"We see it, Mike," Haney said mildly. "You're right. But people won't do it. It's not fair, but they won't."
Joe said, beaming, "Besides, Mike, it'd bust up our gang! And Sally's just gotten the real answer! The answer is for ships to go up to the Platform and not come back!"
He grinned at them. The Chief raised his eyebrows. Haney turned his head to stare. Joe said exuberantly: "They've been talking about arming ships with guided missiles to fight with. Too heavy, of course. But—if we could handle guided missiles, why couldn't we handle drones?"
The three of them gaped at him. Sally said, startled, "But—but, Joe, I didn't——"
"We've got plenty of hulls!" said Joe. Somehow he still looked astonished at what he'd made of Sally's perfectly obvious comment. "Mike's arranged for that! Make—say—six of 'em into drones—space barges. Remote-controlled ships. Control them from one manned ship—the tug! We'll ride that! Take 'em up to the Platform exactly like a tug tows barges. The tow-line will be radio beams. We'll have a space-tow up, and not bother to bring the barges back! There won't be any landing rockets! They'll carry double cargo! That's the answer! A space tug hauling a tow to the Platform!"
"But, Joe," insisted Sally, "I didn't think of——"
The Chief heaved himself up. Haney's voice cut through what the Chief was about to say. Haney said drily: "Sally, if Joe hadn't kissed you for thinking that up, I would. Makes me feel mighty dumb."
Mike swallowed. Then he said loyally, "Yeah. Me too. I'd've made a two-ton cargo possible—maybe. But this adds up. What does the major say?"
"I—haven't talked to him. I'd better, right away." Joe grinned. "I wanted to tell you first."
The Chief grunted. "Good idea. But hold everything!" He fumbled in his pocket. "The arithmetic is easy enough, Joe. Cut out the crew and air and you save something." He felt in another pocket. "Leave off the landing rockets, and you save plenty more. Count in the cargo you could take anyhow"—— he searched another pocket still——"and you get forty-two tons of cargo per space barge, delivered at the Platform. Six drones—that's 252 tons in one tow! Here!" He'd found what he wanted. It was a handkerchief. He thrust it upon Joe. "Wipe that lipstick off, Joe, before you go talk to the major. He's Sally's father and he might not like it."
Joe wiped at his face. Sally, her eyes shining, took the handkerchief from him and finished the job. She displayed that remarkable insensitivity of females in situations productive of both pride and embarrassment. When a girl or a woman is proud, she is never embarrassed.
She and Joe went away, and Sally rushed right into her father's office. In fifteen minutes technical men began to arrive for conferences, summoned by telephone. Within forty-five minutes, messengers carried orders out to the Shed floor and stopped the installation of certain types of fittings in all but one of the hulls. In an hour and a half, top technical designers were doing the work of foremen and getting things done without benefit of blueprints. The proposal was beautifully simple to put into practice. Guided-missile control systems were already in mass production. They could simply be adjusted to take care of drones.
Within twelve hours there were truck-loads of new sorts of supplies arriving at the Shed. Some were Air Force supplies and some were Ordnance, and some were strictly Quartermaster. These were not component parts of space ships. They were freight for the Platform.
And, just forty-eight hours after Joe and Sally looked dispiritedly down upon the floor of the Shed, there were seven gleaming hulls in launching cages and the unholy din of landing pushpots outside the Shed. They came with hysterical cries from their airfield to the south, and they flopped flat with extravagant crashings on the desert outside the eastern door.
By the time the pushpots had been hauled in, one by one, and had attached themselves to the launching cages, Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike had climbed into the cabin of the one ship which was not a drone. There were now seven cages in all to be hoisted toward the sky. A great double triangular gore had been jacked out and rolled aside to make an exit in the side of the Shed. Nearly as many pushpots, it seemed, were involved in this launching as in the take-off of the Platform itself.
The routine test before take-off set the pushpot motors to roaring inside the Shed. The noise was the most sustained and ghastly tumult that had been heard on Earth since the departure of the Platform.
But this launching was not so impressive. It was definitely untidy, imprecise, and unmilitary. There were seven eighty-foothulls in cages surrounded by clustering, bellowing, preposterous groups of howling objects that looked like over-sized black beetles. One of the seven hulls had eyes. The others were blind—but they were equipped with radio antennae. The ship with eyes had several small basket-type radar bowls projecting from its cabin plating.
The seven objects rose one by one and went bellowing and blundering out to the open air. At 40 and 50 feet above the ground, they jockeyed into some sort of formation, with much wallowing and pitching and clumsy maneuvering.
Then, without preliminary, they started up. They rose swiftly. The noise of their going diminished from a bellow to a howl, and from a howl to a moaning noise, and then to a faint, faint, ever-dwindling hum.
Presently that faded out, too.
All the sensations were familiar, the small fleet of improbable objects rose and rose. Of all flying objects ever imagined by man, the launching cages supported by pushpots were most irrational.
The squadron, though, went bumbling upward. In the manned ship, Joe was more tense than on his other take-off—if such a thing was possible. His work was harder this trip. Before, he'd had Mike at communications and the Chief at the steering rockets while Haney kept the pushpots balanced for thrust. Now Joe flew the manned ship alone. Headphones and a mike gave him communications with the Shed direct, and the pushpots were balanced in groups, which cost efficiency but helped on control. He would have, moreover, to handle his own steering rockets during acceleration and when he could—and dared—he should supervise the others. Because each of the other three had two drone-ships to guide. True, they had onlyto keep their drones in formation, but Joe had to navigate for all. The four of them had been assigned this flight because of its importance. They happened to be the only crew alive who had ever flown a space ship designed for maneuvering, and their experience consisted of a single trip.
The jet stream was higher this time than on that other journey now two months past. They blundered into it at 36,000 feet. Joe's headphones buzzed tinnily. Radar from the ground told him his rate-of-rise, his ground speed, his orbital speed, and added comments on the handling of the drones.
The last was not a precision job. On the way up Joe protested, "Somebody's ship—Number Four—is lagging! Snap it up!"
Mike said crisply, "Got it, Joe. Coming up!"
"The Shed says three separate ships are getting out of formation. And we need due east pointing. Check it."
The Chief muttered, "Something whacky here ... come round, you! Okay, Joe."
Joe had no time for reflection. He was in charge of the clumsiest operation ever designed for an exact result. The squadron went wallowing toward the sky. The noise was horrible. A tinny voice in his headphones:
"You are at 65,000 feet. Your rate-of-climb curve is flattening. You should fire your jatos when practical. You have some leeway in rocket power."
Joe spoke into the extraordinary maze of noise waves and pressure systems in the air of the cabin.
"We should blast. I'm throwing in the series circuit for jatos. Try to line up. We want the drones above us and with a spread, remember! Go to it!"
He watched his direction indicator and the small graphic indicators telling of the drones. The sky outside the ports was dark purple. The launching cage responded sluggishly. Its open end came around toward the east. It wobbled and wavered. It touched the due-east point. Joe stabbed the firing-button.
Nothing happened. He hadn't expected it. The seven ships had to keep in formation. They had to start off on one course—witha slight spread as a safety measure—and at one time. So the firing-circuits were keyed to relays in series. Only when all seven firing-keys were down at the same time would any of the jatos fire. Then all would blast together.
The pilots in the cockpit-bubbles of the pushpots had an extraordinary view of the scene. At something over twelve miles height, seven aggregations of clumsy black things clung to frameworks of steel, pushing valorously. Far below there were clouds and there was Earth. There was a horizon, which wavered and tilted. The pushpots struggled with seeming lack of purpose. One of the seven seemed to drop below the others. They pointed vaguely this way and that—all of them. But gradually they seemed to arrive at an uncertain unanimity.
Joe pushed the firing-button again as his own ship touched the due-east mark. Again nothing happened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Haney pressing down both buttons. The Chief's finger lifted. Mike pushed down one button and held off the other.
Roarings and howlings of pushpots. Wobblings and heart-breaking clumsinesses of the drone-ships. They hung in the sky while the pushpots used up their fuel.
"We've got to make it soon," said Joe grimly. "We've got forty seconds. Or we'll have to go down and try again."
There was a clock dial with a red sweep-hand which moved steadily and ominously toward a deadline time for firing. Up to that deadline, the pushpots could let the ships back down to Earth without crashing them. After it, they'd run out of fuel before a landing could be made.
The deadline came closer and closer. Joe snapped:
"Take a degree leeway. We've got ten seconds."
He had the manned ship nearly steady. He held down the firing-button, holding aim by infinitesimal movements of the controls. Haney pushed both hands down, raised one, pushed again. The Chief had one finger down. Mike had both firing buttons depressed.... The Chief pushed down his second button, quietly.
There was a monstrous impact. Every jato in every pushpot about every launching cage fired at once. Joe felt himselfflung back into his acceleration chair. Six gravities. He began the horrible fight to stay alive, while the blood tried to drain from the conscious forepart of his brain, and while every button of his garments pressed noticeably against him, and objects in his pockets pushed. The sides of his mouth dragged back, and his cheeks sagged, and his tongue strove to sink back into his throat and strangle him.
It was very bad. It seemed to last for centuries.
Then the jatos burned out. There was that ghastly feeling of lunging forward to weightlessness. One instant, Joe's body weighed half a ton. The next instant, it weighed less than a dust grain. His head throbbed twice as if his skull were about to split open and let his brains run out. But these things he had experienced before.
There were pantings in the cabin about him. The ship fell. It happened to be going up, but the sensation and the fact was free fall. Joe had been through this before, too. He gasped for breath and croaked, "Drones?"
"Right," said Haney.
Mike panted anxiously, "Four's off course. I'll fix it."
The Chief grunted guttural Mohawk. His hands stirred on the panel for remote control of the drones he had to handle.
"Crazy!" he growled. "Got it now, Joe. Fire when ready."
"Okay, Mike?"
A half-second pause.
"Okay!"
Joe pressed the firing-button for the take-off rockets. And he was slammed back into his acceleration chair again. But this was three gravities only. Pressed heavily against the acceleration cushions, he could perform the navigation for the fleet. He did. The mother-ship had to steer a true course, regardless of the vagaries of its rockets. The drones had simply to be kept in formation with it. The second task was simpler. But Joe was relieved, this time, of the need to report back instrument-readings. A telemetering device took care of that.
The take-off rockets blasted and blasted and blasted. The mere matter of staying alive grew very tedious. The ordeal seemed to last for centuries. Actually it could be measuredonly in minutes. But it seemed millennia before the headphones said, staccato fashion: "You are on course and will reach speed in fourteen seconds. I will count for you."
"Relays for rocket release," panted Joe. "Throw 'em over!"
Three hands moved to obey. Joe could release the drive rockets on all seven ships at will.
The voice counted:
"Ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... cut!"
Joe pressed the master-key. The remnants of the solid-fuel take-off rockets let go. They flashed off into nothingness at unbelievable speed, consuming themselves as they went.
There was again no weight.
This time there was no resting. No eager gazing out the cabin ports. Now they weren't curious. They'd had over a month in space, and something like sixteen days back on Earth, and now they were back in space again.
Mike and Haney and the Chief worked doggedly at their control boards. The radar bowls outside the cabin shifted and moved and quivered. The six drone ships showed on the screens. But they also had telemetering apparatus. They faithfully reported their condition and the direction in which their bows pointed. The radars plotted their position with relation to each other and the mother-ship.
Presently Joe cast a glance out of a port and saw that the dark line of sunset was almost below. The take-off had been timed to get the ships into Earth's shadow above the area from which war rockets were most likely to rise. It wouldn't prevent bombing, of course. But there was a gadget....
Joe spoke into the microphone: "Reporting everything all right so far. But you know it."
The voice from solid ground said, "Report acknowledged."
The ships went on and on and on. The Chief muttered to himself and made very minute adjustments of the movement of one of his drones. Mike fussed with his. Haney regarded the controls of his drones with a profound calm.
Nothing happened, except that they seemed to be falling into a bottomless pit and their stomach-muscles knotted andcramped in purely reflex response to the sensation. Even that grew tedious.
The headphones said, "You will enter Earth's shadow in three minutes. Prepare for combat."
Joe said drily, "We're to prepare for combat."
The Chief growled. "I'd like to do just that!"
The phrasing, of course, was intentional—in case enemy ears were listening. Actually, the small fleet was to use a variant on the tin can shield which protected the Platform. It would be most effective if visual observation was impossible. The fleet was seven ships in very ragged formation. Most improbably, after the long three-gravity acceleration, they were still within a fifty-mile globe of space. Number Four loitered behind, but was being brought up by judicious bursts of steering-rocket fire. Number Two was some distance ahead. The others were simply scattered. They went floating on like a group of meteors. Out the ports, two of them were visible. The others might be picked out by the naked eye—but it wasn't likely.
Drone Two, far ahead and clearly visible, turned from a shining steel speck to a reddish pin-point of light. The red color deepened. It winked out. The sunlight in the ports of the mother-ship turned red. Then it blacked out.
"Shoot the ghosts," said Joe.
The three drone-handlers pushed their buttons. Nothing happened that anybody could see. Actually, though, a small gadget outside the hull began to cough rhythmically. Similar devices on the drones coughed, too. They were small, multiple-barreled guns. Rifle shells fired two-pound missiles at random targets in emptiness. They wouldn't damage anything they hit. They'd go varying distances, explode and shoot small lead shot ahead to check their missile-velocity, and then emit dense masses of aluminum foil. There was no air resistance. The shredded foil would continue to move through emptiness at the same rate as the convoy-fleet. The seven ships had fired a total of eighty-four such objects away into the blackness of Earth's shadow. There were, then, seven ships and eighty-fourmasses of aluminum foil moving through emptiness. They could not be seen by telescopes.
And radars could not tell ships from masses of aluminum foil.
If enemy radars came probing upward, they reported ninety-one space ships in ragged but coherent formation, soaring through emptiness toward the Platform. And a fleet like that was too strong to attack.
The radar operators had been prepared to forward details of the speed and course of a single ship to waiting rocket-launching submarines half-way across the Pacific. But they reported to Very High Authority instead.
He received the report of an armada—an incredible fleet—in space. He didn't believe it. But he didn't dare disbelieve it.
So the fleet swam peacefully through the darkness that was Earth's shadow, and no attempt at attack was made. They came out into sunlight to look down at the western shore of America itself. With seven ships to get on an exact course, at an exact speed, at an exact moment, time was needed. So the fleet made almost a complete circuit of the Earth before reaching the height of the Platform's orbit.
They joined it. A single man in a space suit, anchored to its outer plates, directed a plastic hose which stretched out impossibly far and clamped to one drone with a magnetic grapple. He maneuvered it to the hull and made it fast. He captured a second, which was worked delicately within reach by coy puffs of steering-rocket vapor.
One by one, the drones were made fast. Then the manned ship went in the lock and the great outer door closed, and the plastic-fabric walls collapsed behind their nets, and air came in.
Lieutenant Commander Brown was the one to come into the lock to greet them. He shook hands all around—and it again seemed strange to all the four from Earth to find themselves with their feet more or less firmly planted on a solid floor, but their bodies wavering erratically to right and left and before and back, because there was no up or down.
"Just had reports from Earth," Brown told Joe comfortably."The news of your take-off was released to avoid panic in Europe. But everybody who doesn't like us is yelling blue murder. Somebody—you may guess who—is announcing that a fleet of ninety-one war rockets took off from the United States and now hangs poised in space while the decadent American war-mongers prepare an ultimatum to all the world. Everybody's frightened."
"If they'll only stay scared until we get unloaded," said Joe in some satisfaction, "the government back home can tell them how many we were and what we came up for. But we'll probably make out all right, anyhow."
"My crew will unload," said Brown, in conscious thoughtfulness. "You must have gotten pretty well exhausted by that acceleration."
Joe shook his head. "I think we can handle the freight faster. We found out a few things by going back to Earth."
A section of plating at the top of the lock—at least it had been the top when the Platform was built on Earth—opened up as on the first journey here. A face grinned down. But from this point on, the procedure was changed. Haney and Joe went into the cargo-section of the rocketship and heaved its contents smoothly through weightlessness to the storage chamber above. The Chief and Mike stowed it there. The speed and precision of their work was out of all reason. Brown stared incredulously.
The fact was simply that on their first trip to the Platform, Joe and his crew didn't know how to use their strength where there was no weight. By the time they'd learned, their muscles had lost all tone. Now they were fresh from Earth, with Earth-strength muscles—and they knew how to use them.
"When we got back," Joe told Brown, "we were practically invalids. No exercise up here. This time we've brought some harness to wear. We've some for you, too."
They moved out of the airlock, and the ship was maneuvered to a mooring outside, and a drone took its place. Brown's eyes blinked at the unloading of the drone. But he said, "Navy style work, that!"
"Out here," said Joe, "you take no more exercise than aninvalid on Earth—in fact, not as much. By now the original crew would have trouble standing up on a trip back to Earth. You'd feel pretty heavy, yourself."
Brown frowned.
"Hm. I—ah—I shall ask for instructions on the matter."
He stood erect. He didn't waver on his feet as the others did. But he wore the same magnetic-soled shoes. Joe knew, with private amusement, that Brown must have worked hard to get a dignified stance in weightlessness.
"Mr. Kenmore," said Brown suddenly. "Have you been assigned a definite rank as yet?"
"Not that I know of," said Joe without interest. "I skipper the ship I just brought up. But——"
"Your ship has no rating!" protested Brown irritably. "The skipper of a Navy ship may be anything from a lieutenant junior grade to a captain, depending on the size and rating of the ship. In certain circumstances even a noncommissioned officer. Are you an enlisted man?"
"Again, not that I know of," Joe told him. "Nor my crew, either."
Brown looked at once annoyed and distressed.
"It isn't regular!" he objected. "It isn't shipshape! I should know whether you are under my command or not! For discipline! For organization! It should be cleared up! I shall put through an urgent inquiry."
Joe looked at him incredulously. Lieutenant Commander Brown was a perfectly amiable man, but he had to have things in a certain pattern for him to recognize that they were in a pattern at all. He was more excited over the fact that he didn't know whether he ranked Joe, than over the much more important matter of physical deterioration in the absence of gravity. Yet he surely understood their relative importance. The fact was, of course, that he could confidently expect exact instructions about the last, while he had to settle matters of discipline and routine for himself.
"I shall ask for clarification of your status," he said worriedly. "It shouldn't have been left unclear. I'd better attend to it at once."
He looked at Joe as if expecting a salute. He didn't get it. He clanked away, his magnetic shoe-soles beating out a singularly martial rhythm. He must have practised that walk, in private.
Joe got out of the airlock as another of the space barges was warped in. Brent, the crew's psychologist, joined him when he went to unload. Brent nodded in a friendly fashion to Joe.
"Quite a change, eh?" he said drily. "Sanford turned out to be a crackpot with his notions of grandeur. I'm not sure that Brown's notions of discipline aren't worse."
Joe said, "I've something rather important to pass on," and told about the newly discovered physical effects of a long stay where there was no gravity. The doctors now predicted that anybody who spent six months without weight would suffer a deterioration of muscle tone which could make a return to Earth impossible without a long preliminary process of retraining. One's heart would adjust to the absence of any need to pump blood against gravity.
"Which," said Joe, "means that you're going to have to be relieved before too long. But we brought up some gravity-simulator harness that may help."
Brent said desolately: "And I was so pleased! We all had trouble with insomnia, at first, but lately we've all been sleeping well! Now I see why! Normally one sleeps because he's tired. We had trouble sleeping until our muscles got so weak we tired anyhow!"
Another drone came in and was unloaded. And another and another. But the last of them wasn't only unloaded. Haney took over the Platform's control board and—grinning to himself—sent faint, especially-tuned short wave impulses to the steering-rockets of the drone. The liquid-fuel rockets were designed to steer a loaded ship. With the airlock door open, the silvery ship leaped out of the dock like a frightened horse. The liquid-fuel rocket had a nearly empty hull to accelerate. It responded skittishly.
Joe watched out a port as it went hurtling away. The vastEarth rolled beneath it. It sped on and vanished. Its fumes ceased to be visible. Joe told Brent:
"Another nice job, that! We sent it backward, slowing it a little. It'll have a new orbit, independent of ours and below it. But come sixty hours it will be directly underneath. We'll haul it up and refuel it. And our friends the enemy will hate it. It's a radio repeater. It'll pick up short-wave stuff beamed to it, and repeat it down to Earth. And they can try to jam that!"
It was a mildly malicious trick to play. Behind the Iron Curtain, broadcasts from the free world couldn't be heard because of stations built to emit pure noise and drown them out. But the jamming stations were on the enemy nations' borders. If radio programs came down from overhead, jamming would be ineffective at least in the center of the nations. Populations would hear the truth, even though their governments objected.
But that was a minor matter, after all. With space ship hulls coming into being by dozens, and with one convoy of hundreds of tons of equipment gotten aloft, the whole picture of supply for the Platform had changed.
Part of the new picture was two devices that Haney and the Chief were assembling. They were mostly metal backbone and a series of tanks, with rocket motors mounted on ball and socket joints. They looked like huge red insects, but they were officially rocket recovery vehicles, and Joe's crew referred to them as space wagons. They had no cabin, but something like a saddle. Before it there was a control-board complete with radar-screens. And there were racks to which solid-fuel rockets of divers sizes could be attached. They were literally short-range tow craft for travel in space. They had the stripped, barren look of farm machinery. So the name "space wagon" fitted. There were two of them.
"We're putting the pair together," the Chief told Joe. "Looks kinda peculiar."
"It's only for temporary use," said Joe. "There's a bigger and better one being built with a regular cabin and hull. But some experience with these two will be useful in running a regular space tug."
The Chief said with a trace too much of casualness: "I'm kind of looking forward to testing this."
"No," said Joe doggedly. "I'm responsible. I take the first chance. But we should all be able to handle them. When this is assembled you can stand by with the second one. If the first one works all right, we'll try the second."
The Chief grimaced, but he went back to the assembly of the spidery device.
Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses. He showed Brent how they worked. Brown hadn't official instructions to order their use, but Joe put one on himself, set for full Earth-gravity simulation. He couldn't imitate actual gravity, of course. Only the effect of gravity on one's muscles. There were springs and elastic webbing pulling one's shoulders and feet together, so that it was as much effort to stand extended—with one's legs straight out—as to stand upright on Earth. Joe felt better with a pull on his body.
Brent was upset when he found that to him more than a tenth of normal gravity was unbearable. But he kept it on at that. If he increased the pull a very little every day, he might be able to return to Earth, in time. Now it would be a very dangerous business indeed. He went off to put the other members of the crew in the same sort of harness.
After ten hours, a second drone broadcaster went off into space. By that time the articulated red frameworks were assembled. They looked more than ever like farm machinery, save that their bulging tanks made them look insectile, too. They were actually something between small tow-boats and crash-wagons. A man in a space suit could climb into the saddle of one of these creations, plug in the air-line of his suit to the crash-wagon's tanks, and travel in space by means of the space wagon's rockets. These weird vehicles had remarkably powerful magnetic grapples. They were equipped with steering rockets as powerful as those of a ship. They had banks of solid-fuel rockets of divers power and length of burning. And they even mounted rocket missiles, small guided rockets which could be used to destroy what could not be recovered. They were intended to handle unmanned rocket shipments of suppliesto the Platform. There were reasons why the trick should be economical, if it should happen to work at all.
When they were ready for testing, they seemed very small in the great space lock. Joe and the Chief very carefully checked an extremely long list of things that had to work right or nothing would work at all. That part of the job wasn't thrilling, but Joe no longer looked for thrills. He painstakingly did the things that produced results. If a sense of adventure seemed to disappear, the sensations of achievement more than made up for it.
They got into space suits. They were in an odd position on the Platform. Lieutenant Commander Brown had avoided Joe as much as possible since his arrival. So far he'd carefully avoided giving him direct orders, because Joe was not certainly and officially his subordinate. Lacking exact information, the only thing a conscientious rank-conscious naval officer could do was exercise the maximum of tact and insistently ask authority for a ruling on Joe's place in the hierarchy of rank.
Joe flung a leg over his eccentric, red-painted mount. He clipped his safety-belt, plugged in his suit air-supply to the space wagon's tanks, and spoke into his helmet transmitter.
"Okay to open the lock. Chief, you keep watch. If I make out all right, you can join me. If I get in serious trouble, come after me in the ship we rode up. But only if it's practical! Not otherwise!"
The Chief said something in Mohawk. He sounded indignant.
The plastic walls of the lock swelled inward, burying and overwhelming them. Pumps pounded briefly, removing what air was left. Then the walls drew back, straining against their netting, and Joe waited for the door to open to empty space.
Instead, there came a sharp voice in his helmet-phones. It was Brown. "Radar says there's a rocket on the way up! It's over at what is the edge of the world from here. Three gravities only. Better not go out!"
Joe hesitated. Brown still issued no order. But defense against a single rocket would be a matter of guided missiles—Brown's business—if the tin can screen didn't handle it. Joewould have no part in it. He wouldn't be needed. He couldn't help. And there'd be all the elaborate business of checking to go through again. He said uncomfortably:
"It'll be a long time before it gets here—and three gravities is low! Maybe it's a defective job. There have been misfires and so on. It won't take long to try this wagon, anyhow. They're anxious to send up a robot ship from the Shed and these have to be tested first. Give me ten minutes."
He heard the Chief grumbling to himself. But one tested space wagon was better than none.
The airlock doors opened. Huge round valves swung wide. Bright, remote, swarming stars filled the opening. Joe cracked the control of his forward liquid-fuel rockets. The lock filled instantly with swirling fumes. And instantly the tiny space wagon moved. It did not have to lift from the lock floor. Once the magnetic clamps were released it was free of the floor. But it did have mass. One brief push of the rockets sent it floating out of the lock. It was in space. It kept on.
Joe felt a peculiar twinge of panic. Nobody who is accustomed only to Earth can quite realize at the beginning the conditions of handling vehicles in space. But Joe cracked the braking rockets. He stopped. He hung seemingly motionless in space. The Platform was a good half-mile away.
He tried the gyros, and the space wagon went into swift spinning. He reversed them and straightened out—almost. The vastness of all creation seemed still to revolve slowly about him. The monstrous globe which was Earth moved sedately from above his head to under his feet and continued the slow revolution. The Platform rotated in a clockwise direction. He was drifting very slowly away.
"Chief," he said wrily, "you can't do worse than I'm doing, and we're rushed for time. You might come out. But listen! You don't run your rockets! On Earth you keep a motor going because when it stops, you do. But out here you have to use your motor to stop, but not to keep on going. Get it? When you do come out, don't burn your rockets more than half a second at a time."
The Chief's voice came booming:
"Right, Joe! Here I come!"
There was a billowing of frantically writhing fumes, which darted madly in every direction until they ceased to be. The Chief in his insect-like contraption came bolting out of the hole which was the airlock. He was a good half-mile away. The rocket fumes ceased. He kept on going. Joe heard him swear. The Chief felt the utterly helpless sensation of a man in a car when his brakes don't work. But a moment later the braking rockets did flare briefly, yet still too long. The Chief was not only stopped, but drifting backwards toward the Platform. He evidently tried to turn, and he spun as dizzily as Joe had done. But after a moment he stopped—almost. There were, then, two red-painted things in space, somewhat like giant water-spiders floating forlornly in emptiness. They seemed very remote from the great bright steel Platform and that gigantic ball which was Earth, turning very slowly and filling a good fourth of all that could be seen.
"Suppose you head toward me, Chief," said Joe absorbedly. "Aim to pass, and remember that what you have to estimate is not where I am, but where you have to put on the brakes to stop close by. That's where you use your braking-rockets."
The Chief tried it. He came to a stop a quarter-mile past Joe.
"I'm heavy-handed," said his voice disgustedly.
"I'll try to join you," said Joe.
He did try. He stopped a little short. The two weird objects drifted almost together. The Chief was upside down with regard to Joe. Presently he was sidewise on.
"This takes thinking," said Joe ruefully.
A voice in his headphones, from the Platform, said:
"That rocket from Earth is still accelerating. Still at three gravities. It looks like it isn't defective. It might be carrying a man. Hadn't you better come in?"
The Chief growled: "We won't be any safer there! I want to get the hang of this." Then his voice changed sharply. "Joe! D'you get that?"
Joe heard his own voice, very cold.
"I didn't. I do now. Brown, I'd suggest a guided missileat that rocket coming up. If there's a man in it, he's coming up to take over guided missiles that'll overtake him, and try to smash the Platform by direct control, since proximity fuses don't work. I'd smash him as far away as possible."
Brown's voice came very curt and worried. "Right."
There was an eruption of rocket fumes from the side of the Platform. Something went foaming away toward Earth. It dwindled with incredible rapidity. Then Joe said:
"Chief, I think we'd better go down and meet that rocket. We'll learn to handle these wagons on the way. I think we're going to have a fight on our hands. Whoever's in that rocket isn't coming up just to shake hands with us."
He steadied the small red vehicle and pointed it for Earth. He added:
"I'm firing a six-two solid-fuel job, Chief. Counting three. Three—two—one."
His mount vanished in rocket fumes. But after six seconds at two gravities acceleration the rocket burned out. The Chief had fired a matching rocket. They were miles apart, but speeding Earthward on very nearly identical courses.
The Platform grew smaller. That was their only proof of motion.
A very, very long time passed. The Chief fired his steering rockets to bring him closer to Joe. It did not work. He had to aim for Joe and fire a blast to move noticeably nearer. Presently he would have to blast again to keep from passing.
Joe made calculations in his head. He worried. He and the Chief were speeding Earthward—away from the Platform—at more than four miles a minute, but it was not enough. The manned rocket was accelerating at a great deal more than that rate. And if the Platform's enemies down on Earth had sent a manned rocket up to destroy the Platform, the man in it would have ways of defending himself. He would expect guided missiles—but he probably wouldn't expect to be attacked by space wagons.
Joe said suddenly:
"Chief! I'm going to burn a twelve-two. We've got to match velocities coming back. Join me? Three—two—one."
He fired a twelve-two. Twelve seconds burning, two gravities acceleration. It built up his speed away from the Platform to a rate which would have been breathless, on Earth. But here there was no sensation of motion, and the distances were enormous. Things which happen in space happen with insensate violence and incredible swiftness. But long, long, long intervals elapse between events. The twelve-two rocket burned out. The Chief had matched that also.
Brown's voice in the headphones said, "The rocket's cut acceleration. It's floating up, now. It should reach our orbit fifty miles behind us. But our missile should hit it in forty seconds."
"I wouldn't bet on that," said Joe coldly. "Figure interception data for the Chief and me. Make it fast!"
He spotted the Chief, a dozen miles away and burning his steering rockets to close, again. The Chief had the hang of it, now. He didn't try to steer. He drove toward Joe.
But nothing happened. And nothing happened. And nothing happened. The two tiny space wagons were 90 miles from the Platform, which was now merely a glittering speck, hardly brighter than the brightest stars.
There was a flare of light to Earthward. It was brighter than the sun. The light vanished.
Brown's voice came in the headphones, "Our missile went off 200 miles short! He sent an interceptor to set it off!"
"Then he's dangerous," said Joe. "There'll be war rockets coming up any second now for him to control from right at hand. We won't be fighting rockets controlled from 4,000 miles away! They've found proximity fuses don't work, so he's going to work in close. Give us our course and data, quick! The Chief and I have got to try to smash things!"
The two tiny space wagons—like stick-insects in form, absurdly painted a brilliant red—seemed inordinately lonely. It was hardly possible to pick out the Platform with the naked eyes. The Earth was thousands of miles below. Joe and the Chief, in space suits, rode tiny metal frameworks in an emptiness more vast, more lonely, more terrible than either could have imagined.
Then the war rockets started up. There were eight of them. They came out to do murder at ten gravities acceleration.
But even at ten gravities' drive it takes time to travel 4,000 miles. At three, and coasting a great deal of the way, it takes much longer. The Platform circled Earth in four hours and a little more. Anything intending interception and rising straight up needed to start skyward long before the Platform was overhead. A three-g rocket would start while the Platform was still below the western horizon from its launching-spot. Especially if it planned to coast part of its journey—and a three-gravity rocket would have to coast most of the way.
So there was time. Coasting, the rising manned rocket would be losing speed. If it planned to go no higher than the Platform's orbit, its upward velocity would be zero there. If it were intercepted 500 miles down, it would be rising at an almost leisurely rate, and Joe and the Chief could check their Earthward plunge and match its rising rate.
This they did. But what they couldn't do was match its orbital velocity, which was zero. They had the Platform's eastward speed to start with—over 200 miles a minute. No matter how desperately they fired braking-rockets, they couldn't stop and maneuver around the rising control-ship. Inevitably they would simply flash past it in the fraction of an instant. To fire their tiny guided missiles on ahead would be almost to assure that they would miss. Also, the enemy ship was manned. It could fight back.
But Joe had been on the receiving end of one attack in space. It wasn't much experience, but it was more than anybody but he and his own crew possessed.
"Chief," said Joe softly into his helmet-mike, as if by speaking softly he could keep from being overheard, "get close enough to me to see what I do, and do it too. I can't tell you more. Whoever's running this rocket might know English."
There was a flaring of vapor in space. The Chief was using his steering-rockets to draw near.
Joe spun his little space wagon about, so that it pointed back in the direction from which he had come. He had four guided missiles, demolition type. Very deliberately, he fired the four of them astern—away from the rising rocket. They were relatively low-speed missiles, intended to blow up a robot ship that couldn't be hooked onto, because it was traveling too much faster or slower than the Platform it was intended to reach. The missiles went away. Then Joe faced about again in the direction of his prospective target. The Chief fumed—Joe heard him—but he duplicated Joe's maneuver. He faced his own eccentric vessel in the direction of its line of flight.
Then his fuming suddenly ceased. Joe's headphones brought his explosive grunt when he suddenly saw the idea.
"Joe! I wish you could talk Indian! I could kiss you for this trick!"
Brown's voice said anxiously: "I'm going to let that manned rocket have a couple more shots."
"Let us get by first," said Joe. "Then maybe you can use them on the bombs coming up."
He could see the trails of war-rockets on the way out from Earth. They were infinitesimal threads of vapor. They were the thinnest possible filaments of gossamer white. But they enlarged as they rose. They were climbing at better than two miles per second, now, and still increasing their speed.
But the arena in which this conflict took place was so vast that everything seemed to take place in slow motion. There was time to reason out not only the method of attack from Earth, but the excuse for it. If the Platform vanished from space, no matter from what cause, its enemies would announce vociferously that it had been destroyed by its ownatomic bombs, exploding spontaneously. Even in the face of proof of murder, enemy nations would stridently insist that bombs intended for the enslavement of humanity—in the Platform—had providentially detonated and removed that instrument of war-mongering scoundrelly imperialists from the skies. There might be somebody, somewhere, who would believe it.
Joe and the Chief were steadied now nearly on a line to intercept the rising manned rocket. They had already fired their missiles, which trailed them. They went into battle, not prepared to shoot, but with their ammunition expended. For which there was excellent reason.
Something came foaming toward them from the nearby man-carrying rocket. It seemed like a side-spout from the column of vapor rising from Earth. Actually it was a guided missile.
"Now we dodge," said Joe cheerfully. "Remember the trick of this maneuvering business!"
It was simple. Speeding toward the rising assassin, and with his missiles rushing toward them, the relative speeds of the wagons and the missiles were added together. If the space wagons dodged, the missile operator had less time to swing his guided rockets to match the change of target course. And besides, the attacker hadn't made a single turn in space. Not yet. He might know that a rocket doesn't go where it's pointed, as a matter of theory. He might even know intellectually that the final speed and course of a rocket is the sum of all its previous speeds and courses. But he hadn't used the knowledge Joe and the Chief had.
Something rushed at them. They went into evasive action. And they didn't merely turn the noses of their space wagons. They flung them about end-for-end, and blasted. They used wholly different accelerations at odd angles. Joe shot away from Earth on steering rocket thrust, and touched off a four-three while he faced toward Earth's north pole, and halfway along that four-second rush he flipped his craft in a somersault and the result was nearly a right-angled turn. When the four-three burned out he set off a twelve-two, and halfwaythrough its burning fired a three-two with it, so that at the beginning he had two gravities acceleration, then four gravities for three seconds, and then two again.
With long practice, a man might learn marksmanship in space. But all a man's judgment of speeds is learned on Earth, where things always, always, always move steadily. Nobody making his first space-flight could possibly hit such targets as Joe and the Chief made of themselves. The man in the enemy rocket was making his first flight. Also, Joe and the Chief had an initial velocity of 200 miles a minute toward him. The marksman in the rising rocket hadn't a chance. He fired four more missiles and tried desperately to home them in. But——
They flashed past his rising course. And then they were quite safe from his fire, because it would take a very long time indeed for anything he shot after them to catch up. But their missiles had still to pass him—and Joe and the Chief could steer them without any concern about their own safety or anything else but a hit.
They made a hit.
Two of the eight little missiles flashed luridly, almost together, where the radar-pips showed the rocket to be. Then there were two parts to the rocket, separating. One was small and one was fairly large. Another demolition-missile hit the larger section. Still another exploded as that was going to pieces. The smaller fragment ceased to be important. The explosions weren't atomic bombs, of course. They were only demolition-charges. But they demolished the manned rocket admirably.
Brown's voice came in the headphones, still tense. "You got it! How about the others?"
Joe felt a remarkable exhilaration. Later he might think about the poor devil—there could have been only one—who had been destroyed some 3,700 miles above the surface of the Earth. He might think unhappily of that man as a victim of hatred rather than as a hater. He might become extremely uncomfortable about this, but at the moment he felt merely that he and the Chief had won a startling victory.
"I think," he said, "that you can treat them with silent contempt. They won't have proximity fuses. Those friends of ours who want so badly to kill us have found that proximity fuses don't work. Unless one is on a collision course I don't think you need to do anything about them."
The Chief was muttering to himself in Mohawk, twenty miles away. Joe said:
"Chief, how about getting back to the Platform?"
The Chief growled. "My great-grandfather would disown me! Winning a fight and no scalp to show! Not even counting coup! He'd disown me!"
But Joe saw his rockets flare, away off against the stars.
The war rockets were very near, now. They still emitted monstrous jettings of thick white vapor. They climbed up with incredible speed. One went by Joe at a distance of little more than a mile, and its fumes eddied out to half that before they thinned to nothingness. They went on and on and on....
They burned out somewhere. It would be a long time before they fell back to Earth. Hours, probably. Then they would be meteors. They'd vaporize before they touched solidity. They wouldn't even explode.
But Joe and the Chief rode back to the Platform. It was surprising how hard it was to match speed with it again, to make a good entrance into the giant lock. They barely made it before the Platform made its plunge into that horrible blackness which was the Earth's shadow. And Joe was very glad they did make it before then. He wouldn't have liked to be merely astride a skinny framework in that ghastly darkness, with the monstrous blackness of the Abyss seeming to be trying to devour him.
Haney met them in the airlock. He grinned.
"Nice job, Joe! Nice job, Chief!" he said warmly. "Uh—the Lieutenant Commander wants you to report to him, Joe. Right away."
Joe cocked an eyebrow at him.
"What for?"
Haney spread out his hands. The Chief grunted. "That guy bothers me. I'll bet, Joe, he's going to explain you shouldn't'vegone out when he didn't want you to. Me, I'm keeping away from him!"
The Chief shed his space suit and swaggered away, as well as anyone could swagger while walking on what happened to be the ceiling, from Joe's point of view. Joe put his space gear in its proper place. He went to the small cubbyhole that Brown had appropriated for the office of the Platform Commander. Joe went in, naturally without saluting.
Brown sat in a fastened-down chair with thigh grips holding him in place. He was writing. On Joe's entry, he carefully put the pen down on a magnetized plate that would hold it until he wanted it again. Otherwise it could have floated anywhere about the room.
"Mr. Kenmore," said Brown awkwardly, "you did a very nice piece of work. It's too bad you aren't in the Navy."
Joe said: "It did work out pretty fortunately. It's lucky the Chief and I were out practicing, but now we can take off when a rocket's reported, any time."
Brown cleared his throat. "I can thank you personally," he said unhappily, "and I do. But—really this situation is intolerable! How can I report this affair? I can't suggest commendation, or a promotion, or—anything! I don't even know how to refer to you! I am going to ask you, Mr. Kenmore, to put through a request that your status be clarified. I would imagine that your status would mean a rank—hm—about equivalent to a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy."
Joe grinned.
"I have—ah—prepared a draft you might find helpful," said Brown earnestly. "It's necessary for something to be done. It's urgent! It's important!"
"Sorry," said Joe. "The important thing to me is getting ready to load up the Platform with supplies from Earth. Excuse me."
He went out of the office. He made his way to the quarters assigned himself and his crew. Mike greeted him with reproachful eyes. Joe waved his hand.
"Don't say it, Mike! The answer is yes. See that the tanks are refilled, and new rockets put in place. Then you andHaney go out and practice. But no farther than ten miles from the Platform. Understand?"
"No!" said Mike rebelliously. "It's a dirty trick!"
"Which," Joe assured him, "I commit only because there's a robot ship from Bootstrap coming up any time now. And we'll need to pick it up and tow it here."
He went to the control-room to see if he could get a vision connection to Earth.
He got the beam, and he got Sally on the screen. A report of the attack on the Platform had evidently already gone down to Earth. Sally's expression was somehow drawn and haunted. But she tried to talk lightly.
"Derring-do and stuff, Joe?" she asked. "How does it feel to be a victorious warrior?"
"It feels rotten," he told her. "There must have been somebody in the rocket we blew up. He felt like a patriot, I guess, trying to murder us; But I feel like a butcher."
"Maybe you didn't do it," she said. "Maybe the Chief's bombs——"
"Maybe," said Joe. He hesitated. "Hold up your hand."
She held it up. His ring was still on it. She nodded. "Still there. When will you be back?"
He shook his head. He didn't know. It was curious that one wanted so badly to talk to a girl after doing something that was blood-stirring—and left one rather sickish afterward. This business of space travel and even space battle was what he'd dreamed of, and he still wanted it. But it was very comforting to talk to Sally, who hadn't had to go through any of it.
"Write me a letter, will you?" he asked. "We can't tie up this beam very long."
"I'll write you all the news that's allowed to go out," she assured him. "Be seeing you, Joe."
Her image faded from the screen. And, thinking it over, he couldn't see that either of them had said anything of any importance at all. But he was very glad they'd talked together.
The first robot ship came up some eight hours later—two revolutions after the television call. Mike was ready hours in advance, fidgeting. The robot ship started up while thePlatform was over the middle of the Pacific. It didn't try to make a spiral approach as all other ships had done. It came straight up, and it started from the ground. No pushpots. Its take-off rockets were monsters. They pushed upward at ten gravities until it was out of atmosphere, and then they stepped up to fifteen. Much later, the robot turned on its side and fired orbital speed rockets to match velocity with the Platform.
There were two reasons for the vertical rise, and the high acceleration. If a robot ship went straight up, it wouldn't pass over enemy territory until it was high enough to be protected by the Platform. And—it costs fuel to carry fuel to be burned. So if the rocketship could get up speed for coasting to orbit in the first couple of hundred miles, it needn't haul its fuel so far. It was economical to burn one's fuel fast and get an acceleration that would kill a human crew. Hence robots.
The landing of the first robot ship at the Platform was almost as matter-of-fact as if it had been done a thousand times before. From the Platform its dramatic take-off couldn't be seen, of course. It first appeared aloft as a pip on a radar screen. Then Mike prepared to go out and hook on to it and tow it in. He was in his space suit and in the landing lock, though his helmet faceplate was still open. Aloudspeakerboomed suddenly in Brown's voice: "Evacuate airlock and prepare to take off!"
Joe roared: "Hold that!"
Brown's voice, very official, came: "Withhold execution of that order. You should not be in the airlock, Mr. Kenmore. You will please make way for operational procedure."
"We're checking the space wagon," snapped Joe. "That's operational procedure!"
The loudspeaker said severely: "The checking should have been done earlier!"
There was silence. Mike and Joe, together, painstakingly checked over the very many items that had to be made sure. Every rocket had to have its firing circuit inspected. The tanks' contents and pressure verified. The air connection to Mike's space suit. The air pressure. The device that made sure that air going to Mike's space suit was neither as hotas metal in burning sunlight, nor cold as the chill of a shadow in space.
Everything checked. Mike straddled his red-painted mount. Joe left the lock and said curtly:
"Okay to pump the airlock. Okay to open airlock doors when ready. Go ahead."
Mike went out, and Joe watched from a port in the Platform's hull. The drone from Earth was five miles behind the Platform in its orbit, and twenty miles below, and all of ten miles off-course. Joe saw Mike scoot the red space wagon to it, stop short with a sort of cocky self-assurance, hook on to the tow-ring in the floating space-barge's nose, and blast off back toward the Platform with it in tow.
Mike had to turn about and blast again to check his motion when he arrived. And then he and Haney—Haney in the other space wagon—nudged at it and tugged at it and got it in the great spacelock. They went in after it and the lock doors closed.
Neither Mike nor Haney were out of their space suits when Kent brought Joe a note. A note was an absurdity in the Platform. But this was a formal communication from Brown.