<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<div class="blurb"><h1>30 MINUTES TO LIVE!</h1>
<p><b>Joe Kenmore heard the airlock close
with a sickening wheeze and then a clank. In desperation
he turned toward Haney. "My God, we've
been locked out!"</b></p>
<p><b>Through the transparent domes of their
space helmets, Joe could see a look of horror and
disbelief pass across Haney's face. But it was true!
Joe and his crew were locked out of the Space
Platform.</b></p>
<p><b>Four thousand miles below circled the
Earth. Under Joe's feet rested the solid steel hull
of his home in outer space. But without tools there
was no hope of getting back inside. Joe looked at
his oxygen meter. It registered thirty minutes to live.</b></p>
<p style="margin-top: 1em; font-family: serif;"><i>Space Tug</i> by Murray Leinster is an independent
sequel to the author's popular <i>Space Platform</i>, which
is also available in a <span class="smcap">Pocket Book</span> edition. Both
books were published originally by Shasta Publishers.</p>
</div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h4><i>Of other books by Murray Leinster,
the following are science-fiction:</i></h4>
<p class="center">
<sup>[A]</sup>SPACE PLATFORM<br/>
<br/>
SIDEWISE IN TIME<br/>
<br/>
MURDER MADNESS<br/>
<br/>
THE LAST SPACE SHIP<br/>
<br/>
THE LAWS OF CHANCE<br/>
(<i>anthology</i>)<br/>
<br/>
GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION<br/>
(<i>editor</i>)<br/></p>
<p class="center">[A] Published in a <span class="smcap">Pocket Book</span> edition.</p>
<hr style='width: 100%;' />
<div style="margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>Murray Leinster</i></h3>
<h2 style="text-align: right; border-top: 2px dashed; border-bottom: 2px dashed;">SPACE<br/>TUG</h2>
<p><i>Pocket Books, Inc.<br/>
New York, N. Y.<br/><br/><br/></i><span class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/pocketbook.png" width-obs="75" height-obs="77" alt="Pocket Book Logo" title="" />
</span></p>
</div>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>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.</p>
<div class="bbox">
<h3>Transcriber's Note</h3>
<p class="center">No evidence has been found that the copyright of this book has been
renewed.</p>
</div>
<hr style='width: 100%;' />
<h3>SPACE TUG</h3>
<p class="center sf">Shasta edition published November, 1953</p>
<p class="center sf"><span class="smcap">Pocket Book</span> edition published January, 1955</p>
<p class="center sf">1st printing November, 1954</p>
<p class="sf">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.</p>
<p><i>Copyright, 1953, by Will F. Jenkins. This</i> <span class="smcap">Pocket Book</span> <i>edition
is published by arrangement with Shasta Publishers. Library of
Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-7292. Printed in the U. S. A.</i></p>
<hr style='width: 100%;' />
<p><span class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/pocketbook.png" width-obs="75" height-obs="77" alt="Pocket Book Logo" title="" />
</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. 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: 45%;' />
<h2>Contents</h2>
<div style="margin-left: 15%"><ul>
<li><SPAN href="#c1"><b>Chapter 1</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_1">1</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c2"><b>Chapter 2</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_20">20</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c3"><b>Chapter 3</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_34">34</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c4"><b>Chapter 4</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_53">53</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c5"><b>Chapter 5</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_68">68</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c6"><b>Chapter 6</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_75">75</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c7"><b>Chapter 7</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_91">91</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c8"><b>Chapter 8</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_99">99</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c9"><b>Chapter 9</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_116">116</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c10"><b>Chapter 10</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_132">132</SPAN></span></li>
<li><SPAN href="#c11"><b>Chapter 11</b></SPAN><span class="ralign"><SPAN href="#Page_144">144</SPAN></span></li>
</ul></div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><i>To Joan Patricia Jenkins</i></h2>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></SPAN></span></p>
<h2><SPAN name="c1" id="c1"></SPAN><i>1</i></h2>
<p>To the world at large, of course, it was
just another day. A different sort entirely at different places
on the great, round, rolling Earth, but nothing out of the ordinary.
It was Tuesday on one side of the Date Line and
Monday on the other. It was so-and-so's wedding anniversary
and so-and-so's birthday and another so-and-so would get
out of jail today. It was warm, it was cool, it was fair, it was
cloudy. One looked forward to the future with confidence,
with hope, with uneasiness or with terror according to one's
temperament and one's geographical location and past history.
To most of the human race this was nothing whatever but just
another day.</p>
<p>But to Joe Kenmore it was a most particular day indeed.
Here, it was the gray hour just before sunrise and already
there were hints of reddish colorings in the sky. It was chilly,
and somehow the world seemed still and breathless. To Joe,
the feeling of tensity marked this morning off from all the
other mornings of his experience.</p>
<p>He got up and began to dress, in Major Holt's quarters back
of that giant steel half-globe called the Shed, near the town
of Bootstrap. He felt queer because he felt so much as usual.
By all the rules, he should have experienced a splendid, noble
resolution and a fiery exaltation, and perhaps even an admirable
sensation of humility and unworthiness to accomplish
what was expected of him today. And, deep enough inside, he
felt suitable emotion. But it happened that he couldn't take
time to feel things adequately today.</p>
<p>He was much more aware that he wanted some coffee
rather badly, and that he hoped everything would go all right.
He looked out of the windows at empty, dreary desert under
the dawn sky. Today was the day he'd be leaving on a rather<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></SPAN></span>
important journey. He hoped that Haney and the Chief and
Mike weren't nervous. He also hoped that nobody had gotten
at the fuel for the pushpots, and that the slide-rule crew that
had calculated everything hadn't made any mistakes. He was
also bothered about the steering-rocket fuel, and he was uncomfortable
about the business of releasing the spaceship from
the launching cage. There was, too, cause for worry in the
take-off rockets—if the tube linings had shrunk there would
be some rather gruesome consequences—and there could
always be last-minute orders from Washington to delay or
even cancel everything.</p>
<p>In short, his mind was full of strictly practical details.
He didn't have time to feel noble aspirations or sensations
of high destiny. He had a very tricky and exacting job ahead
of him.</p>
<p>The sky was growing lighter outside. Stars faded in a
paling blue and the desert showed faint colorings. He tied his
necktie. A deep-toned keening set up off to the southward,
over the sere and dreary landscape. It was a faraway noise,
something like the lament of a mountain-sized calf bleating
for its mother. Joe took a deep breath. He looked, but saw
nothing. The noise, though, told him that there'd been no
cancellation of orders so far. He mentally uncrossed one pair
of fingers. He couldn't possibly cross fingers against all foreseeable
disasters. There weren't enough fingers—or toes
either. But it was good that so far the schedule held.</p>
<p>He went downstairs. Major Holt was pacing up and down
the living room of his quarters. Electric lights burned, but
already the windows were brightening. Joe straightened up
and tried to look casual. Strictly speaking, Major Holt was a
family friend who happened also to be security officer here,
in charge of protecting what went on in the giant construction
Shed. He'd had a sufficiently difficult time of it in the
past, and the difficulties might keep on in the future. He
was also the ranking officer here and consequently the immediate
boss of Joe's enterprise. Today's affair was still
highly precarious. The whole thing was controversial and
uncertain and might spoil the career of somebody with stars<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></SPAN></span>
on his collar if it should fail. So nobody in the high brass
wanted the responsibility. If everything went well, somebody
suitable would take the credit and the bows. Meanwhile
Major Holt was boss by default.</p>
<p>He looked sharply at Joe. "Morning."</p>
<p>"Good morning, sir," said Joe. Major Holt's daughter Sally
had a sort of understanding with Joe, but the major hadn't
the knack of cordiality, and nobody felt too much at ease with
him. Besides, Joe was wearing a uniform for the first time
this morning. There were only eight such uniforms in the
world, so far. It was black whipcord, with an Eisenhower
jacket, narrow silver braid on the collar and cuffs, and a silver
rocket for a badge where a plane pilot wears his wings. It
was strictly practical. Against accidental catchings in machinery,
the trousers were narrow and tucked into ten-inch
soft leather boots, and the wide leather belt had flat loops
for the attachment of special equipment. Its width was a
brace against the strains of acceleration. Sally had had much
to do with its design.</p>
<p>But it hadn't yet been decided by the Pentagon whether
the Space Exploration Project would be taken over by the
Army or the Navy or the Air Corps, so Joe wore no insignia
of rank. Technically he was still a civilian.</p>
<p>The deep-toned noise to the south had become a howl,
sweeping closer and trailed by other howlings.</p>
<p>"The pushpots are on the way over, as you can hear," said
the major detachedly, in the curious light of daybreak and
electric bulbs together. "Your crew is up and about. So far
there seems to be no hitch. You're feeling all right for the
attempt today?"</p>
<p>"If you want the truth, sir, I'd feel better with about ten
years' practical experience behind me. But my gang and myself—we've
had all the training we can get without an actual
take-off. We're the best-trained crew to try it. I think we'll
manage."</p>
<p>"I see," said the major. "You'll do your best."</p>
<p>"We may have to do better than that," admitted Joe wrily.</p>
<p>"True enough. You may." The major paused. "You're well<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></SPAN></span>
aware that there are—ah—people who do not altogether like
the idea of the United States possessing an artificial satellite
of Earth."</p>
<p>"I ought to know it," admitted Joe.</p>
<p>The Earth's second, man-constructed moon—out in space
for just six weeks now—didn't seem nowadays like the bitterly
contested achievement it actually was. From Earth it was
merely a tiny speck of light in the sky, identifiable for what it
was only because it moved so swiftly and serenely from the
sunset toward the east, or from night's darkness into the dawn-light.
But it had been fought bitterly before it was launched.
It was first proposed to the United Nations, but even discussion
in the Council was vetoed. So the United States had built
it alone. Yet the nations which objected to it as an international
project liked it even less as a national one, and they'd
done what they could to wreck it.</p>
<p>The building of the great steel hull now out there in emptiness
had been fought more bitterly, by more ruthless and more
highly trained saboteurs, than any other enterprise in history.
There'd been two attempts to blast it with atomic bombs. But
it was high aloft, rolling grandly around the Earth, so close
to its primary that its period was little more than four hours;
and it rose in the west and set in the east six times a day.</p>
<p>Today Joe would try to get a supply ship up to it, a very
small rocket-driven cargo ship named Pelican One. The crew
of the Platform needed food and air and water—and especially
the means of self-defense. Today's take-off would be the first
attempt at a rocket-lift to space.</p>
<p>"The enemies of the Platform haven't given up," said the
major formidably. "And they used spectroscopes on the Platform's
rocket fumes. Apparently they've been able to duplicate
our fuel."</p>
<p>Joe nodded.</p>
<p>Major Holt went on: "For more than a month Military Intelligence
has been aware that rockets were under construction
behind the Iron Curtain. They will be guided missiles,
and they will carry atom bomb heads. One or more may be
finished any day. When they're finished, you can bet that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></SPAN></span>
they'll be used against the Platform. And you will carry up the
first arms for the Platform. Your ship carries half a dozen long-range
interceptor rockets to handle any attack from Earth. It's
vitally important for them to be delivered."</p>
<p>"They'll attack the Platform?" demanded Joe angrily.
"That's war!"</p>
<p>"Not if they deny guilt," said the major ironically, "and if
we have nothing to gain by war. The Platform is intended to
defend the peace of the world. If it is destroyed, we won't
defend the peace of the world by going to war over it. But
while the Platform can defend itself, it is not likely that anyone
will dare to make war. So you have a very worthwhile mission.
I suggest that you have breakfast and report to the Shed.
I'm on my way there now."</p>
<p>Joe said, "Yes, sir."</p>
<p>The major started for the door. Then he stopped. He hesitated,
and said abruptly, "If my security measures have failed,
Joe, you'll be killed. If there has been sabotage or carelessness,
it will be my fault."</p>
<p>"I'm sure, sir, that everything anybody could do—"</p>
<p>"Everything anybody can do to destroy you has been done,"
said the major grimly. "Not only sabotage, Joe, but blunders
and mistakes and stupidities. That always happens. But—I've
done my best. I suspect I'm asking your forgiveness if my best
hasn't been good enough."</p>
<p>Then, before Joe could reply, the major went hurriedly
away.</p>
<p>Joe frowned for a moment. It occurred to him that it must
be pretty tough to be responsible for the things that other
men's lives depend on—when you can't share their danger.
But just then the smell of coffee reached his nostrils. He
trailed the scent. There was a coffeepot steaming on the table
in the dining-room. There was a note on a plate.</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Good luck. I'll see you in the Shed.</i></p>
<p style="margin-left: 12em;"><i>Sally</i></p>
</div>
<p>Joe was relieved. Sally Holt had been somewhere around<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></SPAN></span>
underfoot all his life. She was a swell girl, but he was grateful
that he didn't have to talk to her just now.</p>
<p>He poured coffee and looked at his watch. He went to the
window. The faraway howling was much nearer, and dawn
had definitely arrived. Small cloudlets in a pale blue sky were
tinted pinkish by the rising sun. Patches of yucca and mesquite
and sage out beyond the officers' quarters area stretched
away to a far-off horizon. They were now visibly different in
color from the red-yellow earth between them, and cast long,
streaky shadows. The cause of the howling was still invisible.</p>
<p>But Joe cared nothing for that. He stared skyward, searching.
And he saw what he looked for.</p>
<p>There was a small bright sliver of sunlight high aloft. It
moved slowly toward the east. It showed the unmistakable
glint of sunshine upon polished steel. It was the artificial satellite—a
huge steel hull—which had been built in the gigantic
Shed from whose shadow Joe looked upward. It was the size
of an ocean liner, and six weeks since some hundreds of pushpots,
all straining at once, had gotten it out of the Shed and
panted toward the sky with it. They'd gotten it twelve miles
high and speeding eastward at the ultimate speed they could
manage. They'd fired jato rockets, all at once, and so pushed
its speed up to the preposterous. Then they'd dropped away
and the giant steel thing had fired its own rockets—which made
mile-long flames—and swept on out to emptiness. Before its
rockets were consumed it was in an orbit 4,000 miles above
the Earth's surface, and it hurtled through space at something
over 12,000 miles an hour. It circled the Earth in exactly four
hours, fourteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds. And it
would continue its circling forever, needing no fuel and never
descending. It was a second moon for the planet Earth.</p>
<p>But it could be destroyed.</p>
<p>Joe watched hungrily as it went on to meet the sun.
Smoothly, unhurriedly, serenely, the remote and twinkling
speck floated on out of sight. And then Joe went back to the
table and ate his breakfast quickly. He wolfed it. He had an
appointment to meet that minute speck some 4,000 miles out
in space. His appointment was for a very few hours hence.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>He'd been training for just this morning's effort since before
the Platform's launching. There was a great box swinging in
twenty-foot gimbal rings over in the Shed. There were motors
and projectors and over two thousand vacuum tubes, relays
and electronic units. It was a space flight simulator—a descendant
of the Link trainer which once taught plane pilots how to
fly. But this offered the problems and the sensations of rocketship
control, and for many hours every day Joe and the three
members of his crew had labored in it. The simulator duplicated
every sight and sound and feeling—all but heavy acceleration—to
be experienced in the take-off of a rocketship
to space. The similitude of flight was utterly convincing.
Sometimes it was appallingly so when emergencies and catastrophes
and calamities were staged in horrifying detail for
them to learn to respond to. In six weeks they'd learned how
to handle a spaceship so far as anybody could learn on solid
ground—if the simulator was correctly built. Nobody could be
sure about that. But it was the best training that could be
devised.</p>
<p>In minutes Joe had finished the coffee and was out of Major
Holt's quarters and headed for the Shed's nearest entrance.
The Shed was a gigantic metal structure rising out of sheer
flat desert. There were hills to the westward, but only arid
plain to the east and south and north. There was but one town
in hundreds of miles and that was Bootstrap, built to house
the workmen who'd built the Platform and the still invisible,
ferociously howling pushpots and now the small supply ships,
the first of which was to make its first trip today.</p>
<p>The Shed seemed very near because of its monstrous size.
When he was actually at the base of its wall, it seemed to
fill half the firmament and more than half the horizon. He
went in, and felt self-conscious when the guard's eyes fell on
his uniform. There was a tiny vestibule. Then he was in the
Shed itself, and it was enormous.</p>
<p>There were acres of wood-block flooring. There was a vast,
steel-girdered arching roof which was fifty stories high in the
center. All this size had been needed when the Space Platform
was being built. Men on the far side were merely specks, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></SPAN></span>
the rows of windows to admit light usually did no more than
make a gray twilight inside. But there was light enough today.
To the east the Shed's wall was split from top to bottom. A
colossal triangular gore had been loosened and thrust out and
rolled aside, and a doorway a hundred and fifty feet wide let
in the sunshine. Through it, Joe could see the fiery red ball
which was the sun just leaving the horizon.</p>
<p>But there was something more urgent for him to look at.
Pelican One had been moved into its launching cage. Only
Joe, perhaps, would really have recognized it. Actually it was
a streamlined hull of steel, eighty feet long by twenty in
diameter. There were stubby metal fins—useless in space, and
even on take-off, but essential for the planned method of
landing on its return. There were thick quartz ports in the
bow-section. But its form was completely concealed now by
the attached, exterior take-off rockets. It had been shifted into
the huge cradle of steel beams from which it was to be
launched. Men swarmed about it and over it, in and out of the
launching cage, checking and rechecking every possible thing
that could make for the success of its flight to space.</p>
<p>The other three crew-members were ready—Haney and
Chief Bender and Mike Scandia. They were especially entitled
to be the crew of this first supply ship. When the Platform
was being built, its pilot-gyros had been built by a
precision tool firm owned by Joe's father. He'd gone by plane
with the infinitely precise apparatus to Bootstrap, to deliver
and install it in the Platform. And the plane was sabotaged,
and the gyros were ruined. They'd consumed four months in
the building, and four months more for balancing with absolute
no-tolerance accuracy. The Platform couldn't wait so
long for duplicates. So Joe had improvised a method of repair.
And with Haney to devise special machine-tool setups and
the Chief to use fanatically fine workmanship, and Mike and
Joe aiding according to their gifts, they'd rebuilt the apparatus
in an impossibly short time. The original notion was Joe's, but
he couldn't have done the job without the others.</p>
<p>And there had been other, incidental triumphs by the team
of four. They were not the only ones who worked feverishly<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></SPAN></span>
for the glory of having helped to build the Earth's first artificial
moon, but they had accomplished more than most. Joe
had even been appointed to be an alternate member of the
Platform's crew. But the man he was to have substituted for
recovered from an illness, and Joe was left behind at the
Platform's launching. But all of them had rated some reward,
and it was to serve in the small ships that would supply the
man-made satellite.</p>
<p>Now they were ready to begin. The Chief grinned exuberantly
as Joe ducked through the bars of the launching
cage and approached the ship. He was a Mohawk Indian—one
of that tribe which for two generations had supplied steel
workers to every bridge and dam and skyscraper job on the
continent. He was brown and bulky and explosive. Haney
looked tense and strained. He was tall and lean and spare,
and a good man in any sort of trouble. Mike blazed excitement.
Mike was forty-one inches high and he was full-grown. He had
worked on the Platform, bucking rivets and making welds
and inspections in places too small for a normal-sized man to
reach. He frantically resented any concessions to his size and
he was as good a man as any. He simply was the small, economy
size.</p>
<p>"Hiya, Joe," boomed the Chief. "All set? Had breakfast?"</p>
<p>Joe nodded. He began to ask anxious questions. About
steering-rocket fuel and the launching cage release and the
take-off rockets and the reduction valve from the air tanks—he'd
thought of that on the way over—and the short wave and
loran and radar. Haney nodded to some questions. Mike said
briskly, "I checked" to others.</p>
<p>The Chief grunted amiably, "Look, Joe! We checked everything
last night. We checked it again this morning. I even
caught Mike polishing the ejection seats, because there wasn't
anything else to make sure of!"</p>
<p>Joe managed a smile. The ejection seats were assuredly the
most unlikely of all devices to be useful today. They were
supposedly life-saving devices. If the ship came a cropper on
take-off, the four of them were supposed to use ejection-seats
like those supplied to jet pilots. They would be thrown clear<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></SPAN></span>
of the ship and ribbon-parachutes might open and might let
them land alive. But it wasn't likely. Joe had objected to
their presence. If a feather dropped to Earth from a height of
600 miles, it would be falling so fast when it hit the atmosphere
that it would heat up and burn to ashes from pure air-friction.
It wasn't likely that they could get out of the ship if
anything went wrong.</p>
<p>Somebody marched stiffly toward the four of them. Joe's
expression grew rueful. The Space Project was neither Army
nor Navy nor Air Corps, but something that so far was its own
individual self. But the man marching toward Joe was Lieutenant
Commander Brown, strictly Navy, assigned to the Shed
as an observer. And there were some times when he baffled
Joe. Like now.</p>
<p>He halted, and looked as if he expected Joe to salute. Joe
didn't.</p>
<p>Lieutenant Commander Brown said, formally: "I would
like to offer my best wishes for your trip, Mr. Kenmore."</p>
<p>"Thanks," said Joe.</p>
<p>Brown smiled distantly. "You understand, of course, that I
consider navigation essentially a naval function, and it does
seem to me that any ship, including a spaceship, should be
manned by naval personnel. But I assuredly wish you good
fortune."</p>
<p>"Thanks," said Joe again.</p>
<p>Brown shook hands, then stalked off.</p>
<p>Haney rumbled in his throat. "How come, Joe, he doesn't
wish all of us good luck?"</p>
<p>"He does," said Joe. "But his mind's in uniform too. He's
been trained that way. I'd like to make a bet that we have him
as a passenger out to the Platform some day."</p>
<p>"Heaven forbid!" growled Haney.</p>
<p>There was an outrageous tumult outside the wide-open gap
in the Shed's wall. Something went shrieking by the doorway.
It looked like the magnified top half of a loaf of baker's bread,
painted gray and equipped with an air-scoop in front and a
plastic bubble for a pilot. It howled like a lost baby dragon,
its flat underside tilted up and up until it was almost vertical.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></SPAN></span>
It had no wings, but a blue-white flame spurted out of
its rear, wobbling from side to side for reasons best known to
itself. It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a
jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did. It
settled down on its flame-spouting tail, and the sparse vegetation
burst into smoky flame and shriveled, and the thing—still
shrieking like a fog-horn in a tunnel—flopped flat forward
with a resounding <i>clank!</i> It was abruptly silent.</p>
<p>But the total noise was not lessened. Another pushpot
came soaring wildly into view, making hysterical outcries. It
touched and banged violently to earth. Others appeared in
the air beyond the construction Shed. One flopped so hard
on landing that its tail rose in the air and it attempted a
somersault. It made ten times more noise than before—the
flame from its tail making wild gyrations—and flopped back
again with a crash. Two others rolled over on their sides after
touching ground. One ended up on its back like a tumble-bug,
wriggling.</p>
<p>They seemed to land by hundreds, but their number was
actually in dozens. It was not until the last one was down
that Joe could make himself heard. The pushpots were jet
motors in frames and metal skin, with built-in jato rocket
tubes besides their engines. On the ground they were quite
helpless. In the air they were unbelievably clumsy. They were
actually balanced and steered by vanes in the blasts of their
jets, and they combined the absolute maximum of sheer thrust
with the irreducible minimum of flyability.</p>
<p>Crane-trucks went out to pick them up. Joe said anxiously,
"We'd better check our flight plan again. We have to know it
absolutely!"</p>
<p>He headed across the floor to the flight data board. He
passed the hull of another ship like his own, which was near
completion, and the bare skeletons of two others which needed
a lot of work yet. They'd been begun at distant plants and then
hauled here on monstrous trailers for completion. The wooden
mockup of the design for all the ships—in which every possible
arrangement of instruments and machinery had been
tested out—lay neglected by the Shed wall.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The four stood before the flight data board. It listed the
readings every instrument should show during every instant
of the flight. The readings had been calculated with infinite
care, and Joe and the others needed to know them rather better
than they knew their multiplication tables. Once they
started out, they wouldn't have time to wonder if everything
was right for the time and place. They needed to know.</p>
<p>They stood there, soaking up the information the board
contained, forming mental pictures of it, making as sure as
possible that any one of them would spot anything wrong the
instant it showed up, and would instantly know what had to
be done about it.</p>
<p>A gigantic crane-truck came in through the wide doorway.
It dangled a pushpot. It rolled over to the launching cage in
which the spaceship lay and set the unwieldy metal object
against that cage. There was a <i>clank</i> as the pushpot caught
hold of the magnetic grapples. The crane went out again, passing
a second crane carrying a second pushpot. The second
beetle-like thing was presented to the cage. It stuck fast. The
crane went out for more.</p>
<p>Major Holt came across the floor of the Shed. It took him a
long time to walk the distance from the Security offices to the
launching cage. When he got there, he looked impatiently
around. His daughter Sally came out of nowhere and blew her
nose as if she'd been crying, and pointed to the data board.
The major shrugged his shoulders and looked uneasily at her.
She regarded him with some defiance. The major spoke to her
sternly. They waited.</p>
<p>The cranes brought in more pushpots and set them up
against the steel launching cage. The ship had been nearly
hidden before by the rocket tubes fastened outside its hull.
It went completely out of sight behind the metal monsters
banked about it.</p>
<p>The major looked at his watch and the group about the
data board. They moved away from it and back toward the
ship. Joe saw the major and swerved over to him.</p>
<p>"I have brought you," said the major in an official voice,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></SPAN></span>
"the invoice of your cargo. You will deliver the invoice with
the cargo and bring back proper receipts."</p>
<p>"I hope," said Joe.</p>
<p>"<i>We</i> hope!" said Sally in a strained tone. "Good luck, Joe!"</p>
<p>"Thanks."</p>
<p>"There is not much to say to you," said the major without
visible emotion. "Of course the next crew will start its training
immediately, but it may be a month before another ship
can take off. It is extremely desirable that you reach the Platform
today."</p>
<p>"Yes, sir," said Joe wrily. "I have even a personal motive to
get there. If I don't, I break my neck."</p>
<p>The major ignored the comment. He shook hands formally
and marched away. Sally smiled up at Joe, but her eyes were
suddenly full of tears.</p>
<p>"I—do hope everything goes all right, Joe," she said unsteadily.
"I—I'll be praying for you."</p>
<p>"I can use some of that, too," admitted Joe.</p>
<p>She looked at her hand. Joe's ring was on her finger—wrapped
with string on the inside of the band to make it fit.
Then she looked up again and was crying unashamedly.</p>
<p>"I—will," she repeated. Then she said fiercely, "I don't care
if somebody's looking, Joe. It's time for you to go in the ship."</p>
<p>He kissed her, and turned and went quickly to the peculiar
mass of clustered pushpots, touching and almost overlapping
each other.</p>
<p>He ducked under and looked back. Sally waved. He waved
back. Then he climbed up the ladder into Pelican One's
cabin. Somebody pulled the ladder away and scuttled out of
the cage.</p>
<p>The others were in their places. Joe slowly closed the door
from the cabin to the outer world. There was suddenly a
cushioned silence about him. Out the quartz-glass ports he
could see ahead, out the end of the cage through the monstrous
doorway to the desert beyond. Overhead he could see
the dark, girder-lined roof of the Shed. On either side, though,
he could see only the scratched, dented, flat undersides of the
pushpots ready to lift the ship upward.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"You can start on the pushpot motors, Haney," he said
curtly.</p>
<p>Joe moved to his own, the pilot's seat. Haney pushed a
button. Through the fabric of the ship came the muted uproar
of a pushpot engine starting. Haney pushed another
button. Another. Another. More jet engines bellowed. The
tumult in the Shed would be past endurance, now.</p>
<p>Joe strapped himself into his seat. He made sure that the
Chief at the steering-rocket manual controls was fastened
properly, and Mike at the radio panel was firmly belted past
the chance of injury.</p>
<p>Haney said with enormous calm, "All pushpot motors <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: The original reads 'runing'.">running</ins>,
Joe."</p>
<p>"Steering rockets ready," the Chief reported.</p>
<p>"Radio operating," came from Mike. "Communications
room all set."</p>
<p>Joe reached to the maneuver controls. He should have been
sweating. His hands, perhaps, should have quivered with tension.
But he was too much worried about too many things.
Nobody can strike an attitude or go into a blue funk while they
are worrying about things to be done. Joe heard the small
gyro motors as their speed went up. A hum and a whine and
then a shrill whistle which went up in pitch until it wasn't
anything at all. He frowned anxiously and said to Haney,
"I'm taking over the pushpots."</p>
<p>Haney nodded. Joe took the over-all control. The roar of
engines outside grew loud on the right-hand side, and died
down. It grew thunderous to the left, and dwindled. The ones
ahead pushed. Then the ones behind. Joe nodded and wet his
lips. He said: "Here we go."</p>
<p>There was no more ceremony than that. The noise of the
jet motors outside rose to a thunderous volume which came
even through the little ship's insulated hull. Then it grew
louder, and louder still, and Joe stirred the controls by ever so
tiny a movement.</p>
<p>Suddenly the ship did not feel solid. It stirred a little. Joe
held his breath and cracked the over-all control of the pushpots'
speed a tiny trace further. The ship wobbled a little. Out<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></SPAN></span>
the quartz-glass windows, the great door seemed to descend.
In reality the clustered pushpots and the launching cage rose
some thirty feet from the Shed floor and hovered there uncertainly.
Joe shifted the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: The original reads 'level'.">lever</ins> that governed the vanes in the
jet motor blasts. Ship and cage and pushpots, all together,
wavered toward the doorway. They passed out of it, rocking
a little and pitching a little and wallowing a little. As a flying
device, the combination was a howling tumult and a horror.
It was an aviation designer's nightmare. It was a bad dream
by any standard.</p>
<p>But it wasn't meant as a way to fly from one place to another
on Earth. It was the first booster stage of a three-stage rocket
aimed at outer space. It looked rather like—well—if a swarm
of bumblebees clung fiercely to a wire-gauze cage in which
lay a silver minnow wrapped in match-sticks; and if the bees
buzzed furiously and lifted it in a straining, clumsy, and altogether
unreasonable manner; and if the appearance and the
noise together were multiplied a good many thousands of
times—why—it would present a great similarity to the take-off
of the spaceship under Joe's command. Nothing like it could
be graceful or neatly controllable or even very speedy in the
thick atmosphere near the ground. But higher, it would be
another matter.</p>
<p>It <i>was</i> another matter. Once clear of the Shed, and with
flat, sere desert ahead to the very horizon, Joe threw on full
power to the pushpot motors. The clumsy-seeming aggregation
of grotesque objects began to climb. Ungainly it was, and
clumsy it was, but it went upward at a rate a jet-fighter might
have trouble matching. It wobbled, and it swung around and
around, and it tipped crazily, the whole aggregation of jet
motors and cage and burden of spaceship as a unit. But it rose!</p>
<p>The ground dropped so swiftly that even the Shed seemed
to shrivel like a pricked balloon. The horizon retreated as if
a carpet were hastily unrolled by magic. The barometric pressure
needles turned.</p>
<p>"Communications says our rate-of-climb is 4,000 feet a
minute and going up fast," Mike announced. "It's five....
We're at 17,000 feet ... 18,000. We should get some eastward<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></SPAN></span>
velocity at 32,000 feet. Our height is now 21,000
feet...."</p>
<p>There was no change in the feel of things inside the ship,
of course. Sealed against the vacuum of space, barometric
pressure outside made no difference. Height had no effect on
the air inside the ship.</p>
<p>At 25,000 feet the Chief said suddenly: "We're pointed
due east, Joe. Freeze it?"</p>
<p>"Right," said Joe. "Freeze it."</p>
<p>The Chief threw a lever. The gyros were running at full
operating speed. By engaging them, the Chief had all their
stored-up kinetic energy available to resist any change of direction
the pushpots might produce by minor variations in
their thrusts. Haney brooded over the reports from the individual
engines outside. He made minute adjustments to
keep them balanced. Mike uttered curt comments into the
communicator from time to time.</p>
<p>At 33,000 feet there was a momentary sensation as if the
ship were tilted sharply. It wasn't. The instruments denied
any change from level rise. The upward-soaring complex of
flying things had simply risen into a jet-stream, one of those
wildly rushing wind-floods of the upper atmosphere.</p>
<p>"Eastern velocity four hundred," said Mike from the communicator.
"Now four-twenty-five.... Four-forty."</p>
<p>There was a 300-mile-an-hour wind behind them. A tail-wind,
west to east. The pushpots struggled now to get the maximum
possible forward thrust before they rose out of that east-bound
hurricane. They added a fierce push to eastward to their
upward thrust. Mike's cracked voice reported 500 miles an
hour. Presently it was 600.</p>
<p>At 40,000 feet they were moving eastward at 680 miles
an hour. A jet-motor cannot be rated except indirectly, but
there was over 200,000 horsepower at work to raise the spacecraft
and build up the highest possible forward speed. It
couldn't be kept up, of course. The pushpots couldn't carry
enough fuel.</p>
<p>But they reached 55,000 feet, which is where space begins
for humankind. A man exposed to emptiness at that height will<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></SPAN></span>
die just as quickly as anywhere between the stars. But it
wasn't quite empty space for the pushpots. There was still a
very, very little air. The pushpots could still thrust upward.
Feebly, now, but they still thrust.</p>
<p>Mike said: "Communications says get set to fire jatos, Joe."</p>
<p>"Right!" he replied. "Set yourselves."</p>
<p>Mike flung a switch, and a voice began to chatter behind
Joe's head. It was the voice from the communications-room
atop the Shed, now far below and far behind. Mike settled
himself in the tiny acceleration-chair built for him. The Chief
squirmed to comfort in his seat. Haney took his hands from the
equalizing adjustments he had to make so that Joe's use of
the controls would be exact, regardless of moment-to-moment
differences in the thrust of the various jets.</p>
<p>"We've got a yaw right," said the Chief sharply. "Hold it,
Joe!"</p>
<p>Joe waited for small quivering needles to return to their
proper registrations.</p>
<p>"Back and steady," said the Chief a moment later. "Okay!"</p>
<p>The tinny voice behind Joe now spoke precisely. Mike had
listened to it while the work of take-off could be divided, so
that Joe would not be distracted. Now Joe had to control
everything at once.</p>
<p>The roar of the pushpots outside the ship had long since
lost the volume and timbre of normal atmosphere. Not much
sound could be transmitted by the near-vacuum outside. But
the jet motors did roar, and the sound which was not sound at
such a height was transmitted by the metal cage as so much
pure vibration. The walls and hull of the spaceship picked up
a crawling, quivering pulsation and turned it into sound.
Standing waves set up and dissolved and moved erratically
in the air of the cabin. Joe's eardrums were strangely affected.
Now one ear seemed muted by a temporary difference of air
pressure where a standing wave lingered for a second or two.
Then the other eardrum itched. There were creeping sensations
as of things touching one and quickly moving away.</p>
<p>Joe swung a microphone into place before his mouth.</p>
<p>"All set," he said evenly. "Brief me."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The tinny voice said:</p>
<p>"<i>You are at 65,000 feet. Your curve of rate-of-climb is
flattening out. You are now rising at near-maximum speed, and
not much more forward velocity can be anticipated. You have
an air-speed relative to surface of six-nine-two miles per hour.
The rotational speed of Earth at this latitude is seven-seven-eight.
You have, then, a total orbital speed of one-four-seven-oh
miles per hour, or nearly twelve per cent of your needed
final velocity. Since you will take off laterally and practically
without air resistance, a margin of safety remains. You are
authorized to blast.</i>"</p>
<p>Joe said:</p>
<p>"Ten seconds. Nine ... eight ... seven ... six ...
five ... four ... three ... two ... one...."</p>
<p>He stabbed the master jato switch. And a monstrous jato
rocket, built into each and every one of the pushpots outside,
flared chemical fumes in a simultaneous, gigantic thrust. A
small wire-wound jato for jet-assisted-take-off will weigh a
hundred and forty pounds and deliver a thousand pounds of
thrust for fourteen seconds. And that is for rockets using nonpoisonous
compounds. The jatos of the pushpots used the
beryllium-fluorine fuel that had lifted the Platform and that
filled the take-off rockets of Joe's ship. These jatos gave the
pushpots themselves an acceleration of ten gravities, but it
had to be shared with the cage and the ship. Still....</p>
<p>Joe felt himself slammed back into his seat with irresistible,
overwhelming force. The vibration from the jets had been bad.
Now he didn't notice it. He didn't notice much of anything but
the horrible sensations of six-gravity acceleration.</p>
<p>It was not exactly pain. It was a feeling as if a completely
intolerable and unbearable pressure pushed at him. Not only
on the outside, like a blow, but inside too, like nothing else
imaginable. Not only his chest pressed upon his lungs, but his
lungs strained toward his backbone. Not only the flesh of his
thighs tugged to flatten itself against his acceleration-chair,
but the blood in his legs tried to flow into and burst the blood-vessels
in the back of his legs.</p>
<p>The six-gravity acceleration seemed to endure for centuries.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></SPAN></span>
Actually, it lasted for fourteen seconds. In that time it increased
the speed of the little ship by rather more than half
a mile per second, something over 1,800 miles per hour. Before,
the ship had possessed an orbital speed of a shade over
1,470 miles an hour. After the jato thrust, it was traveling
nearly 3,400 miles per hour. It needed to travel something
over 12,000 miles per hour to reach the artificial satellite of
Earth.</p>
<p>The intolerable thrust ended abruptly. Joe gasped. But he
could allow himself only a shake of the head to clear his brain.
He jammed down the take-off rocket firing button. There was
a monstrous noise and a mighty surging, and Haney panted,
"Clear of cage...."</p>
<p>And then they were pressed fiercely against their acceleration
chairs again. The ship was no longer in its launching cage.
It was no longer upheld by pushpots. It was free, with its take-off
rockets flaming. It plunged on up and out. But the acceleration
was less. Nobody can stand six gravities for long.
Anybody can take three—for a while.</p>
<p>Joe's body resisted movement with a weight of four hundred
and fifty pounds, instead of a third as much for normal.
His heart had to pump against three times the normal resistance
of gravity. His chest felt as if it had a leaden weight
on it. His tongue tried to crowd the back of his mouth and
strangle him. The sensation was that of a nightmare of impossible
duration. It was possible to move and possible to see.
One could breathe, with difficulty, and with titanic effort one
could speak. But there was the same feeling of stifling resistance
to every movement that comes in nightmares.</p>
<p>But Joe managed to keep his eyes focused. The dials of the
instruments said that everything was right. The tinny voice
behind his head, its timbre changed by the weighting of its
diaphragm, said: "<i>All readings check within accuracy of instruments.
Good work!</i>"</p>
<p>Joe moved his eyes to a quartz window. The sky was black.
But there were stars. Bright stars against a black background.
At the same instant he saw the bright white disks of sunshine
that came in the cabin portholes. Stars and sunshine together.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></SPAN></span>
And the sunshine was the sunshine of space. Even with the
polarizers cutting off some of the glare it was unbearably
bright and hot beyond conception. He smelled overheated
paint, where the sunlight smote on a metal bulkhead. Stars and
super-hot sunshine together....</p>
<p>It was necessary to pant for breath, and his heart pounded
horribly and his eyes tried to go out of focus, but Joe Kenmore
strained in his acceleration-chair and managed to laugh
a little.</p>
<p>"We did it!" he panted. "In case you didn't notice, we're
out of—the atmosphere and—out in space! We're—headed to
join the Space Platform!"</p>
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