"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 everybody is anxious to see the
Space Platform take off. Not everybody! What on earth do you think is
the biggest problem out where they're building it?"
"I wouldn't know," admitted Joe. "Keeping the weight down? But there is
a new rocket fuel that's supposed to be all right 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 a face. 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 for the 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 that once the Platform's
floating serenely around the Earth, with a nice stock of atom-headed
guided missiles on board, power politics is finished. So they're doing
what they can to keep the world as it's always been--equipped with just
one moon and many armies. And they're doing plenty, if you ask me!"
"I've heard----" began Joe.
"You haven't heard the half of it," said the co-pilot. "The Air
Transport has lost nearly as many planes and more men on this particular
airlift than it did in Korea while that was the big job. I don't know
how many other men have been killed. But there's a strictly local hot
war going on out where we're headed. No holds barred! 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 to the co-pilot. He said: "He
thinks you're kidding him." He turned back to the contemplation of the
instruments before him and the view out the transparent plastic of the
cabin windows.
"He does?" The co-pilot said to Joe, "You've got 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 know everybody who works at the
plant. We've known them all their lives. They'd get mad if we started to
get stuffy. We don't bother."
"That I'd like to see," said the co-pilot skeptically. "No barbed wire
around the plant? No identity badges you wear when you go in? No
security officer screaming blue murder every five minutes? What do you
think all that's for? You built these pilot gyros! You had to have that
security stuff!"
"But we didn't," insisted Joe. "Not any of it. The plant's been in the
same village for eighty years. It started building wagons and plows, and
now it turns out machine tools and precision machinery. It's the only
factory around, and everybody who works there went to school with
everybody else, and so did our fathers, and we know one another!"