<h2><SPAN name="c2" id="c2"></SPAN><i>2</i></h2>
<p>The pressure of three gravities continued.
Joe's chest muscles ached with the exertion of breathing over
so long a period. Six gravities for fourteen seconds had been
a ghastly ordeal. Three gravities for minutes built up to
something nearly as bad. Joe's heart began to feel fatigue,
and a man's heart normally simply doesn't ever feel tired. It
became more and more difficult to see clearly.</p>
<p>But he had work to do. Important work. The take-off rockets
were solid-fuel jobs, like those which launched the Platform.
They were wire-wound steel tubes lined with a very special
refractory, with unstable beryllium and fluorine compounds in
them. The solid fuel burned at so many inches per second.
The refractory crumbled away and was hurled astern at a
corresponding rate—save for one small point. The refractory
was not all exactly alike. Some parts of it crumbled away faster,
leaving a pattern of baffles which acted like a maxim silencer
on a rifle, or like an automobile muffler. The baffles set
up eddies in the gas stream and produced exactly the effect of
a rocket motor's throat. But the baffles themselves crumbled
and were flung astern, so that the solid-fuel rockets had always<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></SPAN></span>
the efficiency of gas-throated rocket motors; and yet every bit
of refractory was reaction-mass to be hurled astern, and even
the steel tubes melted and were hurled away with a gain in
acceleration to the ship. Every fraction of every ounce of
rocket mass was used for drive. No tanks or pumps or burners
rode deadhead after they ceased to be useful.</p>
<p>But solid-fuel rockets simply can't be made to burn with
absolute evenness as a team. Minute differences in burning-rates
do tend to cancel out. But now and again they reinforce
each other and if uncorrected will throw a ship off course.
Gyros can't handle such effects. So Joe had to watch his instruments
and listen to the tinny voice behind him and steer
the ship against accidental wobblings as the Earth fell away
behind him.</p>
<p>He battled against the fatigue of continuing to live, and
struggled with gyros and steering jets to keep the ship on its
hair-line course. He panted heavily. The beating of his heart
became such a heavy pounding that it seemed that his whole
body shook with it. He had to do infinitely fine precision steering
with hands that weighed pounds and arms that weighed
scores of pounds and a body that had an effective weight of
almost a quarter of a ton.</p>
<p>And this went on and went on and on for what seemed
several centuries.</p>
<p>Then the voice in the speaker said thickly: "<i>Everything is
in the clear. In ten seconds you can release your rockets. Shall
I count?</i>"</p>
<p>Joe panted, "Count!"</p>
<p>The mechanical voice said, "<i>Seven ... six ... five ...
four ... three ... two ... one ... cut!</i>"</p>
<p>Joe pressed the release. The small, unburnt stubs of the
take-off rockets went hurtling off toward emptiness. They consumed
themselves as they went, and they attained an acceleration
of fifty gravities once they were relieved of all load
but their own substance. They had to be released lest one burn
longer than another. It was also the only way to stop acceleration
by solid-fuel rockets. They couldn't be extinguished. They
had to be released.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>From intolerably burdensome heaviness, there was abruptly
no weight at all in the ship. Joe's laboring heart beat twice
with the violence the weight had called for, though weight had
ended. It seemed to him that his skull would crack open during
those two heart-beats. Then he lay limply, resting.</p>
<p>There was a completely incredible stillness, for a time. The
four of them panted. Haney was better off than Joe, but the
Chief was harder hit. Mike's small body had taken the strain
best of all, and he would use the fact later in shrill argument
that midgets were designed by nature to be the explorers of
space for their bulkier and less spaceworthy kindred.</p>
<p>The ending of the steady, punishing drag was infinitely
good, but the new sensation was hardly pleasant. They had no
weight. It felt as if they and the ship about them were
falling together down an abyss which must have a bottom.
Actually, they were falling up. But they felt a physical, crawling
apprehension—a cringing from an imaginary imminent
impact.</p>
<p>They had expected the sensation, but it was not the better
for being understood. Joe flexed and unflexed his fingers
slowly. He stirred and swallowed hastily. But the feeling persisted.
He unstrapped himself from his seat. He stood up—and
floated to the ceiling of the cabin. But there was of course
no ceiling. Every way was up and every way was down. His
stomach cramped itself in a hard knot, in the instinctive tensity
of somebody in free fall.</p>
<p>He fended himself from the ceiling and caught at a hand-line
placed there for just this necessity to grip something. In
his absorption, he did not notice which way his heels went.
He suddenly noticed that his companions, with regard to him,
were upside down and staring at him with wooden, dazed expressions
on their faces.</p>
<p>He tried to laugh, and gulped instead. He pulled over to the
quartz-glass ports. He did not put his hand into the sunlight,
but shifted the glare shutters over those ports which admitted
direct sunshine. Some ports remained clear. Through one of
them he saw the Earth seemingly at arm's length somewhere
off. Not up, not down. Simply out from where he was. It filled<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></SPAN></span>
all the space that the porthole showed. It was a gigantic mass
of white, fleecy specks and spots which would be clouds, and
between the whiteness there was a muddy dark greenish color
which would be the ocean. Yet it seemed to slide very, very
slowly past the window.</p>
<p>He saw a tanness between the clouds, and it moved inward
from the edge of his field of view. He suddenly realized what
it was.</p>
<p>"We've just about crossed the Atlantic," he said in a peculiar
astonishment. But it was true the ship had not been aloft
nearly as much as half an hour. "Africa's just coming into
sight below. We ought to be about 1,200 miles high and still
rising fast. That was the calculation."</p>
<p>He looked again, and then drew himself across to the opposite
porthole. He saw the blackness of space, which was not
blackness because it was a carpet of jewels. They were infinite
in number and variations in brightness, and somehow of vastly
more colorings than one noticed from Earth.</p>
<p>He heard the Chief grunt, and Haney gulp. He was suddenly
conscious that his legs were floating rather ridiculously
in mid-air with no particular relationship to anything. He saw
the Chief rise very cautiously, holding on to the arms of his
seat.</p>
<p>"Better not look at the sun," said Joe, "even though I've
put on the glare-shields."</p>
<p>The Chief nodded. The glare-shields would keep out most
of the heat and a very great deal of the ultraviolet the sun
gave off. But even so, to look at the sun directly might easily
result in a retinal sunburn which could result in blindness.</p>
<p>The loudspeaker behind Joe's chair clattered. It had seemed
muted by the weight of its diaphragm at three gravities. Now
it blasted unintelligibly, with no weight at all. Mike threw a
switch and took the message.</p>
<p>"Communications says radar says we're right on course,
Joe," he reported nonchalantly, "and our speed's okay. We'll
reach maximum altitude in an hour and thirty-six minutes. We
ought to be within calculated distance of the Platform then."</p>
<p>"Good," said Joe abstractedly.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>He strained his eyes at the Earth. They were moving at an
extraordinary speed and height. It had been reached by just
four human beings before them. The tannishness which was
the coast of Africa crept with astonishing slowness toward the
center of what he could see.</p>
<p>Joe headed back to his seat. He could not walk, of course.
He floated. He launched himself with a fine air of confidence.
He misjudged. He was floating past his chair when he reached
down—and that turned his body—and fumbled wildly. He
caught hold of the back as he went by, then held on and
found himself turning a grandly dignified somersault. He
wound up in a remarkably foolish position with the back of his
neck on the back of the chair, his arms in a highly strained
position to hold him there, and his feet touching the deck of
the cabin a good five feet away.</p>
<p>Haney looked greenish, but he said hoarsely:</p>
<p>"Joe, don't make me laugh—not when my stomach feels like
this!"</p>
<p>The feeling of weightlessness was unexpectedly daunting.
Joe turned himself about very slowly, with his legs floating indecorously
in entirely unintended kicks. He was breathing
hard when he pulled himself into the chair and strapped in
once more.</p>
<p>"I'll take Communications," he told Mike as he settled his
headphones.</p>
<p>Reluctantly, Mike switched over.</p>
<p>"Kenmore reporting to Communications," he said briefly.
"We have ended our take-off acceleration. You have our course
and velocity. Our instruments read—"</p>
<p>He went over the bank of instruments before him, giving
the indication of each. In a sense, this first trip of a ship out
to the Platform had some of the aspects of defusing a bomb.
Calculations were useful, but observations were necessary. He
had to report every detail of the condition of his ship and
every instrument-reading because anything might go wrong,
and at any instant. Anything that went wrong could be fatal.
So every bit of data and every intended action needed to be on<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></SPAN></span>
record. Then, if something happened, the next ship to attempt
this journey might avoid the same catastrophe.</p>
<p>Time passed. A lot of time. The feeling of unending fall
continued. They knew what it was, but they had to keep thinking
of its cause to endure it. Joe found that if his mind concentrated
fully on something else, it jerked back to panic and the
feel of falling. But the crew of the Space Platform—now out
in space for more weeks than Joe had been quarter-hours—reported
that one got partly used to it, in time. When awake, at
least. Asleep was another matter.</p>
<p>They were 1,600 miles high and still going out and up. The
Earth as seen through the ports was still an utterly monstrous,
bulging mass, specked with clouds above vast mottlings which
were its seas and land. They might have looked for cities, but
they would be mere patches in a telescope. Their task now was
to wait until their orbit curved into accordance with that of the
Platform and they kept their rendezvous. The artificial satellite
was swinging up behind them, and was only a quarter-circle
about Earth behind them. Their speed in miles per second
was, at the moment, greater than that of the Platform. But
they were climbing. They slowed as they climbed. When
their path intersected that of the Platform, the two velocities
should be exactly equal.</p>
<p>Major Holt's voice came on the Communicator.</p>
<p>"<i>Joe</i>," he said harshly, "<i>I have very bad news. A message
came from Central Intelligence within minutes of your take-off.
I—ah—with Sally I had been following your progress. I did not
decode the message until now. But Central Intelligence has
definite information that more than ten days ago the—ah—enemies
of our Space Exploration Project</i>—" even on a tight
beam to the small spaceship, Major Holt did not name the
nation everybody knew was most desperately resolved to
smash space exploration by anybody but itself—"<i>completed
at least one rocket capable of reaching the Platform's orbit
with a pay-load that could be an atomic bomb. It is believed
that more than one rocket was completed. All were shipped to
an unknown launching station.</i>"</p>
<p>"Not so good," said Joe.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Mike had left his post when Joe took over. Now he made
a swooping dart through the air of the cabin. The midget
showed no signs of the fumbling uncertainty the others had
displayed—but he'd been a member of a midget acrobatic
team before he went to work at the Shed. He brought himself
to a stop precisely at a hand-hold, grinning triumphantly at
the nearly helpless Chief and Haney.</p>
<p>Major Holt said in the headphones: "<i>It's worse than that.
Radar may have told the country in question that you are on
the way up. In that case, if it's even faintly possible to blast
the Platform before your arrival with weapons for its defense,
they'll blast.</i>"</p>
<p>"I don't like that idea," said Joe dourly. "Anything we can
do?"</p>
<p>Major Holt laughed bitterly. "<i>Hardly!</i>" he said. "<i>And do you
realize that if you can't unload your cargo you can't get back to
Earth?</i>"</p>
<p>"Yes," said Joe. "Naturally!"</p>
<p>It was true. The purpose of the pushpots and the jatos and
the ship's own take-off rockets had been to give it a speed at
which it would inevitably rise to a height of 4,000 miles—the
orbit of the Space Platform—and stay there. It would need no
power to remain 4,000 miles out from Earth. But it would
take power to come down. The take-off rockets had been
built to drive the ship with all its contents until it attained
that needed orbital velocity. There were landing rockets fastened
to the hull now to slow it so that it could land. But just
as the take-off rockets had been designed to lift a loaded
ship, the landing-rockets had been designed to land an empty
one.</p>
<p>The more weight the ship carried, the more power it needed
to get out to the Platform. And the more power it needed to
come down again.</p>
<p>If Joe and his companions couldn't get rid of their cargo—and
they could only unload in the ship-lock of the Platform—they'd
stay out in emptiness.</p>
<p>The Major said bitterly: "<i>This is all most irregular, but—here's
Sally.</i>"<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Then Sally's voice sounded in the headphones Joe wore.
He was relieved that Mike wasn't acting as communications
officer at the moment to overhear. But Mike was zestfully
spinning like a pin-wheel in the middle of the air of the
control cabin. He was showing the others that even in the
intramural pastimes a spaceship crew will indulge in, a midget
was better than a full-sized man. Joe said:</p>
<p>"Yes, Sally?"</p>
<p>She said unsteadily. "<i>I'm not going to waste your time
talking to you, Joe. I think you've got to figure out something.
I haven't the faintest idea what it is, but I think you can do it.
Try, will you?</i>"</p>
<p>"I'm afraid we're going to have to trust to luck," admitted
Joe ruefully. "We weren't equipped for anything like this."</p>
<p>"<i>No!</i>" said Sally fiercely. "<i>If I were with you, you wouldn't
think of trusting to luck!</i>"</p>
<p>"I wouldn't want to," admitted Joe. "I'd feel responsible.
But just the same—"</p>
<p>"<i>You're responsible now!</i>" said Sally, as fiercely as before.
"<i>If the Platform's smashed, the rockets that can reach it will
be duplicated to smash our cities in war! But if you can reach
the Platform and arm it for defense, there won't be any war!
Half the world would be praying for you, Joe, if it knew! I
can't do anything else, so I'm going to start on that right now.
But you try, Joe! You hear me?</i>"</p>
<p>"I'll try," said Joe humbly. "Thanks, Sally."</p>
<p>He heard a sound like a sob, and the headphones were
silent. Joe himself swallowed very carefully. It can be alarming
to be the object of an intended murder, but it can also
be very thrilling. One can play up splendidly to a dramatic
picture of doom. It is possible to be one's own audience and
admire one's own fine disregard of danger. But when other
lives depend on one, one has the irritating obligation not
to strike poses but to do something practical.</p>
<p>Joe said somberly: "Mike, how long before we ought to
contact the Platform?"</p>
<p>Mike reached out a small hand, caught a hand-hold, and
flicked his eyes to the master chronometer.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Forty minutes, fifty seconds. Why?"</p>
<p>Joe said wrily, "There are some rockets in enemy hands
which can reach the Platform. They were shipped to launchers
ten days ago. You figure what comes next."</p>
<p>Mike's wizened face became tense and angry. Haney
growled, "They smash the Platform before we get to it."</p>
<p>"Uh-uh!" said Mike instantly. "They smash the Platform
<i>when</i> we get to it! They smash us both up together. Where'll
we be at contact-time, Joe?"</p>
<p>"Over the Indian Ocean, south of the Bay of Bengal, to be
exact," said Joe. "But we'll be moving fast. The worst of it is
that it's going to take time to get in the airlock and unload
our guided missiles and get them in the Platform's launching-tubes.
I'd guess an hour. One bomb should get both of us
above the Bay of Bengal, but we won't be set to launch a
guided missile in defense until we're nearly over America
again."</p>
<p>The Chief said sourly, "Yeah. Sitting ducks all the way
across the Pacific!"</p>
<p>"We'll check with the Platform," said Joe. "See if you can
get them direct, Mike, will you?"</p>
<p>Then something occurred to him. Mike scrambled back to
his communication board. He began feverishly to work the
computer which in turn would swing the tight-beam transmitter
to the target the computer worked out, He threw a
switch and said sharply, "Calling Space Platform! Pelican
One calling Space Platform! Come in, Space Platform!..."
He paused. "Calling Space Platform...."</p>
<p>Joe had a slide-rule going on another problem. He looked
up, his expression peculiar.</p>
<p>"A solid-fuel rocket can start off at ten gravities acceleration,"
he said quietly, "and as its rockets burn away it can
go up a lot higher than that. But 4,000 miles is a long way
to go straight up. If it isn't launched yet—"</p>
<p>Mike snapped into a microphone: "Right!" To Joe he said,
"Space Platform on the wire."</p>
<p>Joe heard an acknowledgment in his headphones. "I've
just had word from the Shed," he explained carefully, "that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></SPAN></span>
there may be some guided missiles coming up from Earth
to smash us as we meet. You're still higher than we are,
and they ought to be starting. Can you pick up anything with
your radar?"</p>
<p>The voice from the Platform said: "<i>We have picked something
up. There are four rockets headed out from near the
sunset-line in the Pacific. Assuming solid-fuel rockets like we
used and you used, they are on a collision course.</i>"</p>
<p>"Are you doing anything about them?" asked Joe absurdly.</p>
<p>The voice said caustically: "<i>Unfortunately, we've nothing to
do anything with.</i>" It paused. "<i>You, of course, can use the
landing-rockets you still possess. If you fire them immediately,
you will pass our scheduled meeting-place some hundreds of
miles ahead of us. You will go on out to space. You may set
up an orbit forty-five hundred or even five thousand miles
out, and wait there for rescue.</i>"</p>
<p>Joe said briefly: "We've air for only four days. That's no
good. It'll be a month before the next ship can be finished
and take off. There are four rockets coming up, you say?"</p>
<p>"<i>Yes.</i>" The voice changed. It spoke away from the microphone.
"<i>What's that?</i>" Then it returned to Joe. "<i>The four
rockets were sent up at the same instant from four separate
launching sites. Probably as many submarines at the corners
of a hundred-mile square, so an accident to one wouldn't set
off the others. They'll undoubtedly converge as they get
nearer to us.</i>"</p>
<p>"I think," said Joe, "that we need some luck."</p>
<p>"<i>I think</i>," said the caustic voice, "<i>that we've run out of it.</i>"</p>
<p>There was a click. Joe swallowed again. The three members
of his crew were looking at him.</p>
<p>"Somebody's fired rockets out from Earth," said Joe carefully.
"They'll curve together where we meet the Platform,
and get there just when we do."</p>
<p>The Chief rumbled. Haney clamped his jaws together.
Mike's expression became one of blazing hatred.</p>
<p>Joe's mind went rather absurdly to the major's curious,
almost despairing talk in his quarters that morning, when
he'd spoken of a conspiracy to destroy all the hopes of men.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></SPAN></span>
The firing of rockets at the Platform was, of course, the work
of men acting deliberately. But they were—unconsciously—trying
to destroy their own best hopes. For freedom, certainly,
whether or not they could imagine being free. But
the Platform and the space exploration project in general
meant benefits past computing for everybody, in time. To
send ships into space for necessary but dangerous experiments
with atomic energy was a purpose every man should
want to help forward. To bring peace on Earth was surely
an objective no man could willingly or sanely combat. And
the ultimate goal of space travel was millions of other planets,
circling other suns, thrown open to colonization by humanity.
That prospect should surely fire every human being with
enthusiasm. But something—and the more one thought about
it the more specific and deliberate it seemed to be—made
it necessary to fight desperately against men in order to benefit
them.</p>
<p>Joe swallowed again. It would have been comforting to be
dramatic in this war against stupidity and malice and blindness.
Especially since this particular battle seemed to be
lost. One could send back an eloquent, defiant message to
Earth saying that the four of them did not regret their journey
into space, though they were doomed to be killed by the
enemies of their country. It could have been a very pretty
gesture. But Joe happened to have a job to do. Pretty gestures
were not a part of it. He had no idea how to do it. So he said
rather sickishly:</p>
<p>"The Platform told me we could fire our landing-rockets
as additional take-off rockets and get out of the way. Of
course we've got missiles of our own on board, but we can't
launch or control them. Absolutely the only thing we can
choose to do or not do is fire those rockets. I'm open to suggestions
if anybody can think of a way to make them useful."</p>
<p>There was silence. Joe's reasoning was good enough. When
one can't do what he wants, one tries to make what he can
do produce the results he wants. But it didn't look too
promising here. They could fire the rockets now, or later,
or<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></SPAN></span>—</p>
<p>An idea came out of the blue. It wasn't a good idea, but
it was the only one possible under the circumstances. There
was just one distinctly remote possibility. He told the others
what it was. Mike's eyes flamed. The Chief nodded profoundly.
Haney said with some skepticism, "It's all we've got.
We've got to use it."</p>
<p>"I need some calculations. Spread. Best time of firing.
That sort of thing. But I'm worried about calling back in
the clear. A beam to the Platform will bounce and might be
picked up by the enemy."</p>
<p>The Chief grinned suddenly. "I've got a trick for that, Joe.
There's a tribesman of mine in the Shed. Get Charley Red
Fox to the phone, guy, and we'll talk privately!"</p>
<p>The small spaceship floated on upward. It pointed steadfastly
in the direction of its motion. The glaring sunshine
which at its take-off had shone squarely in its bow-ports,
now poured down slantingly from behind. The steel plates
of the ship gleamed brightly. Below it lay the sunlit Earth.
Above and about it on every hand were a multitude of stars.
Even the moon was visible as the thinnest of crescents against
the night of space.</p>
<p>The ship climbed steeply. It was meeting the Platform after
only half a circuit of Earth, while the Platform had climbed
upward for three full revolutions. Earth was now 3,000 miles
below and appeared as the most gigantic of possible solid
objects. It curved away and away to mistiness at its horizons,
and it moved visibly as the spaceship floated on.</p>
<p>Invisible microwaves flung arrowlike through emptiness.
They traveled for thousands of miles, spreading as they traveled,
and then struck the strange shape of the Platform. They
splashed from it. Some of them rebounded to Earth, where
spies and agents of foreign powers tried desperately to make
sense of the incredible syllables. They failed.</p>
<p>There was a relay system in operation now, from spaceship
to Platform to Earth and back again. In the ship Chief
Bender, Mohawk and steelman extraordinary, talked to the
Shed and to one Charley Red Fox. They talked in Mohawk,
which is an Algonquin Indian language, agglutinative, complicated,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></SPAN></span>
and not to be learned in ten easy lessons. It was not
a language which eavesdroppers were likely to know as a matter
of course. But it was a language by which computations
could be asked for, so that a very forlorn hope might be
attempted with the best possible chances of success.</p>
<p>Naturally, none of this appeared in the look of things. The
small ship floated on and on. It reached an altitude of 3,500
miles. The Earth was visibly farther away. Behind the ship
the Atlantic with its stately cloud-formations was sunlit to
the very edge of its being. Ahead, the edge of night appeared
beyond India. And above, the Platform appeared as
a speck of molten light, quarter-illuminated by the sun
above it.</p>
<p>Spaceship and Platform moved on toward a meeting place.
The ship moved a trifle faster, because it was climbing. The
speeds would match exactly when they met. The small torpedo-shaped
shining ship and the bulging glowing metal
satellite floated with a seeming vast deliberation in emptiness,
while the most gigantic of possible round objects filled all
the firmament beneath them. They were 200 miles apart. It
seemed that the huge Platform overtook the shining ship. It
did. They were only 50 miles apart and still closing in.</p>
<p>By that time the twilight band of Earth's surface was
nearly at the center of the planet, and night filled more than
a quarter of its disk.</p>
<p>By that time, too, even to the naked eye through the ports
of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible.
They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which
seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and
expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting
into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead
of the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which
seemed remarkably deliberate until one saw with what fury
the rocket-fumes spat out to form the whitish threads. Then
one could guess at a three-or even four-stage launching series,
so that what appeared to be mere pinpoints would really be
rockets carrying half-ton atomic warheads with an attained
velocity of 10,000 miles per hour and more straight up.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The threads unraveled in a straight line aimed at the two
metal things floating in emptiness. One was small and streamlined,
with inadequate landing-rockets clamped to its body
and with stubby fins that had no possible utility out of air.
The other was large and clumsy to look at, but very, very
stately indeed in its progress through the heavens. They
floated smoothly toward a rendezvous. The rockets from
Earth came ravening to destroy them at the instant of their
intersection.</p>
<p>The little spaceship turned slowly. Its rounded bow had
pointed longingly at the stars. Now it tilted downward. Its
direction of movement did not change, of course. In the
absence of air, it could tumble indefinitely without any ill
effect. It was in a trajectory instead of on a course, though
presently the trajectory would become an orbit. But it pointed
nose-down toward the Earth even as it continued to hurtle
onward.</p>
<p>The great steel hull and the small spaceship were 20 miles
apart. An infinitesimal radar-bowl moved on the little ship.
Tight-beam waves flickered invisibly between the two craft.
The rockets raged toward them.</p>
<p>The ship and the Platform were 10 miles apart. The rockets
were now glinting missiles leaping ahead of the fumes that
propelled them.</p>
<p>The ship and the Platform were two miles apart. The
rockets rushed upward.... There were minute corrections
in their courses. They converged....</p>
<p>Flames leaped from the tiny ship. Its landing-rockets
spouted white-hot flame and fumes more thick and coiling
than even the smoke of the bombs. The little ship surged
momentarily toward the racing monsters. And then——</p>
<p>The rockets which were supposed to let the ship down to
Earth flew free—flung themselves unburdened at the rockets
which came with deadly intent to the meeting of the two
Earth spacecraft.</p>
<p>The landing-rockets plunged down at forty gravities or
better. They were a dwindling group of infinitely bright sparks
which seemed to group themselves more closely as they<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></SPAN></span>
dwindled. They charged upon the attacking robot things.
They were unguided, of necessity, but the robot bombs had
to be equipped with proximity fuses. No remote control
could be so accurate as to determine the best moment for
detonation at 4,000 miles' distance. So the war rockets had
to be devised to explode when near anything which reflected
their probing radar waves. They had to be designed to be
triggered by anything in space.</p>
<p>And the loosed landing-rockets plunged among them.</p>
<p>They did not detonate all at once. That was mathematically
impossible. But no human eye could detect the delay. Four
close-packed flares of pure atomic fire sprang into being between
the Platform and Earth. Each was brighter than the
sun. For the fraction of an instant there was no night where
night had fallen on the Earth. For thousands of miles the
Earth glowed brightly.</p>
<p>Then there was a twisting, coiling tumult of incandescent
gases, which were snatched away by nothingness and ceased
to be.</p>
<p>Then there were just two things remaining in the void. One
was the great, clumsy, shining Platform, gigantic in size to
anything close by. The other was the small spaceship which
had climbed to it and fought for it and defended it against
the bombs from Earth.</p>
<p>The little ship now had a slight motion away from the
Platform, due to the instant's tugging by its rockets before
they were released.</p>
<p>It turned about in emptiness. Its steering-rockets spouted
smoke. It began to cancel out its velocity away from the Platform,
and to swim slowly and very carefully toward it.</p>
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