&#8217;s hand trembled in his when she led him away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t think I&#8217;d ever dislike anybody so much,&#8221; said Joe angrily, &#8220;as
+I did that man while he was chewing my throat. We were trying to kill
+each other, of course, but&mdash;confound it, people don&#8217;t bite!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you&mdash;kill him?&#8221; asked Sally in a shaky voice. &#8220;Not that I&#8217;ll mind!
+I would have hated the thought ordinarily, but&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe halted. There was a row of stretchers&mdash;not too long, at that&mdash;in the
+emergency-hospital space. He looked down at the unconscious man who&#8217;d
+fought him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There he is!&#8221; he said irritably. &#8220;I banged him pretty hard. I don&#8217;t
+like to hate anybody, but the way he fought&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally&#8217;s teeth chattered suddenly. She called to one of the security men
+standing guard by the stretchers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;think my&mdash;father is going to want to talk to him,&#8221; she said
+unsteadily. &#8220;Don&#8217;t&mdash;let him be taken away to the hospital until Dad
+knows, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She started away, her face dead-white and her hand stone-cold.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter?&#8221; demanded Joe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;S-sabotage,&#8221; said Sally in an indescribable tone that had a suggestion
+of heartbreak.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg&nbsp;150]</a></span></p><p>She went into her father&#8217;s office alone. She came out again with him,
+and her father looked completely stricken. Miss Ross, his secretary, was
+with him, too. Her face was like a mask of marble. She had always been a
+plain woman, a gloomy one, a morbid one. But at the new and horrible
+look on her face Joe turned his eyes away.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sally was crying beside him, and he put his arm clumsily around her
+and let her sob on his shoulder, completely puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>He didn&#8217;t find out until later what the trouble was. The man who&#8217;d tried
+so earnestly to kill him was Miss Ross&#8217;s fianc&eacute;. She had met this man
+during a vacation, as a government secretary, and he was a refugee with
+an exotic charm that would have fascinated a much more personable and
+beautiful woman than Miss Ross. They had a whirlwind romance. He
+confided to her his terror of emissaries from his native country who
+might kill him. And of course she was more fascinated still. When he
+asked her to marry him she accepted his proposal. Then, just two weeks
+before her assignment to the Space Platform project, he vanished. Miss
+Ross was desperate and lovesick.</p>
+
+<p>One day her telephone rang and his anguished voice told her he&#8217;d been
+abducted, and if she told the police he would be tortured to death. He
+begged her not to do anything to cause him more torment than was already
+his.</p>
+
+<p>She&#8217;d been trying to keep him alive ever since. Once, when she couldn&#8217;t
+bring herself to carry out an order she&#8217;d been given&mdash;with threats of
+torment to him if she failed&mdash;she&#8217;d received a human finger in the mail,
+and a scrawled and blood-stained note which cried out of unspeakable
+torment and begged her not to doom him to more.</p>
+
+<p>So Miss Ross, who was Major Holt&#8217;s secretary and one of his most trusted
+assistants, had been giving information to one group of saboteurs all
+the while. She was the most dangerous security leak in the whole
+Platform project.</p>
+
+<p>But her fianc&eacute; wasn&#8217;t a captive. He was the head of that group of
+saboteurs. He&#8217;d made love to her and proposed to her merely to prepare
+her to supply the information he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg&nbsp;151]</a></span>wanted. He needed only to write a
+sufficiently agonized note, or gasp tormented pleas on a telephone, to
+get what he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Incidentally, he still had all his fingers when Joe knocked him cold.</p>
+
+<p>Sally had recognized him as the subject of a snapshot she&#8217;d once seen
+Miss Ross crying over. Miss Ross had hidden it hastily and told her it
+was someone she had once loved, now dead. And this inadvertent
+disclosure that Miss Ross was the security leak the Major had never had
+a clue to could only have come about through such confusion as Mike had
+instigated and Haney and the Chief and Joe had organized. But Joe
+learned those facts only later.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment, there was still the Platform to be gotten aloft. And
+there was plenty of work to do. There were two small rips in the
+plating, caused by fragments of the exploded truck. There were some
+bullet holes. The Platform could resist small meteorites at forty-five
+miles a second, but a high-velocity small-arm projectile could puncture
+it. Those scars of battle had to be welded shut. The rest of the
+scaffolding had to come down and the rest of the rocket tubes had to be
+affixed. And there was cleaning up to be done.</p>
+
+<p>These things occupied the shift that came on at the time of the multiple
+sabotage assaults. At first the work was ragged. But the policy of
+turning the Security men into news broadcasters worked well. After all,
+the Platform was a construction job and the men who worked on it were
+not softies. Most of them had seen men killed before. Before the shift
+was half over, a definite work rhythm was evident. Men had begun to take
+an even greater pride in the thing they had built, because it had been
+assailed and not destroyed. And the job was almost over.</p>
+
+<p>Sally went back to her father&#8217;s quarters, to try to sleep. Joe stayed in
+the Shed. His throat was painful enough so that he didn&#8217;t want to go to
+bed until he was genuinely tired, and he was thoroughly wrought up.</p>
+
+<p>Mike the midget had gone peacefully to sleep again, curled up in a
+corner of the outgoing screening room. His fellow <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg&nbsp;152]</a></span>midgets talked
+satisfiedly among themselves. Presently, to show their superiority to
+mere pitched battles, two of them brought out a miniature pack of cards
+and started a card game while they waited for a bus to take them back to
+Bootstrap.</p>
+
+<p>The Chief&#8217;s Indian associates loafed comfortably while waiting for the
+same busses. Later they would put in for overtime&mdash;and get it. Haney
+mourned that he had been remote from the scene of action, and was merely
+responsible for the presence and placing and firing of the machine guns
+that had certainly kept the Platform from being blown up from below.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that nothing else would happen to bother anybody. But there
+was one thing more.</p>
+
+<p>That thing happened just two hours before it was time for the shift to
+change once again, and when normal work was back in progress in the
+Shed. Everything seemed fully organized and serene. Everything in the
+Shed had settled down, and nothing had happened outside.</p>
+
+<p>There was ample exterior protection, of course, but the outside-guard
+system hadn&#8217;t had anything to do for a very long time. Men at radar
+screens were bored and sleepy from sheer inactivity and silence. Pilots
+in jet planes two miles and five miles and eight miles high had long
+since grown weary of the splendid view below them. After all, one can
+get very used to late, slanting moonlight on cloud masses far
+underneath, and bright and hostile-seeming stars overhead.</p>
+
+<p>So the thing was well timed.</p>
+
+<p>A Canadian station noticed the pip on its radar screen first. The radar
+observer was puzzled by it. It could have been a meteor, and the
+Canadian observer at first thought it was. But it wasn&#8217;t going quite
+fast enough, and it lasted too long. It was traveling six hundred
+seventy-two miles an hour, and it was headed due south at sixty thousand
+feet. The speed could have been within reason&mdash;provided it didn&#8217;t stay
+constant. But it did. There was something traveling south at eleven
+miles a minute or better. A mile in five-plus seconds. It didn&#8217;t slow.
+It didn&#8217;t drop.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg&nbsp;153]</a></span></p><p>The Canadian radarman debated painfully. He stopped his companion from
+the reading of a magazine article about chinchilla breeding in the home.
+He showed him the pip, still headed south and almost at the limit of
+this radar instrument&#8217;s range. They discussed the thing dubiously. They
+decided to report it.</p>
+
+<p>They had a little trouble getting the call through. The night
+long-distance operators were sleepy. Because of the difficulty of making
+the call, the radarmen became obstinate and insisted on putting it
+through. They reported to Ottawa that some object flying at sixty
+thousand feet and six hundred seventy-two miles an hour was crossing
+Canada headed for the United States.</p>
+
+<p>There was a further time loss. Somebody in authority had to be awakened,
+and somebody had to decide that a further report was justified. Then the
+trick had to be accomplished, and a sleepy man in a bathrobe and
+slippers listened and said sleepily, &#8220;Oh, of course you&#8217;ll tell the
+Americans. It&#8217;s only neighborly!&#8221; and padded back to his bed to go to
+sleep again. Then he waked up suddenly and began to sweat. He&#8217;d realized
+that this might be the beginning of atomic war. So he set phone bells to
+jangling furiously all over Canada, and jet planes began to boom in the
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>But there was only one object in the sky. Over the Dakotas it went
+higher. It went to seventy thousand feet, and then eighty. How this was
+managed is not completely known, because there are still some details of
+that flight that have never been completely explained. But certainly
+jatos flared briefly at some point, and the object reached ninety
+thousand feet where a jet motor would certainly be useless. And then,
+almost certainly, rockets flared once more and well south of the Dakotas
+it started down in a trajectory like that of an artillery shell, but
+with considerably higher speed than most artillery shells achieve.</p>
+
+<p>It was at about this time that the siren in the Shed began its choppy,
+hiccoughing series of warm-up notes. The news from Canada arrived, as a
+matter of fact, some thirty seconds after the outer-perimeter radar
+screen around the Platform <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg&nbsp;154]</a></span>gave its warning. Then there was no
+hesitation or delay at all. Men were already tumbling out of bed at
+three airfields, buckling helmets and hoping their oxygen tanks would
+function properly. Then the radars atop the Shed itself picked up the
+moving speck. And small blue-white flames began to rise from the ground
+and go streaking away in the darkness in astonishing numbers.</p>
+
+<p>The covers of the guns at the top of the Shed slid aside. Miles away,
+jet planes shot skyward, and newly wakened pilots looked at their
+night-fighting instruments and swore unbelievingly at the speed they
+were told the plunging object was making. The jet pilots gave their
+motors everything they could take, but it didn&#8217;t look good.</p>
+
+<p>The planes of the jet umbrella over the Shed stopped cruising and
+sprinted. And they were the only ones likely to get in front of the
+object in time.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the Shed, the siren howled dismally and all the Security men were
+snapping: &#8220;Radar alarm! All out! Radar alarm! All out!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And men were moving fast, too. Some came down from the Platform on
+hoists, dropping with reckless speed to the floor level. Some didn&#8217;t
+wait for a turn at that. They slid down one upright, swung around the
+crosspiece on the level below, and slid down another vertical pipe. For
+a minute or more it looked as if the scaffolds oozed black droplets
+which slid down its pipes. But the drops were men. The floor became
+speckled and spotted with dots running for its exits.</p>
+
+<p>The siren ceased its wailing and its noise went down and down in pitch
+until it was a baritone moan that dropped to bass and ceased. Then there
+was no sound but the men moving to get out of the Shed. There were
+trucks, too. Those that had been loading with dismantled scaffolding
+roared for the doors to get out and away. Some men jumped on board as
+they passed. The exit doors swung up to let them go.</p>
+
+<p>But it was very quiet in the Shed, at that. There was no noise but a few
+fleeing trucks, and the murmur which was the voices of the Security men
+hurrying the work crew out. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg&nbsp;155]</a></span>There was less to hear than went on
+ordinarily. And it was a long distance across the floor of the Shed.</p>
+
+<p>Joe stood with his fists clenched absurdly. This could only be an air
+attack. An air attack could only mean an atom-bomb attack. And if there
+was an atom bomb dropped on the Shed, there&#8217;d be no use getting outside.
+It wouldn&#8217;t be merely a fission bomb. It would be a hell bomb&mdash;a bomb
+which used the kind of bomb that shattered Hiroshima only as a primer
+for the real explosive. Nobody could hope to get beyond the radius of
+its destruction before it hit!</p>
+
+<p>Joe heard himself raging. He&#8217;d thought of Sally. She&#8217;d be in the range
+of annihilation, too. And Joe knew such fury and hatred&mdash;because of
+Sally&mdash;that he forgot everything else.</p>
+
+<p>He didn&#8217;t run. He couldn&#8217;t escape. He couldn&#8217;t fight back. But because
+he hated, he had to do something to defy.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself moving toward the Platform, his jaws clenched. It was
+pure, blind, instinctive defiance.</p>
+
+<p>He was not the only one to have that reaction. Men running toward the
+sidewall exits began to get out of breath from their running. They
+slowed. Presently they stopped. They scowled and raged, like Joe. Some
+of them looked with burning eyes up at the roof of the Shed, though
+their thoughts went on beyond it. The security guards repeated, &#8220;Radar
+alarm! All out! Radar alarm! All out!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Someone snarled, &#8220;Nuts to that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw a man walking in the same direction as himself. He was walking
+deliberately back to the Platform. Somebody else was headed back too....</p>
+
+<p>Very peculiarly, almost all the men on the floor had ceased to run. They
+began to gather in little groups. They knew flight was useless. They
+talked briefly. Profanely. Here and there men started disgustedly back
+toward the Platform. Their lips moved in expressions of furious scorn.
+Their scorn was of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There was a gathering of men about the base of the framework that still
+partly veiled the Platform. They tended to face outward, angrily, and to
+clench their fists.</p>
+
+<p>Then somebody started an engine. A man began to climb <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg&nbsp;156]</a></span>furiously back to
+where he had been at work. Quite unreasonably, other men followed him.</p>
+
+<p>Hammers began defiantly and enragedly to sound.</p>
+
+<p>The work crew in the Shed went defiantly and furiously back to work. A
+clamor was set up that was almost the normal working noise. It was the
+only possible way in which those men could express the raging contempt
+they felt for those who would destroy the thing they worked on.</p>
+
+<p>But there were some other men who could do more. There were three levels
+of jet planes above the Shed, and they could dive. The highest one got
+first to the line along which the missile from an unknown place was
+plunging toward the Shed. That plane steadied on a collision course and
+let go its wing load of rockets. It peeled off and got out of the way.
+Seconds later the others from the jet umbrella were arriving. A tiny
+spray of proximity-fused rockets blazed furiously toward the invisible
+thing from the heights.</p>
+
+<p>Other planes and yet others came hurtling to the line their radars
+briskly computed for them. There were more rockets....</p>
+
+<p>The black-painted thing with more than the speed of an artillery shell
+plunged into a miniature hail of rockets. They flamed viciously. Half a
+dozen&mdash;a dozen&mdash;explosions that were pure futility.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was an explosion that was not. Nobody saw it, because its
+puny detonation was instantly wiped out in a blaze of such incredible
+incandescence that the aluminum paint on jet planes still miles away was
+scorched and blistered instantly. The light of that flare was seen for
+hundreds of miles. The sound&mdash;later on&mdash;was heard farther still. And the
+desert vegetation miles below the hell bomb showed signs of searing when
+the morning came.</p>
+
+<p>But the thing from the north was vaporized, utterly, some forty-five
+miles from its target. The damage it did was negligible.</p>
+
+<p>The work on the preparation for the Platform&#8217;s take-off went on. When
+the all-clear signal sounded inside the Shed, nobody paid any attention.
+They were too busy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg&nbsp;157]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="c13" id="c13"></a><i>13</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>On the day of the take-off there were a number of curious side-effects
+from the completion of the Space Platform. There was a very small
+country on the other side of the world which determined desperately to
+risk its existence on the success of the Platform&#8217;s flight. It had to
+choose between abject submission to a powerful neighbor, or the
+possibility of a revolution in which its neighbor&#8217;s troops would take on
+the semblance of citizens for street-fighting purposes. If the Platform
+got aloft, it could defy its neighbor. And in a grim gamble, it did.</p>
+
+<p>There was also a last-ditch fight in the United Nations, wherein the
+Platform was denounced and a certain block of associated countries
+issued an ultimatum, threatening to bolt the international organization
+if the Platform went aloft. And again there had to be a grim gamble. If
+the Platform did not take to space and so furnish ultimately a guarantee
+of peace, the United Nations would face the alternatives of becoming a
+military alliance for atomic war, or something less than an
+international debating society.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there were less significant results. There were already
+fourteen popular songs ready for broadcast, orchestrated and rehearsed
+with singers ready to saturate the ears of the listening public. They
+ranged from <i>We&#8217;ve Got a Warship in the Sky</i>, which was more or less
+jingoistic, to a boy-and-girl melody entitled <i>We&#8217;ll Have a Moon Just
+for Us Two</i>. The latter tune had been stolen from a hit of four years
+before, which in turn had been stolen from a hit of six years before
+that, and it had been stolen from a still earlier bit of Bach, so it was
+a rather pretty melody.</p>
+
+<p>And of course there was a super-colossal motion picture <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg&nbsp;158]</a></span>epic in color
+and with musical numbers, champing in its film cans for simultaneous
+first-run showings in eight different key cities. It was titled <i>To the
+Stars</i>, and three separate endings had been filmed, of which the
+appropriate one would of course be used in the eight separate world
+<i>premi&egrave;res</i>. One ending had the Platform fail due to sabotage, and the
+hero&mdash;played by an actor who had interrupted his seventh honeymoon to
+play the part&mdash;splendidly prepared to build it all over again. The
+second ending closed with the Platform headed for Alpha Centaurus&mdash;which
+was hardly the intention of anybody outside of filmdom. The third ending
+was secret, but it was said that hard-boiled motion-picture executives
+had cried like babies when it was thrown on preview screens.</p>
+
+<p>These, of course, were merely sidelights. They were not very important
+in the Shed. There, work went on at a feverish rate although there was
+no longer any construction work to be done. In theory, therefore, the
+members of welders and pipe-fitters and steel-construction and
+electrical and other unions should have retired gracefully to Bootstrap.
+Members of building-maintenance and rigging and wrecking and other
+assorted unions should have been gathered together in far cities,
+screened by security, and brought to Bootstrap and paid overtime to pull
+up wood-block flooring and unbolt and jack out the proper sections of
+the Shed&#8217;s eastern wall.</p>
+
+<p>But if there had been anything of that sort tried, it would have
+produced bloodshed. The men who&#8217;d built the Platform were going to see
+it depart this Earth or else. They&#8217;d never have a second chance. It
+would work the first time or it wouldn&#8217;t work at all.</p>
+
+<p>So the Platform was made ready for its take-off by the men who had made
+it. A gigantic section&mdash;two full gores&mdash;of the Shed&#8217;s wall was unbolted
+in two pieces, and each piece thrust outward at the top and bottom, so
+that they were offset from the rest of the huge half-globe. There were
+hundreds of wheels at their bottom which for the first time touched the
+sixteen lines of rails laid with unbelievable solidity around the
+outside of the Shed. And then the monstrous sections were rolled aside.
+A vast opening resulted, and morning <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg&nbsp;159]</a></span>sunlight smote for the first time
+mankind&#8217;s very first space craft.</p>
+
+<p>Joe saw the sunlight strike, and his first sensation was of
+disappointment. The normal shape of the Platform was ungainly, but now
+it was practically hidden by the solid-fuel rockets which would consume
+themselves in their firing. Also, the floor of the Shed looked strange.
+It was littered with the clumsy shapes of pushpots, trucked to this
+place in an unending stream all night long. A very young lieutenant from
+the pushpot airfield hunted up Joe and assured him that every drop of
+fuel in every pushpot&#8217;s tanks had been tested twice&mdash;once in the storage
+tanks, and again in the pushpots. Joe thanked him very politely.</p>
+
+<p>There was no longer any scaffolding. There were no trucks left except
+two gigantic cranes, which could handle the pushpots like so many toys.
+And the effect of sunlight pouring into the Shed seemed strange indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, there were carpenters hammering professionally upon a hasty
+grandstand of timber. Most of the carpenters would have been handier
+with rivet guns or welding torches, but it would have been indiscreet to
+comment. As fast as a final timber was spiked in place, somebody hastily
+wound it with very tawdry bunting. Men were stringing wires to the
+grandstand, and other men were setting up television and movie cameras.
+Two Security men grimly stood by each camera amid a glittering
+miscellany of microphones.</p>
+
+<p>Joe was lucky. Or perhaps Sally pulled wires. Anyhow, the two of them
+had a vantage point for which many other people would have paid
+astonishing sums. They waited where the circular ramp between the two
+skins of the Shed was broken by the removal of the doorway. They were
+halfway up the curve of the Shed&#8217;s roof, at the edge of the great
+opening, and they could see everything, from the pushpot pilots as they
+were checked into their contraptions, to the sedate arrival of the big
+brass at the grandstand below.</p>
+
+<p>There was a reverberant humming from the Shed now. It might have been
+the humming of wind blowing across its open section. Joe and Sally saw a
+grim knot of Security men <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg&nbsp;160]</a></span>escorting four crew members to a flight of
+wooden steps that led up to a lower air-lock door&mdash;Joe had reason to
+remember that door&mdash;and watched them enter and close the air lock behind
+them. Then the security men pulled away the wooden stairs and hauled
+them completely away. There were a very few highly trusted men making
+final inspections of the Platform&#8217;s exterior. One of them was nearly on
+a level with Joe and Sally. Other men were already lowering themselves
+down on ropes that they later jerked free, but this last man on top did
+a very human thing. When he&#8217;d finished his check-up to the last least
+detail, he pulled something out of his hip pocket. It was a tobacco can
+full of black paint. There was a brush with it. He painted his name on
+the silvery plates of the Platform, &#8220;C. J. Adams, Jr.,&#8221; and satisfiedly
+began his descent to the ground. His name would go up with the Platform
+and be visible for uncounted generations&mdash;if all went well. He reached
+the ground and walked away, contented.</p>
+
+<p>The cranes began their task. Each one reached down deliberately and
+picked up a pushpot. They swung the pushpots to vertical positions and
+presented them precisely to the Platform&#8217;s side. They clung there
+ridiculously. Magnetic grapples, of course. Joe and Sally, at the end of
+the corridor in the wall, could see the heads of the pushpot pilots in
+their plastic domes.</p>
+
+<p>Music blared from behind the grandstand. The seats were being filled.
+But naturally, the least important personages were arriving first. There
+were women in costumes to which they had given infinite thought&mdash;and
+nobody looked at them except other women. There was khaki. There were
+gray business suits&mdash;slide-rule men, these, who had done the brain-work
+behind the Platform&#8217;s design. Then black broadcloth. Politicians, past
+question. There is nothing less impressive from a height of two hundred
+feet than a pot-bellied man in black broadcloth walking on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>There were men in uniforms which were not of the United States armed
+forces. They ran heavily to medals, which glittered. There were more
+arrivals, and more, and more. The newsreel and TV cameras nosed around.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg&nbsp;161]</a></span></p><p>The cranes worked methodically. They dipped, and deftly picked up a
+thing shaped like the top half of a loaf of bread. They swung that metal
+thing to the Platform&#8217;s side. Each time it clung fast, like a snail or
+slug to the surface on which it crawls. Many pushpots clung even to the
+rocket tubes&mdash;the same tubes that would presently burn away and vanish.
+So Joe and Sally saw the pushpots in a new aspect: blunt metal slugs
+with gaping mouths which were their air scoops.</p>
+
+<p>The tinny music from below cut off. Somebody began an oration. The men
+who had built the Platform were not interested in fine phrases, but this
+event was broadcast everywhere, and some people might possibly tune to
+the channels that carried the speakers and their orations rather than
+the channels that showed the huge, bleak, obscured shape of the monster
+that was headed either for empty space or pure disaster.</p>
+
+<p>The speaker stopped, and another took his place. Then another. One man
+spoke for less than a minute, and the stands went wild! But the one who
+followed made splendid gestures. He talked and talked and talked. The
+cranes cleaned up the last of the waiting pushpots, and the Platform
+itself was practically invisible.</p>
+
+<p>The cranes backed off and went away, clanking. The orator raised his
+voice. It made small echoes in the vast cavern that was the Shed.
+Somebody plucked the speaker&#8217;s arm. He ended abruptly and sat down,
+wiping his forehead with a huge blue handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>There was a roar. A pushpot had started its motor. Another roar.
+Another. One by one, the multitude of clustering objects added to the
+din. In the open a single jet was appalling. Here, the noise became a
+sound which was no longer a sound. It became a tumult which by pure
+volume ceased to be anything one&#8217;s ears could understand. It reached a
+peak and held there. Then, abruptly, all the motors slackened in unison,
+and then roared more loudly. The group controls within the Platform were
+being tested. Three&mdash;four&mdash;five times the tumult faded to the merely
+unbearable and went up to full volume again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg&nbsp;162]</a></span></p><p>Joe felt Sally plucking at his arm. He turned, and saw a jet plane&#8217;s
+underbelly, very close, and its swept-back wings. It was climbing
+straight up. Then he saw another jet plane streaking for the great
+dome&#8217;s open door. It moved with incredible velocity. It jerked upward
+and climbed over the Shed&#8217;s curve and was gone. But there were others
+and others and others.</p>
+
+<p>These were the fighter ships of the jet-plane guard. For months on end
+they had flown above the Shed, protecting it. Now they were going aloft
+to relieve the present watchers. They were rising to spread out as an
+interceptor screen for hundreds of miles in every direction, in case
+somebody should be so foolish as to try again the exploit of the night
+before. They would not see the monster in the Shed again. So in a single
+line which reached to the horizon, they made this roaring run for the
+one last glimpse which was their right. Joe saw tiny specks come
+streaking down out of the sky to queue up for this privileged view of
+the Platform before it rose.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly they were gone, and Joe felt that tingling sense of pride which
+never comes from the sensation of sharing in mere power or splendor or
+pompous might, but is so certain when the human touch modifies
+magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>And then the roaring of the pushpot engines achieved an utterly
+impossible volume. The whole interior of the Shed was misty now, but
+shining in the morning light.</p>
+
+<p>And the Platform moved.</p>
+
+<p>At first it was a mere stirring. It turned ever so slightly to one side,
+pivoting on the ways that had supported it during building. It turned
+back and to the other side. The vapor thickened. From each jet motor a
+blast of blue-white flame poured down, and the moisture in the earth was
+turning into steam and stray wood-blocks into acrid smoke. The Platform
+turned precisely and exactly back to its original position, and Joe&#8217;s
+heart pounded in his throat, because he knew that the turning had been
+done with the gyros, and they had been handled by the pilot gyros for
+which he was responsible.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Platform moved again. It lifted by inches and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg&nbsp;163]</a></span>swayed forward.
+It checked, and lurched again, and went staggering toward the great
+opening before it. A part of its base gouged a deep furrow in the
+earthen floor.</p>
+
+<p>The noise increased from the incredible to the inconceivable. It seemed
+as if all the thunders since time began had returned to bellow because
+the Platform moved.</p>
+
+<p>And it floated and bumped out of the Shed. It staggered toward the east.
+Its keel was perhaps, at this point, as much as three feet above the
+ground, but the jet motors cast up blinding clouds of dust and smoke and
+even those afoot could not be sure.</p>
+
+<p>There was confusion. The smoke and vapor splashed out in every possible
+direction. Joe saw frantic movement, and he realized that the uniforms
+and the frock coats were scrambling to escape the fumes. The
+khaki-tinted specks which were men seemed to run. The frock coats ran.
+The carefully-thought-out brighter specks which were women ran gasping
+and choking from the smoke. One stout figure toppled, scrambled up, and
+scuttled frantically for safety.</p>
+
+<p>But the Platform was in motion now. It was a hundred yards beyond the
+Shed wall. Two hundred. Three.... It slowly gathered speed. A half-mile
+from the Shed it was definitely clear of the ground. It left a trail of
+scorched, burnt desert behind....</p>
+
+<p>It moved almost swiftly, now. Two miles from the Shed it was fifteen
+feet above the earth. Three miles, and a clear strip of sunlight showed
+beneath it. And it was still accelerating. At four miles and five and
+six....</p>
+
+<p>It was aloft, climbing with seemingly infinite slowness, with all the
+hundreds of straining, thrusting, clumsy pushpots clinging to it and
+pushing it ever ahead and upward.</p>
+
+<p>It went smoothly toward the east. It continued to gain speed. It did not
+seem to dip toward the horizon at all. It went on and on, dwindling from
+a giant to a spot and then to a little dark speck in the sky that still
+went on and on until even Joe could not pretend to himself that he still
+saw it. Even then there was probably a tiny droning noise in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg&nbsp;164]</a></span>air,
+but nobody who had watched the take-off could possibly hear it.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joe looked at Sally and she at him. And Joe was grinning like an
+ape with excitement and relief and triumph which was at once his own and
+that of all his dreams. Sally&#8217;s eyes were shining and exultant. She
+hugged him in purest exuberance, crying that the Space Platform was up,
+was up, was up....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At sundown they were waiting on the porch of the Major&#8217;s quarters behind
+the Shed. The Major was there, and Haney and the Chief and Mike and Joe.
+The Major&#8217;s whole look had changed. He seemed to have shrunk, and he
+looked more tired than any man should ever be allowed to get. But his
+job was done, and the reaction was enough to explain everything. He sat
+in an easy chair with a glass beside him, and he looked as if nothing on
+earth could make him move a finger. But nevertheless he was waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Sally came out with a tray. She gravely passed around the glasses and
+the cakes that went with them. Then she sat down on the porch steps
+beside Joe. She looked at him and nodded in friendly fashion. And Joe
+was inordinately approving of Sally, but he felt awkward at showing it
+too plainly in her father&#8217;s presence.</p>
+
+<p>Mike said defiantly: &#8220;But still it woulda been easier to get it up there
+if it&#8217;d been built for guys like me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Nobody contradicted him. He was right. Anyhow every one of them felt too
+much relaxed and relieved to enter into argument.</p>
+
+<p>Haney said dreamily: &#8220;Everything broke right. Everything! They got in a
+jet stream like they expected, and it gave &#8217;em three hundred miles extra
+east-speed. They were eight miles up when the pushpots fired their
+jatos, an&#8217; twelve miles up when the pushpots let go&mdash;they musta near
+broke their pilots&#8217; necks when they caught their motors again! And the
+Platform&#8217;s rockets fired just right, makin&#8217; flames a mile long, an&#8217; they
+were goin&#8217; then&mdash;what were they makin&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who cares?&#8221; asked the Chief peacefully. &#8220;Plenty!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg&nbsp;165]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Six hundred from the pushpots,&#8221; murmured Haney, frowning, &#8220;an&#8217; three
+hundred from the jet stream, and then there was the jatos that all let
+go at once, an&#8217; then there was eight hundred from the earth
+rotatin&#8217;&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They had ten per cent of their rockets unfired when they got into their
+orbit,&#8221; said Mike authoritatively. &#8220;They were two thousand miles up when
+they passed over India and now they&#8217;re four thousand miles up and the
+orbit&#8217;s stable. This is their third round, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will be,&#8221; said the Chief.</p>
+
+<p>Joe and Sally sat watching the west. The Space Platform went around the
+Earth from west to east, like Earth&#8217;s natural moon, but because of its
+speed it would rise in the west and set in the east six times in every
+twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>Major Holt spoke suddenly. The austerity had gone out of his manner with
+his energy. He said quietly: &#8220;You four&mdash;you gave me the worst scare I&#8217;ve
+ever had in my life. But do you realize that that sabotage attempt with
+the two truck-loads of explosive&mdash;do you realize that they&#8217;d have gotten
+the Platform if it hadn&#8217;t been for that crazy trick you four planned,
+and the precautions we took because of it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe said depreciatingly: &#8220;It was just luck that they happened to pick
+the same time, and that Haney was up there with those machine-gunners at
+the right moment. It was good luck, but it was luck.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Major said effortfully: &#8220;There are people called accident prones.
+Accidents happen all around them, and nobody knows why. You
+four&mdash;perhaps Joe especially&mdash;are not accident prones. You seem to be
+something antithetic to accidents. I would hesitate to credit your
+usefulness to your brains. Especially Joe&#8217;s brains. I have known him too
+long. But&mdash;ah&mdash;Washington does not look at it in exactly the same way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sally touched Joe warningly. But her face was very bright and proud. Joe
+felt queer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Joe,&#8221; said the Major tiredly, &#8220;was an alternate for membership in the
+Platform&#8217;s crew. But for penicillin, or something of the sort that made
+a sick man get well quickly, Joe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg&nbsp;166]</a></span>would be up there in the Platform&#8217;s
+orbit now. His&mdash;ah&mdash;record in the instruction he did take was
+satisfactory. And&mdash;ah&mdash;all four of you were very useful in the last
+stages of the building of the Platform. Again Joe especially.
+His&mdash;ah&mdash;co-operation with higher authorities has produced&mdash;ah&mdash;very
+favorable comments. So it is felt that he should have some recognition.
+All of you, of course, but Joe especially. So&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joe felt himself going white.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Joe,&#8221; said the Major, &#8220;is to be offered an appointment as skipper of a
+ferry rocket, carrying supplies and crew reliefs to the Platform. His
+rocket will carry a crew of four, including himself.
+His&mdash;ah&mdash;recommendations for membership in his crew will have
+considerable weight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a buzzing in Joe&#8217;s ears. He wanted to cry and to dance, and
+especially right then he would have liked very much to kiss Sally. It
+would have been the only really appropriate way to express his emotions.</p>
+
+<p>Mike said in a fierce, strained voice: &#8220;Joe! I can do anything a big
+elephant of a guy can do, and I only use a quarter of the grub and air!
+You&#8217;ve got to take me, Joe! You&#8217;ve got to!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief said benignly: &#8220;H&#8217;m.... I&#8217;m gonna be in charge of the engine
+room, an&#8217; Haney&#8217;ll be bos&#8217;n&mdash;let Joe try to take off without us!&mdash;an&#8217;
+that don&#8217;t leave you a rating, Mike, unless you&#8217;re willin&#8217; to be just
+plain crew!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Slowly Sally turned her face away from Joe and looked up.</p>
+
+<p>Then they all saw it. A telescope, maybe, would have shown it as the
+thing they&#8217;d worked on and fought for. But it didn&#8217;t look like that to
+the naked eye. It was just a tiny speck of incandescence gliding with
+grave deliberation across the sky. It was a sliver of sunlight, moving
+as they watched.</p>
+
+<p>There were a good many millions of people watching it, just then, as it
+floated aloft in emptiness. To some it meant peace and hope and
+confidence of a serene old age and a life worth living for their
+children and their children&#8217;s children. To some it was a fascinating
+technical achievement. To a few it meant that if wars had ended, and
+turmoil was no longer the norm of life on earth, this thing would be
+their destruction. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg&nbsp;167]</a></span>But it meant something to everybody in the world. To
+the people who had been unable to do anything to help it except to pray
+for it, perhaps it meant most of all.</p>
+
+<p>Joe said quietly: &#8220;We&#8217;ll be going up there to visit it. All of us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He realized that Sally&#8217;s hand was tightly clasped in his. She said: &#8220;Me
+too, Joe?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Some day,&#8221; said Joe, &#8220;you too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stood up to watch more closely. Sally stood beside him. The others
+came to look. They made a group on the lawn, as people were grouped
+everywhere in all the world to gaze up at it.</p>
+
+<p>The Space Platform, a tiny sliver of sunshine, an infinitesimal speck of
+golden light, moved sedately across the deepening blue toward the east.
+Toward the night.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div  class="box">
+<div class="center"><img src="images/pocket_cardinal.png" width="330" height="77" alt="These symbols guarantee the best in reading." title="These symbols guarantee the best in reading." /></div>
+
+<p>POCKET BOOKS, INC. is the largest publisher of books in the world today
+in terms of the number of copies it has sold and is currently selling.
+Over 400,000,000 copies have carried the symbol of &#8220;Gertrude,&#8221; the
+little kangaroo which is the colophon of <span class="smcap">Pocket Books, Inc.</span> This
+firm also publishes <span class="smcap">Cardinal Editions</span>, a newer series of books of
+exceptional merit and value, priced at 35&cent; and 50&cent;.</p>
+
+<p>Only genuine <span class="smcap">Pocket Book</span> and <span class="smcap">Cardinal</span> editions carry
+these symbols. The titles are carefully chosen from the lists of all
+leading publishers and present the most distinguished and most widely
+diversified group offered today by any publisher of paper-bound books.
+Watch for these symbols. They are your guarantee of the best in
+reading at the lowest possible price.</p></div>
+
+
+<h2>TOP SECRET</h2>
+
+<p><small>In the little desert town of Bootstrap stands a huge metal shed. In the
+shed men are building an object that can change the history of mankind.
+It is a Space Platform. Propelled to an orbit 4000 miles from Earth this
+platform will serve as the starting place for man&#8217;s exploration of
+mysterious outer space.</small></p>
+
+<p><small><span class="smcap">Space Platform</span> tells the exciting story of a young man helping to
+build this first station. With scientific accuracy and imagination Murray
+Leinster, one of the world&#8217;s top science-fiction writers, describes the
+building and launching of the platform. Here is a fast-paced story of
+sabotage and murder directed against a project more secret and valuable
+than the atom bomb!</small></p>
+
+<p><small>Cover illustration by Earle Bergey</small></p>
+
+<p><small>THIS IS A GENUINE<br />
+POCKET BOOK<br />
+ROCKEFELLER CENTER NEW YORK 20, N. Y.<br />
+25&cent;</small></p>
+
+<p><small>PRINTED IN U. S. A.</small></p>
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h3>Transcriber&#8217;s Note</h3>
+
+<p>A hyperlinked table of contents was added before chapter 1.</p>
+
+<p>In the following compound words, the hyphen was removed to conform to majority use in text:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr><td align='left'>exhaust-blast</td><td align='left'>exhaust blast</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>jet-motors</td><td align='left'>jet motors</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>jet-planes</td><td align='left'>jet planes</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>pilot-gyros</td><td align='left'>pilot gyros</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>space-travel</td><td align='left'>space travel</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>wing-flaps</td><td align='left'>wing flaps</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>The following compounds, with and without a hyphen, were left as found because of equal prevalence of both forms:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr><td align='left'>blood-stained</td><td align='left'>bloodstained</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>wood-blocks</td><td align='left'>wood blocks</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>One compound was split since joined it suggested an inapposite meaning:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr><td align='left'>cherrystone</td><td align='left'>cherry stone</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>A host of compounds were left both hyphenated and separate depending on their part of speech, for example:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr><td align='left'>science-fiction</td><td align='left'>science fiction</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(adjective)</td><td align='left'>(noun)</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>One typo was corrected:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr><td align='left'>spendid</td><td align='left'>splendid</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Space Platform, by Murray Leinster
+
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Space Platform, by Murray Leinster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Space Platform
+
+Author: Murray Leinster
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2008 [EBook #25051]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPACE PLATFORM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Louise Blyton and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                    Transcriber's Note
+
+Despite extensive research, no evidence was found that U.S. copyright
+                 on this book was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+_Space Platform_
+
+
+_Murray Leinster_
+
+
+
+
+_POCKET BOOKS, INC. NEW YORK, N. Y._
+
+
+
+_Reaching for the Stars...._
+
+
+_Ever_ since ancient man first gazed in wonder at the stars, humanity
+has dreamed of traveling to outer space. Now scientists agree that
+space-flight may very soon become a reality.
+
+_Space Platform_ tells of man's first step into outer space ... of the
+difficulties and dangers of reaching for the stars. It is also an
+exciting adventure. When young Joe Kenmore came to Bootstrap to install
+pilot gyros in the Platform he hadn't bargained for sabotage or murder
+or love. But Joe learned that ruthless agents were determined to wreck
+the project. He found that the beautiful girl he loved, and men like The
+Chief, a rugged Indian steelworker, and Mike, a midget who made up for
+his size by brains, would have to fight with their bare hands to make
+man's age old dream of space travel come true!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_This science-fiction novel was originally published by Shasta
+Publishers._
+
+
+_Of other books by Murray Leinster, the following are science-fiction:_
+
+SIDEWISE IN TIME
+
+MURDER MADNESS
+
+THE LAST SPACE SHIP
+
+THE LAWS OF CHANCE (Anthology)
+
+GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION (editor)
+
+
+This Pocket Book includes every word contained in the original,
+higher-priced edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made from
+completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SPACE PLATFORM
+
+Shasta edition published February, 1953
+
+Pocket Book edition published March, 1953
+
+1st printing                 January, 1953
+
+All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be
+reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher,
+except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
+For information, address: SHASTA PUBLISHERS, 5525 South Blackstone
+Avenue, Chicago, 37, Illinois.
+
+_Copyright, 1953, by Will F. Jenkins. This POCKET BOOK edition is
+published by arrangement with Shasta Publishers. Printed in the U.S.A._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Pocket Book]
+
+_Notice_: POCKET BOOK editions are published in the United States by
+Pocket Books, Inc., in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada, Ltd., and in
+England by News of the World, Registered User of the Trade Marks. Trade
+Marks registered in the United States and British Patent Offices by
+Pocket Books, Inc., and registered in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada,
+Ltd.
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
+
+
+This acknowledgment is necessary if I am to say thanks to some experts
+to whom I am indebted. There is Captain Charles Benjamin, who read over
+the aviation parts of this book with pursed lips and a belligerent
+attitude toward questionable statements of fact or observation. There is
+Dr. John Drury Clark, whose authoritative knowledge of rocket fuels was
+the basis for admitted but not extravagant extrapolation on my part.
+There is the crew of a four-engined transport ship, who argued over my
+manuscript and settled the argument by a zestful, full-scale
+crash-landing drill--repeat, "drill"--expressly to make sure I had
+described all the procedure just right. There is Willy Ley, whom I would
+like to exempt from responsibility for any statement in the book, while
+I acknowledge the value of personal talks with him and the pleasure
+anybody who has ever read his books will recognize. And there is Dr.
+Hugh S. Rice of the Hayden Planetarium, who will probably be surprised
+to find that I feel I owe him gratitude. They are in great part
+responsible for the factual matter in this book.
+
+I think I may add, though, that I worked on it too.
+
+
+                                        MURRAY LEINSTER
+"Ardudwy"
+Gloucester, Va.
+
+
+
+
+_Space Platform_
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+There wasn't anything underneath but clouds, and there wasn't anything
+overhead but sky. Joe Kenmore looked out the plane window past the
+co-pilot's shoulder. He stared ahead to where the sky and cloud bank
+joined--it was many miles away--and tried to picture the job before him.
+Back in the cargo space of the plane there were four big crates. They
+contained the pilot gyros for the most important object then being built
+on Earth, and it wouldn't work properly without them. It was Joe's job
+to take that highly specialized, magnificently precise machinery to its
+destination, help to install it, and see to its checking after it was
+installed.
+
+He felt uneasy. Of course the pilot and co-pilot--the only two other
+people on the transport plane--knew their stuff. Every imaginable
+precaution would be taken to make sure that a critically essential
+device like the pilot gyro assembly would get safely where it belonged.
+It would be--it was being--treated as if it were a crate of eggs instead
+of massive metal, smoothed and polished and lapped to a precision
+practically unheard of. But just the same Joe was worried. He'd seen the
+pilot gyro assembly made. He'd helped on it. He knew how many times a
+thousandth of an inch had been split in machining its bearings, and the
+breath-weight balance of its moving parts. He'd have liked to be back in
+the cargo compartment with it, but only the pilot's cabin was
+pressurized, and the ship was at eighteen thousand feet, flying west by
+south.
+
+He tried to get his mind off that impulse by remembering that at
+eighteen thousand feet a good half of the air on Earth was underneath
+him, and by hoping that the other half would be as easy to rise above
+when the gyros were finally in place and starting out for space. The
+gyros, of course, were now on their way to be installed in the
+artificial satellite to be blasted up and set in an orbit around the
+Earth as the initial stage of that figurative stepladder by which men
+would make their first attempt to reach the stars. Until that Space
+Platform left the ground, the gyros were Joe's responsibility.
+
+The plane's co-pilot leaned back in his chair and stretched luxuriously.
+He loosened his safety belt and got up. He stepped carefully past the
+column between the right- and left-hand pilot seats. That column
+contained a fraction of the innumerable dials and controls the pilots of
+a modern multi-engine plane have to watch and handle. The co-pilot went
+to the coffeepot and flipped a switch. Joe fidgeted again on his
+improvised seat. Again he wished that he could be riding in back with
+the crates. But it would be silly to insist on perching somewhere in the
+freight compartment.
+
+There was a steady roaring in the cabin--the motors. One's ears got
+accustomed to it, and by now the noise sounded as if it were heard
+through cushions. Presently the coffeepot bubbled, unheard. The co-pilot
+lighted a cigarette. Then he drew a paper cup of coffee and handed it to
+the pilot. The pilot seemed negligently to contemplate some dozens of
+dials, all of which were duly duplicated on the right-hand, co-pilot's
+side. The co-pilot glanced at Joe.
+
+"Coffee?"
+
+"Thanks," said Joe. He took the paper cup.
+
+The co-pilot said: "Everything okay with you?"
+
+"I'm all right," said Joe. He realized that the co-pilot felt talkative.
+He explained: "Those crates I'm traveling with----. The family firm's
+been working on that machinery for months. It was finished with the
+final grinding done practically with feather dusters. I can't help
+worrying about it. There was four months' work in just lapping the
+shafts and balancing rotors. We made a telescope mounting once, for an
+observatory in South Africa, but compared to this gadget we worked on
+that one blindfolded!"
+
+"Pilot gyros, eh?" said the co-pilot. "That's what the waybill said. But
+if they were all right when they left the plant, they'll be all right
+when they are delivered."
+
+Joe said ruefully: "Still I'd feel better riding back there with them."
+
+"Sabotage bad at the plant?" asked the co-pilot. "Tough!"
+
+"Sabotage? No. Why should there be sabotage?" demanded Joe.
+
+The co-pilot said mildly: "Not quite everybody is anxious to see the
+Space Platform take off. Not everybody! What on earth do you think is
+the biggest problem out where they're building it?"
+
+"I wouldn't know," admitted Joe. "Keeping the weight down? But there is
+a new rocket fuel that's supposed to be all right for sending the
+Platform up. Wasn't that the worst problem? Getting a rocket fuel with
+enough power per pound?"
+
+The co-pilot sipped his coffee and made a face. It was too hot.
+
+"Fella," he said drily, "that stuff was easy! The slide-rule boys did
+that. The big job in making a new moon for the Earth is keeping it from
+being blown up before it can get out to space! There are a few gentlemen
+who thrive on power politics. They know that once the Platform's
+floating serenely around the Earth, with a nice stock of atom-headed
+guided missiles on board, power politics is finished. So they're doing
+what they can to keep the world as it's always been--equipped with just
+one moon and many armies. And they're doing plenty, if you ask me!"
+
+"I've heard----" began Joe.
+
+"You haven't heard the half of it," said the co-pilot. "The Air
+Transport has lost nearly as many planes and more men on this particular
+airlift than it did in Korea while that was the big job. I don't know
+how many other men have been killed. But there's a strictly local hot
+war going on out where we're headed. No holds barred! Hadn't you heard?"
+
+It sounded exaggerated. Joe said politely: "I heard there was
+cloak-and-dagger stuff going on."
+
+The pilot drained his cup and handed it to the co-pilot. He said: "He
+thinks you're kidding him." He turned back to the contemplation of the
+instruments before him and the view out the transparent plastic of the
+cabin windows.
+
+"He does?" The co-pilot said to Joe, "You've got security checks around
+your plant. They weren't put there for fun. It's a hundred times worse
+where the whole Platform's being built."
+
+"Security?" said Joe. He shrugged. "We know everybody who works at the
+plant. We've known them all their lives. They'd get mad if we started to
+get stuffy. We don't bother."
+
+"That I'd like to see," said the co-pilot skeptically. "No barbed wire
+around the plant? No identity badges you wear when you go in? No
+security officer screaming blue murder every five minutes? What do you
+think all that's for? You built these pilot gyros! You had to have that
+security stuff!"
+
+"But we didn't," insisted Joe. "Not any of it. The plant's been in the
+same village for eighty years. It started building wagons and plows, and
+now it turns out machine tools and precision machinery. It's the only
+factory around, and everybody who works there went to school with
+everybody else, and so did our fathers, and we know one another!"
+
+The co-pilot was unconvinced. "No kidding?"
+
+"No kidding," Joe assured him. "In World War Two the only spy scare in
+the village was an FBI man who came around looking for spies. The
+village cop locked him up and wouldn't believe in his credentials. They
+had to send somebody from Washington to get him out of jail."
+
+The co-pilot grinned reluctantly. "I guess there are such places," he
+said enviously. "You should've built the Platform! It's plenty different
+on this job! We can't even talk to a girl without security clearance for
+an interview beforehand, and we can't speak to strange men or go out
+alone after dark--."
+
+The pilot grunted. The co-pilot's tone changed. "Not quite that bad," he
+admitted, "but it's bad! It's really bad! We lost three planes last
+week. I guess you'd call it in action against saboteurs. One flew to
+pieces in mid-air. Sabotage. Carrying critical stuff. One crashed on
+take-off, carrying irreplaceable instruments. Somebody'd put a detonator
+in a servo-motor. And one froze in its landing glide and flew smack-dab
+into its landing field. They had to scrape it up. When this ship got a
+major overhaul two weeks ago, we flew it with our fingers crossed for
+four trips running. Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works.
+But I won't look forward to a serene old age until the Platform's out of
+atmosphere! Not me!"
+
+He went to put the pilot's empty cup in the disposal slot.
+
+The plane went on. There wasn't anything underneath but clouds, and
+there wasn't anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down,
+and the sky was simply up. Joe looked down and saw a faint spot of
+racing brightness with a hint of colors around it. It was the sort of
+nimbus that substitutes for a shadow when a plane is high enough above
+the clouds. It raced madly over the irregular upper surface of the cloud
+layer. The plane flew and flew. Nothing happened at all. This was two
+hours from the field from which it had taken off with the pilot gyro
+cases as its last item of collected cargo. Joe remembered how grimly the
+two crew members had prevented anybody from even approaching it on the
+ground, except those who actually loaded the cases, and how one of the
+two had watched them every second.
+
+Joe fidgeted. He didn't quite know how to take the co-pilot's talk. The
+Kenmore Precision Tool plant was owned by his family, but it wasn't so
+much a family as a civic enterprise. The young men of the village grew
+up to regard fanatically fine workmanship with the casual
+matter-of-factness elsewhere reserved for plowing or deep-sea fishing.
+Joe's father owned it, and some day Joe might head it, but he couldn't
+hope to keep the respect of the men in the plant unless he could handle
+every tool on the place and split a thousandth at least five ways. Ten
+would be better! But as long as the feeling at the plant stayed as it
+was now, there'd never be a security problem there.
+
+If the co-pilot was telling the truth, though--.
+
+Joe found a slow burn beginning inside him. He had a picture in his mind
+that was practically a dream. It was of something big and bright and
+ungainly swimming silently in emptiness with a field of stars behind it.
+The stars were tiny pin points of light. They were unwinking and
+distinct because there was no air where this thing floated. The
+blackness between them was absolute because this was space itself. The
+thing that floated was a moon. A man-made moon. It was an artificial
+satellite of Earth. Men were now building it. Presently it would float
+as Joe dreamed of it, and where the sun struck it, it would be
+unbearably bright, and where there were shadows, they would be abysmally
+black--except, perhaps, when earthshine from the planet below would
+outline it in a ghostly fashion.
+
+There would be men in the thing that floated in space. It swam in a
+splendid orbit about the world that had built it. Sometimes there were
+small ships that--so Joe imagined--would fight their way up to it,
+panting great plumes of rocket smoke, and bringing food and fuel to its
+crew. And presently one of those panting small ships would refill its
+fuel tanks to the bursting point from the fuel other ships had
+brought--and yet the ship would have no weight. So it would drift away
+from the greater floating thing in space, and suddenly its rockets would
+spout flame and fumes, and it would head triumphantly out and away from
+Earth. And it would be the first vessel ever to strike out for the
+stars!
+
+That was the picture Joe had of the Space Platform and its meaning.
+Maybe it was romantic, but men were working right now to make that
+romance come true. This transport plane was flying to a small town
+improbably called Bootstrap, carrying one of the most essential devices
+for the Platform's equipment. In the desert near Bootstrap there was a
+gigantic construction shed. Inside that shed men were building exactly
+the monstrous object that Joe pictured to himself. They were trying to
+realize a dream men have dreamed for decades--the necessary space
+platform that would be the dock, the wharf, the starting point from
+which the first of human space explorers could start for infinity. The
+idea that anybody could want to halt such an undertaking made Joe
+Kenmore burn.
+
+The co-pilot painstakingly crushed out his cigarette. The ship flew with
+more steadiness than a railroad car rolls on rails. There was the oddly
+cushioned sound of the motors. It was all very matter-of-fact.
+
+But Joe said angrily: "Look! Is any of what you said--well--kidding?"
+
+"I wish it were, fella," said the co-pilot. "I can talk to you about it,
+but most of it's hushed up. I tell you----"
+
+"Why can you talk to me?" demanded Joe suspiciously. "What makes it all
+right for you to talk to me?"
+
+"You've got passage on this ship. That means something!"
+
+"Does it?" asked Joe.
+
+The pilot turned in his seat to glance at Joe.
+
+"Do you think we carry passengers regularly?" he asked mildly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Pilot and co-pilot looked at each other.
+
+"Tell him," said the pilot.
+
+"About five months ago," said the co-pilot, "there was an Army colonel
+wangled a ride to Bootstrap on a cargo plane. The plane took off. It
+flew all right until twenty miles from Bootstrap. Then it stopped
+checking. It dove straight for the Shed the Platform's being built in.
+It was shot down. When it hit, there was an explosion." The co-pilot
+shrugged. "You won't believe me, maybe. But a week later they found the
+colonel's body back east. Somebody'd murdered him."
+
+Joe blinked.
+
+"It wasn't the colonel who rode as a passenger," said the co-pilot. "It
+was somebody else. Twenty miles from Bootstrap he'd shot the pilots and
+taken the controls. That's what they figure, anyhow. He meant to dive
+into the construction Shed. Because--very, very cleverly--they'd managed
+to get a bomb in the plane disguised as cargo. They got the men who'd
+done that, later, but it was rather late."
+
+Joe said dubiously: "But would one bomb destroy the Shed and the
+Platform?"
+
+"This one would," said the co-pilot. "It was an atom bomb. But it wasn't
+a good one. It didn't detonate properly. It was a fizz-off."
+
+Joe saw the implications. Cranks and crackpots couldn't get hold of the
+materials for atom bombs. It took the resources of a large nation for
+that. But a nation that didn't quite dare start an open war might try to
+sneak in one atom bomb to destroy the space station. Once the Platform
+was launched no other nation could dream of world domination. The United
+States wouldn't go to war if the Platform was destroyed. But there could
+be a strictly local hot war.
+
+The pilot said sharply: "Something down below!"
+
+The co-pilot fairly leaped into his right-hand seat, his safety belt
+buckled in half a heartbeat.
+
+"Check," he said in a new tone. "Where?"
+
+The pilot pointed.
+
+"I saw something dark," he said briefly, "where there was a deep dent in
+the cloud."
+
+The co-pilot threw a switch. Within seconds a new sound entered the
+cabin. _Beep-beep-beep-beep._ They were thin squeaks, spaced a full
+half-second apart, that rose to inaudibility in pitch in the fraction of
+a second they lasted. The co-pilot snatched a hand phone from the wall
+above his head and held it to his lips.
+
+"Flight two-twenty calling," he said crisply. "Something's got a radar
+on us. We saw it. Get a fix on us and come a-running. We're at eighteen
+thousand and"--here the floor of the cabin tilted markedly--"now we're
+climbing. Get a fix on us and come a-running. Over!"
+
+He took the phone from his lips and said conversationally: "Radar's a
+giveaway. This is no fly-way. You wouldn't think he'd take that much of
+a chance, would you?"
+
+Joe clenched his hands. The pilot did things to the levers on the column
+between the two pilots' seats. He said curtly: "Arm the jatos."
+
+The co-pilot did something mysterious and said: "Check."
+
+All this took place in seconds. The pilot said, "I see something!" and
+instantly there was swift, tense teamwork in action. A call by radio,
+asking for help. The plane headed up for greater clearance between it
+and the clouds. The jatos made ready for firing. They were the
+jet-assisted take-off rockets which on a short or rough field would
+double the motors' thrust for a matter of seconds. In straightaway
+flight they should make the plane leap ahead like a scared rabbit. But
+they wouldn't last long.
+
+"I don't like this," said the co-pilot in a flat voice. "I don't see
+what he could do----"
+
+Then he stopped. Something zoomed out of a cloud. The action was
+completely improbable. The thing that appeared looked absolutely
+commonplace. It was a silver-winged private plane, the sort that cruises
+at one hundred and seventy-five knots and can hit nearly two-fifty if
+pushed. It was expensive, but not large. It came straight up out of the
+cloud layer and went lazily over on its back and dived down into the
+cloud layer again. It looked like somebody stunting for his own private
+lunatic pleasure--the kind of crazy thing some people do, and for which
+there is no possible explanation.
+
+But there was an explanation for this.
+
+At the very top of the loop, threads of white smoke appeared. They
+should have been unnoticeable against the cloud. But for the fraction of
+an instant they were silhouetted against the silver wings. And they were
+not misty wisps of vapor. They were dense, sharply defined rocket
+trails.
+
+They shot upward, spreading out. They unreeled with incredible,
+ever-increasing velocity.
+
+The pilot hit something with the heel of his hand. There was a
+heart-stopping delay. Then the transport leaped forward with a force to
+stop one's breath. The jatos were firing furiously, and the ship jumped.
+There was a bellowing that drowned out the sound of the engines. Joe was
+slammed back on the rear wall of the cabin. He struggled against the
+force that pushed him tailward. He heard the pilot saying calmly: "That
+plane shot rockets at us. If they're guided we're sunk."
+
+Then the threads of smoke became the thickness of cables, of columns!
+They should have ringed the transport plane in. But the jatos had jumped
+it crazily forward and were still thrusting fiercely to make it go
+faster than any prop-plane could. The acceleration made the muscles at
+the front of Joe's throat ache as he held his head upright against it.
+
+"They'll be proximity----"
+
+Then the plane bucked. Very probably, at that moment, it was stretched
+far past the limit of strain for which even its factor of safety was
+designed. One rocket had let go. The others went with it. The rockets
+had had proximity fuses. If they had ringed the transport ship and gone
+off with it enclosed, it would now be a tumbling mass of wreckage. But
+the jatos had thrown the plane out ahead of the target area. Suddenly
+they cut off, and it seemed as if the ship had braked. But the pilot
+dived steeply, for speed.
+
+The co-pilot was saying coldly into the microphone: "He shot rockets.
+Looked like Army issue three point fives with proximities. They missed.
+And we're mighty lonely!"
+
+The transport tore on, both pilots grimly watching the cloud bank below.
+They moved their bodies as they stared out the windows, so that by no
+possibility could any part of the plane mask something that they should
+see. As they searched, the co-pilot spoke evenly into the microphone at
+his lips: "He wouldn't carry more than four rockets, and he's dumping
+his racks and firing equipment now. But he might have a friend with him.
+Better get here quick if you want to catch him. He'll be the innocentest
+private pilot you ever saw in no time!"
+
+Then the pilot grunted. Something was streaking across the cloud
+formation far, far ahead. Three things. They were jet planes, and they
+seemed not so much to approach as to swell in size. They were coming at
+better than five hundred knots--ten miles a minute--and the transport
+was heading for them at its top speed of three hundred knots. The
+transport and the flight of jets neared each other at the rate of a mile
+in less than four seconds.
+
+The co-pilot said crisply: "Silver Messner with red wing-tips. The
+number began----" He gave the letter and first digits of the vanished
+plane's official designation, without which it could not take off from
+or be serviced at any flying field.
+
+Joe heard an insistent, swift _beep-beep-beep-beep_ which would be the
+radars of the approaching jets. He could not hear any answers that might
+reach the co-pilot as he talked to unseen persons who would relay his
+words to the jet fighters.
+
+One of them peeled off and sank into the cloud layer. The others came
+on. They set up in great circles about the transport, crossing before
+it, above it, around it, which gave the effect of flying around an
+object not in motion at all.
+
+The pilot flew on, frowning. The co-pilot said: "Yes. Sure! I'm
+listening!" There was a pause. Then he said: "Check. Thanks."
+
+He hung the instrument back where it belonged, above his head and behind
+him. He thoughtfully mopped his brow. He looked at Joe.
+
+"Maybe," he said mildly, "you believe me when I tell you there's a sort
+of hot war on, to keep the Platform from taking off."
+
+The pilot grunted. "Here's the third jet coming up."
+
+It was true. The jet that had dived into the clouds came up out of the
+cloud formation with somehow an air of impassive satisfaction.
+
+"Did they spot the guy?"
+
+"Yeah," said the co-pilot. "He must've picked up my report. He didn't
+dump his radar. He stayed in the cloud bank. When the jet came for
+him--spotting him with its night-fighter stuff--he tried to ram. Tried
+for a collision. So the jet gave him the works. Blew him apart. Couldn't
+make him land. Maybe they'll pick up something from the wreckage."
+
+Joe wet his lips.
+
+"I--saw what happened," he said. "He tried to smash us with rockets.
+Where'd he get them? How were they smuggled in?"
+
+The co-pilot shrugged. "Maybe smuggled in. Maybe stolen. They coulda
+been landed from a sub anywhere on a good many thousand miles of coast.
+They coulda been hauled anywhere in a station wagon. The plane was a
+private-type ship. Plenty of them flying around. It could've been bought
+easily enough. All they'd need would be a farm somewhere where it could
+land and they could strap on a rocket rack and put in a radar. And
+they'd need information. Probably be a good lead, this business. Only
+just so many people could know what was coming on this ship, and what
+course it was flying, and so on. Security will have to check back from
+that angle."
+
+A shadow fell upon the transport ship. A jet shot past from above it. It
+waggled its wings and changed course.
+
+"We've got to land and be checked for damage," said the co-pilot
+negligently. "These guys will circle us and lead the way--as if we
+needed it!"
+
+Joe subsided. He still had in his mind the glamorous and infinitely
+alluring picture of the Space Platform floating grandly in its orbit,
+with white-hot sunshine on it and a multitude of stars beyond. He had
+been completely absorbed in that aspect of the job that dealt with the
+method of construction and the technical details by which the Platform
+could be made to work.
+
+Now he had a side light on the sort of thing that has to be done when
+anything important is achieved. Figuring out how a thing can be done is
+only part of the job. Overcoming the obstacles to the apparently
+commonplace steps is nine-tenths of the difficulty. It had seemed to him
+that the most dramatic aspect of building the Space Platform had been
+the achievement of a design that would work in space, that could be
+gotten up into space, and that could be lived in under circumstances
+never before experienced. Now he saw that getting the materials to the
+spot where they were needed called for nearly as much brains and effort.
+Screening out spies and destructionists--that would be an even greater
+achievement!
+
+He began to feel a tremendous respect and solicitude for the people who
+were doing ordinary jobs in the building of the Platform. And he worried
+about his own share more than ever.
+
+Presently the transport ship sank toward the clouds. It sped through
+them, stone-blind from the mist. And then there was a small airfield
+below, and the pilot and co-pilot began a pattern of ritualistic
+conversation.
+
+"Pitot and wing heaters?" asked the pilot.
+
+The co-pilot put his hand successively on two controls.
+
+"Off."
+
+"Spark advance?"
+
+The co-pilot moved his hands.
+
+"Take-off and climb?" said the co-pilot.
+
+"Blowers?"
+
+"Low."
+
+"Fuel selectors?"
+
+The co-pilot moved his hands again to the appropriate controls,
+verifying that they were as he reported them.
+
+"Main on," he said matter-of-factly, "crossfeed off."
+
+The transport plane slanted down steeply for the landing field that had
+looked so small at first, but expanded remarkably as they drew near.
+
+Joe found himself frowning. He began to see how really big a job it was
+to get a Space Platform even ready to take off for a journey that in
+theory should last forever. It was daunting to think that before a space
+ship could be built and powered and equipped with machinery there had to
+be such wildly irrelevant plans worked out as a proper check of controls
+for the piston-engine ships that flew parts to the job. The details were
+innumerable!
+
+But the job was still worth doing. Joe was glad he was going to have a
+share in it.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+It was a merely misty day. The transport plane stood by the door of a
+hangar on this military field, and mechanics stood well back from it and
+looked it over. A man crawled over the tail assembly and found one small
+hole in the fabric of the stabilizer. A shell fragment had gone through
+when the war rockets exploded nearby. The pilot verified that the
+fragment had hit no strengthening member inside. He nodded. The mechanic
+made very neat fabric patches over the two holes, upper and lower. He
+began to go over the fuselage. The pilot turned away.
+
+"I'll go talk to Bootstrap," he told the co-pilot. "You keep an eye on
+things."
+
+"I'll keep two eyes on them," said the co-pilot.
+
+The pilot went toward the control tower of the field. Joe looked around.
+The transport ship seemed very large, standing on the concrete apron
+with its tricycle landing gear let down. It curiously resembled a
+misshapen insect, standing elaborately high on inadequate supporting
+legs. Its fuselage, in particular, did not look right for an aircraft.
+The top of the cargo section went smoothly back to the stabilizing fins,
+but the bottom did not taper. It ended astern in a clumsy-looking bulge
+that was closed by a pair of huge clamshell doors, opening straight
+astern. It was built that way, of course, so that large objects could be
+loaded direct into the cargo hold, but it was neither streamlined nor
+graceful.
+
+"Did anything get into the cargo hold?" asked Joe in sudden anxiety.
+"Did the cases I'm with get hit?"
+
+After all, four rockets had exploded deplorably near the ship. If one
+fragment had struck, others might have.
+
+"Nothing big, anyhow," the co-pilot told him. "We'll know presently."
+
+But examination showed no other sign of the ship's recent nearness to
+destruction. It had been overstressed, certainly, but ships are built to
+take beatings. A spot check on areas where excessive flexing of the
+wings would have shown up--a big ship's wings are not perfectly rigid:
+they'd come to pieces in the air if they were--presented no evidence of
+damage. The ship was ready to take off again.
+
+The co-pilot watched grimly until the one mechanic went back to the side
+lines. The mechanic was not cordial. He and all the others regarded the
+ship and Joe and the co-pilot with disfavor. They worked on jets, and to
+suggest that men who worked on fighter jets were not worthy of complete
+confidence did not set well with them. The co-pilot noticed it.
+
+"They think I'm a suspicious heel," he said sourly to Joe, "but I have
+to be. The best spies and saboteurs in the world have been hired to mess
+up the Platform. When better saboteurs are made, they'll be sent over
+here to get busy!"
+
+The pilot came back from the control tower.
+
+"Special flight orders," he told his companion. "We top off with fuel
+and get going."
+
+Mechanics got out the fuel hose, dragging it from the pit. One man
+climbed up on the wing. Other men handed up the hose. Joe was moved to
+comment, but the co-pilot was reading the new flight instructions. It
+was one of those moments of inconsistency to which anybody and everybody
+is liable. The two men of the ship's crew had it in mind to be
+infinitely suspicious of anybody examining their ship. But fueling it
+was so completely standard an operation that they merely stood by
+absently while it went on. They had the orders to read and memorize,
+anyhow.
+
+One wing tank was full. A big, grinning man with sandy hair dragged the
+hose under the nose of the plane to take it to the other wing tank.
+Close by the nose wheel he slipped and steadied himself by the shaft
+which reaches down to the wheel's hub. His position for a moment was
+absurdly ungraceful. When he straightened up, his arm slid into the
+wheel well. But he dragged the hose the rest of the way and passed it on
+up. Then that tank was full and capped. The refueling crew got down to
+the ground and fed the hose back to the pit which devoured it. That was
+all. But somehow Joe remembered the sandy-haired man and his arm going
+up inside the wheel well for a fraction of a second.
+
+The pilot read one part of the flight orders again and tore them
+carefully across. One part he touched his pocket lighter to. It burned.
+He nodded yet again to the co-pilot, and they swung up and in the
+pilots' doorway. Joe followed.
+
+They settled in their places in the cabin. The pilot threw a switch and
+pressed a knob. One motor turned over stiffly, and caught. The second.
+Third. Fourth. The pilot listened, was satisfied, and pulled back on the
+multiple throttle. The plane trundled away. Minutes later it faced the
+long runway, a tinny voice from the control tower spoke out of a
+loud-speaker under the instruments, and the plane roared down the field.
+In seconds it lifted and swept around in a great half-circle.
+
+"Okay," said the pilot. "Wheels up."
+
+The co-pilot obeyed. The telltale lights that showed the wheels
+retracted glowed briefly. The men relaxed.
+
+"You know," said the co-pilot, "there was the devil of a time during the
+War with sabotage. Down in Brazil there was a field planes used to take
+off from to fly to Africa. But they'd take off, head out to sea, get a
+few miles offshore, and then blow up. We must've lost a dozen planes
+that way! Then it broke. There was a guy--a sergeant--in the maintenance
+crew who was sticking a hand grenade up in the nose wheel wells. German,
+he was, and very tidy about it, and nobody suspected him. Everything
+looked okay and tested okay. But when the ship was well away and the
+crew pulled up the wheels, that tightened a string and it pulled the pin
+out of the grenade. It went off.... The master mechanic finally caught
+him and nearly killed him before the MPs could stop him. We've got to be
+plenty careful, whether the ground crews like it or not."
+
+Joe said drily: "You were, except when they were topping off. You took
+that for granted." He told about the sandy-haired man. "He hadn't time
+to stick anything in the wheel well, though," he added.
+
+The co-pilot blinked. Then he looked annoyed. "Confound it! I didn't
+watch! Did you?"
+
+The pilot shook his head, his lips compressed.
+
+The co-pilot said bitterly: "And I thought I was security-conscious!
+Thanks for telling me, fella. No harm done this time, but that was a
+slip!"
+
+He scowled at the dials before him. The plane flew on.
+
+This was the last leg of the trip, and now it should be no more than an
+hour and a half before they reached their destination. Joe felt a lift
+of elation. The Space Platform was a realization--or the beginning of
+it--of a dream that had been Joe's since he was a very small boy. It was
+also the dream of most other small boys at the time. The Space Platform
+would make space travel possible. Of course it wouldn't make journeys to
+the moon or planets itself, but it would sail splendidly about the Earth
+in an orbit some four thousand miles up, and it would gird the world in
+four hours fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. It would carry
+atom-headed guided missiles, and every city in the world would be
+defenseless against it. Nobody could even hope for world domination so
+long as it floated on its celestial round. Which, naturally, was why
+there were such desperate efforts to destroy it before its completion.
+
+But Joe, thinking about the Platform, did not think about it as a
+weapon. It was the first rung on the stepladder to the stars. From it
+the moon would be reached, certainly. Mars next, most likely. Then
+Venus. In time the moons of Saturn, and the twilight zone of Mercury,
+and some day the moons of Jupiter. Possibly a landing could be dared on
+that giant planet itself, despite its gravity.
+
+The co-pilot spoke suddenly. "How do you rate this trip by cargo plane?"
+he asked curiously. "Mostly even generals have to go on the ground. You
+rate plenty. How?"
+
+Joe pulled his thoughts back from satisfied imagining. It hadn't
+occurred to him that it was remarkable that he should be allowed to
+accompany the gyros from the plant to their destination. His family firm
+had built them, so it had seemed natural to him. He wasn't used to the
+idea that everybody looked suspicious to a security officer concerned
+with the safety of the Platform.
+
+"Connections? I haven't any," said Joe. Then he said, "I do know
+somebody on the job. There's a Major Holt out there. He might have
+cleared me. Known my family for years."
+
+"Yeah," said the co-pilot drily. "He might. As a matter of fact, he's
+the senior security officer for the whole job. He's in charge of
+everything, from the security guards to the radar screens and the
+jet-plane umbrella and the checking of the men who work in the Shed. If
+he says you're all right, you probably are."
+
+Joe hadn't meant to seem impressive. He explained: "I don't know him too
+well. He knows my father, and his daughter Sally's been kicking around
+underfoot most of my life. I taught her how to shoot, and she's a better
+shot than I am. She was a nice kid when she was little. I got to like
+her when she fell out of a tree and broke her arm and didn't even
+whimper. That shows how long ago it was!" He grinned. "She was trying to
+act grown-up last time I saw her."
+
+The co-pilot nodded. There was a brisk chirping sound somewhere. The
+pilot reached ahead to the course-correction knob. The plane changed
+course. Sunshine shifted as it poured into the cabin. The ship was
+running on automatic pilot well above the cloud level, and at an
+even-numbered number of thousands of feet altitude, as was suitable for
+planes traveling south or west. Now it droned on its new course,
+forty-five degrees from the original. Joe found himself guessing that
+one of the security provisions for planes approaching the Platform might
+be that they should not come too near on a direct line to it, lest they
+give information to curious persons on the ground.
+
+Time went on. Joe slipped gradually back to his meditations about the
+Platform. There was always, in his mind, the picture of a man-made thing
+shining in blinding sunlight between Earth and moon. But he began to
+remember things he hadn't paid too much attention to before.
+
+Opposition to the bare idea of a Space Platform, for instance, from the
+moment it was first proposed. Every dictator protested bitterly. Even
+politicians out of office found it a subject for rabble-rousing
+harangues. The nationalistic political parties, the peddlers of hate,
+the entrepreneurs of discord--every crank in the world had something to
+say against the Platform from the first. When they did not roundly
+denounce it as impious, they raved that it was a scheme by which the
+United States would put itself in position to rule all the Earth. As a
+matter of fact, the United States had first proposed it as a United
+Nations enterprise, so that denunciations that politicians found good
+politics actually made very poor sense. But it did not get past the
+General Assembly. The proposal was so rabidly attacked on every side
+that it was not even passed up to the Council--where it would certainly
+have been vetoed anyhow.
+
+But it was exactly that furious denunciation which put the Platform
+through the United States Congress, which had to find the money for its
+construction.
+
+In Joe's eyes and in the eyes of most of those who hoped for it from the
+beginning, the Platform's great appeal was that it was the necessary
+first step toward interplanetary travel, with star ships yet to come.
+But most scientists wanted it, desperately, for their own ends. There
+were low-temperature experiments, electronic experiments, weather
+observations, star-temperature measurements, astronomical
+observations.... Any man in any field of science could name reasons for
+it to be built. Even the atom scientists had one, and nearly the best.
+Their argument was that there were new developments of nuclear theory
+that needed to be tried out, but should not be tried out on Earth. There
+were some reactions that ought to yield unlimited power for all the
+world from really abundant materials. But there was one chance in fifty
+that they wouldn't be safe, just because the materials were so abundant.
+No sane man would risk a two-per-cent chance of destroying Earth and all
+its people, yet those reactions should be tried. In a space ship some
+millions of miles out in emptiness they could be. Either they'd be safe
+or they would not. But the only way to get a space ship a safe enough
+distance from Earth was to make a Space Platform as a starting point.
+Then a ship could shoot away from Earth with effectively zero gravity
+and full fuel tanks. The Platform should be built so civilization could
+surge ahead to new heights!
+
+But despite these excellent reasons, it was the Platform's enemies who
+really got it built. The American Congress would never have appropriated
+funds for a Platform for pure scientific research, no matter what
+peacetime benefits it promised. It was the vehemence of those who hated
+it that sold it to Congress as a measure for national defense. And in a
+sense it was.
+
+These were ironic aspects Joe hadn't thought about before, just as he
+hadn't thought about the need to defend the Platform while it was being
+built. Defending it was Sally's father's job, and he wouldn't have a
+popular time. Joe wondered idly how Sally liked living out where the
+most important job on Earth was being done. She was a nice kid. He
+remembered appreciatively that she'd grown up to be a very good-looking
+girl. He tended to remember her mostly as the tomboy who could beat him
+swimming, but the last time he'd seen her, come to think of it, he'd
+been startled to observe how pretty she'd grown. He didn't know anybody
+who ought to be better-looking.... She was a really swell girl....
+
+He came to himself again. There was a change in the look of the sky
+ahead. There was no actual horizon, of course. There was a white haze
+that blended imperceptibly into the cloud layer so that it was
+impossible to tell where the sky ended and the clouds or earth began.
+But presently there were holes in the clouds. The ship droned on, and
+suddenly it floated over the edge of such a hole, and looking down was
+very much like looking over the edge of a cliff at solid earth
+illimitably far below.
+
+The holes increased in number. Then there were no holes at all, but only
+clouds breaking up the clear view of the ground beneath. And presently
+again even the clouds were left behind and the air was clear--but still
+there was no horizon--and there was brownish earth with small green
+patches and beyond was sere brown range. At seventeen thousand feet
+there were simply no details.
+
+Soon the clouds were merely a white-tipped elevation of the white haze
+to the sides and behind. And then there came a new sound above the
+droning roar of the motors. Joe heard it--and then he saw.
+
+Something had flashed down from nowhere. It flashed on ahead and banked
+steeply. It was a fighter jet, and for an instant Joe saw the distant
+range seem to ripple and dance in its exhaust blast. It circled
+watchfully.
+
+The transport pilot manipulated something. There was a change in the
+sound of the motors. Joe followed the co-pilot's eyes. The jet fighter
+was coming up astern, dive brakes extended to reduce its speed. It
+overhauled the transport very slowly. And then the transport's pilot
+touched one of the separate prop-controls gently, and again, and again.
+Joe, looking at the jet, saw it through the whirling blades. There was
+an extraordinary stroboscopic effect. One of the two starboard
+propellers, seen through the other, abruptly took on a look which was
+not that of mistiness at all, but of writhing, gyrating solidity. The
+peculiar appearance vanished, and came again, and vanished and appeared
+yet again before it disappeared completely.
+
+The jet shot on ahead. Its dive brakes retracted. It made a graceful,
+wallowing, shallow dive, and then climbed almost vertically. It went out
+of sight.
+
+"Visual check," said the co-pilot drily, to Joe. "We had a signal to
+give. Individual to this plane. We didn't tell it to you. You couldn't
+duplicate it."
+
+Joe worked it out painfully. The visual effect of one propeller seen
+through another--that was identification. It was not a type of signaling
+an unauthorized or uninformed passenger would expect.
+
+"Also," said the co-pilot, "we have a television camera in the
+instrument board yonder. We've turned it on now. The interior of the
+cabin is being watched from the ground. No more tricks like the phony
+colonel and the atom bomb that didn't 'explode.'"
+
+Joe sat quite still. He noticed that the plane was slanting gradually
+downward. His eyes went to the dial that showed descent at somewhere
+between two and three hundred feet a minute. That was for his benefit.
+The cabin was pressurized, though it did not attempt to simulate
+sea-level pressure. It was a good deal better than the outside air,
+however, and yet too quick a descent meant discomfort. Two to three
+hundred feet per minute is about right.
+
+The ground took on features. Small gulleys. Patches of coloration too
+small to be seen from farther up. The feeling of speed increased. After
+long minutes the plane was only a few thousand feet up. The pilot took
+over manual control from the automatic pilot. He seemed to wait. There
+was a plaintive, mechanical _beep-beep_ and he changed course.
+
+"You'll see the Shed in a minute or two," said the co-pilot. He added
+vexedly, as if the thing had been bothering him, "I wish I hadn't missed
+that sandy-haired guy putting his hand in the wheel well! Nothing
+happened, but I shouldn't have missed it!"
+
+Joe watched. Very, very far away there were mountains, but he suddenly
+realized the remarkable flatness of the ground over which they were
+flying. From the edge of the world, behind, to the very edge of these
+far-distant hills, the ground was flat. There were gullies and
+depressions here and there, but no hills. It was flat, flat, flat....
+
+The plane flew on. There was a tiny glimmer of sunlight. Joe strained
+his eyes. The sunlight glinted from the tiniest possible round pip on
+the brown earth. It grew as the plane flew on. It was half a cherry
+stone. It was half an orange, with gores. It was the top section of a
+sphere that was simply too huge to have been made by men.
+
+There was a thin thread of white that ran across the dun-colored range
+and reached that half-ball and then ended. It was a highway. Joe
+realized that the half-globe was the Shed, the monstrous building made
+for the construction of the Space Platform. It was gigantic. It was
+colossal. It was the most stupendous thing that men had ever created.
+
+Joe saw a tiny projection near the base of it. It was an office building
+for clerks and timekeepers and other white-collar workers. He strained
+his eyes again and saw a motor truck on the highway. It looked
+extraordinarily flat. Then he saw that it wasn't a single truck but a
+convoy of them. A long way back, the white highway was marked by a tiny
+dot. That was a motor bus.
+
+There was no sign of activity anywhere, because the scale was so great.
+Movement there was, but the things that moved were too small to be seen
+by comparison with the Shed. The huge, round, shining half-sphere of
+metal stood tranquilly in the midst of emptiness.
+
+It was bigger than the pyramids.
+
+The plane went on, descending. Joe craned his neck, and then he was
+ashamed to gawk. He looked ahead, and far away there were white speckles
+that would be buildings: Bootstrap, the town especially built for the
+men who built the Space Platform. In it they slept and ate and engaged
+in the uproarious festivity that men on a construction job crave on
+their time off.
+
+The plane dipped noticeably.
+
+"Airfield off to the right," said the co-pilot. "That's for the town and
+the job. The jets--there's an air umbrella overhead all the time--have a
+field somewhere else. The pushpots have a field of their own, too, where
+they're training pilots."
+
+Joe didn't know what a pushpot was, but he didn't ask. He was thinking
+about the Shed, which was the greatest building ever put up, and had
+been built merely to shelter the greatest hope for the world's peace
+while it was put together. He'd be in the Shed presently. He'd work
+there, setting up the contents of the crates back in the cargo space,
+and finally installing them in the Platform itself.
+
+The pilot said: "Pitot and wing heaters?"
+
+"Off," said the co-pilot.
+
+"Spark and advance----"
+
+Joe didn't listen. He looked down at the sprawling small town with
+white-painted barracks and a business section and an obvious, carefully
+designed recreation area that nobody would ever use. The plane was
+making a great half-circle. The motor noise dimmed as Joe became
+absorbed in his anticipation of seeing the Space Platform and having a
+hand in its building.
+
+The co-pilot said sharply: "Hold everything!"
+
+Joe jerked his head around. The co-pilot had his hand on the wheel
+release. His face was tense.
+
+"It don't feel right," he said very, very quietly. "Maybe I'm crazy, but
+there was that sandy-haired guy who put his hand up in the wheel well
+back at that last field. And this don't feel right!"
+
+The plane swept on. The airfield passed below it. The co-pilot very
+cautiously let go of the wheel release, which when pulled should let the
+wheels fall down from their wells to lock themselves in landing
+position. He moved from his seat. His lips were pinched and tight. He
+scrabbled at a metal plate in the flooring. He lifted it and looked
+down. A moment later he had a flashlight. Joe saw the edge of a mirror.
+There were two mirrors down there, in fact. One could look through both
+of them into the wheel well.
+
+The co-pilot made quite sure. He stood up, leaving the plate off the
+opening in the floor.
+
+"There's something down in the wheel well," he said in a brittle tone.
+"It looks to me like a grenade. There's a string tied to it. At a guess,
+that sandy-haired guy set it up like that saboteur sergeant down in
+Brazil. Only--it rolled a little. And this one goes off when the wheels
+go down. I think, too, if we belly-land----Better go around again, huh?"
+
+The pilot nodded. "First," he said evenly, "we get word down to the
+ground about the sandy-haired guy, so they'll get him regardless."
+
+He picked up the microphone hanging above and behind him and began to
+speak coldly into it. The transport plane started to swing in wide,
+sweeping circles over the desert beyond the airport while the pilot
+explained that there was a grenade in the nose wheel well, set to
+explode if the wheel were let down or, undoubtedly, if the ship came in
+to a belly landing.
+
+Joe found himself astonishingly unafraid. But he was filled with a
+pounding rage. He hated the people who wanted to smash the pilot gyros
+because they were essential to the Space Platform. He hated them more
+completely than he had known he could hate anybody. He was so filled
+with fury that it did not occur to him that in any crash or explosive
+landing that would ruin the gyros, he would automatically be killed.
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+The pilot made an examination down the floor-plate hole, with a
+flashlight to see by and two mirrors to show him the contents of a spot
+he could not possibly reach with any instrument. Joe heard his report,
+made to the ground by radio.
+
+"It's a grenade," he said coldly. "It took time to fix it the way it is.
+At a guess, the ship was booby-trapped at the time of its last overhaul.
+But it was arranged that the booby trap had to be set, the trigger
+cocked, by somebody doing something very simple at a different place and
+later on. We've been flying with that grenade in the wheel well for two
+weeks. But it was out of sight. Today, back at the airfield, a
+sandy-haired man reached up and pulled a string he knew how to find.
+That loosened a slipknot. The grenade rolled down to a new position. Now
+when the wheel goes down the pin is pulled. You can figure things out
+from that."
+
+It was an excellent sabotage device. If a ship blew up two weeks after
+overhaul, it would not be guessed that the bomb had been placed so long
+before. Every search would be made for a recent opportunity for the
+bomb's placing. A man who merely reached in and pulled a string that
+armed the bomb and made it ready for firing would never be suspected.
+There might be dozens of planes, now carrying their own destruction
+about with them.
+
+The pilot said into the microphone: "Probably...." He listened. "Very
+well, sir."
+
+He turned away and nodded to the co-pilot, now savagely keeping the ship
+in wide, sweeping circles, the rims of which barely touched the
+farthermost corner of the airport on the ground below.
+
+"We've authority to jump," he said briefly. "You know where the chutes
+are. But there _is_ a chance I can belly-land without that grenade
+blowing. I'm going to try that."
+
+The co-pilot said angrily: "I'll get him a chute." He indicated Joe, and
+said furiously, "They've been known to try two or three tricks, just to
+make sure. Ask if we should dump cargo before we crash-land!"
+
+The pilot held up the microphone again. He spoke. He listened.
+
+"Okay to dump stuff to lighten ship."
+
+"You won't dump my crates," snapped Joe. "And I'm staying to see you
+don't! If you can ride this ship down, so can I!"
+
+The co-pilot got up and scowled at him.
+
+"Anything I can move out, goes. Will you help?"
+
+Joe followed him through the door into the cargo compartment.
+
+The space there was very considerable, and bitterly cold. The crates
+from the Kenmore plant were the heaviest items of cargo. Other objects
+were smaller. The co-pilot made his way to the rear and pulled a lever.
+Great, curved doors opened at the back of the plane. Instantly there was
+such a bellowing of motors that all speech was impossible. The co-pilot
+pulled out a clip of colored-paper slips and checked one with the
+nearest movable parcel. He painstakingly made a check mark and began to
+push the box toward the doors.
+
+It was not a conspicuously sane operation. So near the ground, the plane
+tended to waver. The air was distinctly bumpy. To push a massive box out
+a doorway, so it would tumble down a thousand feet to desert sands, was
+not so safe a matter as would let it become tedious. But Joe helped.
+They got the box to the door and shoved it out. It went spinning down.
+The co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watched it land. He chose
+another box. He checked it. And another. Joe helped. They got them out
+of the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness. The plane soared on
+in circles. The desert, as seen through the opened clamshell doors,
+reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt, and reeled away again. Joe
+and the co-pilot labored furiously. But the co-pilot checked each item
+before he jettisoned it.
+
+It was a singularly deliberate way to dump cargo to destruction. A
+metal-bound box. Over the edge of the cargo space floor. A piece of
+machinery, visible through its crate. A box marked _Instruments_.
+_Fragile_. Each one checked off. Each one dumped to drop a thousand feet
+or more. A small crated dynamo. This item and that. A crate marked
+_Stationery_. It would be printed forms for the timekeepers, perhaps.
+But it wasn't.
+
+It dropped out. The plane bellowed on. And suddenly there was a burst of
+blue-white flame on the desert below. The box that should have contained
+timecards had contained something very much more explosive. As the plane
+roared on--rocking from the shock wave of the explosion--Joe saw a
+crater and a boiling cloud of smoke and flying sand.
+
+The co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously, in the blasting uproar of
+the motors. He vengefully marked the waybill of the parcel that had
+exploded. But then they went back to the job of dumping cargo. They
+worked well as a team now. In no more than minutes everything was out
+except the four crates that were the gyros. The co-pilot regarded them
+dourly, and Joe clenched his fists. The co-pilot closed the clamshell
+doors, and it became possible to hear oneself think again.
+
+"Ship's lighter, anyhow," reported the co-pilot, back in the cabin.
+"Tell 'em this is what exploded."
+
+The pilot took the slip. He plucked down the microphone--exactly like
+somebody picking up an interoffice telephone--and reported the waybill
+number and description of the case that had been an extra bomb. The ship
+carrying the pilot gyros had been booby-trapped--probably with a number
+of other ships--and a bomb had been shipped on it, and a special
+saboteur with a private plane had shot at it with rockets. The pilot
+gyros were critical devices. They had to be on board the Platform when
+it took off, and they took months to make and balance. There had been
+extra pains taken to prevent their arrival!
+
+"I'm dumping gas now," said the pilot into the microphone, "and then
+coming in for a belly landing."
+
+The ship flew straightaway. It flew more lightly, and it bounced a
+little. When gas is dumped one has to slow to not more than one hundred
+and seventy-five knots and fly level. Then one is supposed to fly five
+minutes after dumping with the chutes in the drain position--and even
+then there is forty-five minutes of flying fuel still in the tanks.
+
+The ship swept around and headed back for the now far-distant field. It
+went slowly lower and lower and lower until it seemed barely to skim the
+minor irregularities in the ground. And low like this, the effect of
+speed was terrific.
+
+The co-pilot thought of something. Quickly he went back into the cargo
+space. He returned with an armful of blankets. He dumped them on the
+floor.
+
+"If that grenade does go!" he said sourly.
+
+Joe helped. In the few minutes before Bootstrap loomed near, they filled
+the bottom of the cabin with blankets. Especially around the pilots'
+chairs. And there was a mound of blanketing above the actual place where
+the grenade might be. It made sense. Soft stuff like blankets would
+absorb an explosion better than anything else. But the pilot thought the
+grenade might not blow.
+
+"Hold fast!" snapped the pilot.
+
+The wing flaps were down. That slowed the ship a little. It had been
+lightened. That helped. They went in over the edge of the field less
+than man-height high. Joe found his hands closing convulsively on a
+handgrip. He saw a crash wagon starting out from the side of the runway.
+A fire truck started for the line the plane followed.
+
+Four feet above the rushing sand. Three. The pilot eased back the stick.
+His face was craggy and very grim and very hard. The ship's tail went
+down and dragged. It bumped. Then the plane careened and slid and
+half-whirled crazily, and then the world seemed to come to an end.
+Crashes. Bangs. Shrieks of torn metal. Bumps, thumps and grindings. Then
+a roaring.
+
+Joe pulled himself loose from where he had been flung--it seemed to him
+that he peeled himself loose--and found the pilot struggling up, and he
+grabbed him to help, and the co-pilot hauled at them both, and abruptly
+all three of them were in the open air and running at full speed away
+from the ship.
+
+The roar abruptly became a bellowing. There was an explosion. Flames
+sprouted everywhere. The three men ran stumblingly. But even as they
+ran, the co-pilot swore.
+
+"We left something!" he panted.
+
+Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something
+else exploded dully. But he should be far enough away by now.
+
+He turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckage immersed in roaring
+flames. The flames were monstrous. They rose sky-high, it seemed--more
+flames than forty-five minutes of gasoline should have produced. As he
+looked, something blew up shatteringly, and fire raged even more
+furiously. Of course in such heat the delicately adjusted gyros would be
+warped and ruined even if the crash hadn't wrecked them beforehand. Joe
+made thick, incoherent sounds of rage.
+
+The plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton, licked through by
+flames. The crash wagon roared to a stop beside them.
+
+"Anybody hurt? Anybody left inside?"
+
+Joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairing rage. The fog wagon
+roared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles. Its tanks contained
+water treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest of
+droplets when sprayed at four hundred pounds pressure. It drenched the
+burning wreck with that heavy mist, in which a man would drown. No fire
+could possibly sustain itself. In seconds, it seemed, there were only
+steam and white vapor and fumes of smoldering substances that gradually
+lessened.
+
+But then there was a roaring of motorcycles racing across the field with
+a black car trailing them. The car pulled up beside the fog wagon, then
+sped swiftly to where Joe was coming out of wild rage and sinking into
+sick, black depression. He'd been responsible for the pilot gyros and
+their safe arrival. What had happened wasn't his fault, but it was not
+his job merely to remain blameless. It was his job to get the gyros
+delivered and set up in the Space Platform. He had failed.
+
+The black car braked to a stop. There was Major Holt. Joe had seen him
+six months before. He'd aged a good deal. He looked grimly at the two
+pilots.
+
+"What happened?" he demanded. "You dumped your fuel! What burned like
+this?"
+
+Joe said thickly: "Everything was dumped but the pilot gyros. They
+didn't burn! They were packed at the plant!"
+
+The co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent sound of rage. "I've got it!"
+he said hoarsely. "I know----"
+
+"What?" snapped Major Holt.
+
+"They--planted that grenade at the--major overhaul!" panted the
+co-pilot, too enraged even to swear. "They--fixed it so--any trouble
+would mean a wreck! And I--pulled the fire-extinguisher releases just as
+we hit! For all compartments! To flood everything with CO_2! But it
+wasn't CO_2! That's what burned!"
+
+Major Holt stared sharply at him. He held up his hand. Somebody
+materialized beside him. He said harshly: "Get the extinguisher bottles
+sealed and take them to the laboratory."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+A man went running toward the wreck. Major Holt said coldly: "That's a
+new one. We should have thought of it. You men get yourselves attended
+to and report to Security at the Shed."
+
+The pilot and co-pilot turned away. Joe turned to go with them. Then he
+heard Sally's voice, a little bit wobbly: "Joe! Come with us, please!"
+
+Joe hadn't seen her, but she was in the car. She was pale. Her eyes were
+wide and frightened.
+
+Joe said stiffly: "I'll be all right. I want to look at those
+crates----"
+
+Major Holt said curtly: "They're already under guard. There'll have to
+be photographs made before anything can be touched. And I want a report
+from you, anyhow. Come along!"
+
+Joe looked. The motorcycles were abandoned, and there were already armed
+guards around the still-steaming wreck, grimly watching the men of the
+fog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparks or flame. It was
+noticeable that now nobody moved toward the wreck. There were figures
+walking back toward the edge of the field. What civilians were about,
+even to the mechanics on duty, had started out to look at the debris at
+close range. But the guards were on the job. Nobody could approach. The
+onlookers went back to their proper places.
+
+"Please, Joe!" said Sally shakily.
+
+Joe got drearily into the car. The instant he seated himself, it was in
+motion again. It went plunging back across the field and out the
+entrance. Its horn blared and it went streaking toward the town and
+abruptly turned to the left. In seconds it was on a broad white highway
+that left the town behind and led toward the emptiness of the desert.
+
+But not quite emptiness. Far, far away there was a great half-globe
+rising against the horizon. The car hummed toward it, tires singing. And
+Joe looked at it and felt ashamed, because this was the home of the
+Space Platform, and he hadn't brought to it the part for which he alone
+was responsible.
+
+Sally moistened her lips. She brought out a small box. She opened it.
+There were bandages and bottles.
+
+"I've a first-aid kit, Joe," she said shakily. "You're burned. Let me
+fix the worst ones, anyhow!"
+
+Joe looked at himself. One coat sleeve was burned to charcoal. His hair
+was singed on one side. A trouser leg was burned off around the ankle.
+When he noticed, his burns hurt.
+
+Major Holt watched her spread a salve on scorched skin. He showed no
+emotion whatever.
+
+"Tell me what happened," he commanded. "All of it!"
+
+Somehow, there seemed very little to tell, but Joe told it baldly as the
+car sped on. The great half-ball of metal loomed larger and larger but
+did not appear to grow nearer as Sally practiced first aid. They came to
+a convoy of trucks, and the horn blared, and they turned out and passed
+it. Once they met a convoy of empty vehicles on the way back to
+Bootstrap. They passed a bus. They went on.
+
+Joe finished drearily: "The pilots did everything anybody could. Even
+checked off the packages as they were dumped. We reported the one that
+blew up."
+
+Major Holt said uncompromisingly: "Those were orders. In a sense we've
+gained something even by this disaster. The pilots are probably right
+about the plane's having been booby-trapped after its last overhaul, and
+the traps armed later. I'll have an inspection made immediately, and
+we'll see if we can find how it was done.
+
+"There's the man you think armed the trap on this plane. An order for
+his arrest is on the way now. I told my secretary. And--hm.... That
+CO_2----"
+
+"I didn't understand that," said Joe drearily.
+
+"Planes have CO_2 bottles to put fires out," said the Major impatiently.
+"A fire in flight lights a red warning light on the instrument panel,
+telling where it is. The pilot pulls a handle, and CO_2 floods the
+compartment, putting it out. And this ship was coming in for a crash
+landing so the pilot--according to orders--flooded all compartments with
+CO_2. Only it wasn't."
+
+Sally said in horror: "Oh, no!"
+
+"The CO_2 bottles were filled with an inflammable or an explosive gas,"
+said her father, unbending. "Instead of making a fire impossible, they
+made it certain. We'll have to watch out for that trick now, too."
+
+Joe was too disheartened for any emotion except a bitter depression and
+a much more bitter hatred of those who were ready to commit any
+crime--and had committed most--in the attempt to destroy the Platform.
+
+The Shed that housed it rose and rose against the skyline. It became
+huge. It became monstrous. It became unbelievable. But Joe could have
+wept when the car pulled up at an angular, three-story building built
+out from the Shed's base. From the air, this substantial building had
+looked like a mere chip. The car stopped. They got out. A sentry saluted
+as Major Holt led the way inside. Joe and Sally followed.
+
+The Major said curtly to a uniformed man at a desk: "Get some clothes
+for this man. Get him a long-distance telephone connection to the
+Kenmore Precision Tool Company. Let him talk. Then bring him to me
+again."
+
+He disappeared. Sally tried to smile at Joe. She was still quite pale.
+
+"That's Dad, Joe. He means well, but he's not cordial. I was in his
+office when the report of sabotage to your plane came through. We
+started for Bootstrap. We were on the way when we saw the first
+explosion. I--thought it was your ship." She winced a little at the
+memory. "I knew you were on board. It was--not nice, Joe."
+
+She'd been badly scared. Joe wanted to thump her encouragingly on the
+back, but he suddenly realized that that would no longer be appropriate.
+So he said gruffly: "I'm all right."
+
+He followed the uniformed man. He began to get out of his scorched and
+tattered garments. The sergeant brought him more clothes, and he put
+them on. He was just changing his personal possessions to the new
+pockets when the sergeant came back again.
+
+"Kenmore plant on the line, sir."
+
+Joe went to the phone. On the way he discovered that the banging around
+he'd had when the plane landed had made a number of places on his body
+hurt.
+
+He talked to his father.
+
+Afterward, he realized that it was a queer conversation. He felt guilty
+because something had happened to a job that had taken eight months to
+do and that he alone was escorting to its destination. He told his
+father about that. But his father didn't seem concerned. Not nearly so
+much concerned as he should have been. He asked urgent questions about
+Joe himself. If he was hurt. How much? Where? Joe was astonished that
+his father seemed to think such matters more important than the pilot
+gyros. But he answered the questions and explained the exact situation
+and also a certain desperate hope he was trying to cherish that the
+gyros might still be repairable. His father gave him advice.
+
+Sally was waiting again when he came out. She took him into her father's
+office, and introduced him to her father's secretary. Compared to Sally
+she was an extraordinarily plain woman. She wore a sorrowful expression.
+But she looked very efficient.
+
+Joe explained carefully that his father said for him to hunt up Chief
+Bender--working on the job out here--because he was one of the few men
+who'd left the Kenmore plant to work elsewhere, and he was good. He and
+the Chief, between them, would estimate the damage and the possibility
+of repair.
+
+Major Holt listened. He was military and official and harassed and curt
+and tired. Joe'd known Sally and therefore her father all his life, but
+the Major wasn't an easy man to be relaxed with. He spoke into thin air,
+and immediately his sad-seeming secretary wrote out a pass for Joe. Then
+Major Holt gave crisp orders on a telephone and asked questions, and
+Sally said: "I know. I'll take him there. I know my way around."
+
+Her father's expression did not change. He simply included Sally in his
+orders on the phone.
+
+He hung up and said briefly: "The plane will be surveyed and taken apart
+as soon as possible. By the time you find your man you can probably
+examine the crates. I'll have you cleared for it."
+
+His secretary reached in a drawer for order forms to fill out and hand
+him to sign. Sally tugged at Joe's arm. They left.
+
+Outside, she said: "There's no use arguing with my father, Joe. He has a
+terrible job, and it's on his mind all the time. He hates being a
+Security officer, too. It's a thankless job--and no Security officer
+ever gets to be more than a major. His ability never shows. What he does
+is never noticed unless it fails. So he's frustrated. He's got poor Miss
+Ross--his secretary, you know--so she just listens to what he says must
+be done and she writes it out. Sometimes he goes days without speaking
+to her directly. But really it's pretty bad! It's like a war with no
+enemy to fight except spies! And the things they do! They've been known
+even to booby-trap a truck after an accident, so anybody who tries to
+help will be blown up! So everything has to be done in a certain way or
+everything will be ruined!"
+
+She led him to an office with a door that opened directly into the Shed.
+In spite of his bitterness, Joe was morosely impatient to see inside.
+But Sally had to identify him formally as the Joe Kenmore who was the
+subject of her father's order, and his fingerprints had to be taken, and
+somebody had him stand for a moment before an X-ray screen. Then she led
+him through the door, and he was in the Shed where the Space Platform
+was under construction.
+
+It was a vast cavern of metal sheathing and spidery girders, filled with
+sound and detail. It took him seconds to begin to absorb what he saw and
+heard. The Shed was five hundred feet high in the middle, and it was all
+clear space without a single column or interruption. There were arc
+lamps burning about its edges, and high up somewhere there were strips
+of glass which let in a pale light. All of it resounded with many noises
+and clanging echoes of them.
+
+There were rivet guns at work, and there were the grumblings of motor
+trucks moving about, and the oddly harsh roar of welding torches. But
+the torch flames looked only like marsh fires, blue-white and eerie
+against the mass of the thing that was being built.
+
+It was not too clear to the eye, this incomplete Space Platform. There
+seemed to be a sort of mist, a glamour about it, which was partly a
+veiling mass of scaffolding. But Joe gazed at it with an emotion that
+blotted out even his aching disappointment and feeling of shame.
+
+It was gigantic. It had the dimensions of an ocean liner. It was
+strangely shaped. Partly obscured by the fragile-seeming framework about
+it, there was bright plating in swelling curves, and the plating reached
+up irregularly and followed a peculiar pattern, and above the plating
+there were girders--themselves shining brightly in the light of many arc
+lamps--and they rose up and up toward the roof of the Shed itself. The
+Platform was ungainly and it was huge, and it rested under a hollow
+metal half-globe that could have doubled for a sky. It was more than
+three hundred feet high, itself, and there were men working on the bare
+bright beams of its uppermost parts--and the men were specks. The far
+side of the Shed's floor had other men on it, and they were merely
+jerkily moving motes. You couldn't see their legs as they walked. The
+Shed and the Platform were monstrous!
+
+Joe felt Sally's eyes upon him. Somehow, they looked proud. He took a
+deep breath.
+
+She said: "Come on."
+
+They walked across acres of floor neatly paved with shining wooden
+blocks. They moved toward the thing that was to take mankind's first
+step toward the stars. As they walked centerward, a big sixteen-wheel
+truck-and-trailer outfit backed out of an opening under the lacy haze of
+scaffolds. It turned clumsily, and carefully circled the scaffolding,
+and moved toward a sidewall of the Shed. A section of the wall--it
+seemed as small as a rabbit hole--lifted inward like a flap, and the
+sixteen-wheeler trundled out into the blazing sunlight. Four other
+trucks scurried out after it. Other trucks came in. The sidewall section
+closed.
+
+There was the smell of engine fumes and hot metal and of ozone from
+electric sparks. There was that indescribable smell a man can get
+homesick for, of metal being worked by men. Joe walked like someone in a
+dream, with Sally satisfiedly silent beside him, until the
+scaffolds--which had looked like veiling--became latticework and he saw
+openings.
+
+They walked into one such tunnel. The bulk of the Platform above them
+loomed overhead with a crushing menace. There were trucks rumbling all
+around underneath, here in this maze of scaffold columns. Some carried
+ready-loaded cages waiting to be snatched up by hoists. Crane grips came
+down, and snapped fast on the cages, and lifted them up and up and out
+of sight. There was a Diesel running somewhere, and a man stood and
+stared skyward and made motions with his hands, and the Diesel adjusted
+its running to his signals. Then some empty cages came down and landed
+in a waiting truck body with loud clanking noises. Somebody cast off the
+hooks, and the truck grumbled and drove away.
+
+Sally spoke to a preoccupied man in shirt sleeves with a badge on an arm
+band near his shoulder. He looked carefully at the passes she carried,
+using a flashlight to make sure. Then he led them to a shaft up which a
+hoist ran. It was very noisy here. A rivet gun banged away overhead, and
+the plates of the Platform rang with the sound, and the echoes
+screeched, and to Joe the bedlam was infinitely good to hear. The man
+with the arm band shouted into a telephone transmitter, and a hoist cage
+came down. Joe and Sally stepped on it. Joe took a firm grip on her
+shoulder, and the hoist shot upward.
+
+The hugeness of the Shed and the Platform grew even more apparent as the
+hoist accelerated toward the roof. The flooring seemed to expand.
+Spidery scaffold beams dropped past them. There were things being built
+over by the sidewall. Joe saw a crawling in-plant tow truck moving past
+those enigmatic objects. It was a tiny truck, no more than four feet
+high and with twelve-inch wheels. It dragged behind it flat plates of
+metal with upturned forward edges. They slid over the floor like
+sledges. Cryptic loads were carried on those plates, and the tow truck
+stopped by a mass of steel piping being put together, and began to
+unload the plates.
+
+Then the hoist slowed abruptly and Sally winced a little. The hoist
+stopped.
+
+Here--two hundred feet up--a welding crew worked on the skin of the
+Platform itself. The plating curved in and there was a wide flat space
+parallel to the ground. There was also a great gaping hole beyond.
+Though girders rose roofward even yet, this was as high as the plating
+had gone. That opening--Joe guessed--would ultimately be the door of an
+air lock, and this flat surface was designed for a tender rocket to
+anchor to by magnets. When a rocket came up from Earth with supplies or
+reliefs for the Platform's crew, or with fuel to be stored for an
+exploring ship's later use, it would anchor here and then inch toward
+that doorway....
+
+There were half a dozen men in the welding crew. They should have been
+working. But two men battered savagely at each other, their tools thrown
+down. One was tall and lean, with a wrinkled face and an expression of
+intolerable fury. The other was squat and dark with a look of
+desperation. A third man was in the act of putting down his welding
+torch--he'd carefully turned it off first--to try to interfere. Another
+man gaped. Still another was climbing up by a ladder from the scaffold
+level below.
+
+Joe put Sally's hand on the hoist upright, instinctively freeing himself
+for action.
+
+The lanky man lashed out a terrific roundhouse blow. It landed, but the
+stocky man bored in. Joe had an instant's clear sight of his face. It
+was not the face of a man enraged. It had the look of a man both
+desperate and despairing.
+
+Then the lanky man's foot slipped. He lost balance, and the stocky man's
+fist landed. The thin man reeled backward. Sally cried out, choking. The
+lanky man teetered on the edge of the flat place. Behind him, the
+plating curved down. Below him there were two hundred feet of fall
+through the steel-pipe maze of scaffolds. If he took one step back he
+was gone inexorably down a slope on which he could never stop.
+
+He took that step. The stocky man's face abruptly froze in horror. The
+lanky man stiffened convulsively. He couldn't stop. He knew it. He'd go
+back and on over the rounded edge, and fall. He might touch the
+scaffolding. It would not stop him. It would merely set his body
+spinning crazily as it dropped and crashed again and again before it
+landed two hundred feet below.
+
+It was horror in slow motion, watching the lean man stagger backward to
+his death.
+
+Then Joe leaped.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+For an instant, in mid-air, Joe was incongruously aware of all the
+noises in the Shed. The murky, girdered ceiling still three hundred feet
+above him. The swelling, curving, glittering surface of steel
+underneath. Then he struck. He landed beside the lean man, with his left
+arm outstretched to share his impetus with him. Alone, he would have had
+momentum enough to carry himself up the slope down which the man had
+begun to descend. But now he shared it. The two of them toppled forward
+together. Their arms were upon the flat surface, while their bodies
+dangled. The feel of gravity pulling them slantwise and downward was
+purest nightmare.
+
+But then, as Joe's innards crawled, the same stocky man who had knocked
+the lean man back was dragging frantically at both of them to pull them
+to safety.
+
+Then there were two men pulling. The stocky man's face was gray. His
+horror was proof that he hadn't intended murder. The man who'd put down
+his welding torch pulled. The man who'd been climbing the ladder put his
+weight to the task of getting them back to usable footing. They reached
+safety. Joe scrambled to his feet, but he felt sick at the pit of his
+stomach. The stocky man began to shake horribly. The lanky one advanced
+furiously upon him.
+
+"I didn' mean to keel you, Haney!" the dark one panted.
+
+The lanky one snapped: "Okay. You didn't. But come on, now! We finish
+this----"
+
+He advanced toward the workman who had so nearly caused his death. But
+the other man dropped his arms to his sides.
+
+"I don' fight no more," he said thickly. "Not here. You keel me is okay.
+I don' fight."
+
+The lanky man--Haney--growled at him.
+
+"Tonight, then, in Bootstrap. Now get back to work!"
+
+The stocky man picked up his tools. He was trembling.
+
+Haney turned to Joe and said ungraciously: "Much obliged. What's up?"
+
+Joe still felt queasy. There is rarely any high elation after one has
+risked his life for somebody else. He'd nearly plunged two hundred feet
+to the floor of the Shed with Haney. But he swallowed.
+
+"I'm looking for Chief Bender. You're Haney? Foreman?"
+
+"Gang boss," said Haney. He looked at Joe and then at Sally who was
+holding convulsively to the upright Joe had put her hand on. Her eyes
+were closed. "Yeah," said Haney. "The Chief took off today. Some kind of
+Injun stuff. Funeral, maybe. Want me to tell him something? I'll see him
+when I go off shift."
+
+There was an obscure movement somewhere on this part of the Platform. A
+tiny figure came out of a crevice that would someday be an air lock. Joe
+didn't move his eyes toward it. He said awkwardly: "Just tell him Joe
+Kenmore's in town and needs him. He'll remember me, I think. I'll hunt
+him up tonight."
+
+"Okay," said Haney.
+
+Joe's eyes went to the tiny figure that had come out from behind the
+plating. It was a midget in baggy, stained work garments like the rest
+of the men up here. He wore a miniature welding shield pushed back on
+his head. Joe could guess his function, of course. There'd be corners a
+normal-sized man couldn't get into, to buck a rivet or weld a joint.
+There'd be places only a tiny man could properly inspect. The midget
+regarded Joe without expression.
+
+Joe turned to the hoist to go down to the floor again. Haney waved his
+hand. The midget lifted his, in grave salutation.
+
+The hoist dropped down the shaft. Sally opened her eyes.
+
+"You--saved that man's life, Joe," she said unsteadily. "But you scared
+me to death!"
+
+Joe tried to ignore the remark, but he still seemed to feel slanting
+metal under him and a drop of two hundred feet below. It had been a
+nightmarish sensation.
+
+"I didn't think," he said uncomfortably. "It was a crazy thing to do.
+Lucky it worked out."
+
+Sally glanced at him. The hoist still dropped swiftly. Levels of
+scaffolding shot upward past them. If Joe had slipped down that rolling
+curve of metal, he'd have dropped past all these. It was not good to
+think about. He swallowed again. Then the hoist checked in its descent.
+It stopped. Joe somewhat absurdly helped Sally off to solid ground.
+
+"It--looks to me," said Sally, "as if you're bound to make me see
+somebody killed. Joe, would you mind leading a little bit less
+adventurous life for a while? While I'm around?"
+
+He managed to grin. But he still did not feel right.
+
+"Nothing I can do until I can look at the plane," he said, changing the
+subject, "and I can't find the Chief until tonight. Could we sightsee a
+little?"
+
+She nodded. They went out from under the intricate framework that upheld
+the Platform. They went, in fact, completely under that colossal
+incomplete object. Sally indicated the sidewall.
+
+"Let's go look at the pushpots. They're fascinating!"
+
+She led the way. The enormous spaciousness of the Shed again became
+evident. There was a catwalk part way up the inward curving wall.
+Someone leaned on its railing and surveyed the interior of the Shed. He
+would probably be a security man. Maybe the fist fight up on the
+Platform had been seen, or maybe not. The man on the catwalk was hardly
+more than a speck, and it occurred to Joe that there must be other
+watchers' posts high up on the outer shell where men could search the
+sunlit desert outside for signs of danger.
+
+But he turned and looked yearningly back at the monstrous thing under
+the mist of scaffolding. For the first time he could make out its shape.
+It was something like an egg, but a great deal more like something he
+couldn't put a name to. Actually it was exactly like nothing in the
+world but itself, and when it was out in space there would be nothing
+left on Earth like it.
+
+It would be in a fashion a world in itself, independent of the Earth
+that made it. There would be hydroponic tanks in which plants would grow
+to purify its air and feed its crew. There would be telescopes with
+which men would be able to study the stars as they had never been able
+to do from the bottom of Earth's ocean of turbulent air. But it would
+serve Earth.
+
+There would be communicators. They would pick up microwave messages and
+retransmit them to destinations far around the curve of the planet, or
+else store them and retransmit them to the other side of the world an
+hour or two hours later.
+
+It would store fuel with which men could presently set out for the
+stars--and out to emptiness for nuclear experiments that must not be
+made on Earth. And finally it would be armed with squat, deadly atomic
+missiles that no nation could possibly defy. And so this Space Platform
+would keep peace on Earth.
+
+But it could not make good will among men.
+
+Sally walked on. They reached the mysterious objects being manufactured
+in a row around half the sidewall of the Shed. They were of simple
+design and, by comparison, not unduly large. The first objects were
+merely frameworks of metal pipe, which men were welding together
+unbreakably. They were no bigger than--say--half of a six-room house. A
+little way on, these were filled with intricate arrays of tanks and
+piping, and still farther--there was a truck and hoist unloading a
+massive object into place right now--there were huge engines fitting
+precisely into openings designed to hold them. Others were being plated
+in with metallic skins.
+
+At the very end of this assembly line a crane was loading a finished
+object onto a flat-bed trailer. As it swung in the air, Joe realized
+what it was. It might be called a jet plane, but it was not of any type
+ever before used. More than anything else, it looked like a beetle. It
+would not be really useful for anything but its function at the end of
+Operation Stepladder. Then hundreds of these ungainly objects would
+cluster upon the Platform's sides, like swarming bees. They would thrust
+savagely up with their separate jet engines. They would lift the
+Platform from the foundation on which it had been built. Tugging,
+straining, panting, they would get it out of the Shed. But their work
+would not end there. Holding it aloft, they would start it eastward,
+lifting effortfully. They would carry it as far and as high and as fast
+as their straining engines could work. Then there would be one last
+surge of fierce thrusting with oversize jato rockets, built separately
+into each pushpot, all firing at once.
+
+Finally the clumsy things would drop off and come bumbling back home,
+while the Platform's own rockets flared out their mile-long flames--and
+it headed up for emptiness.
+
+But the making of these pushpots and all the other multitudinous
+activities of the Shed would have no meaning if the contents of four
+crates in the wreckage of a burned-out plane could not be salvaged and
+put to use again.
+
+Joe said restlessly: "I want to see all this, Sally, and maybe anything
+else I do is useless, but I've got to find out what happened to the
+gyros I was bringing here!"
+
+Sally said nothing. She turned, and they moved across the long, long
+space of wood-block flooring toward the doorway by which they had
+entered. And now that he had seen the Space Platform, all of Joe's
+feeling of guilt and despondency came back. It seemed unbearable. They
+went out through the guarded door, Sally surrendered the pass, and Joe
+was again checked carefully before he was free to go.
+
+Then Sally said: "You don't want me tagging around, do you?"
+
+Joe said honestly: "It isn't exactly that, Sally, but if the stuff is
+really smashed, I'd--rather not have anybody see me. Please don't be
+angry, but--"
+
+Sally said quietly: "I know. I'll get somebody to drive you over."
+
+She vanished. She came back with the uniformed man who'd driven Major
+Holt. She put her hand momentarily on Joe's arm.
+
+"If it's really bad, Joe, tell me. You won't let yourself cry, but I'll
+cry for you." She searched his eyes. "Really, Joe!"
+
+He grinned feebly and went out to the car.
+
+The feeling on the way to the airfield was not a good one. It was
+twenty-odd miles from the Shed, but Joe dreaded what he was going to
+see. The black car burned up the road. It turned to the right off the
+white highway, onto the curved short cut--and there was the field.
+
+And there was the wreck of the transport plane, still where it had
+crashed and burned. There were still armed guards about it, but men were
+working on the wreck, cutting it apart with torches. Already some of it
+was dissected.
+
+Joe went to the remains of the four crates.
+
+The largest was bent askew by the force of the crash or an explosion,
+Joe didn't know which. The smallest was a twisted mass of charcoal. Joe
+gulped, and dug into them with borrowed tools.
+
+The pilot gyros of the Space Platform would apply the torque that would
+make the main gyros shift it to any desired position, or else hold it
+absolutely still. They were to act, in a sense, as a sort of steering
+engine on the take-off and keep a useful function out in space. If a
+star photograph was to be made, it was essential that the Platform hold
+absolutely still while the exposure lasted. If a guided missile was to
+be launched, it must be started right, and the pilot gyros were needed.
+To turn to receive an arriving rocket from Earth....
+
+The pilot gyros were the steering apparatus of the Space Platform. They
+had to be more than adequate. They had to be perfect! On the take-off
+alone, they were starkly necessary. The Platform couldn't hope to reach
+its orbit without them.
+
+Joe chipped away charred planks. He pulled off flame-eaten timbers. He
+peeled off carbonized wrappings--but some did not need to be peeled:
+they crumbled at a touch--and in twenty minutes he knew the whole story.
+The rotor motors were ruined. The couplers--pilot-to-main-gyro
+connections--had been heated red hot and were no longer hardened steel;
+their dimensions had changed and they would no longer fit. But these
+were not disastrous items. They were serious, but not tragic.
+
+The tragedy was the gyros themselves. On their absolute precision and
+utterly perfect balance the whole working of the Platform would depend.
+And the rotors were gashed in one place, and the shafts were bent. Being
+bent and nicked, the precision of the apparatus was destroyed. Its
+precision lost, the whole device was useless. And it had taken four
+months' work merely to get it perfectly balanced!
+
+It had been the most accurate piece of machine work ever done on Earth.
+It was balanced to a microgram--to a millionth of the combined weight of
+three aspirin tablets. It would revolve at 40,000 revolutions per
+minute. It had to balance perfectly or it would vibrate intolerably. If
+it vibrated at all it would shake itself to pieces, or, failing that,
+send aging sound waves through all the Platform's substance. If it
+vibrated by the least fraction of a ten-thousandth of an inch, it would
+wear, and vibrate more strongly, and destroy itself and possibly the
+Platform. It needed the precision of an astronomical telescope's
+lenses--multiplied! And it was bent. It was exactly as useless as if it
+had never been made at all.
+
+Joe felt as a man might feel if the mirror of the greatest telescope on
+earth, in his care, had been smashed. As if the most priceless picture
+in the world, in his charge, had been burned. But he felt worse. Whether
+it was his fault or not--and it wasn't--it was destroyed.
+
+A truck rolled up and was stopped by a guard. There was talk, and the
+guard let it through. A small crane lift came over from the hangars. Its
+normal use was the lifting of plane motors in and out of their nacelles.
+Now it was to pick up the useless pieces of equipment on which the best
+workmen and the best brains of the Kenmore Precision Tool Company had
+worked unceasingly for eight calendar months, and which now was junk.
+
+Joe watched, numbed by disaster, while the crane hook went down to
+position above the once-precious objects. Men shored up the heavy things
+and ran planks under them, and then deftly fitted rope slings for them
+to be lifted by. It was late afternoon by now. Long shadows were
+slanting as the crane truck's gears whined, and the slack took up, and
+the first of the four charred objects lifted and swung, spinning slowly,
+to the truck that had come from the Shed.
+
+Joe froze, watching. He watched the second. The third did not spin. It
+merely swayed. But the fourth.... The lines up to the crane hook were
+twisted. As the largest of the four crates lifted from its bed, it
+twisted the lines toward straightness. It spun. It spun more and more
+rapidly, and then more and more slowly, and stopped, and began to spin
+back.
+
+Then Joe caught his breath. It seemed that he hadn't breathed in
+minutes. The big crate wasn't balanced. It was spinning. It wasn't
+vibrating. It spun around its own center of gravity, unerringly revealed
+by its flexible suspension.
+
+He watched until it was dropped into the truck. Then he went stiffly
+over to the driver of the car that had brought him.
+
+"Everything's all right," he said, feeling a queer astonishment at his
+own words. "I'm going to ride back to the Shed with the stuff I brought.
+It's not hurt too much. I'll be able to fix it with a man or two I can
+pick up out here. But I don't want anything else to happen to it!"
+
+So he rode back out to the Shed on the tailboard of the truck that
+carried the crates. The sun set as he rode. He was smudged and
+disheveled. The reek of charred wood and burnt insulation and scorched
+wrappings was strong in his nostrils. But he felt very much inclined to
+sing.
+
+It occurred to Joe that he should have sent Sally a message that she
+didn't need to cry as a substitute for him. He felt swell! He knew how
+to do the job that would let the Space Platform take off! He'd tell her,
+first chance.
+
+It was very good to be alive.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+There was nobody in the world to whom the Space Platform was
+meaningless. To Joe and a great many people like him, it was a dream
+long and stubbornly held to and now doggedly being made a reality. To
+some it was the prospect of peace and the hope of a quiet life: children
+and grandchildren and a serene look forward to the future. Some people
+prayed yearningly for its success, though they could have no other share
+in its making. And of course there were those men who had gotten into
+power and could not stay there without ruthlessness. They knew what the
+Platform would mean to their kind. For, once world peace was certain,
+they would be killed by the people they ruled over. So they sent grubby,
+desperate men to wreck it at any cost. They were prepared to pay for or
+to commit any crime if the Space Platform could be smashed and turmoil
+kept as the norm of life on Earth.
+
+And there were the people who were actually doing the building.
+
+Joe rode a bus into Bootstrap that night with some of them. The middle
+shift--two to ten o'clock--was off. Fleets of busses rolled out from the
+small town twenty miles away, their headlights making a procession of
+paired flames in the darkness. They rolled into the unloading area and
+disgorged the late shift--ten to six--to be processed by security and
+admitted to the Shed. Then, quite empty, the busses went trundling
+around to where Joe waited with the released shift milling around him.
+
+The busses stopped and opened their doors. The waiting men stormed in,
+shoving zestfully, calling to each other, scrambling for seats or merely
+letting themselves be pushed on board. The bus Joe found himself on was
+jammed in seconds. He held on to a strap and didn't notice. He was
+absorbed in the rapt contemplation of his idea for the repair of the
+pilot gyros. The motors could be replaced easily enough. The foundation
+of his first despair had been the belief that everything could be
+managed but one thing; that the all-important absolute accuracy was the
+only thing that couldn't be achieved. Getting that accuracy, back at the
+plant, had consumed four months of time. Each of the gyros was four feet
+in diameter and weighed five hundred pounds. Each spun at 40,000 r.p.m.
+It had to be machined from a special steel to assure that it would not
+fly to pieces from sheer centrifugal force. Each was plated with iridium
+lest a speck of rust form and throw it off balance. If the shaft and
+bearings were not centered exactly at the center of gravity of the
+rotors--five hundred pounds of steel off balance at 40,000 r.p.m. could
+raise the devil. They could literally wreck the Platform itself. And
+"exactly at the center of gravity" meant exactly. There could be no
+error by which the shaft was off center by the thousandth of an inch, or
+a ten-thousandth, or even the tenth of a ten-thousandth. The accuracy
+had to be absolute.
+
+Gloating over the solution he'd found, Joe could have hugged himself.
+Hanging to a strap in the waiting bus, he saw another bus start off with
+a grinding of gears and a spouting of exhaust smoke. It trundled to the
+highway and rolled away. Another and another followed it. Joe's bus fell
+in line. They headed for Bootstrap in a convoy, a long, long string of
+lighted vehicles running one behind the other.
+
+It was dark outside. The Shed was alone, for security. It was twenty
+miles from the town where its work force slept and ate and made merry.
+That was security too. One shift came off, and went through a security
+check, and during that time the Shed was empty save for the security
+officers who roamed it endlessly, looking for trouble. Sometimes they
+found it. The shift coming on also passed through a security check.
+Nobody could get into the Shed without being identified past question.
+The picture-badge stage was long since passed on the Space Platform job.
+Security was tight!
+
+The long procession of busses rolled through the night. Outside was dark
+desert. Overhead were many stars. Inside the jammed bus were swaying
+figures crowded in the aisle, and every seat was filled. There was the
+smell of sweat, and oil, and tobacco. Somebody still had garlic on his
+breath from lunch. There was the noise of many voices. There was an
+argument two seats up the aisle. There was the rumble of the motor, and
+the peculiar whine of spinning tires. Men had to raise their voices to
+be heard above the din.
+
+A swaying among the crowded figures more pronounced than that caused by
+the motion of the bus caught Joe's eye. Somebody was crowding his way
+from the back toward the front. The aisle was narrow. Joe clung to his
+strap, thinking hard and happily about the rebalancing of the gyros.
+There could be no tolerance. It had to be exact. There had to be no
+vibration at all....
+
+Figures swayed away from him. A hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Hiya."
+
+He swung around. It was the lean man, Haney, whom he'd kept from being
+knocked off the level place two hundred feet up.
+
+Joe said: "Hello."
+
+"I thought you were big brass," said Haney, rumbling in his ear. "But
+big brass don't ride the busses."
+
+"I'm going in to try to hunt up the Chief," said Joe.
+
+Haney grunted. He looked estimatingly at Joe. His glance fell to Joe's
+hands. Joe had been digging further into the crates, and afterward he'd
+washed up, but packing grease is hard to get off. When mixed with soot
+and charcoal it leaves signs. Haney relaxed.
+
+"We mostly eat together," he observed, satisfied that Joe was regular
+because his hands weren't soft and because mechanic's soap had done an
+incomplete job on them. "The Chief's a good guy. Join us?"
+
+"Sure!" said Joe. "And thanks."
+
+A brittle voice sounded somewhere around Haney's knees. Joe looked down,
+startled. The midget he'd seen up on the Platform nodded up at him. He'd
+squirmed through the press in Haney's wake. He seemed to bristle a
+little out of pure habit. Joe made room for him.
+
+"I'm okay," said the midget pugnaciously.
+
+Haney made a formal introduction.
+
+"Mike Scandia." He thumbed at Joe. "Joe Kenmore. He's eating with us.
+Wants to find the Chief."
+
+There had been no reference to the risk Joe had run in keeping Haney
+from a two-hundred-foot fall. But now Haney said approvingly: "I wanted
+to say thanks anyhow for keeping your mouth shut. New here?"
+
+Joe nodded. The noise in the bus made any sort of talk difficult. Haney
+appeared used to it.
+
+"Saw you with--uh--Major Holt's daughter," he observed again. "That's
+why I thought you were brass. Figured one or the other'd tell on Braun.
+You didn't, or somebody'd've raised Cain. But I'll handle it."
+
+Braun would be the man Haney had been fighting. If Haney wanted to
+handle it his way, it was naturally none of Joe's business. He said
+nothing.
+
+"Braun's a good guy," said Haney. "Crazy, that's all. He picked that
+fight. Picked it! Up there! Coulda been him knocked off--and I'd ha'
+been in a mess! I'll see him tonight."
+
+The midget said something biting in his peculiarly cracked and brittle
+voice.
+
+The bus rolled and rolled and rolled. It was a long twenty miles to
+Bootstrap. The desert outside the bus windows was utterly black and
+featureless, but once a convoy of trucks passed, going to the Shed.
+
+Presently, though, lights twinkled in the night. Again the bus slowed,
+in column with the others. Then there were barrackslike buildings,
+succeeding each other, and then there was a corner and suddenly the
+outside was ablaze with light. The busses drew up to the curb and
+stopped, and everybody was immediately in a great hurry to get out,
+shoving unnecessarily, and Joe let himself be carried along by the
+crowd.
+
+He found himself on the sidewalk with bright neon signs up and down the
+street. He was in the midst of the crowd which was the middle shift
+released. It eddied and dispersed without seeming to lessen. Most of the
+figures in sight were men. There were very, very few women. The neon
+signs proclaimed that here one could buy beer, and that this was Fred's
+Place, and that was Sid's Steak Joint. Bowling. Pool. A store--still
+open for this shift's trade--sold fancy shirts and strictly practical
+work clothes and highly eccentric items of personal adornment. A movie
+house. A second. A third. Somewhere a record shop fed repetitious music
+to the night air. There was movement and crowding and jostling, but the
+middle of the street was almost empty save for the busses. There were
+some bicycles, but practically no other wheeled traffic. After all,
+Bootstrap was strictly a security town. A man could leave whenever he
+chose, but there were formalities, and personal cars weren't practical.
+
+"Chief'll be yonder," said Haney in Joe's ear. "Come along."
+
+They shouldered their way along the sidewalk. The passers-by were of a
+type--construction men. Somebody here had taken part in the building of
+every skyscraper and bridge and dam put up in Joe's lifetime. They could
+have been kept away from the Space Platform job only by a flat refusal
+by security to let them be hired.
+
+Haney and Joe moved toward Sid's Steak Joint, with Mike the midget
+marching truculently between them. Men nodded to them as they passed.
+Joe marshaled in his mind what he was going to tell the Chief. He had a
+trick for fixing the pilot gyros. A speck of rust would spoil them, and
+they had been through a plane crash and a fire and explosions, but his
+trick would do, in ten days or less, what the plant back home had needed
+four months to accomplish. The trick was something to gloat over.
+
+Into Sid's Steak Joint. A juke box was playing. Over in a booth, four
+men ate hungrily, with a slot TV machine in the wall beside them showing
+wrestling matches out in San Francisco. A waiter carried a huge tray
+from which steam and fragrant odors arose.
+
+There was the Chief, dark and saturnine to look at, with his straight
+black hair gleaming in the light. He was a Mohawk, and he and his tribe
+had taken to steel construction work a long time back. They were good.
+There were not many big construction jobs on which the Chief's tribesmen
+were not to be found working. Forty of them had died together in the
+worst construction accident in history, when a bridge on its way to
+completion collapsed in the making, but there were a dozen or more at
+work on the Space Platform now. The Chief had essayed machine-tool work
+at the Kenmore plant, and he'd been good. He'd pitched on the plant
+baseball team, and he'd sung bass in the church choir, but there had
+been nobody else around who talked Indian, and he'd gotten lonely. At
+that, though, he'd left because the Space Platform began and wild horses
+couldn't have kept him away from a job like that!
+
+He'd held a table for Haney and Mike, but his eyes widened when he saw
+Joe. Then he grinned and almost upset the table to stand up and greet
+him.
+
+"Son-of-a-gun!" he said warmly. "What you doin' here?"
+
+"Right now," said Joe. "I'm looking for you. I've got a job for you."
+
+The Chief, still grinning, shook his head.
+
+"Not me, I'm here till the Platform's done."
+
+"It's on the job," said Joe. "I've got to get a crew together to repair
+something I brought out here today and that got smashed in the landing."
+
+The four of them sat down. Mike's chin was barely above the table top.
+The Chief waved to a waiter. "Steaks all around!" he bellowed. Then he
+bent toward Joe. "Shoot it!"
+
+Joe told his story. Concisely. The pilot gyros, which had to be perfect,
+had been especially gunned at by saboteurs. An attack with possibly
+stolen proximity-fused rockets. The plane was booby-trapped, and
+somebody at an airfield had had a chance to spring the trap. So it was
+wreckage. Crashed and burned on landing.
+
+The Chief growled. Haney pressed his lips together. The eyes of Mike
+were burning.
+
+"Plenty of that sabotage stuff," growled the Chief. "Hard to catch the
+so-and-sos. Smash the gyros and the take-off'd have to wait till new
+ones got made--and that's more time for more sabotage."
+
+Joe said carefully: "I think it can be licked. Listen a minute, will
+you?"
+
+The Chief fixed his eyes upon him.
+
+"The gyros have to be rebalanced," said Joe. "They have to spin on their
+own center of gravity. At the plant, they set them up, spun them, and
+found which side was heavy. They took metal off till it ran smoothly at
+five hundred r.p.m. Then they spun it at a thousand. It vibrated. They
+found imbalance that was too small to show up before. They fixed that.
+They speeded it up. And so on. They tried to make the center of gravity
+the center of the shaft by trimming off the weight that put the center
+of gravity somewhere else. Right?"
+
+The Chief said irritably: "No other way to do it! No other way!"
+
+"I saw one," said Joe. "When they cleaned up the wreck at the airfield,
+they heaved up the crates with a crane. The slings were twisted. Every
+crate spun as it rose. But not one wobbled! They found their own centers
+of gravity and spun around them!"
+
+The Chief scowled, deep in thought. Then his face went blank.
+
+"By the holy mud turtle!" he grunted. "I get it!"
+
+Joe said, with very great pains not to seem triumphant, "Instead of
+spinning the shaft and trimming the rotor, we'll spin the rotor and trim
+the shaft. We'll form the shaft around the center of gravity, instead of
+trying to move the center of gravity to the middle of the shaft. We'll
+spin the rotors on a flexible bearing base. I think it'll work."
+
+Surprisingly, it was Mike the midget who said warmly, "You got it! Yes,
+sir, you got it!"
+
+The Chief took a deep breath. "Yeah! And d'you know how I know? The
+Plant built a high-speed centrifuge once. Remember?" He grinned with the
+triumph Joe concealed. "It was just a plate with a shaft in the middle.
+There were vanes on the plate. It fitted in a shaft hole that was much
+too big. They blew compressed air up the shaft hole. It floated the
+plate up, the air hit the vanes and spun the plate--and it ran as sweet
+as honey! Balanced itself and didn't wobble a bit! We'll do something
+like that! Sure!"
+
+"Will you work on it with me?" asked Joe. "We'll need a sort of
+crew--three or four altogether. Have to figure out the stuff we need. I
+can ask for anybody I want. I'm asking for you. You pick the others."
+
+The Chief grinned broadly. "Any objections, Haney? You and Mike and me
+and Joe here? Look!"
+
+He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. He started to draw on the plastic
+table top, and then took a paper napkin instead.
+
+"Something like this----"
+
+The steaks came, sizzling on the platters they'd been cooked in. The
+outside was seared, and the inside was hot and deliciously rare.
+Intellectual exercises like the designing of a machine-tool operation
+could not compete with such aromas and sights and sounds. The four of
+them fell to.
+
+But they talked as they ate. Absorbed and often with their mouths full,
+frequently with imperfect articulation, but with deepening satisfaction
+as the steaks vanished and the method they'd use took form in their
+minds. It wouldn't be wholly simple, of course. When the rotors were
+spinning about their centers of gravity, trimming off the shaft would
+change the center of gravity. But the change would be infinitely less
+than trimming off the rotors' rims. If they spun the rotors and used an
+abrasive on the high side of the shaft as it turned....
+
+"Going to have precession!" warned Mike. "Have to have a polishing
+surface. Quarter turn behind the cutter. That'll hold it."
+
+Joe only remembered afterward to be astonished that Mike would know gyro
+theory. At the moment he merely swallowed quickly to get the words out.
+
+"Right! And if we cut too far down we can plate the bearing up to
+thickness and cut it down again----"
+
+"Plate it up with iridium," said the Chief. He waved a steak knife.
+"Man! This is gonna be fun! No tolerance you say, Joe?"
+
+"No tolerance," agreed Joe. "Accurate within the limits of measurement."
+
+The Chief beamed. The Platform was a challenge to all of humanity. The
+pilot gyro was essential to the functioning of the Platform. To provide
+that necessity against impossible obstacles was a challenge to the four
+who were undertaking it.
+
+"Some fun!" repeated the Chief, blissfully.
+
+They ate their steaks, talking. They consumed huge slabs of apple pie
+with preposterous mounds of ice cream on top, still talking urgently.
+They drank coffee, interrupting each other to draw diagrams. They used
+up all the paper napkins, and were still at it when someone came heavily
+toward the table. It was the stocky man who had fought with Haney on the
+Platform that day. Braun.
+
+He tapped Haney on the shoulder. The four at the table looked up.
+
+"We hadda fight today," said Braun in a queer voice. He was oddly pale.
+"We didn't finish. You wanna finish?"
+
+Haney growled.
+
+"That was a fool business," he said angrily. "That ain't any place to
+fight, up on the job! You know it!"
+
+"Yeah," said Braun in the same odd voice. "You wanna finish it now?"
+
+Haney said formidably: "I'm not dodgin' any fight. I didn't dodge it
+then. I'm not dodgin' it now. You picked it. It was crazy! But if you
+got over the craziness----"
+
+Braun smiled a remarkably peculiar smile. "I'm still crazy. We finish,
+huh?"
+
+Haney pushed back his chair and stood up grimly. "Okay, we finish it!
+You coulda killed me. I coulda killed you too, with that fall ready for
+either of us."
+
+"Sure! Too bad nobody got killed," said Braun.
+
+"You fellas wait," said Haney angrily to Joe and the rest. "There's a
+storeroom out back. Sid'll let us use it."
+
+But the Chief pushed back his chair.
+
+"Uh-uh," he said, shaking his head. "We're watchin' this."
+
+Haney spoke with elaborate courtesy: "You mind, Braun? Want to get some
+friends of yours, too?"
+
+"I got no friends," said Braun. "Let's go."
+
+The Chief went authoritatively to the owner of Sid's Steak Joint. He
+paid the bill, talking. The owner of the place negligently jerked his
+thumb toward the rear. This was not an unparalleled request--for the use
+of a storeroom so that two men could batter each other undisturbed.
+Bootstrap was a law-abiding town, because to get fired from work on the
+Platform was to lose a place in the most important job in history. So it
+was inevitable that the settlement of quarrels in private should become
+commonplace.
+
+The Chief leading, they filed through the kitchen and out of doors. The
+storeroom lay beyond. The Chief went in and switched on the light. He
+looked about and was satisfied. It was almost empty, save for stacked
+cartons in one corner. Braun was already taking off his coat.
+
+"You want rounds and stuff?" demanded the Chief.
+
+"I want fight," said Braun thickly.
+
+"Okay, then," snapped the Chief. "No kickin' or gougin'. A man's down,
+he has a chance to get up. That's all the rules. Right?"
+
+Haney, stripping off his coat in turn, grunted an assent. He handed his
+coat to Joe. He faced his antagonist.
+
+It was a curious atmosphere for a fight. There were merely the plank
+walls of the storeroom with a single dangling light in the middle and an
+unswept floor beneath. The Chief stood in the doorway, scowling. This
+didn't feel right. There was not enough hatred in evidence to justify
+it. There was doggedness and resolution enough, but Braun was deathly
+white and if his face was contorted--and it was--it was not with the
+lust to batter and injure and maim. It was something else.
+
+The two men faced each other. And then the stocky, swarthy Braun swung
+at Haney. The blow had sting in it but nothing more. It almost looked as
+if Braun were trying to work himself up to the fight he'd insisted on
+finishing. Haney countered with a roundhouse blow that glanced off
+Braun's cheek. And then they bore in at each other, slugging without
+science or skill.
+
+Joe watched. Braun launched a blow that hurt, but Haney sent him reeling
+back. He came in doggedly again, and swung and swung, but he had no idea
+of boxing. His only idea was to slug. He did slug. Haney had been
+peevish rather than angry. Now he began to glower. He began to take the
+fight to Braun.
+
+He knocked Braun down. Braun staggered up and rushed. A wildly flailing
+fist landed on Haney's ear. He doubled Braun up with a wallop to the
+midsection. Braun came back, fists swinging.
+
+Haney closed one eye for him. He came back. Haney shook him from head to
+foot with a chest blow. He came back. Haney split his lip and loosened a
+tooth. He came back.
+
+The Chief said sourly: "This ain't a fight. Quit it, Haney! He don't
+know how!"
+
+Haney tried to draw away, but Braun swarmed on him, striking fiercely
+until Haney had to floor him again. He dragged himself up and rushed at
+Haney--and was knocked down again. Haney stood over him, panting
+furiously.
+
+"Quit it, y'fool! What's the matter with you?"
+
+Braun started to get up again. The Chief interfered and held him, while
+Haney glared.
+
+"He ain't going to fight any more, Braun," pronounced the Chief firmly.
+"You ain't got a chance. This fight's over. You had enough."
+
+Braun was bloody and horribly battered, but he panted: "He's got
+enough?"
+
+"Are you out o' your head?" demanded the Chief. "He ain't got a mark on
+him!"
+
+"I ain't--got enough," panted Braun, "till he's got--enough!"
+
+His breath was coming in soblike gasps, the result of body blows. It
+hadn't been a fight but a beating, administered by Haney. But Braun
+struggled to get up.
+
+Mike the midget said brittlely: "You got enough, Haney. You're
+satisfied. Tell him so."
+
+"Sure I'm satisfied," snorted Haney. "I don't want to hit him any more.
+I got enough of that!"
+
+Braun panted: "Okay! Okay!"
+
+The Chief let him get to his feet. He went groggily to his coat. He
+tried to put himself into it. Mike caught Joe's eye and nodded
+meaningfully. Joe helped Braun into the coat. There was silence, save
+for Braun's heavy, labored breathing.
+
+He moved unsteadily toward the door. Then he stopped.
+
+"Haney," he said effortfully, "I don't say I'm sorry for fighting you
+today. I fight first. But now I say I am sorry. You are good guy, Haney.
+I was crazy. I--got reason."
+
+He stumbled out of the door and was gone. The four who were left behind
+stared at each other.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" demanded Haney blankly.
+
+"He's nuts," said the Chief. "If he was gonna apologize----"
+
+Mike shook his head.
+
+"He wouldn't apologize," he said brittlely, "because he thought you
+might think he was scared. But when he'd proved he wasn't scared of a
+beating--then he could say he was sorry." He paused. "I've seen guys I
+liked a lot less than him."
+
+Haney put on his coat, frowning.
+
+"I don't get it," he rumbled. "Next time I see him----"
+
+"You won't," snapped Mike. "None of us will. I'll bet on it."
+
+But he was wrong. The others went out of the storeroom and back into
+Sid's Steak Joint, and the Chief politely thanked the proprietor for the
+loan of his storeroom for a private fight. Then they went out into the
+neon-lighted business street of Bootstrap.
+
+"What do we do now?" asked Joe.
+
+"Where you sleeping?" asked the Chief hospitably. "I can get you a room
+at my place."
+
+"I'm staying out at the Shed," Joe told him awkwardly. "My family's
+known Major Holt a long time. I'm staying at his house behind the Shed."
+
+Haney raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
+
+"Better get out there then," said the Chief. "It's midnight, and they
+might want to lock up. There's your bus."
+
+A lighted bus was waiting by the curb. Its doors were open, but it was
+empty of passengers. Single busses ran out to the Shed now and then, but
+they ran in fleets at shift-change time. Joe went over and climbed
+aboard the bus.
+
+"We'll turn up early," said the Chief. "This won't be a shift job. We'll
+look things over and lay out what we want and then get to work, eh?"
+
+"Right," said Joe. "And thanks."
+
+"We'll be there with our hair in braids," said Mike, in his cracked
+voice. "Now a glass of beer and so to bed. 'Night."
+
+Haney waved his hand. The three of them marched off, the two huge
+figures of Haney and the Chief, with Mike trotting truculently between
+them, hardly taller than their knees. They were curiously colorful with
+all the many-tinted neon signs upon them. They turned into a diner.
+
+Joe sat in the bus, alone. The driver was off somewhere. The sounds of
+Bootstrap were distinctive by night. Footsteps, and the jangling of
+bicycle bells, and voices, and a radio blaring somewhere and a
+record-shop loud-speaker somewhere else, and a sort of underriding noise
+of festivity.
+
+There was a sharp rap on the glass by Joe's window. He started and
+looked out. Braun--battered, and bleeding from the corner of his
+mouth--motioned urgently for him to come to the door of the bus. Joe
+went.
+
+Braun stared up at him in a new fashion. Now he was neither dogged nor
+fierce nor desperate to look at. Despite the beating he'd taken, he
+seemed completely and somehow frighteningly tranquil. He looked like
+somebody who has come to the end of torment and is past any feeling but
+that of relief from suffering.
+
+"You--" said Braun. "That girl you were with today. Her pop is Major
+Holt, eh?"
+
+Joe frowned, and reservedly said that he was.
+
+"You tell her pop," said Braun detachedly, "this is hot tip. Hot tip.
+Look two kilometers north of Shed tomorrow. He find something bad. Hot!
+You tell him. Two kilometers."
+
+"Y-yes," said Joe, his frown increasing. "But look here----"
+
+"Be sure say hot," repeated Braun.
+
+Rather incredibly, he smiled. Then he turned and walked quickly away.
+
+Joe went back to his seat in the empty bus, and sat there and waited for
+it to start, and tried to figure out what the message meant. Since it
+was for Major Holt, it had something to do with security. And security
+meant defense against sabotage. And "hot" might mean merely
+_significant_, or--in these days--it might mean _something else_. In
+fact, it might mean something to make your hair stand on end when
+thought of in connection with the Space Platform.
+
+Joe waited for the bus to take off. He became convinced that Braun's use
+of the word "hot" did not mean merely "significant." The other meaning
+was what he had in mind.
+
+Joe's teeth tried to chatter.
+
+He didn't let them.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+Major Holt wasn't to be found when Joe got out to the Shed. And he
+wasn't in the house in the officers'-quarters area behind it. There was
+only the housekeeper, who yawned pointedly as she let Joe in. Sally was
+presumably long since asleep. And Joe didn't know any way to get hold of
+the Major. He assured himself that Braun was a good guy--if he weren't
+he wouldn't have insisted on taking a licking before he apologized--and
+he hadn't said there was any hurry. Tomorrow, he'd said. So Joe uneasily
+let himself be led to a room with a cot, and he was asleep in what
+seemed seconds. But just the same he was badly worried.
+
+In fact, next morning Joe woke at a practically unearthly hour with
+Braun's message pounding on his brain. He was downstairs waiting when
+the housekeeper appeared. She looked startled.
+
+"Major Holt?" he asked.
+
+But the Major was gone. He must have done with no more than three or
+four hours' sleep. There was an empty coffee cup whose contents he'd
+gulped down before going back to the security office.
+
+Joe trudged to the barbed-wire enclosure around the officers'-quarters
+area and explained to the sentry where he wanted to go. A sleepy driver
+whisked him around the half-mile circle to the security building and he
+found his way to Major Holt's office.
+
+The plain and gloomy secretary was already on the job, too. She led him
+in to face Major Holt. He blinked at the sight of Joe.
+
+"Hm.... I have some news," he observed. "We back-tracked the parcel that
+exploded when it was dumped from the plane."
+
+Joe had almost forgotten it. Too many other things had happened since.
+
+"We've got two very likely prisoners out of that affair," said the
+Major. "They may talk. Also, an emergency inspection of other transport
+planes has turned up three other grenades tucked away in front-wheel
+wells. Ah--CO_2 bottles have turned out to have something explosive in
+them. A very nice bit of work, that! The sandy-haired man who fueled
+your plane--ah--disappeared. That is bad!"
+
+Joe said politely: "That's fine, sir."
+
+"All in all, you've been the occasion of our forestalling a good deal of
+sabotage," said the Major. "Bad for you, of course.... Did you find the
+men you were looking for?"
+
+"I've found them, but--."
+
+"I'll have them transferred to work under your direction," said the
+Major briskly. "Their names?"
+
+Joe gave the names. The Major wrote them down.
+
+"Very good. I'm busy now----"
+
+"I've a tip for you," said Joe. "I think it should be checked right
+away. I don't feel too good about it."
+
+The Major waited impatiently. And Joe explained, very carefully, about
+the fight on the Platform the day before, Braun's insistence on
+finishing the fight in Bootstrap, and then the tip he'd given Joe after
+everything was over. He repeated the message exactly, word for word.
+
+The Major, to do him justice, did not interrupt. He listened with an
+expression that varied between grimness and weariness. When Joe ended he
+picked up a telephone. He talked briefly. Joe felt a reluctant sort of
+approval. Major Holt was not a man one could ever feel very close to,
+and the work he was in charge of was not likely to make him popular, but
+he did think straight--and fast. He didn't think "hot" meant
+"significant," either. When he'd hung up the phone he said curtly: "When
+will your work crew get here?"
+
+"Early--but not yet," said Joe. "Not for some time yet."
+
+"Go with the pilot," said the Major. "You'd recognize what Braun meant
+as soon as anybody. See what you see."
+
+Joe stood up.
+
+"You--think the tip is straight?"
+
+"This isn't the first time," said Major Holt detachedly, "that a man has
+been blackmailed into trying sabotage. If he's got a family somewhere
+abroad, and they're threatened with death or torture unless he does
+such-and-such here, he's in a bad fix. It's happened. Of course he can't
+tell me! He's watched. But he sometimes finds an out."
+
+Joe was puzzled. His face showed it.
+
+"He can try to do the sabotage," said the Major precisely, "or he can
+arrange to be caught trying to do it. If he's caught--he tried; and the
+blackmail threat is no threat at all so long as he keeps his mouth shut.
+Which he does. And--ah--you would be surprised how often a man who
+wasn't born in the United States would rather go to prison for sabotage
+than commit it--here."
+
+Joe blinked.
+
+"If your friend Braun is caught," said the Major, "he will be punished.
+Severely. Officially. But privately, someone will--ah--mention this tip
+and say 'thanks.' And he'll be told that he will be released from prison
+just as soon as he thinks it's safe. And he will be. That's all."
+
+He turned to his papers. Joe went out. On the way to meet the pilot
+who'd check on his tip, he thought things over. He began to feel a sort
+of formless but very definite pride. He wasn't quite sure what he was
+proud of, but it had something to do with being part of a country toward
+which men of wholly different upbringing could feel deep loyalty. If a
+man who was threatened unless he turned traitor, a man who might not
+even be a citizen, arranged to be caught and punished for an apparent
+crime against a country rather than commit it--that wasn't bad. There
+can be a lot of things wrong with a nation, but if somebody from another
+one entirely can come to feel that kind of loyalty toward it--well--it's
+not too bad a country to belong to.
+
+Joe had a security guard with him this time, instead of Sally, as he
+went across the vast, arc-lit interior of the Shed and past the
+shimmering growing monster that was the Platform. He went all the way to
+the great swinging doors that let in materials trucks. And there were
+guards there, and they checked each driver very carefully before they
+admitted his truck. But somehow it wasn't irritating. It wasn't scornful
+suspicion. There'd be snide and snappy characters in the Security force,
+of course, swaggering and throwing their weight about. But even they
+were guarding something that men--some men--were willing to throw away
+their lives for.
+
+Joe and his guard reached one of the huge entrances as a ten-wheeler
+truck came in with a load of shining metal plates. Joe's escort went
+through the opening with him and they waited outside. The sun had barely
+risen. It looked huge but very far away, and Joe suddenly realized why
+just this spot had been chosen for the building of the Platform.
+
+The ground was flat. All the way to the eastern horizon there wasn't
+even a minor hillock rising above the plain. It was bare, arid,
+sun-scorched desert. It was featureless save for sage and mesquite and
+tall thin stalks of yucca. But it was flat. It could be a runway. It was
+a perfect place for the Platform to start from. The Platform shouldn't
+touch ground at all, after it was out of the Shed, but at least it
+wouldn't run into any obstacles on its way toward the horizon.
+
+A light plane came careening around the great curved outer surface of
+the Shed. It landed and taxied up to the door. It swung smartly around
+and its side door opened. A bandaged hand waved at Joe. He climbed in.
+The pilot of this light, flimsy plane was the co-pilot of the transport
+of yesterday. He was the man Joe had helped to dump cargo.
+
+Joe climbed in and settled himself. The small motor pop-popped
+valiantly, the plane rushed forward over hard-packed desert earth, and
+went swaying up into the air.
+
+The co-pilot--pilot now--shouted cheerfully above the din: "Hiya. You
+couldn't sleep either? Burns hurt?"
+
+Joe shook his head.
+
+"Bothered," he shouted in reply. Then he added, "Do I do something to
+help, or am I along just for the ride?"
+
+"First we take a look," the pilot called over the motor racket. "Two
+kilometers due north of the Shed, eh?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"We'll see what's there," the pilot told him.
+
+The small plane went up and up. At five hundred feet--nearly level with
+the roof of the Shed--it swung away and began to make seemingly erratic
+dartings out over the spotty desert land, and then back. Actually, it
+was a search pattern. Joe looked down from his side of the small
+cockpit. This was a very small plane indeed, and in consequence its
+motor made much more noise inside its cabin than much more powerful
+engines in bigger ships.
+
+"Those burns I got," shouted the pilot, staring down, "kept me awake. So
+I got up and was just walking around when the call came for somebody to
+drive one of these things. I took over."
+
+Back and forth, and back and forth. From five hundred feet in the early
+morning the desert had a curious appearance. The plane was low enough
+for each smallest natural feature to be visible, and it was early enough
+for every shrub or hummock to cast a long, slender shadow. The ground
+looked streaked, but all the streaks ran the same way, and all were
+shadows.
+
+Joe shouted: "What's that?"
+
+The plane banked at a steep angle and ran back. It banked again. The
+pilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a button. There
+was a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw a
+puff of smoke in the air.
+
+The pilot shouted: "It's a man. He looks dead."
+
+He swung directly over the small prone object and there was a second
+puff of smoke.
+
+"They've got range finders on us from the Shed," he called across the
+two-foot space separating him from Joe. "This marks the spot. Now we'll
+see if there's anything to the hot part of that tip."
+
+He reached over behind his seat and brought out a stubby pole like a
+fishpole with a very large reel. There was also a headset, and something
+very much like a large aluminum fish on the end of the line.
+
+"You know Geiger counters?" called the pilot. "Stick on these headphones
+and listen!"
+
+Joe slipped on the headset. The pilot threw a switch and Joe heard
+clickings. They had no pattern and no fixed frequency. They were
+clickings at strictly random intervals, but there was an average
+frequency, at that.
+
+"Let the counter out the window," called the pilot, "and listen. Tell me
+if the noise goes up."
+
+Joe obeyed. The aluminum fish dangled. The line slanted astern from the
+wind. It made a curve between the pole and the aluminum plummet, which
+was hollow in the direction of the plane's motion. The pilot squinted
+down and began to swing in a wide circle around the spot where an
+apparently dead man had been sighted, and above which puffs of smoke now
+floated.
+
+Three-quarters of the way around, the random clickings suddenly became a
+roar.
+
+Joe said: "Hey!"
+
+The pilot swung the plane about and flew back. He pointed to the button
+he'd pushed.
+
+"Poke that when you hear it again."
+
+The clickings.... They roared. Joe pushed the button. He felt the tiny
+impact.
+
+"Once more," said the pilot.
+
+He swung in nearer where the dead man lay. Joe had a sickening idea of
+who the dead man might be. A sudden rush of noise in the headphones and
+he pushed the button again.
+
+"Reel in now!" shouted the pilot. "Our job's done."
+
+Joe reeled in as the plane winged steadily back toward the Shed. There
+were puffs of smoke floating in the air behind. They had been ranged on
+at the instant they appeared. Somebody back at the Shed knew that
+something that needed to be investigated was at a certain spot, and the
+two later puffs of smoke had said that radioactivity was notable in the
+air along the line the two puffs made. Not much more information would
+be needed. The meaning of Braun's warning that his tip was "hot" was
+definite. It was "hot" in the sense that it dealt with radioactivity!
+
+The plane dipped down and landed by the great doors again. It taxied up
+and the pilot killed the motor.
+
+"We've been using Geigers for months," he said pleasedly, "and never got
+a sign before. This is one time we were set for something."
+
+"What?" asked Joe. But he knew.
+
+"Atomic dust is one good guess," the pilot told him. "It was talked of
+as a possible weapon away back in the Smyth Report. Nobody's ever tried
+it. We thought it might be tried against the Platform. If somebody
+managed to spread some really hot radioactive dust around the Shed, all
+three shifts might get fatally burned before it was noticed. _They'd_
+think so, anyhow! But the guy who was supposed to dump it opened up the
+can for a look. And it killed him."
+
+He climbed out of the plane and went to the doorway. He took a telephone
+from a guard and talked crisply into it. He hung up.
+
+"Somebody coming for you," he said amiably. "Wait here. Be seeing you."
+
+He went out, the motor kicked over and caught, and the tiny plane raced
+away. Seconds later it was aloft and winging southward.
+
+Joe waited. Presently a door opened and something came clanking out. It
+was a tractor with surprisingly heavy armor. There were men in it, also
+wearing armor of a peculiar sort, which they were still adjusting. The
+tractor towed a half-track platform on which there were a crane and a
+very considerable lead-coated bin with a top. It went briskly off into
+the distance toward the north.
+
+Joe was amazed, but comprehending. The vehicle and the men were armored
+against radioactivity. They would approach the dead man from upwind, and
+they would scoop up his body and put it in the lead-lined bin, and with
+it all deadly radioactive material near him. This was the equipment that
+must have been used to handle the dud atom bomb some months back. It had
+been ready for that. It was ready for this emergency. Somebody had tried
+to think of every imaginable situation that could arise in connection
+with the Platform.
+
+But in a moment a guard came for Joe and took him to where the Chief and
+Haney and Mike waited by the still incompletely-pulled-away crates. They
+had some new ideas about the job on hand that were better than the
+original ones in some details. All four of them set to work to make a
+careful survey of damage--of parts that would have to be replaced and of
+those that needed to be repaired. The discoveries they made would have
+appalled Joe earlier. Now he merely made notes of parts necessary to be
+replaced by new ones that could be had within the repair time for
+rebalancing the rotors.
+
+"This is sure a mess," said Haney mournfully, as they worked. "It's two
+days just getting things cleaned up!"
+
+The Chief eyed the rotors. There were two of them, great four-foot disks
+with extraordinary short and stubby shafts that were brought to
+beautifully polished conical ends to fit in the bearings. The bearings
+were hollowed to fit the shaft ends, but they were intricately scored to
+form oil channels. In operation, a very special silicone oil would be
+pumped into the bearings under high pressure. Distributed by the
+channels, the oil would form a film that by its pressure would hold the
+cone end of the bearing away from actual contact with the metal. The
+rotors, in fact, would be floated in oil just as the high-speed
+centrifuge the Chief had mentioned had floated on compressed air. But
+they had to be perfectly balanced, because any imbalance would make the
+shaft pierce the oil film and touch the metal of the bearing--and when a
+shaft is turning at 40,000 r.p.m. it is not good for it to touch
+anything. Shaft and bearing would burn white-hot in fractions of a
+second and there would be several devils to pay.
+
+"We've got to spin it in a lathe," said the Chief profoundly, "to hold
+the chucks. The chucks have got to be these same bearings, because
+nothing else will stand the speed. And we got to cut out the bed plate
+of any lathe we find. Hm. We got to do our spinning with the shaft lined
+up with the earth's axis, too."
+
+Mike nodded wisely, and Joe knew he'd pointed that out. It was true
+enough. A high-speed gyro could only be run for minutes in one single
+direction if its mount were fixed. If a precisely mounted gyro had its
+shaft pointed at the sun, for example, while it ran, its axis would try
+to follow the sun. It would try not to turn with the earth, and it would
+wreck itself. They had to use the cone bearings, but in order to protect
+the fine channellings for oil they'd have to use cone-shaped shims at
+the beginning while running at low speed. The cone ends of the shaft
+would need new machining to line them up. The bearings had to be fixed,
+yet flexible. The----
+
+They had used many paper napkins the night before, merely envisioning
+these details. New problems turned up as the apparatus itself was being
+uncovered and cleaned.
+
+They worked for hours, clearing away soot and charred material. Joe's
+list of small parts to be replaced from the home plant was as long as
+his arm. The motors, of course, had to be scrapped and new ones
+substituted. Considering their speed--the field strength at operating
+rate was almost imperceptible--they had to be built new, which would
+mean round-the-clock work at Kenmore.
+
+A messenger came for Joe. The security office wanted him. Major Holt's
+gloomy secretary did not even glance up as he entered. Major Holt
+himself looked tired.
+
+"There was a man out there," he said curtly. "I think it is your friend
+Braun. I'll get you to look and identify."
+
+Joe had suspected as much. He waited.
+
+"He'd opened a container of cobalt powder. It was in a beryllium case.
+There was half a pound of it. It killed him."
+
+"Radioactive cobalt," said Joe.
+
+"Definitely," said the Major grimly. "Half a pound of it gives off the
+radiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium. One can guess that he
+had been instructed to get up as high as he could in the Shed and dump
+the powder into the air. It would diffuse--scatter as it sifted down. It
+would have contaminated the whole Shed past all use for years--let alone
+killing everybody in it."
+
+Joe swallowed.
+
+"He was burned, then."
+
+"He had the equivalent of two hundred and fifty pounds of radium within
+inches of his body," the Major said unbendingly, "and naturally it was
+not healthy. For that matter, the container itself was not adequate
+protection for him. Once he'd carried it in his pocket for a very few
+minutes, he was a dead man, even though he was not conscious of the
+fact."
+
+Joe knew what was wanted of him.
+
+"You want me to look at him," he said.
+
+The Major nodded.
+
+"Yes. Afterward, get a radiation check on yourself. It is hardly likely
+that he was--ah--carrying the stuff with him last night, in Bootstrap.
+But if he was--ah--you may need some precautionary treatment--you and
+the men who were with you."
+
+Joe realized what that meant. Braun had been given a relatively small
+container of the deadliest available radioactive material on Earth.
+Milligrams of it, shipped from Oak Ridge for scientific use, were
+encased in thick lead chests. He'd carried two hundred and fifty grams
+in a container he could put in his pocket. He was not only dead as he
+walked, under such circumstances. He was also death to those who walked
+near him.
+
+"Somebody else may have been burned in any case," said the Major
+detachedly. "I am going to issue a radioactivity alarm and check every
+man in Bootstrap for burns. It is--ah--very likely that the man who
+delivered it to this man is burned, too. But you will not mention this,
+of course."
+
+He waved his hand in dismissal. Joe turned to go. The Major added
+grimly: "By the way, there is no doubt about the booby-trapping of
+planes. We've found eight, so far, ready to be crashed when a string was
+pulled while they were serviced. But the men who did the booby-trapping
+have vanished. They disappeared suddenly during last night. They were
+warned! Have you talked to anybody?"
+
+"No sir," said Joe.
+
+"I would like to know," said the Major coldly, "how they knew we'd found
+out their trick!"
+
+Joe went out. He felt very cold at the pit of his stomach. He was to
+identify Braun. Then he was to get a radiation check on himself. In that
+order of events. He was to identify Braun first, because if Braun had
+carried a half-pound of radioactive cobalt on him in Sid's Steak Joint
+the night before, Joe was going to die. And so were Haney and the Chief
+and Mike, and anybody else who'd passed near him. So Joe was to do the
+identification before he was disturbed by the information that he was
+dead.
+
+He made the identification. Braun was very decently laid out in a
+lead-lined box, with a lead-glass window over his face. There was no
+sign of any injury on him except from his fight with Haney. The
+radiation burns were deep, but they'd left no marks of their own. He'd
+died before outer symptoms could occur.
+
+Joe signed the identification certificate. He went to be checked for his
+own chances of life. It was a peculiar sensation. The most peculiar was
+that he wasn't afraid. He was neither confident that he was not burned
+inside, nor sure that he was. He simply was not afraid. Nobody really
+ever believes that he is going to die--in the sense of ceasing to exist.
+The most arrant coward, stood before a wall to be shot, or strapped in
+an electric chair, finds that astoundingly he does not believe that what
+happens to his body is going to kill him, the individual. That is why a
+great many people die with reasonable dignity. They know it is not worth
+making too much of a fuss over.
+
+But when the Geiger counters had gone over him from head to foot, and
+his body temperature was normal, and his reflexes sound--when he was
+assured that he had not been exposed to dangerous radiation--Joe felt
+distinctly weak in the knees. And that was natural, too.
+
+He went trudging back to the wrecked gyros. His friends were gone,
+leaving a scrawled memo for him. They had gone to pick out the machine
+tools for the work at hand.
+
+He continued to check over the wreckage, thinking with a detached
+compassion of that poor devil Braun who was the victim of men who hated
+the idea of the Space Platform and what it would mean to humanity. Men
+of that kind thought of themselves as superior to humanity, and of human
+beings as creatures to be enslaved. So they arranged for planes to crash
+and burn and for men to be murdered, and they practiced blackmail--or
+rewarded those who practiced it for them. They wanted to prevent the
+Platform from existing because it would keep them from trying to pull
+the world down in ruins so they could rule over the wreckage.
+
+Joe--who had so recently thought it likely that he would die--considered
+these actions with an icy dislike that was much deeper than anger. It
+was backed by everything he believed in, everything he had ever wanted,
+and everything he hoped for. And anger could cool off, but the way he
+felt about people who would destroy others for their own purposes could
+not cool off. It was part of him. He thought about it as he worked, with
+all the noises of the Shed singing in his ears.
+
+A voice said: "Joe."
+
+He started and turned. Sally stood behind him, looking at him very
+gravely. She tried to smile.
+
+"Dad told me," she said, "about the check-up that says you're all right.
+May I congratulate you on your being with us for a while?--on the
+cobalt's not getting near you?--or the rest of us?"
+
+Joe did not know exactly what to say.
+
+"I'm going inside the Platform," she told him. "Would you like to come
+along?"
+
+He wiped his hands on a piece of waste.
+
+"Naturally! My gang is off picking out tools. I can't do much until they
+come back."
+
+He fell into step beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it
+was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge
+beyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size.
+Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it.
+There was always a faint bluish mist in the air, and there were the
+marsh-fire lights of welding torches playing here and there. The sounds
+of the Shed were a steady small tumult in Joe's ears. He was getting
+accustomed to them, though.
+
+"How is it you can go around so freely?" he asked abruptly. "I have to
+be checked and rechecked."
+
+"You'll get a full clearance," she told him. "It has to go through
+channels. Me--I have influence. I always come in through security, and I
+have the door guards trained. And I do have business in the Platform."
+
+He turned his head to look at her.
+
+"Interior decoration," she explained. "And don't laugh! It isn't
+prettifying. It's psychology. The Platform was designed by engineers and
+physicists and people with slide rules. They made a beautiful
+environment for machinery. But there will be men living in it, and they
+aren't machines."
+
+"I don't see----"
+
+"They designed the hydroponic garden," said Sally with a certain scorn.
+"They calculated very neatly that eleven square feet of leaf surface of
+a pumpkin plant will purify all the air a resting man uses, and so much
+more will purify the air a man uses when he's working hard. So they
+designed the gardens for the most efficient production of the greatest
+possible leaf surface--of pumpkin plants! They figured food would be
+brought up by the tender rockets! But can you imagine the men in the
+Platform, floating among the stars, living on dehydrated food and
+stuffing themselves hungrily with pumpkins because that is the only
+fresh food they have?"
+
+Joe saw the irony.
+
+"They're thinking of mechanical efficiency," said Sally indignantly. "I
+don't know anything about machinery, but I've wasted an awful lot of
+time at school and otherwise if I don't know something about human
+beings! I argued, and the garden now isn't as mechanically efficient,
+but it'll be a nice place for a man to go into. He won't smell pumpkin
+plants all the time, either. I've even gotten them to include some
+flowers!"
+
+They were very near the Platform. And it was very near to completion.
+Joe looked at it hungrily, and he felt a great sense of urgency. He
+tried to strip away the scaffolding in his mind and see it floating
+proudly free in emptiness, with white-hot sunshine glinting from it, and
+only a background of unwinking stars.
+
+Sally's voice went on: "And I've really put up an argument about the
+living quarters. They had every interior wall painted aluminum! I argued
+that in space or out of it, where people have to live, it's
+housekeeping. This is going to be their home. And they ought to feel
+human in it!"
+
+They passed into one of the openings in the maze of uprights. All about
+them there were trucks, and puffing engines, and hoists. Joe dragged
+Sally aside as a monstrous truck-and-trailer came from where it had
+delivered some gigantic item of interior use. It rumbled past them, and
+she led the way to a flight of temporary wooden stairs with two security
+guards at the bottom. Sally talked severely to them, and they grinned
+and waved for Joe to go ahead. He went up the steps--which would be
+pulled down before the Platform's launching--and went actually inside
+the Space Platform for the first time.
+
+It was a moment of extreme vividness for him. Within the past hour he'd
+come to think detachedly of the possibility of death for himself, and
+then had learned that he would live for a while yet. He knew that Sally
+had been scared on his account, and that her matter-of-fact manner was
+partly assumed. She was at least as much wrought up as he was.
+
+And this was the first time he was going into what would be the first
+space ship ever to leave the Earth on a non-return journey.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+Nobody could have gone through the changes of emotion Joe had
+experienced that morning and remained quite matter-of-fact. Seeing a
+dead man who had more or less deliberately killed himself so that he
+wouldn't have to kill Joe--for one--had its effect. Knowing that it was
+certainly possible the man hadn't killed himself in time had another.
+Being checked over for radiation burns which would mean that he'd die
+quite comfortably within three or four days, and then learning that no
+burns existed, was something of an ordeal. And Sally--of course her
+feelings shouldn't have been as vivid as his own, but the fact that
+she'd been scared for him held some significance. When, on top of all
+the rest, he went into the Space Platform for the first time, Joe was
+definitely keyed up.
+
+But he talked technology. He examined the inner skin and its lining
+before going beyond the temporary entrance. The plating of the Platform
+was actually double. The outer layer was a meteor-bumper against which
+particles of cosmic dust would strike and explode without damage to the
+inner skin. They could even penetrate it without causing a leak of air.
+Inside the inner skin there was a layer of glass wool for heat
+insulation. Inside the glass wool was a layer of material serving
+exactly the function of the coating of a bulletproof gasoline tank. No
+meteor under a quarter-inch size could hope to make a puncture, even at
+the forty-five-mile-per-second speed that is the theoretical maximum for
+meteors. And if one did, the selfsealing stuff would stop the leak
+immediately. Joe could explain the protection of the metal skins. He
+did.
+
+"When a missile travels fast enough," he said absorbedly, "it stops
+acquiring extra puncturing ability. Over a mile a second, impact can't
+be transmitted from front to rear. The back end of the thing that hits
+has arrived at the hit place before the shock of arrival can travel back
+to it. It's like a train in a collision which doesn't stop all at once.
+A meteor hitting the Platform will telescope on itself like the cars of
+a railroad train that hits another at full speed."
+
+Sally listened enigmatically.
+
+"So," said Joe, "the punching effect isn't there. A meteor hitting the
+Platform won't punch. It'll explode. Part of it will turn to
+vapor--metallic vapor if it's metal, and rocky vapor if it's stone.
+It'll blow a crater in the metal plate. It'll blow away as much weight
+of the skin as it weighs itself. Mass for mass. So that weight for
+weight, pea soup would be just as effective armor against meteors as
+hardened steel."
+
+Sally said: "Dear me! You must read the newspapers!"
+
+"The odds figure out, the odds are even that the Platform won't get an
+actual meteor puncture in the first twenty thousand years it's floating
+round the Earth."
+
+"Twenty thousand two seventy, Joe," said Sally. She was trying to tease
+him, but her face showed a little of the strain. "I read the magazine
+articles too. In fact I sometimes show the tame article writers around,
+when they're cleared to see the Platform."
+
+Joe winced a little. Then he grinned wryly.
+
+"That cuts me down to size, eh?"
+
+She smiled at him. But they both felt queer. They went on into the
+interior of the huge space ship.
+
+"Lots of space," said Joe. "This could've been smaller."
+
+"It'll be nine-tenths empty when it goes up," said Sally. "But you know
+about that, don't you?"
+
+Joe did know. The reasons for the streamlining of rockets to be fired
+from the ground didn't apply to the Platform. Not with the same urgency,
+anyhow. Rockets had to burn their fuel fast to get up out of the dense
+air near the ground. They had to be streamlined to pierce the thick,
+resisting part of the atmosphere. The Platform didn't. It wouldn't climb
+by itself. It would be carried necessarily at slow speed up to the point
+where jet motors were most efficient, and then it would be carried
+higher until they ceased to be efficient. Only when it was up where air
+resistance was a very small fraction of ground-level drag would its own
+rockets fire. It wouldn't gain much by being shaped to cut thin air, and
+it would lose a lot. For one thing, the launching process planned for
+the Platform allowed it to be built complete so far as its hull was
+concerned. Once it got out into its orbit there would be no more
+worries. There wouldn't be any gamble on the practicability of
+assembling a great structure in a weightless "world."
+
+The two of them--and the way they both felt, it seemed natural for Joe
+to be helping Sally very carefully through the corridors of the
+Platform--the two of them came to the engine room. This wasn't the place
+where the drive of the Platform was centered. It was where the service
+motors and the air-circulation system and the fluid pumps were powered.
+Off the engine room the main gyros were already installed. They waited
+only for the pilot gyros to control them as a steering engine controls
+an Earth ship's rudder. Joe looked very thoughtfully at the gyro
+assembly. That was familiar, from the working drawings. But he let Sally
+guide him on without trying to stop and look closely.
+
+She showed him the living quarters. They centered in a great open space
+sixty feet long and twenty wide and high. There were bookshelves, and
+two balconies, and chairs. Private cabins opened from it on different
+levels, but there were no steps to them. Yet there were comfortable
+chairs with straps so that when a man was weightless he could fasten
+himself in them. There were ash trays, ingeniously designed to look like
+exactly that and nothing else. But ashes would not fall into them, but
+would be drawn into them by suction. There was unpatterned carpet on the
+floor _and_ on the ceiling.
+
+"It's going to feel queer," said Sally, oddly quiet, "when all this is
+out in space, but it will look fairly normal. I think that's important.
+This room will look like a big private library more than anything else.
+One won't be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he's
+living in a strictly synthetic environment. He won't feel cramped. If
+all the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. At
+least this way he can pretend that things are normal."
+
+Her mind was not wholly on her words. She'd been frightened for Joe. And
+he was acutely aware of it, because he felt a peculiar after-effect
+himself.
+
+"Normal," he said drily, "except that he doesn't weigh anything."
+
+"I've worried about that," said Sally. "Sleeping's going to be a big
+problem."
+
+"It'll take getting used to," Joe agreed.
+
+There was a momentary pause. They were simply looking about the great
+room. Sally stirred uneasily.
+
+"Tell me what you think," she said. "You've been in an elevator that
+started to drop like a plummet. When the Platform is orbiting it'll be
+like that all the time, only worse. No weight. Joe, if you were in an
+elevator that seemed to be dropping and dropping and dropping for hours
+on end--do you think you could go to sleep?"
+
+Joe hadn't thought about it. And he was acutely conscious of Sally, just
+then, but the idea startled him.
+
+"It might be hard to adjust to," he admitted.
+
+"It'll be hard to adjust to, awake," said Sally. "But getting adjusted
+to it asleep should be worse. You've waked up from a dream that you're
+falling?"
+
+"Sure," said Joe. Then he whistled. "Oh-oh! I see! You'd drop off to
+sleep, and you'd be falling. So you'd wake up. Everybody in the Platform
+will be falling around the Earth in the Platform's orbit! Every time
+they doze off they'll be falling and they'll wake up!"
+
+He managed to think about it. It was true enough. A man awake could
+remind himself that he only thought and felt that he was falling, and
+that there was no danger. But what would happen when he tried to sleep?
+Falling is the first fear a human being ever knows. Everybody in the
+world has at one time waked up gasping from a dream of precipices down
+which he plunged. It is an inborn terror. And no matter how thoroughly a
+man might know in his conscious mind that weightlessness was normal in
+emptiness, his conscious mind would go off duty when he went to sleep. A
+completely primitive subconscious would take over then, and it would not
+be satisfied. It might wake him frantically at any sign of dozing until
+he cracked up from sheer insomnia ... or else let him sleep only when
+exhaustion produced unconsciousness rather than restful slumber.
+
+"That's a tough one!" he said disturbedly, and noticed that she still
+showed signs of her recent distress. "There's not much to be done about
+it, either!"
+
+"I suggested something," said Sally, "and they built it in. I hope it
+works!" she explained uncomfortably. "It's a sort of blanket with a top
+that straps down, and an inflatable underside. When a man wants to
+sleep, he'll inflate this thing, and it will hold him in his bunk. It
+won't touch his head, of course, and he can move, but it will press
+against him gently."
+
+Joe thought over what Sally had just explained. He noticed that they
+were quite close together, but he put his mind on her words.
+
+"It'll be like a man swimming?" he asked. "One can go to sleep floating.
+There's no sensation of weight, but there's the feeling of pressure all
+about. A man might be able to sleep if he felt he were floating. Yes,
+that's a good idea, Sally! It'll work! A man will think he's floating,
+rather than falling!"
+
+Sally flushed a little.
+
+"I thought of it another way," she said awkwardly. "When we go to sleep,
+we go way back. We're like babies, with all a baby's fears and needs. It
+_might_ feel like floating. But--I tried one of those bunks. It feels
+like--it feels sort of dreamy, as if someone were--holding one quite
+safe. It feels as if one were a baby and--beautifully secure. But of
+course I haven't tried it weightless. I just--hope it works."
+
+As if embarrassed, she turned abruptly and showed him the kitchen. Every
+pan was covered. The top of the stove was alnico-magnet strips, arranged
+rather like the top of a magnetic chuck. Pans would cling to it. And the
+covers had a curious flexible lining which Joe could not understand.
+
+"It's a flexible plastic that's heatproof," said Sally. "It inflates and
+holds the food down to the hot bottom of the pan. They expected the crew
+to eat ready-prepared food. I said that it would be bad enough to have
+to drink out of plastic bottles instead of glasses. They hung one of
+these stoves upside down, for me, and I cooked bacon and eggs and
+pancakes with the cover of the pan pointing to the floor. They said the
+psychological effect would be worth while."
+
+Joe was stirred. He followed her out of the kitchen and said warmly--the
+more warmly because these contributions to the Space Platform came on
+top of a personal anxiety on his own account: "You must be the first
+girl in the world who thought about housekeeping in space!"
+
+"Girls will be going into space, won't they?" she asked, not looking at
+him. "If there are colonies on the other planets, they'll have to. And
+some day--to the stars...."
+
+She stood quite still, and Joe wanted to do something about her and the
+world and the way he felt. The interior of the Platform was very silent.
+Somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulation was incomplete, the
+sound of workmen was audible, but the inner corridors of the Platform
+were not resonant. They were lined with a material to destroy reminders
+that this was merely a metal shell, an artificial world that would swim
+in emptiness. Here and now, Joe and Sally seemed very private and alone,
+and he felt a sense of urgency.
+
+He looked at her yearningly. Her color was a little higher than usual.
+She was not just a nice kid, she was swell! And she was good to look at.
+Joe had noticed that before, but now with the memory of her fright
+because he'd been in danger, her worry because he might have been
+killed, he thought of her very absurd but honest offer to cry for him.
+
+Joe found himself twisting at the ring on his finger. He got it off, and
+there was some soot and grease on it from the work he'd been doing. He
+knew that she saw what he was about, but she looked away.
+
+"Look, Sally," he said awkwardly, "we've known each other a long time.
+I've--uh--liked you a lot. And I've got some things to do first,
+but----" He stopped. He swallowed. She turned and smiled at him. "Look,"
+he said desperately, "what's a good way to ask if you'd like to wear
+this?"
+
+She nodded, her eyes shining a little.
+
+"That was a good way, Joe. I'd like it a lot."
+
+There was an interlude, then, during which she very ridiculously cried
+and explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life so
+much! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. It
+was the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppy
+ululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed and
+wailed and wailed.
+
+"That's the alarm," exclaimed Sally. She was still misty-eyed.
+"Everybody out of the Shed. Come on, Joe."
+
+They started back the way they'd come in. And Sally looked up at Joe and
+grinned suddenly.
+
+"When I have grandchildren," she told him, "I'm going to brag that I was
+the very first girl in all the world ever to be kissed in a space ship!"
+
+But before Joe could do anything about the comment, she was out on the
+stairs, in plain view and going down. So he followed her.
+
+The Shed was emptying. The bare wood-block floor was dotted with figures
+moving steadily toward the security exit. There was no hurry, because
+security men were shouting that this was not an alarm but a
+precautionary measure, and there was no need for haste. Each security
+man had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkie he wore. By it
+every guard could be told anything he needed to know, either on the
+floor of the Shed, or on the catwalks aloft or even in the Platform
+itself.
+
+Trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go out the swing-up doors. Men
+came down from the scaffolds after putting their tools in proper
+between-shifts positions--for counting and inspection--and other men
+were streaming quietly from the pushpot assembly line. Except for the
+gigantic object in the middle, and for the fact that every man was in
+work clothes, the scene was surprisingly like the central waiting room
+of a very large railroad station, with innumerable people moving briskly
+here and there.
+
+"No hurry," said Joe, catching the word from a security man as he passed
+it on. "I'll go see what my gang found out."
+
+The trio--Haney and Mike and the Chief--were just arriving by the piles
+of charred but now uncovered wreckage. Sally flushed ever so slightly
+when she saw the Chief eye Joe's ring on her finger.
+
+"Rest of the day off, huh?" said the Chief. "Look! We found most of the
+stuff we need. They're gonna give us a shop to work in. We'll move this
+stuff there. We're gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe we
+picked, an' then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in between
+the chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line."
+
+That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel to the axis of the
+earth. Joe nodded.
+
+"We'll be able to get set up in the mornin'," added Haney, "and get
+started. You got the parts list off to the plant for your folks to get
+busy on?"
+
+Sally said quickly: "He's sending that by facsimile now. Then----"
+
+The Chief beamed in benign mockery. "What you goin' to do after that,
+Joe? If we got the rest of the day off----?"
+
+Sally said hurriedly: "We were--he was going off on a picnic with me. To
+Red Canyon Lake. Do you really need to talk business--all afternoon?"
+
+The Chief laughed. He'd known Sally, at least by sight, back at the
+Kenmore plant.
+
+"No, ma'am!" he told her. "Just askin'. I worked on that Red Canyon dam
+job, years back. That dam that made the lake. It ought to be right
+pretty around there now. Okay, Joe. See you as soon as work starts up.
+In the mornin', most likely."
+
+Joe started away with Sally. Mike the midget called hoarsely: "Joe! Just
+a minute!"
+
+Joe drew back. The midget's seamed face was very earnest. He said in his
+odd voice: "Here's something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard
+to keep you from getting those gyros here. They might work hard to keep
+them from getting repaired. That's why we asked for a special shop to
+work in. It's occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would
+be to stop us. Not everybody would've figured out how to rebalance this
+thing. You get me?"
+
+"Sure!" said Joe. "You three had better look out for yourselves."
+
+Mike stared at him and grimaced.
+
+"You don't get it," he said brittlely. "All right. I may be crazy, at
+that."
+
+Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but he
+approved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to the
+security building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm and
+efficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stop
+all work. As they went toward Major Holt's office, Joe heard somebody
+dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: "... this attempt at atomic
+sabotage was defeated outside the Shed, but it never had a chance of
+success. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt to
+smuggle radioactive material into the Shed...."
+
+Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.
+
+"That's for a publicity release?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It's true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without passing
+close to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though they
+don't set the sirens to screaming."
+
+Joe said: "I'll get my order for new parts off on the facsimile
+machine."
+
+But he had to get Major Holt's secretary to show him where to feed in
+the list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and then
+be rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set the
+machine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of the
+document. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.
+
+"You and Sally," remarked Sally's father's secretary with a morose sigh,
+"can go and relax this afternoon. But there's no relaxation for Major
+Holt. Or for me."
+
+Joe said unhopefully: "I'm sure Sally'd be glad if you came with us."
+
+Major Holt's plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.
+
+"I haven't had a day off since the work began here," she said frowning.
+"The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You're going
+to Red Canyon Lake?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Joe. "Sally thought it might be pleasant."
+
+"It's terribly dry and arid here," said Miss Ross sadly. "That's the
+only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it's pretty there.
+I've never seen it."
+
+She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An
+exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence
+more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore
+Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no
+question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!
+
+Sally came out, smiled at her father's secretary, and led Joe down to
+the entrance.
+
+"I have the car," she said cheerfully, "and there'll be a lunch basket
+waiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold for
+swimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it's nice to look at."
+
+They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were just
+beginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black car
+was waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. She
+regarded the men swarming on the busses.
+
+"There'll be bulletins all over Bootstrap," she observed, "saying that
+Braun tried to dust-bomb the Shed. They'll say that he may have carried
+the cobalt about with him, and so he may have burned other people--in a
+restaurant, a movie theater, anywhere--while he was carrying the dust
+and dying without knowing it. So everybody's supposed to report to the
+hospital for a check-up for radiation burns. Some people may really have
+them. But Dad thinks that since you weren't burned, Braun didn't carry
+it around. If anyone is burned, it'll be the person who brought the
+cobalt here to give him. And--well--he'll turn up because everybody
+does, and because he's burned he'll be asked plenty of questions."
+
+Joe stepped on the starter. Then he pressed the accelerator and the car
+sped forward.
+
+They stopped at the house in the officers'-quarters area on the other
+side of the Shed. Sally picked up the lunch basket that her father's
+housekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions. They drove away.
+
+Red Canyon was eighty miles from the Shed, and the only way to get there
+was through Bootstrap, because the only highway away from the Shed led
+to that small, synthetic town. It was irritating, though they had no
+schedule, to find that the long line of busses was ahead of them on that
+twenty-mile stretch. The busses ran nose to tail and filled the road for
+a half-mile or more. It was not possible to pass so long a string of
+close-packed vehicles. There was just enough traffic in the opposite
+direction to make that impracticable.
+
+They had to trail the line of busses as far as Bootstrap and crawl
+through the crowded streets. Once beyond the town they came to a
+security stop. Here Sally's pass was good. Then they went rolling on and
+on through an empty, arid, sun-baked terrain toward the hills to the
+west. It looked remarkably lonely. Joe thought for the first time about
+gas. He looked carefully at the fuel gauge. Sally shook her head.
+
+"Don't worry. Plenty of gas. Security takes care of that. When I said
+where we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everything
+checked. If I live through this, I'll bet I stay a fanatic about
+cautiousness all my life!"
+
+Joe said distastefully: "I suppose it gets everybody. Mike--the midget,
+you know--called me back just now to suggest that the people who tried
+to spoil the gyros might try to harm the four of us to hinder their
+repair!"
+
+"It's not just foolishness," Sally admitted. "The strain is pretty bad,
+especially when you know things. You've noticed that Dad's getting gray.
+That's strain. And Miss Ross is about as tense. Things leak out in the
+most remarkable way--and Dad can't find out how. Once there was a case
+of sabotage and he could have sworn that nobody had the information that
+permitted it but himself and Miss Ross. She had hysterics. She insisted
+that she wanted to be locked up somewhere so she couldn't be suspected
+of telling anybody anything. She'd resign tomorrow if she could. It's
+ghastly." Then she hesitated and smiled faintly: "In fact, so Dad
+wouldn't worry about me this afternoon----"
+
+He took his eyes off the road to glance at her.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I promised we wouldn't go swimming and----" Then she said awkwardly:
+"There are two pistols in the glove compartment. Dad knows you. So I
+promised you'd put one in your pocket up at the lake."
+
+Joe drew a deep breath. She opened the glove compartment and handed him
+a pistol. He looked at it: .38, hammerless. A good safe weapon. He
+slipped it in his coat pocket. But he frowned.
+
+"I was looking forward to--not worrying for a while," he said wryly.
+"But now I'll have to remember to keep looking over my shoulder all the
+time!"
+
+"Maybe," said Sally, "you can look over my shoulder and I'll look over
+yours, and we can glance at each other occasionally."
+
+She laughed, and he managed to smile. But the trace of a frown remained
+on his forehead.
+
+Joe drove and drove and drove. Once they came to a very small town. It
+may have contained a hundred people. There were gas pumps and a
+restaurant and two or three general stores, which were certainly too
+many for the permanent residents. But there were cow ponies hitched
+before the stores, and automobiles were also in view. The ground here
+was slightly rolling. The mountains had grown to good-sized ramparts
+against the sky. Joe drove carefully down the single street, turning out
+widely once to dodge a dog sleeping placidly in an area normally
+reserved for traffic.
+
+Finally they came to the foothills, and then the road curved and
+recurved as it wound among them. And two hours from Bootstrap they
+reached Red Canyon. They first saw the dam from downstream. It was a
+monstrous structure of masonry, alone in the mountains. From its top a
+plume of falling water jetted out.
+
+"The dam's for irrigation," said Sally professionally, "and the Shed
+gets all its power from here. One of Dad's nightmares is that somebody
+may blow up this dam and leave Bootstrap and the Shed without power."
+
+Joe said nothing. He drove on up the trail as it climbed the canyon wall
+in hairpin slants. It was ticklish driving. But then, quite suddenly,
+they reached the top of the canyon wall and the top of the dam and the
+level of the lake at once. Here there was a sheet of water that reached
+back among the barren hillsides for miles and miles. It twisted out of
+sight. There were small waves on its surface, and grass at its edge.
+There were young trees. The powerhouse was a small squat structure in
+the middle of the dam. Not a person was visible anywhere.
+
+"Here we are," said Sally, when Joe stopped the car.
+
+He got out and went around to open the door for her. But she was already
+stepping out with the lunch basket in her hand when he arrived. He
+reached for it, and she held on, and they moved companionably away from
+the car carrying the basket between them.
+
+"There's a nice place," said Sally, pointing.
+
+A small ridge of rock stretched out into the lake, and rose, and spread,
+and formed what was almost a miniature island some fifty feet across.
+There were some young trees on it. Sally and Joe climbed down the slope
+and out the rocky isthmus that connected it with the shore.
+
+Sally let down the lunch box on a stone and laughed for no reason at all
+as the wind blew her hair. It was a cool wind from over the water. And
+Joe realized with a shock of surprise that the air felt different and
+smelled different when it blew over open water like this. Up to now he
+hadn't thought of the dryness of the air in Bootstrap and the Shed.
+
+The lunch basket was tilted a little. Joe picked it up and settled it
+more solidly. Then he said: "Hungry?"
+
+There was literally nothing on his mind at the moment but the luxurious,
+satisfied feeling of being off somewhere with grass and a lake and
+Sally, and a good part of the afternoon to throw away. It felt good. So
+he lifted the lid of the lunch basket.
+
+There was a revolver there. It was the other one from the glove
+compartment of the car. Sally hadn't left it behind. Joe regarded it and
+said ironically: "Happy, carefree youth--that's us! Which are the ham
+sandwiches, Sally?"
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+Nevertheless, the afternoon began splendidly. Joe dunked the bottled
+soft drinks in the lake to cool. Then he and Sally ate and talked and
+laughed. Joe, in particular, had more than the usual capacity for
+enjoyment today. He'd been through twenty-four hours of turmoil but now
+things began to look better. And there was the arrangement with Sally,
+which had a solid satisfactoriness about it. Sally was swell! If she'd
+been homely, Joe would have liked her just the same--to talk to and to
+be with. But she was pretty--and she was wearing his ring. She'd wrapped
+some string around the inside of the band to make it fit.
+
+The only trouble was that Joe was occasionally conscious of the heavy
+weight in his right-hand coat pocket.
+
+But they spent at least an hour in contented, satisfying, meaningless
+loafing that nobody can describe but that everybody likes to remember
+afterward. From time to time Joe looked ashore, when the weight in his
+pocket reminded him of danger.
+
+But he didn't look often enough. He was pulling the chilled soft-drink
+bottles out of the lake when he saw a movement out of the corner of his
+eye. He whirled, his hand in his pocket....
+
+It was the Chief, with Haney and Mike the midget. They were striding
+across the rocky small peninsula.
+
+Haney called sharply: "Everything okay?"
+
+"Sure!" said Joe. "Everything's fine! What's the matter?"
+
+"Mike had a hunch," said the Chief. "And--uh--I remembered I worked on
+the job when this dam was built twelve-fifteen years ago." He looked
+about him. "It looked different then."
+
+Then he caught Joe's eye and jerked his head almost imperceptibly to one
+side. Joe caught the signal.
+
+"I'll see about some more soft drinks," he said. "Come help me fish up
+the bottles."
+
+Sally smiled at the other two. She was already inspecting the lunch
+basket.
+
+"We still have some sandwiches," she said hospitably, "and some cake."
+
+Haney came forward awkwardly. Mike advanced toward her with something of
+truculence. Joe knew what was in his mind. If Sally treated him like a
+freak.... But Joe knew with deep satisfaction that she wouldn't. He went
+down to the water's edge.
+
+"What's up, Chief?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+"Mike hadda hunch," rumbled the Chief. "Somebody tried to smash the
+stuff you brought. They did. But we started gettin' set to mend it. So
+what would they do? Polish us off. If they were set to atom-dust the
+whole Shed an' everybody in it, they wouldn't stop at four more
+murders."
+
+Joe fished for a pop bottle.
+
+"Mike said something like that back at the Shed," he observed.
+
+"Yeah. But you were the one who figured things out. You'd be first
+target. Haney and Mike and me--we'd be hard to knock off in a crowd in
+Bootstrap. But you and her headed off by y'selves. Mike figured you
+mightn't be safe. So we checked."
+
+Joe brought up one bottle and then another.
+
+"We're all right. Haven't seen a soul."
+
+"Don't mean a soul hasn't seen you," growled the Chief. "A car left
+Bootstrap less than twenty minutes behind you. There were three guys in
+it. It's parked down below the dam, outa sight. We saw it. And when we
+came up, careful, we spotted three guys hidin' out behind the rocks
+yonder. They look to me like they're waiting for somebody to go
+strolling back from the shoreline, so's--uh--maybe folks out at the
+powerhouse can't see 'em. That'd be you and her, huh?"
+
+Joe went cold. Not for himself. For Sally.
+
+"There's nobody else around," said the Chief. "Who'd they be waiting for
+but you two? Suppose they got a chance to kill you. They'd take the car
+keys. They'd drop your two bodies somewheres Gawdknowswhere. There'd be
+considerable of a hunt for you two. Major Holt would be upset plenty.
+Security might get loosened up. There might be breaks for guys who
+wanted to do a little extra sabotage--besides maybe hamperin' the
+repairin' of the pilot gyros. Then they could try for Haney and Mike and
+me."
+
+Joe said coldly: "I've got a pistol and so has Sally. Shall we take
+those pistols and go ask those three if they want to start something?"
+
+The Chief snorted.
+
+"Use sense! It's good you got the pistols, though. I snagged a
+twenty-two rifle from a shooting gallery. It was all I could get in a
+hurry. But go huntin' trouble? Fella, I want to see that Platform go up!
+I'll take care of things now. Good layout here. They got to come across
+the open to get near. Don't say anything to Sally. But we'll keep our
+eyes open."
+
+Joe nodded. He carried the chilled, dripping bottles back to where Haney
+solemnly ate a sandwich, sitting crosslegged with his back to the lake
+and regarding the shore. The Chief dragged a .22 repeating rifle from
+inside his belt, where it had hung alongside his thigh. He casually
+strolled over to Mike and dropped the rifle.
+
+"You said you felt like target practice," he remarked blandly. "Here's
+your armament. Any more sandwiches, ma'am?"
+
+Sally smilingly passed him the last. She left the top of the basket
+open. The pistol that had been there was gone. Then Sally's eyes met
+Joe's and she was aware that his three friends had not come here merely
+to crash a picnic. But she took it in stride. It was an additional
+reason for Joe to approve of Sally.
+
+"Me," said the Chief largely, "I'm goin' to swim. I haven't had any more
+water around me than a shower bath for so long that I crave to soak and
+splash. I'll go yonder and dunk myself."
+
+He wandered off, taking bites from the sandwich as he went. He vanished.
+Haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyes roving about the shoreline
+and the rocks and brush behind it.
+
+Mike was talking in his crackling, high-pitched voice.
+
+"But just the same it's crazy! Fighting sabotage when we little guys
+could take over in a week and make sabotage just plain foolish! We could
+do the whole job while the saboteurs weren't looking!"
+
+Sally said with interest: "Have you got the figures? Were they ever
+passed on?"
+
+"I spent a month's pay once," said Mike sardonically, "hiring a math
+shark to go over them. He found one mistake. It raised the margin of
+what we could do!"
+
+Sally answered: "Joe! Listen to this! Mike says he has the real answer
+to sabotage, and, in a way, to space travel! Listen!"
+
+Joe dropped to the ground.
+
+"Shoot it," he said.
+
+He was grimly alert, just the same. There were men waiting for them to
+start back to the car. These saboteurs were armed, and they intended to
+murder Sally and himself. Joe's jaws clamped tautly shut at the grim
+ideas that came into his mind.
+
+But Mike was beginning to speak.
+
+"Forget about the Platform a minute," he said, standing up to
+gesticulate, because he was only three and a half feet high. "Just
+figure on a rocket straight to the moon. With old-style rockets they'd
+a' had to have a mass ratio of a hundred and twenty to one. You'd have
+to burn a hundred and twenty tons of old-style fuel to land one ton on
+the moon. Now it could be done with sixty, and when the Platform's up,
+that figure'll drop again! Okay! You're gonna land a man on the moon. He
+weighs two hundred pounds. He uses up twenty pounds of food and drink
+and oxygen a day. Give him grub and air for two months--twelve hundred
+pounds. A cabin seven feet high and ten feet across. Sixteen hundred
+pounds, counting insulation an' braces for strength. That makes a pay
+load of a ton an' a half, and you'd have to burn a hundred an' eighty
+tons of fuel--old-style--to take it to the moon, and another hundred an'
+twenty for every ton the rocket ship weighed. You might get a man to the
+moon with a twelve-hundred-ton rocket--maybe. That's with the old fuels.
+He'd get there, an' he'd live two months, an' then he'd die for lack of
+air. With the new fuels you'd need ninety tons of fuel to carry the guy
+there, and sixty more for every ton the ship weighed itself. Call it six
+hundred tons for the rocket to carry one man to the moon."
+
+Sally nodded absorbedly.
+
+"I've seen figures like that," she agreed.
+
+"But take a guy like me!" said Mike the midget bitterly. "I weigh
+forty-five pounds, not two hundred! I use four pounds of food and air a
+day. A cabin for me to live in would be four feet high an' five across.
+Bein' smaller, it wouldn't need so much bracing. You could do it for two
+hundred pounds. Three hundred for grub and air, fifty for me. Me on the
+moon supplied for two months would come to five-fifty pounds. Sixteen
+tons of fuel to get me to the moon direct! To carry the weight of the
+ship--it's smaller!--fifty tons maximum!"
+
+"I--see...," said Sally, frowning.
+
+He looked at her suspiciously, but there was no mockery in her face.
+
+"It'd take a six-hundred-ton rocket to get a full-sized man to the
+moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "but a guy my size could do the
+same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it'd
+be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land,
+take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back--all in a
+sixty-ton rocket. That's just ten per cent of what it'd cost to take a
+full-sized man one way!"
+
+He stamped his foot. Then he said coldly: "Haney, sittin' still you're a
+sittin' duck!"
+
+The comment was just. Joe knew that Sally was on the lakeward side of
+this small island, and that there were impenetrable rocks between her
+and the mainland. But Haney sat crosslegged where he could watch the
+mainland, and he hadn't moved in a long while. If someone did intend to
+commit murder from a distance, Haney was offering a chance for a very
+fine target. He moved.
+
+"Yeah!" said Mike with fine irony, reverting to his topic. "I could show
+you plenty of figures! There are other guys like me! We've got as much
+brains as full-sized people! If the big brass had figured on us small
+guys, they coulda made the Platform the size of a four-family house an'
+it'd ha' been up in the sky right now, with guys like me running it.
+Guys my size could man the ferry rockets bringin' up fuel for storage,
+and four of us could take a six-hundred-ton rocket an' slide out to Mars
+an' be back by springtime--next springtime!--with all the facts and the
+photographs to prove 'em! By golly----"
+
+Then he made a raging, helpless gesture.
+
+"But that's just the big picture," he said bitterly. "Right now, right
+at this minute, we could make it easy to finish the Platform the way
+it's building in the Shed! There are ferry rockets building somewhere
+else. You know about them?"
+
+Sally said apologetically: "Yes. I know there'll be smaller rocket ships
+going up to the Platform. They'll carry fuel and stores and exchanges
+for the crew. Yes, I know there are ferry rockets building."
+
+"Those ferry rockets," said Mike sardonically, "carry four men, plus two
+replacements for the crew. They'll carry air for ten days. But put four
+of us small guys in a ferry rocket! _We'd_ have air and grub for two
+months, almost! Pull out the pay load and put in a hydroponic garden and
+communicators and we'd _be_ a Platform, right then! Send up another
+ferry rocket to join us, and it could bring guided missiles! The ferry
+rockets could be finished quicker than the Platform! Send up three ferry
+rockets with midgets as crews, an' we could weld 'em together and have a
+Space Platform in orbit and working--and what'd be the use of sabotaging
+the big Platform then? The job would be done! There'd be no sense
+sabotaging the big Platform because the little one could do anything the
+big one could! It'd be up there and working! But," he demanded bitterly,
+"do you think anybody'll do anything as sensible as that?"
+
+His small features were twisted in angry rebellion. And he was quite
+right in all his reasoning. Mankind could have made the journey to the
+planets in a hurry, and it could have had its Space Platform in the sky
+much more quickly, if only it could have consented to be represented by
+people like Mike--who would have represented mankind very valiantly.
+
+Sally said distressedly: "Oh, Mike, it's all true and I'm so sorry!"
+
+And she meant it. Joe liked Sally especially right then, because she
+didn't patronize Mike, or try to reason him out of his heartbreak.
+
+Then Haney said abruptly: "Somebody's spotted the Chief."
+
+Joe mentally kicked himself. The Chief had said he was going to swim.
+Now--but only now--Joe looked to see what he was doing.
+
+He was far out from shore, swimming unhurriedly to the powerhouse at the
+middle of the dam. He would reach it, and swing up the ladder that could
+just be seen going down the lake side of the dam's top, and he would
+explain the situation on shore. A telephone call to Bootstrap would
+bring security men rushing at eighty miles an hour, and parachute
+troopers a good deal faster. But even before they arrived the Chief
+would lead the powerhouse crew ashore armed with the shotguns they kept
+for shooting waterfowl in and out of season.
+
+The men on shore might or might not consider the Chief's swim to be
+proof that he knew their intentions. They were probably discussing the
+matter in some agitation right now. But they couldn't know that the
+party on the semi-island was armed.
+
+Suddenly Mike said crisply: "We're goin' to have visitors."
+
+He lay down carefully on the ground, fifteen feet uphill from Sally,
+where he could look over the ridge. He snuggled the .22 target rifle
+professionally to his shoulder. He drew a bead.
+
+Three men very casually strolled out of the brushwood on the shore. They
+moved nonchalantly toward the strand of rocks that led out to the picnic
+spot. They looked like anybody else from Bootstrap. Casual, rough work
+clothing.... Haney bent down and picked up four good throwing stones.
+His expression was pained.
+
+Joe said: "We've got pistols, Haney, and Sally's a good shot."
+
+The men came on. Their manner was elaborately casual. Joe stepped up
+into view.
+
+"No visitors!" he called. "We don't want company!"
+
+One of the men held his hand to his ear, as if not understanding. They
+came on. They made no threatening gestures.
+
+Then Joe took his hand out of his pocket, the pistol Sally'd given him
+gripped tightly.
+
+"I mean that!" he said harshly. "Stand back!"
+
+One of the three spoke sharply. On that instant three snub-nosed pistols
+appeared. Bullets whined as the men hurtled forward. The purpose was not
+so much murder at this moment as the demoralizing effect of bullets
+flying overhead while the three assassins got close enough to do their
+bloody job with precision.
+
+A stone whizzed by Joe--Haney had thrown it--and the small target rifle
+in Mike's hands coughed twice. Joe held his fire. He had only six
+bullets and three targets to hit. With a familiar revolver he'd have
+started shooting now, but thirty yards is a long range with a strange
+pistol at a moving target.
+
+One of the three killers stumbled and crashed to the ground. A second
+seemed suddenly to be grinning widely on one side of his face. A .22
+bullet had slashed his cheek. The third ran head on into a rock thrown
+by Haney. It knocked the breath out of him and his pistol fell from his
+hand.
+
+Joe fired deliberately at the widely grinning man and saw him spin
+around. Mike's target rifle spat again and the man Joe had hit wheeled
+and ran heavily, making incoherent yells. The one who'd tumbled
+scrambled to his feet and fled, hopping crazily, favoring one leg.
+Deserted, the third man turned and ran too, still doubled over and still
+gasping.
+
+Mike's voice crackled. He was in a towering rage because of the way the
+target rifle shot. It threw high and to the right. The shooting gallery
+paid off in cigarettes for high scores--so the guns didn't shoot
+straight.
+
+Until this moment Joe had been relatively calm, because he had something
+to do. But just then he heard Sally say "Oh!" in a queer voice. He
+whirled. Unknown to him, she had not been waiting under cover, but
+standing with her pistol out and ready. And her face was very white, and
+she was plucking at her hair. A strand came away in her fingers. A
+bullet had clipped it just above her shoulder.
+
+Then Joe went sick ... weak ... trembling, and he disgraced himself by
+half-hysterically grabbing Sally and demanding to know if she was hurt,
+and raging at her for exposing herself to fire, while his throat tried
+to close and shut off his breath from horror.
+
+There came loud pop-pop-popping noises. With the peculiar reverberation
+of sound over water, two motorcycles started from the powerhouse along
+the crest of the dam. They streaked for the shore carrying five men, one
+of whom was the Chief, with a red-checked tablecloth about his middle,
+brandishing a fire axe in default of other weapons.
+
+The danger was over.
+
+But the assassins couldn't be followed immediately. They still had at
+least two pistols. Eight men and a girl, counting Mike, with an armament
+of only two pistols, a .22 rifle, two shotguns and a fire axe were not a
+properly equipped posse to hunt down killers. Also by now it was close
+to sunset.
+
+So the victors did the sensible thing. Joe and Sally and Haney and the
+Chief--his clothes retrieved--plus Mike headed back for Bootstrap. Joe
+and Sally rode in the Major's black car, and the other three in the
+jalopy they'd rented for the afternoon. On the way into the canyon below
+the dam, they stopped at the parked car their would-be assassins had
+come in. They removed its distributor and fan belt. The other men
+returned to the powerhouse with their shotguns and the fire axe, and
+telephoned to Bootstrap. The three gunmen who had planned murder became
+fugitives, with no means of transportation but their legs. They had a
+good many thousand square miles of territory to hide in, but it wasn't
+likely that they had food or any competence to find it in the wilds. Two
+were certainly hurt. With dogs and planes and organization, it should be
+possible to catch them handily, come morning.
+
+So Joe and Sally drove back to Bootstrap with the other car following
+closely through all the miles that had to be covered in the dark.
+Halfway back, they met a grim search party in cars, heading for the dam
+to begin their man hunt in the morning. After that, Joe felt better. But
+his teeth still tended to chatter every time he thought of Sally's
+startled, scared expression as she pulled away a lock of her hair that
+had been severed by a bullet.
+
+When they got back to the Shed, Major Holt looked tired and old. Sally
+explained breathlessly that her danger was her own fault. Joe'd thought
+she was safely under cover....
+
+"It was my fault," said the Major detachedly. "I let you go away from
+the Shed. I do not blame Joe at all."
+
+But he did not look kindly. Joe wet his lips, ready to agree that any
+disgrace he might be subjected to was justified, since he had caused
+Sally to be shot at.
+
+"I blame myself a great deal, sir," he said grimly. "But I can promise
+I'll never take Sally away from safety again. Not until the Platform's
+up and there's no more reason for her to be in danger."
+
+The Major said remotely: "I shall have to arrange for more than that. I
+shall put you in touch with your father by telephone. You will explain
+to him, in detail, exactly how the repair of your apparatus is planned.
+I understand that the gyros can be duplicated more quickly by the method
+you have worked out?"
+
+Joe said: "Yes, sir. The balancing of the gyros can, which was the
+longest single job. But anything can be made quicker the second time.
+The patterns for the castings are all made, and the bugs worked out of
+the production process."
+
+"You will explain that to your father," said the Major heavily. "Your
+father's plant will begin to duplicate these--ah--pilot gyros at once.
+Meanwhile your--ah--work crew will start to repair the one that is
+here."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And," said the Major, "I am sending you to the pushpot airfield. I
+intend to scatter the targets the saboteurs might aim at. You are one of
+them. Your crew is another. From time to time you will confer with them
+and verify their work. If any of them should be--disposed of, you will
+be able to instruct others."
+
+"It's really the other way about, sir," objected Joe. "The Chief and
+Haney are pretty good, and Mike's got brains----"
+
+The Major moved impatiently.
+
+"I am looking at this from a security standpoint," he said. "I am trying
+to make it plainly useless to attack the gyros again. Duplicates will be
+in production at your father's plant. There will be three men repairing
+the smashed ones. There will be another man in another place--and this
+will be you--who can instruct new workmen in the repair procedure if
+anything should happen. Thus there will have to be three separate
+successful coups if the pilot gyros are not to be ready when the
+Platform needs them. Saboteurs might try one. Possibly two. But I think
+they will look for another weak spot to attack."
+
+Joe did not like the idea of being moved away. He wanted to be on the
+job repairing the device that was primarily his responsibility. Besides,
+he had a feeling about Sally. If she were in danger, he wanted to be on
+hand.
+
+"About Sally, sir----"
+
+"Sally," said the Major tiredly, "is going to have to restrict herself
+to the point where she'll feel that jail would be preferable. But she
+will see the need for it. She will be guarded a good deal more carefully
+than before--and you may not know it, but she has been guarded rather
+well."
+
+Joe saw Sally smiling ruefully at him. What the Major had said was
+unpleasant, but he was right. This was one of those arrangements that
+nobody likes, an irritating, uncomfortable, disappointing necessity. But
+such necessities are a part of every actual achievement. The difference
+between things that get done and things that don't get done is often
+merely the difference between patience and impatience with tedious
+details. This arrangement would mean that Joe couldn't see Sally very
+often. It would mean that the Chief and Haney and Mike would do the
+actual work of getting the gyros ready. It would take all the glamour
+out of Joe's contribution. These deprivations shouldn't be necessary.
+But they were.
+
+"All right, sir," said Joe gloomily. "When do I go over to the field?"
+
+"Right away," said the Major. "Tonight." Then he added detachedly:
+"Officially, the excuse for your presence there will be that you have
+been useful in uncovering sabotage methods. You have. After all, through
+you a number of planes that would have been blown up have now had their
+booby traps removed. I know you do not claim credit for the fact, but it
+is an excuse for keeping you where I want you to be for another reason
+entirely. So it will be assumed that you are at the pushpot field for
+counter-sabotage inspection."
+
+The Major nodded dismissal with an indefinable air of irony, and Joe
+went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length.
+His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a
+place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new
+set of pilot gyros at once.
+
+A little later Sally came out of her father's office.
+
+"I'm sorry, Joe!"
+
+He grinned unhappily.
+
+"So am I. I don't feel very heroic, but if this is what has to be done
+to get the Platform out of the Shed and on the way up--it's what has to
+be done. I suppose I can phone you?"
+
+"You can," said Sally. "And you'd better!"
+
+They had talked a long time that afternoon, very satisfyingly and
+without any cares at all. Neither could have remembered much of what had
+been said. It probably was not earth-shaking in importance. But now
+there seemed to be a very great deal of other similar conversation
+urgently needing to be gone through.
+
+"I'll call you!" said Joe.
+
+Then somebody approached to take him to the pushpot airfield. They
+separated very formally under the eyes of the impersonal security
+officer who would drive Joe to his destination.
+
+It was a tedious journey through the darkness. This particular security
+officer was not companionable. He was one of those conscientious people
+who think that if they keep their mouths shut it will make up for their
+inability to keep their eyes open. Socially he treated Joe as if he were
+a highly suspect person. It could be guessed that he treated everybody
+that way.
+
+Joe went to sleep in the car.
+
+He was only half-awake when he arrived, and he didn't bother to rouse
+himself completely when he was shown to a cubbyhole in the officers'
+barracks. He went to bed, making a half-conscious note to buy himself
+some clothes--especially fresh linen--in the morning.
+
+Then he knew nothing until he was awaked in the early morning by what
+sounded exactly like the crack of doom.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+It was not, however, the crack of doom. When Joe stared out the window
+by the head of his cot, he saw gray-red dawn breaking over the landing
+field. There were low, featureless structures silhouetted against the
+sunrise. As the crimson light grew brighter, Joe realized that the
+angular shapes were hangars. Improbable crane poles loomed above them.
+One was in motion, handling something he could not make out, but the
+noise that had awakened him was less, now. It seemed to circle overhead,
+and it had an angry, droning, buzzing quality that was not natural in
+any motor he had ever heard before.
+
+Joe shivered, standing at the window. It was cold and dank in the dawn
+light at this altitude, but he wanted to know what that completely
+unbelievable roar had been. A crane beam by the hangars tilted down,
+slowly, and then lifted as if released of a great weight. The light was
+growing slowly brighter. Joe saw something on the ground. Rather, it was
+not quite on the ground. It rested on something on the ground.
+
+Suddenly that unholy uproar began again. Something moved. It ran heavily
+out from the masking dark of the hangars. It picked up speed. It
+acquired a reasonable velocity--forty or fifty miles an hour. As it
+scuttled over the dimly lighted field, it made a din like all the boiler
+factories in the world and all the backfiring motors in creation trying
+to drown each other's noise out--and all of them being very successful.
+
+It was a pushpot. Joe recognized it with incredulity. It was one of
+those utterly ungainly creations that were built around one half of the
+sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of
+a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled
+vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a
+blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome
+flirtings from side to side.
+
+The pushpot lifted from the vehicle on which it rode, and the vehicle
+put on speed and got away from under it with frantic agility. The
+vehicle swerved to one side, and Joe stared with amazed eyes at the
+pushpot, some twenty feet aloft. It had a flat underside, and a topside
+that still looked to him like the rounded top half of a loaf of baker's
+bread. It hung in the air at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and
+it howled like a panic-stricken dragon--Joe was getting his metaphors
+mixed by this time--and it swung and wobbled and slowly gained altitude,
+and then suddenly it seemed to get the knack of what it was supposed to
+do. It started to circle around, and then it began abruptly to climb
+skyward. Until it began to climb it looked heavy and clumsy and wholly
+unimpressive. But when it climbed, it really moved!
+
+Joe found his head out the window, craning up to look at it. Its
+unearthly din took on the indignant quality of an irritated beehive. But
+it climbed! It went up without grace but with astonishing speed. And it
+was huge, but it became lost in the red-flecked dawn sky while Joe still
+gaped.
+
+Joe flung on his clothes. He went out the door through resonant empty
+corridors, hunting for somebody to tell him something. He blundered into
+a mess hall. There were many tables, but the chairs around them were
+pushed back as if used and then left behind by people in a hurry to be
+somewhere else. There were exactly two people still visible over in a
+corner.
+
+Another din like the wailing of a baby volcano with a toothache. It
+began, and moved, and went through the series of changes that ended in a
+climbing, droning hum. Another. Another. The launching of pushpots for
+their morning flight was evidently getting well under way.
+
+Joe hesitated in the nearly empty mess hall. Then he recognized the two
+seated figures. They were the pilot and co-pilot, respectively, of the
+fateful plane that had brought him to Bootstrap.
+
+He went over to their table. The pilot nodded matter-of-factly. The
+co-pilot grinned. Both still wore bandages on their hands, which would
+account for their remaining here.
+
+"Fancy seeing you!" said the co-pilot cheerfully. "Welcome to the Hotel
+de Gink! But don't tell me you're going to fly a pushpot!"
+
+"I hadn't figured on it," admitted Joe. "Are you?"
+
+"Perish forbid," said the co-pilot amiably. "I tried it once, for the
+devil of it. Those things fly with the grace of a lady elephant on ice
+skates! Did you, by any chance, notice that they haven't got any wings?
+And did you notice where their control surfaces were?"
+
+Joe shook his head. He saw the remnants of ham and eggs and coffee. He
+was hungry.
+
+There was the uproar to be expected of a basso-profundo banshee in pain.
+Another pushpot was taking off.
+
+"How do I get breakfast?" he asked.
+
+The co-pilot pointed to a chair. He rapped sharply on a drinking glass.
+A door opened, he pointed at Joe, and the door closed.
+
+"Breakfast coming up," said the co-pilot. "Look! I know you're Joe
+Kenmore. I'm Brick Talley and this is Captain--no less than
+Captain!--Thomas J. Walton. Impressed?"
+
+"Very much," said Joe. He sat down. "What about the control surfaces on
+pushpots?"
+
+"They're in the jet blast!" said the co-pilot, now identified as Brick
+Talley. "Like the V Two rockets when the Germans made 'em. Vanes in the
+exhaust blast, no kidding! Landing, and skidding in on their tails like
+they do, they haven't speed enough to give wing flaps a grip on the air,
+even if they had wings to put wing flaps on. Those dinkuses are things
+to have bad dreams about!"
+
+Again, a door opened and a man in uniform with an apron in front came
+marching in with a tray. There was tomato juice and ham and eggs and
+coffee. He served Joe briskly and marched out again.
+
+"That's Hotel de Gink service," said Talley. "No wasted motion, no
+sloppy civilities. He was about to eat that himself, he gave it to you,
+and now he'll cook himself a double portion of everything. What are you
+doing here, anyhow?"
+
+Joe shrugged. It occurred to him that it would neither be wise nor
+creditable to say that he'd been sent here to split up a target at which
+saboteurs might shoot.
+
+"I guess I'm attached for rations," he observed. "There'll be orders
+along about me presently, I suppose. Then I'll know what it's all
+about."
+
+He fell to on his breakfast. The thunderous noises of the pushpots
+taking off made the mess hall quiver. Joe said between mouthfuls: "Funny
+way for anything to take off, riding on--it looked like a truck."
+
+"It is a truck," said Talley. "A high-speed truck. Fifty of them
+specially made to serve as undercarriages so pushpot pilots can
+practice. The pushpots are really only expected to work once, you know."
+
+Joe nodded.
+
+"They aren't to take off," Talley explained. "Not in theory. They hang
+on to the Platform and heave. They go up with it, pushing. When they get
+it as high as they can, they'll shoot their jatos, let go, and come
+bumbling back home. So they have to practice getting back home and
+landing. For practicing it doesn't matter how they get aloft. When they
+get down, a big straddle truck on caterpillar treads picks them up--they
+land in the doggonedest places, sometimes!--and brings 'em back. Then a
+crane heaves them up on a high-speed truck and they do it all over
+again."
+
+Joe considered while he ate. It made sense. The function of the pushpots
+was to serve as the first booster stage of a multiple-stage rocket.
+Together, they would lift the Platform off the ground and get it as high
+as their jet motors would take it traveling east at the topmost speed
+they could manage. Then they'd fire their jatos simultaneously, and in
+doing that they'd be acting as the second booster stage of a
+multiple-stage rocket. Then their work would be done, and their only
+remaining purpose would be to get their pilots back to the ground alive,
+while the Platform on its own third stage shot out to space.
+
+"So," said Talley, "since their pilots need to practice landings, the
+trucks get them off the ground. They go up to fifty thousand feet, just
+to give their oxygen tanks a chance to conk out on them; then they barge
+around up there a while. The advanced trainees shoot off a jato at top
+speed. It's gauged to build them up to the speed they'll give the
+Platform. And then if they come out of that and get back down to ground
+safely, they uncross their fingers. A merry life those guys lead! When a
+man's made ten complete flights he retires. One flight a week thereafter
+to keep in practice only, until the big day for the Platform's take-off.
+Those guys sweat!"
+
+"Is it that bad?"
+
+The pilot grunted. The co-pilot--Talley--spread out his hands.
+
+"It is that bad! Every so often one of them comes down untidily. There's
+something the matter with the motors. They've got a little too much
+power, maybe. Sometimes--occasionally--they explode."
+
+"Jet motors?" asked Joe. "Explode? That's news!"
+
+"A strictly special feature," said Talley drily. "Exclusive with
+pushpots for the Platform. They run 'em and run 'em and run 'em, on
+test. Nothing happens. But occasionally one blows up in flight. Once it
+happened warming up. That was a mess! The field's been losing two pilots
+a week. Lately more."
+
+"It doesn't sound exactly reasonable," said Joe slowly. He put a last
+forkful in his mouth.
+
+"It's also inconvenient," said Talley, "for the pilots."
+
+The pilot--Walton--opened his mouth.
+
+"It'd be sabotage," he said curtly, "if there was any way to do it. Four
+pilots killed this week."
+
+He lapsed into silence again.
+
+Joe considered. He frowned.
+
+A pushpot, outside the building, hysterically bellowed its way across
+the runway and its noise changed and it was aloft. It went spiraling up
+and up. Joe stirred his coffee.
+
+There were thin shoutings outside. A screaming, whistling noise! A
+crash! Something metallic shrieked and died. Then silence.
+
+Talley, the co-pilot, looked sick. Then he said: "Correction. It's been
+five pushpots exploded and five pilots killed this week. It's getting a
+little bit serious." He looked sharply at Joe. "Better drink your coffee
+before you go look. You won't want to, afterward."
+
+He was right.
+
+Joe saw the crashed pushpot half an hour later. He found that his
+ostensible assignment to the airfield for the investigation of sabotage
+was quaintly taken at face value there. A young lieutenant solemnly
+escorted him to the spot where the pushpot had landed, only ten feet
+from a hangar wall. The impact had carried parts of the pushpot five
+feet into the soil, and the splash effect had caved in the hangar
+wall-footing. There'd been a fire, which had been put out.
+
+The ungainly flying thing was twisted and torn. Entrails of steel tubing
+were revealed. The plastic cockpit cover was shattered. There were only
+grisly stains where the pilot had been.
+
+The motor had exploded. The jet motor. And jet motors do not explode.
+But this one had. It had burst from within, and the turbine vanes of the
+compressor section were revealed, twisted intolerably where the barrel
+of the motor was ripped away. The jagged edges of the tear testified to
+the violence of the internal explosion.
+
+Joe looked wise and felt ill. The young lieutenant very politely looked
+away as Joe's face showed how he felt. But of course there were the
+orders that said he was a sabotage expert. And Joe felt angrily that he
+was sailing under false colors. He didn't know anything about sabotage.
+He believed that he was probably the least qualified of anybody that
+security had ever empowered to look into methods of destruction.
+
+Yet, in a sense, that very fact was an advantage. A man may be set to
+work to contrive methods of sabotage. Another man may be trained to
+counter him. The training of the second man is essentially a study of
+how the first man's mind works. Then it can be guessed what this
+saboteur will think and do. But such a trained security man will often
+be badly handicapped if he comes upon the sabotage methods of a second
+man--an entirely different saboteur who thinks in a new fashion. The
+security man may be hampered in dealing with the second man's sabotage
+just because he knows too much about the thinking of the first.
+
+Joe went off and scowled at a wall, while the young lieutenant waited
+hopefully nearby.
+
+He was in a false position. But he could see that there was something
+odd here. There was a sort of pattern in the way the other sabotage
+incidents had been planned. It was hard to pick out, but it was there.
+Joe thought of the trick of booby-trapping a plane during its major
+overhaul, and then arming the traps at a later date.... A private plane
+had been fitted to deliver proximity rockets in mid-air when the
+transport ship flew past. There was the explosion of the cargo parcel
+which was supposed to contain requisition forms and stationery. And the
+attempt to smash the entire Platform by getting an atomic bomb into a
+plane and having a saboteur shoot the crew and then deliver the bomb at
+the Shed in an officially harmless aircraft....
+
+The common element in all those sabotage tricks was actually clear
+enough, but Joe wasn't used to thinking in such terms. He did know,
+though, that there was a pattern in those devices which did not exist in
+the blowing up of jet motors from inside.
+
+He scowled and scowled, racking his brains, while the young lieutenant
+watched respectfully, waiting for Joe to have an inspiration. Had Joe
+known it, the lieutenant was deeply impressed by his attempt at
+concentration on the problem it had not been Major Holt's intention for
+Joe to consider. When Joe temporarily gave up, the young lieutenant
+eagerly showed him over the whole field and all its workings.
+
+In mid-morning another pushpot fell screaming from the skies. That made
+six pushpots and six pilots for this week--two today. The things had no
+wings. They had no gliding angle. Pointed up, they could climb
+unbelievably. While their engines functioned, they could be controlled
+after a fashion. But they were not aircraft in any ordinary meaning of
+the word. They were engines with fuel tanks and controls in their
+exhaust blast. When their engines failed, they were so much junk falling
+out of the sky.
+
+Joe happened to see the second crash, and he didn't go to noon mess at
+all. He hadn't any appetite. Instead, he gloomily let himself be packed
+full of irrelevant information by the young lieutenant who considered
+that since Joe had been sent by security to look into sabotage, he must
+be given every possible opportunity to evaluate--that would be the word
+the young lieutenant would use--the situation.
+
+But all the time that Joe followed him about, his mind fumbled with a
+hunch. The idea was that there was a pattern of thinking in sabotage,
+and if you could solve it, you could outguess the saboteur. But the
+trouble was to figure out the similarity he felt existed in--say--a
+private plane shooting rockets and overhaul mechanics planting booby
+traps and faked shippers getting bombs on planes--and come to think of
+it, there was Braun....
+
+Braun was the key! Braun had been an honest man, with an honest loyalty
+to the United States which had given him refuge. But he had been
+blackmailed into accepting a container of atomic death to be released in
+the Shed. Radioactive cobalt did not belong in the Shed. That was the
+key to the pattern of sabotage. Braun was not to use any natural thing
+that belonged in the Shed. He was to be only the means by which
+something extraneous and deadly was to have been introduced.
+
+That was it! Somebody was devising ingenious ways to get well-known
+destructive devices into places where they did not belong, but where
+they would be effective. Rockets. Bombs. Even radioactive cobalt dust.
+All were perfectly well-known means of destruction. The minds that
+planned those tricks said, in effect: "These things will destroy. How
+can we get them to where they will destroy something?" It was a strict
+pattern.
+
+But the pushpot sabotage--and Joe was sure it was nothing else--was not
+that sort of thing. Making motors explode.... Motors don't explode. One
+couldn't put bombs in them. There wasn't room. The explosions Joe had
+seen looked as if they'd centered in the fire basket--technically the
+combustion area--behind the compressor and before the drive vanes. A jet
+motor whirled. Its front vanes compressed air, and a flame burned
+furiously in the compressed air, which swelled enormously and poured out
+past other vanes that took power from it to drive the compressor. The
+excess of blast poured out astern in a blue-white flame, driving the
+ship.
+
+But one couldn't put a bomb in a fire basket. The temperature would melt
+anything but the refractory alloys of which a jet motor has to be built.
+A bomb placed there would explode the instant a motor was started. It
+couldn't resist until the pushpot took off. It couldn't....
+
+This was a different kind of sabotage. There was a different mind at
+work.
+
+In the afternoon Joe watched the landings, while the young lieutenant
+followed him patiently about. A pushpot landing was quite unlike the
+landing of any other air-borne thing. It came flying down with
+incredible clumsiness, making an uproar out of all proportion to its
+landing speed. Pushpots came in with their tail ends low, crudely and
+cruelly clumsy in their handling. They had no wings or fins. They had to
+be balanced by their jet blasts. They had to be steered the same way.
+When a jet motor conked out there was no control. The pushpot fell.
+
+He carefully watched one landing now. It came down low, and swung in
+toward the field, and seemed to reach its stern down tentatively to
+slide on the earth, and the flame of its exhaust scorched the field, and
+it hesitated, pointing up at an ever steeper angle--and it touched and
+its nose tilted forward--and leaped up as the jet roared more loudly,
+and then touched again....
+
+The goal was for pushpots to touch ground finally with the whole weight
+of the flying monstrosity supported by the vertical thrust of the jet,
+and while it was moving forward at the lowest possible rate of speed.
+When that goal was achieved, they flopped solidly flat, slid a few feet
+on their metal bellies, and lay still. Some hit hard and tried to dig
+into the earth with their blunt noses. Joe finally saw one touch with no
+forward speed at all. It seemed to try to settle down vertically, as a
+rocket takes off. That one fell over backward and wallowed with its
+belly plates in the air before it rolled over on its side and rocked
+there.
+
+The last of a flight touched down and flopped, and the memory of the
+wreckage had been overlaid by these other sights and Joe could think of
+his next meal without aversion. When it was evening-mess time he went
+doggedly back to the mess hall. There was a sort of itchy feeling in his
+mind. He knew something he didn't know he knew. There was something in
+his memory that he couldn't recall.
+
+Talley and Walton were again at mess. Joe went to their table. Talley
+looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"Yes, I saw both crashes," said Joe gloomily, "and I didn't want any
+lunch. It was sabotage, though. Only it was different in kind--it was
+different in principle--from the other tricks. But I can't figure out
+what it is!"
+
+"Mmmmmm," said Talley, amiably. "You'd learn something if you could talk
+to the Resistance fighters and saboteurs in Europe. The Poles were
+wonderful at it! They had one chap who could get at the tank cars that
+took aviation gasoline from the refinery to the various Nazi airfields.
+He used to dump some chemical compound--just a tiny bit--into each
+carload of gas. It looked all right, smelled all right, and worked all
+right. But at odd moments Hitler's planes would crash. The valves would
+stick and the engine'd conk out."
+
+Joe stared at him. And it was just as simple as that. He saw.
+
+"The Nazis lost a lot of planes that way," said Talley. "Those that
+didn't crash from stuck valves in flight--they had to have their valves
+reground. Lost flying time. Wonderful! And when the Nazis did uncover
+the trick, they had to re-refine every drop of aviation gas they had!"
+
+Joe said: "That's it!"
+
+"That's it? And _it_ is what?"
+
+Then Joe said disgustedly: "Surely! It's the trick of loading CO_2
+bottles with explosive gas, too! Excuse me!"
+
+He got up from the table and hurried out. He found a phone booth and got
+the Shed, and then the security office, and at long last Major Holt. The
+Major's tone was curt.
+
+"Yes?... Joe?... The three men from the affair of the lake were tracked
+this morning. When they were cornered they tried to fight. I am afraid
+we'll get no information from them, if that's what you wanted to know."
+
+The Major's manner seemed to disapprove of Joe as expressing curiosity.
+His words meant, of course, that the three would-be murderers had been
+fatally shot.
+
+Joe said carefully: "That wasn't what I called about, sir. I think I've
+found out something about the pushpots. How they're made to crash. But
+my hunch needs to be checked."
+
+The Major said briefly: "Tell me."
+
+Joe said: "All the tricks but one, that were used on the plane I came
+on, were the same kind of trick. They were all arrangements for getting
+regular destructive items--bombs or rockets or whatever--where they
+could explode and smash things. The saboteurs were adding destructive
+items to various states of things. But there was one trick that was
+different."
+
+"Yes?" said the Major, on the telephone.
+
+"Putting explosive gas in the CO_2 bottles," said Joe painstakingly,
+"wasn't adding a new gadget to a situation. It was changing something
+that was already there. The saboteurs took something that belonged in a
+plane and changed it. They did not put something new into a plane--or a
+situation--that didn't belong there. It was a special kind of thinking.
+You see, sir?"
+
+The Major, to do him justice, had the gift of listening. He waited.
+
+"The pushpots," said Joe, very carefully, "naturally have their fuel
+stored in different tanks in different places, as airplanes do. The
+pilots switch on one tank or another just like plane pilots. In the
+underground storage and fueling pits, where all the fuel for the
+pushpots is kept in bulk, there are different tanks too. Naturally! At
+the fuel pump, the attendant can draw on any of those underground tanks
+he chooses."
+
+The Major said curtly: "Obviously! What of it?"
+
+"The pushpot motors explode," said Joe. "And they shouldn't. No bomb
+could be gotten into them without going off the instant they started,
+and they don't blow that way. I make a guess, sir, that one of the
+underground storage tanks--just one--contains doctored fuel. I'm
+guessing that as separate tanks in a pushpot are filled up, one by one,
+_one_ is filled from a particular underground storage tank that contains
+doctored fuel. The rest will have normal fuel. And the pushpot is going
+to crash when that tank, and only that tank, is used!"
+
+Major Holt was very silent.
+
+"You see, sir?" said Joe uneasily. "The pushpots could be fueled a
+hundred times over with perfectly good fuel, and then one tank in one of
+them would explode when drawn on. There'd be no pattern in the
+explosions...."
+
+Major Holt said coldly: "Of course I see! It would need only one tank of
+doctored fuel to be delivered to the airfield, and it need not be used
+for weeks. And there would be no trace in the wreckage, after the fire!
+You are telling me there is one underground storage tank in which the
+fuel is highly explosive. It is plausible. I will have it checked
+immediately."
+
+He hung up, and Joe went back to his meal. He felt uneasy. There
+couldn't be any way to make a jet motor explode unless you fed it
+explosive fuel. Then there couldn't be any way to stop it. And
+then--after the wreck had burned--there couldn't be any way to prove it
+was really sabotage. But the feeling of having reported only a guess was
+not too satisfying. Joe ate gloomily. He didn't pay much attention to
+Talley. He had that dogged, uncomfortable feeling a man has when he
+knows he doesn't qualify as an expert, but feels that he's hit on
+something the experts have missed.
+
+Half an hour after the evening mess--near sunset--a security officer
+wearing a uniform hunted up Joe at the airfield.
+
+"Major Holt sent me over to bring you back to the Shed," he said
+politely.
+
+"If you don't mind," said Joe with equal politeness, "I'll check that."
+
+He went to the phone booth in the barracks. He got Major Holt on the
+wire. And Major Holt hadn't sent anybody to get him.
+
+So Joe stayed in the telephone booth--on orders--while the Major did
+some fast telephoning. It was comforting to know he had a pistol in his
+pocket, and it was frustrating not to be allowed to try to capture the
+fake security officer himself. The idea of murdering Joe had not been
+given up, and he'd have liked to take part personally in protecting
+himself. But it was much more important for the fake security man to be
+captured than for Joe to have the satisfaction of attempting it himself.
+
+As a matter of fact, the fake officer started his getaway the instant
+Joe went to check on his orders. The officer knew they'd be found faked.
+It had not been practical for him to shoot Joe down where he was. There
+were too many people around for this murderer to have a chance at a
+getaway.
+
+But he didn't get away, at that. Twenty minutes later, while Joe still
+waited fretfully in the phone booth, the phone bell rang and Major Holt
+was again on the wire. And this time Joe was instructed to come back to
+the Shed. He had exact orders whom to come with, and they had orders
+which identified them to Joe.
+
+Some eight miles from the airfield--it was just dusk--Joe came upon a
+wrecked car with motorcycle security guards working on it. They stopped
+Joe's escort. Joe's phone call had set off an alarm. A plane had spotted
+this car tearing away from the airfield, and motorcyclists were guided
+in pursuit by the plane. When it wouldn't stop--when the fake Security
+officer in it tried to shoot his way clear--the plane strafed him. So he
+was dead and his car was a wreck, and the motorcycle men were trying to
+get some useful information from his body and the car.
+
+Joe went to the Major's house in the officers'-quarters area. The Major
+looked even more tired than before, but he nodded approvingly at Joe.
+Sally was there too, and she regarded Joe with a look which was a good
+deal warmer than her father's.
+
+"You did very well," said the Major detachedly. "I don't have too high
+an opinion of the brains of anybody your age, Joe. When you are my age,
+you won't either. But whether you have brains or simply luck, you are
+turning out to be very useful."
+
+Joe said: "I'm getting security conscious, sir. I want to stay alive."
+
+The Major regarded him with irony.
+
+"I was thinking of the fact that when you worked out the matter of the
+doctored pushpot fuel, you did not try to be a hero and prove it
+yourself. You referred it to me. That was the proper procedure. You
+could have been killed, investigating--it's clear that the saboteurs
+would be pleased to have a good chance to murder you--and your
+suspicions might never have reached me. They were correct, by the way.
+One storage tank underground was half-full of doctored fuel. Rather more
+important, another _was_ full, not yet drawn on."
+
+The Major went on, without apparent cordiality: "It seems probable that
+if this particular sabotage trick had not been detected--it seems likely
+that on the Platform's take-off, all or most of the pushpots would have
+been fueled to explode at some time after the Platform was aloft, and
+before it could possibly get out to space."
+
+Joe felt queer. The Major was telling him, in effect, that he might have
+kept the Platform from crashing on take-off. It was a good but upsetting
+sensation. It was still more important to Joe that the Platform get out
+to space than that he be credited with saving it. And it was not
+reassuring to hear that it might have been wrecked.
+
+"Your reasoning," added the Major coldly, "was soundly based. It seems
+certain that there is not one central authority directing all the
+sabotage against the Platform. There are probably several sabotage
+organizations, all acting independently and probably hating each other,
+but all hating the Platform more."
+
+Joe blinked. He hadn't thought of that. It was disheartening.
+
+"It will really be bad," said the Major, "if they ever co-operate!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Joe.
+
+"But I called you back from the airfield," the Major told him without
+warmth, "to say that you have done a good job. I have talked to
+Washington. Naturally, you deserve a reward."
+
+"I'm doing all right, sir," said Joe awkwardly. "I want to see the
+Platform go up and stay up!"
+
+The Major nodded impatiently.
+
+"Naturally! But--ah--one of the men selected and trained for the crew of
+the Platform has been--ah--taken ill. In strict confidence, because of
+sabotage it has been determined to close in the Platform and get it
+aloft at the earliest possible instant, even if its interior
+arrangements are incomplete. So--ah--in view of your usefulness, I said
+to Washington that I believed the greatest reward you could be offered
+was--ah--to be trained as an alternate crew member, to take this man's
+place if he does not recover in time."
+
+The room seemed to reel around Joe. Then he gulped and said: "Yes, sir!
+I mean--that's right. I mean, I'd rather have that, than all the money
+in the world!"
+
+"Very well." The Major turned to leave the room. "You'll stay here, be
+guarded a good deal more closely than before, and take instructions. But
+you understand that you are still only an alternate for a crew member!
+The odds are definitely against your going!"
+
+"That's--that's all right, sir," said Joe unsteadily. "That's quite all
+right!"
+
+The Major went out. Joe stood still, trying to realize what all this
+might mean to him. Then Sally stirred.
+
+"You might say thanks, Joe."
+
+Her eyes were shining, but she looked proud, too.
+
+"I put it in Dad's head that that was what you'd like better than
+anything else," she told him. "If I can't go up in the Platform
+myself--and I can't--I wanted you to. Because I knew you wanted to."
+
+She smiled at him as he tried incoherently to talk. With a quiet
+maternal patience, she led him out on the porch of her father's house
+and sat there and listened to him. It was a long time before he realized
+that she was humoring him. Then he stopped short and looked at her
+suspiciously. He found that in his enthusiastic gesticulations he had
+been gesticulating with _her_ hand as well as his own.
+
+"I guess I'm pretty crazy," he said ruefully. "Shooting off my mouth
+about myself up there in space.... You're pretty decent to stand me the
+way I am, Sally."
+
+He paused. Then he said humbly: "I'm plain lucky. But knowing you
+and--having you like me reasonably much is pretty lucky too!"
+
+She looked at him noncommittally.
+
+He added painfully: "And not only because you spoke to your father and
+told him just the right thing, either. You're--sort of swell, Sally!"
+
+She let out her breath. Then she grinned at him.
+
+"That's the difference between us, Joe," she told him. "To me, what you
+just said is the most important thing anybody's said tonight."
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+The world turned over on its axis with unfailing regularity, and nights
+followed mornings and mornings followed nights according to
+well-established precedent. One man turned up in Bootstrap with
+radiation burns, but he had not offered himself for check over at the
+hospital. He was found dead in his lodging. Since nobody else appeared
+to have suffered any burns at all, it was assumed that he was the
+messenger who had brought the radioactive cobalt to Braun, who also had
+been doomed by possession of the deadly stuff, but who had broken the
+chain of fatality by not dumping it free into the air of the Shed. Under
+the circumstances, then, three-shift work on the Platform was resumed,
+and three times in each twenty-four hours fleets of busses rolled out of
+Bootstrap carrying men to work in the Shed, and rolled back again loaded
+with men who had just stopped working there.
+
+Trucks carried materials to the Shed, and swing-up doors opened in the
+great dome's eastern wall, and the trucks went in and unloaded. Then the
+trucks went out of the same doors and trundled back for more materials.
+In the Shed, shining plates of metal swung aloft, and welding torches
+glittered in the maze of joists and upright pipes that still covered the
+monster shape. Each day it was a little more nearly complete. In a
+separate, guarded workshop by a sidewall, the Chief and Haney and Mike
+the midget labored mightily to accomplish the preposterous. They grew
+lean and red-eyed from fatigue, and short of temper and ever more
+fanatical--and security men moved about in seeming uselessness but
+never-ceasing vigilance.
+
+There were changes, though. The assembly line of pushpots grew shorter,
+and the remaining monstrosities around the sidewall were plainly near to
+completion. There came a day, indeed, when only five ungainly objects
+remained on that line, and even they were completely plated in and
+needed only a finishing touch. It was at this time that more crates and
+parcels arrived from the Kenmore Precision Tool plant, and Joe dropped
+his schoolroomlike instruction course in space flight for work of
+greater immediate need. He and his allies worked twice around the clock
+to assemble the replaced parts with the repaired elements of the pilot
+gyros. They grew groggy from the desperate need both for speed and for
+absolute accuracy, but they put the complex device together, and
+adjusted it, and surveyed the result through red-rimmed eyes, and were
+too weary to rejoice.
+
+Then Joe threw a switch and the reconstituted pilot gyro assembly began
+to hum quietly, and the humming rose to a whine, and the whine went
+deliberately up the scale until it ceased to be audible at all.
+Presently a dial announced the impossible, and they gazed at a device
+that seemed to be doing nothing whatever. The gyros appeared quite
+motionless. They spun with such incredible precision that it was not
+possible to detect that they moved a hairbreadth. And the whole complex
+device looked very simple and useless.
+
+But the four of them gazed at it--now that it worked--with a sudden
+passionate satisfaction. Joe moved a control, and the axis of the device
+moved smoothly to a new place and stayed there. He moved the control
+again, and it moved to another position and stayed there. And to another
+and another and another.
+
+Then the Chief took Joe's place, and under his hand the seemingly static
+disks--which were actually spinning at forty thousand revolutions per
+minute--turned obediently and without any appearance of the spectacular.
+Then Haney worked the controls. And Mike put the device through its
+paces.
+
+Mike left the gyros spinning so that the main axis pointed at the sun,
+invisible beyond the Shed's roof. And then all four of them watched. It
+took minutes for this last small test to show its results. But visibly
+and inexorably the pilot gyros followed the unseen sun, and they would
+have resisted with a force of very many tons any attempt to move them
+aside by so little as one-tenth of a second of arc, which would mean
+something like one three-hundred-thousandth of a right angle. And these
+pilot gyros would control the main gyros with just this precision, and
+after the Platform was out in space could hold the Platform itself with
+the steadiness needed for astronomical observation past achievement from
+the surface of the Earth.
+
+The pilot gyros, in a word, were ready for installation.
+
+Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike were not beautiful to look at. They
+were begrimed from head to toe, and their eyes were bloodshot, and they
+were exhausted to the point where they did not even notice any longer
+that they were weary. And their mental processes were not at all normal,
+so that they were quarrelsome and arbitrary and arrogant to the men with
+the flat-bed trailer who came almost reverently to move their work. They
+went jealously with the thing they had rebuilt, and they were rude to
+engineers and construction workers and supervisors, and they shouted
+angrily at each other as it was hoisted up a shaft that had been left in
+the Platform for its entrance, and they were very far from tactful as
+they watched with hot, anxious eyes as it was bolted into place.
+
+It would be welded later, but first it was tried out. And it moved the
+main gyros! They weighed many times what the pilot gyros did, but even
+when they were spinning the pilot gyros stirred them. Of course the
+main-gyro linkage to the fabric of the Shed had to be broken for this
+test, or the gyros would have twisted the giant upon its support and all
+the scaffolding around it would have been broken and the men on it
+killed.
+
+But the gyros worked! They visibly and unquestionably worked! They
+controlled the gigantic wheels that would steer the Platform in its
+take-off, and later would swing it to receive the cargo rockets coming
+up from Earth. The pilot instrument worked! There was no vibration. In
+its steering apparatus the Platform was ready for space!
+
+Then the Chief yawned, and his eyes glazed as he stood in the huge gyro
+room. And Haney's knees wobbled, and he sat down and was instantly
+asleep. Then Joe vaguely saw somebody--it was Major Holt--holding Mike
+in his arms as if Mike were a baby. Mike would have resented it
+furiously if he had been awake. And then suddenly Joe didn't know what
+was going on around him, either.
+
+There was a definite hiatus in his consciousness. He came back to
+awareness very slowly. He was half-awake and half-asleep for a long
+time. He only knew contentedly that his job was finished. Then, slowly,
+he realized that he was in a bunk in one of the Platform sleeping
+cabins, and the inflated cover that was Sally's contribution to the
+Platform held him very gently in place. Somehow it was infinitely
+soothing, and he had an extraordinary sensation of peacefulness and
+relaxation and fulfillment. The pilot gyros were finished and in
+position. His responsibility to them was ended. And he had slept the
+clock around three times. He'd slept for thirty-six hours. He was
+starving.
+
+Sally had evidently constituted herself a watch over Joe as he slept,
+because she faced him immediately when he went groggily out of the cabin
+to look for a place to wash. He was still covered with the grime of past
+labor, and he had been allowed to sleep with only his shoes removed. He
+was not an attractive sight. But Sally regarded him with an approval
+that her tone belied.
+
+"You can get a shower," she told him firmly, "and then I'll have some
+breakfast for you. Fresh clothes are waiting, too."
+
+Joe said peacefully: "The gyros are finished and they work!"
+
+"Don't I know?" demanded Sally. "Go get washed and come back for
+breakfast. The Chief and Haney and Mike are already awake. And because
+of the four of you, they've been able to advance the Platform's take-off
+time--to just two days off! It leaked out, and now it's official. And
+you made it possible!"
+
+This was a slight exaggeration, but it was pardonable because of Sally's
+partiality for Joe. He went groggily into the special shower arrangement
+in the Platform. In orbit, there would be no gravity, so a tub bath was
+unthinkable. The shower cabinet was a cubbyhole with handgrips on all
+four sides and straps into which one could slip his feet. When Joe
+turned handles, needle sprays sprang at him from all sides, and
+simultaneously a ventilator fan began to run. When in space that fan
+could draw out what would otherwise become an inchoate mixture of air
+and quite weightless water-drops. In space a man might drown in his own
+shower bath without the fan. The apparatus for collecting the water
+again was complex, but Joe didn't think about that at the moment. He
+considered ruefully that however convenient this system might be out in
+the Platform's orbit, it left something to be desired on Earth.
+
+But there were clean clothes waiting when he came out. He dressed and
+felt brand new and utterly peaceful and rested, and it seemed to him
+very much like the way he had often felt on a new spring morning. It was
+very, very good!
+
+Then he smelled coffee and became ravenous.
+
+There were the others in the Platform's kitchen, sitting in the chairs
+that had straps on them so the crew needn't float about because of
+weightlessness. There was an argument in progress. The Chief grinned at
+Joe. Mike the midget looked absorbed. Haney was thinking something out,
+rather painfully. Sally was busy at the Platform's very special stove.
+She had ham and eggs and pancakes ready for Joe to eat.
+
+"Gentlemen," she said, "you are about to eat the first meal ever cooked
+in a space ship--and like it!"
+
+She served them and sat companionably down with them all. But her eyes
+were very warm when she looked at Joe.
+
+"Leavin' aside what we were arguin' about," said the Chief blissfully,
+"Sally here--mind if I call you Sally, ma'am?--she says the slide-rule
+guys have given our job the works and they say it's a better job than
+they designed. Take a bow, Joe."
+
+Sally said firmly: "When the technical journals are through talking
+about the job you did, you'll all four be famous for precision-machining
+technique and improvements on standard practices."
+
+"Which," said the Chief sarcastically, "is gonna make us feel fine when
+we're back to welding and stuff!"
+
+"No more welding," Sally told him. "Not on this job. The Platform's
+closed in. They've started to take down the scaffolding."
+
+The Chief looked startled. Haney asked: "Laying off men yet?"
+
+"Not you," Sally assured him. "Definitely not you. You four have the
+very top super-special security rating there is! I think you're the only
+four people in the world my father is sure can't be reached, somehow, to
+make you harm the Platform."
+
+Mike said abruptly: "Yeah. The Major thought he had headaches before.
+Now he's really got 'em!"
+
+Mike hadn't seemed to be listening. He'd acted as if he were feverishly
+absorbing the feel of being inside the Platform--not as a workman
+building it, but as a man whose proper habitat it would become. But Joe
+suddenly realized that his comment was exact. There'd been plenty of
+sabotage to prevent the Platform from reaching completion. But now it
+was ready to take off in two days. If it was to be stopped, it would
+have to be stopped within forty-eight hours by people with plenty of
+resources, who for their own evil ends needed it to be stopped. These
+last two days would contain the last-ditch, most desperate, most
+completely ruthless stepped-up attempts at destruction that could
+possibly be made. And Major Holt had to handle them.
+
+But the four at table--five, with Sally--were peculiarly relaxed. The
+matter they'd handled had been conspicuous, perhaps, but it was still
+only one of thousands that had to be accomplished before the Platform
+could take off. But they had the infinitely restful feeling of a job
+well done.
+
+"No more welding," said Haney meditatively, "and our job on the gyros
+finished. What are we gonna do?"
+
+The Chief said forcefully: "Me, I'm gonna sweep floors or something, but
+I'm sure gonna stick around and watch the take-off!"
+
+Joe said nothing. He looked at Sally. She became very busy, making
+certain the others did not want more to eat. After a long time Joe said,
+with very careful casualness, "Come to think of it, I was getting loaded
+up with astrogation theory when I had to stop and pitch in on the gyros.
+How's that sick crew member, Sally?"
+
+"I--wouldn't know," answered Sally unconvincingly. "Have some more
+coffee?"
+
+Joe made his face go completely expressionless. There was nothing else
+to do. Sally hadn't said that his chances looked bad for making the crew
+of the Platform when it went out to space. But Sally had ways of knowing
+things. She would be sure to keep informed on a matter like that,
+because she was wearing Joe's ring and it would have taken a great deal
+of discouragement to keep her from finding out good news to tell him.
+She didn't have any good news. So it must be bad.
+
+Joe drank his coffee, trying to make himself believe that he'd known all
+along he wasn't going to make the crew. He'd started late to learn the
+things a crew member ought to know. He'd stopped at the most crucial
+part of his training to work on the gyros, which were more crucial
+still. He'd slept a day and a half. The platform would take off in
+forty-eight hours. He tried to reason carefully that it was common sense
+to use a man who was fully trained from the beginning for a place in the
+crew, rather than a latecomer like himself. But it wasn't easy to take.
+
+Mike the midget said suddenly: "I got a hunch."
+
+"Shoot it," said the Chief, amiably.
+
+"I got a hunch I know what kind of sabotage will be tried next--and
+when," said Mike.
+
+The others looked at him--all but Joe, who stared at the wall.
+
+"There hasn't been one set of guys trying to smash the Platform," said
+Mike excitedly. "There's been four or five. Joe found a gang sabotaging
+the pushpots that didn't think like the gang that blackmailed Braun. And
+the gang that tried to kill us up at Red Canyon may be another. There
+could be others: fascists and commies and nationalists and crackpots of
+all kinds. And they all know they've got to work fast, even if they have
+to help each other. Get it?"
+
+Haney growled.
+
+"I'll buy what you've said so far," said the Chief. "Sure! Those
+so-and-sos will all pile in everything they got at the last minute.
+They'll even pull together to smash the Platform--and then double-cross
+each other afterward. But what'll they do, an' when?"
+
+"This time they'll try outright violence," said Mike coldly, "instead of
+sneaking. They'll try something really rough. For sneaking, one time's
+as good as another, but for really rough stuff, there's just one time
+when the Platform hasn't got plenty of guys around ready to fight for
+it."
+
+The Chief whistled softly.
+
+"You mean change-shift time! Which one?"
+
+"The first one possible," said Mike briefly. "After every shift, things
+will get tighter. So my guess is the next shift, if they can. And if one
+gang starts something, the others will have to jump right in. You see?"
+
+That made sense. One attempt at actual violence, defeated, would create
+a rigidity of defense that would make others impossible. If a successful
+attempt at violent sabotage was to be made, the efforts of all groups
+would have to be timed to the first, or abandoned.
+
+"I could--uh--set up a sort of smoke screen," said Mike. "We'll fake
+we're going to smash something--and let those saboteurs find it out.
+They'll see it as a chance to do their stuff with us to run interference
+for them.--Sally, does your father sure-enough trust us?"
+
+Sally nodded.
+
+"He doesn't talk very cordially, but he trusts you."
+
+"Okay," said Mike. "You tell him, private, that I'm setting up something
+tricky. He can laugh off anything his security guys report that I'm
+mixed up in. Joe'll see that he gets the whole picture beforehand. But
+he ain't to tell anybody--not _any_body--that something is getting
+framed up. Right?"
+
+"I'll ask him," said Sally. "He is pretty desperate. He's sure some
+last-minute frantic assault on the Platform will be made. But----"
+
+"We'll tip him in plenty of time," said Mike with authority. "In time
+for him to play along, but not for a leak to spoil things. Okay?"
+
+"I'll make the bargain," Sally assured him, "if it can be made."
+
+Mike nodded. He drained his coffee cup and slipped down from his chair.
+
+"Come on, Chief! C'mon, Haney!"
+
+He led them out of the room.
+
+Joe fiddled with his spoon a moment, and then said: "The crewman I was
+to have subbed for if he didn't get well--he did, didn't he?"
+
+Sally answered reluctantly: "Y-yes."
+
+Joe said measuredly: "Well, then--that's that! I guess it will be all
+right for me to stick around and watch the take-off?"
+
+Sally's eyes were misty.
+
+"Of course it will, Joe! I'm so sorry!"
+
+Joe grinned, but even to himself his face seemed like a mask.
+
+"Into each life some rain must fall. Let's go out and see what's been
+accomplished since I went to sleep. All right?"
+
+They went out of the Platform together. And as soon as they reached the
+floor of the Shed it was plain that the stage had been set for stirring
+events.
+
+The top five or six levels of scaffolding had already been removed, and
+more of the girders and pipes were coming down in bundles on lines from
+giraffelike cranes. There were some new-type trucks in view, too, giants
+of the kind that carry ready-mixed concrete through city streets. They
+were pouring a doughy white paste into huge buckets that carried it
+aloft, where it vanished into the mouths of tubes that seemed to replace
+the scaffolding along the Platform's sides.
+
+"Lining the rockets," said Sally in a subdued voice.
+
+Joe watched. He knew about this, too. It had been controversial for a
+time. After the pushpots and their jatos had served as the first two
+stages of a multiple-rocket aggregation, the Platform carried rocket
+fuel as the third stage. But the Platform was a highly special ballistic
+problem. It would take off almost horizontally--a great advantage in
+fueling matters. This was practical simply because the Platform could be
+lifted far beyond effective air resistance, and already have
+considerable speed before its own rockets flared.
+
+Moreover, it was not a space ship in the sense of needing rockets for
+landing purposes. It wouldn't land. Not ever. And again there was the
+fact that men would be riding in it. That ruled out the use of eight- and
+ten- and fifteen-gravity acceleration. It had to make use of a long
+period of relatively slow acceleration rather than a brief terrific
+surge of power. So its very special rockets had been designed as the
+answer.
+
+They were solid-fuel rockets, though solid fuels had been long abandoned
+for long-range missiles. But they were entirely unlike other solid-fuel
+drives. The pasty white compound being hauled aloft was a self-setting
+refractory compound with which the rocket tubes would be lined, with the
+solid fuel filling the center. The tubes themselves were thin
+steel--absurdly thin--but wound with wire under tension to provide
+strength against bursting, like old-fashioned rifle cannon.
+
+When the fuel was fired, it would be at the muzzle end of the rocket
+tube, and the fuel would burn forward at so many inches per second. The
+refractory lining would resist the rocket blast for a certain time and
+then crumble away. Crumbling, the refractory particles would be hurled
+astern and so serve as reaction mass. When the steel outer tubes were
+exposed, they would melt and be additional reaction mass.
+
+In effect, as the rocket fuel was exhausted, the tubes that contained it
+dissolved into their own blast and added to the accelerating thrust,
+even as they diminished the amount of mass to be accelerated. Then the
+quantity of fuel burned could diminish--the tubes could grow smaller--so
+the rate of speed gain would remain constant. Under the highly special
+conditions of this particular occasion, there was a notable gain in
+efficiency over a liquid-fuel rocket design. For one item, the Platform
+would certainly have no use for fuel pumps and fuel tanks once it was in
+its orbit. In this way, it wouldn't have them. Their equivalent in mass
+would have been used to gain velocity. And when the Platform finally
+rode in space, it would have expended every ounce of the driving
+apparatus used to get it there.
+
+Now the rocket tubes were being lined and loaded. The time to take-off
+was growing short indeed.
+
+Joe watched a while and turned away. He felt very good because he'd
+finished his job and lived up to the responsibility he'd had. But he
+felt very bad because he'd had an outside chance to be one of the first
+men ever to make a real space journey--and now it was gone. He couldn't
+resent the decision against him. If it had been put up to him, he'd
+probably have made the same hard decision himself. But it hurt to have
+had even a crazy hope taken away.
+
+Sally said, trying hard to interest him, "These rockets hold an awful
+lot of fuel, Joe! And it's better than scientists thought a chemical
+fuel could ever be!"
+
+"Yes," said Joe.
+
+"Fluorine-beryllium," said Sally urgently. "It fits in with the
+pushpots' having pressurized cockpits. Rockets like that couldn't be
+used on the ground! The fumes would be poisonous!"
+
+But Joe only nodded in agreement. He was apathetic. He was uninterested.
+He was still thinking of that lost trip in space. He realized that Sally
+was watching his face.
+
+"Joe," she said unhappily, "I wish you wouldn't look like that!"
+
+"I'm all right," he told her.
+
+"You act as if you didn't care about anything," she protested, "and you
+do!"
+
+"I'm all right," he repeated.
+
+"I'd like to go outside somewhere," she said abruptly, "but after what
+happened up at the lake, I mustn't. Would you like to go up to the top
+of the Shed?"
+
+"If you want to," he agreed without enthusiasm.
+
+He followed when she went to a doorway--with a security guard beside
+it--in the sidewall. She flashed her pass and the guard let them
+through. They began to walk up an inclined, endless, curving ramp. It
+was between the inner and outer skins of the Shed. There had to be two
+skins because the Shed was too big to be ventilated properly, and the
+hot desert sunshine on one side would have made "weather" inside.
+There'd have been a convection-current motion of the air in the enclosed
+space, and minor whirlwinds, and there could even be miniature
+thunderclouds and lightning. Joe remembered reading that such things had
+happened in a shed built for Zeppelins before he was born.
+
+They came upon an open gallery, and there was a security man looking
+down at the floor and the Platform. He had a very good view of all that
+went on.
+
+They went around another long circuit of the slanting gallery, dimly
+lighted with small electric bulbs. They came to a second gallery, and
+saw the Platform again. There was another guard here.
+
+They were halfway up the globular wall now, and were visibly suspended
+over emptiness. The view of the Platform was impressive. There were an
+astonishing number of rocket tubes being fastened to the outside of that
+huge object. Three giant cranes, working together, hoisted a tube to the
+last remaining level of scaffolding, and men swarmed on it and fastened
+it to the swelling hull. As soon as it was fast, other men hurried into
+it with the white pasty stuff to line it from end to end. The tubes
+would nearly hide the structure they were designed to propel. But they'd
+all be burned away when it reached its destination.
+
+"Wonderful, isn't it?" asked Sally hopefully.
+
+Joe looked, and said without warmth, "It's the most wonderful thing that
+anybody ever even tried to do."
+
+Which was true enough, but the zest of it had unreasonably departed for
+Joe for the time being. His disappointment was new.
+
+Halfway around again, Sally opened a door, and Joe was almost surprised
+out of his lethargy. Here was a watching post on the outside of the
+monstrous half-globe. There were two guards here, with fifty-caliber
+machine guns under canvas hoods. Their duties were tedious but
+necessary. They watched the desert. From this height it stretched out
+for miles, and Bootstrap could be seen as a series of white specks far
+away with hills behind it.
+
+Ultimately Sally and Joe came to the very top of the Shed into the open
+air. From here the steep plating curved down and away in every
+direction. The sunshine was savagely bright and shining, but there was a
+breeze. And here there was a considerable expanse fenced in--almost an
+acre, it seemed. There were metal-walled small buildings with
+innumerable antennae of every possible shape for the reception of every
+conceivable wave length. There were three radar bowl reflectors turning
+restlessly to scan the horizon, and a fourth which went back and forth,
+revolving, to scan the sky itself. Sally told Joe that in the very
+middle--where there was a shed with a domelike roof which wasn't
+metal--there was a wave-guide radar that could spot a plane within three
+feet vertically, and horizontally at a distance of thirty miles, with
+greater distances in proportion.
+
+There were guns down in pits so their muzzles wouldn't interfere with
+the radar. There were enough non-recoil anti-aircraft guns to defend the
+Shed against anything one could imagine.
+
+"And there are jet planes overhead too," said Sally. "Dad asked to have
+them reinforced, and two new wings of jet fighters landed yesterday at a
+field somewhere over yonder. There are plenty of guards!"
+
+The Platform was guarded as no object in all history had ever been
+guarded. It was ironic that it had to be protected so, because it was
+actually the only hope of escape from atomic war. But that was why some
+people hated the Platform, and their hatred had made it seem obviously
+an item of national defense. Ironically that was the reason the money
+had been provided for its construction. But the greatest irony of all
+was that its most probable immediate usefulness would be the help it
+would give in making nuclear experiments that weren't safe enough to
+make on Earth.
+
+That was pure irony. Because if those experiments were successful, they
+should mean that everybody in the world would in time become rich beyond
+envy.
+
+But Joe couldn't react to the fact. He was drained and empty of emotion
+because his job was done and he'd lost a very flimsy hope to be one of
+the Platform's first crew.
+
+He didn't really feel better until late that night, when suddenly he
+realized that life was real and life was earnest, because a panting man
+was trying to strangle Joe with his bare hands. Joe was hampered in his
+self-defense because a large number of battling figures trampled over
+him and his antagonist together. They were underneath the Platform, and
+Joe expected to be blown to bits any second.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+Joe sat on the porch of Major Holt's quarters in the area next to the
+Shed. It was about eight-thirty, and dark, but there was a moon. And Joe
+had come to realize that his personal disappointment was only his
+personal disappointment, and that he hadn't any right to make a nuisance
+of himself about it. Therefore he didn't talk about the thing nearest in
+his mind, but something else that was next nearest or farther away
+still. Yet, with the Shed filling up a full quarter of the sky, and a
+gibbous moon new-risen from the horizon, it was not natural for a young
+man like Joe to speak purely of earthly things.
+
+"It'll come," he said yearningly, staring at the moon. "If the Platform
+gets up day after tomorrow, it's going to take time to ferry up the
+equipment it ought to have. But still, somebody ought to land on the
+moon before too long."
+
+He added absorbedly: "Once the Platform is fully equipped, it won't take
+many rocket pay loads to refill a ship's tanks at the Platform, before
+it can head on out."
+
+Mathematically, a rocket ship that could leave the Platform with full
+fuel tanks should have fuel to reach the moon and land on it, and take
+off again and return to the Platform. The mathematical fact had a
+peculiar nagging flavor. When a dream is subjected to statistical
+analysis and the report is in its favor, a dreamer's satisfaction is
+always diluted by a subconscious feeling that the report is only part of
+the dream. Everybody worries a little when a cherished dream shows a
+likelihood of coming true. Some people take firm steps to stop things
+right there, so a romantic daydream won't be spoiled by transmutation
+into prosaic fact. But Joe said doggedly: "Twenty ferry trips to pile up
+fuel, and the twenty-first ship should be able to refuel and go on out.
+And then somebody will step out on the moon!"
+
+He was disappointed now. He wouldn't be the one to do it. But somebody
+would.
+
+"You might try for the ferry service," said Sally uneasily.
+
+"I will," said Joe grimly, "but I won't be hoping too much. After all,
+there are astronomers and physics sharks and such things, who'll be glad
+to learn to run rockets in order to practice their specialties out of
+atmosphere."
+
+Sally said mournfully: "I can't seem to say anything to make you feel
+better!"
+
+"But you do," said Joe. He added grandiloquently, "But for your
+unflagging faith in me, I would not have the courage to bear the burdens
+of everyday life."
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+"Stop it!"
+
+"All right." But he said quietly, "You are a good kid, Sally. You know,
+it's not too bright of me to mourn."
+
+She drew a deep breath.
+
+"That's better! Now, I want----"
+
+There was a gangling figure walking down the concrete path between the
+trim, monotonous cottages that were officers' quarters at the Shed.
+
+Joe said sharply: "That's Haney! What's he doing here?" He called,
+"Haney!"
+
+Haney's manner took on purpose. He came across the grass--the lawns
+around the officers' quarters contained the only grass in twenty miles.
+
+"Hiya," said Haney uncomfortably. He spoke politely to Sally. "Hiya.
+Uh--you want to get in on the party, Joe?"
+
+"What kind?"
+
+"The party Mike was talkin' about," said Haney. "He's set it up. He
+wants me to get you and a kinda--uh--undercover tip-off to Major Holt."
+
+Joe stirred. Sally said hospitably: "Sit down. You've noticed that my
+father gave you full security clearance, so you can go anywhere?"
+
+Haney perched awkwardly on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Yeah. That's helped with the party. It's how I got here, as far as that
+goes. Mike's on top of the world."
+
+"Shoot it," said Joe.
+
+"Y'know he's been pretty bitter about things," said Haney carefully.
+"He's been sayin' that little guys like him ought to be the spacemen.
+There's half a dozen other little guys been working on the Platform too.
+They can get in cracks an' buck rivets an' so on. Useful. He's had 'em
+all hopped up on the fact that the Platform coulda been finished months
+ago if it'd been built for them, an' they could get to the moon an' back
+while full-sized guys couldn't an' so on. Remember?"
+
+"I remember," said Sally.
+
+"They've all been beefin' about it," explained Haney. "People know how
+they feel. So today Mike went and talked to one or two of 'em. An' they
+started actin' mysterious, passin' messages back an' forth an' so on.
+Little guys, actin' important. Security guys wouldn't notice 'em much.
+Y'don't take a guy Mike's size serious, unless you know him. Then he's
+the same as anybody else. So the security guys didn't pay any attention
+to him. But some other guys did. Some special other guys. They saw those
+little fellas actin' like they were cookin' up somethin' fancy. An' they
+bit."
+
+"Bit?" asked Sally.
+
+"They got curious. So Mike an' his gang got confidential. An' they're
+going to have help sabotagin' the Platform when the next shift changes.
+The midgets gettin' even for bein' laughed at, see? They're pretending
+their plan is that when the Platform's sabotaged--not smashed, but just
+messed up so it can't take off--the big brass will let 'em take a ferry
+rocket up in a hurry, an' get it in orbit, an' use it for a Platform
+until the big Platform can be mended an' sent up. Once they're up there,
+there's no use tryin' to stop the big Platform. So it can go ahead."
+
+Joe said dubiously: "I think I see...."
+
+"Mike and his gang of little guys are bein' saps--on purpose. If
+anybody's goin' to pull some fast stuff, next shift change--that's the
+time everybody's got to! Last chance! Mike and his gang don't know
+what's gonna happen, but they sure know when! They're invitin' the real
+saboteurs to make fools of 'em. And what'll happen?"
+
+Joe said drily: "The logical thing would be to feel sorry for the big
+guys who think they're smarter than Mike."
+
+"Uh-huh," said Haney, deadly serious. "Mike's story is there's half a
+dozen rocket tubes already loaded. They're goin' to fire those rockets
+between shifts. The Platform gets shoved off its base an' maybe dented,
+and so on. Mike's gang say they got the figures to prove they can go up
+in a ferry rocket an' be a Platform, and the big brass won't have any
+choice but to let 'em."
+
+Sally said: "I don't think they know how the big brass thinks."
+
+Haney and Joe said together, "No!" and Joe added: "Mike's not crazy! He
+knows better! But it's a good story for somebody who doesn't know Mike."
+
+Haney said in indignation: "I came out here to ask the Major to help us.
+The Chief's gettin' a gang together, too. There's some Indians of his
+tribe that work here. We can count on them for plenty of rough stuff.
+And there's Joe and me. The point is that Mike's stunt makes it certain
+that everything busts loose at a time we can know in advance. If the
+Major gives us a free hand, and then in the last five minutes takes his
+own measures--so they can't leak out ahead of time and tip off the gangs
+we want to get--we oughta knock off all the expert saboteurs who know
+the weak spots in the Platform. For instance those who know that
+thermite in the gyros would mess everything up all over again."
+
+Joe said quietly: "But Major Holt has to be told well in advance about
+all this! That's absolute!"
+
+"Yeah," agreed Haney. "But also he has got to keep quiet--not tell
+anybody else! There've been too many leaks already about too many
+things. You know that!"
+
+Joe said: "Sally, see if you can get your father to come here and talk.
+Haney's right. Not in his office. Right here."
+
+Sally got up and went inside the house. She came back with an uneasy
+expression on her face.
+
+"He's coming. But I couldn't very well tell him what was wanted,
+and--I'm not sure he's going to be in a mood to listen."
+
+When the Major arrived he was definitely not in a mood to listen. He was
+a harried man, and he was keyed up to the limit by the multiplied strain
+due to the imminence of the Platform's take-off. He came back to his
+house from a grim conference on exactly the subject of how to make
+preparations against any possible sabotage incidents--and ran into a
+proposal to stimulate them! He practically exploded. Even if provocation
+should be given to saboteurs to lure them into showing their hands, this
+was no time for it! And if it were, it would be security business. It
+should not be meddled in by amateurs!
+
+Joe said grimly: "I don't mean to be disrespectful, sir, but there's a
+point you've missed. It isn't thinkable that you'll be able to prevent
+something from being tried at a time the saboteurs pick. They've got
+just so much time left, and they'll use it! But Mike's plan would offer
+them a diversion under cover of which they could pull their own stuff!
+And besides that, you know your office leaks! You couldn't set up a
+trick like this through security methods. And for a third fact, this is
+the one sort of thing no saboteur would expect from your security
+organization! We caught the saboteurs at the pushpot field by guessing
+at a new sort of thinking for sabotage. Here's a chance to catch the
+saboteurs who'll work their heads off in the next twenty-four hours or
+so, by using a new sort of thinking for security!"
+
+Major Holt was not an easy man to get along with at any time, and this
+was the worst of all times to differ with him. But he did think
+straight. He stared furiously at Joe, growing crimson with anger at
+being argued with. But after he had stared a full minute, the angry
+flush went slowly away. Then he nodded abruptly.
+
+"There you have a point," he said curtly. "I don't like it. But it is a
+point. It would be completely the reverse of anything my antagonists
+could possibly expect. So I accept the suggestion. Now--let us make the
+arrangements."
+
+He settled down for a quick, comprehensive, detailed plan. In careful
+consultation with Haney, Joe worked it out. The all-important point was
+that the Major's part was to be done in completely unorthodox fashion.
+He would take measures to mesh his actions with those of Mike, the
+Chief, Haney, and Joe. Each action the Major took and each order he gave
+he would attend to personally. His actions would be restricted to the
+last five minutes or less before shift-change time. His orders would be
+given individually to individuals, and under no circumstances would he
+transmit any order through anybody else. In every instance, his order
+would be devised to mean nothing intelligible to its recipient until the
+time came for obedience.
+
+It was not an easy scheme for the Major to bind himself to. It ran
+counter to every principle of military thinking save one, which was that
+it was a good idea to outguess the enemy. At the end he said detachedly:
+"This is distinctly irregular. It is as irregular as anything could
+possibly be! But that is why I have agreed to it. It will be at
+least--unexpected--coming from me!"
+
+Then he smiled without mirth and nodded to Joe and to Haney, and went
+striding away down the concrete walk to where his car waited.
+
+Haney left a moment later to carry the list of arrangements to the Chief
+and to Mike. And Joe went into the Shed to do his part.
+
+There was little difference in the appearance of the Shed by night. In
+the daytime there were long rows of windows in the roof, which let in a
+vague, dusky, inadequate twilight. At night those windows were
+shuttered. This meant that the shadows were a little sharper and the
+contrasts of light and shade a trifle more abrupt. All other changes
+that Joe could see were the normal ones due to the taking down of
+scaffolding and the fastening up of rocket tubes. It was clear that the
+shape of the Platform proper would be obscure when all its rocket tubes
+were fast in place.
+
+Joe went to look at the last pushpots, and they were ready to be taken
+over to their own field for their flight test before use. There were
+extras, anyhow, beyond the number needed to lift the Platform. He found
+himself considering the obvious fact that after the Platform was aloft,
+they would be used to launch the ferry rockets, too.
+
+Then he moved toward the center of the Shed. A whole level of
+scaffolding came apart and its separate elements were bundled together
+as he watched. Slings lowered the bundles down to waiting trucks which
+would carry them elsewhere. There were mixing trucks still pouring out
+their white paste for the lining of the rocket tubes, and their product
+went up and vanished into the gaping mouths of the giant wire-wound
+pipes.
+
+Presently Joe went into the maze of piers under the Space Platform
+itself. He came to the temporary stairs he had reason to remember. He
+nodded to the two guards there.
+
+"I want to take another look at that gadget we installed," he said.
+
+One of the guards said good-naturedly: "Major Holt said to pass you any
+time."
+
+He ascended and went along the curious corridor--it had handgrips on the
+walls so a man could pull himself along it when there was no weight--and
+went to the engine room. He heard voices. They were speaking a
+completely unintelligible language. He tensed.
+
+Then the Chief grinned at him amiably. He was in the engine room and
+with him were no fewer than eight men of his own coppery complexion.
+
+"Here's some friends of mine," he explained, and Joe shook hands with
+black-haired, dark-skinned men who were named Charley Spotted Dog and
+Sam Fatbelly and Luther Red Cow and other exotic things. The Chief said
+exuberantly, "Major Holt told the guards to let me pass in some Indian
+friends, so I took my gang on a guided tour of the Platform. None of 'em
+had ever been inside before. And----"
+
+"I heard you talking Indian," said Joe.
+
+"You're gonna hear some more," said the Chief. "We're the first war
+party of my tribe in longer'n my grandpa woulda thought respectable!"
+
+Joe found it difficult to restrain a smile. The Chief took him off to
+one side.
+
+"Fella," he said kindly, "it bothers you, this business, because it
+ain't organized. That's what this world needs, Joe. Everything figured
+out by slide rules an' such--it's civilized, but it ain't human! What
+everybody oughta be is a connoisseur of chaos, like me. Quit worryin'
+an' get outside and pick up that security guy the Major was gonna send
+to meet you!"
+
+He gave Joe an amiable shove and rejoined his fellow Mohawks, each of
+whom, Joe noticed suddenly, had somewhere on his person a twelve-inch
+Stillson wrench or a reasonable facsimile to serve as a substitute
+tomahawk. They grinned at him as he departed.
+
+At the bottom of the flight of narrow wooden steps there was a third
+security man. He greeted Joe.
+
+"Major Holt told me to pick you up," he observed.
+
+Joe walked to one side with him. Major Holt had promised to send a
+first-class man to meet Joe at this place, with orders to take
+instructions from Joe. Joe said curtly: "You're to snag as many Security
+men as you can, place them more or less out of sight under the Platform
+here, and tell them to turn off their walkie-talkies and wait. No matter
+what happens, they're to wait right here until they're needed, right
+here!"
+
+He looked harassedly around him. The Security man nodded and moved
+casually away. This was close timing. Something made Joe look up. He saw
+the catwalk gallery nearly overhead. The expected guard was there.
+Haney, though, was with him. There was nothing else in sight. Not yet.
+But Haney was on the job. Joe saw a Security man step out of sight in
+the scaffolding. He saw his own assigned security man speak to another,
+who wandered casually toward the Platform's base.
+
+Minutes passed. Only Joe could have noticed, because he was watching for
+it. There were eight or nine Security men posted within call. They had
+their walkie-talkies turned off and would be subject only to his orders
+if an emergency arose.
+
+Gongs began to ring all around the edge of the Shed. They set up a
+horrendous clanging. This was not an alarm, but simply the notice of
+change-of-shift time.
+
+There was a marked change in the noises overhead. A crane pulled back.
+Hammerings dwindled and stopped. There were the sounds of pipes,
+combined to form the scaffolds, being taken apart for removal. A
+sling-load of pipe touched the floor and stayed there. The crane's
+internal-combustion motor stopped. Its operator stepped down to the
+floor and headed for the exit. Hoists descended and men moved across the
+floor. Other men scrambled down ladders. The floor became dotted with
+figures moving toward the doors through which men went out to get on the
+busses for Bootstrap.
+
+Nothing happened. More long minutes passed. The shift brought out by the
+busses was going through the check-over process in the incoming screen
+room. Joe knew that Major Holt had, within the past five minutes,
+gathered together a tight-knit bunch of armed security men to be
+available for anything that might turn up. The men doing the normal
+shift-change screening were shorthanded in consequence.
+
+The floor next to the exits became crowded, but the central area of the
+floor was cleared. One truck was stalled at the swing-up truck doors.
+Its driver ground the starter insistently.
+
+Suddenly there was a high-pitched yell away up on the Platform. Then
+there was a shot. Its echoes rang horribly in the resonant interior of
+the Shed. Joe's own special security man hurried to him, his face tense.
+
+"What about that?"
+
+"Hold everything," said Joe grimly. "That's taken care of."
+
+It was. That was Mike's gang--miniature humans popping out of hiding to
+offer battle with missiles carefully prepared beforehand against their
+alleged associates in sabotage. One of the associates had drawn a gun
+and fired. But Mike's gang had help. Out of small air locks devised to
+make the Platform's skin accessible to its crew on every side--provided
+they wore space suits--dark-skinned men appeared.
+
+The security man's walkie-talkie under his shoulder made a buzzing
+sound. He reached for it.
+
+"Forget it!" snapped Joe. "That's not for you! You've got your orders!
+Stay here!"
+
+There was a sudden growling uproar where men were crowding to get out of
+the Shed. Thick, billowing smoke appeared. There was a crashing
+explosion. The men eddied and milled crazily.
+
+The motor of the stalled truck caught. It moved toward the door, which
+opened, swinging up and high. Two trucks came roaring in. They raced for
+the Platform. And as they raced inside, their camouflaged loads
+clattered off and men showed instead. The guards by the doorway began to
+shoot.
+
+"That's what we've got to stop!" snapped Joe.
+
+He began to run, his pistol out. There was suddenly a small
+army--gathered by his orders--which materialized in the dim space under
+the Platform. It raced to guard against this evidently well-planned
+invasion.
+
+The harsh, tearing rattle of a machine gun sounded from somewhere high
+up. Joe knew what it was. Mike's whole scheme had been intended to force
+all sabotage efforts to take place at a single instant. Part of the
+preparation was authority for Haney to drag in two machine guns from an
+outer watching-post and mount them to cover the interior of the Shed
+when the general attack began.
+
+Those machine guns were shooting at the trucks. Splinters sprang up from
+the wood-block floor. Then, abruptly, one of the trucks vanished in a
+monstrous, actinic flash of blue-white flame and a roar so horrible that
+it was not sound but pure concussion. The other truck keeled over and
+crashed from the blast, but did not explode. Men jumped from it. There
+must have been screamed orders, but Joe could hear nothing at all. He
+only saw men waving their arms, and others seized things from the
+toppled load and rushed toward him, and he began to shoot as he ran to
+meet them.
+
+Now, belatedly, the sirens of the Shed screamed their alarm, and choppy
+yappings set up as the siren wails rose in pitch. Over by the exit
+pistols cracked. Something fell with a ghastly crash not ten feet from
+where Joe ran. It was a man's body, toppled from somewhere high up on
+the structure that was the most important man-made thing in all the
+world. A barbaric war whoop sounded among the echoes of other tumult.
+
+A Security man shot, and one of the running figures toppled and slid,
+his burden--which must certainly be a bomb--rolling ridiculously. There
+had been two trucks that plunged through the swing-up door. They had
+raced for the spaces under the Platform at the exact time when the floor
+would be clear, because all work had stopped. Under the Platform, the
+trucks were to have been detonated. At the very least, they would have
+rent and torn it horribly. They might have broken its back. And surely
+one truck should have made it. But there should not have been machine
+guns ready trained to shoot. Now the load of desperate men from the
+overturned survivor scurried for the Platform with parts of its cargo.
+If they could fight their way inside the Platform, they could blast its
+hull open, or demolish its controls or shatter its air pumps and its
+gyros and turn its air tanks into sieves. Anything that could be damaged
+would delay the take-off and so expose the Platform to further and
+perhaps more successful attack.
+
+There were more pistol shots. A group of men fought their way out of the
+incoming screening rooms and raced for the center of the Shed. (Later,
+it would be found they had slabs of explosive inside their garments, and
+detonation caps to set them off.) Somewhere another door opened, and
+Security men came out with flickering pistols, Major Holt leading them.
+He had started out to fight off the truck-borne attack, but he was bound
+to be too late. Joe's followers were trying to take care of that. The
+scuttling men from the incoming rooms were Major Holt's first prey. They
+were shot as they ran.
+
+Joe stumbled and fell and he heard guns crackling. As he scrambled up he
+pitched into a running figure that snarled as Joe hit him. And then he
+was fighting for his life.
+
+This was under the Platform and in the middle of confusion many times
+confounded. Joe caught a wrist that held a gun. He knew his assailant
+had a bomb slung over one shoulder and right now had one hand free for
+combat. Joe instinctively tried to batter his enemy with his own pistol,
+instead of pushing the muzzle against the man's body and pulling the
+trigger. He struck a flailing blow, and his hand and the weapon struck a
+metal brace. The blow cut his knuckles and paralyzed his fingers.
+Despairingly he felt the pistol slipping from his grasp. Then his
+assailant brought up his knee viciously, but it hit Joe's thigh instead
+of his groin, and Joe flung his weight furiously forward and they
+toppled to the ground together.
+
+There was fighting all around him. The machine guns rasped again--there
+was a burst of tracer-bullet fire. The panicked men by the exit tried to
+surge out through the swinging doors. But the tracers marked a line they
+must not cross. They checked. Once a gun flashed so close by Joe's eyes
+that it blinded him. And once somebody fell over both himself and his
+antagonist, who writhed like an eel possessed of desperate strength past
+belief.
+
+Joe could really know only his private part in the struggle down in the
+murky tangle of the scaffold base. But there was fighting up on the
+Platform itself. A savagely grinning Mohawk wrestled furiously with a
+man on one of the rocket tubes. An incendiary device in the saboteur's
+pocket ignited, and it flamed red-hot and he screamed as it burned its
+way out of his garments. The Mohawk flung the man fiercely clear, to
+crash horribly on the far-distant floor, and then kicked the incendiary
+off. It fell after the man and hit and burst, and it was thermite which
+surrounded itself with a column of acrid smoke from seared wood blocks.
+
+There was fighting by the exit doors. There was an ululating uproar in
+the incoming screening room, and a war whoop from the top of the
+Platform. A saboteur tried to crawl into an air-lock entrance, and he
+got his head and shoulders in, but a copper-skinned Indian held his
+forehead still and chopped down with the side of his hand on that man's
+neck. Underneath the Platform was panting chaos, with pistol shots and
+hand-to-hand struggles everywhere. The force Joe had gathered fought
+valiantly, but four invaders got to the foot of the wooden steps, where
+there were two guards. Then there were only two saboteurs left to
+scramble desperately up the steps over the dead guards' bodies and head
+toward the Platform door, but the Chief appeared swinging a twelve-inch
+Stillson. He let it go, precisely like a skillfully flung tomahawk, and
+leaped down sixteen steps squarely onto the body of the other man. A gun
+flashed, but then there was only squirming struggle on the floor.
+
+Mike the midget, inside the Platform, found one bloodied, panting,
+sobbing man who somehow had gotten inside. And Mike brought down a
+spanner from a ladder step, and swarmed upon his half-conscious victim,
+and hit him again, and then stayed on guard until somebody arrived who
+was big enough to carry the saboteur away.
+
+And all this while, Joe struggled with only one man. It was a horrible
+struggle, because the man had a bomb and he might manage to set it off
+or it might go off of itself. It was a ghastly struggle, because the man
+had the strength and desperation of a maniac--and practiced the tactics.
+Joe pounded the hand that held the gun upon the floor, and it hit
+something and exploded smokily and fell clear. But that made things
+worse. While struggling to kill Joe with the revolver, his antagonist
+had had only five fingers with which to gouge out Joe's eyes or tear
+away his ears or rend his flesh. But with no pistol he had ten, and he
+fought like a wild beast. He even breathed like an animal. He began to
+pant--thick, guttural pantings that had the quality of hellish hate. And
+then there was a surging of bodies--Major Holt's reserve was arriving
+very late in the center of the Shed--and then a struggling group
+trampled all over the pair who squirmed and fought on the ground, and a
+heavy boot jammed down Joe's head and he felt teeth sink in his throat.
+They dug into his flesh, worrying and tearing....
+
+Joe used his knee in a frenzy of revulsion--used his knee as the other
+man had tried to use his in the first instant of battle. The man beneath
+him screamed as an animal would scream, and Joe jerked his bleeding
+throat free. In hysterical horror he pounded his antagonist's head on
+the floor until the man went limp....
+
+And then he heard a grim voice saying: "Quit it or you get your head
+blown off! Quit it----" And Joe panted: "It's about time you guys got
+here! This man came in on that truck. Watch out for that bomb he's got
+slung on him...."
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+The incoming shift had a messy clean-up job to do. It was accomplished
+only because security men abruptly took over the work of gang bosses,
+and all ordinary labor on the Platform was put aside until normal
+operations were again possible. Even that would not have been feasible
+but for the walkie-talkies the security men wore. As the situation was
+sorted out, it was explained to them, and they relayed the news for the
+satisfaction of the curiosity of those who worked under them. No
+work--no explanation. It produced immediate and satisfactory
+co-operation all around.
+
+There had been four separate and independent attempts to wreck the
+Platform at the same time. One was, of course, the plan of those
+sympathetic characters who had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win
+the status of spacemen by firing the Platform's rockets. There were not
+many of them, and they had lost heavily. They'd had thermite bombs to
+destroy the Platform's vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely,
+if morosely, and that was that.
+
+There had been a particularly ungifted attempt to cause panic in the
+incoming shift in the rooms where its members were screened before
+admission to work. Somebody had tried to establish complete confusion
+there by firing revolver shots in the crowd, expecting the workers to
+break through to the floor and assigned gentlemen with slabs of
+explosive to get to the Platform with them. The gentlemen with the
+explosives had run into Major Holt's security reserve, and they got
+nowhere. The creators of panic with revolver shots were finally rescued
+from their shift-mates and more or less scraped up from the
+screening-room floor--they were in very bad shape--and carted off to be
+patched up for questioning. The members of this group had been
+impractical idealists, and besides, some of them had lost their nerve,
+as was evidenced by the discovery of abandoned explosives and detonators
+in the locker room and men's room of the Shed.
+
+The most dangerous attempt was, of course, that perfectly planned and
+co-ordinated assault which had been merely carried out at its original
+time, without either being hastened or delayed by Mike's activities.
+That plan had been beautifully contrived, and it would certainly have
+been successful but for the machine-gun bullets from the gallery and the
+fight Joe's followers put up underneath the Platform.
+
+The exact instant when the whole Shed would be most nearly empty had
+been fixed upon, and three separate units had worked in perfect timing.
+There'd been the man in the stalled truck. He'd delayed his exit from
+the Shed to the precise fraction of a second to get the doors open at
+the perfect instant. The explosive-laden trucks had raced in at the
+exact second when they were most certain to get underneath the Platform
+and detonate their cargoes. There'd been a perfect diversion planned for
+that, too. Smoke bombs and explosions in the outgoing screening rooms
+had created real panic, and but for Joe's order for his group's
+walkie-talkies to be turned off would have drawn every security man on
+duty to that spot.
+
+Mike's trick, then, had brought some saboteurs into the open, but had
+merely happened to coincide with the most dangerous and well-organized
+coup of all. However, it was due to his trick that the Platform was not
+now a wreck.
+
+There was also another break that was sheer coincidence. It was a
+discovery that could not possibly have turned up save in a situation of
+pure chaos artificially induced. Joe had had to react in a personal and
+vengeful way to the manner in which his especial antagonist had fought
+him. One expects a man to fight fair by instinct, and to turn to
+fouls--if he does--in desperation only. But Joe's personal opponent
+hadn't tried a single fair trick. It was as if he'd never heard of a
+fist blow, but only of murder and mayhem. Joe felt an individual enmity
+toward him.
+
+Joe didn't consider himself the most urgent of the injured, when doctors
+and nurses took up the work of patching, but Sally was there to help,
+and she went deathly pale when she saw his bloodstained throat. She
+dragged him quickly to a doctor. And the doctor looked at Joe and
+dropped everything else.
+
+But it wasn't too serious. The antiseptics hurt, and the stitching was
+unpleasant, but Joe was more worried by the knowledge that Sally was
+standing there and suffering for him. When he got up from the emergency
+operating table, the doctor nodded grimly to him.
+
+"That was close!" said the doctor. "Whoever chewed you was working for
+your jugular vein, and he was halfway through the wall when he stopped.
+A fraction of an inch more, and he'd have had you!"
+
+"Thanks," said Joe. His neck felt clumsy with bandages, and when he
+tried to turn his head the stitches hurt.
+
+Sally's hand trembled in his when she led him away.
+
+"I didn't think I'd ever dislike anybody so much," said Joe angrily, "as
+I did that man while he was chewing my throat. We were trying to kill
+each other, of course, but--confound it, people don't bite!"
+
+"Did you--kill him?" asked Sally in a shaky voice. "Not that I'll mind!
+I would have hated the thought ordinarily, but----"
+
+Joe halted. There was a row of stretchers--not too long, at that--in the
+emergency-hospital space. He looked down at the unconscious man who'd
+fought him.
+
+"There he is!" he said irritably. "I banged him pretty hard. I don't
+like to hate anybody, but the way he fought----"
+
+Sally's teeth chattered suddenly. She called to one of the security men
+standing guard by the stretchers.
+
+"I--think my--father is going to want to talk to him," she said
+unsteadily. "Don't--let him be taken away to the hospital until Dad
+knows, please."
+
+She started away, her face dead-white and her hand stone-cold.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Joe.
+
+"S-sabotage," said Sally in an indescribable tone that had a suggestion
+of heartbreak.
+
+She went into her father's office alone. She came out again with him,
+and her father looked completely stricken. Miss Ross, his secretary, was
+with him, too. Her face was like a mask of marble. She had always been a
+plain woman, a gloomy one, a morbid one. But at the new and horrible
+look on her face Joe turned his eyes away.
+
+Then Sally was crying beside him, and he put his arm clumsily around her
+and let her sob on his shoulder, completely puzzled.
+
+He didn't find out until later what the trouble was. The man who'd tried
+so earnestly to kill him was Miss Ross's fiance. She had met this man
+during a vacation, as a government secretary, and he was a refugee with
+an exotic charm that would have fascinated a much more personable and
+beautiful woman than Miss Ross. They had a whirlwind romance. He
+confided to her his terror of emissaries from his native country who
+might kill him. And of course she was more fascinated still. When he
+asked her to marry him she accepted his proposal. Then, just two weeks
+before her assignment to the Space Platform project, he vanished. Miss
+Ross was desperate and lovesick.
+
+One day her telephone rang and his anguished voice told her he'd been
+abducted, and if she told the police he would be tortured to death. He
+begged her not to do anything to cause him more torment than was already
+his.
+
+She'd been trying to keep him alive ever since. Once, when she couldn't
+bring herself to carry out an order she'd been given--with threats of
+torment to him if she failed--she'd received a human finger in the mail,
+and a scrawled and blood-stained note which cried out of unspeakable
+torment and begged her not to doom him to more.
+
+So Miss Ross, who was Major Holt's secretary and one of his most trusted
+assistants, had been giving information to one group of saboteurs all
+the while. She was the most dangerous security leak in the whole
+Platform project.
+
+But her fiance wasn't a captive. He was the head of that group of
+saboteurs. He'd made love to her and proposed to her merely to prepare
+her to supply the information he wanted. He needed only to write a
+sufficiently agonized note, or gasp tormented pleas on a telephone, to
+get what he wanted.
+
+Incidentally, he still had all his fingers when Joe knocked him cold.
+
+Sally had recognized him as the subject of a snapshot she'd once seen
+Miss Ross crying over. Miss Ross had hidden it hastily and told her it
+was someone she had once loved, now dead. And this inadvertent
+disclosure that Miss Ross was the security leak the Major had never had
+a clue to could only have come about through such confusion as Mike had
+instigated and Haney and the Chief and Joe had organized. But Joe
+learned those facts only later.
+
+At the moment, there was still the Platform to be gotten aloft. And
+there was plenty of work to do. There were two small rips in the
+plating, caused by fragments of the exploded truck. There were some
+bullet holes. The Platform could resist small meteorites at forty-five
+miles a second, but a high-velocity small-arm projectile could puncture
+it. Those scars of battle had to be welded shut. The rest of the
+scaffolding had to come down and the rest of the rocket tubes had to be
+affixed. And there was cleaning up to be done.
+
+These things occupied the shift that came on at the time of the multiple
+sabotage assaults. At first the work was ragged. But the policy of
+turning the Security men into news broadcasters worked well. After all,
+the Platform was a construction job and the men who worked on it were
+not softies. Most of them had seen men killed before. Before the shift
+was half over, a definite work rhythm was evident. Men had begun to take
+an even greater pride in the thing they had built, because it had been
+assailed and not destroyed. And the job was almost over.
+
+Sally went back to her father's quarters, to try to sleep. Joe stayed in
+the Shed. His throat was painful enough so that he didn't want to go to
+bed until he was genuinely tired, and he was thoroughly wrought up.
+
+Mike the midget had gone peacefully to sleep again, curled up in a
+corner of the outgoing screening room. His fellow midgets talked
+satisfiedly among themselves. Presently, to show their superiority to
+mere pitched battles, two of them brought out a miniature pack of cards
+and started a card game while they waited for a bus to take them back to
+Bootstrap.
+
+The Chief's Indian associates loafed comfortably while waiting for the
+same busses. Later they would put in for overtime--and get it. Haney
+mourned that he had been remote from the scene of action, and was merely
+responsible for the presence and placing and firing of the machine guns
+that had certainly kept the Platform from being blown up from below.
+
+It seemed that nothing else would happen to bother anybody. But there
+was one thing more.
+
+That thing happened just two hours before it was time for the shift to
+change once again, and when normal work was back in progress in the
+Shed. Everything seemed fully organized and serene. Everything in the
+Shed had settled down, and nothing had happened outside.
+
+There was ample exterior protection, of course, but the outside-guard
+system hadn't had anything to do for a very long time. Men at radar
+screens were bored and sleepy from sheer inactivity and silence. Pilots
+in jet planes two miles and five miles and eight miles high had long
+since grown weary of the splendid view below them. After all, one can
+get very used to late, slanting moonlight on cloud masses far
+underneath, and bright and hostile-seeming stars overhead.
+
+So the thing was well timed.
+
+A Canadian station noticed the pip on its radar screen first. The radar
+observer was puzzled by it. It could have been a meteor, and the
+Canadian observer at first thought it was. But it wasn't going quite
+fast enough, and it lasted too long. It was traveling six hundred
+seventy-two miles an hour, and it was headed due south at sixty thousand
+feet. The speed could have been within reason--provided it didn't stay
+constant. But it did. There was something traveling south at eleven
+miles a minute or better. A mile in five-plus seconds. It didn't slow.
+It didn't drop.
+
+The Canadian radarman debated painfully. He stopped his companion from
+the reading of a magazine article about chinchilla breeding in the home.
+He showed him the pip, still headed south and almost at the limit of
+this radar instrument's range. They discussed the thing dubiously. They
+decided to report it.
+
+They had a little trouble getting the call through. The night
+long-distance operators were sleepy. Because of the difficulty of making
+the call, the radarmen became obstinate and insisted on putting it
+through. They reported to Ottawa that some object flying at sixty
+thousand feet and six hundred seventy-two miles an hour was crossing
+Canada headed for the United States.
+
+There was a further time loss. Somebody in authority had to be awakened,
+and somebody had to decide that a further report was justified. Then the
+trick had to be accomplished, and a sleepy man in a bathrobe and
+slippers listened and said sleepily, "Oh, of course you'll tell the
+Americans. It's only neighborly!" and padded back to his bed to go to
+sleep again. Then he waked up suddenly and began to sweat. He'd realized
+that this might be the beginning of atomic war. So he set phone bells to
+jangling furiously all over Canada, and jet planes began to boom in the
+darkness.
+
+But there was only one object in the sky. Over the Dakotas it went
+higher. It went to seventy thousand feet, and then eighty. How this was
+managed is not completely known, because there are still some details of
+that flight that have never been completely explained. But certainly
+jatos flared briefly at some point, and the object reached ninety
+thousand feet where a jet motor would certainly be useless. And then,
+almost certainly, rockets flared once more and well south of the Dakotas
+it started down in a trajectory like that of an artillery shell, but
+with considerably higher speed than most artillery shells achieve.
+
+It was at about this time that the siren in the Shed began its choppy,
+hiccoughing series of warm-up notes. The news from Canada arrived, as a
+matter of fact, some thirty seconds after the outer-perimeter radar
+screen around the Platform gave its warning. Then there was no
+hesitation or delay at all. Men were already tumbling out of bed at
+three airfields, buckling helmets and hoping their oxygen tanks would
+function properly. Then the radars atop the Shed itself picked up the
+moving speck. And small blue-white flames began to rise from the ground
+and go streaking away in the darkness in astonishing numbers.
+
+The covers of the guns at the top of the Shed slid aside. Miles away,
+jet planes shot skyward, and newly wakened pilots looked at their
+night-fighting instruments and swore unbelievingly at the speed they
+were told the plunging object was making. The jet pilots gave their
+motors everything they could take, but it didn't look good.
+
+The planes of the jet umbrella over the Shed stopped cruising and
+sprinted. And they were the only ones likely to get in front of the
+object in time.
+
+Inside the Shed, the siren howled dismally and all the Security men were
+snapping: "Radar alarm! All out! Radar alarm! All out!"
+
+And men were moving fast, too. Some came down from the Platform on
+hoists, dropping with reckless speed to the floor level. Some didn't
+wait for a turn at that. They slid down one upright, swung around the
+crosspiece on the level below, and slid down another vertical pipe. For
+a minute or more it looked as if the scaffolds oozed black droplets
+which slid down its pipes. But the drops were men. The floor became
+speckled and spotted with dots running for its exits.
+
+The siren ceased its wailing and its noise went down and down in pitch
+until it was a baritone moan that dropped to bass and ceased. Then there
+was no sound but the men moving to get out of the Shed. There were
+trucks, too. Those that had been loading with dismantled scaffolding
+roared for the doors to get out and away. Some men jumped on board as
+they passed. The exit doors swung up to let them go.
+
+But it was very quiet in the Shed, at that. There was no noise but a few
+fleeing trucks, and the murmur which was the voices of the Security men
+hurrying the work crew out. There was less to hear than went on
+ordinarily. And it was a long distance across the floor of the Shed.
+
+Joe stood with his fists clenched absurdly. This could only be an air
+attack. An air attack could only mean an atom-bomb attack. And if there
+was an atom bomb dropped on the Shed, there'd be no use getting outside.
+It wouldn't be merely a fission bomb. It would be a hell bomb--a bomb
+which used the kind of bomb that shattered Hiroshima only as a primer
+for the real explosive. Nobody could hope to get beyond the radius of
+its destruction before it hit!
+
+Joe heard himself raging. He'd thought of Sally. She'd be in the range
+of annihilation, too. And Joe knew such fury and hatred--because of
+Sally--that he forgot everything else.
+
+He didn't run. He couldn't escape. He couldn't fight back. But because
+he hated, he had to do something to defy.
+
+He found himself moving toward the Platform, his jaws clenched. It was
+pure, blind, instinctive defiance.
+
+He was not the only one to have that reaction. Men running toward the
+sidewall exits began to get out of breath from their running. They
+slowed. Presently they stopped. They scowled and raged, like Joe. Some
+of them looked with burning eyes up at the roof of the Shed, though
+their thoughts went on beyond it. The security guards repeated, "Radar
+alarm! All out! Radar alarm! All out!"
+
+Someone snarled, "Nuts to that!"
+
+Joe saw a man walking in the same direction as himself. He was walking
+deliberately back to the Platform. Somebody else was headed back too....
+
+Very peculiarly, almost all the men on the floor had ceased to run. They
+began to gather in little groups. They knew flight was useless. They
+talked briefly. Profanely. Here and there men started disgustedly back
+toward the Platform. Their lips moved in expressions of furious scorn.
+Their scorn was of themselves.
+
+There was a gathering of men about the base of the framework that still
+partly veiled the Platform. They tended to face outward, angrily, and to
+clench their fists.
+
+Then somebody started an engine. A man began to climb furiously back to
+where he had been at work. Quite unreasonably, other men followed him.
+
+Hammers began defiantly and enragedly to sound.
+
+The work crew in the Shed went defiantly and furiously back to work. A
+clamor was set up that was almost the normal working noise. It was the
+only possible way in which those men could express the raging contempt
+they felt for those who would destroy the thing they worked on.
+
+But there were some other men who could do more. There were three levels
+of jet planes above the Shed, and they could dive. The highest one got
+first to the line along which the missile from an unknown place was
+plunging toward the Shed. That plane steadied on a collision course and
+let go its wing load of rockets. It peeled off and got out of the way.
+Seconds later the others from the jet umbrella were arriving. A tiny
+spray of proximity-fused rockets blazed furiously toward the invisible
+thing from the heights.
+
+Other planes and yet others came hurtling to the line their radars
+briskly computed for them. There were more rockets....
+
+The black-painted thing with more than the speed of an artillery shell
+plunged into a miniature hail of rockets. They flamed viciously. Half a
+dozen--a dozen--explosions that were pure futility.
+
+Then there was an explosion that was not. Nobody saw it, because its
+puny detonation was instantly wiped out in a blaze of such incredible
+incandescence that the aluminum paint on jet planes still miles away was
+scorched and blistered instantly. The light of that flare was seen for
+hundreds of miles. The sound--later on--was heard farther still. And the
+desert vegetation miles below the hell bomb showed signs of searing when
+the morning came.
+
+But the thing from the north was vaporized, utterly, some forty-five
+miles from its target. The damage it did was negligible.
+
+The work on the preparation for the Platform's take-off went on. When
+the all-clear signal sounded inside the Shed, nobody paid any attention.
+They were too busy.
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+On the day of the take-off there were a number of curious side-effects
+from the completion of the Space Platform. There was a very small
+country on the other side of the world which determined desperately to
+risk its existence on the success of the Platform's flight. It had to
+choose between abject submission to a powerful neighbor, or the
+possibility of a revolution in which its neighbor's troops would take on
+the semblance of citizens for street-fighting purposes. If the Platform
+got aloft, it could defy its neighbor. And in a grim gamble, it did.
+
+There was also a last-ditch fight in the United Nations, wherein the
+Platform was denounced and a certain block of associated countries
+issued an ultimatum, threatening to bolt the international organization
+if the Platform went aloft. And again there had to be a grim gamble. If
+the Platform did not take to space and so furnish ultimately a guarantee
+of peace, the United Nations would face the alternatives of becoming a
+military alliance for atomic war, or something less than an
+international debating society.
+
+Of course there were less significant results. There were already
+fourteen popular songs ready for broadcast, orchestrated and rehearsed
+with singers ready to saturate the ears of the listening public. They
+ranged from _We've Got a Warship in the Sky_, which was more or less
+jingoistic, to a boy-and-girl melody entitled _We'll Have a Moon Just
+for Us Two_. The latter tune had been stolen from a hit of four years
+before, which in turn had been stolen from a hit of six years before
+that, and it had been stolen from a still earlier bit of Bach, so it was
+a rather pretty melody.
+
+And of course there was a super-colossal motion picture epic in color
+and with musical numbers, champing in its film cans for simultaneous
+first-run showings in eight different key cities. It was titled _To the
+Stars_, and three separate endings had been filmed, of which the
+appropriate one would of course be used in the eight separate world
+_premieres_. One ending had the Platform fail due to sabotage, and the
+hero--played by an actor who had interrupted his seventh honeymoon to
+play the part--splendidly prepared to build it all over again. The
+second ending closed with the Platform headed for Alpha Centaurus--which
+was hardly the intention of anybody outside of filmdom. The third ending
+was secret, but it was said that hard-boiled motion-picture executives
+had cried like babies when it was thrown on preview screens.
+
+These, of course, were merely sidelights. They were not very important
+in the Shed. There, work went on at a feverish rate although there was
+no longer any construction work to be done. In theory, therefore, the
+members of welders and pipe-fitters and steel-construction and
+electrical and other unions should have retired gracefully to Bootstrap.
+Members of building-maintenance and rigging and wrecking and other
+assorted unions should have been gathered together in far cities,
+screened by security, and brought to Bootstrap and paid overtime to pull
+up wood-block flooring and unbolt and jack out the proper sections of
+the Shed's eastern wall.
+
+But if there had been anything of that sort tried, it would have
+produced bloodshed. The men who'd built the Platform were going to see
+it depart this Earth or else. They'd never have a second chance. It
+would work the first time or it wouldn't work at all.
+
+So the Platform was made ready for its take-off by the men who had made
+it. A gigantic section--two full gores--of the Shed's wall was unbolted
+in two pieces, and each piece thrust outward at the top and bottom, so
+that they were offset from the rest of the huge half-globe. There were
+hundreds of wheels at their bottom which for the first time touched the
+sixteen lines of rails laid with unbelievable solidity around the
+outside of the Shed. And then the monstrous sections were rolled aside.
+A vast opening resulted, and morning sunlight smote for the first time
+mankind's very first space craft.
+
+Joe saw the sunlight strike, and his first sensation was of
+disappointment. The normal shape of the Platform was ungainly, but now
+it was practically hidden by the solid-fuel rockets which would consume
+themselves in their firing. Also, the floor of the Shed looked strange.
+It was littered with the clumsy shapes of pushpots, trucked to this
+place in an unending stream all night long. A very young lieutenant from
+the pushpot airfield hunted up Joe and assured him that every drop of
+fuel in every pushpot's tanks had been tested twice--once in the storage
+tanks, and again in the pushpots. Joe thanked him very politely.
+
+There was no longer any scaffolding. There were no trucks left except
+two gigantic cranes, which could handle the pushpots like so many toys.
+And the effect of sunlight pouring into the Shed seemed strange indeed.
+
+Outside, there were carpenters hammering professionally upon a hasty
+grandstand of timber. Most of the carpenters would have been handier
+with rivet guns or welding torches, but it would have been indiscreet to
+comment. As fast as a final timber was spiked in place, somebody hastily
+wound it with very tawdry bunting. Men were stringing wires to the
+grandstand, and other men were setting up television and movie cameras.
+Two Security men grimly stood by each camera amid a glittering
+miscellany of microphones.
+
+Joe was lucky. Or perhaps Sally pulled wires. Anyhow, the two of them
+had a vantage point for which many other people would have paid
+astonishing sums. They waited where the circular ramp between the two
+skins of the Shed was broken by the removal of the doorway. They were
+halfway up the curve of the Shed's roof, at the edge of the great
+opening, and they could see everything, from the pushpot pilots as they
+were checked into their contraptions, to the sedate arrival of the big
+brass at the grandstand below.
+
+There was a reverberant humming from the Shed now. It might have been
+the humming of wind blowing across its open section. Joe and Sally saw a
+grim knot of Security men escorting four crew members to a flight of
+wooden steps that led up to a lower air-lock door--Joe had reason to
+remember that door--and watched them enter and close the air lock behind
+them. Then the security men pulled away the wooden stairs and hauled
+them completely away. There were a very few highly trusted men making
+final inspections of the Platform's exterior. One of them was nearly on
+a level with Joe and Sally. Other men were already lowering themselves
+down on ropes that they later jerked free, but this last man on top did
+a very human thing. When he'd finished his check-up to the last least
+detail, he pulled something out of his hip pocket. It was a tobacco can
+full of black paint. There was a brush with it. He painted his name on
+the silvery plates of the Platform, "C. J. Adams, Jr.," and satisfiedly
+began his descent to the ground. His name would go up with the Platform
+and be visible for uncounted generations--if all went well. He reached
+the ground and walked away, contented.
+
+The cranes began their task. Each one reached down deliberately and
+picked up a pushpot. They swung the pushpots to vertical positions and
+presented them precisely to the Platform's side. They clung there
+ridiculously. Magnetic grapples, of course. Joe and Sally, at the end of
+the corridor in the wall, could see the heads of the pushpot pilots in
+their plastic domes.
+
+Music blared from behind the grandstand. The seats were being filled.
+But naturally, the least important personages were arriving first. There
+were women in costumes to which they had given infinite thought--and
+nobody looked at them except other women. There was khaki. There were
+gray business suits--slide-rule men, these, who had done the brain-work
+behind the Platform's design. Then black broadcloth. Politicians, past
+question. There is nothing less impressive from a height of two hundred
+feet than a pot-bellied man in black broadcloth walking on the ground.
+
+There were men in uniforms which were not of the United States armed
+forces. They ran heavily to medals, which glittered. There were more
+arrivals, and more, and more. The newsreel and TV cameras nosed around.
+
+The cranes worked methodically. They dipped, and deftly picked up a
+thing shaped like the top half of a loaf of bread. They swung that metal
+thing to the Platform's side. Each time it clung fast, like a snail or
+slug to the surface on which it crawls. Many pushpots clung even to the
+rocket tubes--the same tubes that would presently burn away and vanish.
+So Joe and Sally saw the pushpots in a new aspect: blunt metal slugs
+with gaping mouths which were their air scoops.
+
+The tinny music from below cut off. Somebody began an oration. The men
+who had built the Platform were not interested in fine phrases, but this
+event was broadcast everywhere, and some people might possibly tune to
+the channels that carried the speakers and their orations rather than
+the channels that showed the huge, bleak, obscured shape of the monster
+that was headed either for empty space or pure disaster.
+
+The speaker stopped, and another took his place. Then another. One man
+spoke for less than a minute, and the stands went wild! But the one who
+followed made splendid gestures. He talked and talked and talked. The
+cranes cleaned up the last of the waiting pushpots, and the Platform
+itself was practically invisible.
+
+The cranes backed off and went away, clanking. The orator raised his
+voice. It made small echoes in the vast cavern that was the Shed.
+Somebody plucked the speaker's arm. He ended abruptly and sat down,
+wiping his forehead with a huge blue handkerchief.
+
+There was a roar. A pushpot had started its motor. Another roar.
+Another. One by one, the multitude of clustering objects added to the
+din. In the open a single jet was appalling. Here, the noise became a
+sound which was no longer a sound. It became a tumult which by pure
+volume ceased to be anything one's ears could understand. It reached a
+peak and held there. Then, abruptly, all the motors slackened in unison,
+and then roared more loudly. The group controls within the Platform were
+being tested. Three--four--five times the tumult faded to the merely
+unbearable and went up to full volume again.
+
+Joe felt Sally plucking at his arm. He turned, and saw a jet plane's
+underbelly, very close, and its swept-back wings. It was climbing
+straight up. Then he saw another jet plane streaking for the great
+dome's open door. It moved with incredible velocity. It jerked upward
+and climbed over the Shed's curve and was gone. But there were others
+and others and others.
+
+These were the fighter ships of the jet-plane guard. For months on end
+they had flown above the Shed, protecting it. Now they were going aloft
+to relieve the present watchers. They were rising to spread out as an
+interceptor screen for hundreds of miles in every direction, in case
+somebody should be so foolish as to try again the exploit of the night
+before. They would not see the monster in the Shed again. So in a single
+line which reached to the horizon, they made this roaring run for the
+one last glimpse which was their right. Joe saw tiny specks come
+streaking down out of the sky to queue up for this privileged view of
+the Platform before it rose.
+
+Suddenly they were gone, and Joe felt that tingling sense of pride which
+never comes from the sensation of sharing in mere power or splendor or
+pompous might, but is so certain when the human touch modifies
+magnificence.
+
+And then the roaring of the pushpot engines achieved an utterly
+impossible volume. The whole interior of the Shed was misty now, but
+shining in the morning light.
+
+And the Platform moved.
+
+At first it was a mere stirring. It turned ever so slightly to one side,
+pivoting on the ways that had supported it during building. It turned
+back and to the other side. The vapor thickened. From each jet motor a
+blast of blue-white flame poured down, and the moisture in the earth was
+turning into steam and stray wood-blocks into acrid smoke. The Platform
+turned precisely and exactly back to its original position, and Joe's
+heart pounded in his throat, because he knew that the turning had been
+done with the gyros, and they had been handled by the pilot gyros for
+which he was responsible.
+
+Then the Platform moved again. It lifted by inches and swayed forward.
+It checked, and lurched again, and went staggering toward the great
+opening before it. A part of its base gouged a deep furrow in the
+earthen floor.
+
+The noise increased from the incredible to the inconceivable. It seemed
+as if all the thunders since time began had returned to bellow because
+the Platform moved.
+
+And it floated and bumped out of the Shed. It staggered toward the east.
+Its keel was perhaps, at this point, as much as three feet above the
+ground, but the jet motors cast up blinding clouds of dust and smoke and
+even those afoot could not be sure.
+
+There was confusion. The smoke and vapor splashed out in every possible
+direction. Joe saw frantic movement, and he realized that the uniforms
+and the frock coats were scrambling to escape the fumes. The
+khaki-tinted specks which were men seemed to run. The frock coats ran.
+The carefully-thought-out brighter specks which were women ran gasping
+and choking from the smoke. One stout figure toppled, scrambled up, and
+scuttled frantically for safety.
+
+But the Platform was in motion now. It was a hundred yards beyond the
+Shed wall. Two hundred. Three.... It slowly gathered speed. A half-mile
+from the Shed it was definitely clear of the ground. It left a trail of
+scorched, burnt desert behind....
+
+It moved almost swiftly, now. Two miles from the Shed it was fifteen
+feet above the earth. Three miles, and a clear strip of sunlight showed
+beneath it. And it was still accelerating. At four miles and five and
+six....
+
+It was aloft, climbing with seemingly infinite slowness, with all the
+hundreds of straining, thrusting, clumsy pushpots clinging to it and
+pushing it ever ahead and upward.
+
+It went smoothly toward the east. It continued to gain speed. It did not
+seem to dip toward the horizon at all. It went on and on, dwindling from
+a giant to a spot and then to a little dark speck in the sky that still
+went on and on until even Joe could not pretend to himself that he still
+saw it. Even then there was probably a tiny droning noise in the air,
+but nobody who had watched the take-off could possibly hear it.
+
+Then Joe looked at Sally and she at him. And Joe was grinning like an
+ape with excitement and relief and triumph which was at once his own and
+that of all his dreams. Sally's eyes were shining and exultant. She
+hugged him in purest exuberance, crying that the Space Platform was up,
+was up, was up....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At sundown they were waiting on the porch of the Major's quarters behind
+the Shed. The Major was there, and Haney and the Chief and Mike and Joe.
+The Major's whole look had changed. He seemed to have shrunk, and he
+looked more tired than any man should ever be allowed to get. But his
+job was done, and the reaction was enough to explain everything. He sat
+in an easy chair with a glass beside him, and he looked as if nothing on
+earth could make him move a finger. But nevertheless he was waiting.
+
+Sally came out with a tray. She gravely passed around the glasses and
+the cakes that went with them. Then she sat down on the porch steps
+beside Joe. She looked at him and nodded in friendly fashion. And Joe
+was inordinately approving of Sally, but he felt awkward at showing it
+too plainly in her father's presence.
+
+Mike said defiantly: "But still it woulda been easier to get it up there
+if it'd been built for guys like me!"
+
+Nobody contradicted him. He was right. Anyhow every one of them felt too
+much relaxed and relieved to enter into argument.
+
+Haney said dreamily: "Everything broke right. Everything! They got in a
+jet stream like they expected, and it gave 'em three hundred miles extra
+east-speed. They were eight miles up when the pushpots fired their
+jatos, an' twelve miles up when the pushpots let go--they musta near
+broke their pilots' necks when they caught their motors again! And the
+Platform's rockets fired just right, makin' flames a mile long, an' they
+were goin' then--what were they makin'?"
+
+"Who cares?" asked the Chief peacefully. "Plenty!"
+
+"Six hundred from the pushpots," murmured Haney, frowning, "an' three
+hundred from the jet stream, and then there was the jatos that all let
+go at once, an' then there was eight hundred from the earth
+rotatin'----"
+
+"They had ten per cent of their rockets unfired when they got into their
+orbit," said Mike authoritatively. "They were two thousand miles up when
+they passed over India and now they're four thousand miles up and the
+orbit's stable. This is their third round, isn't it?"
+
+"Will be," said the Chief.
+
+Joe and Sally sat watching the west. The Space Platform went around the
+Earth from west to east, like Earth's natural moon, but because of its
+speed it would rise in the west and set in the east six times in every
+twenty-four hours.
+
+Major Holt spoke suddenly. The austerity had gone out of his manner with
+his energy. He said quietly: "You four--you gave me the worst scare I've
+ever had in my life. But do you realize that that sabotage attempt with
+the two truck-loads of explosive--do you realize that they'd have gotten
+the Platform if it hadn't been for that crazy trick you four planned,
+and the precautions we took because of it?"
+
+Joe said depreciatingly: "It was just luck that they happened to pick
+the same time, and that Haney was up there with those machine-gunners at
+the right moment. It was good luck, but it was luck."
+
+The Major said effortfully: "There are people called accident prones.
+Accidents happen all around them, and nobody knows why. You
+four--perhaps Joe especially--are not accident prones. You seem to be
+something antithetic to accidents. I would hesitate to credit your
+usefulness to your brains. Especially Joe's brains. I have known him too
+long. But--ah--Washington does not look at it in exactly the same way."
+
+Sally touched Joe warningly. But her face was very bright and proud. Joe
+felt queer.
+
+"Joe," said the Major tiredly, "was an alternate for membership in the
+Platform's crew. But for penicillin, or something of the sort that made
+a sick man get well quickly, Joe would be up there in the Platform's
+orbit now. His--ah--record in the instruction he did take was
+satisfactory. And--ah--all four of you were very useful in the last
+stages of the building of the Platform. Again Joe especially.
+His--ah--co-operation with higher authorities has produced--ah--very
+favorable comments. So it is felt that he should have some recognition.
+All of you, of course, but Joe especially. So----"
+
+Joe felt himself going white.
+
+"Joe," said the Major, "is to be offered an appointment as skipper of
+a ferry rocket, carrying supplies and crew reliefs to the Platform.
+His rocket will carry a crew of four, including himself.
+His--ah--recommendations for membership in his crew will have
+considerable weight."
+
+There was a buzzing in Joe's ears. He wanted to cry and to dance, and
+especially right then he would have liked very much to kiss Sally. It
+would have been the only really appropriate way to express his emotions.
+
+Mike said in a fierce, strained voice: "Joe! I can do anything a big
+elephant of a guy can do, and I only use a quarter of the grub and air!
+You've got to take me, Joe! You've got to!"
+
+The Chief said benignly: "H'm.... I'm gonna be in charge of the engine
+room, an' Haney'll be bos'n--let Joe try to take off without us!--an'
+that don't leave you a rating, Mike, unless you're willin' to be just
+plain crew!"
+
+Slowly Sally turned her face away from Joe and looked up.
+
+Then they all saw it. A telescope, maybe, would have shown it as the
+thing they'd worked on and fought for. But it didn't look like that to
+the naked eye. It was just a tiny speck of incandescence gliding with
+grave deliberation across the sky. It was a sliver of sunlight, moving
+as they watched.
+
+There were a good many millions of people watching it, just then, as it
+floated aloft in emptiness. To some it meant peace and hope and
+confidence of a serene old age and a life worth living for their
+children and their children's children. To some it was a fascinating
+technical achievement. To a few it meant that if wars had ended, and
+turmoil was no longer the norm of life on earth, this thing would be
+their destruction. But it meant something to everybody in the world. To
+the people who had been unable to do anything to help it except to pray
+for it, perhaps it meant most of all.
+
+Joe said quietly: "We'll be going up there to visit it. All of us."
+
+He realized that Sally's hand was tightly clasped in his. She said: "Me
+too, Joe?"
+
+"Some day," said Joe, "you too."
+
+He stood up to watch more closely. Sally stood beside him. The others
+came to look. They made a group on the lawn, as people were grouped
+everywhere in all the world to gaze up at it.
+
+The Space Platform, a tiny sliver of sunshine, an infinitesimal speck of
+golden light, moved sedately across the deepening blue toward the east.
+Toward the night.
+
+
+
+
+THESE SYMBOLS GUARANTEE THE BEST IN READING
+
+
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+
+POCKET BOOKS, INC. is the largest publisher of books in the world today
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+
+
+TOP SECRET
+
+
+In the little desert town of Bootstrap stands a huge metal shed. In the
+shed men are building an object that can change the history of mankind.
+It is a Space Platform. Propelled to an orbit 4000 miles from Earth this
+platform will serve as the starting place for man's exploration of
+mysterious outer space.
+
+SPACE PLATFORM tells the exciting story of a young man helping to build
+this first station. With scientific accuracy and imagination Murray
+Leinster, one of the world's top science-fiction writers, describes the
+building and launching of the platform. Here is a fast-paced story of
+sabotage and murder directed against a project more secret and valuable
+than the atom bomb!
+
+Cover illustration by Earle Bergey
+
+THIS IS A GENUINE
+POCKET BOOK
+ROCKEFELLER CENTER NEW YORK 20, N. Y.
+25c
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+
+                      Transcriber's Note
+
+The chemical symbol for carbon dioxide is shown as
+CO_2 to represent subscript 2.
+
+In the following compound words, the hyphen was
+removed to conform to majority use in text:
+      exhaust-blast     exhaust blast
+      jet-motors        jet motors
+      jet-planes        jet planes
+      pilot-gyros       pilot gyros
+      space-travel      space travel
+      wing-flaps        wing flaps
+
+The following compounds, with and without a hyphen, were
+left as found because of equal prevalence of both forms:
+      blood-stained     bloodstained
+      wood-blocks       wood blocks
+
+One compound was split since joined it suggested an
+inapposite meaning:
+      cherrystone       cherry stone
+
+A host of compounds were left both hyphenated and separate
+depending on their part of speech, for example:
+      science-fiction   science fiction
+      (adjective)       (noun)
+
+One typo was corrected:
+      spendid            splendid
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Space Platform, by Murray Leinster
+
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+
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