<h2><SPAN name="c9" id="c9"></SPAN><i>9</i></h2>
<p>But even at ten gravities' drive it takes time
to travel 4,000 miles. At three, and coasting a great deal of the
way, it takes much longer. The Platform circled Earth in
four hours and a little more. Anything intending interception
and rising straight up needed to start skyward long before
the Platform was overhead. A three-g rocket would start while
the Platform was still below the western horizon from its
launching-spot. Especially if it planned to coast part of its
journey—and a three-gravity rocket would have to coast most
of the way.</p>
<p>So there was time. Coasting, the rising manned rocket would
be losing speed. If it planned to go no higher than the Platform's
orbit, its upward velocity would be zero there. If it
were intercepted 500 miles down, it would be rising at an almost
leisurely rate, and Joe and the Chief could check their
Earthward plunge and match its rising rate.</p>
<p>This they did. But what they couldn't do was match its
orbital velocity, which was zero. They had the Platform's eastward
speed to start with—over 200 miles a minute. No matter
how desperately they fired braking-rockets, they couldn't stop
and maneuver around the rising control-ship. Inevitably they
would simply flash past it in the fraction of an instant. To fire
their tiny guided missiles on ahead would be almost to assure
that they would miss. Also, the enemy ship was manned. It
could fight back.</p>
<p>But Joe had been on the receiving end of one attack in
space. It wasn't much experience, but it was more than anybody
but he and his own crew possessed.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Chief," said Joe softly into his helmet-mike, as if by
speaking softly he could keep from being overheard, "get
close enough to me to see what I do, and do it too. I can't tell
you more. Whoever's running this rocket might know English."</p>
<p>There was a flaring of vapor in space. The Chief was using
his steering-rockets to draw near.</p>
<p>Joe spun his little space wagon about, so that it pointed
back in the direction from which he had come. He had four
guided missiles, demolition type. Very deliberately, he fired
the four of them astern—away from the rising rocket. They
were relatively low-speed missiles, intended to blow up a
robot ship that couldn't be hooked onto, because it was
traveling too much faster or slower than the Platform it was
intended to reach. The missiles went away. Then Joe faced
about again in the direction of his prospective target. The
Chief fumed—Joe heard him—but he duplicated Joe's maneuver.
He faced his own eccentric vessel in the direction of
its line of flight.</p>
<p>Then his fuming suddenly ceased. Joe's headphones brought
his explosive grunt when he suddenly saw the idea.</p>
<p>"<i>Joe! I wish you could talk Indian! I could kiss you for this
trick!</i>"</p>
<p>Brown's voice said anxiously: "<i>I'm going to let that manned
rocket have a couple more shots.</i>"</p>
<p>"Let us get by first," said Joe. "Then maybe you can use
them on the bombs coming up."</p>
<p>He could see the trails of war-rockets on the way out from
Earth. They were infinitesimal threads of vapor. They were the
thinnest possible filaments of gossamer white. But they enlarged
as they rose. They were climbing at better than two
miles per second, now, and still increasing their speed.</p>
<p>But the arena in which this conflict took place was so vast
that everything seemed to take place in slow motion. There
was time to reason out not only the method of attack from
Earth, but the excuse for it. If the Platform vanished from
space, no matter from what cause, its enemies would announce
vociferously that it had been destroyed by its own<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></SPAN></span>
atomic bombs, exploding spontaneously. Even in the face
of proof of murder, enemy nations would stridently insist that
bombs intended for the enslavement of humanity—in the
Platform—had providentially detonated and removed that
instrument of war-mongering scoundrelly imperialists from
the skies. There might be somebody, somewhere, who would
believe it.</p>
<p>Joe and the Chief were steadied now nearly on a line to
intercept the rising manned rocket. They had already fired
their missiles, which trailed them. They went into battle, not
prepared to shoot, but with their ammunition expended. For
which there was excellent reason.</p>
<p>Something came foaming toward them from the nearby
man-carrying rocket. It seemed like a side-spout from the
column of vapor rising from Earth. Actually it was a guided
missile.</p>
<p>"Now we dodge," said Joe cheerfully. "Remember the
trick of this maneuvering business!"</p>
<p>It was simple. Speeding toward the rising assassin, and
with his missiles rushing toward them, the relative speeds of
the wagons and the missiles were added together. If the space
wagons dodged, the missile operator had less time to swing
his guided rockets to match the change of target course. And
besides, the attacker hadn't made a single turn in space. Not
yet. He might know that a rocket doesn't go where it's pointed,
as a matter of theory. He might even know intellectually that
the final speed and course of a rocket is the sum of all its
previous speeds and courses. But he hadn't used the knowledge
Joe and the Chief had.</p>
<p>Something rushed at them. They went into evasive action.
And they didn't merely turn the noses of their space wagons.
They flung them about end-for-end, and blasted. They used
wholly different accelerations at odd angles. Joe shot away
from Earth on steering rocket thrust, and touched off a four-three
while he faced toward Earth's north pole, and halfway
along that four-second rush he flipped his craft in a somersault
and the result was nearly a right-angled turn. When the
four-three burned out he set off a twelve-two, and halfway<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></SPAN></span>
through its burning fired a three-two with it, so that at the
beginning he had two gravities acceleration, then four gravities
for three seconds, and then two again.</p>
<p>With long practice, a man might learn marksmanship in
space. But all a man's judgment of speeds is learned on
Earth, where things always, always, always move steadily.
Nobody making his first space-flight could possibly hit such
targets as Joe and the Chief made of themselves. The man in
the enemy rocket was making his first flight. Also, Joe and
the Chief had an initial velocity of 200 miles a minute toward
him. The marksman in the rising rocket hadn't a chance.
He fired four more missiles and tried desperately to home them
in. But——</p>
<p>They flashed past his rising course. And then they were
quite safe from his fire, because it would take a very long time
indeed for anything he shot after them to catch up. But their
missiles had still to pass him—and Joe and the Chief could
steer them without any concern about their own safety or
anything else but a hit.</p>
<p>They made a hit.</p>
<p>Two of the eight little missiles flashed luridly, almost together,
where the radar-pips showed the rocket to be. Then
there were two parts to the rocket, separating. One was small
and one was fairly large. Another demolition-missile hit the
larger section. Still another exploded as that was going to
pieces. The smaller fragment ceased to be important. The
explosions weren't atomic bombs, of course. They were only
demolition-charges. But they demolished the manned rocket
admirably.</p>
<p>Brown's voice came in the headphones, still tense. "<i>You
got it! How about the others?</i>"</p>
<p>Joe felt a remarkable exhilaration. Later he might think
about the poor devil—there could have been only one—who
had been destroyed some 3,700 miles above the surface of
the Earth. He might think unhappily of that man as a victim
of hatred rather than as a hater. He might become extremely
uncomfortable about this, but at the moment he felt merely
that he and the Chief had won a startling victory.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"I think," he said, "that you can treat them with silent contempt.
They won't have proximity fuses. Those friends of
ours who want so badly to kill us have found that proximity
fuses don't work. Unless one is on a collision course I don't
think you need to do anything about them."</p>
<p>The Chief was muttering to himself in Mohawk, twenty
miles away. Joe said:</p>
<p>"Chief, how about getting back to the Platform?"</p>
<p>The Chief growled. "<i>My great-grandfather would disown
me! Winning a fight and no scalp to show! Not even counting
coup! He'd disown me!</i>"</p>
<p>But Joe saw his rockets flare, away off against the stars.</p>
<p>The war rockets were very near, now. They still emitted
monstrous jettings of thick white vapor. They climbed up with
incredible speed. One went by Joe at a distance of little more
than a mile, and its fumes eddied out to half that before they
thinned to nothingness. They went on and on and on....</p>
<p>They burned out somewhere. It would be a long time before
they fell back to Earth. Hours, probably. Then they would
be meteors. They'd vaporize before they touched solidity.
They wouldn't even explode.</p>
<p>But Joe and the Chief rode back to the Platform. It was
surprising how hard it was to match speed with it again, to
make a good entrance into the giant lock. They barely made
it before the Platform made its plunge into that horrible
blackness which was the Earth's shadow. And Joe was very
glad they did make it before then. He wouldn't have liked to
be merely astride a skinny framework in that ghastly darkness,
with the monstrous blackness of the Abyss seeming to be
trying to devour him.</p>
<p>Haney met them in the airlock. He grinned.</p>
<p>"Nice job, Joe! Nice job, Chief!" he said warmly. "Uh—the
Lieutenant Commander wants you to report to him, Joe. Right
away."</p>
<p>Joe cocked an eyebrow at him.</p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>Haney spread out his hands. The Chief grunted. "That guy
bothers me. I'll bet, Joe, he's going to explain you shouldn't've<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></SPAN></span>
gone out when he didn't want you to. Me, I'm keeping away
from him!"</p>
<p>The Chief shed his space suit and swaggered away, as well
as anyone could swagger while walking on what happened
to be the ceiling, from Joe's point of view. Joe put his space
gear in its proper place. He went to the small cubbyhole that
Brown had appropriated for the office of the Platform Commander.
Joe went in, naturally without saluting.</p>
<p>Brown sat in a fastened-down chair with thigh grips holding
him in place. He was writing. On Joe's entry, he carefully
put the pen down on a magnetized plate that would hold it
until he wanted it again. Otherwise it could have floated anywhere
about the room.</p>
<p>"Mr. Kenmore," said Brown awkwardly, "you did a very
nice piece of work. It's too bad you aren't in the Navy."</p>
<p>Joe said: "It did work out pretty fortunately. It's lucky the
Chief and I were out practicing, but now we can take off when
a rocket's reported, any time."</p>
<p>Brown cleared his throat. "I can thank you personally," he
said unhappily, "and I do. But—really this situation is intolerable!
How can I report this affair? I can't suggest commendation,
or a promotion, or—anything! I don't even know how to
refer to you! I am going to ask you, Mr. Kenmore, to put
through a request that your status be clarified. I would imagine
that your status would mean a rank—hm—about equivalent
to a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy."</p>
<p>Joe grinned.</p>
<p>"I have—ah—prepared a draft you might find helpful," said
Brown earnestly. "It's necessary for something to be done.
It's urgent! It's important!"</p>
<p>"Sorry," said Joe. "The important thing to me is getting
ready to load up the Platform with supplies from Earth.
Excuse me."</p>
<p>He went out of the office. He made his way to the quarters
assigned himself and his crew. Mike greeted him with reproachful
eyes. Joe waved his hand.</p>
<p>"Don't say it, Mike! The answer is yes. See that the tanks
are refilled, and new rockets put in place. Then you and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></SPAN></span>
Haney go out and practice. But no farther than ten miles from
the Platform. Understand?"</p>
<p>"No!" said Mike rebelliously. "It's a dirty trick!"</p>
<p>"Which," Joe assured him, "I commit only because there's
a robot ship from Bootstrap coming up any time now. And
we'll need to pick it up and tow it here."</p>
<p>He went to the control-room to see if he could get a vision
connection to Earth.</p>
<p>He got the beam, and he got Sally on the screen. A report
of the attack on the Platform had evidently already gone
down to Earth. Sally's expression was somehow drawn and
haunted. But she tried to talk lightly.</p>
<p>"Derring-do and stuff, Joe?" she asked. "How does it feel
to be a victorious warrior?"</p>
<p>"It feels rotten," he told her. "There must have been somebody
in the rocket we blew up. He felt like a patriot, I guess,
trying to murder us; But I feel like a butcher."</p>
<p>"Maybe you didn't do it," she said. "Maybe the Chief's
bombs——"</p>
<p>"Maybe," said Joe. He hesitated. "Hold up your hand."</p>
<p>She held it up. His ring was still on it. She nodded. "Still
there. When will you be back?"</p>
<p>He shook his head. He didn't know. It was curious that
one wanted so badly to talk to a girl after doing something
that was blood-stirring—and left one rather sickish afterward.
This business of space travel and even space battle was what
he'd dreamed of, and he still wanted it. But it was very comforting
to talk to Sally, who hadn't had to go through any of it.</p>
<p>"Write me a letter, will you?" he asked. "We can't tie up
this beam very long."</p>
<p>"I'll write you all the news that's allowed to go out," she
assured him. "Be seeing you, Joe."</p>
<p>Her image faded from the screen. And, thinking it over, he
couldn't see that either of them had said anything of any
importance at all. But he was very glad they'd talked together.</p>
<p>The first robot ship came up some eight hours later—two
revolutions after the television call. Mike was ready hours in
advance, fidgeting. The robot ship started up while the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></SPAN></span>
Platform was over the middle of the Pacific. It didn't try to
make a spiral approach as all other ships had done. It came
straight up, and it started from the ground. No pushpots. Its
take-off rockets were monsters. They pushed upward at ten
gravities until it was out of atmosphere, and then they stepped
up to fifteen. Much later, the robot turned on its side and fired
orbital speed rockets to match velocity with the Platform.</p>
<p>There were two reasons for the vertical rise, and the high
acceleration. If a robot ship went straight up, it wouldn't
pass over enemy territory until it was high enough to be protected
by the Platform. And—it costs fuel to carry fuel to be
burned. So if the rocketship could get up speed for coasting
to orbit in the first couple of hundred miles, it needn't haul its
fuel so far. It was economical to burn one's fuel fast and get
an acceleration that would kill a human crew. Hence robots.</p>
<p>The landing of the first robot ship at the Platform was almost
as matter-of-fact as if it had been done a thousand
times before. From the Platform its dramatic take-off couldn't
be seen, of course. It first appeared aloft as a pip on a radar
screen. Then Mike prepared to go out and hook on to it and
tow it in. He was in his space suit and in the landing lock,
though his helmet faceplate was still open. A <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Hyphen removed to conform to the majority usage.">loudspeaker</ins>
boomed suddenly in Brown's voice: "<i>Evacuate airlock and prepare
to take off!</i>"</p>
<p>Joe roared: "Hold that!"</p>
<p>Brown's voice, very official, came: "<i>Withhold execution of
that order. You should not be in the airlock, Mr. Kenmore.
You will please make way for operational procedure.</i>"</p>
<p>"We're checking the space wagon," snapped Joe. "That's
operational procedure!"</p>
<p>The loudspeaker said severely: "<i>The checking should have
been done earlier!</i>"</p>
<p>There was silence. Mike and Joe, together, painstakingly
checked over the very many items that had to be made sure.
Every rocket had to have its firing circuit inspected. The
tanks' contents and pressure verified. The air connection to
Mike's space suit. The air pressure. The device that made
sure that air going to Mike's space suit was neither as hot<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></SPAN></span>
as metal in burning sunlight, nor cold as the chill of a shadow
in space.</p>
<p>Everything checked. Mike straddled his red-painted mount.
Joe left the lock and said curtly:</p>
<p>"Okay to pump the airlock. Okay to open airlock doors
when ready. Go ahead."</p>
<p>Mike went out, and Joe watched from a port in the Platform's
hull. The drone from Earth was five miles behind the
Platform in its orbit, and twenty miles below, and all of ten
miles off-course. Joe saw Mike scoot the red space wagon to
it, stop short with a sort of cocky self-assurance, hook on to
the tow-ring in the floating space-barge's nose, and blast
off back toward the Platform with it in tow.</p>
<p>Mike had to turn about and blast again to check his motion
when he arrived. And then he and Haney—Haney in the other
space wagon—nudged at it and tugged at it and got it in the
great spacelock. They went in after it and the lock doors
closed.</p>
<p>Neither Mike nor Haney were out of their space suits when
Kent brought Joe a note. A note was an absurdity in the
Platform. But this was a formal communication from Brown.</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"<i>From: Lt. Comdr. Brown</i></p>
<p><i>To: Mr. Kenmore</i></p>
<p><i>Subject: Cooperation and courtesy in rocket recovery vehicle launchings.</i></p>
<ol style="font-style: italic;">
<li>There is a regrettable lack of coordination and courtesy
in the launching of rocket-recovery vehicles (space
wagons) in the normal operation of the Platform.</li>
<li>The maintenance of discipline and efficiency requires
that the commanding officer maintain overall control
of all operations at all times.</li>
<li>Hereafter when a space vehicle of any type is to be
launched, the commanding officer will be notified in
writing not less than one hour before such launching.</li>
<li>The time of such proposed launching will be given in
such notification in hours and minutes and seconds,
Greenwich Mean Time.</li>
<li><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></SPAN></span>All commands for launching will be given by the commanding
officer or an officer designated by him."</li>
</ol></div>
<p>Joe received the memo as he was in the act of writing a
painstaking report on the maneuver Mike had carried out.
Mike was radiant as he discussed possible improvements with
later and better equipment. After all, this had been a lucky
landing. For a robot to end up no more than 30 miles from
its target, after a journey of 4,000 miles, and with a difference
in velocity that was almost immeasurable—such good fortune
couldn't be expected as a regular thing. The space wagons
were tiny. If they had to travel long distances to recover erratic
ships coming up from Earth——</p>
<p>Joe forgot all about Lieutenant Commander Brown and
his memo when the mail was distributed. Joe had three letters
from Sally. He read them in the great living compartment of
the Platform with its sixty-foot length and its carpet on floor
and ceiling, and the galleries without stairs outside the sleeping
cabins. He sat in a chair with thigh grips to hold him in
place, and he wore a gravity simulation harness. It was necessary.
The regular crew of the Platform, by this time, couldn't
have handled space wagons in action against enemy manned
rockets. Joe meant to stay able to take acceleration.</p>
<p>It was just as he finished his mail that Brent came in.</p>
<p>"Big news!" said Brent. "They're building a big new ship
of new design—almost half as big as the Platform. With concreted
metal they can do it in weeks."</p>
<p>"What's it for?" demanded Joe.</p>
<p>"It'll be a human base on the Moon," said Brent relievedly.
"An expedition will start in six weeks, according to plan. As
long as we're the only American base in space, we're going to
be shot at. But a base on the Moon will be invulnerable. So
they're going ahead with it."</p>
<p>Joe said hopefully:</p>
<p>"Any orders for me to join it?"</p>
<p>Brent shook his head. "We're to be loaded up with supplies
for the Moon expedition. We're to be ready to take a robot ship
every round. Actually, they can't hope to send us more than<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></SPAN></span>
two a day for a while, but even that'll be eighty tons of supplies
to be stored away."</p>
<p>The Chief grumbled, but somehow his grumbling did not
sound genuine. "They're going to the Moon—and leave us
here to do stevedore stuff?" His tone was odd. He looked
at a letter he'd been reading and gave up pretense. He said
self-consciously: "Listen, you guys.... My tribe's got all excited.
I just got a letter from the council. They've been having
an argument about me. Wanna hear?"</p>
<p>He was a little amused, and a little embarrassed, but something
had happened to make him feel good.</p>
<p>"Let's have it," said Joe. Mike was very still in another
chair. He didn't look up, though he must have heard. Haney
cocked an interested ear.</p>
<p>The Chief said awkwardly, "You know—us Mohawks are
kinda proud. We got something to be proud of. We were
one of the Five Nations, when that was a sort of United Nations
and all Europe was dog-eat-dog. My tribe had a big pow-wow
about me. There's a tribe member that's a professor of
anthropology out in Chicago. He was there. And a couple of
guys that do electronic research, and doctors and farmers and
all sorts of guys. All Mohawks. They got together in tribal
council."</p>
<p>He stopped and flushed under his dark skin. "I wouldn't
tell you, only you guys are in on it."</p>
<p>Still he hesitated. Joe found a curious picture forming in
his mind. He'd known the Chief a long time, and he knew
that part of the tribe lived in Brooklyn, and individual members
were widely scattered. But still there was a certain remote
village which to all the tribesmen was home. Everybody
went back there from time to time, to rest from the
strangeness of being Indians in a world of pale-skinned folk.</p>
<p>Joe could almost imagine the council. There'd be old, old
men who could nearly remember the days of the tribe's former
glory, who'd heard stories of forest warfare and zestful hunts,
and scalpings and heroic deeds from their grandfathers. But
there were also doctors and lawyers and technical men in that
council which met to talk about the Chief.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"It's addressed to me," said the Chief with sudden clumsiness,
"in the World-by-itself Canoe. That's the Platform here.
And it says—I'll have to translate, because it's in Mohawk."
He took a deep breath. "It says, 'We your tribesmen have
heard of your journeyings off the Earth where men have never
traveled before. This has given us great pride, that one of
our tribe and kin had ventured so valiantly.'" The Chief
grinned abashedly. He went on. "'In full assembly, the
elders of the tribe have held counsel on a way to express their
pride in you, and in the friends you have made who accompanied
you. It was proposed that you be given a new
name to be borne by your sons after you. It was proposed
that the tribe accept from each of its members a gift to be
given you in the name of the tribe. But these were not considered
great enough. Therefore the tribe, in full council, has
decreed that your name shall be named at every tribal council
of the Mohawks from this day to the end of time, as one the
young braves would do well to copy in all ways. And the
names of your friends Joe Kenmore, Mike Scandia, and
Thomas Haney shall also be named as friends whose like all
young braves should strive to seek out and to be.'"</p>
<p>The Chief sweated a little, but he looked enormously
proud. Joe went over to him and shook hands warmly. The
Chief almost broke his fingers. It was, of course, as high an
honor as could be paid to anybody by the people who paid it.</p>
<p>Haney said awkwardly, "Lucky they don't know me like you
do, Chief. But it's swell!"</p>
<p>Which it was. But Mike hadn't said a word. The Chief
said exuberantly:</p>
<p>"Did you hear that, Mike? Every Mohawk for ten thousand
years is gonna be told that you were a swell guy! Crazy, huh?"</p>
<p>Mike said in an odd voice: "Yeah. I didn't mean that, Chief.
It's fine! But I—I got a letter. I—never thought to get a letter
like this."</p>
<p>He looked unbelievingly at the paper in his hands.</p>
<p>"Mash note?" asked the Chief. His tone was a little bit harsh.
Mike was a midget. And there were women who were fools.
It would be unbearable if some half-witted female had written<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></SPAN></span>
Mike the sort of gushing letter that some half-witted females
might write.</p>
<p>Mike shook his head, with an odd, quick smile.</p>
<p>"Not what you think, Chief. But it is from a girl. She sent
me her picture. It's a—swell letter. I'm—going to answer it.
You can look at her picture. She looks kind of—nice."</p>
<p>He handed the Chief a snapshot. The Chief's face changed.
Haney looked over his shoulder. He passed the picture to Joe
and said ferociously: "You Mike! You doggoned Don Juan!
The Chief and me have got to warn her what kinda guy you
are! Stealing from blind men! Fighting cops——"</p>
<p>Joe looked at the picture. It was a very sweet small face,
and the eyes that looked out of the photograph were very
honest and yearning. And Joe understood. He grinned at
Mike. Because this girl had the distinctive look that Mike
had. She was a midget, too.</p>
<p>"She's—<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: The original reads 'thiry-nine'.">thirty-nine</ins> inches tall," said Mike, almost stunned.
"She's just two inches shorter than me. And—she says she
doesn't mind being a midget so much since she heard about
me. I'm going to write her."</p>
<p>But it would be, of course, a long time before there was a
way for mail to get down to Earth.</p>
<p>It was a long time. Now it was possible to send up robot
rockets to the Platform. They came up. When the second arrived,
Haney went out to pull it in. Joe forgot to notify Brown,
in writing, an hour before launching a rocket recovery vehicle
(space wagon) according to paragraph 3 of the formal memo,
nor the time of launching in hours, minutes, etc., by Greenwich
Mean Time (paragraph 4), nor was the testing of all equipment
made before moving it into the airlock. This was because
the testing equipment was in the airlock, where it belonged.
And the commands for launching were not given by
Brown or an officer designated by him, because Joe forgot all
about it.</p>
<p>Brown made a stormy scene about the matter, and Joe was
honestly apologetic, but the Chief and Haney and Mike glared
venomously.</p>
<p>The result was completely inconclusive. Joe had not been<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></SPAN></span>
put under Brown's command. He and his crew were the only
people on the Platform physically in shape to operate the
space wagons, considering the acceleration involved. Brent
and the others were wearing gravity simulators, and were
building back to strength. But they weren't up to par as yet.
They'd been in space too long.</p>
<p>So there was nothing Brown could do. He retreated into
icily correct, outraged dignity. And the others hauled in and
unloaded rockets as they arrived. They came up fast. The
processes of making them had been improved. They could be
made faster, heated to sintering temperature faster, and the
hulls cooled to usefulness in a quarter of the former time. The
production of space ship hulls went up to four a day, while
the molds for the Moonship were being worked even faster.
The Moonship, actually, was assembled from precast individual
cells which then were welded together. It would have
features the Platform lacked, because it was designed to be a
base for exploration and military activities in addition to research.</p>
<p>But only twenty days after the recovery and docking of the
first robot ship to rise, a new sort of ship entirely came blindly
up as a robot. The little space wagons hauled it to the airlock
and inside. They unloaded it—and it was no longer a robot. It
was a modified hull designed for the duties of a tug in space.
It could carry a crew of four, and its cargohold was accessible
from the cabin. It had an airlock. More, it carried a cargo of
solid-fuel rockets which could be shifted to firing racks outside
its hull. Starting from the platform, where it had no effective
weight, it was capable of direct descent to the Earth without
spiralling or atmospheric braking. To make that descent it
would, obviously, expend four-fifths of its loaded weight in
rockets. And since it had no weight at the Platform, but only
mass, it was capable of far-ranging journeying. It could literally
take off from the Platform and reach the Moon and land
on it, and then return to the Platform.</p>
<p>But that had to wait.</p>
<p>"Sure we could do it," agreed Joe, when Mike wistfully
pointed out the possibility. "It would be good to try it. But<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></SPAN></span>
unfortunately, space exploration isn't a stunt. We've gotten
this far because—somebody wanted to do something. But——"
Then he said, "It could be done and the United Nations
wouldn't do it. So the United States had to, or—somebody
else would have. You can figure who that would be, and what
use they'd make of space travel! So it's important. It's more
important than stunt flights we could make!"</p>
<p>"Nobody could stop us if we wanted to take off!" Mike said
rebelliously.</p>
<p>"True," Joe said. "But we four can stand three gravities
acceleration and handle any more manned rockets that start
out here. We've lived through plenty more than that! But
Brent and the others couldn't put up a fight in space. They're
wearing harness now, and they're coming back to strength.
But we're going to stay right here and do stevedoring—and
fighting too, if it comes to that—until the job is done."</p>
<p>And that was the way it was, too. Of stevedoring there was
plenty. Two robot ships a day for weeks on end. Three ships
a day for a time. Four. Sometimes things went smoothly, and
the little space wagons could go out and bring back the great,
rocket-scarred hulls from Earth. But once in three times the
robots were going too fast or too slow. The space wagons
couldn't handle them. Then the new ship, the space tug, went
out and hooked onto the robot with a chain and used the power
it had to bring them to their destination. And sometimes the
robots didn't climb straight. At least once the space tug captured
an erratic robot 400 miles from its destination and
hauled it in. It used some heavy solid-fuel rockets on that trip.</p>
<p>The Platform had become, in fact, a port in space, though
so far it had had only arrivals and no departures. Its storage
compartments almost bulged with fuel stores and food stores
and equipment of every imaginable variety. It had a stock
of rockets which were enough to land it safely on Earth,
though there was surely no intention of doing so. It had food
and air for centuries. It had repair parts for all its own equipment.
And it had weapons. It contained, in robot hulls anchored
to its sides, enough fissionable material to conduct a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></SPAN></span>
deadly war—which was only stored for transfer to the Moon
base when that should be established.</p>
<p>And it had communication with Earth of high quality. So
far the actual mail was only a one-way service, but even entertainment
came up, and news. Once there was a television
shot of the interior of the Shed. It was carefully scrambled before
transmission, but it was a heartening sight. The Shed on
the TV screen appeared a place of swarming activity. Robot
hulls were being made. They were even improved, fined
down to ten tons of empty weight apiece, and their controls
were assembly line products now. And there was the space
flight simulator with men practicing in it, although for the
time being only robots were taking off from Earth. And there
was the Moonship.</p>
<p>It didn't look like the Platform, but rather like something
a child might have put together out of building blocks. It was
built up out of welded-together cells with strengthening members
added. It was 60 feet high from the floor and twice as
long, and it did not weigh nearly what it seemed to. Already
it was being clad in that thick layer of heat insulation it would
need to endure the two-week-long lunar night. It could take
off very soon now.</p>
<p>The pictured preparations back on Earth meant round-the-clock
drudgery for Joe and the others. They wore themselves
out. But the storage space on the Platform filled up. Days and
weeks went by. Then there came a time when literally nothing
else could be stored, so Joe and his crew made ready to go
back to Earth.</p>
<p>They ate hugely and packed a very small cargo in their
ship. They picked up one bag of mail and four bags of scientific
records and photographs which had only been transmitted
by facsimile TV before. They got into the space tug. It
floated free.</p>
<p>"<i>You will fire in ten seconds</i>," said a crisp voice in Joe's
headphones. "<i>Ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six
... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... fire!</i>"</p>
<p>Joe crooked his index finger. There was an explosive jolt.
Rockets flamed terribly in emptiness. The space tug rushed<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></SPAN></span>
toward the west. The Platform seemed to dwindle with startling
suddenness. It seemed to rush away and become lost in
the myriads of stars. The space tug accelerated at four gravities
in the direction opposed to its orbital motion.</p>
<p>As the acceleration built up, it dropped toward Earth and
home like a tumbled stone.</p>
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