Joe still felt queasy. There is rarely any high elation after one has
risked his life for somebody else. He'd nearly plunged two hundred feet
to the floor of the Shed with Haney. But he swallowed.
"I'm looking for Chief Bender. You're Haney? Foreman?"
"Gang boss," said Haney. He looked at Joe and then at Sally who was
holding convulsively to the upright Joe had put her hand on. Her eyes
were closed. "Yeah," said Haney. "The Chief took off today. Some kind of
Injun stuff. Funeral, maybe. Want me to tell him something? I'll see him
when I go off shift."
There was an obscure movement somewhere on this part of the Platform. A
tiny figure came out of a crevice that would someday 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 remember me, I think. I'll hunt
him up tonight."
"Okay," said Haney.
Joe's eyes went to the tiny figure that had come out from behind the
plating. It was a midget in baggy, stained work garments like the rest
of the men up here. He wore a miniature welding shield pushed back on
his head. Joe could guess his function, of course. There'd be corners a
normal-sized man couldn't get into, to buck a rivet or weld a joint.
There'd be places only a tiny man could properly inspect. The midget
regarded Joe without expression.
Joe turned to the hoist to go down to the floor again. Haney waved his
hand. The midget lifted his, in grave salutation.
The hoist dropped down the shaft. Sally opened her eyes.
"You--saved that man's life, Joe," she said unsteadily. "But you scared
me to death!"
Joe tried to ignore the remark, but he still seemed to feel slanting
metal under him and a drop of two hundred feet below. It had been a
nightmarish sensation.
"I didn't think," he said uncomfortably. "It was a crazy thing to do.
Lucky it worked out."
Sally glanced at him. The hoist still dropped swiftly. Levels of
scaffolding shot upward past them. If Joe had slipped down that rolling
curve of metal, he'd have dropped past all these. It was not good to
think about. He swallowed again. Then the hoist checked in its descent.
It stopped. Joe somewhat absurdly helped Sally off to solid ground.
"It--looks to me," said Sally, "as if you're bound to make me see
somebody killed. Joe, would you mind leading a little bit less
adventurous life for a while? While I'm around?"
He managed to grin. But he still did not feel right.
"Nothing I can do until I can look at the plane," he said, changing the
subject, "and I can't find the Chief until tonight. Could we sightsee a
little?"
She nodded. They went out from under the intricate framework that upheld
the Platform. They went, in fact, completely under that colossal
incomplete object. Sally indicated the sidewall.
"Let's go look at the pushpots. They're fascinating!"
She led the way. The enormous spaciousness of the Shed again became
evident. There was a catwalk part way up the inward curving wall.
Someone leaned on its railing and surveyed the interior of the Shed. He
would probably be a security man. Maybe the fist fight up on the
Platform had been seen, or maybe not. The man on the catwalk was hardly
more than a speck, and it occurred to Joe that there must be other
watchers' posts high up on the outer shell where men could search the
sunlit desert outside for signs of danger.
But he turned and looked yearningly back at the monstrous thing under
the mist of scaffolding. For the first time he could make out its shape.
It was something like an egg, but a great deal more like something he
couldn't put a name to. Actually it was exactly like nothing in the
world but itself, and when it was out in space there 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 tanks in which plants would grow
to purify its air and feed its crew. There would be telescopes with
which men would be able to study the stars as they had never been able
to do from the bottom of Earth's ocean of turbulent air. But it would
serve Earth.
There would be communicators. They would pick up microwave messages and
retransmit them to destinations far around the curve of the planet, or
else store them and retransmit them to the other side of the world an
hour or two hours later.
It would store fuel with which men could presently set out for the
stars--and out to emptiness for nuclear experiments that must not be
made on Earth. And finally it would be armed with 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 mysterious objects 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 men were welding together
unbreakably. They were no bigger than--say--half of a six-room house. A
little way on, these were filled with intricate arrays of tanks and
piping, and still farther--there was a truck and hoist unloading a
massive object into place right now--there were 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 crane was loading a finished
object onto a flat-bed trailer. As it swung in 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 but its function at the end of
Operation Stepladder. Then hundreds of these ungainly objects would
cluster upon the Platform's sides, like swarming bees. They would thrust
savagely up with their separate jet engines. They would lift the
Platform from the foundation on which it had been built. Tugging,
straining, panting, they would get it out of the Shed. But their work
would not end there. Holding it aloft, they would start it eastward,
lifting effortfully. They would carry it as far and as high and as fast
as their straining engines could work. Then there would be one last
surge of fierce thrusting with oversize jato rockets, built separately
into each pushpot, all firing at once.
Finally the clumsy things would drop off and come bumbling back home,
while the Platform's own rockets flared out their mile-long flames--and
it headed up for emptiness.
But the making of these pushpots and all the other multitudinous
activities of the Shed would have no meaning if the contents of four
crates in the wreckage of a burned-out plane could 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 find out what happened to the
gyros I was bringing here!"
Sally said nothing. She turned, and they moved across the long, long
space of wood-block flooring toward the doorway by which they had
entered. And now that he had seen the Space Platform, all of Joe's
feeling of guilt and despondency came back. It seemed unbearable. They
went out through the guarded door, Sally surrendered the pass, and Joe
was again checked carefully before he was free to go.