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space platformby murray leinster 1 there wasn't anything underneath but clouds,and there wasn't anything overhead but sky. joe kenmore looked out theplane window past the co-pilot's shoulder. he stared ahead to wherethe sky and cloud bank joined--it was many miles away--and triedto picture the job before him. back in the cargo space of the plane therewere four big crates. they contained the pilot gyros for the most importantobject then being built on earth, and it wouldn't work properly withoutthem. it was joe's job

to take that highly specialized, magnificentlyprecise machinery to its destination, help to install it, and see toits checking after it was installed. he felt uneasy. of course the pilot and co-pilot--theonly two other people on the transport plane--knew theirstuff. every imaginable precaution would be taken to make sure thata critically essential device like the pilot gyro assembly wouldget safely where it belonged. it would be--it was being--treated as if itwere a crate of eggs instead of massive metal, smoothed and polished andlapped to a precision

practically unheard of. but just the samejoe was worried. he'd seen the pilot gyro assembly made. he'd helped on it.he knew how many times a thousandth of an inch had been split in machiningits bearings, and the breath-weight balance of its moving parts.he'd have liked to be back in the cargo compartment with it, but only thepilot's cabin was pressurized, and the ship was at eighteenthousand feet, flying west by south. he tried to get his mind off that impulseby remembering that at eighteen thousand feet a good half of theair on earth was underneath

him, and by hoping that the other half wouldbe as easy to rise above when the gyros were finally in place and startingout for space. the gyros, of course, were now on their way tobe installed in the artificial satellite to be blasted up andset in an orbit around the earth as the initial stage of that figurativestepladder by which men would make their first attempt to reach thestars. until that space platform left the ground, the gyros were joe'sresponsibility. the plane's co-pilot leaned back in his chairand stretched luxuriously. he loosened his safety belt and got up. hestepped carefully past the

column between the right- and left-hand pilotseats. that column contained a fraction of the innumerable dialsand controls the pilots of a modern multi-engine plane have to watchand handle. the co-pilot went to the coffeepot and flipped a switch. joefidgeted again on his improvised seat. again he wished that he couldbe riding in back with the crates. but it would be silly to insiston perching somewhere in the freight compartment. there was a steady roaring in the cabin--themotors. one's ears got accustomed to it, and by now the noise soundedas if it were heard

through cushions. presently the coffeepotbubbled, unheard. the co-pilot lighted a cigarette. then he drew a papercup of coffee and handed it to the pilot. the pilot seemed negligently tocontemplate some dozens of dials, all of which were duly duplicated onthe right-hand, co-pilot's side. the co-pilot glanced at joe. "coffee?" "thanks," said joe. he took the paper cup. the co-pilot said: "everything okay with you?" "i'm all right," said joe. he realized thatthe co-pilot felt talkative.

he explained: "those crates i'm travelingwith----. the family firm's been working on that machinery for months.it was finished with the final grinding done practically with featherdusters. i can't help worrying about it. there was four months'work in just lapping the shafts and balancing rotors. we made a telescopemounting once, for an observatory in south africa, but comparedto this gadget we worked on that one blindfolded!" "pilot gyros, eh?" said the co-pilot. "that'swhat the waybill said. but if they were all right when they left theplant, they'll be all right

when they are delivered." joe said ruefully: "still i'd feel betterriding back there with them." "sabotage bad at the plant?" asked the co-pilot."tough!" "sabotage? no. why should there be sabotage?"demanded joe. the co-pilot said mildly: "not quite everybodyis anxious to see the space platform take off. not everybody! whaton earth do you think is the biggest problem out where they're buildingit?" "i wouldn't know," admitted joe. "keepingthe weight down? but there is a new rocket fuel that's supposed to be allright for sending the

platform up. wasn't that the worst problem?getting a rocket fuel with enough power per pound?" the co-pilot sipped his coffee and made aface. it was too hot. "fella," he said drily, "that stuff was easy!the slide-rule boys did that. the big job in making a new moon forthe earth is keeping it from being blown up before it can get out to space!there are a few gentlemen who thrive on power politics. they know thatonce the platform's floating serenely around the earth, with anice stock of atom-headed guided missiles on board, power politics isfinished. so they're doing

what they can to keep the world as it's alwaysbeen--equipped with just one moon and many armies. and they're doingplenty, if you ask me!" "i've heard----" began joe. "you haven't heard the half of it," said theco-pilot. "the air transport has lost nearly as many planes andmore men on this particular airlift than it did in korea while that wasthe big job. i don't know how many other men have been killed. but there'sa strictly local hot war going on out where we're headed. no holdsbarred! hadn't you heard?" it sounded exaggerated. joe said politely:"i heard there was

cloak-and-dagger stuff going on." the pilot drained his cup and handed it tothe co-pilot. he said: "he thinks you're kidding him." he turned backto the contemplation of the instruments before him and the view out thetransparent plastic of the cabin windows. "he does?" the co-pilot said to joe, "you'vegot security checks around your plant. they weren't put there for fun.it's a hundred times worse where the whole platform's being built." "security?" said joe. he shrugged. "we knoweverybody who works at the

plant. we've known them all their lives. they'dget mad if we started to get stuffy. we don't bother." "that i'd like to see," said the co-pilotskeptically. "no barbed wire around the plant? no identity badges you wearwhen you go in? no security officer screaming blue murder everyfive minutes? what do you think all that's for? you built these pilotgyros! you had to have that security stuff!" "but we didn't," insisted joe. "not any ofit. the plant's been in the same village for eighty years. it startedbuilding wagons and plows, and

now it turns out machine tools and precisionmachinery. it's the only factory around, and everybody who works therewent to school with everybody else, and so did our fathers, andwe know one another!" the co-pilot was unconvinced. "no kidding?" "no kidding," joe assured him. "in world wartwo the only spy scare in the village was an fbi man who came aroundlooking for spies. the village cop locked him up and wouldn't believein his credentials. they had to send somebody from washington to gethim out of jail." the co-pilot grinned reluctantly. "i guessthere are such places," he

said enviously. "you should've built the platform!it's plenty different on this job! we can't even talk to a girlwithout security clearance for an interview beforehand, and we can't speakto strange men or go out alone after dark--." the pilot grunted. the co-pilot's tone changed."not quite that bad," he admitted, "but it's bad! it's really bad!we lost three planes last week. i guess you'd call it in action againstsaboteurs. one flew to pieces in mid-air. sabotage. carrying criticalstuff. one crashed on take-off, carrying irreplaceable instruments.somebody'd put a detonator

in a servo-motor. and one froze in its landingglide and flew smack-dab into its landing field. they had to scrapeit up. when this ship got a major overhaul two weeks ago, we flew it withour fingers crossed for four trips running. seems to be all right,though. we gave it the works. but i won't look forward to a serene old ageuntil the platform's out of atmosphere! not me!" he went to put the pilot's empty cup in thedisposal slot. the plane went on. there wasn't anything underneathbut clouds, and there wasn't anything overhead but sky. theclouds were a long way down,

and the sky was simply up. joe looked downand saw a faint spot of racing brightness with a hint of colors aroundit. it was the sort of nimbus that substitutes for a shadow whena plane is high enough above the clouds. it raced madly over the irregularupper surface of the cloud layer. the plane flew and flew. nothing happenedat all. this was two hours from the field from which it had takenoff with the pilot gyro cases as its last item of collected cargo.joe remembered how grimly the two crew members had prevented anybody fromeven approaching it on the ground, except those who actually loaded thecases, and how one of the

two had watched them every second. joe fidgeted. he didn't quite know how totake the co-pilot's talk. the kenmore precision tool plant was owned byhis family, but it wasn't so much a family as a civic enterprise. the youngmen of the village grew up to regard fanatically fine workmanshipwith the casual matter-of-factness elsewhere reserved forplowing or deep-sea fishing. joe's father owned it, and some day joe mighthead it, but he couldn't hope to keep the respect of the men in theplant unless he could handle every tool on the place and split a thousandthat least five ways. ten

would be better! but as long as the feelingat the plant stayed as it was now, there'd never be a security problemthere. if the co-pilot was telling the truth, though--. joe found a slow burn beginning inside him.he had a picture in his mind that was practically a dream. it was of somethingbig and bright and ungainly swimming silently in emptiness witha field of stars behind it. the stars were tiny pin points of light. theywere unwinking and distinct because there was no air where thisthing floated. the blackness between them was absolute becausethis was space itself. the

thing that floated was a moon. a man-mademoon. it was an artificial satellite of earth. men were now buildingit. presently it would float as joe dreamed of it, and where the sun struckit, it would be unbearably bright, and where there were shadows,they would be abysmally black--except, perhaps, when earthshine fromthe planet below would outline it in a ghostly fashion. there would be men in the thing that floatedin space. it swam in a splendid orbit about the world that had builtit. sometimes there were small ships that--so joe imagined--would fighttheir way up to it,

panting great plumes of rocket smoke, andbringing food and fuel to its crew. and presently one of those panting smallships would refill its fuel tanks to the bursting point from thefuel other ships had brought--and yet the ship would have no weight.so it would drift away from the greater floating thing in space,and suddenly its rockets would spout flame and fumes, and it would head triumphantlyout and away from earth. and it would be the first vessel everto strike out for the stars! that was the picture joe had of the spaceplatform and its meaning.

maybe it was romantic, but men were workingright now to make that romance come true. this transport plane wasflying to a small town improbably called bootstrap, carrying oneof the most essential devices for the platform's equipment. in the desertnear bootstrap there was a gigantic construction shed. inside that shedmen were building exactly the monstrous object that joe pictured tohimself. they were trying to realize a dream men have dreamed for decades--thenecessary space platform that would be the dock, the wharf,the starting point from which the first of human space explorers couldstart for infinity. the

idea that anybody could want to halt suchan undertaking made joe kenmore burn. the co-pilot painstakingly crushed out hiscigarette. the ship flew with more steadiness than a railroad car rollson rails. there was the oddly cushioned sound of the motors. it was allvery matter-of-fact. but joe said angrily: "look! is any of whatyou said--well--kidding?" "i wish it were, fella," said the co-pilot."i can talk to you about it, but most of it's hushed up. i tell you----" "why can you talk to me?" demanded joe suspiciously."what makes it all

right for you to talk to me?" "you've got passage on this ship. that meanssomething!" "does it?" asked joe. the pilot turned in his seat to glance atjoe. "do you think we carry passengers regularly?"he asked mildly. "why not?" pilot and co-pilot looked at each other. "tell him," said the pilot. "about five months ago," said the co-pilot,"there was an army colonel

wangled a ride to bootstrap on a cargo plane.the plane took off. it flew all right until twenty miles from bootstrap.then it stopped checking. it dove straight for the shed theplatform's being built in. it was shot down. when it hit, there was anexplosion." the co-pilot shrugged. "you won't believe me, maybe. buta week later they found the colonel's body back east. somebody'd murderedhim." joe blinked. "it wasn't the colonel who rode as a passenger,"said the co-pilot. "it was somebody else. twenty miles from bootstraphe'd shot the pilots and

taken the controls. that's what they figure,anyhow. he meant to dive into the construction shed. because--very,very cleverly--they'd managed to get a bomb in the plane disguised as cargo.they got the men who'd done that, later, but it was rather late." joe said dubiously: "but would one bomb destroythe shed and the platform?" "this one would," said the co-pilot. "it wasan atom bomb. but it wasn't a good one. it didn't detonate properly. itwas a fizz-off." joe saw the implications. cranks and crackpotscouldn't get hold of the

materials for atom bombs. it took the resourcesof a large nation for that. but a nation that didn't quite darestart an open war might try to sneak in one atom bomb to destroy the spacestation. once the platform was launched no other nation could dream ofworld domination. the united states wouldn't go to war if the platformwas destroyed. but there could be a strictly local hot war. the pilot said sharply: "something down below!" the co-pilot fairly leaped into his right-handseat, his safety belt buckled in half a heartbeat.

"check," he said in a new tone. "where?" the pilot pointed. "i saw something dark," he said briefly, "wherethere was a deep dent in the cloud." the co-pilot threw a switch. within secondsa new sound entered the cabin. _beep-beep-beep-beep._ they were thinsqueaks, spaced a full half-second apart, that rose to inaudibilityin pitch in the fraction of a second they lasted. the co-pilot snatcheda hand phone from the wall above his head and held it to his lips.

"flight two-twenty calling," he said crisply."something's got a radar on us. we saw it. get a fix on us and comea-running. we're at eighteen thousand and"--here the floor of the cabintilted markedly--"now we're climbing. get a fix on us and come a-running.over!" he took the phone from his lips and said conversationally:"radar's a giveaway. this is no fly-way. you wouldn'tthink he'd take that much of a chance, would you?" joe clenched his hands. the pilot did thingsto the levers on the column between the two pilots' seats. he said curtly:"arm the jatos."

the co-pilot did something mysterious andsaid: "check." all this took place in seconds. the pilotsaid, "i see something!" and instantly there was swift, tense teamworkin action. a call by radio, asking for help. the plane headed up for greaterclearance between it and the clouds. the jatos made ready for firing.they were the jet-assisted take-off rockets which on a shortor rough field would double the motors' thrust for a matter ofseconds. in straightaway flight they should make the plane leap aheadlike a scared rabbit. but they wouldn't last long.

"i don't like this," said the co-pilot ina flat voice. "i don't see what he could do----" then he stopped. something zoomed out of acloud. the action was completely improbable. the thing that appearedlooked absolutely commonplace. it was a silver-winged privateplane, the sort that cruises at one hundred and seventy-five knots andcan hit nearly two-fifty if pushed. it was expensive, but not large. itcame straight up out of the cloud layer and went lazily over on its backand dived down into the cloud layer again. it looked like somebodystunting for his own private

lunatic pleasure--the kind of crazy thingsome people do, and for which there is no possible explanation. but there was an explanation for this. at the very top of the loop, threads of whitesmoke appeared. they should have been unnoticeable against thecloud. but for the fraction of an instant they were silhouetted against thesilver wings. and they were not misty wisps of vapor. they were dense,sharply defined rocket trails. they shot upward, spreading out. they unreeledwith incredible,

ever-increasing velocity. the pilot hit something with the heel of hishand. there was a heart-stopping delay. then the transport leapedforward with a force to stop one's breath. the jatos were firing furiously,and the ship jumped. there was a bellowing that drowned out thesound of the engines. joe was slammed back on the rear wall of the cabin.he struggled against the force that pushed him tailward. he heard thepilot saying calmly: "that plane shot rockets at us. if they're guidedwe're sunk." then the threads of smoke became the thicknessof cables, of columns!

they should have ringed the transport planein. but the jatos had jumped it crazily forward and were still thrustingfiercely to make it go faster than any prop-plane could. the accelerationmade the muscles at the front of joe's throat ache as he heldhis head upright against it. "they'll be proximity----" then the plane bucked. very probably, at thatmoment, it was stretched far past the limit of strain for which evenits factor of safety was designed. one rocket had let go. the otherswent with it. the rockets had had proximity fuses. if they had ringedthe transport ship and gone

off with it enclosed, it would now be a tumblingmass of wreckage. but the jatos had thrown the plane out ahead ofthe target area. suddenly they cut off, and it seemed as if the shiphad braked. but the pilot dived steeply, for speed. the co-pilot was saying coldly into the microphone:"he shot rockets. looked like army issue three point fives withproximities. they missed. and we're mighty lonely!" the transport tore on, both pilots grimlywatching the cloud bank below. they moved their bodies as they stared outthe windows, so that by no

possibility could any part of the plane masksomething that they should see. as they searched, the co-pilot spokeevenly into the microphone at his lips: "he wouldn't carry more than fourrockets, and he's dumping his racks and firing equipment now. but hemight have a friend with him. better get here quick if you want to catchhim. he'll be the innocentest private pilot you ever saw in no time!" then the pilot grunted. something was streakingacross the cloud formation far, far ahead. three things. theywere jet planes, and they seemed not so much to approach as to swellin size. they were coming at

better than five hundred knots--ten milesa minute--and the transport was heading for them at its top speed of threehundred knots. the transport and the flight of jets neared eachother at the rate of a mile in less than four seconds. the co-pilot said crisply: "silver messnerwith red wing-tips. the number began----" he gave the letter and firstdigits of the vanished plane's official designation, without whichit could not take off from or be serviced at any flying field. joe heard an insistent, swift _beep-beep-beep-beep_which would be the

radars of the approaching jets. he could nothear any answers that might reach the co-pilot as he talked to unseenpersons who would relay his words to the jet fighters. one of them peeled off and sank into the cloudlayer. the others came on. they set up in great circles about thetransport, crossing before it, above it, around it, which gave the effectof flying around an object not in motion at all. the pilot flew on, frowning. the co-pilotsaid: "yes. sure! i'm listening!" there was a pause. then he said:"check. thanks."

he hung the instrument back where it belonged,above his head and behind him. he thoughtfully mopped his brow. he lookedat joe. "maybe," he said mildly, "you believe me wheni tell you there's a sort of hot war on, to keep the platform from takingoff." the pilot grunted. "here's the third jet comingup." it was true. the jet that had dived into theclouds came up out of the cloud formation with somehow an air of impassivesatisfaction. "did they spot the guy?" "yeah," said the co-pilot. "he must've pickedup my report. he didn't

dump his radar. he stayed in the cloud bank.when the jet came for him--spotting him with its night-fighter stuff--hetried to ram. tried for a collision. so the jet gave him the works.blew him apart. couldn't make him land. maybe they'll pick up somethingfrom the wreckage." joe wet his lips. "i--saw what happened," he said. "he triedto smash us with rockets. where'd he get them? how were they smuggledin?" the co-pilot shrugged. "maybe smuggled in.maybe stolen. they coulda been landed from a sub anywhere on a goodmany thousand miles of coast.

they coulda been hauled anywhere in a stationwagon. the plane was a private-type ship. plenty of them flying around.it could've been bought easily enough. all they'd need would be afarm somewhere where it could land and they could strap on a rocket rackand put in a radar. and they'd need information. probably be a goodlead, this business. only just so many people could know what was comingon this ship, and what course it was flying, and so on. securitywill have to check back from that angle." a shadow fell upon the transport ship. a jetshot past from above it. it

waggled its wings and changed course. "we've got to land and be checked for damage,"said the co-pilot negligently. "these guys will circle us andlead the way--as if we needed it!" joe subsided. he still had in his mind theglamorous and infinitely alluring picture of the space platform floatinggrandly in its orbit, with white-hot sunshine on it and a multitudeof stars beyond. he had been completely absorbed in that aspect ofthe job that dealt with the method of construction and the technical detailsby which the platform

could be made to work. now he had a side light on the sort of thingthat has to be done when anything important is achieved. figuring outhow a thing can be done is only part of the job. overcoming the obstaclesto the apparently commonplace steps is nine-tenths of the difficulty.it had seemed to him that the most dramatic aspect of buildingthe space platform had been the achievement of a design that would workin space, that could be gotten up into space, and that could be livedin under circumstances never before experienced. now he saw thatgetting the materials to the

spot where they were needed called for nearlyas much brains and effort. screening out spies and destructionists--thatwould be an even greater achievement! he began to feel a tremendous respect andsolicitude for the people who were doing ordinary jobs in the building ofthe platform. and he worried about his own share more than ever. presently the transport ship sank toward theclouds. it sped through them, stone-blind from the mist. and thenthere was a small airfield below, and the pilot and co-pilot began apattern of ritualistic

conversation. "pitot and wing heaters?" asked the pilot. the co-pilot put his hand successively ontwo controls. "off." "spark advance?" the co-pilot moved his hands. "take-off and climb?" said the co-pilot. "blowers?" "low."

"fuel selectors?" the co-pilot moved his hands again to theappropriate controls, verifying that they were as he reported them. "main on," he said matter-of-factly, "crossfeedoff." the transport plane slanted down steeply forthe landing field that had looked so small at first, but expanded remarkablyas they drew near. joe found himself frowning. he began to seehow really big a job it was to get a space platform even ready to takeoff for a journey that in theory should last forever. it was dauntingto think that before a space

ship could be built and powered and equippedwith machinery there had to be such wildly irrelevant plans worked outas a proper check of controls for the piston-engine ships that flew partsto the job. the details were innumerable! but the job was still worth doing. joe wasglad he was going to have a share in it. 2 it was a merely misty day. the transport planestood by the door of a hangar on this military field, and mechanicsstood well back from it and

looked it over. a man crawled over the tailassembly and found one small hole in the fabric of the stabilizer. a shellfragment had gone through when the war rockets exploded nearby. thepilot verified that the fragment had hit no strengthening member inside.he nodded. the mechanic made very neat fabric patches over the twoholes, upper and lower. he began to go over the fuselage. the pilot turnedaway. "i'll go talk to bootstrap," he told the co-pilot."you keep an eye on things." "i'll keep two eyes on them," said the co-pilot.

the pilot went toward the control tower ofthe field. joe looked around. the transport ship seemed very large, standingon the concrete apron with its tricycle landing gear let down. itcuriously resembled a misshapen insect, standing elaborately highon inadequate supporting legs. its fuselage, in particular, did notlook right for an aircraft. the top of the cargo section went smoothlyback to the stabilizing fins, but the bottom did not taper. it ended asternin a clumsy-looking bulge that was closed by a pair of huge clamshelldoors, opening straight astern. it was built that way, of course,so that large objects could be

loaded direct into the cargo hold, but itwas neither streamlined nor graceful. "did anything get into the cargo hold?" askedjoe in sudden anxiety. "did the cases i'm with get hit?" after all, four rockets had exploded deplorablynear the ship. if one fragment had struck, others might have. "nothing big, anyhow," the co-pilot told him."we'll know presently." but examination showed no other sign of theship's recent nearness to destruction. it had been overstressed, certainly,but ships are built to

take beatings. a spot check on areas whereexcessive flexing of the wings would have shown up--a big ship's wingsare not perfectly rigid: they'd come to pieces in the air if they were--presentedno evidence of damage. the ship was ready to take off again. the co-pilot watched grimly until the onemechanic went back to the side lines. the mechanic was not cordial. he andall the others regarded the ship and joe and the co-pilot with disfavor.they worked on jets, and to suggest that men who worked on fighter jetswere not worthy of complete confidence did not set well with them. theco-pilot noticed it.

"they think i'm a suspicious heel," he saidsourly to joe, "but i have to be. the best spies and saboteurs in theworld have been hired to mess up the platform. when better saboteurs aremade, they'll be sent over here to get busy!" the pilot came back from the control tower. "special flight orders," he told his companion."we top off with fuel and get going." mechanics got out the fuel hose, draggingit from the pit. one man climbed up on the wing. other men handed upthe hose. joe was moved to

comment, but the co-pilot was reading thenew flight instructions. it was one of those moments of inconsistencyto which anybody and everybody is liable. the two men of the ship's crewhad it in mind to be infinitely suspicious of anybody examiningtheir ship. but fueling it was so completely standard an operation thatthey merely stood by absently while it went on. they had the ordersto read and memorize, anyhow. one wing tank was full. a big, grinning manwith sandy hair dragged the hose under the nose of the plane to take itto the other wing tank.

close by the nose wheel he slipped and steadiedhimself by the shaft which reaches down to the wheel's hub. hisposition for a moment was absurdly ungraceful. when he straightenedup, his arm slid into the wheel well. but he dragged the hose the restof the way and passed it on up. then that tank was full and capped. therefueling crew got down to the ground and fed the hose back to the pitwhich devoured it. that was all. but somehow joe remembered the sandy-hairedman and his arm going up inside the wheel well for a fraction ofa second. the pilot read one part of the flight ordersagain and tore them

carefully across. one part he touched hispocket lighter to. it burned. he nodded yet again to the co-pilot, and theyswung up and in the pilots' doorway. joe followed. they settled in their places in the cabin.the pilot threw a switch and pressed a knob. one motor turned over stiffly,and caught. the second. third. fourth. the pilot listened, was satisfied,and pulled back on the multiple throttle. the plane trundled away.minutes later it faced the long runway, a tinny voice from the controltower spoke out of a loud-speaker under the instruments, and theplane roared down the field.

in seconds it lifted and swept around in agreat half-circle. "okay," said the pilot. "wheels up." the co-pilot obeyed. the telltale lights thatshowed the wheels retracted glowed briefly. the men relaxed. "you know," said the co-pilot, "there wasthe devil of a time during the war with sabotage. down in brazil there wasa field planes used to take off from to fly to africa. but they'd takeoff, head out to sea, get a few miles offshore, and then blow up. we must'velost a dozen planes that way! then it broke. there was a guy--asergeant--in the maintenance

crew who was sticking a hand grenade up inthe nose wheel wells. german, he was, and very tidy about it, and nobodysuspected him. everything looked okay and tested okay. but when theship was well away and the crew pulled up the wheels, that tighteneda string and it pulled the pin out of the grenade. it went off.... the mastermechanic finally caught him and nearly killed him before the mps couldstop him. we've got to be plenty careful, whether the ground crews likeit or not." joe said drily: "you were, except when theywere topping off. you took that for granted." he told about the sandy-hairedman. "he hadn't time

to stick anything in the wheel well, though,"he added. the co-pilot blinked. then he looked annoyed."confound it! i didn't watch! did you?" the pilot shook his head, his lips compressed. the co-pilot said bitterly: "and i thoughti was security-conscious! thanks for telling me, fella. no harm donethis time, but that was a slip!" he scowled at the dials before him. the planeflew on. this was the last leg of the trip, and nowit should be no more than an

hour and a half before they reached theirdestination. joe felt a lift of elation. the space platform was a realization--orthe beginning of it--of a dream that had been joe's since hewas a very small boy. it was also the dream of most other small boys atthe time. the space platform would make space travel possible. of courseit wouldn't make journeys to the moon or planets itself, but it would sailsplendidly about the earth in an orbit some four thousand miles up, andit would gird the world in four hours fourteen minutes and twenty-twoseconds. it would carry atom-headed guided missiles, and every cityin the world would be

defenseless against it. nobody could evenhope for world domination so long as it floated on its celestial round.which, naturally, was why there were such desperate efforts to destroyit before its completion. but joe, thinking about the platform, didnot think about it as a weapon. it was the first rung on the stepladderto the stars. from it the moon would be reached, certainly. marsnext, most likely. then venus. in time the moons of saturn, and thetwilight zone of mercury, and some day the moons of jupiter. possiblya landing could be dared on that giant planet itself, despite its gravity.

the co-pilot spoke suddenly. "how do you ratethis trip by cargo plane?" he asked curiously. "mostly even generalshave to go on the ground. you rate plenty. how?" joe pulled his thoughts back from satisfiedimagining. it hadn't occurred to him that it was remarkable thathe should be allowed to accompany the gyros from the plant to theirdestination. his family firm had built them, so it had seemed natural tohim. he wasn't used to the idea that everybody looked suspicious to asecurity officer concerned with the safety of the platform.

"connections? i haven't any," said joe. thenhe said, "i do know somebody on the job. there's a major holtout there. he might have cleared me. known my family for years." "yeah," said the co-pilot drily. "he might.as a matter of fact, he's the senior security officer for the wholejob. he's in charge of everything, from the security guards to theradar screens and the jet-plane umbrella and the checking of themen who work in the shed. if he says you're all right, you probably are." joe hadn't meant to seem impressive. he explained:"i don't know him too

well. he knows my father, and his daughtersally's been kicking around underfoot most of my life. i taught her howto shoot, and she's a better shot than i am. she was a nice kid when shewas little. i got to like her when she fell out of a tree and brokeher arm and didn't even whimper. that shows how long ago it was!"he grinned. "she was trying to act grown-up last time i saw her." the co-pilot nodded. there was a brisk chirpingsound somewhere. the pilot reached ahead to the course-correctionknob. the plane changed course. sunshine shifted as it poured intothe cabin. the ship was

running on automatic pilot well above thecloud level, and at an even-numbered number of thousands of feetaltitude, as was suitable for planes traveling south or west. now it dronedon its new course, forty-five degrees from the original. joefound himself guessing that one of the security provisions for planesapproaching the platform might be that they should not come too near on adirect line to it, lest they give information to curious persons on theground. time went on. joe slipped gradually back tohis meditations about the platform. there was always, in his mind, thepicture of a man-made thing

shining in blinding sunlight between earthand moon. but he began to remember things he hadn't paid too much attentionto before. opposition to the bare idea of a space platform,for instance, from the moment it was first proposed. every dictatorprotested bitterly. even politicians out of office found it a subjectfor rabble-rousing harangues. the nationalistic political parties,the peddlers of hate, the entrepreneurs of discord--every crankin the world had something to say against the platform from the first. whenthey did not roundly denounce it as impious, they raved that itwas a scheme by which the

united states would put itself in positionto rule all the earth. as a matter of fact, the united states had firstproposed it as a united nations enterprise, so that denunciationsthat politicians found good politics actually made very poor sense. butit did not get past the general assembly. the proposal was so rabidlyattacked on every side that it was not even passed up to the council--whereit would certainly have been vetoed anyhow. but it was exactly that furious denunciationwhich put the platform through the united states congress, whichhad to find the money for its

construction. in joe's eyes and in the eyes of most of thosewho hoped for it from the beginning, the platform's great appeal wasthat it was the necessary first step toward interplanetary travel, withstar ships yet to come. but most scientists wanted it, desperately,for their own ends. there were low-temperature experiments, electronicexperiments, weather observations, star-temperature measurements,astronomical observations.... any man in any field of sciencecould name reasons for it to be built. even the atom scientists hadone, and nearly the best.

their argument was that there were new developmentsof nuclear theory that needed to be tried out, but should notbe tried out on earth. there were some reactions that ought to yield unlimitedpower for all the world from really abundant materials. butthere was one chance in fifty that they wouldn't be safe, just because thematerials were so abundant. no sane man would risk a two-per-cent chanceof destroying earth and all its people, yet those reactions should betried. in a space ship some millions of miles out in emptiness they couldbe. either they'd be safe or they would not. but the only way to geta space ship a safe enough

distance from earth was to make a space platformas a starting point. then a ship could shoot away from earth witheffectively zero gravity and full fuel tanks. the platform should bebuilt so civilization could surge ahead to new heights! but despite these excellent reasons, it wasthe platform's enemies who really got it built. the american congresswould never have appropriated funds for a platform for pure scientific research,no matter what peacetime benefits it promised. it was thevehemence of those who hated it that sold it to congress as a measure fornational defense. and in a

sense it was. these were ironic aspects joe hadn't thoughtabout before, just as he hadn't thought about the need to defend theplatform while it was being built. defending it was sally's father's job,and he wouldn't have a popular time. joe wondered idly how sallyliked living out where the most important job on earth was being done.she was a nice kid. he remembered appreciatively that she'd grownup to be a very good-looking girl. he tended to remember her mostly asthe tomboy who could beat him swimming, but the last time he'd seen her,come to think of it, he'd

been startled to observe how pretty she'dgrown. he didn't know anybody who ought to be better-looking.... she wasa really swell girl.... he came to himself again. there was a changein the look of the sky ahead. there was no actual horizon, of course.there was a white haze that blended imperceptibly into the cloudlayer so that it was impossible to tell where the sky ended andthe clouds or earth began. but presently there were holes in the clouds.the ship droned on, and suddenly it floated over the edge of sucha hole, and looking down was very much like looking over the edge of acliff at solid earth

illimitably far below. the holes increased in number. then therewere no holes at all, but only clouds breaking up the clear view of the groundbeneath. and presently again even the clouds were left behind andthe air was clear--but still there was no horizon--and there was brownishearth with small green patches and beyond was sere brown range. atseventeen thousand feet there were simply no details. soon the clouds were merely a white-tippedelevation of the white haze to the sides and behind. and then there camea new sound above the

droning roar of the motors. joe heard it--andthen he saw. something had flashed down from nowhere. itflashed on ahead and banked steeply. it was a fighter jet, and for aninstant joe saw the distant range seem to ripple and dance in its exhaustblast. it circled watchfully. the transport pilot manipulated something.there was a change in the sound of the motors. joe followed the co-pilot'seyes. the jet fighter was coming up astern, dive brakes extendedto reduce its speed. it overhauled the transport very slowly. andthen the transport's pilot

touched one of the separate prop-controlsgently, and again, and again. joe, looking at the jet, saw it through thewhirling blades. there was an extraordinary stroboscopic effect. oneof the two starboard propellers, seen through the other, abruptlytook on a look which was not that of mistiness at all, but of writhing,gyrating solidity. the peculiar appearance vanished, and came again,and vanished and appeared yet again before it disappeared completely. the jet shot on ahead. its dive brakes retracted.it made a graceful, wallowing, shallow dive, and then climbedalmost vertically. it went out

of sight. "visual check," said the co-pilot drily, tojoe. "we had a signal to give. individual to this plane. we didn'ttell it to you. you couldn't duplicate it." joe worked it out painfully. the visual effectof one propeller seen through another--that was identification.it was not a type of signaling an unauthorized or uninformed passenger wouldexpect. "also," said the co-pilot, "we have a televisioncamera in the instrument board yonder. we've turned it onnow. the interior of the

cabin is being watched from the ground. nomore tricks like the phony colonel and the atom bomb that didn't 'explode.'" joe sat quite still. he noticed that the planewas slanting gradually downward. his eyes went to the dial that showeddescent at somewhere between two and three hundred feet a minute.that was for his benefit. the cabin was pressurized, though it did notattempt to simulate sea-level pressure. it was a good deal betterthan the outside air, however, and yet too quick a descent meantdiscomfort. two to three hundred feet per minute is about right.

the ground took on features. small gulleys.patches of coloration too small to be seen from farther up. the feelingof speed increased. after long minutes the plane was only a few thousandfeet up. the pilot took over manual control from the automatic pilot.he seemed to wait. there was a plaintive, mechanical _beep-beep_ andhe changed course. "you'll see the shed in a minute or two,"said the co-pilot. he added vexedly, as if the thing had been botheringhim, "i wish i hadn't missed that sandy-haired guy putting his hand inthe wheel well! nothing happened, but i shouldn't have missed it!"

joe watched. very, very far away there weremountains, but he suddenly realized the remarkable flatness of the groundover which they were flying. from the edge of the world, behind,to the very edge of these far-distant hills, the ground was flat. therewere gullies and depressions here and there, but no hills.it was flat, flat, flat.... the plane flew on. there was a tiny glimmerof sunlight. joe strained his eyes. the sunlight glinted from the tiniestpossible round pip on the brown earth. it grew as the plane flewon. it was half a cherry stone. it was half an orange, with gores.it was the top section of a

sphere that was simply too huge to have beenmade by men. there was a thin thread of white that ranacross the dun-colored range and reached that half-ball and then ended.it was a highway. joe realized that the half-globe was the shed,the monstrous building made for the construction of the space platform.it was gigantic. it was colossal. it was the most stupendous thingthat men had ever created. joe saw a tiny projection near the base ofit. it was an office building for clerks and timekeepers and other white-collarworkers. he strained his eyes again and saw a motor truck on thehighway. it looked

extraordinarily flat. then he saw that itwasn't a single truck but a convoy of them. a long way back, the whitehighway was marked by a tiny dot. that was a motor bus. there was no sign of activity anywhere, becausethe scale was so great. movement there was, but the things that movedwere too small to be seen by comparison with the shed. the huge, round,shining half-sphere of metal stood tranquilly in the midst of emptiness. it was bigger than the pyramids. the plane went on, descending. joe cranedhis neck, and then he was

ashamed to gawk. he looked ahead, and faraway there were white speckles that would be buildings: bootstrap, the townespecially built for the men who built the space platform. in it theyslept and ate and engaged in the uproarious festivity that men on aconstruction job crave on their time off. the plane dipped noticeably. "airfield off to the right," said the co-pilot."that's for the town and the job. the jets--there's an air umbrellaoverhead all the time--have a field somewhere else. the pushpots have afield of their own, too, where

they're training pilots." joe didn't know what a pushpot was, but hedidn't ask. he was thinking about the shed, which was the greatest buildingever put up, and had been built merely to shelter the greatesthope for the world's peace while it was put together. he'd be in theshed presently. he'd work there, setting up the contents of the cratesback in the cargo space, and finally installing them in the platformitself. the pilot said: "pitot and wing heaters?" "off," said the co-pilot.

"spark and advance----" joe didn't listen. he looked down at the sprawlingsmall town with white-painted barracks and a business sectionand an obvious, carefully designed recreation area that nobody wouldever use. the plane was making a great half-circle. the motor noisedimmed as joe became absorbed in his anticipation of seeing thespace platform and having a hand in its building. the co-pilot said sharply: "hold everything!" joe jerked his head around. the co-pilot hadhis hand on the wheel

release. his face was tense. "it don't feel right," he said very, veryquietly. "maybe i'm crazy, but there was that sandy-haired guy who put hishand up in the wheel well back at that last field. and this don't feelright!" the plane swept on. the airfield passed belowit. the co-pilot very cautiously let go of the wheel release, whichwhen pulled should let the wheels fall down from their wells to lockthemselves in landing position. he moved from his seat. his lipswere pinched and tight. he scrabbled at a metal plate in the flooring.he lifted it and looked

down. a moment later he had a flashlight.joe saw the edge of a mirror. there were two mirrors down there, in fact.one could look through both of them into the wheel well. the co-pilot made quite sure. he stood up,leaving the plate off the opening in the floor. "there's something down in the wheel well,"he said in a brittle tone. "it looks to me like a grenade. there's astring tied to it. at a guess, that sandy-haired guy set it up like thatsaboteur sergeant down in brazil. only--it rolled a little. and thisone goes off when the wheels

go down. i think, too, if we belly-land----bettergo around again, huh?" the pilot nodded. "first," he said evenly,"we get word down to the ground about the sandy-haired guy, so they'llget him regardless." he picked up the microphone hanging aboveand behind him and began to speak coldly into it. the transport planestarted to swing in wide, sweeping circles over the desert beyond theairport while the pilot explained that there was a grenade in thenose wheel well, set to explode if the wheel were let down or, undoubtedly,if the ship came in to a belly landing.

joe found himself astonishingly unafraid.but he was filled with a pounding rage. he hated the people who wantedto smash the pilot gyros because they were essential to the space platform.he hated them more completely than he had known he could hateanybody. he was so filled with fury that it did not occur to him thatin any crash or explosive landing that would ruin the gyros, he wouldautomatically be killed. 3 the pilot made an examination down the floor-platehole, with a flashlight to see by and two mirrors to showhim the contents of a spot

he could not possibly reach with any instrument.joe heard his report, made to the ground by radio. "it's a grenade," he said coldly. "it tooktime to fix it the way it is. at a guess, the ship was booby-trapped atthe time of its last overhaul. but it was arranged that the booby trap hadto be set, the trigger cocked, by somebody doing something very simpleat a different place and later on. we've been flying with that grenadein the wheel well for two weeks. but it was out of sight. today, backat the airfield, a sandy-haired man reached up and pulled a stringhe knew how to find.

that loosened a slipknot. the grenade rolleddown to a new position. now when the wheel goes down the pin is pulled.you can figure things out from that." it was an excellent sabotage device. if aship blew up two weeks after overhaul, it would not be guessed that thebomb had been placed so long before. every search would be made for a recentopportunity for the bomb's placing. a man who merely reached inand pulled a string that armed the bomb and made it ready for firingwould never be suspected. there might be dozens of planes, now carryingtheir own destruction

about with them. the pilot said into the microphone: "probably...."he listened. "very well, sir." he turned away and nodded to the co-pilot,now savagely keeping the ship in wide, sweeping circles, the rims of whichbarely touched the farthermost corner of the airport on the groundbelow. "we've authority to jump," he said briefly."you know where the chutes are. but there _is_ a chance i can belly-landwithout that grenade blowing. i'm going to try that."

the co-pilot said angrily: "i'll get him achute." he indicated joe, and said furiously, "they've been known to trytwo or three tricks, just to make sure. ask if we should dump cargo beforewe crash-land!" the pilot held up the microphone again. hespoke. he listened. "okay to dump stuff to lighten ship." "you won't dump my crates," snapped joe. "andi'm staying to see you don't! if you can ride this ship down, socan i!" the co-pilot got up and scowled at him. "anything i can move out, goes. will you help?"

joe followed him through the door into thecargo compartment. the space there was very considerable, andbitterly cold. the crates from the kenmore plant were the heaviest itemsof cargo. other objects were smaller. the co-pilot made his way tothe rear and pulled a lever. great, curved doors opened at the back ofthe plane. instantly there was such a bellowing of motors that all speechwas impossible. the co-pilot pulled out a clip of colored-paper slips andchecked one with the nearest movable parcel. he painstakingly madea check mark and began to push the box toward the doors.

it was not a conspicuously sane operation.so near the ground, the plane tended to waver. the air was distinctly bumpy.to push a massive box out a doorway, so it would tumble down a thousandfeet to desert sands, was not so safe a matter as would let it becometedious. but joe helped. they got the box to the door and shoved itout. it went spinning down. the co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watchedit land. he chose another box. he checked it. and another. joehelped. they got them out of the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness.the plane soared on in circles. the desert, as seen through theopened clamshell doors,

reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt,and reeled away again. joe and the co-pilot labored furiously. but theco-pilot checked each item before he jettisoned it. it was a singularly deliberate way to dumpcargo to destruction. a metal-bound box. over the edge of the cargospace floor. a piece of machinery, visible through its crate. a boxmarked _instruments_. _fragile_. each one checked off. each onedumped to drop a thousand feet or more. a small crated dynamo. this itemand that. a crate marked _stationery_. it would be printed forms forthe timekeepers, perhaps.

but it wasn't. it dropped out. the plane bellowed on. andsuddenly there was a burst of blue-white flame on the desert below. thebox that should have contained timecards had contained something very muchmore explosive. as the plane roared on--rocking from the shock wave ofthe explosion--joe saw a crater and a boiling cloud of smoke and flyingsand. the co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously,in the blasting uproar of the motors. he vengefully marked the waybillof the parcel that had exploded. but then they went back to the jobof dumping cargo. they

worked well as a team now. in no more thanminutes everything was out except the four crates that were the gyros.the co-pilot regarded them dourly, and joe clenched his fists. the co-pilotclosed the clamshell doors, and it became possible to hear oneselfthink again. "ship's lighter, anyhow," reported the co-pilot,back in the cabin. "tell 'em this is what exploded." the pilot took the slip. he plucked down themicrophone--exactly like somebody picking up an interoffice telephone--andreported the waybill number and description of the case that hadbeen an extra bomb. the ship

carrying the pilot gyros had been booby-trapped--probablywith a number of other ships--and a bomb had been shippedon it, and a special saboteur with a private plane had shot atit with rockets. the pilot gyros were critical devices. they had to beon board the platform when it took off, and they took months to makeand balance. there had been extra pains taken to prevent their arrival! "i'm dumping gas now," said the pilot intothe microphone, "and then coming in for a belly landing." the ship flew straightaway. it flew more lightly,and it bounced a

little. when gas is dumped one has to slowto not more than one hundred and seventy-five knots and fly level. thenone is supposed to fly five minutes after dumping with the chutes in thedrain position--and even then there is forty-five minutes of flyingfuel still in the tanks. the ship swept around and headed back forthe now far-distant field. it went slowly lower and lower and lower untilit seemed barely to skim the minor irregularities in the ground. and lowlike this, the effect of speed was terrific. the co-pilot thought of something. quicklyhe went back into the cargo

space. he returned with an armful of blankets.he dumped them on the floor. "if that grenade does go!" he said sourly. joe helped. in the few minutes before bootstraploomed near, they filled the bottom of the cabin with blankets. especiallyaround the pilots' chairs. and there was a mound of blanketingabove the actual place where the grenade might be. it made sense. softstuff like blankets would absorb an explosion better than anything else.but the pilot thought the grenade might not blow.

"hold fast!" snapped the pilot. the wing flaps were down. that slowed theship a little. it had been lightened. that helped. they went in overthe edge of the field less than man-height high. joe found his handsclosing convulsively on a handgrip. he saw a crash wagon starting outfrom the side of the runway. a fire truck started for the line the planefollowed. four feet above the rushing sand. three. thepilot eased back the stick. his face was craggy and very grim and veryhard. the ship's tail went down and dragged. it bumped. then the planecareened and slid and

half-whirled crazily, and then the world seemedto come to an end. crashes. bangs. shrieks of torn metal. bumps,thumps and grindings. then a roaring. joe pulled himself loose from where he hadbeen flung--it seemed to him that he peeled himself loose--and found thepilot struggling up, and he grabbed him to help, and the co-pilot hauledat them both, and abruptly all three of them were in the open air andrunning at full speed away from the ship. the roar abruptly became a bellowing. therewas an explosion. flames

sprouted everywhere. the three men ran stumblingly.but even as they ran, the co-pilot swore. "we left something!" he panted. joe heard a crescendo of booming, cracklingnoises behind. something else exploded dully. but he should be farenough away by now. he turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckageimmersed in roaring flames. the flames were monstrous. they rosesky-high, it seemed--more flames than forty-five minutes of gasolineshould have produced. as he looked, something blew up shatteringly, andfire raged even more

furiously. of course in such heat the delicatelyadjusted gyros would be warped and ruined even if the crash hadn'twrecked them beforehand. joe made thick, incoherent sounds of rage. the plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton,licked through by flames. the crash wagon roared to a stop besidethem. "anybody hurt? anybody left inside?" joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairingrage. the fog wagon roared up, already spouting mist from itsnozzles. its tanks contained water treated with detergent so that it brokeinto the finest of

droplets when sprayed at four hundred poundspressure. it drenched the burning wreck with that heavy mist, in whicha man would drown. no fire could possibly sustain itself. in seconds,it seemed, there were only steam and white vapor and fumes of smolderingsubstances that gradually lessened. but then there was a roaring of motorcyclesracing across the field with a black car trailing them. the car pulledup beside the fog wagon, then sped swiftly to where joe was coming out ofwild rage and sinking into sick, black depression. he'd been responsiblefor the pilot gyros and

their safe arrival. what had happened wasn'this fault, but it was not his job merely to remain blameless. it washis job to get the gyros delivered and set up in the space platform.he had failed. the black car braked to a stop. there wasmajor holt. joe had seen him six months before. he'd aged a good deal.he looked grimly at the two pilots. "what happened?" he demanded. "you dumpedyour fuel! what burned like this?" joe said thickly: "everything was dumped butthe pilot gyros. they

didn't burn! they were packed at the plant!" the co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent soundof rage. "i've got it!" he said hoarsely. "i know----" "what?" snapped major holt. "they--planted that grenade at the--majoroverhaul!" panted the co-pilot, too enraged even to swear. "they--fixedit so--any trouble would mean a wreck! and i--pulled the fire-extinguisherreleases just as we hit! for all compartments! to flood everythingwith co_2! but it wasn't co_2! that's what burned!"

major holt stared sharply at him. he heldup his hand. somebody materialized beside him. he said harshly:"get the extinguisher bottles sealed and take them to the laboratory." "yes, sir!" a man went running toward the wreck. majorholt said coldly: "that's a new one. we should have thought of it. youmen get yourselves attended to and report to security at the shed." the pilot and co-pilot turned away. joe turnedto go with them. then he heard sally's voice, a little bit wobbly:"joe! come with us, please!"

joe hadn't seen her, but she was in the car.she was pale. her eyes were wide and frightened. joe said stiffly: "i'll be all right. i wantto look at those crates----" major holt said curtly: "they're already underguard. there'll have to be photographs made before anything can betouched. and i want a report from you, anyhow. come along!" joe looked. the motorcycles were abandoned,and there were already armed guards around the still-steaming wreck, grimlywatching the men of the

fog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparksor flame. it was noticeable that now nobody moved toward thewreck. there were figures walking back toward the edge of the field.what civilians were about, even to the mechanics on duty, had startedout to look at the debris at close range. but the guards were on the job.nobody could approach. the onlookers went back to their proper places. "please, joe!" said sally shakily. joe got drearily into the car. the instanthe seated himself, it was in motion again. it went plunging back acrossthe field and out the

entrance. its horn blared and it went streakingtoward the town and abruptly turned to the left. in seconds itwas on a broad white highway that left the town behind and led toward theemptiness of the desert. but not quite emptiness. far, far away therewas a great half-globe rising against the horizon. the car hummedtoward it, tires singing. and joe looked at it and felt ashamed, becausethis was the home of the space platform, and he hadn't brought to itthe part for which he alone was responsible. sally moistened her lips. she brought outa small box. she opened it.

there were bandages and bottles. "i've a first-aid kit, joe," she said shakily."you're burned. let me fix the worst ones, anyhow!" joe looked at himself. one coat sleeve wasburned to charcoal. his hair was singed on one side. a trouser leg wasburned off around the ankle. when he noticed, his burns hurt. major holt watched her spread a salve on scorchedskin. he showed no emotion whatever. "tell me what happened," he commanded. "allof it!"

somehow, there seemed very little to tell,but joe told it baldly as the car sped on. the great half-ball of metalloomed larger and larger but did not appear to grow nearer as sally practicedfirst aid. they came to a convoy of trucks, and the horn blared, andthey turned out and passed it. once they met a convoy of empty vehicleson the way back to bootstrap. they passed a bus. they went on. joe finished drearily: "the pilots did everythinganybody could. even checked off the packages as they were dumped.we reported the one that blew up."

major holt said uncompromisingly: "those wereorders. in a sense we've gained something even by this disaster. thepilots are probably right about the plane's having been booby-trappedafter its last overhaul, and the traps armed later. i'll have an inspectionmade immediately, and we'll see if we can find how it was done. "there's the man you think armed the trapon this plane. an order for his arrest is on the way now. i told my secretary.and--hm.... that co_2----" "i didn't understand that," said joe drearily.

"planes have co_2 bottles to put fires out,"said the major impatiently. "a fire in flight lights a red warning lighton the instrument panel, telling where it is. the pilot pulls a handle,and co_2 floods the compartment, putting it out. and this shipwas coming in for a crash landing so the pilot--according to orders--floodedall compartments with co_2. only it wasn't." sally said in horror: "oh, no!" "the co_2 bottles were filled with an inflammableor an explosive gas," said her father, unbending. "instead of makinga fire impossible, they

made it certain. we'll have to watch out forthat trick now, too." joe was too disheartened for any emotion excepta bitter depression and a much more bitter hatred of those who wereready to commit any crime--and had committed most--in the attemptto destroy the platform. the shed that housed it rose and rose againstthe skyline. it became huge. it became monstrous. it became unbelievable.but joe could have wept when the car pulled up at an angular,three-story building built out from the shed's base. from the air, thissubstantial building had looked like a mere chip. the car stopped.they got out. a sentry saluted

as major holt led the way inside. joe andsally followed. the major said curtly to a uniformed man ata desk: "get some clothes for this man. get him a long-distance telephoneconnection to the kenmore precision tool company. let him talk.then bring him to me again." he disappeared. sally tried to smile at joe.she was still quite pale. "that's dad, joe. he means well, but he'snot cordial. i was in his office when the report of sabotage to yourplane came through. we started for bootstrap. we were on the waywhen we saw the first

explosion. i--thought it was your ship." shewinced a little at the memory. "i knew you were on board. it was--notnice, joe." she'd been badly scared. joe wanted to thumpher encouragingly on the back, but he suddenly realized that that wouldno longer be appropriate. so he said gruffly: "i'm all right." he followed the uniformed man. he began toget out of his scorched and tattered garments. the sergeant brought himmore clothes, and he put them on. he was just changing his personalpossessions to the new pockets when the sergeant came back again.

"kenmore plant on the line, sir." joe went to the phone. on the way he discoveredthat the banging around he'd had when the plane landed had made anumber of places on his body hurt. he talked to his father. afterward, he realized that it was a queerconversation. he felt guilty because something had happened to a job thathad taken eight months to do and that he alone was escorting to itsdestination. he told his father about that. but his father didn't seemconcerned. not nearly so

much concerned as he should have been. heasked urgent questions about joe himself. if he was hurt. how much? where?joe was astonished that his father seemed to think such matters moreimportant than the pilot gyros. but he answered the questions and explainedthe exact situation and also a certain desperate hope he was tryingto cherish that the gyros might still be repairable. his fathergave him advice. sally was waiting again when he came out.she took him into her father's office, and introduced him to her father'ssecretary. compared to sally she was an extraordinarily plain woman. shewore a sorrowful expression.

but she looked very efficient. joe explained carefully that his father saidfor him to hunt up chief bender--working on the job out here--becausehe was one of the few men who'd left the kenmore plant to work elsewhere,and he was good. he and the chief, between them, would estimate thedamage and the possibility of repair. major holt listened. he was military and officialand harassed and curt and tired. joe'd known sally and thereforeher father all his life, but the major wasn't an easy man to be relaxedwith. he spoke into thin air,

and immediately his sad-seeming secretarywrote out a pass for joe. then major holt gave crisp orders on a telephoneand asked questions, and sally said: "i know. i'll take him there.i know my way around." her father's expression did not change. hesimply included sally in his orders on the phone. he hung up and said briefly: "the plane willbe surveyed and taken apart as soon as possible. by the time you findyour man you can probably examine the crates. i'll have you clearedfor it." his secretary reached in a drawer for orderforms to fill out and hand

him to sign. sally tugged at joe's arm. theyleft. outside, she said: "there's no use arguingwith my father, joe. he has a terrible job, and it's on his mind all thetime. he hates being a security officer, too. it's a thankless job--andno security officer ever gets to be more than a major. his abilitynever shows. what he does is never noticed unless it fails. so he'sfrustrated. he's got poor miss ross--his secretary, you know--so she justlistens to what he says must be done and she writes it out. sometimes hegoes days without speaking to her directly. but really it's pretty bad!it's like a war with no

enemy to fight except spies! and the thingsthey do! they've been known even to booby-trap a truck after an accident,so anybody who tries to help will be blown up! so everything has tobe done in a certain way or everything will be ruined!" she led him to an office with a door thatopened directly into the shed. in spite of his bitterness, joe was moroselyimpatient to see inside. but sally had to identify him formally asthe joe kenmore who was the subject of her father's order, and his fingerprintshad to be taken, and somebody had him stand for a moment beforean x-ray screen. then she led

him through the door, and he was in the shedwhere the space platform was under construction. it was a vast cavern of metal sheathing andspidery girders, filled with sound and detail. it took him seconds to beginto absorb what he saw and heard. the shed was five hundred feet highin the middle, and it was all clear space without a single column or interruption.there were arc lamps burning about its edges, and high upsomewhere there were strips of glass which let in a pale light. all ofit resounded with many noises and clanging echoes of them.

there were rivet guns at work, and there werethe grumblings of motor trucks moving about, and the oddly harsh roarof welding torches. but the torch flames looked only like marsh fires,blue-white and eerie against the mass of the thing that was beingbuilt. it was not too clear to the eye, this incompletespace platform. there seemed to be a sort of mist, a glamour aboutit, which was partly a veiling mass of scaffolding. but joe gazedat it with an emotion that blotted out even his aching disappointmentand feeling of shame. it was gigantic. it had the dimensions ofan ocean liner. it was

strangely shaped. partly obscured by the fragile-seemingframework about it, there was bright plating in swelling curves,and the plating reached up irregularly and followed a peculiar pattern,and above the plating there were girders--themselves shining brightlyin the light of many arc lamps--and they rose up and up toward theroof of the shed itself. the platform was ungainly and it was huge, andit rested under a hollow metal half-globe that could have doubled fora sky. it was more than three hundred feet high, itself, and therewere men working on the bare bright beams of its uppermost parts--and themen were specks. the far

side of the shed's floor had other men onit, and they were merely jerkily moving motes. you couldn't see theirlegs as they walked. the shed and the platform were monstrous! joe felt sally's eyes upon him. somehow, theylooked proud. he took a deep breath. she said: "come on." they walked across acres of floor neatly pavedwith shining wooden blocks. they moved toward the thing that wasto take mankind's first step toward the stars. as they walked centerward,a big sixteen-wheel

truck-and-trailer outfit backed out of anopening under the lacy haze of scaffolds. it turned clumsily, and carefullycircled the scaffolding, and moved toward a sidewall of the shed. asection of the wall--it seemed as small as a rabbit hole--lifted inwardlike a flap, and the sixteen-wheeler trundled out into the blazingsunlight. four other trucks scurried out after it. other truckscame in. the sidewall section closed. there was the smell of engine fumes and hotmetal and of ozone from electric sparks. there was that indescribablesmell a man can get

homesick for, of metal being worked by men.joe walked like someone in a dream, with sally satisfiedly silent besidehim, until the scaffolds--which had looked like veiling--becamelatticework and he saw openings. they walked into one such tunnel. the bulkof the platform above them loomed overhead with a crushing menace. therewere trucks rumbling all around underneath, here in this maze of scaffoldcolumns. some carried ready-loaded cages waiting to be snatchedup by hoists. crane grips came down, and snapped fast on the cages, and liftedthem up and up and out

of sight. there was a diesel running somewhere,and a man stood and stared skyward and made motions with his hands,and the diesel adjusted its running to his signals. then some emptycages came down and landed in a waiting truck body with loud clankingnoises. somebody cast off the hooks, and the truck grumbled and drove away. sally spoke to a preoccupied man in shirtsleeves with a badge on an arm band near his shoulder. he looked carefullyat the passes she carried, using a flashlight to make sure. then he ledthem to a shaft up which a hoist ran. it was very noisy here. a rivetgun banged away overhead, and

the plates of the platform rang with the sound,and the echoes screeched, and to joe the bedlam was infinitelygood to hear. the man with the arm band shouted into a telephonetransmitter, and a hoist cage came down. joe and sally stepped on it. joetook a firm grip on her shoulder, and the hoist shot upward. the hugeness of the shed and the platformgrew even more apparent as the hoist accelerated toward the roof. the flooringseemed to expand. spidery scaffold beams dropped past them.there were things being built over by the sidewall. joe saw a crawling in-planttow truck moving past

those enigmatic objects. it was a tiny truck,no more than four feet high and with twelve-inch wheels. it draggedbehind it flat plates of metal with upturned forward edges. they slidover the floor like sledges. cryptic loads were carried on thoseplates, and the tow truck stopped by a mass of steel piping being puttogether, and began to unload the plates. then the hoist slowed abruptly and sally winceda little. the hoist stopped. here--two hundred feet up--a welding crewworked on the skin of the

platform itself. the plating curved in andthere was a wide flat space parallel to the ground. there was also a greatgaping hole beyond. though girders rose roofward even yet, thiswas as high as the plating had gone. that opening--joe guessed--wouldultimately be the door of an air lock, and this flat surface was designedfor a tender rocket to anchor to by magnets. when a rocket came upfrom earth with supplies or reliefs for the platform's crew, or with fuelto be stored for an exploring ship's later use, it would anchorhere and then inch toward that doorway....

there were half a dozen men in the weldingcrew. they should have been working. but two men battered savagely ateach other, their tools thrown down. one was tall and lean, with a wrinkledface and an expression of intolerable fury. the other was squat anddark with a look of desperation. a third man was in the act ofputting down his welding torch--he'd carefully turned it off first--totry to interfere. another man gaped. still another was climbing up bya ladder from the scaffold level below. joe put sally's hand on the hoist upright,instinctively freeing himself

for action. the lanky man lashed out a terrific roundhouseblow. it landed, but the stocky man bored in. joe had an instant'sclear sight of his face. it was not the face of a man enraged. it hadthe look of a man both desperate and despairing. then the lanky man's foot slipped. he lostbalance, and the stocky man's fist landed. the thin man reeled backward.sally cried out, choking. the lanky man teetered on the edge of the flatplace. behind him, the plating curved down. below him there weretwo hundred feet of fall

through the steel-pipe maze of scaffolds.if he took one step back he was gone inexorably down a slope on whichhe could never stop. he took that step. the stocky man's face abruptlyfroze in horror. the lanky man stiffened convulsively. he couldn'tstop. he knew it. he'd go back and on over the rounded edge, and fall.he might touch the scaffolding. it would not stop him. it wouldmerely set his body spinning crazily as it dropped and crashedagain and again before it landed two hundred feet below. it was horror in slow motion, watching thelean man stagger backward to

his death. then joe leaped. 4 for an instant, in mid-air, joe was incongruouslyaware of all the noises in the shed. the murky, girdered ceilingstill three hundred feet above him. the swelling, curving, glitteringsurface of steel underneath. then he struck. he landed besidethe lean man, with his left arm outstretched to share his impetus withhim. alone, he would have had momentum enough to carry himself up the slopedown which the man had

begun to descend. but now he shared it. thetwo of them toppled forward together. their arms were upon the flat surface,while their bodies dangled. the feel of gravity pulling themslantwise and downward was purest nightmare. but then, as joe's innards crawled, the samestocky man who had knocked the lean man back was dragging franticallyat both of them to pull them to safety. then there were two men pulling. the stockyman's face was gray. his horror was proof that he hadn't intended murder.the man who'd put down

his welding torch pulled. the man who'd beenclimbing the ladder put his weight to the task of getting them back tousable footing. they reached safety. joe scrambled to his feet, but hefelt sick at the pit of his stomach. the stocky man began to shake horribly.the lanky one advanced furiously upon him. "i didn' mean to keel you, haney!" the darkone panted. the lanky one snapped: "okay. you didn't.but come on, now! we finish this----" he advanced toward the workman who had sonearly caused his death. but

the other man dropped his arms to his sides. "i don' fight no more," he said thickly. "nothere. you keel me is okay. i don' fight." the lanky man--haney--growled at him. "tonight, then, in bootstrap. now get backto work!" the stocky man picked up his tools. he wastrembling. haney turned to joe and said ungraciously:"much obliged. what's up?" joe still felt queasy. there is rarely anyhigh elation after one has risked his life for somebody else. he'd nearlyplunged two hundred feet

to the floor of the shed with haney. but heswallowed. "i'm looking for chief bender. you're haney?foreman?" "gang boss," said haney. he looked at joeand then at sally who was holding convulsively to the upright joe hadput her hand on. her eyes were closed. "yeah," said haney. "the chieftook off today. some kind of injun stuff. funeral, maybe. want me to tellhim something? i'll see him when i go off shift." there was an obscure movement somewhere onthis part of the platform. a tiny figure came out of a crevice that wouldsomeday be an air lock. joe

didn't move his eyes toward it. he said awkwardly:"just tell him joe kenmore's in town and needs him. he'll rememberme, i think. i'll hunt him up tonight." "okay," said haney. joe's eyes went to the tiny figure that hadcome out from behind the plating. it was a midget in baggy, stainedwork garments like the rest of the men up here. he wore a miniature weldingshield pushed back on his head. joe could guess his function, ofcourse. there'd be corners a normal-sized man couldn't get into, to bucka rivet or weld a joint.

there'd be places only a tiny man could properlyinspect. the midget regarded joe without expression. joe turned to the hoist to go down to thefloor again. haney waved his hand. the midget lifted his, in grave salutation. the hoist dropped down the shaft. sally openedher eyes. "you--saved that man's life, joe," she saidunsteadily. "but you scared me to death!" joe tried to ignore the remark, but he stillseemed to feel slanting metal under him and a drop of two hundredfeet below. it had been a

nightmarish sensation. "i didn't think," he said uncomfortably. "itwas a crazy thing to do. lucky it worked out." sally glanced at him. the hoist still droppedswiftly. levels of scaffolding shot upward past them. if joehad slipped down that rolling curve of metal, he'd have dropped past allthese. it was not good to think about. he swallowed again. then thehoist checked in its descent. it stopped. joe somewhat absurdly helped sallyoff to solid ground. "it--looks to me," said sally, "as if you'rebound to make me see

somebody killed. joe, would you mind leadinga little bit less adventurous life for a while? while i'm around?" he managed to grin. but he still did not feelright. "nothing i can do until i can look at theplane," he said, changing the subject, "and i can't find the chief untiltonight. could we sightsee a little?" she nodded. they went out from under the intricateframework that upheld the platform. they went, in fact, completelyunder that colossal incomplete object. sally indicated the sidewall.

"let's go look at the pushpots. they're fascinating!" she led the way. the enormous spaciousnessof the shed again became evident. there was a catwalk part way up theinward curving wall. someone leaned on its railing and surveyedthe interior of the shed. he would probably be a security man. maybe thefist fight up on the platform had been seen, or maybe not. theman on the catwalk was hardly more than a speck, and it occurred to joethat there must be other watchers' posts high up on the outer shellwhere men could search the sunlit desert outside for signs of danger.

but he turned and looked yearningly back atthe monstrous thing under the mist of scaffolding. for the first timehe could make out its shape. it was something like an egg, but a greatdeal more like something he couldn't put a name to. actually it was exactlylike nothing in the world but itself, and when it was out in spacethere would be nothing left on earth like it. it would be in a fashion a world in itself,independent of the earth that made it. there would be hydroponic tanksin which plants would grow to purify its air and feed its crew. therewould be telescopes with

which men would be able to study the starsas they had never been able to do from the bottom of earth's ocean ofturbulent air. but it would serve earth. there would be communicators. they would pickup microwave messages and retransmit them to destinations far aroundthe curve of the planet, or else store them and retransmit them to theother side of the world an hour or two hours later. it would store fuel with which men could presentlyset out for the stars--and out to emptiness for nuclear experimentsthat must not be

made on earth. and finally it would be armedwith squat, deadly atomic missiles that no nation could possibly defy.and so this space platform would keep peace on earth. but it could not make good will among men. sally walked on. they reached the mysteriousobjects being manufactured in a row around half the sidewall of the shed.they were of simple design and, by comparison, not unduly large.the first objects were merely frameworks of metal pipe, which menwere welding together unbreakably. they were no bigger than--say--halfof a six-room house. a

little way on, these were filled with intricatearrays of tanks and piping, and still farther--there was a truckand hoist unloading a massive object into place right now--therewere huge engines fitting precisely into openings designed to hold them.others were being plated in with metallic skins. at the very end of this assembly line a cranewas loading a finished object onto a flat-bed trailer. as it swungin the air, joe realized what it was. it might be called a jet plane,but it was not of any type ever before used. more than anything else,it looked like a beetle. it

would not be really useful for anything butits function at the end of operation stepladder. then hundreds of theseungainly objects would cluster upon the platform's sides, like swarmingbees. they would thrust savagely up with their separate jet engines.they would lift the platform from the foundation on which it hadbeen built. tugging, straining, panting, they would get it outof the shed. but their work would not end there. holding it aloft, theywould start it eastward, lifting effortfully. they would carry it asfar and as high and as fast as their straining engines could work. thenthere would be one last

surge of fierce thrusting with oversize jatorockets, built separately into each pushpot, all firing at once. finally the clumsy things would drop off andcome bumbling back home, while the platform's own rockets flared outtheir mile-long flames--and it headed up for emptiness. but the making of these pushpots and all theother multitudinous activities of the shed would have no meaningif the contents of four crates in the wreckage of a burned-out planecould not be salvaged and put to use again.

joe said restlessly: "i want to see all this,sally, and maybe anything else i do is useless, but i've got to findout what happened to the gyros i was bringing here!" sally said nothing. she turned, and they movedacross the long, long space of wood-block flooring toward the doorwayby which they had entered. and now that he had seen the spaceplatform, all of joe's feeling of guilt and despondency came back.it seemed unbearable. they went out through the guarded door, sally surrenderedthe pass, and joe was again checked carefully before he wasfree to go.

then sally said: "you don't want me taggingaround, do you?" joe said honestly: "it isn't exactly that,sally, but if the stuff is really smashed, i'd--rather not have anybodysee me. please don't be angry, but--" sally said quietly: "i know. i'll get somebodyto drive you over." she vanished. she came back with the uniformedman who'd driven major holt. she put her hand momentarily on joe'sarm. "if it's really bad, joe, tell me. you won'tlet yourself cry, but i'll cry for you." she searched his eyes. "really,joe!"

he grinned feebly and went out to the car. the feeling on the way to the airfield wasnot a good one. it was twenty-odd miles from the shed, but joe dreadedwhat he was going to see. the black car burned up the road. itturned to the right off the white highway, onto the curved short cut--andthere was the field. and there was the wreck of the transport plane,still where it had crashed and burned. there were still armedguards about it, but men were working on the wreck, cutting it apart withtorches. already some of it was dissected.

joe went to the remains of the four crates. the largest was bent askew by the force ofthe crash or an explosion, joe didn't know which. the smallest was atwisted mass of charcoal. joe gulped, and dug into them with borrowed tools. the pilot gyros of the space platform wouldapply the torque that would make the main gyros shift it to any desiredposition, or else hold it absolutely still. they were to act, in a sense,as a sort of steering engine on the take-off and keep a useful functionout in space. if a star photograph was to be made, it was essentialthat the platform hold

absolutely still while the exposure lasted.if a guided missile was to be launched, it must be started right, andthe pilot gyros were needed. to turn to receive an arriving rocket fromearth.... the pilot gyros were the steering apparatusof the space platform. they had to be more than adequate. they had tobe perfect! on the take-off alone, they were starkly necessary. the platformcouldn't hope to reach its orbit without them. joe chipped away charred planks. he pulledoff flame-eaten timbers. he peeled off carbonized wrappings--but somedid not need to be peeled:

they crumbled at a touch--and in twenty minuteshe knew the whole story. the rotor motors were ruined. the couplers--pilot-to-main-gyroconnections--had been heated red hot and were no longer hardened steel;their dimensions had changed and they would no longer fit. but thesewere not disastrous items. they were serious, but not tragic. the tragedy was the gyros themselves. on theirabsolute precision and utterly perfect balance the whole workingof the platform would depend. and the rotors were gashed in one place, andthe shafts were bent. being bent and nicked, the precision of the apparatuswas destroyed. its

precision lost, the whole device was useless.and it had taken four months' work merely to get it perfectly balanced! it had been the most accurate piece of machinework ever done on earth. it was balanced to a microgram--to a millionthof the combined weight of three aspirin tablets. it would revolve at40,000 revolutions per minute. it had to balance perfectly or itwould vibrate intolerably. if it vibrated at all it would shake itself topieces, or, failing that, send aging sound waves through all the platform'ssubstance. if it vibrated by the least fraction of a ten-thousandthof an inch, it would

wear, and vibrate more strongly, and destroyitself and possibly the platform. it needed the precision of an astronomicaltelescope's lenses--multiplied! and it was bent. it wasexactly as useless as if it had never been made at all. joe felt as a man might feel if the mirrorof the greatest telescope on earth, in his care, had been smashed. as ifthe most priceless picture in the world, in his charge, had been burned.but he felt worse. whether it was his fault or not--and it wasn't--itwas destroyed. a truck rolled up and was stopped by a guard.there was talk, and the

guard let it through. a small crane lift cameover from the hangars. its normal use was the lifting of plane motorsin and out of their nacelles. now it was to pick up the useless pieces ofequipment on which the best workmen and the best brains of the kenmoreprecision tool company had worked unceasingly for eight calendar months,and which now was junk. joe watched, numbed by disaster, while thecrane hook went down to position above the once-precious objects.men shored up the heavy things and ran planks under them, and then deftlyfitted rope slings for them to be lifted by. it was late afternoon bynow. long shadows were

slanting as the crane truck's gears whined,and the slack took up, and the first of the four charred objects liftedand swung, spinning slowly, to the truck that had come from the shed. joe froze, watching. he watched the second.the third did not spin. it merely swayed. but the fourth.... the linesup to the crane hook were twisted. as the largest of the four crateslifted from its bed, it twisted the lines toward straightness. itspun. it spun more and more rapidly, and then more and more slowly, andstopped, and began to spin back.

then joe caught his breath. it seemed thathe hadn't breathed in minutes. the big crate wasn't balanced. itwas spinning. it wasn't vibrating. it spun around its own center ofgravity, unerringly revealed by its flexible suspension. he watched until it was dropped into the truck.then he went stiffly over to the driver of the car that had broughthim. "everything's all right," he said, feelinga queer astonishment at his own words. "i'm going to ride back to theshed with the stuff i brought. it's not hurt too much. i'll be able to fixit with a man or two i can

pick up out here. but i don't want anythingelse to happen to it!" so he rode back out to the shed on the tailboardof the truck that carried the crates. the sun set as he rode.he was smudged and disheveled. the reek of charred wood and burntinsulation and scorched wrappings was strong in his nostrils. buthe felt very much inclined to sing. it occurred to joe that he should have sentsally a message that she didn't need to cry as a substitute for him.he felt swell! he knew how to do the job that would let the space platformtake off! he'd tell her,

first chance. it was very good to be alive. 5 there was nobody in the world to whom thespace platform was meaningless. to joe and a great many peoplelike him, it was a dream long and stubbornly held to and now doggedlybeing made a reality. to some it was the prospect of peace and thehope of a quiet life: children and grandchildren and a serene look forwardto the future. some people prayed yearningly for its success, thoughthey could have no other share

in its making. and of course there were thosemen who had gotten into power and could not stay there without ruthlessness.they knew what the platform would mean to their kind. for, onceworld peace was certain, they would be killed by the people they ruledover. so they sent grubby, desperate men to wreck it at any cost. theywere prepared to pay for or to commit any crime if the space platformcould be smashed and turmoil kept as the norm of life on earth. and there were the people who were actuallydoing the building. joe rode a bus into bootstrap that night withsome of them. the middle

shift--two to ten o'clock--was off. fleetsof busses rolled out from the small town twenty miles away, their headlightsmaking a procession of paired flames in the darkness. they rolledinto the unloading area and disgorged the late shift--ten to six--to beprocessed by security and admitted to the shed. then, quite empty, thebusses went trundling around to where joe waited with the releasedshift milling around him. the busses stopped and opened their doors.the waiting men stormed in, shoving zestfully, calling to each other,scrambling for seats or merely letting themselves be pushed on board. thebus joe found himself on was

jammed in seconds. he held on to a strap anddidn't notice. he was absorbed in the rapt contemplation of hisidea for the repair of the pilot gyros. the motors could be replacedeasily enough. the foundation of his first despair had been the belief thateverything could be managed but one thing; that the all-importantabsolute accuracy was the only thing that couldn't be achieved. gettingthat accuracy, back at the plant, had consumed four months of time. eachof the gyros was four feet in diameter and weighed five hundred pounds.each spun at 40,000 r.p.m. it had to be machined from a special steelto assure that it would not

fly to pieces from sheer centrifugal force.each was plated with iridium lest a speck of rust form and throw it offbalance. if the shaft and bearings were not centered exactly at thecenter of gravity of the rotors--five hundred pounds of steel off balanceat 40,000 r.p.m. could raise the devil. they could literally wreckthe platform itself. and "exactly at the center of gravity" meant exactly.there could be no error by which the shaft was off center bythe thousandth of an inch, or a ten-thousandth, or even the tenth of a ten-thousandth.the accuracy had to be absolute.

gloating over the solution he'd found, joecould have hugged himself. hanging to a strap in the waiting bus, hesaw another bus start off with a grinding of gears and a spouting of exhaustsmoke. it trundled to the highway and rolled away. another and anotherfollowed it. joe's bus fell in line. they headed for bootstrap in a convoy,a long, long string of lighted vehicles running one behind the other. it was dark outside. the shed was alone, forsecurity. it was twenty miles from the town where its work force sleptand ate and made merry. that was security too. one shift came off,and went through a security

check, and during that time the shed was emptysave for the security officers who roamed it endlessly, lookingfor trouble. sometimes they found it. the shift coming on also passedthrough a security check. nobody could get into the shed without beingidentified past question. the picture-badge stage was long since passedon the space platform job. security was tight! the long procession of busses rolled throughthe night. outside was dark desert. overhead were many stars. inside thejammed bus were swaying figures crowded in the aisle, and every seatwas filled. there was the

smell of sweat, and oil, and tobacco. somebodystill had garlic on his breath from lunch. there was the noise ofmany voices. there was an argument two seats up the aisle. there wasthe rumble of the motor, and the peculiar whine of spinning tires. menhad to raise their voices to be heard above the din. a swaying among the crowded figures more pronouncedthan that caused by the motion of the bus caught joe's eye. somebodywas crowding his way from the back toward the front. the aislewas narrow. joe clung to his strap, thinking hard and happily about therebalancing of the gyros.

there could be no tolerance. it had to beexact. there had to be no vibration at all.... figures swayed away from him. a hand on hisshoulder. "hiya." he swung around. it was the lean man, haney,whom he'd kept from being knocked off the level place two hundred feetup. joe said: "hello." "i thought you were big brass," said haney,rumbling in his ear. "but big brass don't ride the busses."

"i'm going in to try to hunt up the chief,"said joe. haney grunted. he looked estimatingly at joe.his glance fell to joe's hands. joe had been digging further into thecrates, and afterward he'd washed up, but packing grease is hard to getoff. when mixed with soot and charcoal it leaves signs. haney relaxed. "we mostly eat together," he observed, satisfiedthat joe was regular because his hands weren't soft and becausemechanic's soap had done an incomplete job on them. "the chief's a goodguy. join us?" "sure!" said joe. "and thanks."

a brittle voice sounded somewhere around haney'sknees. joe looked down, startled. the midget he'd seen up on the platformnodded up at him. he'd squirmed through the press in haney's wake.he seemed to bristle a little out of pure habit. joe made room forhim. "i'm okay," said the midget pugnaciously. haney made a formal introduction. "mike scandia." he thumbed at joe. "joe kenmore.he's eating with us. wants to find the chief." there had been no reference to the risk joehad run in keeping haney

from a two-hundred-foot fall. but now haneysaid approvingly: "i wanted to say thanks anyhow for keeping your mouthshut. new here?" joe nodded. the noise in the bus made anysort of talk difficult. haney appeared used to it. "saw you with--uh--major holt's daughter,"he observed again. "that's why i thought you were brass. figured oneor the other'd tell on braun. you didn't, or somebody'd've raised cain.but i'll handle it." braun would be the man haney had been fighting.if haney wanted to handle it his way, it was naturally none ofjoe's business. he said

nothing. "braun's a good guy," said haney. "crazy,that's all. he picked that fight. picked it! up there! coulda been himknocked off--and i'd ha' been in a mess! i'll see him tonight." the midget said something biting in his peculiarlycracked and brittle voice. the bus rolled and rolled and rolled. it wasa long twenty miles to bootstrap. the desert outside the bus windowswas utterly black and featureless, but once a convoy of trucks passed,going to the shed.

presently, though, lights twinkled in thenight. again the bus slowed, in column with the others. then there werebarrackslike buildings, succeeding each other, and then there wasa corner and suddenly the outside was ablaze with light. the bussesdrew up to the curb and stopped, and everybody was immediately ina great hurry to get out, shoving unnecessarily, and joe let himselfbe carried along by the crowd. he found himself on the sidewalk with brightneon signs up and down the street. he was in the midst of the crowd whichwas the middle shift

released. it eddied and dispersed withoutseeming to lessen. most of the figures in sight were men. there were very,very few women. the neon signs proclaimed that here one could buy beer,and that this was fred's place, and that was sid's steak joint. bowling.pool. a store--still open for this shift's trade--sold fancy shirtsand strictly practical work clothes and highly eccentric items ofpersonal adornment. a movie house. a second. a third. somewhere a recordshop fed repetitious music to the night air. there was movement and crowdingand jostling, but the middle of the street was almost empty savefor the busses. there were

some bicycles, but practically no other wheeledtraffic. after all, bootstrap was strictly a security town. aman could leave whenever he chose, but there were formalities, and personalcars weren't practical. "chief'll be yonder," said haney in joe'sear. "come along." they shouldered their way along the sidewalk.the passers-by were of a type--construction men. somebody here hadtaken part in the building of every skyscraper and bridge and dam put upin joe's lifetime. they could have been kept away from the space platformjob only by a flat refusal by security to let them be hired.

haney and joe moved toward sid's steak joint,with mike the midget marching truculently between them. men noddedto them as they passed. joe marshaled in his mind what he was goingto tell the chief. he had a trick for fixing the pilot gyros. a speckof rust would spoil them, and they had been through a plane crash and afire and explosions, but his trick would do, in ten days or less, whatthe plant back home had needed four months to accomplish. the trick was somethingto gloat over. into sid's steak joint. a juke box was playing.over in a booth, four men ate hungrily, with a slot tv machine inthe wall beside them showing

wrestling matches out in san francisco. awaiter carried a huge tray from which steam and fragrant odors arose. there was the chief, dark and saturnine tolook at, with his straight black hair gleaming in the light. he was amohawk, and he and his tribe had taken to steel construction work a longtime back. they were good. there were not many big construction jobson which the chief's tribesmen were not to be found working. forty of themhad died together in the worst construction accident in history, whena bridge on its way to completion collapsed in the making, but therewere a dozen or more at

work on the space platform now. the chiefhad essayed machine-tool work at the kenmore plant, and he'd been good.he'd pitched on the plant baseball team, and he'd sung bass in the churchchoir, but there had been nobody else around who talked indian,and he'd gotten lonely. at that, though, he'd left because the spaceplatform began and wild horses couldn't have kept him away from a job likethat! he'd held a table for haney and mike, buthis eyes widened when he saw joe. then he grinned and almost upset thetable to stand up and greet him.

"son-of-a-gun!" he said warmly. "what youdoin' here?" "right now," said joe. "i'm looking for you.i've got a job for you." the chief, still grinning, shook his head. "not me, i'm here till the platform's done." "it's on the job," said joe. "i've got toget a crew together to repair something i brought out here today and thatgot smashed in the landing." the four of them sat down. mike's chin wasbarely above the table top. the chief waved to a waiter. "steaks all around!"he bellowed. then he bent toward joe. "shoot it!"

joe told his story. concisely. the pilot gyros,which had to be perfect, had been especially gunned at by saboteurs.an attack with possibly stolen proximity-fused rockets. the planewas booby-trapped, and somebody at an airfield had had a chance tospring the trap. so it was wreckage. crashed and burned on landing. the chief growled. haney pressed his lipstogether. the eyes of mike were burning. "plenty of that sabotage stuff," growled thechief. "hard to catch the so-and-sos. smash the gyros and the take-off'dhave to wait till new

ones got made--and that's more time for moresabotage." joe said carefully: "i think it can be licked.listen a minute, will you?" the chief fixed his eyes upon him. "the gyros have to be rebalanced," said joe."they have to spin on their own center of gravity. at the plant, theyset them up, spun them, and found which side was heavy. they took metaloff till it ran smoothly at five hundred r.p.m. then they spun it at athousand. it vibrated. they found imbalance that was too small to showup before. they fixed that.

they speeded it up. and so on. they triedto make the center of gravity the center of the shaft by trimming off theweight that put the center of gravity somewhere else. right?" the chief said irritably: "no other way todo it! no other way!" "i saw one," said joe. "when they cleanedup the wreck at the airfield, they heaved up the crates with a crane. theslings were twisted. every crate spun as it rose. but not one wobbled!they found their own centers of gravity and spun around them!" the chief scowled, deep in thought. then hisface went blank.

"by the holy mud turtle!" he grunted. "i getit!" joe said, with very great pains not to seemtriumphant, "instead of spinning the shaft and trimming the rotor,we'll spin the rotor and trim the shaft. we'll form the shaft around thecenter of gravity, instead of trying to move the center of gravity to themiddle of the shaft. we'll spin the rotors on a flexible bearing base.i think it'll work." surprisingly, it was mike the midget who saidwarmly, "you got it! yes, sir, you got it!" the chief took a deep breath. "yeah! and d'youknow how i know? the

plant built a high-speed centrifuge once.remember?" he grinned with the triumph joe concealed. "it was just a platewith a shaft in the middle. there were vanes on the plate. it fitted ina shaft hole that was much too big. they blew compressed air up the shafthole. it floated the plate up, the air hit the vanes and spun theplate--and it ran as sweet as honey! balanced itself and didn't wobblea bit! we'll do something like that! sure!" "will you work on it with me?" asked joe."we'll need a sort of crew--three or four altogether. have to figureout the stuff we need. i

can ask for anybody i want. i'm asking foryou. you pick the others." the chief grinned broadly. "any objections,haney? you and mike and me and joe here? look!" he pulled a pencil out of his pocket. he startedto draw on the plastic table top, and then took a paper napkin instead. "something like this----" the steaks came, sizzling on the plattersthey'd been cooked in. the outside was seared, and the inside was hotand deliciously rare. intellectual exercises like the designingof a machine-tool operation

could not compete with such aromas and sightsand sounds. the four of them fell to. but they talked as they ate. absorbed andoften with their mouths full, frequently with imperfect articulation, butwith deepening satisfaction as the steaks vanished and the method they'duse took form in their minds. it wouldn't be wholly simple, of course.when the rotors were spinning about their centers of gravity, trimmingoff the shaft would change the center of gravity. but the changewould be infinitely less than trimming off the rotors' rims. if theyspun the rotors and used an

abrasive on the high side of the shaft asit turned.... "going to have precession!" warned mike. "haveto have a polishing surface. quarter turn behind the cutter. that'llhold it." joe only remembered afterward to be astonishedthat mike would know gyro theory. at the moment he merely swallowedquickly to get the words out. "right! and if we cut too far down we canplate the bearing up to thickness and cut it down again----" "plate it up with iridium," said the chief.he waved a steak knife. "man! this is gonna be fun! no tolerance yousay, joe?"

"no tolerance," agreed joe. "accurate withinthe limits of measurement." the chief beamed. the platform was a challengeto all of humanity. the pilot gyro was essential to the functioningof the platform. to provide that necessity against impossible obstacleswas a challenge to the four who were undertaking it. "some fun!" repeated the chief, blissfully. they ate their steaks, talking. they consumedhuge slabs of apple pie with preposterous mounds of ice cream on top,still talking urgently. they drank coffee, interrupting each otherto draw diagrams. they used

up all the paper napkins, and were still atit when someone came heavily toward the table. it was the stocky man whohad fought with haney on the platform that day. braun. he tapped haney on the shoulder. the fourat the table looked up. "we hadda fight today," said braun in a queervoice. he was oddly pale. "we didn't finish. you wanna finish?" haney growled. "that was a fool business," he said angrily."that ain't any place to fight, up on the job! you know it!"

"yeah," said braun in the same odd voice."you wanna finish it now?" haney said formidably: "i'm not dodgin' anyfight. i didn't dodge it then. i'm not dodgin' it now. you picked it.it was crazy! but if you got over the craziness----" braun smiled a remarkably peculiar smile."i'm still crazy. we finish, huh?" haney pushed back his chair and stood up grimly."okay, we finish it! you coulda killed me. i coulda killed youtoo, with that fall ready for either of us."

"sure! too bad nobody got killed," said braun. "you fellas wait," said haney angrily to joeand the rest. "there's a storeroom out back. sid'll let us use it." but the chief pushed back his chair. "uh-uh," he said, shaking his head. "we'rewatchin' this." haney spoke with elaborate courtesy: "youmind, braun? want to get some friends of yours, too?" "i got no friends," said braun. "let's go." the chief went authoritatively to the ownerof sid's steak joint. he

paid the bill, talking. the owner of the placenegligently jerked his thumb toward the rear. this was not an unparalleledrequest--for the use of a storeroom so that two men could battereach other undisturbed. bootstrap was a law-abiding town, becauseto get fired from work on the platform was to lose a place in the most importantjob in history. so it was inevitable that the settlement of quarrelsin private should become commonplace. the chief leading, they filed through thekitchen and out of doors. the storeroom lay beyond. the chief went in andswitched on the light. he

looked about and was satisfied. it was almostempty, save for stacked cartons in one corner. braun was already takingoff his coat. "you want rounds and stuff?" demanded thechief. "i want fight," said braun thickly. "okay, then," snapped the chief. "no kickin'or gougin'. a man's down, he has a chance to get up. that's all therules. right?" haney, stripping off his coat in turn, gruntedan assent. he handed his coat to joe. he faced his antagonist. it was a curious atmosphere for a fight. therewere merely the plank

walls of the storeroom with a single danglinglight in the middle and an unswept floor beneath. the chief stood inthe doorway, scowling. this didn't feel right. there was not enough hatredin evidence to justify it. there was doggedness and resolution enough,but braun was deathly white and if his face was contorted--and itwas--it was not with the lust to batter and injure and maim. it wassomething else. the two men faced each other. and then thestocky, swarthy braun swung at haney. the blow had sting in it but nothingmore. it almost looked as if braun were trying to work himself up tothe fight he'd insisted on

finishing. haney countered with a roundhouseblow that glanced off braun's cheek. and then they bore in at eachother, slugging without science or skill. joe watched. braun launched a blow that hurt,but haney sent him reeling back. he came in doggedly again, and swungand swung, but he had no idea of boxing. his only idea was to slug. he didslug. haney had been peevish rather than angry. now he began toglower. he began to take the fight to braun. he knocked braun down. braun staggered upand rushed. a wildly flailing

fist landed on haney's ear. he doubled braunup with a wallop to the midsection. braun came back, fists swinging. haney closed one eye for him. he came back.haney shook him from head to foot with a chest blow. he came back. haneysplit his lip and loosened a tooth. he came back. the chief said sourly: "this ain't a fight.quit it, haney! he don't know how!" haney tried to draw away, but braun swarmedon him, striking fiercely until haney had to floor him again. he draggedhimself up and rushed at

haney--and was knocked down again. haney stoodover him, panting furiously. "quit it, y'fool! what's the matter with you?" braun started to get up again. the chief interferedand held him, while haney glared. "he ain't going to fight any more, braun,"pronounced the chief firmly. "you ain't got a chance. this fight's over.you had enough." braun was bloody and horribly battered, buthe panted: "he's got enough?"

"are you out o' your head?" demanded the chief."he ain't got a mark on him!" "i ain't--got enough," panted braun, "tillhe's got--enough!" his breath was coming in soblike gasps, theresult of body blows. it hadn't been a fight but a beating, administeredby haney. but braun struggled to get up. mike the midget said brittlely: "you got enough,haney. you're satisfied. tell him so." "sure i'm satisfied," snorted haney. "i don'twant to hit him any more.

i got enough of that!" braun panted: "okay! okay!" the chief let him get to his feet. he wentgroggily to his coat. he tried to put himself into it. mike caughtjoe's eye and nodded meaningfully. joe helped braun into the coat.there was silence, save for braun's heavy, labored breathing. he moved unsteadily toward the door. thenhe stopped. "haney," he said effortfully, "i don't sayi'm sorry for fighting you today. i fight first. but now i say i am sorry.you are good guy, haney.

i was crazy. i--got reason." he stumbled out of the door and was gone.the four who were left behind stared at each other. "what's the matter with him?" demanded haneyblankly. "he's nuts," said the chief. "if he was gonnaapologize----" mike shook his head. "he wouldn't apologize," he said brittlely,"because he thought you might think he was scared. but when he'd provedhe wasn't scared of a beating--then he could say he was sorry."he paused. "i've seen guys i

liked a lot less than him." haney put on his coat, frowning. "i don't get it," he rumbled. "next time isee him----" "you won't," snapped mike. "none of us will.i'll bet on it." but he was wrong. the others went out of thestoreroom and back into sid's steak joint, and the chief politelythanked the proprietor for the loan of his storeroom for a private fight.then they went out into the neon-lighted business street of bootstrap. "what do we do now?" asked joe.

"where you sleeping?" asked the chief hospitably."i can get you a room at my place." "i'm staying out at the shed," joe told himawkwardly. "my family's known major holt a long time. i'm stayingat his house behind the shed." haney raised his eyebrows but said nothing. "better get out there then," said the chief."it's midnight, and they might want to lock up. there's your bus." a lighted bus was waiting by the curb. itsdoors were open, but it was empty of passengers. single busses ran outto the shed now and then, but

they ran in fleets at shift-change time. joewent over and climbed aboard the bus. "we'll turn up early," said the chief. "thiswon't be a shift job. we'll look things over and lay out what we wantand then get to work, eh?" "right," said joe. "and thanks." "we'll be there with our hair in braids,"said mike, in his cracked voice. "now a glass of beer and so to bed.'night." haney waved his hand. the three of them marchedoff, the two huge figures of haney and the chief, with miketrotting truculently between

them, hardly taller than their knees. theywere curiously colorful with all the many-tinted neon signs upon them.they turned into a diner. joe sat in the bus, alone. the driver wasoff somewhere. the sounds of bootstrap were distinctive by night. footsteps,and the jangling of bicycle bells, and voices, and a radio blaringsomewhere and a record-shop loud-speaker somewhere else, anda sort of underriding noise of festivity. there was a sharp rap on the glass by joe'swindow. he started and looked out. braun--battered, and bleedingfrom the corner of his

mouth--motioned urgently for him to come tothe door of the bus. joe went. braun stared up at him in a new fashion. nowhe was neither dogged nor fierce nor desperate to look at. despite thebeating he'd taken, he seemed completely and somehow frighteninglytranquil. he looked like somebody who has come to the end of tormentand is past any feeling but that of relief from suffering. "you--" said braun. "that girl you were withtoday. her pop is major holt, eh?"

joe frowned, and reservedly said that he was. "you tell her pop," said braun detachedly,"this is hot tip. hot tip. look two kilometers north of shed tomorrow.he find something bad. hot! you tell him. two kilometers." "y-yes," said joe, his frown increasing. "butlook here----" "be sure say hot," repeated braun. rather incredibly, he smiled. then he turnedand walked quickly away. joe went back to his seat in the empty bus,and sat there and waited for it to start, and tried to figure out whatthe message meant. since it

was for major holt, it had something to dowith security. and security meant defense against sabotage. and "hot"might mean merely _significant_, or--in these days--it mightmean _something else_. in fact, it might mean something to make yourhair stand on end when thought of in connection with the space platform. joe waited for the bus to take off. he becameconvinced that braun's use of the word "hot" did not mean merely "significant."the other meaning was what he had in mind. joe's teeth tried to chatter.

he didn't let them. 6 major holt wasn't to be found when joe gotout to the shed. and he wasn't in the house in the officers'-quartersarea behind it. there was only the housekeeper, who yawned pointedlyas she let joe in. sally was presumably long since asleep. and joe didn'tknow any way to get hold of the major. he assured himself that braun wasa good guy--if he weren't he wouldn't have insisted on taking a lickingbefore he apologized--and he hadn't said there was any hurry. tomorrow,he'd said. so joe uneasily

let himself be led to a room with a cot, andhe was asleep in what seemed seconds. but just the same he was badlyworried. in fact, next morning joe woke at a practicallyunearthly hour with braun's message pounding on his brain. hewas downstairs waiting when the housekeeper appeared. she looked startled. "major holt?" he asked. but the major was gone. he must have donewith no more than three or four hours' sleep. there was an empty coffeecup whose contents he'd gulped down before going back to the securityoffice.

joe trudged to the barbed-wire enclosure aroundthe officers'-quarters area and explained to the sentry where hewanted to go. a sleepy driver whisked him around the half-mile circle tothe security building and he found his way to major holt's office. the plain and gloomy secretary was alreadyon the job, too. she led him in to face major holt. he blinked at the sightof joe. "hm.... i have some news," he observed. "weback-tracked the parcel that exploded when it was dumped from the plane." joe had almost forgotten it. too many otherthings had happened since.

"we've got two very likely prisoners out ofthat affair," said the major. "they may talk. also, an emergencyinspection of other transport planes has turned up three other grenadestucked away in front-wheel wells. ah--co_2 bottles have turned out tohave something explosive in them. a very nice bit of work, that! the sandy-hairedman who fueled your plane--ah--disappeared. that is bad!" joe said politely: "that's fine, sir." "all in all, you've been the occasion of ourforestalling a good deal of sabotage," said the major. "bad for you, ofcourse.... did you find the

men you were looking for?" "i've found them, but--." "i'll have them transferred to work underyour direction," said the major briskly. "their names?" joe gave the names. the major wrote them down. "very good. i'm busy now----" "i've a tip for you," said joe. "i think itshould be checked right away. i don't feel too good about it." the major waited impatiently. and joe explained,very carefully, about

the fight on the platform the day before,braun's insistence on finishing the fight in bootstrap, and thenthe tip he'd given joe after everything was over. he repeated the messageexactly, word for word. the major, to do him justice, did not interrupt.he listened with an expression that varied between grimness andweariness. when joe ended he picked up a telephone. he talked briefly.joe felt a reluctant sort of approval. major holt was not a man one couldever feel very close to, and the work he was in charge of was not likelyto make him popular, but he did think straight--and fast. he didn'tthink "hot" meant

"significant," either. when he'd hung up thephone he said curtly: "when will your work crew get here?" "early--but not yet," said joe. "not for sometime yet." "go with the pilot," said the major. "you'drecognize what braun meant as soon as anybody. see what you see." joe stood up. "you--think the tip is straight?" "this isn't the first time," said major holtdetachedly, "that a man has been blackmailed into trying sabotage. ifhe's got a family somewhere

abroad, and they're threatened with deathor torture unless he does such-and-such here, he's in a bad fix. it'shappened. of course he can't tell me! he's watched. but he sometimes findsan out." joe was puzzled. his face showed it. "he can try to do the sabotage," said themajor precisely, "or he can arrange to be caught trying to do it. if he'scaught--he tried; and the blackmail threat is no threat at all so longas he keeps his mouth shut. which he does. and--ah--you would be surprisedhow often a man who wasn't born in the united states would rathergo to prison for sabotage

than commit it--here." "if your friend braun is caught," said themajor, "he will be punished. severely. officially. but privately, someonewill--ah--mention this tip and say 'thanks.' and he'll be told that hewill be released from prison just as soon as he thinks it's safe. and hewill be. that's all." he turned to his papers. joe went out. onthe way to meet the pilot who'd check on his tip, he thought thingsover. he began to feel a sort of formless but very definite pride. he wasn'tquite sure what he was proud of, but it had something to do withbeing part of a country toward

which men of wholly different upbringing couldfeel deep loyalty. if a man who was threatened unless he turned traitor,a man who might not even be a citizen, arranged to be caught andpunished for an apparent crime against a country rather than commitit--that wasn't bad. there can be a lot of things wrong with a nation,but if somebody from another one entirely can come to feel that kind ofloyalty toward it--well--it's not too bad a country to belong to. joe had a security guard with him this time,instead of sally, as he went across the vast, arc-lit interior ofthe shed and past the

shimmering growing monster that was the platform.he went all the way to the great swinging doors that let in materialstrucks. and there were guards there, and they checked each driververy carefully before they admitted his truck. but somehow it wasn'tirritating. it wasn't scornful suspicion. there'd be snide and snappy charactersin the security force, of course, swaggering and throwing their weightabout. but even they were guarding something that men--some men--werewilling to throw away their lives for. joe and his guard reached one of the hugeentrances as a ten-wheeler

truck came in with a load of shining metalplates. joe's escort went through the opening with him and they waitedoutside. the sun had barely risen. it looked huge but very far away, andjoe suddenly realized why just this spot had been chosen for the buildingof the platform. the ground was flat. all the way to the easternhorizon there wasn't even a minor hillock rising above the plain.it was bare, arid, sun-scorched desert. it was featureless savefor sage and mesquite and tall thin stalks of yucca. but it was flat.it could be a runway. it was a perfect place for the platform to startfrom. the platform shouldn't

touch ground at all, after it was out of theshed, but at least it wouldn't run into any obstacles on its waytoward the horizon. a light plane came careening around the greatcurved outer surface of the shed. it landed and taxied up to the door.it swung smartly around and its side door opened. a bandaged handwaved at joe. he climbed in. the pilot of this light, flimsy plane wasthe co-pilot of the transport of yesterday. he was the man joe had helpedto dump cargo. joe climbed in and settled himself. the smallmotor pop-popped valiantly, the plane rushed forward over hard-packeddesert earth, and

went swaying up into the air. the co-pilot--pilot now--shouted cheerfullyabove the din: "hiya. you couldn't sleep either? burns hurt?" joe shook his head. "bothered," he shouted in reply. then he added,"do i do something to help, or am i along just for the ride?" "first we take a look," the pilot called overthe motor racket. "two kilometers due north of the shed, eh?" "that's right."

"we'll see what's there," the pilot told him. the small plane went up and up. at five hundredfeet--nearly level with the roof of the shed--it swung away and beganto make seemingly erratic dartings out over the spotty desert land,and then back. actually, it was a search pattern. joe looked down fromhis side of the small cockpit. this was a very small plane indeed,and in consequence its motor made much more noise inside its cabinthan much more powerful engines in bigger ships. "those burns i got," shouted the pilot, staringdown, "kept me awake. so

i got up and was just walking around whenthe call came for somebody to drive one of these things. i took over." back and forth, and back and forth. from fivehundred feet in the early morning the desert had a curious appearance.the plane was low enough for each smallest natural feature to be visible,and it was early enough for every shrub or hummock to cast a long,slender shadow. the ground looked streaked, but all the streaks ran thesame way, and all were shadows. joe shouted: "what's that?"

the plane banked at a steep angle and ranback. it banked again. the pilot stared carefully. he reached forwardand pushed a button. there was a tiny impact underfoot. another steepbanking turn, and joe saw a puff of smoke in the air. the pilot shouted: "it's a man. he looks dead." he swung directly over the small prone objectand there was a second puff of smoke. "they've got range finders on us from theshed," he called across the two-foot space separating him from joe. "thismarks the spot. now we'll

see if there's anything to the hot part ofthat tip." he reached over behind his seat and broughtout a stubby pole like a fishpole with a very large reel. there wasalso a headset, and something very much like a large aluminum fish on theend of the line. "you know geiger counters?" called the pilot."stick on these headphones and listen!" joe slipped on the headset. the pilot threwa switch and joe heard clickings. they had no pattern and no fixedfrequency. they were clickings at strictly random intervals, butthere was an average

frequency, at that. "let the counter out the window," called thepilot, "and listen. tell me if the noise goes up." joe obeyed. the aluminum fish dangled. theline slanted astern from the wind. it made a curve between the pole andthe aluminum plummet, which was hollow in the direction of the plane'smotion. the pilot squinted down and began to swing in a wide circle aroundthe spot where an apparently dead man had been sighted, andabove which puffs of smoke now floated.

three-quarters of the way around, the randomclickings suddenly became a roar. joe said: "hey!" the pilot swung the plane about and flew back.he pointed to the button he'd pushed. "poke that when you hear it again." the clickings.... they roared. joe pushedthe button. he felt the tiny impact. "once more," said the pilot.

he swung in nearer where the dead man lay.joe had a sickening idea of who the dead man might be. a sudden rush ofnoise in the headphones and he pushed the button again. "reel in now!" shouted the pilot. "our job'sdone." joe reeled in as the plane winged steadilyback toward the shed. there were puffs of smoke floating in the air behind.they had been ranged on at the instant they appeared. somebody backat the shed knew that something that needed to be investigated wasat a certain spot, and the two later puffs of smoke had said that radioactivitywas notable in the

air along the line the two puffs made. notmuch more information would be needed. the meaning of braun's warningthat his tip was "hot" was definite. it was "hot" in the sense that itdealt with radioactivity! the plane dipped down and landed by the greatdoors again. it taxied up and the pilot killed the motor. "we've been using geigers for months," hesaid pleasedly, "and never got a sign before. this is one time we were setfor something." "what?" asked joe. but he knew. "atomic dust is one good guess," the pilottold him. "it was talked of

as a possible weapon away back in the smythreport. nobody's ever tried it. we thought it might be tried against theplatform. if somebody managed to spread some really hot radioactivedust around the shed, all three shifts might get fatally burned beforeit was noticed. _they'd_ think so, anyhow! but the guy who was supposedto dump it opened up the can for a look. and it killed him." he climbed out of the plane and went to thedoorway. he took a telephone from a guard and talked crisply into it. hehung up. "somebody coming for you," he said amiably."wait here. be seeing you."

he went out, the motor kicked over and caught,and the tiny plane raced away. seconds later it was aloft and wingingsouthward. joe waited. presently a door opened and somethingcame clanking out. it was a tractor with surprisingly heavy armor.there were men in it, also wearing armor of a peculiar sort, which theywere still adjusting. the tractor towed a half-track platform on whichthere were a crane and a very considerable lead-coated bin with a top.it went briskly off into the distance toward the north. joe was amazed, but comprehending. the vehicleand the men were armored

against radioactivity. they would approachthe dead man from upwind, and they would scoop up his body and put it inthe lead-lined bin, and with it all deadly radioactive material near him.this was the equipment that must have been used to handle the dud atombomb some months back. it had been ready for that. it was ready for thisemergency. somebody had tried to think of every imaginable situation thatcould arise in connection with the platform. but in a moment a guard came for joe and tookhim to where the chief and haney and mike waited by the still incompletely-pulled-awaycrates. they

had some new ideas about the job on hand thatwere better than the original ones in some details. all four ofthem set to work to make a careful survey of damage--of parts that wouldhave to be replaced and of those that needed to be repaired. the discoveriesthey made would have appalled joe earlier. now he merely made notesof parts necessary to be replaced by new ones that could be had withinthe repair time for rebalancing the rotors. "this is sure a mess," said haney mournfully,as they worked. "it's two days just getting things cleaned up!"

the chief eyed the rotors. there were twoof them, great four-foot disks with extraordinary short and stubby shaftsthat were brought to beautifully polished conical ends to fit inthe bearings. the bearings were hollowed to fit the shaft ends, but theywere intricately scored to form oil channels. in operation, a very specialsilicone oil would be pumped into the bearings under high pressure.distributed by the channels, the oil would form a film that byits pressure would hold the cone end of the bearing away from actual contactwith the metal. the rotors, in fact, would be floated in oil justas the high-speed

centrifuge the chief had mentioned had floatedon compressed air. but they had to be perfectly balanced, becauseany imbalance would make the shaft pierce the oil film and touch the metalof the bearing--and when a shaft is turning at 40,000 r.p.m. it is notgood for it to touch anything. shaft and bearing would burn white-hotin fractions of a second and there would be several devils topay. "we've got to spin it in a lathe," said thechief profoundly, "to hold the chucks. the chucks have got to be thesesame bearings, because nothing else will stand the speed. and wegot to cut out the bed plate

of any lathe we find. hm. we got to do ourspinning with the shaft lined up with the earth's axis, too." mike nodded wisely, and joe knew he'd pointedthat out. it was true enough. a high-speed gyro could only be runfor minutes in one single direction if its mount were fixed. if a preciselymounted gyro had its shaft pointed at the sun, for example, whileit ran, its axis would try to follow the sun. it would try not to turnwith the earth, and it would wreck itself. they had to use the cone bearings,but in order to protect the fine channellings for oil they'd haveto use cone-shaped shims at

the beginning while running at low speed.the cone ends of the shaft would need new machining to line them up.the bearings had to be fixed, yet flexible. the---- they had used many paper napkins the nightbefore, merely envisioning these details. new problems turned up as theapparatus itself was being uncovered and cleaned. they worked for hours, clearing away sootand charred material. joe's list of small parts to be replaced from thehome plant was as long as his arm. the motors, of course, had to bescrapped and new ones

substituted. considering their speed--thefield strength at operating rate was almost imperceptible--they had tobe built new, which would mean round-the-clock work at kenmore. a messenger came for joe. the security officewanted him. major holt's gloomy secretary did not even glance up ashe entered. major holt himself looked tired. "there was a man out there," he said curtly."i think it is your friend braun. i'll get you to look and identify." joe had suspected as much. he waited.

"he'd opened a container of cobalt powder.it was in a beryllium case. there was half a pound of it. it killed him." "radioactive cobalt," said joe. "definitely," said the major grimly. "halfa pound of it gives off the radiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium.one can guess that he had been instructed to get up as high as hecould in the shed and dump the powder into the air. it would diffuse--scatteras it sifted down. it would have contaminated the whole shed pastall use for years--let alone killing everybody in it."

joe swallowed. "he was burned, then." "he had the equivalent of two hundred andfifty pounds of radium within inches of his body," the major said unbendingly,"and naturally it was not healthy. for that matter, the containeritself was not adequate protection for him. once he'd carried it inhis pocket for a very few minutes, he was a dead man, even though hewas not conscious of the fact." joe knew what was wanted of him.

"you want me to look at him," he said. the major nodded. "yes. afterward, get a radiation check onyourself. it is hardly likely that he was--ah--carrying the stuff with himlast night, in bootstrap. but if he was--ah--you may need some precautionarytreatment--you and the men who were with you." joe realized what that meant. braun had beengiven a relatively small container of the deadliest available radioactivematerial on earth. milligrams of it, shipped from oak ridge forscientific use, were

encased in thick lead chests. he'd carriedtwo hundred and fifty grams in a container he could put in his pocket.he was not only dead as he walked, under such circumstances. he was alsodeath to those who walked near him. "somebody else may have been burned in anycase," said the major detachedly. "i am going to issue a radioactivityalarm and check every man in bootstrap for burns. it is--ah--verylikely that the man who delivered it to this man is burned, too. butyou will not mention this, of course."

he waved his hand in dismissal. joe turnedto go. the major added grimly: "by the way, there is no doubt aboutthe booby-trapping of planes. we've found eight, so far, ready tobe crashed when a string was pulled while they were serviced. but the menwho did the booby-trapping have vanished. they disappeared suddenly duringlast night. they were warned! have you talked to anybody?" "no sir," said joe. "i would like to know," said the major coldly,"how they knew we'd found out their trick!"

joe went out. he felt very cold at the pitof his stomach. he was to identify braun. then he was to get a radiationcheck on himself. in that order of events. he was to identify braunfirst, because if braun had carried a half-pound of radioactive cobalton him in sid's steak joint the night before, joe was going to die. andso were haney and the chief and mike, and anybody else who'd passed nearhim. so joe was to do the identification before he was disturbed bythe information that he was dead. he made the identification. braun was verydecently laid out in a

lead-lined box, with a lead-glass window overhis face. there was no sign of any injury on him except from hisfight with haney. the radiation burns were deep, but they'd leftno marks of their own. he'd died before outer symptoms could occur. joe signed the identification certificate.he went to be checked for his own chances of life. it was a peculiar sensation.the most peculiar was that he wasn't afraid. he was neither confidentthat he was not burned inside, nor sure that he was. he simply wasnot afraid. nobody really ever believes that he is going to die--inthe sense of ceasing to exist.

the most arrant coward, stood before a wallto be shot, or strapped in an electric chair, finds that astoundinglyhe does not believe that what happens to his body is going to kill him,the individual. that is why a great many people die with reasonable dignity.they know it is not worth making too much of a fuss over. but when the geiger counters had gone overhim from head to foot, and his body temperature was normal, and his reflexessound--when he was assured that he had not been exposed to dangerousradiation--joe felt distinctly weak in the knees. and that wasnatural, too.

he went trudging back to the wrecked gyros.his friends were gone, leaving a scrawled memo for him. they hadgone to pick out the machine tools for the work at hand. he continued to check over the wreckage, thinkingwith a detached compassion of that poor devil braun who wasthe victim of men who hated the idea of the space platform and what itwould mean to humanity. men of that kind thought of themselves as superiorto humanity, and of human beings as creatures to be enslaved. so theyarranged for planes to crash and burn and for men to be murdered, and theypracticed blackmail--or

rewarded those who practiced it for them.they wanted to prevent the platform from existing because it would keepthem from trying to pull the world down in ruins so they could ruleover the wreckage. joe--who had so recently thought it likelythat he would die--considered these actions with an icy dislike that wasmuch deeper than anger. it was backed by everything he believed in, everythinghe had ever wanted, and everything he hoped for. and anger couldcool off, but the way he felt about people who would destroy othersfor their own purposes could not cool off. it was part of him. he thoughtabout it as he worked, with

all the noises of the shed singing in hisears. a voice said: "joe." he started and turned. sally stood behindhim, looking at him very gravely. she tried to smile. "dad told me," she said, "about the check-upthat says you're all right. may i congratulate you on your being withus for a while?--on the cobalt's not getting near you?--or the restof us?" joe did not know exactly what to say. "i'm going inside the platform," she toldhim. "would you like to come

along?" he wiped his hands on a piece of waste. "naturally! my gang is off picking out tools.i can't do much until they come back." he fell into step beside her. they walkedtoward the platform. and it was still magic, no matter how often joe lookedat it. it was huge beyond belief, though it was surely not heavyin proportion to its size. its bright plating shone through the gossamerscaffolding all about it. there was always a faint bluish mist in theair, and there were the

marsh-fire lights of welding torches playinghere and there. the sounds of the shed were a steady small tumult injoe's ears. he was getting accustomed to them, though. "how is it you can go around so freely?" heasked abruptly. "i have to be checked and rechecked." "you'll get a full clearance," she told him."it has to go through channels. me--i have influence. i always comein through security, and i have the door guards trained. and i do havebusiness in the platform." he turned his head to look at her.

"interior decoration," she explained. "anddon't laugh! it isn't prettifying. it's psychology. the platformwas designed by engineers and physicists and people with slide rules. theymade a beautiful environment for machinery. but there willbe men living in it, and they aren't machines." "i don't see----" "they designed the hydroponic garden," saidsally with a certain scorn. "they calculated very neatly that eleven squarefeet of leaf surface of a pumpkin plant will purify all the air aresting man uses, and so much

more will purify the air a man uses when he'sworking hard. so they designed the gardens for the most efficientproduction of the greatest possible leaf surface--of pumpkin plants!they figured food would be brought up by the tender rockets! but canyou imagine the men in the platform, floating among the stars, livingon dehydrated food and stuffing themselves hungrily with pumpkinsbecause that is the only fresh food they have?" joe saw the irony. "they're thinking of mechanical efficiency,"said sally indignantly. "i

don't know anything about machinery, but i'vewasted an awful lot of time at school and otherwise if i don't knowsomething about human beings! i argued, and the garden now isn'tas mechanically efficient, but it'll be a nice place for a man to gointo. he won't smell pumpkin plants all the time, either. i've even gottenthem to include some flowers!" they were very near the platform. and it wasvery near to completion. joe looked at it hungrily, and he felt a greatsense of urgency. he tried to strip away the scaffolding in hismind and see it floating

proudly free in emptiness, with white-hotsunshine glinting from it, and only a background of unwinking stars. sally's voice went on: "and i've really putup an argument about the living quarters. they had every interior wallpainted aluminum! i argued that in space or out of it, where people haveto live, it's housekeeping. this is going to be their home.and they ought to feel human in it!" they passed into one of the openings in themaze of uprights. all about them there were trucks, and puffing engines,and hoists. joe dragged

sally aside as a monstrous truck-and-trailercame from where it had delivered some gigantic item of interior use.it rumbled past them, and she led the way to a flight of temporary woodenstairs with two security guards at the bottom. sally talked severelyto them, and they grinned and waved for joe to go ahead. he went upthe steps--which would be pulled down before the platform's launching--andwent actually inside the space platform for the first time. it was a moment of extreme vividness for him.within the past hour he'd come to think detachedly of the possibilityof death for himself, and

then had learned that he would live for awhile yet. he knew that sally had been scared on his account, and that hermatter-of-fact manner was partly assumed. she was at least as much wroughtup as he was. and this was the first time he was going intowhat would be the first space ship ever to leave the earth on a non-returnjourney. 7 nobody could have gone through the changesof emotion joe had experienced that morning and remained quitematter-of-fact. seeing a dead man who had more or less deliberatelykilled himself so that he

wouldn't have to kill joe--for one--had itseffect. knowing that it was certainly possible the man hadn't killed himselfin time had another. being checked over for radiation burns whichwould mean that he'd die quite comfortably within three or four days,and then learning that no burns existed, was something of an ordeal.and sally--of course her feelings shouldn't have been as vivid as hisown, but the fact that she'd been scared for him held some significance.when, on top of all the rest, he went into the space platformfor the first time, joe was definitely keyed up.

but he talked technology. he examined theinner skin and its lining before going beyond the temporary entrance.the plating of the platform was actually double. the outer layer was ameteor-bumper against which particles of cosmic dust would strike andexplode without damage to the inner skin. they could even penetrate it withoutcausing a leak of air. inside the inner skin there was a layer ofglass wool for heat insulation. inside the glass wool was a layerof material serving exactly the function of the coating of a bulletproofgasoline tank. no meteor under a quarter-inch size could hopeto make a puncture, even at

the forty-five-mile-per-second speed thatis the theoretical maximum for meteors. and if one did, the selfsealing stuffwould stop the leak immediately. joe could explain the protectionof the metal skins. he did. "when a missile travels fast enough," he saidabsorbedly, "it stops acquiring extra puncturing ability. over amile a second, impact can't be transmitted from front to rear. the backend of the thing that hits has arrived at the hit place before the shockof arrival can travel back to it. it's like a train in a collision whichdoesn't stop all at once.

a meteor hitting the platform will telescopeon itself like the cars of a railroad train that hits another at fullspeed." sally listened enigmatically. "so," said joe, "the punching effect isn'tthere. a meteor hitting the platform won't punch. it'll explode. partof it will turn to vapor--metallic vapor if it's metal, and rockyvapor if it's stone. it'll blow a crater in the metal plate. it'llblow away as much weight of the skin as it weighs itself. mass formass. so that weight for weight, pea soup would be just as effectivearmor against meteors as

hardened steel." sally said: "dear me! you must read the newspapers!" "the odds figure out, the odds are even thatthe platform won't get an actual meteor puncture in the first twentythousand years it's floating round the earth." "twenty thousand two seventy, joe," said sally.she was trying to tease him, but her face showed a little of the strain."i read the magazine articles too. in fact i sometimes show thetame article writers around, when they're cleared to see the platform."

joe winced a little. then he grinned wryly. "that cuts me down to size, eh?" she smiled at him. but they both felt queer.they went on into the interior of the huge space ship. "lots of space," said joe. "this could'vebeen smaller." "it'll be nine-tenths empty when it goes up,"said sally. "but you know about that, don't you?" joe did know. the reasons for the streamliningof rockets to be fired from the ground didn't apply to the platform.not with the same urgency,

anyhow. rockets had to burn their fuel fastto get up out of the dense air near the ground. they had to be streamlinedto pierce the thick, resisting part of the atmosphere. the platformdidn't. it wouldn't climb by itself. it would be carried necessarilyat slow speed up to the point where jet motors were most efficient, andthen it would be carried higher until they ceased to be efficient.only when it was up where air resistance was a very small fraction of ground-leveldrag would its own rockets fire. it wouldn't gain much by beingshaped to cut thin air, and it would lose a lot. for one thing, the launchingprocess planned for

the platform allowed it to be built completeso far as its hull was concerned. once it got out into its orbitthere would be no more worries. there wouldn't be any gamble on thepracticability of assembling a great structure in a weightless"world." the two of them--and the way they both felt,it seemed natural for joe to be helping sally very carefully throughthe corridors of the platform--the two of them came to the engineroom. this wasn't the place where the drive of the platform was centered.it was where the service motors and the air-circulation system andthe fluid pumps were powered.

off the engine room the main gyros were alreadyinstalled. they waited only for the pilot gyros to control them asa steering engine controls an earth ship's rudder. joe looked very thoughtfullyat the gyro assembly. that was familiar, from the workingdrawings. but he let sally guide him on without trying to stop and lookclosely. she showed him the living quarters. they centeredin a great open space sixty feet long and twenty wide and high.there were bookshelves, and two balconies, and chairs. private cabinsopened from it on different levels, but there were no steps to them. yetthere were comfortable

chairs with straps so that when a man wasweightless he could fasten himself in them. there were ash trays, ingeniouslydesigned to look like exactly that and nothing else. but ashes wouldnot fall into them, but would be drawn into them by suction. therewas unpatterned carpet on the floor _and_ on the ceiling. "it's going to feel queer," said sally, oddlyquiet, "when all this is out in space, but it will look fairly normal.i think that's important. this room will look like a big private librarymore than anything else. one won't be reminded every second, by everythinghe sees, that he's

living in a strictly synthetic environment.he won't feel cramped. if all the rooms were small, a man would feelas if he were in prison. at least this way he can pretend that thingsare normal." her mind was not wholly on her words. she'dbeen frightened for joe. and he was acutely aware of it, because he felta peculiar after-effect himself. "normal," he said drily, "except that he doesn'tweigh anything." "i've worried about that," said sally. "sleeping'sgoing to be a big problem."

"it'll take getting used to," joe agreed. there was a momentary pause. they were simplylooking about the great room. sally stirred uneasily. "tell me what you think," she said. "you'vebeen in an elevator that started to drop like a plummet. when the platformis orbiting it'll be like that all the time, only worse. no weight.joe, if you were in an elevator that seemed to be dropping and droppingand dropping for hours on end--do you think you could go to sleep?" joe hadn't thought about it. and he was acutelyconscious of sally, just

then, but the idea startled him. "it might be hard to adjust to," he admitted. "it'll be hard to adjust to, awake," saidsally. "but getting adjusted to it asleep should be worse. you've wakedup from a dream that you're falling?" "sure," said joe. then he whistled. "oh-oh!i see! you'd drop off to sleep, and you'd be falling. so you'd wakeup. everybody in the platform will be falling around the earth in the platform'sorbit! every time they doze off they'll be falling and they'llwake up!"

he managed to think about it. it was trueenough. a man awake could remind himself that he only thought and feltthat he was falling, and that there was no danger. but what would happenwhen he tried to sleep? falling is the first fear a human being everknows. everybody in the world has at one time waked up gasping froma dream of precipices down which he plunged. it is an inborn terror.and no matter how thoroughly a man might know in his conscious mind thatweightlessness was normal in emptiness, his conscious mind would go offduty when he went to sleep. a completely primitive subconscious would takeover then, and it would not

be satisfied. it might wake him franticallyat any sign of dozing until he cracked up from sheer insomnia ... or elselet him sleep only when exhaustion produced unconsciousness ratherthan restful slumber. "that's a tough one!" he said disturbedly,and noticed that she still showed signs of her recent distress. "there'snot much to be done about it, either!" "i suggested something," said sally, "andthey built it in. i hope it works!" she explained uncomfortably. "it'sa sort of blanket with a top that straps down, and an inflatable underside.when a man wants to

sleep, he'll inflate this thing, and it willhold him in his bunk. it won't touch his head, of course, and he canmove, but it will press against him gently." joe thought over what sally had just explained.he noticed that they were quite close together, but he put hismind on her words. "it'll be like a man swimming?" he asked."one can go to sleep floating. there's no sensation of weight, but there'sthe feeling of pressure all about. a man might be able to sleep if hefelt he were floating. yes, that's a good idea, sally! it'll work! a manwill think he's floating,

rather than falling!" sally flushed a little. "i thought of it another way," she said awkwardly."when we go to sleep, we go way back. we're like babies, with alla baby's fears and needs. it _might_ feel like floating. but--i tried oneof those bunks. it feels like--it feels sort of dreamy, as if someonewere--holding one quite safe. it feels as if one were a baby and--beautifullysecure. but of course i haven't tried it weightless. i just--hopeit works." as if embarrassed, she turned abruptly andshowed him the kitchen. every

pan was covered. the top of the stove wasalnico-magnet strips, arranged rather like the top of a magnetic chuck. panswould cling to it. and the covers had a curious flexible lining whichjoe could not understand. "it's a flexible plastic that's heatproof,"said sally. "it inflates and holds the food down to the hot bottom of thepan. they expected the crew to eat ready-prepared food. i said that itwould be bad enough to have to drink out of plastic bottles instead ofglasses. they hung one of these stoves upside down, for me, and i cookedbacon and eggs and pancakes with the cover of the pan pointingto the floor. they said the

psychological effect would be worth while." joe was stirred. he followed her out of thekitchen and said warmly--the more warmly because these contributions tothe space platform came on top of a personal anxiety on his own account:"you must be the first girl in the world who thought about housekeepingin space!" "girls will be going into space, won't they?"she asked, not looking at him. "if there are colonies on the other planets,they'll have to. and some day--to the stars...." she stood quite still, and joe wanted to dosomething about her and the

world and the way he felt. the interior ofthe platform was very silent. somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulationwas incomplete, the sound of workmen was audible, but the innercorridors of the platform were not resonant. they were lined with amaterial to destroy reminders that this was merely a metal shell, an artificialworld that would swim in emptiness. here and now, joe and sallyseemed very private and alone, and he felt a sense of urgency. he looked at her yearningly. her color wasa little higher than usual. she was not just a nice kid, she was swell!and she was good to look at.

joe had noticed that before, but now withthe memory of her fright because he'd been in danger, her worry becausehe might have been killed, he thought of her very absurd buthonest offer to cry for him. joe found himself twisting at the ring onhis finger. he got it off, and there was some soot and grease on it fromthe work he'd been doing. he knew that she saw what he was about, but shelooked away. "look, sally," he said awkwardly, "we've knowneach other a long time. i've--uh--liked you a lot. and i've got somethings to do first, but----" he stopped. he swallowed. she turnedand smiled at him. "look,"

he said desperately, "what's a good way toask if you'd like to wear she nodded, her eyes shining a little. "that was a good way, joe. i'd like it a lot." there was an interlude, then, during whichshe very ridiculously cried and explained that he must be more carefuland not risk his life so much! and then there was a faint, faint soundoutside the platform. it was the yapping sound of a siren, crying outin short and choppy ululations as it warmed up. finally its notesteadied and it wailed and wailed and wailed.

"that's the alarm," exclaimed sally. she wasstill misty-eyed. "everybody out of the shed. come on, joe." they started back the way they'd come in.and sally looked up at joe and grinned suddenly. "when i have grandchildren," she told him,"i'm going to brag that i was the very first girl in all the world everto be kissed in a space ship!" but before joe could do anything about thecomment, she was out on the stairs, in plain view and going down. so hefollowed her. the shed was emptying. the bare wood-blockfloor was dotted with figures

moving steadily toward the security exit.there was no hurry, because security men were shouting that this was notan alarm but a precautionary measure, and there was no needfor haste. each security man had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkiehe wore. by it every guard could be told anything he neededto know, either on the floor of the shed, or on the catwalks aloftor even in the platform itself. trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go outthe swing-up doors. men came down from the scaffolds after puttingtheir tools in proper

between-shifts positions--for counting andinspection--and other men were streaming quietly from the pushpot assemblyline. except for the gigantic object in the middle, and for thefact that every man was in work clothes, the scene was surprisingly likethe central waiting room of a very large railroad station, with innumerablepeople moving briskly here and there. "no hurry," said joe, catching the word froma security man as he passed it on. "i'll go see what my gang found out." the trio--haney and mike and the chief--werejust arriving by the piles

of charred but now uncovered wreckage. sallyflushed ever so slightly when she saw the chief eye joe's ring on herfinger. "rest of the day off, huh?" said the chief."look! we found most of the stuff we need. they're gonna give us a shopto work in. we'll move this stuff there. we're gonna have to weld a falseframe on the lathe we picked, an' then cut out the bed plate tolet the gyros fit in between the chucks. mount it so the spinning is inthe right line." that would be with the axis of the rotorsparallel to the axis of the earth. joe nodded.

"we'll be able to get set up in the mornin',"added haney, "and get started. you got the parts list off to theplant for your folks to get busy on?" sally said quickly: "he's sending that byfacsimile now. then----" the chief beamed in benign mockery. "whatyou goin' to do after that, joe? if we got the rest of the day off----?" sally said hurriedly: "we were--he was goingoff on a picnic with me. to red canyon lake. do you really need to talkbusiness--all afternoon?" the chief laughed. he'd known sally, at leastby sight, back at the

kenmore plant. "no, ma'am!" he told her. "just askin'. iworked on that red canyon dam job, years back. that dam that made the lake.it ought to be right pretty around there now. okay, joe. see youas soon as work starts up. in the mornin', most likely." joe started away with sally. mike the midgetcalled hoarsely: "joe! just a minute!" joe drew back. the midget's seamed face wasvery earnest. he said in his odd voice: "here's something to think about.somebody worked mighty hard

to keep you from getting those gyros here.they might work hard to keep them from getting repaired. that's why weasked for a special shop to work in. it's occurred to me that a good wayto stop these repairs would be to stop us. not everybody would've figuredout how to rebalance this thing. you get me?" "sure!" said joe. "you three had better lookout for yourselves." mike stared at him and grimaced. "you don't get it," he said brittlely. "allright. i may be crazy, at that."

joe rejoined sally. the idea of a picnic wasbrand new to him, but he approved of it completely. they went to thesmall exit that led to the security building. they were admitted. therewas remarkable calm and efficiency here, even though routine had beenupset by the need to stop all work. as they went toward major holt'soffice, joe heard somebody dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: "... thisattempt at atomic sabotage was defeated outside the shed, butit never had a chance of success. geiger counters would have instantlyshown any attempt to smuggle radioactive material into the shed...."

joe glanced sidewise at sally. "that's for a publicity release?" he asked. she nodded. "it's true, too. nothing goes in or out ofthe shed without passing close to a geiger counter. even radium-dialwatches show up, though they don't set the sirens to screaming." joe said: "i'll get my order for new partsoff on the facsimile machine." but he had to get major holt's secretary toshow him where to feed in

the list. it would go east to the nearestfacsimile receiver, and then be rushed by special messenger to the plant.miss ross gloomily set the machine and initialed the delivery requisitionwhich was part of the document. it flashed through the scanningprocess and came out again. "you and sally," remarked sally's father'ssecretary with a morose sigh, "can go and relax this afternoon. but there'sno relaxation for major holt. or for me." joe said unhopefully: "i'm sure sally'd beglad if you came with us." major holt's plain, unglamorous assistantshook her head.

"i haven't had a day off since the work beganhere," she said frowning. "the major depends on me. nobody else coulddo what i do! you're going to red canyon lake?" "yes," agreed joe. "sally thought it mightbe pleasant." "it's terribly dry and arid here," said missross sadly. "that's the only body of water in a hundred miles or more.i hope it's pretty there. i've never seen it." she handed joe back his original memo fromthe facsimile machine. an exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting,was now in existence

more than fifteen hundred miles away, andwould arrive at the kenmore precision tool plant within a matter of hours.there could be no question of errors in transmission! it hadto be right! sally came out, smiled at her father's secretary,and led joe down to the entrance. "i have the car," she said cheerfully, "andthere'll be a lunch basket waiting for us at the house. i agreed thatthe lake was too cold for swimming, though. it is. snow water feedsit. but it's nice to look at." they went out the door, and the workers onthe platform were just

beginning to pile into the waiting fleet ofbusses. but the black car was waiting, too. joe opened the door andsally handed him the key. she regarded the men swarming on the busses. "there'll be bulletins all over bootstrap,"she observed, "saying that braun tried to dust-bomb the shed. they'llsay that he may have carried the cobalt about with him, and so he may haveburned other people--in a restaurant, a movie theater, anywhere--whilehe was carrying the dust and dying without knowing it. so everybody'ssupposed to report to the hospital for a check-up for radiation burns.some people may really have

them. but dad thinks that since you weren'tburned, braun didn't carry it around. if anyone is burned, it'll be theperson who brought the cobalt here to give him. and--well--he'llturn up because everybody does, and because he's burned he'll be askedplenty of questions." joe stepped on the starter. then he pressedthe accelerator and the car sped forward. they stopped at the house in the officers'-quartersarea on the other side of the shed. sally picked up the lunchbasket that her father's housekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions.they drove away.

red canyon was eighty miles from the shed,and the only way to get there was through bootstrap, because the only highwayaway from the shed led to that small, synthetic town. it was irritating,though they had no schedule, to find that the long line of busseswas ahead of them on that twenty-mile stretch. the busses ran nose totail and filled the road for a half-mile or more. it was not possible topass so long a string of close-packed vehicles. there was just enoughtraffic in the opposite direction to make that impracticable. they had to trail the line of busses as faras bootstrap and crawl

through the crowded streets. once beyond thetown they came to a security stop. here sally's pass was good.then they went rolling on and on through an empty, arid, sun-baked terraintoward the hills to the west. it looked remarkably lonely. joe thoughtfor the first time about gas. he looked carefully at the fuel gauge.sally shook her head. "don't worry. plenty of gas. security takescare of that. when i said where we were going and that i wanted thecar, dad had everything checked. if i live through this, i'll beti stay a fanatic about cautiousness all my life!"

joe said distastefully: "i suppose it getseverybody. mike--the midget, you know--called me back just now to suggestthat the people who tried to spoil the gyros might try to harm the fourof us to hinder their repair!" "it's not just foolishness," sally admitted."the strain is pretty bad, especially when you know things. you've noticedthat dad's getting gray. that's strain. and miss ross is about as tense.things leak out in the most remarkable way--and dad can't find outhow. once there was a case of sabotage and he could have sworn that nobodyhad the information that

permitted it but himself and miss ross. shehad hysterics. she insisted that she wanted to be locked up somewhereso she couldn't be suspected of telling anybody anything. she'd resigntomorrow if she could. it's ghastly." then she hesitated and smiled faintly:"in fact, so dad wouldn't worry about me this afternoon----" he took his eyes off the road to glance ather. "what?" "i promised we wouldn't go swimming and----"then she said awkwardly: "there are two pistols in the glove compartment.dad knows you. so i

promised you'd put one in your pocket up atthe lake." joe drew a deep breath. she opened the glovecompartment and handed him a pistol. he looked at it: .38, hammerless.a good safe weapon. he slipped it in his coat pocket. but he frowned. "i was looking forward to--not worrying fora while," he said wryly. "but now i'll have to remember to keep lookingover my shoulder all the time!" "maybe," said sally, "you can look over myshoulder and i'll look over yours, and we can glance at each other occasionally."

she laughed, and he managed to smile. butthe trace of a frown remained on his forehead. joe drove and drove and drove. once they cameto a very small town. it may have contained a hundred people. therewere gas pumps and a restaurant and two or three general stores,which were certainly too many for the permanent residents. but therewere cow ponies hitched before the stores, and automobiles were alsoin view. the ground here was slightly rolling. the mountains had grownto good-sized ramparts against the sky. joe drove carefully downthe single street, turning out

widely once to dodge a dog sleeping placidlyin an area normally reserved for traffic. finally they came to the foothills, and thenthe road curved and recurved as it wound among them. and two hoursfrom bootstrap they reached red canyon. they first saw the damfrom downstream. it was a monstrous structure of masonry, alone in themountains. from its top a plume of falling water jetted out. "the dam's for irrigation," said sally professionally,"and the shed gets all its power from here. one of dad'snightmares is that somebody

may blow up this dam and leave bootstrap andthe shed without power." joe said nothing. he drove on up the trailas it climbed the canyon wall in hairpin slants. it was ticklish driving.but then, quite suddenly, they reached the top of the canyon wall andthe top of the dam and the level of the lake at once. here there wasa sheet of water that reached back among the barren hillsides for milesand miles. it twisted out of sight. there were small waves on its surface,and grass at its edge. there were young trees. the powerhouse wasa small squat structure in the middle of the dam. not a person was visibleanywhere.

"here we are," said sally, when joe stoppedthe car. he got out and went around to open the doorfor her. but she was already stepping out with the lunch basket in herhand when he arrived. he reached for it, and she held on, and theymoved companionably away from the car carrying the basket between them. "there's a nice place," said sally, pointing. a small ridge of rock stretched out into thelake, and rose, and spread, and formed what was almost a miniature islandsome fifty feet across. there were some young trees on it. sally andjoe climbed down the slope

and out the rocky isthmus that connected itwith the shore. sally let down the lunch box on a stone andlaughed for no reason at all as the wind blew her hair. it was a cool windfrom over the water. and joe realized with a shock of surprise thatthe air felt different and smelled different when it blew over open waterlike this. up to now he hadn't thought of the dryness of the air inbootstrap and the shed. the lunch basket was tilted a little. joepicked it up and settled it more solidly. then he said: "hungry?" there was literally nothing on his mind atthe moment but the luxurious,

satisfied feeling of being off somewhere withgrass and a lake and sally, and a good part of the afternoon tothrow away. it felt good. so he lifted the lid of the lunch basket. there was a revolver there. it was the otherone from the glove compartment of the car. sally hadn't leftit behind. joe regarded it and said ironically: "happy, carefree youth--that'sus! which are the ham sandwiches, sally?" 8 nevertheless, the afternoon began splendidly.joe dunked the bottled

soft drinks in the lake to cool. then he andsally ate and talked and laughed. joe, in particular, had more thanthe usual capacity for enjoyment today. he'd been through twenty-fourhours of turmoil but now things began to look better. and there wasthe arrangement with sally, which had a solid satisfactoriness about it.sally was swell! if she'd been homely, joe would have liked her justthe same--to talk to and to be with. but she was pretty--and she was wearinghis ring. she'd wrapped some string around the inside of the bandto make it fit. the only trouble was that joe was occasionallyconscious of the heavy

weight in his right-hand coat pocket. but they spent at least an hour in contented,satisfying, meaningless loafing that nobody can describe but thateverybody likes to remember afterward. from time to time joe looked ashore,when the weight in his pocket reminded him of danger. but he didn't look often enough. he was pullingthe chilled soft-drink bottles out of the lake when he saw a movementout of the corner of his eye. he whirled, his hand in his pocket.... it was the chief, with haney and mike themidget. they were striding

across the rocky small peninsula. haney called sharply: "everything okay?" "sure!" said joe. "everything's fine! what'sthe matter?" "mike had a hunch," said the chief. "and--uh--iremembered i worked on the job when this dam was built twelve-fifteenyears ago." he looked about him. "it looked different then." then he caught joe's eye and jerked his headalmost imperceptibly to one side. joe caught the signal. "i'll see about some more soft drinks," hesaid. "come help me fish up

the bottles." sally smiled at the other two. she was alreadyinspecting the lunch basket. "we still have some sandwiches," she saidhospitably, "and some cake." haney came forward awkwardly. mike advancedtoward her with something of truculence. joe knew what was in his mind.if sally treated him like a freak.... but joe knew with deep satisfactionthat she wouldn't. he went down to the water's edge. "what's up, chief?" he asked in a low tone.

"mike hadda hunch," rumbled the chief. "somebodytried to smash the stuff you brought. they did. but we startedgettin' set to mend it. so what would they do? polish us off. if theywere set to atom-dust the whole shed an' everybody in it, they wouldn'tstop at four more murders." joe fished for a pop bottle. "mike said something like that back at theshed," he observed. "yeah. but you were the one who figured thingsout. you'd be first target. haney and mike and me--we'd be hardto knock off in a crowd in

bootstrap. but you and her headed off by y'selves.mike figured you mightn't be safe. so we checked." joe brought up one bottle and then another. "we're all right. haven't seen a soul." "don't mean a soul hasn't seen you," growledthe chief. "a car left bootstrap less than twenty minutes behindyou. there were three guys in it. it's parked down below the dam, outa sight.we saw it. and when we came up, careful, we spotted three guys hidin'out behind the rocks yonder. they look to me like they're waitingfor somebody to go

strolling back from the shoreline, so's--uh--maybefolks out at the powerhouse can't see 'em. that'd be you andher, huh?" joe went cold. not for himself. for sally. "there's nobody else around," said the chief."who'd they be waiting for but you two? suppose they got a chance tokill you. they'd take the car keys. they'd drop your two bodies somewheresgawdknowswhere. there'd be considerable of a hunt for you two. majorholt would be upset plenty. security might get loosened up. there mightbe breaks for guys who wanted to do a little extra sabotage--besidesmaybe hamperin' the

repairin' of the pilot gyros. then they couldtry for haney and mike and me." joe said coldly: "i've got a pistol and sohas sally. shall we take those pistols and go ask those three if theywant to start something?" the chief snorted. "use sense! it's good you got the pistols,though. i snagged a twenty-two rifle from a shooting gallery.it was all i could get in a hurry. but go huntin' trouble? fella, i wantto see that platform go up! i'll take care of things now. good layouthere. they got to come across

the open to get near. don't say anything tosally. but we'll keep our eyes open." joe nodded. he carried the chilled, drippingbottles back to where haney solemnly ate a sandwich, sitting crossleggedwith his back to the lake and regarding the shore. the chief draggeda .22 repeating rifle from inside his belt, where it had hung alongsidehis thigh. he casually strolled over to mike and dropped the rifle. "you said you felt like target practice,"he remarked blandly. "here's your armament. any more sandwiches, ma'am?"

sally smilingly passed him the last. she leftthe top of the basket open. the pistol that had been there was gone.then sally's eyes met joe's and she was aware that his three friendshad not come here merely to crash a picnic. but she took it in stride.it was an additional reason for joe to approve of sally. "me," said the chief largely, "i'm goin' toswim. i haven't had any more water around me than a shower bath for solong that i crave to soak and splash. i'll go yonder and dunk myself." he wandered off, taking bites from the sandwichas he went. he vanished.

haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyesroving about the shoreline and the rocks and brush behind it. mike was talking in his crackling, high-pitchedvoice. "but just the same it's crazy! fighting sabotagewhen we little guys could take over in a week and make sabotagejust plain foolish! we could do the whole job while the saboteurs weren'tlooking!" sally said with interest: "have you got thefigures? were they ever passed on?" "i spent a month's pay once," said mike sardonically,"hiring a math

shark to go over them. he found one mistake.it raised the margin of what we could do!" sally answered: "joe! listen to this! mikesays he has the real answer to sabotage, and, in a way, to space travel!listen!" joe dropped to the ground. "shoot it," he said. he was grimly alert, just the same. therewere men waiting for them to start back to the car. these saboteurs werearmed, and they intended to murder sally and himself. joe's jaws clampedtautly shut at the grim

ideas that came into his mind. but mike was beginning to speak. "forget about the platform a minute," he said,standing up to gesticulate, because he was only three anda half feet high. "just figure on a rocket straight to the moon. withold-style rockets they'd a' had to have a mass ratio of a hundred andtwenty to one. you'd have to burn a hundred and twenty tons of old-stylefuel to land one ton on the moon. now it could be done with sixty,and when the platform's up, that figure'll drop again! okay! you're gonnaland a man on the moon. he

weighs two hundred pounds. he uses up twentypounds of food and drink and oxygen a day. give him grub and air fortwo months--twelve hundred pounds. a cabin seven feet high and ten feetacross. sixteen hundred pounds, counting insulation an' braces forstrength. that makes a pay load of a ton an' a half, and you'd have toburn a hundred an' eighty tons of fuel--old-style--to take it to themoon, and another hundred an' twenty for every ton the rocket ship weighed.you might get a man to the moon with a twelve-hundred-ton rocket--maybe.that's with the old fuels. he'd get there, an' he'd live two months,an' then he'd die for lack of

air. with the new fuels you'd need ninetytons of fuel to carry the guy there, and sixty more for every ton the shipweighed itself. call it six hundred tons for the rocket to carry one manto the moon." sally nodded absorbedly. "i've seen figures like that," she agreed. "but take a guy like me!" said mike the midgetbitterly. "i weigh forty-five pounds, not two hundred! i usefour pounds of food and air a day. a cabin for me to live in would be fourfeet high an' five across. bein' smaller, it wouldn't need so much bracing.you could do it for two

hundred pounds. three hundred for grub andair, fifty for me. me on the moon supplied for two months would come tofive-fifty pounds. sixteen tons of fuel to get me to the moon direct!to carry the weight of the ship--it's smaller!--fifty tons maximum!" "i--see...," said sally, frowning. he looked at her suspiciously, but there wasno mockery in her face. "it'd take a six-hundred-ton rocket to geta full-sized man to the moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "buta guy my size could do the same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job.counting how much easier it'd

be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration,i could make a trip, land, take observations, pick up mineral specimens,and get back--all in a sixty-ton rocket. that's just ten per centof what it'd cost to take a full-sized man one way!" he stamped his foot. then he said coldly:"haney, sittin' still you're a sittin' duck!" the comment was just. joe knew that sallywas on the lakeward side of this small island, and that there were impenetrablerocks between her and the mainland. but haney sat crossleggedwhere he could watch the

mainland, and he hadn't moved in a long while.if someone did intend to commit murder from a distance, haney was offeringa chance for a very fine target. he moved. "yeah!" said mike with fine irony, revertingto his topic. "i could show you plenty of figures! there are other guyslike me! we've got as much brains as full-sized people! if the big brasshad figured on us small guys, they coulda made the platform the sizeof a four-family house an' it'd ha' been up in the sky right now, withguys like me running it. guys my size could man the ferry rockets bringin'up fuel for storage,

and four of us could take a six-hundred-tonrocket an' slide out to mars an' be back by springtime--next springtime!--withall the facts and the photographs to prove 'em! by golly----" then he made a raging, helpless gesture. "but that's just the big picture," he saidbitterly. "right now, right at this minute, we could make it easy to finishthe platform the way it's building in the shed! there are ferryrockets building somewhere else. you know about them?" sally said apologetically: "yes. i know there'llbe smaller rocket ships

going up to the platform. they'll carry fueland stores and exchanges for the crew. yes, i know there are ferryrockets building." "those ferry rockets," said mike sardonically,"carry four men, plus two replacements for the crew. they'll carry airfor ten days. but put four of us small guys in a ferry rocket! _we'd_have air and grub for two months, almost! pull out the pay load andput in a hydroponic garden and communicators and we'd _be_ a platform, rightthen! send up another ferry rocket to join us, and it could bringguided missiles! the ferry rockets could be finished quicker than theplatform! send up three ferry

rockets with midgets as crews, an' we couldweld 'em together and have a space platform in orbit and working--and what'dbe the use of sabotaging the big platform then? the job would be done!there'd be no sense sabotaging the big platform because the littleone could do anything the big one could! it'd be up there and working!but," he demanded bitterly, "do you think anybody'll do anything as sensibleas that?" his small features were twisted in angry rebellion.and he was quite right in all his reasoning. mankind couldhave made the journey to the planets in a hurry, and it could have hadits space platform in the sky

much more quickly, if only it could have consentedto be represented by people like mike--who would have representedmankind very valiantly. sally said distressedly: "oh, mike, it's alltrue and i'm so sorry!" and she meant it. joe liked sally especiallyright then, because she didn't patronize mike, or try to reason himout of his heartbreak. then haney said abruptly: "somebody's spottedthe chief." joe mentally kicked himself. the chief hadsaid he was going to swim. now--but only now--joe looked to see whathe was doing. he was far out from shore, swimming unhurriedlyto the powerhouse at the

middle of the dam. he would reach it, andswing up the ladder that could just be seen going down the lake side of thedam's top, and he would explain the situation on shore. a telephonecall to bootstrap would bring security men rushing at eighty milesan hour, and parachute troopers a good deal faster. but even beforethey arrived the chief would lead the powerhouse crew ashore armedwith the shotguns they kept for shooting waterfowl in and out of season. the men on shore might or might not considerthe chief's swim to be proof that he knew their intentions. theywere probably discussing the

matter in some agitation right now. but theycouldn't know that the party on the semi-island was armed. suddenly mike said crisply: "we're goin' tohave visitors." he lay down carefully on the ground, fifteenfeet uphill from sally, where he could look over the ridge. he snuggledthe .22 target rifle professionally to his shoulder. he drew abead. three men very casually strolled out of thebrushwood on the shore. they moved nonchalantly toward the strand of rocksthat led out to the picnic spot. they looked like anybody else from bootstrap.casual, rough work

clothing.... haney bent down and picked upfour good throwing stones. his expression was pained. joe said: "we've got pistols, haney, and sally'sa good shot." the men came on. their manner was elaboratelycasual. joe stepped up into view. "no visitors!" he called. "we don't want company!" one of the men held his hand to his ear, asif not understanding. they came on. they made no threatening gestures. then joe took his hand out of his pocket,the pistol sally'd given him

gripped tightly. "i mean that!" he said harshly. "stand back!" one of the three spoke sharply. on that instantthree snub-nosed pistols appeared. bullets whined as the men hurtledforward. the purpose was not so much murder at this moment as the demoralizingeffect of bullets flying overhead while the three assassinsgot close enough to do their bloody job with precision. a stone whizzed by joe--haney had thrown it--andthe small target rifle in mike's hands coughed twice. joe held hisfire. he had only six

bullets and three targets to hit. with a familiarrevolver he'd have started shooting now, but thirty yards isa long range with a strange pistol at a moving target. one of the three killers stumbled and crashedto the ground. a second seemed suddenly to be grinning widely on oneside of his face. a .22 bullet had slashed his cheek. the third ranhead on into a rock thrown by haney. it knocked the breath out of himand his pistol fell from his hand. joe fired deliberately at the widely grinningman and saw him spin

around. mike's target rifle spat again andthe man joe had hit wheeled and ran heavily, making incoherent yells.the one who'd tumbled scrambled to his feet and fled, hopping crazily,favoring one leg. deserted, the third man turned and ran too,still doubled over and still gasping. mike's voice crackled. he was in a toweringrage because of the way the target rifle shot. it threw high and to theright. the shooting gallery paid off in cigarettes for high scores--sothe guns didn't shoot straight.

until this moment joe had been relativelycalm, because he had something to do. but just then he heard sally say "oh!"in a queer voice. he whirled. unknown to him, she had not beenwaiting under cover, but standing with her pistol out and ready. andher face was very white, and she was plucking at her hair. a strand cameaway in her fingers. a bullet had clipped it just above her shoulder. then joe went sick ... weak ... trembling,and he disgraced himself by half-hysterically grabbing sally and demandingto know if she was hurt, and raging at her for exposing herself tofire, while his throat tried

to close and shut off his breath from horror. there came loud pop-pop-popping noises. withthe peculiar reverberation of sound over water, two motorcycles startedfrom the powerhouse along the crest of the dam. they streaked for theshore carrying five men, one of whom was the chief, with a red-checkedtablecloth about his middle, brandishing a fire axe in default of otherweapons. the danger was over. but the assassins couldn't be followed immediately.they still had at least two pistols. eight men and a girl, countingmike, with an armament

of only two pistols, a .22 rifle, two shotgunsand a fire axe were not a properly equipped posse to hunt down killers.also by now it was close to sunset. so the victors did the sensible thing. joeand sally and haney and the chief--his clothes retrieved--plus mike headedback for bootstrap. joe and sally rode in the major's black car, andthe other three in the jalopy they'd rented for the afternoon. onthe way into the canyon below the dam, they stopped at the parked car theirwould-be assassins had come in. they removed its distributor andfan belt. the other men

returned to the powerhouse with their shotgunsand the fire axe, and telephoned to bootstrap. the three gunmenwho had planned murder became fugitives, with no means of transportationbut their legs. they had a good many thousand square miles of territoryto hide in, but it wasn't likely that they had food or any competenceto find it in the wilds. two were certainly hurt. with dogs and planesand organization, it should be possible to catch them handily, come morning. so joe and sally drove back to bootstrap withthe other car following closely through all the miles that had tobe covered in the dark.

halfway back, they met a grim search partyin cars, heading for the dam to begin their man hunt in the morning. afterthat, joe felt better. but his teeth still tended to chatter every timehe thought of sally's startled, scared expression as she pulledaway a lock of her hair that had been severed by a bullet. when they got back to the shed, major holtlooked tired and old. sally explained breathlessly that her danger washer own fault. joe'd thought she was safely under cover.... "it was my fault," said the major detachedly."i let you go away from

the shed. i do not blame joe at all." but he did not look kindly. joe wet his lips,ready to agree that any disgrace he might be subjected to was justified,since he had caused sally to be shot at. "i blame myself a great deal, sir," he saidgrimly. "but i can promise i'll never take sally away from safety again.not until the platform's up and there's no more reason for her to bein danger." the major said remotely: "i shall have toarrange for more than that. i shall put you in touch with your father bytelephone. you will explain

to him, in detail, exactly how the repairof your apparatus is planned. i understand that the gyros can be duplicatedmore quickly by the method you have worked out?" joe said: "yes, sir. the balancing of thegyros can, which was the longest single job. but anything can be madequicker the second time. the patterns for the castings are all made,and the bugs worked out of the production process." "you will explain that to your father," saidthe major heavily. "your father's plant will begin to duplicate these--ah--pilotgyros at once.

meanwhile your--ah--work crew will start torepair the one that is here." "yes, sir." "and," said the major, "i am sending you tothe pushpot airfield. i intend to scatter the targets the saboteursmight aim at. you are one of them. your crew is another. from time to timeyou will confer with them and verify their work. if any of them shouldbe--disposed of, you will be able to instruct others." "it's really the other way about, sir," objectedjoe. "the chief and

haney are pretty good, and mike's got brains----" the major moved impatiently. "i am looking at this from a security standpoint,"he said. "i am trying to make it plainly useless to attack the gyrosagain. duplicates will be in production at your father's plant. therewill be three men repairing the smashed ones. there will be another manin another place--and this will be you--who can instruct new workmenin the repair procedure if anything should happen. thus there will haveto be three separate successful coups if the pilot gyros are notto be ready when the

platform needs them. saboteurs might try one.possibly two. but i think they will look for another weak spot to attack." joe did not like the idea of being moved away.he wanted to be on the job repairing the device that was primarilyhis responsibility. besides, he had a feeling about sally. if she werein danger, he wanted to be on "about sally, sir----" "sally," said the major tiredly, "is goingto have to restrict herself to the point where she'll feel that jail wouldbe preferable. but she will see the need for it. she will be guardeda good deal more carefully

than before--and you may not know it, butshe has been guarded rather well." joe saw sally smiling ruefully at him. whatthe major had said was unpleasant, but he was right. this was oneof those arrangements that nobody likes, an irritating, uncomfortable,disappointing necessity. but such necessities are a part of every actualachievement. the difference between things that get done and things thatdon't get done is often merely the difference between patience andimpatience with tedious details. this arrangement would mean thatjoe couldn't see sally very

often. it would mean that the chief and haneyand mike would do the actual work of getting the gyros ready. itwould take all the glamour out of joe's contribution. these deprivationsshouldn't be necessary. but they were. "all right, sir," said joe gloomily. "whendo i go over to the field?" "right away," said the major. "tonight." thenhe added detachedly: "officially, the excuse for your presencethere will be that you have been useful in uncovering sabotage methods.you have. after all, through you a number of planes that would have beenblown up have now had their

booby traps removed. i know you do not claimcredit for the fact, but it is an excuse for keeping you where i wantyou to be for another reason entirely. so it will be assumed that you areat the pushpot field for counter-sabotage inspection." the major nodded dismissal with an indefinableair of irony, and joe went unhappily out of his office. he telephonedhis father at length. his father did not share joe's disappointmentat being removed to a place of safety. he undertook to begin thecastings for an entire new set of pilot gyros at once.

a little later sally came out of her father'soffice. "i'm sorry, joe!" he grinned unhappily. "so am i. i don't feel very heroic, but ifthis is what has to be done to get the platform out of the shed and onthe way up--it's what has to be done. i suppose i can phone you?" "you can," said sally. "and you'd better!" they had talked a long time that afternoon,very satisfyingly and without any cares at all. neither could haveremembered much of what had

been said. it probably was not earth-shakingin importance. but now there seemed to be a very great deal of othersimilar conversation urgently needing to be gone through. "i'll call you!" said joe. then somebody approached to take him to thepushpot airfield. they separated very formally under the eyes ofthe impersonal security officer who would drive joe to his destination. it was a tedious journey through the darkness.this particular security officer was not companionable. he was oneof those conscientious people

who think that if they keep their mouths shutit will make up for their inability to keep their eyes open. sociallyhe treated joe as if he were a highly suspect person. it could be guessedthat he treated everybody that way. joe went to sleep in the car. he was only half-awake when he arrived, andhe didn't bother to rouse himself completely when he was shown to acubbyhole in the officers' barracks. he went to bed, making a half-consciousnote to buy himself some clothes--especially fresh linen--in themorning.

then he knew nothing until he was awaked inthe early morning by what sounded exactly like the crack of doom. 9 it was not, however, the crack of doom. whenjoe stared out the window by the head of his cot, he saw gray-red dawnbreaking over the landing field. there were low, featureless structuressilhouetted against the sunrise. as the crimson light grew brighter,joe realized that the angular shapes were hangars. improbable cranepoles loomed above them. one was in motion, handling something he couldnot make out, but the

noise that had awakened him was less, now.it seemed to circle overhead, and it had an angry, droning, buzzing qualitythat was not natural in any motor he had ever heard before. joe shivered, standing at the window. it wascold and dank in the dawn light at this altitude, but he wanted to knowwhat that completely unbelievable roar had been. a crane beam bythe hangars tilted down, slowly, and then lifted as if released ofa great weight. the light was growing slowly brighter. joe saw somethingon the ground. rather, it was not quite on the ground. it rested on somethingon the ground.

suddenly that unholy uproar began again. somethingmoved. it ran heavily out from the masking dark of the hangars.it picked up speed. it acquired a reasonable velocity--forty or fiftymiles an hour. as it scuttled over the dimly lighted field, itmade a din like all the boiler factories in the world and all the backfiringmotors in creation trying to drown each other's noise out--and all ofthem being very successful. it was a pushpot. joe recognized it with incredulity.it was one of those utterly ungainly creations that werebuilt around one half of the sidewall of the shed. in shape, its upperpart was like the top half of

a loaf of bread. in motion, here, it restedon some sort of wheeled vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignantcaterpillar, and a blue-white flame squirted out of its tail,with coy and frolicsome flirtings from side to side. the pushpot lifted from the vehicle on whichit rode, and the vehicle put on speed and got away from under it withfrantic agility. the vehicle swerved to one side, and joe staredwith amazed eyes at the pushpot, some twenty feet aloft. it had aflat underside, and a topside that still looked to him like the roundedtop half of a loaf of baker's

bread. it hung in the air at an angle of aboutforty-five degrees, and it howled like a panic-stricken dragon--joewas getting his metaphors mixed by this time--and it swung and wobbledand slowly gained altitude, and then suddenly it seemed to get the knackof what it was supposed to do. it started to circle around, and thenit began abruptly to climb skyward. until it began to climb it lookedheavy and clumsy and wholly unimpressive. but when it climbed, it reallymoved! joe found his head out the window, craningup to look at it. its unearthly din took on the indignant qualityof an irritated beehive. but

it climbed! it went up without grace but withastonishing speed. and it was huge, but it became lost in the red-fleckeddawn sky while joe still gaped. joe flung on his clothes. he went out thedoor through resonant empty corridors, hunting for somebody to tell himsomething. he blundered into a mess hall. there were many tables, but thechairs around them were pushed back as if used and then left behindby people in a hurry to be somewhere else. there were exactly two peoplestill visible over in a corner.

another din like the wailing of a baby volcanowith a toothache. it began, and moved, and went through the seriesof changes that ended in a climbing, droning hum. another. another. thelaunching of pushpots for their morning flight was evidently gettingwell under way. joe hesitated in the nearly empty mess hall.then he recognized the two seated figures. they were the pilot and co-pilot,respectively, of the fateful plane that had brought him to bootstrap. he went over to their table. the pilot noddedmatter-of-factly. the co-pilot grinned. both still wore bandageson their hands, which would

account for their remaining here. "fancy seeing you!" said the co-pilot cheerfully."welcome to the hotel de gink! but don't tell me you're going tofly a pushpot!" "i hadn't figured on it," admitted joe. "areyou?" "perish forbid," said the co-pilot amiably."i tried it once, for the devil of it. those things fly with the graceof a lady elephant on ice skates! did you, by any chance, notice thatthey haven't got any wings? and did you notice where their control surfaceswere?" joe shook his head. he saw the remnants ofham and eggs and coffee. he

was hungry. there was the uproar to be expected of a basso-profundobanshee in pain. another pushpot was taking off. "how do i get breakfast?" he asked. the co-pilot pointed to a chair. he rappedsharply on a drinking glass. a door opened, he pointed at joe, and thedoor closed. "breakfast coming up," said the co-pilot."look! i know you're joe kenmore. i'm brick talley and this is captain--noless than captain!--thomas j. walton. impressed?"

"very much," said joe. he sat down. "whatabout the control surfaces on pushpots?" "they're in the jet blast!" said the co-pilot,now identified as brick talley. "like the v two rockets when the germansmade 'em. vanes in the exhaust blast, no kidding! landing, and skiddingin on their tails like they do, they haven't speed enough to givewing flaps a grip on the air, even if they had wings to put wing flaps on.those dinkuses are things to have bad dreams about!" again, a door opened and a man in uniformwith an apron in front came

marching in with a tray. there was tomatojuice and ham and eggs and coffee. he served joe briskly and marchedout again. "that's hotel de gink service," said talley."no wasted motion, no sloppy civilities. he was about to eat thathimself, he gave it to you, and now he'll cook himself a double portionof everything. what are you doing here, anyhow?" joe shrugged. it occurred to him that it wouldneither be wise nor creditable to say that he'd been sent hereto split up a target at which saboteurs might shoot.

"i guess i'm attached for rations," he observed."there'll be orders along about me presently, i suppose. theni'll know what it's all about." he fell to on his breakfast. the thunderousnoises of the pushpots taking off made the mess hall quiver. joesaid between mouthfuls: "funny way for anything to take off, riding on--itlooked like a truck." "it is a truck," said talley. "a high-speedtruck. fifty of them specially made to serve as undercarriagesso pushpot pilots can practice. the pushpots are really only expectedto work once, you know."

joe nodded. "they aren't to take off," talley explained."not in theory. they hang on to the platform and heave. they go up withit, pushing. when they get it as high as they can, they'll shoot theirjatos, let go, and come bumbling back home. so they have to practicegetting back home and landing. for practicing it doesn't matterhow they get aloft. when they get down, a big straddle truck on caterpillartreads picks them up--they land in the doggonedest places, sometimes!--andbrings 'em back. then a crane heaves them up on a high-speed truckand they do it all over

joe considered while he ate. it made sense.the function of the pushpots was to serve as the first booster stage ofa multiple-stage rocket. together, they would lift the platform offthe ground and get it as high as their jet motors would take it travelingeast at the topmost speed they could manage. then they'd fire theirjatos simultaneously, and in doing that they'd be acting as the secondbooster stage of a multiple-stage rocket. then their work wouldbe done, and their only remaining purpose would be to get their pilotsback to the ground alive, while the platform on its own third stageshot out to space.

"so," said talley, "since their pilots needto practice landings, the trucks get them off the ground. they go upto fifty thousand feet, just to give their oxygen tanks a chance to conkout on them; then they barge around up there a while. the advanced traineesshoot off a jato at top speed. it's gauged to build them up to thespeed they'll give the platform. and then if they come out of thatand get back down to ground safely, they uncross their fingers. a merrylife those guys lead! when a man's made ten complete flights he retires.one flight a week thereafter to keep in practice only, until the big dayfor the platform's take-off.

those guys sweat!" "is it that bad?" the pilot grunted. the co-pilot--talley--spreadout his hands. "it is that bad! every so often one of themcomes down untidily. there's something the matter with the motors. they'vegot a little too much power, maybe. sometimes--occasionally--theyexplode." "jet motors?" asked joe. "explode? that'snews!" "a strictly special feature," said talleydrily. "exclusive with pushpots for the platform. they run 'em andrun 'em and run 'em, on

test. nothing happens. but occasionally oneblows up in flight. once it happened warming up. that was a mess! thefield's been losing two pilots a week. lately more." "it doesn't sound exactly reasonable," saidjoe slowly. he put a last forkful in his mouth. "it's also inconvenient," said talley, "forthe pilots." the pilot--walton--opened his mouth. "it'd be sabotage," he said curtly, "if therewas any way to do it. four pilots killed this week."

he lapsed into silence again. joe considered. he frowned. a pushpot, outside the building, hystericallybellowed its way across the runway and its noise changed and it wasaloft. it went spiraling up and up. joe stirred his coffee. there were thin shoutings outside. a screaming,whistling noise! a crash! something metallic shrieked and died.then silence. talley, the co-pilot, looked sick. then hesaid: "correction. it's been five pushpots exploded and five pilots killedthis week. it's getting a

little bit serious." he looked sharply atjoe. "better drink your coffee before you go look. you won't want to, afterward." he was right. joe saw the crashed pushpot half an hour later.he found that his ostensible assignment to the airfield forthe investigation of sabotage was quaintly taken at face value there. ayoung lieutenant solemnly escorted him to the spot where the pushpothad landed, only ten feet from a hangar wall. the impact had carriedparts of the pushpot five feet into the soil, and the splash effecthad caved in the hangar

wall-footing. there'd been a fire, which hadbeen put out. the ungainly flying thing was twisted andtorn. entrails of steel tubing were revealed. the plastic cockpit cover wasshattered. there were only grisly stains where the pilot had been. the motor had exploded. the jet motor. andjet motors do not explode. but this one had. it had burst from within,and the turbine vanes of the compressor section were revealed, twistedintolerably where the barrel of the motor was ripped away. the jagged edgesof the tear testified to the violence of the internal explosion.

joe looked wise and felt ill. the young lieutenantvery politely looked away as joe's face showed how he felt. butof course there were the orders that said he was a sabotage expert.and joe felt angrily that he was sailing under false colors. he didn'tknow anything about sabotage. he believed that he was probably the leastqualified of anybody that security had ever empowered to look into methodsof destruction. yet, in a sense, that very fact was an advantage.a man may be set to work to contrive methods of sabotage. anotherman may be trained to counter him. the training of the second manis essentially a study of

how the first man's mind works. then it canbe guessed what this saboteur will think and do. but such a trainedsecurity man will often be badly handicapped if he comes upon thesabotage methods of a second man--an entirely different saboteur who thinksin a new fashion. the security man may be hampered in dealing withthe second man's sabotage just because he knows too much about the thinkingof the first. joe went off and scowled at a wall, whilethe young lieutenant waited hopefully nearby. he was in a false position. but he could seethat there was something

odd here. there was a sort of pattern in theway the other sabotage incidents had been planned. it was hard topick out, but it was there. joe thought of the trick of booby-trappinga plane during its major overhaul, and then arming the traps at a laterdate.... a private plane had been fitted to deliver proximity rocketsin mid-air when the transport ship flew past. there was the explosionof the cargo parcel which was supposed to contain requisitionforms and stationery. and the attempt to smash the entire platform by gettingan atomic bomb into a plane and having a saboteur shoot the crewand then deliver the bomb at

the shed in an officially harmless aircraft.... the common element in all those sabotage trickswas actually clear enough, but joe wasn't used to thinking insuch terms. he did know, though, that there was a pattern in thosedevices which did not exist in the blowing up of jet motors from inside. he scowled and scowled, racking his brains,while the young lieutenant watched respectfully, waiting for joe to havean inspiration. had joe known it, the lieutenant was deeply impressedby his attempt at concentration on the problem it had not beenmajor holt's intention for

joe to consider. when joe temporarily gaveup, the young lieutenant eagerly showed him over the whole field andall its workings. in mid-morning another pushpot fell screamingfrom the skies. that made six pushpots and six pilots for this week--twotoday. the things had no wings. they had no gliding angle. pointedup, they could climb unbelievably. while their engines functioned,they could be controlled after a fashion. but they were not aircraftin any ordinary meaning of the word. they were engines with fuel tanksand controls in their exhaust blast. when their engines failed,they were so much junk falling

out of the sky. joe happened to see the second crash, andhe didn't go to noon mess at all. he hadn't any appetite. instead, he gloomilylet himself be packed full of irrelevant information by the younglieutenant who considered that since joe had been sent by security tolook into sabotage, he must be given every possible opportunity to evaluate--thatwould be the word the young lieutenant would use--the situation. but all the time that joe followed him about,his mind fumbled with a hunch. the idea was that there was a patternof thinking in sabotage,

and if you could solve it, you could outguessthe saboteur. but the trouble was to figure out the similarity hefelt existed in--say--a private plane shooting rockets and overhaulmechanics planting booby traps and faked shippers getting bombs onplanes--and come to think of it, there was braun.... braun was the key! braun had been an honestman, with an honest loyalty to the united states which had given him refuge.but he had been blackmailed into accepting a container ofatomic death to be released in the shed. radioactive cobalt did not belongin the shed. that was the

key to the pattern of sabotage. braun wasnot to use any natural thing that belonged in the shed. he was to be onlythe means by which something extraneous and deadly was to havebeen introduced. that was it! somebody was devising ingeniousways to get well-known destructive devices into places where theydid not belong, but where they would be effective. rockets. bombs. evenradioactive cobalt dust. all were perfectly well-known means of destruction.the minds that planned those tricks said, in effect: "thesethings will destroy. how can we get them to where they will destroysomething?" it was a strict

pattern. but the pushpot sabotage--and joe was sureit was nothing else--was not that sort of thing. making motors explode....motors don't explode. one couldn't put bombs in them. there wasn't room.the explosions joe had seen looked as if they'd centered in the firebasket--technically the combustion area--behind the compressor andbefore the drive vanes. a jet motor whirled. its front vanes compressedair, and a flame burned furiously in the compressed air, which swelledenormously and poured out past other vanes that took power from it todrive the compressor. the

excess of blast poured out astern in a blue-whiteflame, driving the ship. but one couldn't put a bomb in a fire basket.the temperature would melt anything but the refractory alloys of whicha jet motor has to be built. a bomb placed there would explode the instanta motor was started. it couldn't resist until the pushpot took off.it couldn't.... this was a different kind of sabotage. therewas a different mind at work. in the afternoon joe watched the landings,while the young lieutenant

followed him patiently about. a pushpot landingwas quite unlike the landing of any other air-borne thing. it cameflying down with incredible clumsiness, making an uproar outof all proportion to its landing speed. pushpots came in with theirtail ends low, crudely and cruelly clumsy in their handling. they hadno wings or fins. they had to be balanced by their jet blasts. they hadto be steered the same way. when a jet motor conked out there was no control.the pushpot fell. he carefully watched one landing now. it camedown low, and swung in toward the field, and seemed to reach itsstern down tentatively to

slide on the earth, and the flame of its exhaustscorched the field, and it hesitated, pointing up at an ever steeperangle--and it touched and its nose tilted forward--and leaped up asthe jet roared more loudly, and then touched again.... the goal was for pushpots to touch groundfinally with the whole weight of the flying monstrosity supported by thevertical thrust of the jet, and while it was moving forward at the lowestpossible rate of speed. when that goal was achieved, they floppedsolidly flat, slid a few feet on their metal bellies, and lay still. somehit hard and tried to dig

into the earth with their blunt noses. joefinally saw one touch with no forward speed at all. it seemed to try tosettle down vertically, as a rocket takes off. that one fell over backwardand wallowed with its belly plates in the air before it rolled overon its side and rocked there. the last of a flight touched down and flopped,and the memory of the wreckage had been overlaid by these othersights and joe could think of his next meal without aversion. when it wasevening-mess time he went doggedly back to the mess hall. there wasa sort of itchy feeling in his

mind. he knew something he didn't know heknew. there was something in his memory that he couldn't recall. talley and walton were again at mess. joewent to their table. talley looked at him inquiringly. "yes, i saw both crashes," said joe gloomily,"and i didn't want any lunch. it was sabotage, though. only it wasdifferent in kind--it was different in principle--from the other tricks.but i can't figure out what it is!" "mmmmmm," said talley, amiably. "you'd learnsomething if you could talk

to the resistance fighters and saboteurs ineurope. the poles were wonderful at it! they had one chap who couldget at the tank cars that took aviation gasoline from the refinery tothe various nazi airfields. he used to dump some chemical compound--justa tiny bit--into each carload of gas. it looked all right, smelledall right, and worked all right. but at odd moments hitler's planeswould crash. the valves would stick and the engine'd conk out." joe stared at him. and it was just as simpleas that. he saw. "the nazis lost a lot of planes that way,"said talley. "those that

didn't crash from stuck valves in flight--theyhad to have their valves reground. lost flying time. wonderful! andwhen the nazis did uncover the trick, they had to re-refine every dropof aviation gas they had!" joe said: "that's it!" "that's it? and _it_ is what?" then joe said disgustedly: "surely! it's thetrick of loading co_2 bottles with explosive gas, too! excuse me!" he got up from the table and hurried out.he found a phone booth and got the shed, and then the security office, andat long last major holt. the

major's tone was curt. "yes?... joe?... the three men from the affairof the lake were tracked this morning. when they were cornered theytried to fight. i am afraid we'll get no information from them, if that'swhat you wanted to know." the major's manner seemed to disapprove ofjoe as expressing curiosity. his words meant, of course, that the threewould-be murderers had been fatally shot. joe said carefully: "that wasn't what i calledabout, sir. i think i've found out something about the pushpots. howthey're made to crash. but

my hunch needs to be checked." the major said briefly: "tell me." joe said: "all the tricks but one, that wereused on the plane i came on, were the same kind of trick. they wereall arrangements for getting regular destructive items--bombs or rocketsor whatever--where they could explode and smash things. the saboteurswere adding destructive items to various states of things. but therewas one trick that was different." "yes?" said the major, on the telephone.

"putting explosive gas in the co_2 bottles,"said joe painstakingly, "wasn't adding a new gadget to a situation.it was changing something that was already there. the saboteurs tooksomething that belonged in a plane and changed it. they did not put somethingnew into a plane--or a situation--that didn't belong there. it wasa special kind of thinking. you see, sir?" the major, to do him justice, had the giftof listening. he waited. "the pushpots," said joe, very carefully,"naturally have their fuel stored in different tanks in different places,as airplanes do. the

pilots switch on one tank or another justlike plane pilots. in the underground storage and fueling pits, whereall the fuel for the pushpots is kept in bulk, there are differenttanks too. naturally! at the fuel pump, the attendant can draw on anyof those underground tanks he chooses." the major said curtly: "obviously! what ofit?" "the pushpot motors explode," said joe. "andthey shouldn't. no bomb could be gotten into them without going offthe instant they started, and they don't blow that way. i make a guess,sir, that one of the

underground storage tanks--just one--containsdoctored fuel. i'm guessing that as separate tanks in a pushpotare filled up, one by one, _one_ is filled from a particular undergroundstorage tank that contains doctored fuel. the rest will have normal fuel.and the pushpot is going to crash when that tank, and only that tank,is used!" major holt was very silent. "you see, sir?" said joe uneasily. "the pushpotscould be fueled a hundred times over with perfectly good fuel,and then one tank in one of them would explode when drawn on. there'dbe no pattern in the

explosions...." major holt said coldly: "of course i see!it would need only one tank of doctored fuel to be delivered to the airfield,and it need not be used for weeks. and there would be no trace inthe wreckage, after the fire! you are telling me there is one undergroundstorage tank in which the fuel is highly explosive. it is plausible.i will have it checked immediately." he hung up, and joe went back to his meal.he felt uneasy. there couldn't be any way to make a jet motor explodeunless you fed it

explosive fuel. then there couldn't be anyway to stop it. and then--after the wreck had burned--there couldn'tbe any way to prove it was really sabotage. but the feeling of havingreported only a guess was not too satisfying. joe ate gloomily. he didn'tpay much attention to talley. he had that dogged, uncomfortablefeeling a man has when he knows he doesn't qualify as an expert, butfeels that he's hit on something the experts have missed. half an hour after the evening mess--nearsunset--a security officer wearing a uniform hunted up joe at the airfield.

"major holt sent me over to bring you backto the shed," he said politely. "if you don't mind," said joe with equal politeness,"i'll check that." he went to the phone booth in the barracks.he got major holt on the wire. and major holt hadn't sent anybody toget him. so joe stayed in the telephone booth--on orders--whilethe major did some fast telephoning. it was comforting toknow he had a pistol in his pocket, and it was frustrating not to be allowedto try to capture the fake security officer himself. the idea ofmurdering joe had not been

given up, and he'd have liked to take partpersonally in protecting himself. but it was much more important forthe fake security man to be captured than for joe to have the satisfactionof attempting it himself. as a matter of fact, the fake officer startedhis getaway the instant joe went to check on his orders. the officerknew they'd be found faked. it had not been practical for him to shootjoe down where he was. there were too many people around for this murdererto have a chance at a getaway. but he didn't get away, at that. twenty minuteslater, while joe still

waited fretfully in the phone booth, the phonebell rang and major holt was again on the wire. and this time joe wasinstructed to come back to the shed. he had exact orders whom to comewith, and they had orders which identified them to joe. some eight miles from the airfield--it wasjust dusk--joe came upon a wrecked car with motorcycle security guardsworking on it. they stopped joe's escort. joe's phone call had set offan alarm. a plane had spotted this car tearing away from the airfield, andmotorcyclists were guided in pursuit by the plane. when it wouldn'tstop--when the fake security

officer in it tried to shoot his way clear--theplane strafed him. so he was dead and his car was a wreck, and themotorcycle men were trying to get some useful information from his bodyand the car. joe went to the major's house in the officers'-quartersarea. the major looked even more tired than before, but henodded approvingly at joe. sally was there too, and she regarded joewith a look which was a good deal warmer than her father's. "you did very well," said the major detachedly."i don't have too high an opinion of the brains of anybody your age,joe. when you are my age,

you won't either. but whether you have brainsor simply luck, you are turning out to be very useful." joe said: "i'm getting security conscious,sir. i want to stay alive." the major regarded him with irony. "i was thinking of the fact that when youworked out the matter of the doctored pushpot fuel, you did not try tobe a hero and prove it yourself. you referred it to me. that wasthe proper procedure. you could have been killed, investigating--it'sclear that the saboteurs would be pleased to have a good chance tomurder you--and your

suspicions might never have reached me. theywere correct, by the way. one storage tank underground was half-fullof doctored fuel. rather more important, another _was_ full, not yet drawnon." the major went on, without apparent cordiality:"it seems probable that if this particular sabotage trick had notbeen detected--it seems likely that on the platform's take-off, all or mostof the pushpots would have been fueled to explode at some time afterthe platform was aloft, and before it could possibly get out to space." joe felt queer. the major was telling him,in effect, that he might have

kept the platform from crashing on take-off.it was a good but upsetting sensation. it was still more important tojoe that the platform get out to space than that he be credited with savingit. and it was not reassuring to hear that it might have beenwrecked. "your reasoning," added the major coldly,"was soundly based. it seems certain that there is not one central authoritydirecting all the sabotage against the platform. there are probablyseveral sabotage organizations, all acting independently andprobably hating each other, but all hating the platform more."

joe blinked. he hadn't thought of that. itwas disheartening. "it will really be bad," said the major, "ifthey ever co-operate!" "yes, sir," said joe. "but i called you back from the airfield,"the major told him without warmth, "to say that you have done a goodjob. i have talked to washington. naturally, you deserve a reward." "i'm doing all right, sir," said joe awkwardly."i want to see the platform go up and stay up!" the major nodded impatiently.

"naturally! but--ah--one of the men selectedand trained for the crew of the platform has been--ah--taken ill. in strictconfidence, because of sabotage it has been determined to close inthe platform and get it aloft at the earliest possible instant, evenif its interior arrangements are incomplete. so--ah--in viewof your usefulness, i said to washington that i believed the greatestreward you could be offered was--ah--to be trained as an alternate crewmember, to take this man's place if he does not recover in time." the room seemed to reel around joe. then hegulped and said: "yes, sir!

i mean--that's right. i mean, i'd rather havethat, than all the money in the world!" "very well." the major turned to leave theroom. "you'll stay here, be guarded a good deal more closely than before,and take instructions. but you understand that you are still only analternate for a crew member! the odds are definitely against your going!" "that's--that's all right, sir," said joeunsteadily. "that's quite all right!" the major went out. joe stood still, tryingto realize what all this

might mean to him. then sally stirred. "you might say thanks, joe." her eyes were shining, but she looked proud,too. "i put it in dad's head that that was whatyou'd like better than anything else," she told him. "if i can'tgo up in the platform myself--and i can't--i wanted you to. becausei knew you wanted to." she smiled at him as he tried incoherentlyto talk. with a quiet maternal patience, she led him out on theporch of her father's house and sat there and listened to him. it wasa long time before he realized

that she was humoring him. then he stoppedshort and looked at her suspiciously. he found that in his enthusiasticgesticulations he had been gesticulating with _her_ hand as wellas his own. "i guess i'm pretty crazy," he said ruefully."shooting off my mouth about myself up there in space.... you'repretty decent to stand me the way i am, sally." he paused. then he said humbly: "i'm plainlucky. but knowing you and--having you like me reasonably much ispretty lucky too!" she looked at him noncommittally.

he added painfully: "and not only becauseyou spoke to your father and told him just the right thing, either. you're--sortof swell, sally!" she let out her breath. then she grinned athim. "that's the difference between us, joe," shetold him. "to me, what you just said is the most important thing anybody'ssaid tonight." 10 the world turned over on its axis with unfailingregularity, and nights followed mornings and mornings followed nightsaccording to well-established precedent. one man turnedup in bootstrap with

radiation burns, but he had not offered himselffor check over at the hospital. he was found dead in his lodging.since nobody else appeared to have suffered any burns at all, it wasassumed that he was the messenger who had brought the radioactivecobalt to braun, who also had been doomed by possession of the deadly stuff,but who had broken the chain of fatality by not dumping it free intothe air of the shed. under the circumstances, then, three-shift workon the platform was resumed, and three times in each twenty-four hoursfleets of busses rolled out of bootstrap carrying men to work in the shed,and rolled back again loaded

with men who had just stopped working there. trucks carried materials to the shed, andswing-up doors opened in the great dome's eastern wall, and the truckswent in and unloaded. then the trucks went out of the same doors and trundledback for more materials. in the shed, shining plates of metal swungaloft, and welding torches glittered in the maze of joists and uprightpipes that still covered the monster shape. each day it was a little morenearly complete. in a separate, guarded workshop by a sidewall,the chief and haney and mike the midget labored mightily to accomplishthe preposterous. they grew

lean and red-eyed from fatigue, and shortof temper and ever more fanatical--and security men moved about inseeming uselessness but never-ceasing vigilance. there were changes, though. the assembly lineof pushpots grew shorter, and the remaining monstrosities around thesidewall were plainly near to completion. there came a day, indeed, whenonly five ungainly objects remained on that line, and even they werecompletely plated in and needed only a finishing touch. it was at thistime that more crates and parcels arrived from the kenmore precisiontool plant, and joe dropped

his schoolroomlike instruction course in spaceflight for work of greater immediate need. he and his alliesworked twice around the clock to assemble the replaced parts with the repairedelements of the pilot gyros. they grew groggy from the desperateneed both for speed and for absolute accuracy, but they put the complexdevice together, and adjusted it, and surveyed the result throughred-rimmed eyes, and were too weary to rejoice. then joe threw a switch and the reconstitutedpilot gyro assembly began to hum quietly, and the humming rose to awhine, and the whine went

deliberately up the scale until it ceasedto be audible at all. presently a dial announced the impossible,and they gazed at a device that seemed to be doing nothing whatever.the gyros appeared quite motionless. they spun with such incredibleprecision that it was not possible to detect that they moved a hairbreadth.and the whole complex device looked very simple and useless. but the four of them gazed at it--now thatit worked--with a sudden passionate satisfaction. joe moved a control,and the axis of the device moved smoothly to a new place and stayed there.he moved the control

again, and it moved to another position andstayed there. and to another and another and another. then the chief took joe's place, and underhis hand the seemingly static disks--which were actually spinning at fortythousand revolutions per minute--turned obediently and without anyappearance of the spectacular. then haney worked the controls. and mike putthe device through its paces. mike left the gyros spinning so that the mainaxis pointed at the sun, invisible beyond the shed's roof. and thenall four of them watched. it

took minutes for this last small test to showits results. but visibly and inexorably the pilot gyros followed theunseen sun, and they would have resisted with a force of very many tonsany attempt to move them aside by so little as one-tenth of a secondof arc, which would mean something like one three-hundred-thousandthof a right angle. and these pilot gyros would control the main gyros withjust this precision, and after the platform was out in space couldhold the platform itself with the steadiness needed for astronomical observationpast achievement from the surface of the earth.

the pilot gyros, in a word, were ready forinstallation. joe and haney and the chief and mike werenot beautiful to look at. they were begrimed from head to toe, and theireyes were bloodshot, and they were exhausted to the point where they didnot even notice any longer that they were weary. and their mental processeswere not at all normal, so that they were quarrelsome and arbitraryand arrogant to the men with the flat-bed trailer who came almost reverentlyto move their work. they went jealously with the thing they had rebuilt,and they were rude to engineers and construction workers and supervisors,and they shouted

angrily at each other as it was hoisted upa shaft that had been left in the platform for its entrance, and they werevery far from tactful as they watched with hot, anxious eyes as itwas bolted into place. it would be welded later, but first it wastried out. and it moved the main gyros! they weighed many times what thepilot gyros did, but even when they were spinning the pilot gyros stirredthem. of course the main-gyro linkage to the fabric of the shedhad to be broken for this test, or the gyros would have twisted thegiant upon its support and all the scaffolding around it would have beenbroken and the men on it

killed. but the gyros worked! they visibly and unquestionablyworked! they controlled the gigantic wheels that wouldsteer the platform in its take-off, and later would swing it to receivethe cargo rockets coming up from earth. the pilot instrument worked!there was no vibration. in its steering apparatus the platform was readyfor space! then the chief yawned, and his eyes glazedas he stood in the huge gyro room. and haney's knees wobbled, and he satdown and was instantly asleep. then joe vaguely saw somebody--itwas major holt--holding mike

in his arms as if mike were a baby. mike wouldhave resented it furiously if he had been awake. and then suddenlyjoe didn't know what was going on around him, either. there was a definite hiatus in his consciousness.he came back to awareness very slowly. he was half-awake andhalf-asleep for a long time. he only knew contentedly that his jobwas finished. then, slowly, he realized that he was in a bunk in one ofthe platform sleeping cabins, and the inflated cover that was sally'scontribution to the platform held him very gently in place. somehowit was infinitely

soothing, and he had an extraordinary sensationof peacefulness and relaxation and fulfillment. the pilot gyroswere finished and in position. his responsibility to them was ended.and he had slept the clock around three times. he'd slept for thirty-sixhours. he was starving. sally had evidently constituted herself awatch over joe as he slept, because she faced him immediately when hewent groggily out of the cabin to look for a place to wash. he was stillcovered with the grime of past labor, and he had been allowed to sleep withonly his shoes removed. he

was not an attractive sight. but sally regardedhim with an approval that her tone belied. "you can get a shower," she told him firmly,"and then i'll have some breakfast for you. fresh clothes are waiting,too." joe said peacefully: "the gyros are finishedand they work!" "don't i know?" demanded sally. "go get washedand come back for breakfast. the chief and haney and mike arealready awake. and because of the four of you, they've been able to advancethe platform's take-off time--to just two days off! it leaked out,and now it's official. and

you made it possible!" this was a slight exaggeration, but it waspardonable because of sally's partiality for joe. he went groggily intothe special shower arrangement in the platform. in orbit, there would beno gravity, so a tub bath was unthinkable. the shower cabinet was a cubbyholewith handgrips on all four sides and straps into which one couldslip his feet. when joe turned handles, needle sprays sprang at himfrom all sides, and simultaneously a ventilator fan began to run.when in space that fan could draw out what would otherwise becomean inchoate mixture of air

and quite weightless water-drops. in spacea man might drown in his own shower bath without the fan. the apparatusfor collecting the water again was complex, but joe didn't think aboutthat at the moment. he considered ruefully that however convenientthis system might be out in the platform's orbit, it left something tobe desired on earth. but there were clean clothes waiting whenhe came out. he dressed and felt brand new and utterly peaceful and rested,and it seemed to him very much like the way he had often felt ona new spring morning. it was very, very good!

then he smelled coffee and became ravenous. there were the others in the platform's kitchen,sitting in the chairs that had straps on them so the crew needn'tfloat about because of weightlessness. there was an argument in progress.the chief grinned at joe. mike the midget looked absorbed. haneywas thinking something out, rather painfully. sally was busy at the platform'svery special stove. she had ham and eggs and pancakes ready forjoe to eat. "gentlemen," she said, "you are about to eatthe first meal ever cooked in a space ship--and like it!"

she served them and sat companionably downwith them all. but her eyes were very warm when she looked at joe. "leavin' aside what we were arguin' about,"said the chief blissfully, "sally here--mind if i call you sally, ma'am?--shesays the slide-rule guys have given our job the works and theysay it's a better job than they designed. take a bow, joe." sally said firmly: "when the technical journalsare through talking about the job you did, you'll all four befamous for precision-machining technique and improvements on standard practices."

"which," said the chief sarcastically, "isgonna make us feel fine when we're back to welding and stuff!" "no more welding," sally told him. "not onthis job. the platform's closed in. they've started to take down thescaffolding." the chief looked startled. haney asked: "layingoff men yet?" "not you," sally assured him. "definitelynot you. you four have the very top super-special security rating thereis! i think you're the only four people in the world my father is surecan't be reached, somehow, to make you harm the platform."

mike said abruptly: "yeah. the major thoughthe had headaches before. now he's really got 'em!" mike hadn't seemed to be listening. he'd actedas if he were feverishly absorbing the feel of being inside the platform--notas a workman building it, but as a man whose proper habitatit would become. but joe suddenly realized that his comment was exact.there'd been plenty of sabotage to prevent the platform from reachingcompletion. but now it was ready to take off in two days. if it wasto be stopped, it would have to be stopped within forty-eight hoursby people with plenty of

resources, who for their own evil ends neededit to be stopped. these last two days would contain the last-ditch,most desperate, most completely ruthless stepped-up attempts atdestruction that could possibly be made. and major holt had to handlethem. but the four at table--five, with sally--werepeculiarly relaxed. the matter they'd handled had been conspicuous,perhaps, but it was still only one of thousands that had to be accomplishedbefore the platform could take off. but they had the infinitelyrestful feeling of a job well done.

"no more welding," said haney meditatively,"and our job on the gyros finished. what are we gonna do?" the chief said forcefully: "me, i'm gonnasweep floors or something, but i'm sure gonna stick around and watch thetake-off!" joe said nothing. he looked at sally. shebecame very busy, making certain the others did not want more to eat.after a long time joe said, with very careful casualness, "come to thinkof it, i was getting loaded up with astrogation theory when i had to stopand pitch in on the gyros. how's that sick crew member, sally?"

"i--wouldn't know," answered sally unconvincingly."have some more coffee?" joe made his face go completely expressionless.there was nothing else to do. sally hadn't said that his chanceslooked bad for making the crew of the platform when it went out to space.but sally had ways of knowing things. she would be sure to keep informedon a matter like that, because she was wearing joe's ring and itwould have taken a great deal of discouragement to keep her from findingout good news to tell him. she didn't have any good news. so it mustbe bad.

joe drank his coffee, trying to make himselfbelieve that he'd known all along he wasn't going to make the crew. he'dstarted late to learn the things a crew member ought to know. he'd stoppedat the most crucial part of his training to work on the gyros,which were more crucial still. he'd slept a day and a half. the platformwould take off in forty-eight hours. he tried to reason carefullythat it was common sense to use a man who was fully trained from thebeginning for a place in the crew, rather than a latecomer like himself.but it wasn't easy to take. mike the midget said suddenly: "i got a hunch."

"shoot it," said the chief, amiably. "i got a hunch i know what kind of sabotagewill be tried next--and when," said mike. the others looked at him--all but joe, whostared at the wall. "there hasn't been one set of guys tryingto smash the platform," said mike excitedly. "there's been four or five.joe found a gang sabotaging the pushpots that didn't think like the gangthat blackmailed braun. and the gang that tried to kill us up at red canyonmay be another. there could be others: fascists and commies andnationalists and crackpots of

all kinds. and they all know they've got towork fast, even if they have to help each other. get it?" "i'll buy what you've said so far," said thechief. "sure! those so-and-sos will all pile in everything theygot at the last minute. they'll even pull together to smash the platform--andthen double-cross each other afterward. but what'll they do,an' when?" "this time they'll try outright violence,"said mike coldly, "instead of sneaking. they'll try something really rough.for sneaking, one time's as good as another, but for really rough stuff,there's just one time

when the platform hasn't got plenty of guysaround ready to fight for it." the chief whistled softly. "you mean change-shift time! which one?" "the first one possible," said mike briefly."after every shift, things will get tighter. so my guess is the nextshift, if they can. and if one gang starts something, the others will haveto jump right in. you see?" that made sense. one attempt at actual violence,defeated, would create a rigidity of defense that would make othersimpossible. if a successful

attempt at violent sabotage was to be made,the efforts of all groups would have to be timed to the first, or abandoned. "i could--uh--set up a sort of smoke screen,"said mike. "we'll fake we're going to smash something--and let thosesaboteurs find it out. they'll see it as a chance to do their stuffwith us to run interference for them.--sally, does your father sure-enoughtrust us?" sally nodded. "he doesn't talk very cordially, but he trustsyou." "okay," said mike. "you tell him, private,that i'm setting up something

tricky. he can laugh off anything his securityguys report that i'm mixed up in. joe'll see that he gets the wholepicture beforehand. but he ain't to tell anybody--not _any_body--thatsomething is getting framed up. right?" "i'll ask him," said sally. "he is prettydesperate. he's sure some last-minute frantic assault on the platformwill be made. but----" "we'll tip him in plenty of time," said mikewith authority. "in time for him to play along, but not for a leakto spoil things. okay?" "i'll make the bargain," sally assured him,"if it can be made."

mike nodded. he drained his coffee cup andslipped down from his chair. "come on, chief! c'mon, haney!" he led them out of the room. joe fiddled with his spoon a moment, and thensaid: "the crewman i was to have subbed for if he didn't get well--hedid, didn't he?" sally answered reluctantly: "y-yes." joe said measuredly: "well, then--that's that!i guess it will be all right for me to stick around and watch thetake-off?" sally's eyes were misty.

"of course it will, joe! i'm so sorry!" joe grinned, but even to himself his faceseemed like a mask. "into each life some rain must fall. let'sgo out and see what's been accomplished since i went to sleep. all right?" they went out of the platform together. andas soon as they reached the floor of the shed it was plain that the stagehad been set for stirring events. the top five or six levels of scaffoldinghad already been removed, and more of the girders and pipes were comingdown in bundles on lines from

giraffelike cranes. there were some new-typetrucks in view, too, giants of the kind that carry ready-mixed concretethrough city streets. they were pouring a doughy white paste into hugebuckets that carried it aloft, where it vanished into the mouths oftubes that seemed to replace the scaffolding along the platform's sides. "lining the rockets," said sally in a subduedvoice. joe watched. he knew about this, too. it hadbeen controversial for a time. after the pushpots and their jatos hadserved as the first two stages of a multiple-rocket aggregation, theplatform carried rocket

fuel as the third stage. but the platformwas a highly special ballistic problem. it would take off almost horizontally--agreat advantage in fueling matters. this was practical simplybecause the platform could be lifted far beyond effective air resistance,and already have considerable speed before its own rocketsflared. moreover, it was not a space ship in the senseof needing rockets for landing purposes. it wouldn't land. not ever.and again there was the fact that men would be riding in it. thatruled out the use of eight- and ten- and fifteen-gravity acceleration. ithad to make use of a long

period of relatively slow acceleration ratherthan a brief terrific surge of power. so its very special rocketshad been designed as the answer. they were solid-fuel rockets, though solidfuels had been long abandoned for long-range missiles. but they were entirelyunlike other solid-fuel drives. the pasty white compound being hauledaloft was a self-setting refractory compound with which the rockettubes would be lined, with the solid fuel filling the center. the tubes themselveswere thin steel--absurdly thin--but wound with wireunder tension to provide

strength against bursting, like old-fashionedrifle cannon. when the fuel was fired, it would be at themuzzle end of the rocket tube, and the fuel would burn forward at somany inches per second. the refractory lining would resist the rocketblast for a certain time and then crumble away. crumbling, the refractoryparticles would be hurled astern and so serve as reaction mass. whenthe steel outer tubes were exposed, they would melt and be additionalreaction mass. in effect, as the rocket fuel was exhausted,the tubes that contained it dissolved into their own blast and added tothe accelerating thrust,

even as they diminished the amount of massto be accelerated. then the quantity of fuel burned could diminish--thetubes could grow smaller--so the rate of speed gain would remain constant.under the highly special conditions of this particular occasion, therewas a notable gain in efficiency over a liquid-fuel rocket design.for one item, the platform would certainly have no use for fuel pumpsand fuel tanks once it was in its orbit. in this way, it wouldn't have them.their equivalent in mass would have been used to gain velocity. andwhen the platform finally rode in space, it would have expended everyounce of the driving

apparatus used to get it there. now the rocket tubes were being lined andloaded. the time to take-off was growing short indeed. joe watched a while and turned away. he feltvery good because he'd finished his job and lived up to the responsibilityhe'd had. but he felt very bad because he'd had an outsidechance to be one of the first men ever to make a real space journey--andnow it was gone. he couldn't resent the decision against him. if it hadbeen put up to him, he'd probably have made the same hard decisionhimself. but it hurt to have

had even a crazy hope taken away. sally said, trying hard to interest him, "theserockets hold an awful lot of fuel, joe! and it's better than scientiststhought a chemical fuel could ever be!" "yes," said joe. "fluorine-beryllium," said sally urgently."it fits in with the pushpots' having pressurized cockpits. rocketslike that couldn't be used on the ground! the fumes would be poisonous!" but joe only nodded in agreement. he was apathetic.he was uninterested.

he was still thinking of that lost trip inspace. he realized that sally was watching his face. "joe," she said unhappily, "i wish you wouldn'tlook like that!" "i'm all right," he told her. "you act as if you didn't care about anything,"she protested, "and you do!" "i'm all right," he repeated. "i'd like to go outside somewhere," she saidabruptly, "but after what happened up at the lake, i mustn't. wouldyou like to go up to the top

of the shed?" "if you want to," he agreed without enthusiasm. he followed when she went to a doorway--witha security guard beside it--in the sidewall. she flashed her passand the guard let them through. they began to walk up an inclined,endless, curving ramp. it was between the inner and outer skins of theshed. there had to be two skins because the shed was too big to be ventilatedproperly, and the hot desert sunshine on one side would havemade "weather" inside. there'd have been a convection-current motionof the air in the enclosed

space, and minor whirlwinds, and there couldeven be miniature thunderclouds and lightning. joe rememberedreading that such things had happened in a shed built for zeppelins beforehe was born. they came upon an open gallery, and therewas a security man looking down at the floor and the platform. he hada very good view of all that went on. they went around another long circuit of theslanting gallery, dimly lighted with small electric bulbs. they cameto a second gallery, and saw the platform again. there was anotherguard here.

they were halfway up the globular wall now,and were visibly suspended over emptiness. the view of the platform wasimpressive. there were an astonishing number of rocket tubes being fastenedto the outside of that huge object. three giant cranes, working together,hoisted a tube to the last remaining level of scaffolding, and menswarmed on it and fastened it to the swelling hull. as soon as it wasfast, other men hurried into it with the white pasty stuff to line it fromend to end. the tubes would nearly hide the structure they weredesigned to propel. but they'd all be burned away when it reached its destination.

"wonderful, isn't it?" asked sally hopefully. joe looked, and said without warmth, "it'sthe most wonderful thing that anybody ever even tried to do." which was true enough, but the zest of ithad unreasonably departed for joe for the time being. his disappointmentwas new. halfway around again, sally opened a door,and joe was almost surprised out of his lethargy. here was a watching poston the outside of the monstrous half-globe. there were two guardshere, with fifty-caliber machine guns under canvas hoods. their dutieswere tedious but

necessary. they watched the desert. from thisheight it stretched out for miles, and bootstrap could be seen asa series of white specks far away with hills behind it. ultimately sally and joe came to the verytop of the shed into the open air. from here the steep plating curved downand away in every direction. the sunshine was savagely brightand shining, but there was a breeze. and here there was a considerableexpanse fenced in--almost an acre, it seemed. there were metal-walled smallbuildings with innumerable antennae of every possible shapefor the reception of every

conceivable wave length. there were threeradar bowl reflectors turning restlessly to scan the horizon, and a fourthwhich went back and forth, revolving, to scan the sky itself. sally toldjoe that in the very middle--where there was a shed with a domelikeroof which wasn't metal--there was a wave-guide radar that couldspot a plane within three feet vertically, and horizontally at a distanceof thirty miles, with greater distances in proportion. there were guns down in pits so their muzzleswouldn't interfere with the radar. there were enough non-recoil anti-aircraftguns to defend the

shed against anything one could imagine. "and there are jet planes overhead too," saidsally. "dad asked to have them reinforced, and two new wings of jetfighters landed yesterday at a field somewhere over yonder. there are plentyof guards!" the platform was guarded as no object in allhistory had ever been guarded. it was ironic that it had to be protectedso, because it was actually the only hope of escape from atomicwar. but that was why some people hated the platform, and their hatredhad made it seem obviously an item of national defense. ironically thatwas the reason the money

had been provided for its construction. butthe greatest irony of all was that its most probable immediate usefulnesswould be the help it would give in making nuclear experiments thatweren't safe enough to make on earth. that was pure irony. because if those experimentswere successful, they should mean that everybody in the world wouldin time become rich beyond envy. but joe couldn't react to the fact. he wasdrained and empty of emotion because his job was done and he'd lost a veryflimsy hope to be one of

the platform's first crew. he didn't really feel better until late thatnight, when suddenly he realized that life was real and life was earnest,because a panting man was trying to strangle joe with his bare hands.joe was hampered in his self-defense because a large number of battlingfigures trampled over him and his antagonist together. they wereunderneath the platform, and joe expected to be blown to bits any second. 11 joe sat on the porch of major holt's quartersin the area next to the

shed. it was about eight-thirty, and dark,but there was a moon. and joe had come to realize that his personal disappointmentwas only his personal disappointment, and that he hadn'tany right to make a nuisance of himself about it. therefore he didn't talkabout the thing nearest in his mind, but something else that was nextnearest or farther away still. yet, with the shed filling up a fullquarter of the sky, and a gibbous moon new-risen from the horizon, itwas not natural for a young man like joe to speak purely of earthly things. "it'll come," he said yearningly, staringat the moon. "if the platform

gets up day after tomorrow, it's going totake time to ferry up the equipment it ought to have. but still, somebodyought to land on the moon before too long." he added absorbedly: "once the platform isfully equipped, it won't take many rocket pay loads to refill a ship's tanksat the platform, before it can head on out." mathematically, a rocket ship that could leavethe platform with full fuel tanks should have fuel to reach the moonand land on it, and take off again and return to the platform. themathematical fact had a

peculiar nagging flavor. when a dream is subjectedto statistical analysis and the report is in its favor, adreamer's satisfaction is always diluted by a subconscious feeling thatthe report is only part of the dream. everybody worries a little whena cherished dream shows a likelihood of coming true. some people takefirm steps to stop things right there, so a romantic daydream won'tbe spoiled by transmutation into prosaic fact. but joe said doggedly:"twenty ferry trips to pile up fuel, and the twenty-first ship should beable to refuel and go on out. and then somebody will step out on the moon!"

he was disappointed now. he wouldn't be theone to do it. but somebody would. "you might try for the ferry service," saidsally uneasily. "i will," said joe grimly, "but i won't behoping too much. after all, there are astronomers and physics sharks andsuch things, who'll be glad to learn to run rockets in order to practicetheir specialties out of atmosphere." sally said mournfully: "i can't seem to sayanything to make you feel better!"

"but you do," said joe. he added grandiloquently,"but for your unflagging faith in me, i would not have thecourage to bear the burdens of everyday life." she stamped her foot. "stop it!" "all right." but he said quietly, "you area good kid, sally. you know, it's not too bright of me to mourn." she drew a deep breath. "that's better! now, i want----"

there was a gangling figure walking down theconcrete path between the trim, monotonous cottages that were officers'quarters at the shed. joe said sharply: "that's haney! what's hedoing here?" he called, "haney!" haney's manner took on purpose. he came acrossthe grass--the lawns around the officers' quarters contained theonly grass in twenty miles. "hiya," said haney uncomfortably. he spokepolitely to sally. "hiya. uh--you want to get in on the party, joe?" "what kind?"

"the party mike was talkin' about," said haney."he's set it up. he wants me to get you and a kinda--uh--undercovertip-off to major holt." joe stirred. sally said hospitably: "sit down.you've noticed that my father gave you full security clearance, soyou can go anywhere?" haney perched awkwardly on the edge of theporch. "yeah. that's helped with the party. it'show i got here, as far as that goes. mike's on top of the world." "shoot it," said joe. "y'know he's been pretty bitter about things,"said haney carefully.

"he's been sayin' that little guys like himought to be the spacemen. there's half a dozen other little guys beenworking on the platform too. they can get in cracks an' buck rivets an'so on. useful. he's had 'em all hopped up on the fact that the platformcoulda been finished months ago if it'd been built for them, an' theycould get to the moon an' back while full-sized guys couldn't an' so on.remember?" "i remember," said sally. "they've all been beefin' about it," explainedhaney. "people know how they feel. so today mike went and talked toone or two of 'em. an' they

started actin' mysterious, passin' messagesback an' forth an' so on. little guys, actin' important. security guyswouldn't notice 'em much. y'don't take a guy mike's size serious, unlessyou know him. then he's the same as anybody else. so the securityguys didn't pay any attention to him. but some other guys did. some specialother guys. they saw those little fellas actin' like they were cookin'up somethin' fancy. an' they bit." "bit?" asked sally. "they got curious. so mike an' his gang gotconfidential. an' they're

going to have help sabotagin' the platformwhen the next shift changes. the midgets gettin' even for bein' laughedat, see? they're pretending their plan is that when the platform's sabotaged--notsmashed, but just messed up so it can't take off--the big brasswill let 'em take a ferry rocket up in a hurry, an' get it in orbit,an' use it for a platform until the big platform can be mended an' sentup. once they're up there, there's no use tryin' to stop the big platform.so it can go ahead." joe said dubiously: "i think i see...." "mike and his gang of little guys are bein'saps--on purpose. if

anybody's goin' to pull some fast stuff, nextshift change--that's the time everybody's got to! last chance! mikeand his gang don't know what's gonna happen, but they sure know when!they're invitin' the real saboteurs to make fools of 'em. and what'llhappen?" joe said drily: "the logical thing would beto feel sorry for the big guys who think they're smarter than mike." "uh-huh," said haney, deadly serious. "mike'sstory is there's half a dozen rocket tubes already loaded. they'regoin' to fire those rockets between shifts. the platform gets shoved offits base an' maybe dented,

and so on. mike's gang say they got the figuresto prove they can go up in a ferry rocket an' be a platform, and thebig brass won't have any choice but to let 'em." sally said: "i don't think they know how thebig brass thinks." haney and joe said together, "no!" and joeadded: "mike's not crazy! he knows better! but it's a good story for somebodywho doesn't know mike." haney said in indignation: "i came out hereto ask the major to help us. the chief's gettin' a gang together, too.there's some indians of his tribe that work here. we can count on themfor plenty of rough stuff.

and there's joe and me. the point is thatmike's stunt makes it certain that everything busts loose at a time we canknow in advance. if the major gives us a free hand, and then in thelast five minutes takes his own measures--so they can't leak out aheadof time and tip off the gangs we want to get--we oughta knock off all theexpert saboteurs who know the weak spots in the platform. for instancethose who know that thermite in the gyros would mess everythingup all over again." joe said quietly: "but major holt has to betold well in advance about all this! that's absolute!"

"yeah," agreed haney. "but also he has gotto keep quiet--not tell anybody else! there've been too many leaksalready about too many things. you know that!" joe said: "sally, see if you can get yourfather to come here and talk. haney's right. not in his office. right here." sally got up and went inside the house. shecame back with an uneasy expression on her face. "he's coming. but i couldn't very well tellhim what was wanted, and--i'm not sure he's going to be in a moodto listen."

when the major arrived he was definitely notin a mood to listen. he was a harried man, and he was keyed up to thelimit by the multiplied strain due to the imminence of the platform's take-off.he came back to his house from a grim conference on exactly thesubject of how to make preparations against any possible sabotageincidents--and ran into a proposal to stimulate them! he practicallyexploded. even if provocation should be given to saboteurs to lure theminto showing their hands, this was no time for it! and if it were, it wouldbe security business. it should not be meddled in by amateurs!

joe said grimly: "i don't mean to be disrespectful,sir, but there's a point you've missed. it isn't thinkable thatyou'll be able to prevent something from being tried at a time the saboteurspick. they've got just so much time left, and they'll use it!but mike's plan would offer them a diversion under cover of which theycould pull their own stuff! and besides that, you know your office leaks!you couldn't set up a trick like this through security methods.and for a third fact, this is the one sort of thing no saboteur would expectfrom your security organization! we caught the saboteurs at thepushpot field by guessing

at a new sort of thinking for sabotage. here'sa chance to catch the saboteurs who'll work their heads off in thenext twenty-four hours or so, by using a new sort of thinking for security!" major holt was not an easy man to get alongwith at any time, and this was the worst of all times to differ withhim. but he did think straight. he stared furiously at joe, growingcrimson with anger at being argued with. but after he had stareda full minute, the angry flush went slowly away. then he nodded abruptly. "there you have a point," he said curtly."i don't like it. but it is a

point. it would be completely the reverseof anything my antagonists could possibly expect. so i accept the suggestion.now--let us make the arrangements." he settled down for a quick, comprehensive,detailed plan. in careful consultation with haney, joe worked it out.the all-important point was that the major's part was to be done in completelyunorthodox fashion. he would take measures to mesh his actionswith those of mike, the chief, haney, and joe. each action the majortook and each order he gave he would attend to personally. his actionswould be restricted to the

last five minutes or less before shift-changetime. his orders would be given individually to individuals, and underno circumstances would he transmit any order through anybody else. inevery instance, his order would be devised to mean nothing intelligibleto its recipient until the time came for obedience. it was not an easy scheme for the major tobind himself to. it ran counter to every principle of military thinkingsave one, which was that it was a good idea to outguess the enemy.at the end he said detachedly: "this is distinctly irregular. it is as irregularas anything could

possibly be! but that is why i have agreedto it. it will be at least--unexpected--coming from me!" then he smiled without mirth and nodded tojoe and to haney, and went striding away down the concrete walk to wherehis car waited. haney left a moment later to carry the listof arrangements to the chief and to mike. and joe went into the shed todo his part. there was little difference in the appearanceof the shed by night. in the daytime there were long rows of windowsin the roof, which let in a vague, dusky, inadequate twilight. at nightthose windows were

shuttered. this meant that the shadows werea little sharper and the contrasts of light and shade a trifle moreabrupt. all other changes that joe could see were the normal ones dueto the taking down of scaffolding and the fastening up of rockettubes. it was clear that the shape of the platform proper would be obscurewhen all its rocket tubes were fast in place. joe went to look at the last pushpots, andthey were ready to be taken over to their own field for their flight testbefore use. there were extras, anyhow, beyond the number needed tolift the platform. he found

himself considering the obvious fact thatafter the platform was aloft, they would be used to launch the ferry rockets,too. then he moved toward the center of the shed.a whole level of scaffolding came apart and its separate elementswere bundled together as he watched. slings lowered the bundlesdown to waiting trucks which would carry them elsewhere. there were mixingtrucks still pouring out their white paste for the lining of the rockettubes, and their product went up and vanished into the gaping mouthsof the giant wire-wound pipes.

presently joe went into the maze of piersunder the space platform itself. he came to the temporary stairs hehad reason to remember. he nodded to the two guards there. "i want to take another look at that gadgetwe installed," he said. one of the guards said good-naturedly: "majorholt said to pass you any time." he ascended and went along the curious corridor--ithad handgrips on the walls so a man could pull himself along itwhen there was no weight--and went to the engine room. he heard voices.they were speaking a

completely unintelligible language. he tensed. then the chief grinned at him amiably. hewas in the engine room and with him were no fewer than eight men of hisown coppery complexion. "here's some friends of mine," he explained,and joe shook hands with black-haired, dark-skinned men who were namedcharley spotted dog and sam fatbelly and luther red cow and otherexotic things. the chief said exuberantly, "major holt told the guards tolet me pass in some indian friends, so i took my gang on a guided tourof the platform. none of 'em had ever been inside before. and----"

"i heard you talking indian," said joe. "you're gonna hear some more," said the chief."we're the first war party of my tribe in longer'n my grandpa wouldathought respectable!" joe found it difficult to restrain a smile.the chief took him off to one side. "fella," he said kindly, "it bothers you,this business, because it ain't organized. that's what this world needs,joe. everything figured out by slide rules an' such--it's civilized,but it ain't human! what everybody oughta be is a connoisseur of chaos,like me. quit worryin'

an' get outside and pick up that securityguy the major was gonna send to meet you!" he gave joe an amiable shove and rejoinedhis fellow mohawks, each of whom, joe noticed suddenly, had somewhereon his person a twelve-inch stillson wrench or a reasonable facsimileto serve as a substitute tomahawk. they grinned at him as he departed. at the bottom of the flight of narrow woodensteps there was a third security man. he greeted joe. "major holt told me to pick you up," he observed.

joe walked to one side with him. major holthad promised to send a first-class man to meet joe at this place,with orders to take instructions from joe. joe said curtly: "you'reto snag as many security men as you can, place them more or less outof sight under the platform here, and tell them to turn off their walkie-talkiesand wait. no matter what happens, they're to wait right here untilthey're needed, right here!" he looked harassedly around him. the securityman nodded and moved casually away. this was close timing. somethingmade joe look up. he saw

the catwalk gallery nearly overhead. the expectedguard was there. haney, though, was with him. there was nothingelse in sight. not yet. but haney was on the job. joe saw a securityman step out of sight in the scaffolding. he saw his own assigned securityman speak to another, who wandered casually toward the platform'sbase. minutes passed. only joe could have noticed,because he was watching for it. there were eight or nine security menposted within call. they had their walkie-talkies turned off and wouldbe subject only to his orders if an emergency arose.

gongs began to ring all around the edge ofthe shed. they set up a horrendous clanging. this was not an alarm,but simply the notice of change-of-shift time. there was a marked change in the noises overhead.a crane pulled back. hammerings dwindled and stopped. there werethe sounds of pipes, combined to form the scaffolds, being takenapart for removal. a sling-load of pipe touched the floor and stayedthere. the crane's internal-combustion motor stopped. its operatorstepped down to the floor and headed for the exit. hoists descendedand men moved across the

floor. other men scrambled down ladders. thefloor became dotted with figures moving toward the doors through whichmen went out to get on the busses for bootstrap. nothing happened. more long minutes passed.the shift brought out by the busses was going through the check-over processin the incoming screen room. joe knew that major holt had, withinthe past five minutes, gathered together a tight-knit bunch of armedsecurity men to be available for anything that might turn up.the men doing the normal shift-change screening were shorthanded inconsequence.

the floor next to the exits became crowded,but the central area of the floor was cleared. one truck was stalled atthe swing-up truck doors. its driver ground the starter insistently. suddenly there was a high-pitched yell awayup on the platform. then there was a shot. its echoes rang horriblyin the resonant interior of the shed. joe's own special security man hurriedto him, his face tense. "what about that?" "hold everything," said joe grimly. "that'staken care of." it was. that was mike's gang--miniature humanspopping out of hiding to

offer battle with missiles carefully preparedbeforehand against their alleged associates in sabotage. one of theassociates had drawn a gun and fired. but mike's gang had help. out ofsmall air locks devised to make the platform's skin accessible to itscrew on every side--provided they wore space suits--dark-skinned men appeared. the security man's walkie-talkie under hisshoulder made a buzzing sound. he reached for it. "forget it!" snapped joe. "that's not foryou! you've got your orders! stay here!"

there was a sudden growling uproar where menwere crowding to get out of the shed. thick, billowing smoke appeared.there was a crashing explosion. the men eddied and milled crazily. the motor of the stalled truck caught. itmoved toward the door, which opened, swinging up and high. two trucks cameroaring in. they raced for the platform. and as they raced inside, theircamouflaged loads clattered off and men showed instead. theguards by the doorway began to shoot. "that's what we've got to stop!" snapped joe.

he began to run, his pistol out. there wassuddenly a small army--gathered by his orders--which materializedin the dim space under the platform. it raced to guard against thisevidently well-planned invasion. the harsh, tearing rattle of a machine gunsounded from somewhere high up. joe knew what it was. mike's whole schemehad been intended to force all sabotage efforts to take place at a singleinstant. part of the preparation was authority for haney to dragin two machine guns from an outer watching-post and mount them to coverthe interior of the shed

when the general attack began. those machine guns were shooting at the trucks.splinters sprang up from the wood-block floor. then, abruptly, oneof the trucks vanished in a monstrous, actinic flash of blue-white flameand a roar so horrible that it was not sound but pure concussion. theother truck keeled over and crashed from the blast, but did not explode.men jumped from it. there must have been screamed orders, but joe couldhear nothing at all. he only saw men waving their arms, and othersseized things from the toppled load and rushed toward him, and hebegan to shoot as he ran to

meet them. now, belatedly, the sirens of the shed screamedtheir alarm, and choppy yappings set up as the siren wails rose inpitch. over by the exit pistols cracked. something fell with a ghastlycrash not ten feet from where joe ran. it was a man's body, toppledfrom somewhere high up on the structure that was the most importantman-made thing in all the world. a barbaric war whoop sounded amongthe echoes of other tumult. a security man shot, and one of the runningfigures toppled and slid, his burden--which must certainly be a bomb--rollingridiculously. there

had been two trucks that plunged through theswing-up door. they had raced for the spaces under the platform atthe exact time when the floor would be clear, because all work had stopped.under the platform, the trucks were to have been detonated. at thevery least, they would have rent and torn it horribly. they might havebroken its back. and surely one truck should have made it. but there shouldnot have been machine guns ready trained to shoot. now the loadof desperate men from the overturned survivor scurried for the platformwith parts of its cargo. if they could fight their way inside the platform,they could blast its

hull open, or demolish its controls or shatterits air pumps and its gyros and turn its air tanks into sieves.anything that could be damaged would delay the take-off and so expose theplatform to further and perhaps more successful attack. there were more pistol shots. a group of menfought their way out of the incoming screening rooms and raced for thecenter of the shed. (later, it would be found they had slabs of explosiveinside their garments, and detonation caps to set them off.) somewhereanother door opened, and security men came out with flickering pistols,major holt leading them.

he had started out to fight off the truck-borneattack, but he was bound to be too late. joe's followers were tryingto take care of that. the scuttling men from the incoming rooms weremajor holt's first prey. they were shot as they ran. joe stumbled and fell and he heard guns crackling.as he scrambled up he pitched into a running figure that snarledas joe hit him. and then he was fighting for his life. this was under the platform and in the middleof confusion many times confounded. joe caught a wrist that held agun. he knew his assailant

had a bomb slung over one shoulder and rightnow had one hand free for combat. joe instinctively tried to batterhis enemy with his own pistol, instead of pushing the muzzle against theman's body and pulling the trigger. he struck a flailing blow, and hishand and the weapon struck a metal brace. the blow cut his knuckles andparalyzed his fingers. despairingly he felt the pistol slipping fromhis grasp. then his assailant brought up his knee viciously, butit hit joe's thigh instead of his groin, and joe flung his weight furiouslyforward and they toppled to the ground together.

there was fighting all around him. the machineguns rasped again--there was a burst of tracer-bullet fire. the panickedmen by the exit tried to surge out through the swinging doors. butthe tracers marked a line they must not cross. they checked. once a gun flashedso close by joe's eyes that it blinded him. and once somebody fellover both himself and his antagonist, who writhed like an eel possessedof desperate strength past belief. joe could really know only his private partin the struggle down in the murky tangle of the scaffold base. but therewas fighting up on the

platform itself. a savagely grinning mohawkwrestled furiously with a man on one of the rocket tubes. an incendiarydevice in the saboteur's pocket ignited, and it flamed red-hot andhe screamed as it burned its way out of his garments. the mohawk flungthe man fiercely clear, to crash horribly on the far-distant floor, andthen kicked the incendiary off. it fell after the man and hit and burst,and it was thermite which surrounded itself with a column of acrid smokefrom seared wood blocks. there was fighting by the exit doors. therewas an ululating uproar in the incoming screening room, and a war whoopfrom the top of the

platform. a saboteur tried to crawl into anair-lock entrance, and he got his head and shoulders in, but a copper-skinnedindian held his forehead still and chopped down with the sideof his hand on that man's neck. underneath the platform was pantingchaos, with pistol shots and hand-to-hand struggles everywhere. the forcejoe had gathered fought valiantly, but four invaders got to the footof the wooden steps, where there were two guards. then there were onlytwo saboteurs left to scramble desperately up the steps over thedead guards' bodies and head toward the platform door, but the chief appearedswinging a twelve-inch

stillson. he let it go, precisely like a skillfullyflung tomahawk, and leaped down sixteen steps squarely onto thebody of the other man. a gun flashed, but then there was only squirmingstruggle on the floor. mike the midget, inside the platform, foundone bloodied, panting, sobbing man who somehow had gotten inside.and mike brought down a spanner from a ladder step, and swarmed uponhis half-conscious victim, and hit him again, and then stayed on guarduntil somebody arrived who was big enough to carry the saboteur away. and all this while, joe struggled with onlyone man. it was a horrible

struggle, because the man had a bomb and hemight manage to set it off or it might go off of itself. it was a ghastlystruggle, because the man had the strength and desperation of a maniac--andpracticed the tactics. joe pounded the hand that held the gun uponthe floor, and it hit something and exploded smokily and fell clear.but that made things worse. while struggling to kill joe with therevolver, his antagonist had had only five fingers with which to gougeout joe's eyes or tear away his ears or rend his flesh. but withno pistol he had ten, and he fought like a wild beast. he even breathedlike an animal. he began to

pant--thick, guttural pantings that had thequality of hellish hate. and then there was a surging of bodies--majorholt's reserve was arriving very late in the center of the shed--and thena struggling group trampled all over the pair who squirmed andfought on the ground, and a heavy boot jammed down joe's head and he feltteeth sink in his throat. they dug into his flesh, worrying and tearing.... joe used his knee in a frenzy of revulsion--usedhis knee as the other man had tried to use his in the first instantof battle. the man beneath him screamed as an animal would scream, andjoe jerked his bleeding

throat free. in hysterical horror he poundedhis antagonist's head on the floor until the man went limp.... and then he heard a grim voice saying: "quitit or you get your head blown off! quit it----" and joe panted: "it'sabout time you guys got here! this man came in on that truck. watchout for that bomb he's got slung on him...." 12 the incoming shift had a messy clean-up jobto do. it was accomplished only because security men abruptly took overthe work of gang bosses,

and all ordinary labor on the platform wasput aside until normal operations were again possible. even thatwould not have been feasible but for the walkie-talkies the security menwore. as the situation was sorted out, it was explained to them, andthey relayed the news for the satisfaction of the curiosity of those whoworked under them. no work--no explanation. it produced immediateand satisfactory co-operation all around. there had been four separate and independentattempts to wreck the platform at the same time. one was, of course,the plan of those

sympathetic characters who had volunteeredto help mike and his gang win the status of spacemen by firing the platform'srockets. there were not many of them, and they had lost heavily. they'dhad thermite bombs to destroy the platform's vitals. ultimatelythe survivors talked freely, if morosely, and that was that. there had been a particularly ungifted attemptto cause panic in the incoming shift in the rooms where its memberswere screened before admission to work. somebody had tried to establishcomplete confusion there by firing revolver shots in the crowd,expecting the workers to

break through to the floor and assigned gentlemenwith slabs of explosive to get to the platform with them.the gentlemen with the explosives had run into major holt's securityreserve, and they got nowhere. the creators of panic with revolvershots were finally rescued from their shift-mates and more or less scrapedup from the screening-room floor--they were in very badshape--and carted off to be patched up for questioning. the members ofthis group had been impractical idealists, and besides, some ofthem had lost their nerve, as was evidenced by the discovery of abandonedexplosives and detonators

in the locker room and men's room of the shed. the most dangerous attempt was, of course,that perfectly planned and co-ordinated assault which had been merelycarried out at its original time, without either being hastened or delayedby mike's activities. that plan had been beautifully contrived,and it would certainly have been successful but for the machine-gun bulletsfrom the gallery and the fight joe's followers put up underneath theplatform. the exact instant when the whole shed wouldbe most nearly empty had been fixed upon, and three separate unitshad worked in perfect timing.

there'd been the man in the stalled truck.he'd delayed his exit from the shed to the precise fraction of a secondto get the doors open at the perfect instant. the explosive-laden truckshad raced in at the exact second when they were most certain toget underneath the platform and detonate their cargoes. there'd been aperfect diversion planned for that, too. smoke bombs and explosions in theoutgoing screening rooms had created real panic, and but for joe'sorder for his group's walkie-talkies to be turned off would havedrawn every security man on duty to that spot.

mike's trick, then, had brought some saboteursinto the open, but had merely happened to coincide with the mostdangerous and well-organized coup of all. however, it was due to his trickthat the platform was not now a wreck. there was also another break that was sheercoincidence. it was a discovery that could not possibly have turnedup save in a situation of pure chaos artificially induced. joe had hadto react in a personal and vengeful way to the manner in which his especialantagonist had fought him. one expects a man to fight fair by instinct,and to turn to

fouls--if he does--in desperation only. butjoe's personal opponent hadn't tried a single fair trick. it was asif he'd never heard of a fist blow, but only of murder and mayhem.joe felt an individual enmity toward him. joe didn't consider himself the most urgentof the injured, when doctors and nurses took up the work of patching, butsally was there to help, and she went deathly pale when she saw hisbloodstained throat. she dragged him quickly to a doctor. and the doctorlooked at joe and dropped everything else.

but it wasn't too serious. the antisepticshurt, and the stitching was unpleasant, but joe was more worried by theknowledge that sally was standing there and suffering for him. whenhe got up from the emergency operating table, the doctor nodded grimlyto him. "that was close!" said the doctor. "whoeverchewed you was working for your jugular vein, and he was halfway throughthe wall when he stopped. a fraction of an inch more, and he'd havehad you!" "thanks," said joe. his neck felt clumsy withbandages, and when he tried to turn his head the stitches hurt.

sally's hand trembled in his when she ledhim away. "i didn't think i'd ever dislike anybody somuch," said joe angrily, "as i did that man while he was chewing my throat.we were trying to kill each other, of course, but--confound it, peopledon't bite!" "did you--kill him?" asked sally in a shakyvoice. "not that i'll mind! i would have hated the thought ordinarily,but----" joe halted. there was a row of stretchers--nottoo long, at that--in the emergency-hospital space. he looked down atthe unconscious man who'd fought him.

"there he is!" he said irritably. "i bangedhim pretty hard. i don't like to hate anybody, but the way he fought----" sally's teeth chattered suddenly. she calledto one of the security men standing guard by the stretchers. "i--think my--father is going to want to talkto him," she said unsteadily. "don't--let him be taken awayto the hospital until dad knows, please." she started away, her face dead-white andher hand stone-cold. "what's the matter?" demanded joe.

"s-sabotage," said sally in an indescribabletone that had a suggestion of heartbreak. she went into her father's office alone. shecame out again with him, and her father looked completely stricken.miss ross, his secretary, was with him, too. her face was like a mask ofmarble. she had always been a plain woman, a gloomy one, a morbid one. butat the new and horrible look on her face joe turned his eyes away. then sally was crying beside him, and he puthis arm clumsily around her and let her sob on his shoulder, completelypuzzled.

he didn't find out until later what the troublewas. the man who'd tried so earnestly to kill him was miss ross's fiancã©.she had met this man during a vacation, as a government secretary,and he was a refugee with an exotic charm that would have fascinateda much more personable and beautiful woman than miss ross. they had awhirlwind romance. he confided to her his terror of emissaries fromhis native country who might kill him. and of course she was morefascinated still. when he asked her to marry him she accepted his proposal.then, just two weeks before her assignment to the space platformproject, he vanished. miss

ross was desperate and lovesick. one day her telephone rang and his anguishedvoice told her he'd been abducted, and if she told the police he wouldbe tortured to death. he begged her not to do anything to cause himmore torment than was already his. she'd been trying to keep him alive ever since.once, when she couldn't bring herself to carry out an order she'dbeen given--with threats of torment to him if she failed--she'd receiveda human finger in the mail, and a scrawled and blood-stained note whichcried out of unspeakable

torment and begged her not to doom him tomore. so miss ross, who was major holt's secretaryand one of his most trusted assistants, had been giving information toone group of saboteurs all the while. she was the most dangerous securityleak in the whole platform project. but her fiancã© wasn't a captive. he was thehead of that group of saboteurs. he'd made love to her and proposedto her merely to prepare her to supply the information he wanted. heneeded only to write a sufficiently agonized note, or gasp tormentedpleas on a telephone, to

get what he wanted. incidentally, he still had all his fingerswhen joe knocked him cold. sally had recognized him as the subject ofa snapshot she'd once seen miss ross crying over. miss ross had hiddenit hastily and told her it was someone she had once loved, now dead.and this inadvertent disclosure that miss ross was the securityleak the major had never had a clue to could only have come about throughsuch confusion as mike had instigated and haney and the chief and joehad organized. but joe learned those facts only later.

at the moment, there was still the platformto be gotten aloft. and there was plenty of work to do. there weretwo small rips in the plating, caused by fragments of the explodedtruck. there were some bullet holes. the platform could resist smallmeteorites at forty-five miles a second, but a high-velocity small-armprojectile could puncture it. those scars of battle had to be weldedshut. the rest of the scaffolding had to come down and the restof the rocket tubes had to be affixed. and there was cleaning up to be done. these things occupied the shift that cameon at the time of the multiple

sabotage assaults. at first the work was ragged.but the policy of turning the security men into news broadcastersworked well. after all, the platform was a construction job and themen who worked on it were not softies. most of them had seen men killedbefore. before the shift was half over, a definite work rhythm wasevident. men had begun to take an even greater pride in the thing they hadbuilt, because it had been assailed and not destroyed. and the job wasalmost over. sally went back to her father's quarters,to try to sleep. joe stayed in the shed. his throat was painful enough sothat he didn't want to go to

bed until he was genuinely tired, and he wasthoroughly wrought up. mike the midget had gone peacefully to sleepagain, curled up in a corner of the outgoing screening room. hisfellow midgets talked satisfiedly among themselves. presently, toshow their superiority to mere pitched battles, two of them broughtout a miniature pack of cards and started a card game while they waitedfor a bus to take them back to bootstrap. the chief's indian associates loafed comfortablywhile waiting for the same busses. later they would put in for overtime--andget it. haney

mourned that he had been remote from the sceneof action, and was merely responsible for the presence and placing andfiring of the machine guns that had certainly kept the platform frombeing blown up from below. it seemed that nothing else would happen tobother anybody. but there was one thing more. that thing happened just two hours beforeit was time for the shift to change once again, and when normal work wasback in progress in the shed. everything seemed fully organized andserene. everything in the shed had settled down, and nothing had happenedoutside.

there was ample exterior protection, of course,but the outside-guard system hadn't had anything to do for a verylong time. men at radar screens were bored and sleepy from sheer inactivityand silence. pilots in jet planes two miles and five miles andeight miles high had long since grown weary of the splendid view belowthem. after all, one can get very used to late, slanting moonlighton cloud masses far underneath, and bright and hostile-seemingstars overhead. so the thing was well timed. a canadian station noticed the pip on itsradar screen first. the radar

observer was puzzled by it. it could havebeen a meteor, and the canadian observer at first thought it was.but it wasn't going quite fast enough, and it lasted too long. it wastraveling six hundred seventy-two miles an hour, and it was headeddue south at sixty thousand feet. the speed could have been within reason--providedit didn't stay constant. but it did. there was somethingtraveling south at eleven miles a minute or better. a mile in five-plusseconds. it didn't slow. it didn't drop. the canadian radarman debated painfully. hestopped his companion from

the reading of a magazine article about chinchillabreeding in the home. he showed him the pip, still headed southand almost at the limit of this radar instrument's range. they discussedthe thing dubiously. they decided to report it. they had a little trouble getting the callthrough. the night long-distance operators were sleepy. becauseof the difficulty of making the call, the radarmen became obstinate andinsisted on putting it through. they reported to ottawa that someobject flying at sixty thousand feet and six hundred seventy-twomiles an hour was crossing

canada headed for the united states. there was a further time loss. somebody inauthority had to be awakened, and somebody had to decide that a furtherreport was justified. then the trick had to be accomplished, and a sleepyman in a bathrobe and slippers listened and said sleepily, "oh,of course you'll tell the americans. it's only neighborly!" and paddedback to his bed to go to sleep again. then he waked up suddenly andbegan to sweat. he'd realized that this might be the beginning of atomicwar. so he set phone bells to jangling furiously all over canada, and jetplanes began to boom in the

darkness. but there was only one object in the sky.over the dakotas it went higher. it went to seventy thousand feet,and then eighty. how this was managed is not completely known, because thereare still some details of that flight that have never been completelyexplained. but certainly jatos flared briefly at some point, and theobject reached ninety thousand feet where a jet motor would certainlybe useless. and then, almost certainly, rockets flared once moreand well south of the dakotas it started down in a trajectory like thatof an artillery shell, but

with considerably higher speed than most artilleryshells achieve. it was at about this time that the siren inthe shed began its choppy, hiccoughing series of warm-up notes. the newsfrom canada arrived, as a matter of fact, some thirty seconds afterthe outer-perimeter radar screen around the platform gave its warning.then there was no hesitation or delay at all. men were alreadytumbling out of bed at three airfields, buckling helmets and hopingtheir oxygen tanks would function properly. then the radars atop theshed itself picked up the moving speck. and small blue-white flamesbegan to rise from the ground

and go streaking away in the darkness in astonishingnumbers. the covers of the guns at the top of the shedslid aside. miles away, jet planes shot skyward, and newly wakenedpilots looked at their night-fighting instruments and swore unbelievinglyat the speed they were told the plunging object was making.the jet pilots gave their motors everything they could take, but itdidn't look good. the planes of the jet umbrella over the shedstopped cruising and sprinted. and they were the only ones likelyto get in front of the object in time.

inside the shed, the siren howled dismallyand all the security men were snapping: "radar alarm! all out! radar alarm!all out!" and men were moving fast, too. some came downfrom the platform on hoists, dropping with reckless speed to thefloor level. some didn't wait for a turn at that. they slid down oneupright, swung around the crosspiece on the level below, and slid downanother vertical pipe. for a minute or more it looked as if the scaffoldsoozed black droplets which slid down its pipes. but the drops weremen. the floor became speckled and spotted with dots running forits exits.

the siren ceased its wailing and its noisewent down and down in pitch until it was a baritone moan that droppedto bass and ceased. then there was no sound but the men moving to get outof the shed. there were trucks, too. those that had been loading withdismantled scaffolding roared for the doors to get out and away.some men jumped on board as they passed. the exit doors swung up to letthem go. but it was very quiet in the shed, at that.there was no noise but a few fleeing trucks, and the murmur which was thevoices of the security men hurrying the work crew out. there was lessto hear than went on

ordinarily. and it was a long distance acrossthe floor of the shed. joe stood with his fists clenched absurdly.this could only be an air attack. an air attack could only mean an atom-bombattack. and if there was an atom bomb dropped on the shed, there'dbe no use getting outside. it wouldn't be merely a fission bomb. it wouldbe a hell bomb--a bomb which used the kind of bomb that shatteredhiroshima only as a primer for the real explosive. nobody could hopeto get beyond the radius of its destruction before it hit! joe heard himself raging. he'd thought ofsally. she'd be in the range

of annihilation, too. and joe knew such furyand hatred--because of sally--that he forgot everything else. he didn't run. he couldn't escape. he couldn'tfight back. but because he hated, he had to do something to defy. he found himself moving toward the platform,his jaws clenched. it was pure, blind, instinctive defiance. he was not the only one to have that reaction.men running toward the sidewall exits began to get out of breathfrom their running. they slowed. presently they stopped. they scowledand raged, like joe. some

of them looked with burning eyes up at theroof of the shed, though their thoughts went on beyond it. the securityguards repeated, "radar alarm! all out! radar alarm! all out!" someone snarled, "nuts to that!" joe saw a man walking in the same directionas himself. he was walking deliberately back to the platform. somebodyelse was headed back too.... very peculiarly, almost all the men on thefloor had ceased to run. they began to gather in little groups. they knewflight was useless. they talked briefly. profanely. here and theremen started disgustedly back

toward the platform. their lips moved in expressionsof furious scorn. their scorn was of themselves. there was a gathering of men about the baseof the framework that still partly veiled the platform. they tended toface outward, angrily, and to clench their fists. then somebody started an engine. a man beganto climb furiously back to where he had been at work. quite unreasonably,other men followed him. hammers began defiantly and enragedly to sound. the work crew in the shed went defiantly andfuriously back to work. a

clamor was set up that was almost the normalworking noise. it was the only possible way in which those men couldexpress the raging contempt they felt for those who would destroy thething they worked on. but there were some other men who could domore. there were three levels of jet planes above the shed, and they coulddive. the highest one got first to the line along which the missilefrom an unknown place was plunging toward the shed. that plane steadiedon a collision course and let go its wing load of rockets. it peeledoff and got out of the way. seconds later the others from the jet umbrellawere arriving. a tiny

spray of proximity-fused rockets blazed furiouslytoward the invisible thing from the heights. other planes and yet others came hurtlingto the line their radars briskly computed for them. there were morerockets.... the black-painted thing with more than thespeed of an artillery shell plunged into a miniature hail of rockets.they flamed viciously. half a dozen--a dozen--explosions that were purefutility. then there was an explosion that was not.nobody saw it, because its puny detonation was instantly wiped out ina blaze of such incredible

incandescence that the aluminum paint on jetplanes still miles away was scorched and blistered instantly. the lightof that flare was seen for hundreds of miles. the sound--later on--washeard farther still. and the desert vegetation miles below the hell bombshowed signs of searing when the morning came. but the thing from the north was vaporized,utterly, some forty-five miles from its target. the damage it did wasnegligible. the work on the preparation for the platform'stake-off went on. when the all-clear signal sounded inside the shed,nobody paid any attention.

they were too busy. 13 on the day of the take-off there were a numberof curious side-effects from the completion of the space platform.there was a very small country on the other side of the world whichdetermined desperately to risk its existence on the success of the platform'sflight. it had to choose between abject submission to a powerfulneighbor, or the possibility of a revolution in which its neighbor'stroops would take on the semblance of citizens for street-fightingpurposes. if the platform

got aloft, it could defy its neighbor. andin a grim gamble, it did. there was also a last-ditch fight in the unitednations, wherein the platform was denounced and a certain blockof associated countries issued an ultimatum, threatening to bolt theinternational organization if the platform went aloft. and again therehad to be a grim gamble. if the platform did not take to space and sofurnish ultimately a guarantee of peace, the united nations would face thealternatives of becoming a military alliance for atomic war, or somethingless than an international debating society.

of course there were less significant results.there were already fourteen popular songs ready for broadcast,orchestrated and rehearsed with singers ready to saturate the ears ofthe listening public. they ranged from _we've got a warship in the sky_,which was more or less jingoistic, to a boy-and-girl melody entitled_we'll have a moon just for us two_. the latter tune had been stolenfrom a hit of four years before, which in turn had been stolen froma hit of six years before that, and it had been stolen from a stillearlier bit of bach, so it was a rather pretty melody.

and of course there was a super-colossal motionpicture epic in color and with musical numbers, champing in itsfilm cans for simultaneous first-run showings in eight different keycities. it was titled _to the stars_, and three separate endings had beenfilmed, of which the appropriate one would of course be used inthe eight separate world _premiã¨res_. one ending had the platformfail due to sabotage, and the hero--played by an actor who had interruptedhis seventh honeymoon to play the part--splendidly prepared to buildit all over again. the second ending closed with the platform headedfor alpha centaurus--which

was hardly the intention of anybody outsideof filmdom. the third ending was secret, but it was said that hard-boiledmotion-picture executives had cried like babies when it was thrown onpreview screens. these, of course, were merely sidelights.they were not very important in the shed. there, work went on at a feverishrate although there was no longer any construction work to be done.in theory, therefore, the members of welders and pipe-fitters and steel-constructionand electrical and other unions should have retiredgracefully to bootstrap. members of building-maintenance and riggingand wrecking and other

assorted unions should have been gatheredtogether in far cities, screened by security, and brought to bootstrapand paid overtime to pull up wood-block flooring and unbolt and jackout the proper sections of the shed's eastern wall. but if there had been anything of that sorttried, it would have produced bloodshed. the men who'd built theplatform were going to see it depart this earth or else. they'd neverhave a second chance. it would work the first time or it wouldn't workat all. so the platform was made ready for its take-offby the men who had made

it. a gigantic section--two full gores--ofthe shed's wall was unbolted in two pieces, and each piece thrust outwardat the top and bottom, so that they were offset from the rest of thehuge half-globe. there were hundreds of wheels at their bottom which forthe first time touched the sixteen lines of rails laid with unbelievablesolidity around the outside of the shed. and then the monstroussections were rolled aside. a vast opening resulted, and morning sunlightsmote for the first time mankind's very first space craft. joe saw the sunlight strike, and his firstsensation was of

disappointment. the normal shape of the platformwas ungainly, but now it was practically hidden by the solid-fuelrockets which would consume themselves in their firing. also, the floorof the shed looked strange. it was littered with the clumsy shapes ofpushpots, trucked to this place in an unending stream all night long.a very young lieutenant from the pushpot airfield hunted up joe and assuredhim that every drop of fuel in every pushpot's tanks had been testedtwice--once in the storage tanks, and again in the pushpots. joe thankedhim very politely. there was no longer any scaffolding. therewere no trucks left except

two gigantic cranes, which could handle thepushpots like so many toys. and the effect of sunlight pouring into theshed seemed strange indeed. outside, there were carpenters hammering professionallyupon a hasty grandstand of timber. most of the carpenterswould have been handier with rivet guns or welding torches, but itwould have been indiscreet to comment. as fast as a final timber was spikedin place, somebody hastily wound it with very tawdry bunting. men werestringing wires to the grandstand, and other men were setting uptelevision and movie cameras. two security men grimly stood by each cameraamid a glittering

miscellany of microphones. joe was lucky. or perhaps sally pulled wires.anyhow, the two of them had a vantage point for which many other peoplewould have paid astonishing sums. they waited where the circularramp between the two skins of the shed was broken by the removalof the doorway. they were halfway up the curve of the shed's roof, atthe edge of the great opening, and they could see everything, fromthe pushpot pilots as they were checked into their contraptions, to thesedate arrival of the big brass at the grandstand below.

there was a reverberant humming from the shednow. it might have been the humming of wind blowing across its opensection. joe and sally saw a grim knot of security men escorting four crewmembers to a flight of wooden steps that led up to a lower air-lockdoor--joe had reason to remember that door--and watched them enterand close the air lock behind them. then the security men pulled away thewooden stairs and hauled them completely away. there were a very fewhighly trusted men making final inspections of the platform's exterior.one of them was nearly on a level with joe and sally. other men werealready lowering themselves

down on ropes that they later jerked free,but this last man on top did a very human thing. when he'd finished hischeck-up to the last least detail, he pulled something out of his hippocket. it was a tobacco can full of black paint. there was a brush withit. he painted his name on the silvery plates of the platform, "c. j.adams, jr.," and satisfiedly began his descent to the ground. his namewould go up with the platform and be visible for uncounted generations--ifall went well. he reached the ground and walked away, contented. the cranes began their task. each one reacheddown deliberately and

picked up a pushpot. they swung the pushpotsto vertical positions and presented them precisely to the platform'sside. they clung there ridiculously. magnetic grapples, of course.joe and sally, at the end of the corridor in the wall, could see the headsof the pushpot pilots in their plastic domes. music blared from behind the grandstand. theseats were being filled. but naturally, the least important personageswere arriving first. there were women in costumes to which they had giveninfinite thought--and nobody looked at them except other women.there was khaki. there were

gray business suits--slide-rule men, these,who had done the brain-work behind the platform's design. then black broadcloth.politicians, past question. there is nothing less impressivefrom a height of two hundred feet than a pot-bellied man in black broadclothwalking on the ground. there were men in uniforms which were notof the united states armed forces. they ran heavily to medals, whichglittered. there were more arrivals, and more, and more. the newsreeland tv cameras nosed around. the cranes worked methodically. they dipped,and deftly picked up a thing shaped like the top half of a loaf ofbread. they swung that metal

thing to the platform's side. each time itclung fast, like a snail or slug to the surface on which it crawls. manypushpots clung even to the rocket tubes--the same tubes that would presentlyburn away and vanish. so joe and sally saw the pushpots in a newaspect: blunt metal slugs with gaping mouths which were their air scoops. the tinny music from below cut off. somebodybegan an oration. the men who had built the platform were not interestedin fine phrases, but this event was broadcast everywhere, and some peoplemight possibly tune to the channels that carried the speakers andtheir orations rather than

the channels that showed the huge, bleak,obscured shape of the monster that was headed either for empty space orpure disaster. the speaker stopped, and another took hisplace. then another. one man spoke for less than a minute, and the standswent wild! but the one who followed made splendid gestures. he talkedand talked and talked. the cranes cleaned up the last of the waitingpushpots, and the platform itself was practically invisible. the cranes backed off and went away, clanking.the orator raised his voice. it made small echoes in the vast cavernthat was the shed.

somebody plucked the speaker's arm. he endedabruptly and sat down, wiping his forehead with a huge blue handkerchief. there was a roar. a pushpot had started itsmotor. another roar. another. one by one, the multitude of clusteringobjects added to the din. in the open a single jet was appalling.here, the noise became a sound which was no longer a sound. it becamea tumult which by pure volume ceased to be anything one's ears couldunderstand. it reached a peak and held there. then, abruptly, all themotors slackened in unison, and then roared more loudly. the group controlswithin the platform were

being tested. three--four--five times thetumult faded to the merely unbearable and went up to full volume again. joe felt sally plucking at his arm. he turned,and saw a jet plane's underbelly, very close, and its swept-backwings. it was climbing straight up. then he saw another jet planestreaking for the great dome's open door. it moved with incrediblevelocity. it jerked upward and climbed over the shed's curve and wasgone. but there were others and others and others. these were the fighter ships of the jet-planeguard. for months on end

they had flown above the shed, protectingit. now they were going aloft to relieve the present watchers. they wererising to spread out as an interceptor screen for hundreds of miles inevery direction, in case somebody should be so foolish as to try againthe exploit of the night before. they would not see the monster inthe shed again. so in a single line which reached to the horizon, they madethis roaring run for the one last glimpse which was their right. joesaw tiny specks come streaking down out of the sky to queue upfor this privileged view of the platform before it rose.

suddenly they were gone, and joe felt thattingling sense of pride which never comes from the sensation of sharingin mere power or splendor or pompous might, but is so certain when thehuman touch modifies magnificence. and then the roaring of the pushpot enginesachieved an utterly impossible volume. the whole interior of theshed was misty now, but shining in the morning light. and the platform moved. at first it was a mere stirring. it turnedever so slightly to one side,

pivoting on the ways that had supported itduring building. it turned back and to the other side. the vapor thickened.from each jet motor a blast of blue-white flame poured down, andthe moisture in the earth was turning into steam and stray wood-blocks intoacrid smoke. the platform turned precisely and exactly back to its originalposition, and joe's heart pounded in his throat, because he knewthat the turning had been done with the gyros, and they had been handledby the pilot gyros for which he was responsible. then the platform moved again. it lifted byinches and swayed forward.

it checked, and lurched again, and went staggeringtoward the great opening before it. a part of its base gougeda deep furrow in the earthen floor. the noise increased from the incredible tothe inconceivable. it seemed as if all the thunders since time began hadreturned to bellow because the platform moved. and it floated and bumped out of the shed.it staggered toward the east. its keel was perhaps, at this point, as muchas three feet above the ground, but the jet motors cast up blindingclouds of dust and smoke and

even those afoot could not be sure. there was confusion. the smoke and vapor splashedout in every possible direction. joe saw frantic movement, and herealized that the uniforms and the frock coats were scrambling to escapethe fumes. the khaki-tinted specks which were men seemedto run. the frock coats ran. the carefully-thought-out brighter speckswhich were women ran gasping and choking from the smoke. one stout figuretoppled, scrambled up, and scuttled frantically for safety. but the platform was in motion now. it wasa hundred yards beyond the

shed wall. two hundred. three.... it slowlygathered speed. a half-mile from the shed it was definitely clear of theground. it left a trail of scorched, burnt desert behind.... it moved almost swiftly, now. two miles fromthe shed it was fifteen feet above the earth. three miles, and a clearstrip of sunlight showed beneath it. and it was still accelerating.at four miles and five and six.... it was aloft, climbing with seemingly infiniteslowness, with all the hundreds of straining, thrusting, clumsy pushpotsclinging to it and

pushing it ever ahead and upward. it went smoothly toward the east. it continuedto gain speed. it did not seem to dip toward the horizon at all. itwent on and on, dwindling from a giant to a spot and then to a little darkspeck in the sky that still went on and on until even joe could not pretendto himself that he still saw it. even then there was probably a tinydroning noise in the air, but nobody who had watched the take-off couldpossibly hear it. then joe looked at sally and she at him. andjoe was grinning like an ape with excitement and relief and triumphwhich was at once his own and

that of all his dreams. sally's eyes wereshining and exultant. she hugged him in purest exuberance, crying thatthe space platform was up, was up, was up.... * * * * * at sundown they were waiting on the porchof the major's quarters behind the shed. the major was there, and haney andthe chief and mike and joe. the major's whole look had changed. he seemedto have shrunk, and he looked more tired than any man should everbe allowed to get. but his job was done, and the reaction was enoughto explain everything. he sat

in an easy chair with a glass beside him,and he looked as if nothing on earth could make him move a finger. but neverthelesshe was waiting. sally came out with a tray. she gravely passedaround the glasses and the cakes that went with them. then she satdown on the porch steps beside joe. she looked at him and nodded infriendly fashion. and joe was inordinately approving of sally, but hefelt awkward at showing it too plainly in her father's presence. mike said defiantly: "but still it wouldabeen easier to get it up there if it'd been built for guys like me!"

nobody contradicted him. he was right. anyhowevery one of them felt too much relaxed and relieved to enter into argument. haney said dreamily: "everything broke right.everything! they got in a jet stream like they expected, and it gave'em three hundred miles extra east-speed. they were eight miles up whenthe pushpots fired their jatos, an' twelve miles up when the pushpotslet go--they musta near broke their pilots' necks when they caughttheir motors again! and the platform's rockets fired just right, makin'flames a mile long, an' they were goin' then--what were they makin'?"

"who cares?" asked the chief peacefully. "plenty!" "six hundred from the pushpots," murmuredhaney, frowning, "an' three hundred from the jet stream, and then therewas the jatos that all let go at once, an' then there was eight hundredfrom the earth rotatin'----" "they had ten per cent of their rockets unfiredwhen they got into their orbit," said mike authoritatively. "they weretwo thousand miles up when they passed over india and now they're fourthousand miles up and the orbit's stable. this is their third round,isn't it?"

"will be," said the chief. joe and sally sat watching the west. the spaceplatform went around the earth from west to east, like earth's naturalmoon, but because of its speed it would rise in the west and set inthe east six times in every twenty-four hours. major holt spoke suddenly. the austerity hadgone out of his manner with his energy. he said quietly: "you four--yougave me the worst scare i've ever had in my life. but do you realize thatthat sabotage attempt with the two truck-loads of explosive--do you realizethat they'd have gotten

the platform if it hadn't been for that crazytrick you four planned, and the precautions we took because of it?" joe said depreciatingly: "it was just luckthat they happened to pick the same time, and that haney was up therewith those machine-gunners at the right moment. it was good luck, but itwas luck." the major said effortfully: "there are peoplecalled accident prones. accidents happen all around them, and nobodyknows why. you four--perhaps joe especially--are not accidentprones. you seem to be something antithetic to accidents. i wouldhesitate to credit your

usefulness to your brains. especially joe'sbrains. i have known him too long. but--ah--washington does not look atit in exactly the same way." sally touched joe warningly. but her facewas very bright and proud. joe felt queer. "joe," said the major tiredly, "was an alternatefor membership in the platform's crew. but for penicillin, or somethingof the sort that made a sick man get well quickly, joe would beup there in the platform's orbit now. his--ah--record in the instructionhe did take was satisfactory. and--ah--all four of you werevery useful in the last

stages of the building of the platform. againjoe especially. his--ah--co-operation with higher authoritieshas produced--ah--very favorable comments. so it is felt that heshould have some recognition. all of you, of course, but joe especially.so----" joe felt himself going white. "joe," said the major, "is to be offered anappointment as skipper of a ferry rocket, carrying supplies and crewreliefs to the platform. his rocket will carry a crew of four, includinghimself. his--ah--recommendations for membership inhis crew will have

considerable weight." there was a buzzing in joe's ears. he wantedto cry and to dance, and especially right then he would have likedvery much to kiss sally. it would have been the only really appropriateway to express his emotions. mike said in a fierce, strained voice: "joe!i can do anything a big elephant of a guy can do, and i only use aquarter of the grub and air! you've got to take me, joe! you've got to!" the chief said benignly: "h'm.... i'm gonnabe in charge of the engine room, an' haney'll be bos'n--let joe try totake off without us!--an'

that don't leave you a rating, mike, unlessyou're willin' to be just plain crew!" slowly sally turned her face away from joeand looked up. then they all saw it. a telescope, maybe,would have shown it as the thing they'd worked on and fought for. butit didn't look like that to the naked eye. it was just a tiny speck ofincandescence gliding with grave deliberation across the sky. it wasa sliver of sunlight, moving as they watched. there were a good many millions of peoplewatching it, just then, as it

floated aloft in emptiness. to some it meantpeace and hope and confidence of a serene old age and a lifeworth living for their children and their children's children. tosome it was a fascinating technical achievement. to a few it meant thatif wars had ended, and turmoil was no longer the norm of life onearth, this thing would be their destruction. but it meant somethingto everybody in the world. to the people who had been unable to do anythingto help it except to pray for it, perhaps it meant most of all. joe said quietly: "we'll be going up thereto visit it. all of us."

he realized that sally's hand was tightlyclasped in his. she said: "me too, joe?" "some day," said joe, "you too." he stood up to watch more closely. sally stoodbeside him. the others came to look. they made a group on the lawn,as people were grouped everywhere in all the world to gaze up atit. the space platform, a tiny sliver of sunshine,an infinitesimal speck of golden light, moved sedately across the deepeningblue toward the east. toward the night.

Author : indra

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