<h2><SPAN name="c3" id="c3"></SPAN><i>3</i></h2>
<p>Making actual contact with the platform was
not a matter for instruments and calculations. It had to be
done directly—by hand, as it were. Joe watched out the ports<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></SPAN></span>
and played the controls of the steering jets with a nerve-racked
precision. His task was not easy.</p>
<p>Before he could return to the point of rendezvous, the blinding
sunlight on the Platform took on a tinge of red. It was the
twilight-zone of the satellite's orbit, when for a time the
sunlight that reached it was light which had passed through
Earth's atmosphere and been bent by it and colored crimson
by the dust in Earth's air. It glowed a fiery red, and the color
deepened, and then there was darkness.</p>
<p>They were in Earth's shadow. There were stars to be seen,
but no sun. The Moon was hidden, too. And the Earth was a
monstrous, incredible, abysmal blackness which at this first
experience of its appearance produced an almost superstitious
terror. Formerly it had seemed a distant but sunlit world,
flecked with white clouds and with sprawling differentiations
of color beneath them.</p>
<p>Now it did not look like a solid thing at all. It looked like
a hole in creation. One could see ten thousand million stars
of every imaginable tint and shade. But where the Earth
should be there seemed a vast nothingness. It looked like an
opening to annihilation. It looked like the veritable Pit of
Darkness which is the greatest horror men have ever imagined,
and since those in the ship were without weight it
seemed that they were falling into it.</p>
<p>Joe knew better, of course. So did the others. But that was
the look of things, and that was the feeling. One did not feel
in danger of death, but of extinction—which, in cold fact, is
very much worse.</p>
<p>Lights glowed on the outside of the Platform to guide the
supply ship to it. There were red and green and blue and
harsh blue-white electric bulbs. They were bright and distinct,
but the feeling of loneliness above that awful appearance
of the Pit was appalling. No small child alone at
night had ever so desolate a sensation of isolation as the
four in the small ship.</p>
<p>But Joe painstakingly played the buttons of the steering-rocket
control board. The ship surged, and turned, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></SPAN></span>
surged forward again. Mike, at the communicator, said, "They
say slow up, Joe."</p>
<p>Joe obeyed, but he was tense. Haney and the Chief were
at other portholes, looking out. The Chief said heavily,
"Fellas, I'm going to admit I never felt so lonesome in my
life!"</p>
<p>"I'm glad I've got you fellows with me!" Haney admitted
guiltily.</p>
<p>"The job's almost over," said Joe.</p>
<p>The ship's own hull, outside the ports, glowed suddenly
in a light-beam from the Platform. The small, brief surges
of acceleration which sent the ship on produced tremendous
emotional effects. When the Platform was only one mile
away, Haney switched on the ship's searchlights. They
stabbed through emptiness with absolutely no sign of their
existence until they touched the steel hull of the satellite.</p>
<p>Mike said sharply: "Slow up some more, Joe."</p>
<p>He obeyed again. It would not be a good idea to ram the
Platform after they had come so far to reach it.</p>
<p>They drifted slowly, slowly, slowly toward it. The monstrous
Pit of Darkness which was the night side of Earth
seemed almost about to engulf the Platform. They were a few
hundred feet higher than the great metal globe, and the
blackness was behind it. They were a quarter of a mile away.
The distance diminished.</p>
<p>A thin straight line seemed to grow out toward them. There
was a small, bulb-like object at its end. It reached out farther
than was at all plausible. Nothing so slender should
conceivably reach so far without bending of its own weight.
But of course it had no weight here. It was a plastic flexible
hose with air pressure in it. It groped for the spaceship.</p>
<p>The four in the ship held their breaths.</p>
<p>There was a loud, metallic <i>clank!</i></p>
<p>Then it was possible to feel the ship being pulled toward
the Platform by the magnetic grapple. It was a landing-line.
It was the means by which the ship would be docked in the
giant lock which had been built to receive it.</p>
<p>As they drew near, they saw the joints of the plating of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></SPAN></span>
the Platform. They saw rivets. There was the huge, 30-foot
doorway with its valves swung wide. Their searchlight beam
glared into it. They saw the metal floor, and the bulging
plastic sidewalls, restrained by nets. They saw the inner lock-door.
It seemed that men should be visible to welcome them.
There were none.</p>
<p>The airlock swallowed them. They touched against something
solid. There were more clankings. They seemed to
crunch against the metal floor—magnetic flooring-grapples.
Then, in solid contact with the substance of the Platform,
they heard the sounds of the great outer doors swinging
shut. They were within the artificial satellite of Earth. It
was bright in the lock, and Joe stared out the cabin ports
at the quilted sides. There was a hissing of air, and he saw
a swirling mist, and then the bulges of the sidewall sagged.
The air pressure gauge was spinning up toward normal sea-level
air pressure.</p>
<p>Joe threw the ready lever of the steering rockets to <i>Off</i>.
"We're landed."</p>
<p>There was silence. Joe looked about him. The other three
looked queer. It would have seemed natural for them to rejoice
on arriving at their destination. But somehow they
didn't feel that they had.</p>
<p>Joe said wrily, "It seems that we ought to weigh something,
now we've got here. So we feel queer that we don't. Shoes,
Mike?"</p>
<p>Mike peeled off the magnetic-soled slippers from their
place on the cabin wall. He handed them out and opened
the door. A biting chill came in it. Joe slipped on the shoe-soles
with their elastic bands to hold them. He stepped out
the door.</p>
<p>He didn't land. He floated until he reached the sidewall.
Then he pulled himself down by the netting. Once he
touched the floor, his shoes seemed to be sticky. The net
and the plastic sidewalls were, of course, the method by which
a really large airlock was made practical. When this ship was
about to take off again, pumps would not labor for hours to
pump the air out. The sidewalls would inflate and closely<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></SPAN></span>
enclose the ship's hull, and so force the air in the lock back
into the ship. Then the pumps would work on the air behind
the inflated walls—with nets to help them draw the wall-stuff
back to let the ship go free. The lock could be used with
only fifteen minutes for pumping instead of four hours.</p>
<p>The door in the back of the lock clanked open. Joe tried
to walk toward it. He discovered his astounding clumsiness.
To walk in magnetic-soled shoes in weightlessness requires
a knack. When Joe lifted one foot and tried to swing the
other forward, his body tried to pivot. When he lifted his
right foot, he had to turn his left slightly inward. His arms
tried to float absurdly upward. When he was in motion and
essayed to pause, his whole body tended to continue forward
with a sedate toppling motion that brought him down flat
on his face. He had to put one foot forward to check himself.
He seemed to have no sense of balance. When he stood
still—his stomach queasy because of weightlessness—he found
himself tilting undignifiedly forward or back—or, with equal
unpredictability, sidewise. He would have to learn an entirely
new method of walking.</p>
<p>A man came in the lock, and Joe knew who it was. Sanford,
the senior scientist of the Platform's crew. Joe had seen him
often enough on the television screen in the Communications
Room at the Shed. Now Sanford looked nerve-racked,
but his eyes were bright and his expression sardonic.</p>
<p>"My compliments," he said, his voice tight with irony, "for
a splendidly futile job well done! You've got your cargo
invoice?"</p>
<p>Joe nodded. Sanford held out his hand. Joe fumbled in his
pocket and brought out the yellow sheet.</p>
<p>"I'd like to introduce my crew," said Joe. "This is Haney,
and Chief Bender, and Mike Scandia." He waved his hand,
and his whole body wobbled unexpectedly.</p>
<p>"We'll know each other!" said Sanford sardonically. "Our
first job is more futility—to get the guided missiles you've
brought us into the launching tubes. A lot of good they'll do!"</p>
<p>A huge plate in the roof of the lock—but it was not up
or down or in any particular direction—withdrew itself. A<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></SPAN></span>
man floated through the opening and landed on the ship's
hull; another man followed him.</p>
<p>"Chief," said Joe, "and Haney. Will you open the cargo
doors?"</p>
<p>The two swaying figures moved to obey, though with erratic
clumsiness. Sanford called sharply: "Don't touch the hull without
gloves! If it isn't nearly red-hot from the sunlight, it'll be
below zero from shadow!"</p>
<p>Joe realized, then, the temperature effects the skin on his
face noticed. A part of the spaceship's hull gave off heat like
that of a panel heating installation. Another part imparted
a chill.</p>
<p>Sanford said unpleasantly, "You want to report your
heroism, eh? Come along!"</p>
<p>He clanked to the doorway by which he had entered. Joe
followed, and Mike after him.</p>
<p>They went out of the lock. Sanford suddenly peeled off
his metal-soled slippers, put them in his pocket, and dived
casually into a four-foot metal tube. He drifted smoothly
away along the lighted bore, not touching the sidewalls. He
moved in the manner of a dream, when one floats with infinite
ease and precision in any direction one chooses.</p>
<p>Joe and Mike did not share his talent. Joe launched himself
after Sanford, and for perhaps 20 or 30 feet the lighted
aluminum sidewall of the tube sped past him. Then his
shoulder rubbed, and he found himself skidding to an undignified
stop, choking the bore. Mike thudded into him.</p>
<p>"I haven't got the hang of this yet," said Joe apologetically.</p>
<p>He untangled himself and went on. Mike followed him,
his expression that of pure bliss. He was a tiny man, was Mike,
but he had the longings and the ambitions of half a dozen
ordinary-sized men in his small body. And he had known
frustration. He could prove by mathematics that space exploration
could be carried on by midgets at a fraction of the
cost and risk of the same job done by normal-sized men.
He was, of course, quite right. The cabins and air and food
supplies for a spaceship's crew of midgets would cost and
weigh a fraction of similar equipment for six-footers. But<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></SPAN></span>
people simply weren't interested in sending midgets out
into space.</p>
<p>But Mike had gotten here. He was in the Space Platform.
There were full-sized men who would joyfully have changed
places with him, forty-one inch height and all. So Mike was
blissful.</p>
<p>The tube ended and Joe bounced off the wall that faced
its end. Sanford was waiting. He grinned with more than a
hint of spite.</p>
<p>"Here's our communications room," he said. "Now you
can talk down to Earth. It'll be relayed, now, but in half an
hour you can reach the Shed direct."</p>
<p>He floated inside. Joe followed cautiously. There was
another crew member on duty there. He sat before a group
of radar screens, with thigh grips across his legs to hold
him in his chair. He turned his head and nodded cheerfully
enough.</p>
<p>"Here!" snapped Sanford.</p>
<p>Joe clambered awkwardly to the seat the senior crew member
pointed out. He made his way to it by handholds on the
walls. He fumbled into the chair and threw over the curved
thigh grips that would hold him in place.</p>
<p>Suddenly he was oriented. He had seen this room before—before
the Platform was launched. True, the man at the
radar screens was upside-down with reference to himself,
and Sanford had hooked a knee negligently around the arm
of a firmly anchored chair with his body at right angles to
Joe's own, but at least Joe knew where he was and what
he was to do.</p>
<p>"Go ahead and report," said Sanford sardonically. "You
might tell them that you heroically destroyed the rockets
that attacked us, and that your crew behaved splendidly, and
that you have landed in the Space Platform and the situation
is well in hand. It isn't, but it will make nice headlines."</p>
<p>Joe said evenly, "Our arrival's been reported?"</p>
<p>"No," said Sanford, grinning. "Obviously the radar down
on Earth—shipboard ones on this hemisphere, of course—have<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></SPAN></span>
reported that the Platform still exists. But we haven't
communicated since the bombs went off. They probably
think we had so many punctures that we lost all our air
and are all wiped out. They'll be glad to hear from you that
we aren't."</p>
<p>Joe threw a switch, frowning. This wasn't right. Sanford
was the senior scientist on board and hence in command,
because he was best-qualified to direct the scientific observations
the Platform was making. But there was something
specifically wrong.</p>
<p>The communicator hummed. A faint voice sounded. It
swelled to loudness. "Calling Space Platform! <i>Calling Space
Platform!</i> <span class="smcap">CALLING SPACE PLATFORM</span>!" Joe turned down the
volume. He said into the microphone:</p>
<p>"Space Platform calling Earth. Joe Kenmore reporting. We
have made contact with the Platform and completed our
landing. Our cargo is now being unloaded. Our landing rockets
had to be expended against presumably hostile bombs, and
we are now unable to return to Earth. The ship and the
Platform, however, are unharmed. I am now waiting for
orders. Report ends."</p>
<p>He turned away from the microphone. Sanford said sharply,
"Go on! Tell them what a hero you are!"</p>
<p>"I'm going to help unload my ship," Joe said shortly. "You
report what you please."</p>
<p>"Get back at that transmitter!" shouted Sanford furiously.
"Tell 'em you're a hero! Tell 'em you're wonderful! I'll tell
'em how useless it is!"</p>
<p>Joe saw the other man in the room, the man at the radar
screens, shake his head. He got up and fumbled his way along
the wall to the door. Sanford shouted after him angrily.</p>
<p>Joe went out, found the four-foot tunnel, and floated not
down but along it back to the unloading lock. Wordlessly,
he set to work to get the cargo out of the cargo hold of the
spaceship.</p>
<p>Handling objects in weightlessness which on Earth would
be heavy was an art in itself. Two men could move tons.
It needed only one man to start a massive crate in motion.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></SPAN></span>
However, one had either to lift or push an object in the exact
line it was to follow. To thrust hard for a short time produced
exactly the same effect as to push gently for a longer period.
Anything floated tranquilly in the line along which it was
moved. The man who had to stop it, though, needed to use
exactly as much energy as the man who sent it floating. He
needed to check the floating thing in exactly the same line.
If one tried to stop a massive shipment from one side, he
would topple into it and he and the crate together would go
floundering helplessly over each other.</p>
<p>The Chief had gone off to help maneuver two-ton guided
missiles into launching tubes. One crew member remained
with Haney, unloading things that would have had to be
handled with cranes on Earth. Joe found himself needed most
in the storage chamber. A crate floated from the ship to the
crewman. Standing head downward, he stopped its original
movement, braced himself, and sent it floating to Joe. He
braced himself, stopped its flight, and very slowly—to move
fast with anything heavy in his hands would pull his feet
from the floor—set it on a stack of similar objects which
would presently be fastened in place.</p>
<p>Everything had to be done in slow motion, or one would
lose his footing. Joe worked painstakingly. He gradually
began to understand the process. But the muscles of his
stomach ached because of their continuous, instinctive cramp
due to the sensation of unending fall.</p>
<p>Mike floated through the hatchway from the lock. He
twisted about as he floated, and his magnetized soles clanked
to a deft contact with the wall. He said calmly: "That guy
Sanford has cracked up. He's potty. If this were jail he'd be
stir-crazy. He's yelling into the communicator now that we'll
all be dead in a matter of days, and the rocket missiles we
brought up won't help. He's nasty about it, too!"</p>
<p>Haney called from the cargo space of the ship in the lock:
"All empty here! We're unloaded."</p>
<p>There were sounds as he closed the cargo doors. Haney,
followed by the Chief, came into view, floating as Mike had
done. But he didn't land as skillfully. He touched the wall on<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></SPAN></span>
his hands and knees and bounced away and tried helplessly
to swim to a hand-hold. It would have been funny except that
Joe was in no mood for humor.</p>
<p>Mike whipped off his belt and flipped the end of it to
Haney. He caught it and was drawn gently to the wall.
Haney's shoes clicked to a hold. The Chief landed more
expertly.</p>
<p>"We need wings here," he said ruefully. "You reported,
Joe?"</p>
<p>Joe nodded. He turned to Brent, the crew member who'd
been unloading. He knew him too, from their two-way video
conversations.</p>
<p>"Sanford does act oddly," he said uncomfortably. "When
he met me in the lock he said our coming was useless. He
talked about the futility of everything while I reported. He
sounds like he sneers at every possible action as useless."</p>
<p>"Most likely it is," Brent said mildly. "Here, anyhow. It
does look as if we're going to be knocked off. But Sanford's
taking it badly. The rest of us have let him act as he pleased
because it didn't seem to matter. It probably doesn't, except
that he's annoying."</p>
<p>Mike said truculently, "We won't be knocked off! We've
got rockets of our own up here now! We can fight back if
there's another attack!"</p>
<p>Brent shrugged. His face was young enough, but deeply
lined. He said as mildly as before: "Your landing rockets set
off four bombs on the way from Earth. You brought us six
more rocket missiles. How many bombs can we knock down
with them?"</p>
<p>Joe blinked. It was a shock to realize the facts of life in an
artificial satellite. If it could be reached by bombs from
Earth, the bombs could be reached by guided missiles from
the satellite. But it would take one guided missile to knock
down one bomb—with luck.</p>
<p>"I see," said Joe slowly. "We can handle just six more
bombs from Earth."</p>
<p>"Six in the next month," agreed Brent wrily. "It'll be that
long before we get more. Somebody sent up four bombs today.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></SPAN></span>
Suppose they send eight next time? Or simply one a day
for a week?"</p>
<p>Mike made an angry noise. "The seventh bomb shot at us
knocks us out! We're sitting ducks here too!"</p>
<p>Brent nodded. He said mildly:</p>
<p>"Yes. The Platform can't be defended against an indefinite
number of bombs from Earth. Of course the United States
could go to war because we've been shot at. But would that do
us any good? We'd be shot down in the war."</p>
<p>Joe said distastefully, "And Sanford's cracked up because
he knows he's going to be killed?"</p>
<p>Brent said earnestly. "Oh, no! He's a good scientist! But he's
always had a brilliant mind. Poor devil, he's never failed at
anything in all his life until now! Now he <i>has</i> failed. He's
going to be killed, and he can't think of any way to stop it.
His brains are the only things he's ever believed in, and now
they're no good. He can't accept the idea that he's stupid, so
he has to believe that everything else is. It's a necessity for
him. Haven't you known people who had to think everybody
else was stupid to keep from knowing that they were themselves?"</p>
<p>Joe nodded. He waited.</p>
<p>"Sanford," said Brent earnestly, "simply can't adjust to the
discovery that he's no better than anybody else. That's all.
He was a nice guy, but he's not used to frustration and he can't
take it. Therefore he scorns everything that frustrates him—and
everything else, by necessity. He'll be scornful about getting
killed when it happens. But waiting for it is becoming
intolerable to him."</p>
<p>He looked at his watch. He said apologetically, "I'm the
crew psychologist. That's why I speak so firmly. In five minutes
we're due to come out of the Earth's shadow into sunshine
again. I'd suggest that you come to watch. It's good to look
at."</p>
<p>He did not wait for an answer. He led the way. And the
others followed in a strange procession. Somehow, automatically,
they fell into single file, and they moved on their
magnetic-soled slippers toward a passage tube in one wall.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></SPAN></span>
Their slipper soles clanked and clicked in an erratic rhythm.
Brent walked with the mincing steps necessary for movement
in weightlessness. The others imitated him. Their hands no
longer hung naturally by their sides, but tended to make extravagant
gestures with the slightest muscular impulse. They
swayed extraordinarily as they walked. Brent was a slender
figure, and Joe was more thick-set, and Haney was taller, and
lean. The burly Chief and the forty-one inch figure of Mike
the midget followed after them. They made a queer procession
indeed.</p>
<p>Minutes later they were in a blister on the skin of the
Platform. There were quartz glass ports in the sidewall. Outside
the glass were metal shutters. Brent served out dense
goggles, almost black, and touched the buttons that opened
the steel port coverings.</p>
<p>They looked into space. The dimmer stars were extinguished
by the goggles they wore. The brighter ones seemed faint and
widely spaced. Beneath their feet as they held to handrails
lay the featureless darkness of Earth. But before them and
very far away there was a vast, dim arch of deepest red.</p>
<p>It was sunlight filtered through the thickest layers of Earth's
air. It barely outlined the curve of that gigantic globe. As they
stared, it grew brighter. The artificial satellite required little
more than four hours for one revolution about its primary, the
Earth. To those aboard it, the Earth would go through all its
phases in no longer a time. They saw now the thinnest possible
crescent of the new Earth. But in minutes—almost in
seconds—the deep red sunshine brightened to gold. The hair-thin
line of light widened to a narrow ribbon which described
an eight-thousand-mile half-circle. It brightened markedly at
the middle. It remained red at its ends, but in the very center
it glowed with splendid flame. Then a golden ball appeared,
and swam up and detached itself from the Earth, and the on-lookers
saw the breath-taking spectacle of all of Earth's surface
seemingly being born of the night.</p>
<p>As if new-created before their eyes, seas and lands unfolded
in the sunlight. They watched flecks of cloud and the long<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></SPAN></span>
shadows of mountains, and the strangely different colorings
of its fields and forests.</p>
<p>As Brent had told them, it was good to watch.</p>
<p>It was half an hour later when they gathered in the kitchen
of the Platform. The man who had been loading launching
tubes now briskly worked to prepare a meal on the extremely
unusual cooking-devices of a human outpost in interplanetary
space.</p>
<p>The food smelled good. But Joe noticed that he could smell
growing things. Green stuff. It was absurd—until he remembered
that there was a hydroponic garden here. Plants grew
in it under sunlamps which were turned on for a certain number
of hours every day. The plants purified the Platform's air,
and of course provided some fresh and nourishing food for
the crew.</p>
<p>They ate. The food was served in plastic bowls, with elastic
thread covers through which they could see and choose the
particular morsels they fancied next. The threads stretched
to let through the forks they ate with. But Brent used a rather
more practical pair of tongs in a businesslike manner.</p>
<p>They drank coffee from cups which looked very much like
ordinary cups on Earth. Joe remembered suddenly that Sally
Holt had had much to do with the design of domestic science
arrangements here. He regarded his cup with interest. It
stayed in its saucer because of magnets in both plastic articles.
The saucer stayed on the table because the table was magnetic,
too. And the coffee did not float out to mid-air in a hot,
round brownish ball, because there was a transparent cover
over the cup. When one put his lips to the proper edge, a
part of the cover yielded as the cup was squeezed. The far
side of the cup was flexible. One pressed, and the coffee came
into one's lips without the spilling of a drop.</p>
<p>At that moment Joe really thought of Sally for the first time
in a good two hours. She'd been anxious that living in the
Platform should be as normal and Earth-like as possible. The
total absence of weight would be bad enough. She believed
it needed to be countered, as a psychological factor in staying<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></SPAN></span>
sane, by the effect of normal-seeming chairs and normal-tasting
food, and not too exotic systems for eating.</p>
<p>Joe asked Brent about it.</p>
<p>"Oh, yes," said Brent mildly. "It's likely we'd all have gone
off the deep end if there weren't some familiar things about.
To have to drink from a cup that one squeezes is tolerable.
But we'd have felt hysterical at times if we had to drink everything
from the equivalent of baby bottles."</p>
<p>"Sally Holt," said Joe, "is a friend of mine. She helped design
this stuff."</p>
<p>"That girl has every ounce of brains that any woman can be
trusted with!" Brent said warmly. "She thought of things that
would never have occurred to me! As a psychologist, I could
see how good her ideas were when she brought them up, but
as a male I'd never have dreamed of them." Then he grinned.
"She fell down on just one point. So did everybody else. Nobody
happened to think of a garbage-disposal system for the
Platform."</p>
<p>It came into Joe's mind that garbage-disposal was hardly a
subject one would expect to be discussing in interplanetary
space. But the Platform wasn't the same thing as a spaceship.
A ship could jettison refuse and leave it behind, or store it
during a voyage and dump it at either end. But the Space
Platform would never land. It could roll on forever. And if
it heaved out its refuse from airlocks—why—the stuff would
still have the Platform's orbital speed and would follow it
tirelessly around the Earth until the end of time.</p>
<p>"We dry and store it now," said Brent. "If we were going
to live, we'd figure out some way to turn it to fertilizer for
the hydroponic gardens. It's hardly worth while as things are.
Even then, though, the problem of tin cans could be hopeless."</p>
<p>The Chief wiped his mouth deliberately. He had helped
load four guided-missile launching tubes, and he had been
brought up to date on the state of things in the Platform. He
growled in a preliminary fashion and said, "Joe."</p>
<p>Joe looked at him.</p>
<p>"We brought up six two-ton guided missiles," said the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></SPAN></span>
Chief dourly. "We'll have warning of other bombs coming up.
We can send these missiles out to intercept 'em. Six of 'em.
They can get close enough to set off their proximity fuses,
anyhow. But what are we going to do, Joe, if somebody flings
seven bombs at us? We can manage six—maybe. But what'll
we do with the one that's left over?"</p>
<p>"Have you any ideas?" asked Joe.</p>
<p>The Chief shook his head. Brent said mildly. "We've worked
on that here in the Platform, I assure you. And as Sanford
puts it quite soundly, about the only thing we can really do
is throw our empty tin cans at them."</p>
<p>Joe nodded. Then he tensed. Brent had meant it as a rather
mirthless joke. But Joe was astonished at what his own brain
made of it. He thought it over. Then he said, "Why not? It
ought to be a very good trick."</p>
<p>Brent stared at him incredulously. Haney looked solemnly at
him. The Chief regarded Joe thoughtfully out of the corner
of his eye. Then Mike shouted gleefully. The Chief blinked,
and a moment later grunted wrathful unintelligible syllables
of Mohawk, and then tried to pound Joe on the back and
because of his want of weight went head over heels into the
air between the six walls of the kitchen.</p>
<p>Haney said disgustedly, "Joe, there are times when a guy
wants to murder you! Why didn't I think of that?"</p>
<p>But Brent was looking at the four of them with a lively,
helpless curiosity. "Will you guys let me in on this?"</p>
<p>They told him. Joe began to explain it carefully, but the
Chief broke in with a barked and impatient description, and
then Mike interrupted to snap a correction. But by that time
Brent's expression had changed with astonishing suddenness.</p>
<p>"I see! I see!" he said excitedly. "All right! Have you got
space suits in your ship? We have them. So we'll go out and
pelt the stars with garbage. I think we'd better get at it right
now, too. In under two hours we'll be a fine target for more
bombs, and it would be good to start ahead of time."</p>
<p>Mike made a gesture and went floating out of the kitchen,
air-swimming to go get space suits from the ship. The grin<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></SPAN></span>
on his small face threatened to cut his throat. Joe asked,
"Sanford's in command. How'll he like this idea?"</p>
<p>Brent hesitated. "I'm afraid," he said regretfully, "he won't
like it. If you solve a problem he gave up, it will tear his
present adjustment to bits. He's gone psychotic. I think,
though, that he'll allow it to be tried while he swears at us
for fools. He's most likely to react that way if you suggest it."</p>
<p>"Then," agreed Joe, "I suggest it. Chief——"</p>
<p>The Chief raised a large brown hand.</p>
<p>"I got the program, Joe," he said. "We'll all get set."</p>
<p>And Joe went floating unhappily through passage-tubes
to the control room. He heard Sanford's voice, sardonic and
mocking, as he reached the communications room door.</p>
<p>"What do you expect?" Sanford was saying derisively.
"We're clay pigeons. We're a perfect target. We've just so
much ammunition now. You say you may send us more in
three weeks instead of a month. I admire your persistence,
but it's really no use! This is all a very stupid business...."</p>
<p>He felt Joe's presence. He turned, and then sharply struck
the communicator switch with the heel of his hand. The
image on the television screen died. The voice cut off. He said
blandly: "Well?"</p>
<p>"I want," said Joe, "to take a garbage-disposal party out on
the outside of the Platform. I came to ask for authority."</p>
<p>Sanford looked at him in mocking surprise.</p>
<p>"To be sure it seems as intelligent as anything else the
human race has ever done," he observed. "But why does it
appeal to you as something you want to do?"</p>
<p>"I think," Joe told him, "that we can make a defense against
bombs from Earth with our empty tin cans."</p>
<p>Sanford raised his eyebrows.</p>
<p>"If you happen to have a four-leaf clover with you," he said
in fine irony, "I'm told they're good, too."</p>
<p>His eyes were bright and scornful. His manner was feverishly
derisive. Joe would have done well to let it go at that.
But he was nettled.</p>
<p>"We set off the last bombs," he said doggedly, "by shooting
our landing rockets at them. They didn't collide with the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></SPAN></span>
bombs. They simply touched off the bombs' proximity fuses.
If we surround the Platform with a cluster of tin cans and
such things, they may do as well. Things we throw away won't
drop to Earth. Ultimately, they'll actually circle us, like satellites
themselves. But if we can get enough of them between
us and Earth, any bombs that come up will have their proximity
fuses detonated by the floating trash we throw out."</p>
<p>Sanford laughed.</p>
<p>"We might ask for aluminum-foil ribbon to come up in the
next supply ship," said Joe. "We could have masses of that,
or maybe metallic dust floating around us."</p>
<p>"I much prefer used tin cans," said Sanford humorously.
"I'll take the watch here and let everybody go out with you.
By all means we must defend ourselves. Forward with the
garbage! Go ahead!"</p>
<p>His eyes were almost hysterically scornful as he waited for
Joe to leave. Joe did not like it at all, but there was nothing
to do but get out.</p>
<p>He found the Chief with a net bag filled with emptied tin
cans. Haney had another. There were two more, carried by
members of the Platform's four-man crew. They were donning
their space suits when Joe came upon them. Mike was
grotesque in the cut-down outfit built for him. Actually, the
only difference was in the size of the fabric suit and the length
of the arms and legs. He could carry a talkie outfit with its
batteries, and the oxygen tank for breathing as well as anybody,
since out here weight did not count at all. There were
plastic ropes, resistant to extremes of temperature.</p>
<p>Joe got into his own space suit. It was no such self-contained
space craft in itself as the fantastic story tellers dreamed of.
It was not much more than an altitude suit, aluminized to
withstand the blazing heat of sunshine in emptiness, and
with extravagantly insulated soles to the magnetic boots. In
theory, there simply is no temperature in space. In practice, a
metal hull heats up in sunshine to very much more than any
record-hot-day temperature on Earth. In shadow, too, a metal
hull will drop very close to minus 250 degrees Centigrade,
which is something like 400 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></SPAN></span>
But mainly the space boots were insulated against the almost
dull-red-heat temperatures of long-continued sunshine.</p>
<p>A crewman named Corey moved into an airlock with one
of the bags of empty tin cans. Brent watched in a routine
fashion through a glass in the lock-door. The pumps began to
exhaust the air from the airlock. Corey's space suit inflated
visibly. Presently the pump stopped. Corey opened the outer
door. He went out, paying plastic rope behind him. An instant
later he reappeared and removed the rope. He'd made
his line fast outside. He closed the outer lock-door. Air surged
into the lock and Haney crowded in. Again the pumping.
Then Haney went out, and was anchored to the Platform not
only by his magnetic boots but by a rope fastened to a hand-hold.
Brent went out. Mike. Joe came next.</p>
<p>They stood on the hull of the Space Platform, waiting in
the incredible harsh sunshine of emptiness. The bright steel
plates of the hull swelled and curved away on every hand.
There were myriads of stars and the vast round bulk of Earth
seemed farther away to a man in a space suit than to a man
looking out a port. Where shadows cut across the Platform's
irregular surface, there was utter blackness. Also there was
horrible frigidity. Elsewhere it was blindingly bright. The
men were specks of humanity standing on a shining metal
hull, and all about them there was the desolation of nothingness.</p>
<p>But Joe felt strangely proud. The seventh man came out of
the lock-door. They tied their plastic ropes together and
spread out in a long line which went almost around the
Platform. The man next to the lock was anchored to a steel
hand-hold. The third man of the line also anchored himself.
The fifth. The seventh. They were a straggling line of figures
with impossibly elongated shadows, held together by ropes.
They were peculiarly like a party of weirdly costumed mountaineers
on a glacier of gleaming silver.</p>
<p>But no mountain climbers ever had a background of ten
thousand million stars, peering up from below them as well as
from overhead. Nor did any ever have a mottled greenish<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></SPAN></span>
planet rolling by 4,000 miles beneath them, nor a blazing sun
glaring down at them from a sky such as this.</p>
<p>In particular, perhaps, no other explorers ever set out upon
an expedition whose purpose was to throw tin cans and dried
refuse at all the shining cosmos.</p>
<p>They set to work. The space suits were inevitably clumsy.
It was not easy to throw hard with only magnetism to hold
one to his feet. It was actually more practical to throw straight
up with an underhand gesture. But even that would send the
tin cans an enormous distance, in time. There was no air to
slow them.</p>
<p>The tin cans twinkled as they left the Platform's steel expanse.
They moved away at a speed of possibly 20 to 30
miles an hour. They floated off in all possible directions. They
would never reach Earth, of course. They shared the Platform's
orbital speed, and they would circle the Earth with
it forever. But when they were thrown away, their orbits were
displaced a little. Each can thrown downward just now, for
example, would always be between the Platform and the
Earth on this side of its orbit. But on the other side of Earth
it would be above the Platform. The Platform, in fact, became
the center of a swarm, a cluster, a cloud of infinitesimal objects
which would always accompany it and always be in motion
with regard to it. Together, they should make up a
screen no proximity fuse bomb could pierce without exploding.</p>
<p>Joe heard clankings, transmitted to his body through his
feet.</p>
<p>"What's that?" he demanded sharply. "It sounds like the
airlock!"</p>
<p>Voices mingled in his ears. The other walkie-talkies allowed
everybody to speak at once. Most of them did. Then Joe heard
someone laugh. It was Sanford's voice.</p>
<p>Sandford's aluminized, space-suited figure came clanking
around the curve of the small metal world. The antenna of
his walkie-talkie glittered above his head. He seemed to
swagger against the background of many-colored stars.</p>
<p>Brent spoke quickly, before anyone else could question<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></SPAN></span>
Sanford. His tone was mild and matter of fact, but Joe somehow
knew the tension behind it.</p>
<p>"Hello, Sanford. You came out? Was it wise? Shouldn't
there be someone inside the Platform?"</p>
<p>Sanford laughed again. "It was very wise. We're going to
be killed, as you fellows know perfectly well. It's futile to try
to avoid it. So very sensibly I've decided to spare myself the
nuisance of waiting to be killed. I came out."</p>
<p>There was silence in the ear-phones of Joe's space suit
radio. He heard his own heart beating loudly and steadily in
the absolute stillness.</p>
<p>"Incidentally," said Sanford with almost hysterical amusement,
"I fixed it so that none of us can get back in. It would
be useless, anyhow. Everything's futility. So I've put an end to
our troubles for good. I've locked us all out."</p>
<p>He laughed yet again. And Joe knew that in Sanford's
madness it was perfectly possible for him to have done exactly
what he said.</p>
<p>There were eight human beings on the Platform. All were
now outside it, on its outer skin. They wore space suits with
from half an hour to an hour's oxygen supply. They had no
tools with which to break back into the satellite. And no help
could possibly reach them in less than three weeks.</p>
<p>If they couldn't get back inside the Platform, Sanford,
laughing proudly, had killed them all.</p>
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