<h2><SPAN name="c11" id="c11"></SPAN>11</h2>
<p>The others got the space tug into the platform's
lock and did things to it, in the way of loading, that
its designers never intended, while Joe was calling Earth for
calculations. The result was infuriating. The Moonship had
taken off for the Moon on the other side of the Platform's
orbit, when it had a velocity of more than 12,000 miles an
hour in the direction it wished to go. The Platform and of
course the space tug was now on the reverse side of the Platform's
orbit. And of course they now had a velocity of more
than 12,000 miles per hour away from the direction in which
it was urgently necessary for the space tug to go. They could
wait for two hours to take off, said Earth, or waste the time
and fuel they'd need to throw away to duplicate the effect of
waiting.</p>
<p>"But we can't wait!" raged Joe. Then he snapped. "Look
here! Suppose we take off from here, dive at Earth, make a
near-graze, and let its gravity curve our course! Like a
cometary path! Figure that! That's what we've got to do!"</p>
<p>He kicked off his magnetic-soled shoes and went diving
down to the airlock. Over his shoulder he panted an order
for the radar-duty man to relay anything from Earth down to
him there. He arrived to find Haney and Mike in hot argument
over whether it was possible to load on an extra ton or
two of mass. He stopped it. They would.</p>
<p>"Everything's loaded?" he demanded. "Okay! Space suits!
All set? Let's get out of this lock and start blasting!"<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>He drove them into the space tug. He climbed in himself.
He closed the entrance port. The plastic walls of the lock
bulged out, pulled back fast, and the steering rockets jetted.
The space tug came out of the lock. It spun about. It aimed
for Earth and monstrous bursts of rocket-trail spread out behind
it. It dived.</p>
<p>Naturally! When a ship from the Platform wanted to reach
Earth for atmosphere-deceleration, it was more economical
to head away from it. Now that it was the most urgent of all
possible necessities to get away from Earth, in the opposite direction
to the space tug's present motion, it was logical to dive
toward it. The ship would plunge toward Earth, and Earth's
gravity would help its rockets in the attainment of frenzied
speed. But the tug still possessed its orbital speed. So it would
not actually strike the Earth, but would be carried eastward
past its disk, even though aimed for Earth's mid-bulge. Yet
Earth would continue to pull. As the space tug skimmed past,
its path would be curved by the pull of gravity. At the nearest
possible approach to Earth, the tug would fire its heaviest
rockets for maximum acceleration. And it would swing around
Earth's atmosphere perhaps no more than 500 miles high—just
barely beyond the measurable presence of air—and come out of
that crazy curve a good hour ahead of the Platform for a
corresponding position, and with a greater velocity than could
be had in any other way. Traced on paper, the course of the
tug would be a tight parabola.</p>
<p>The ship dived. And it happened that it had left the Platform
and plunged deep in Earth's shadow, so that the look
and feel of things was that of an utterly suicidal plunge into
oblivion. There was the seeming of a vast sack of pure blackness
before the nose of the space tug. She started for it at
four gravities acceleration, and Joe got his headphones to his
ears and lay panting while he waited for the figures and information
he had to have.</p>
<p>He got them. When the four-gravity rockets burned out,
the tug's crew painstakingly adjusted the ship's nose to a
certain position. They flung themselves back into the acceleration
chairs and Joe fired a six-g blast. They came out of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></SPAN></span>
that, and he fired another. The three blasts gave the ship a
downward speed of a mile and a half a second, and Earth's
pull added to it steadily. The Earth itself was drawing them
down most of a 4,000-mile fall, which added to the speed their
rockets built up.</p>
<p>Down on Earth, radar-bowls wavered dizzily, hunting for
them to feed them observations of position and data for their
guidance. Back on the Platform, members of the crew feverishly
made their own computations. When the four in the
Space tug were half-way to Earth, they were traveling faster
than any humans had ever traveled before, relative to the
Earth or the Platform itself. When they were a thousand
miles from Earth, it was certain they would clear its edge.
Joe proposed and received an okay to fire a salvo of Mark
Tens to speed the ship still more. When they burned to the
release-point and flashed away past the ports, the Chief and
Haney panted up from their chairs and made their way aft.</p>
<p>"Going to reload the firing-frames," gasped the Chief.</p>
<p>They vanished. The space tug could take rockets from its
cargo and set them outside its hull for firing. No other ship
could.</p>
<p>Haney and the Chief came back. There was dead silence
in the ship, save for a small, tinny voice in Joe's headphones.</p>
<p>"We'll pass Earth 600 miles high," said Joe in a flat voice.
"Maybe closer. I'm going to try to make it 450. We'll be smack
over enemy territory, but I doubt they could hit us. We'll be
hitting better than six miles a second. If we wanted to, we
could spend some more rockets and hit escape velocity. But
we want to stop, later. We'll ride it out."</p>
<p>Silence. Stillness. Speed. Out the ports to Earthward there
was purest blackness. On the other side, a universe of stars.
But the blackness grew and grew and grew until it neatly
bisected the cosmos itself, and half of everything that was,
was blackness. Half was tiny colored stars.</p>
<p>Then there was a sound. A faint sound. It was a moan.
It was a howl. It was a shriek.... And then it was a mere
thin moan again. Then it was not.</p>
<p>"We touched air," said Joe calmly, "at six and a quarter<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></SPAN></span>
miles per second. Pretty thin, though. At that, we may have
left a meteor-trail for the populace to admire."</p>
<p>Nobody said anything at all. In a little while there was light
ahead. There was brightness. Instantly, it seemed, they were
out of night and there was a streaming tumult of clouds
flashing past below—but they were 800 miles up now—and
Joe's headphones rattled and he said:</p>
<p>"Now we can give a touch of course-correction, and maybe
a trace of speed...."</p>
<p>Rockets droned and boomed and roared outside the hull.
The Earth fell away and away and presently it was behind.
And they were plunging on after the Moonship which was
very, very, very far on before them.</p>
<p>It was actually many hours before they reached it. They
couldn't afford to overtake it gradually, because they had to
have time to work in after contact. But overtaking it swiftly
cost extra fuel, and they hadn't too much. So they compromised,
and came up behind the Moonship at better than
2,000 feet per second difference in speed—they approached
it as fast as most rifle-bullets travel—and all creation was
blotted out by the fumes of the rockets they fired for deceleration.</p>
<p>Then the space tug came cautiously close to the Moonship.
Mike climbed out on the outside of the tug's hull, with the
Chief also in space equipment, paying out Mike's safety-line.
Mike leaped across two hundred yards of emptiness with
light-years of gulf beneath him. His metal soles clanked on
the Moonship's hull.</p>
<p>Then the vision-screen on the tug lighted up. Lieutenant
Commander Brown looked out of it, quietly grim. Joe flicked
on his own transmitter. He nodded.</p>
<p>"<i>Mr. Kenmore</i>," said Brown evenly, "<i>I did not contact you
before because I was not certain that contact could be made.
How many passengers can you take back to the Platform?</i>"</p>
<p>Joe blinked at him.</p>
<p>"I haven't any idea," he said. "But I'm going to hitch on
and use our rockets to land you."</p>
<p>"<i>I do not think it practicable</i>," said Brown calmly. "<i>I believe<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></SPAN></span>
the only result of such a course will be the loss of both
ships with all hands. I will give you a written authorization to
return on my order. But since all my crew can't return, how
many can you take? I have ten married men aboard. Six have
children. Can you take six? Or all ten?</i>" Then he said without
a trace of emphasis, "<i>Of course, none of them will be officers.</i>"</p>
<p>"If I tried to turn back now, I think my crew would mutiny,"
Joe said coldly. "I'd hate to think they wouldn't,
anyhow! We're going to hook on and play this out the way
it lies!"</p>
<p>There was a pause. Then Brown spoke again. "<i>Mr. Kenmore,
I was hoping you'd say that. Actually—er—not to be
quoted, you understand—actually, intelligent defiance has
always been in the traditions of the Navy. Of course, you're
not in the Navy, Kenmore, but right now it looks like the
Navy is in your hands. Like a battleship in the hands of a tug.
Good luck, Kenmore.</i>"</p>
<p>Joe flicked off the screen. "You know," he said, winking
at Mike, "I guess Brown isn't such a bad egg after all. Let's
go!"</p>
<p>In minutes, the space tug had a line made fast. In half an
hour, the two space craft were bound firmly together, but
far enough apart for the rocket blasts to dissipate before they
reached the Moonship. Mike returned to the tug. A pair of the
big Mark Twenty rockets burned frenziedly in emptiness.</p>
<p>The Moonship was slowed by a fraction of its speed. The
deceleration was hardly perceptible.</p>
<p>There were more burnings. Back on Earth there were careful
measurements. A tight beam tends to attenuate when it
is thrown a hundred thousand miles. It tends to! When speech
is conducted over it, the lag between comment and reply is
perceptible. It's not great—just over half a second. But one
notices it. That lag was used to measure the speed and distance
of the two craft. The prospect didn't look too good.</p>
<p>The space tug burned rocket after rocket after rocket.
There was no effect that Joe could detect, of course. It would
have been like noticing the effect of single oar-strokes in a
rowboat miles from shore. But the instruments on Earth found<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></SPAN></span>
a difference. They made very, very, very careful computations.
And the electronic brains did the calculations which battalions
of mathematicians would have needed years to work out. The
electronic calculations which could not make a mistake said—that
it was a toss-up.</p>
<p>The Moon came slowly to float before the two linked ships.
It grew slowly, slowly larger. The word from Earth was that
considering the rockets still available in the space tug, and
those that should have been fired but weren't on the Moonship,
there must be no more blasts just yet. The two ships
must pass together through the neutral-point where the
gravities of Earth and Moon exactly cancel out. They must
fall together toward the Moon. Forty miles above the lunar
surface such-and-such rockets were to be fired. At twenty
miles, such-and-such others. At five miles the Moonship
itself must fire its remaining fuel-store. With luck, it was a
toss-up. Safety or a smash.</p>
<p>But there was a long time to wait. Joe and his crew relaxed
in the space tug. The Chief looked out a port and observed:</p>
<p>"I can see the ring-mountains now. Naked-eye stuff, too! I
wonder if anybody ever saw that before!"</p>
<p>"Not likely," said Joe.</p>
<p>Mike stared out a port. Haney looked, also.</p>
<p>"How're we going to get back, Joe?"</p>
<p>"The Moonship has rockets on board," Joe told him. "Only
they can't stick them in the firing-racks outside. They're
stowed away, all shipshape, Navy fashion. After we land, we'll
ask politely for rockets to get back to the Platform with.
It'll be a tedious run. Mostly coasting—falling free. But we'll
make it."</p>
<p>"If everything doesn't blow when we land," said the Chief.</p>
<p>Joe said uncomfortably: "It won't. Not that somebody won't
try." Then he stopped. After a moment he said awkwardly:
"Look! It's necessary that we humans get to the stars, or
ultimately we'll crowd the Earth until we won't be able to
stay human. We'd have to have wars and plagues and such
things to keep our numbers down. It—it seems to me, and I—think
it's been said before, that it looks like there's something,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></SPAN></span>
somewhere, that's afraid of us humans. It doesn't want us to
reach the stars. It didn't want us to fly. Before that it didn't
want us to learn how to cure disease, or have steam, or—anything
that makes men different from the beasts."</p>
<p>Haney turned his head. He listened intently.</p>
<p>"Maybe it sounds—superstitious," said Joe uneasily, "but
there's always been somebody trying to smash everything the
rest of us wanted. As if—as if something alien and hateful went
around whispering hypnotically into men's ears while they
slept, commanding them irresistibly to do things to smash all
their own hopes."</p>
<p>The Chief grunted. "Huh! D'you think that's new stuff,
Joe?"</p>
<p>"N-no," admitted Joe. "But it's true. Something fights us.
You can make wild guesses. Maybe—things on far planets
that know that if ever we reach there.... There's something
that hates men and it tries to make us destroy ourselves."</p>
<p>"Sure," said Haney mildly. "I learned about that in Sunday
School, Joe."</p>
<p>"Maybe I mean that," said Joe helplessly. "But anyhow
there's something we fight—and there's Something that fights
with us. So I think we're going to get the Moonship down all
right."</p>
<p>Mike said sharply: "You mean you think this is all worked
out in advance. That we'd be here, we'd get here——"</p>
<p>The Chief said impatiently, "It's figured out so we can do
it if we got the innards. We got the chance. We can duck it.
But if we duck it, it's bad, and somebody else has to have the
chance later. I know what Joe's saying. Us men, we got to
get to the stars. There's millions of 'em, and we need the
planets they've got swimming around 'em."</p>
<p>Haney said, "Some of them have planets. That's known.
Yeah."</p>
<p>"Those planets ain't going to go on forever with nobody
using 'em," grunted the Chief. "It don't make sense. And
things in general do make sense. All but us humans," he
finished with a grin. "And I like us, anyhow. Joe's right. We'll
get by this time. And if we don't—some other guys'll have to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></SPAN></span>
do the job of landing on the Moon. But it'll be done—as a
starter."</p>
<p>"I can see lots of mountains down there. Plain," Mike said
quietly.</p>
<p>"What's the radar say?"</p>
<p>Joe looked. Back at the Platform it had shown the curve
of the surface of Earth. Here a dim line was beginning to
show on the vertical-plane screen. It was the curve of the
surface of the Moon.</p>
<p>"We might as well get set," said Joe. "We've got time but
we might as well. Space suits on. I'll tighten up the chain.
Steering rockets'll do that. Then we'll take a last look. All
firing racks loaded outside?"</p>
<p>"Yeah," said Haney. He grinned wrily. "You know, Joe, I
know what I know, but still I'm scared."</p>
<p>"Me, too," said Joe.</p>
<p>But there were things to do. They took their places. They
watched out the ports. The Moon had seemed a vast round
ball a little while back. Now it appeared to be flattening. Its
edges still curved away beyond a surprisingly nearby horizon.
The ring-mountains were amazingly distinct. There were incredibly
wide, smooth spaces with mottled colorings. But
the mountains....</p>
<p>When the ships were 40 miles high the space tug blasted
valorously, and all the panorama of the Moon's surface was
momentarily hidden by the racing clouds of mist. The rockets
burned out.</p>
<p>Haney and the Chief replaced the burned-out rockets. They
were gigantic, heavy-bore tubes which they couldn't have
stirred on Earth. Now they loaded them into the curious locks
which conveyed them outside the hull into firing position.</p>
<p>The ring-mountains were gigantic when they blasted again!
They were only 20 miles up, then, and some of the peaks
rose four miles from their inner crater floors.</p>
<p>The ships were still descending fast. Joe spoke into his
microphone.</p>
<p>"Calling Moonship! Calling——" He stopped and said<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></SPAN></span>
matter-of-factly, "I suggest we fire our last blast together.
Shall I give the word? Right!"</p>
<p>The surface of the Moon came toward them. Craters, cracks,
frozen fountains of stone, swelling undulations of ground interrupted
without rhyme or reason by the gigantic splashings
of missiles from the sky a hundred thousand million years
ago. The colorings were unbelievable. There were reds and
browns and yellows. There were grays and dusty deep-blues
and streaks of completely impossible tints in combination.</p>
<p>But Joe couldn't watch that. He kept his eyes on a very
special gadget which was a radar range-finder. He hadn't
used it about the Platform because there were too many tin
cans and such trivia floating about. It wouldn't be dependable.
But it did measure the exact distance to the nearest solid
object.</p>
<p>"Prepare for firing on a count of five," said Joe quietly.
"Five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... fire!"</p>
<p>The space tug's rockets blasted. For the first time since they
overtook the Moonship, the tug now had help. The remaining
rockets outside the Moonship's hull blasted furiously. Out the
ports there was nothing but hurtling whitenesses. The rockets
droned and rumbled and roared....</p>
<p>The main rockets burned out. The steering rockets still
boomed. Joe had thrown them on for what good their lift
might do.</p>
<p>"Joe!" said Haney in a surprised tone. "I feel weight! Not
much, but some! And the main rockets are off!"</p>
<p>Joe nodded. He watched the instruments before him. He
shifted a control, and the space tug swayed. It swayed over
to the limit of the tow-chain it had fastened to the Moonship.
Joe shifted his controls again.</p>
<p>There was a peculiar, gritty contact somewhere. Joe cut
the steering rockets and it was possible to look out. There were
more gritty noises. The space tug settled a little and leaned
a little. It was still. Then there was no noise at all.</p>
<p>"Yes," said Joe. "We've got some weight. We're on the
Moon."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>They went out of the ship in a peculiarly solemn procession.
About them reared cliffs such as no man had ever looked on
before save in dreams. Above their heads hung a huge round
greenish globe, with a white polar ice-cap plainly visible. It
hung in mid-sky and was four times the size of the Moon as
seen from Earth. If one stood still and looked at it, it would
undoubtedly be seen to be revolving, once in some twenty-four
hours.</p>
<p>Mike scuffled in the dust in which he walked. Nobody had
emerged from the Moonship yet. The four of them were
literally the first human beings ever to set foot on the surface
of the Moon. But none of them mentioned the fact, though
all were acutely aware of it. Mike kicked up dust. It rose in
a curiously liquid-like fashion. There was no air to scatter it.
It settled deliberately back again.</p>
<p>Mike spoke with an odd constraint. "No green cheese," he
said absurdly.</p>
<p>"No," agreed Joe. "Let's go over to the Moonship. It looks
all right. It couldn't have landed hard."</p>
<p>They went toward the bulk of the ship from Earth, which
now was a base for the military occupation of a globe with
more land-area than all Earth's continents put together—but
not a drop of water. The Moonship was tilted slightly askew,
but it was patently unharmed. There were faces at every port
in the hull.</p>
<p>The Chief stopped suddenly. A sizable boulder rose from
the dust. The Chief struck it smartly with his space-gloved
hand.</p>
<p>"I'm counting coup on the Moon!" he said zestfully "Tie
that, you guys!"</p>
<p>Then he joined the others on their way to the Moonship's
main lock.</p>
<p>"Shall we knock?" asked Mike humorously. "I doubt they've
got a door-bell!"</p>
<p>But the lock-door was opening to admit them. They
crowded inside.</p>
<p>Commander Brown was waiting for them with an out-stretched<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></SPAN></span>
hand. "Glad to have you aboard." And there was a
genuine smile creeping across his face.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>Joe talked with careful distinctness into a microphone. His
voice took a little over a second to reach its destination. Then
there was a pause of the same length before the first syllable
of Sally's reply came to him from Earth.</p>
<p>"I've reported to your father," said Joe carefully, "and the
Moonship has reported to the Navy. In a couple of hours
Haney and the Chief and Mike and I will be taking off to go
back to the Platform. We got rockets from the stores of the
Moonship."</p>
<p>Sally's voice was surprisingly clear. It wavered a little, but
there was no sound of static to mar reception.</p>
<p>"Then what, Joe?"</p>
<p>"I'm bringing written reports and photographs and first
specimens of geology from the Moon," Joe told her. "I'm a
mailman. It'll probably be sixty hours back to the Platform—free
fall most of the way—and then we'll refuel and I'll come
down to Earth to deliver the reports and such."</p>
<p>Pause. One second and a little for his voice to go. Another
second and something over for her voice to return.</p>
<p>"And then?"</p>
<p>"That's what I'm trying to find out," said Joe. "What day
is today?"</p>
<p>"Tuesday," said Sally after the inevitable pause. "It's ten
o'clock Tuesday morning at the Shed."</p>
<p>Joe made calculations in his mind. Then he said:</p>
<p>"I ought to land on Earth some time next Monday."</p>
<p>Pause.</p>
<p>"Yes?" said Sally.</p>
<p>"I wondered," said Joe. "How about a date that night?"
Another pause. Then Sally's voice. She sounded glad.</p>
<p>"It's a date, Joe. And—do you know, I must be the first girl
in the world to make a date with the Man in the Moon?"<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></SPAN></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<div class="blurb">
<h2><SPAN name="COMBAT_MISSION" id="COMBAT_MISSION"></SPAN>COMBAT MISSION!</h2>
<p style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Joe Kenmore's mission
was as dangerous as
it sounded simple:</i></b></p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"DELIVER SUPPLIES AND ATOMIC
WEAPONS TO THE SPACE
PLATFORM. THEN PREPARE FOR
MAN'S FIRST EXPEDITION
TO THE MOON."</p>
</div>
<p><b>Joe had helped launch the first Space
Platform—that initial rung in man's ladder
to the stars. But the enemies who had
ruthlessly tried to destroy the space station
before it left Earth were still at work.
They were plotting to stop Joe's mission!</b></p>
<p class="sf" style="text-align: right;">Cover painting by Robert Schulz</p>
</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />