"The odds figure out, the odds are even that the Platform won't get an
actual meteor puncture in the first twenty thousand 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 the tame 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've been 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 streamlining of 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 fast to get up out of the dense
air near the ground. They had to be streamlined to pierce the thick,
resisting part of the atmosphere. The Platform didn't. It wouldn't climb
by itself. It would be carried necessarily at slow speed up to the point
where jet motors were most efficient, and then 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-level drag would its own
rockets fire. It wouldn't gain much by being shaped to cut thin air, and
it would lose a lot. For one thing, the launching process planned for
the Platform allowed it to be built complete so far as its hull was
concerned. Once it got out into its orbit there would be no more
worries. There wouldn't be any gamble on the practicability 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 through the corridors of the
Platform--the two of them came to the engine room. This wasn't the place
where the drive of the Platform was centered. It was where the service
motors and the air-circulation system and the fluid pumps were powered.
Off the engine room the main gyros were already installed. They waited
only for the pilot gyros to control them as a steering engine controls
an Earth ship's rudder. Joe looked very thoughtfully at the gyro
assembly. That was familiar, from the working drawings. But he let Sally
guide him on without trying to stop and look closely.
She showed him the living quarters. They centered in a great open space
sixty feet long and twenty wide and high. There were bookshelves, and
two balconies, and chairs. Private cabins opened from it on different
levels, but there were no steps to them. Yet there were comfortable
chairs with straps so that when a man was weightless he could fasten
himself in them. There were ash trays, ingeniously designed to look like
exactly that and nothing else. But ashes would not fall into them, but
would be drawn into them by suction. There was unpatterned carpet on the
floor _and_ on the ceiling.
"It's going to feel queer," said Sally, oddly quiet, "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 library more than anything else.
One won't be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he's
living in a strictly synthetic environment. He won't feel cramped. If
all the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. At
least this way he can pretend that things are normal."
Her mind was not wholly on her words. She'd been frightened for Joe. And
he was acutely aware of it, because he felt a peculiar after-effect
himself.
"Normal," he said drily, "except that he doesn't weigh anything."
"I've worried about that," said Sally. "Sleeping's going to be a big
problem."
"It'll take getting used to," Joe agreed.
There was a momentary pause. They were simply looking about the great
room. Sally stirred uneasily.
"Tell me what you think," she said. "You've been in an elevator that
started to drop like a plummet. When the Platform is 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 dropping and dropping for hours
on end--do you think you could go to sleep?"
Joe hadn't thought about it. And he was acutely conscious 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," said Sally. "But getting adjusted
to it asleep should be worse. You've waked up 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 wake up. Everybody in the Platform
will be falling around the Earth in the Platform's orbit! Every time
they doze off they'll be falling and they'll wake up!"
He managed to think about it. It was true enough. A man awake could
remind himself that he only thought and felt that he was falling, and
that there was no danger. But what would happen when he tried to sleep?
Falling is the first fear a human being ever knows. Everybody in the
world has at one time waked up gasping from a 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 that weightlessness was normal in
emptiness, his conscious mind would go off duty when he went to sleep. A
completely primitive subconscious would take over then, and it would not
be satisfied. It might wake him frantically at any sign of dozing until
he cracked up from sheer insomnia ... or else let him sleep only when
exhaustion produced unconsciousness rather than restful slumber.
"That's a tough one!" he said disturbedly, and noticed that she still
showed signs of her recent distress. "There's not much to be done about
it, either!"
"I suggested something," said Sally, "and they built it in. I hope it
works!" she explained uncomfortably. "It's a 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 will hold him in his bunk. It
won't touch his head, of course, and he can move, 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 his mind 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's the feeling of pressure all
about. A man might be able to sleep if he felt he were floating. Yes,
that's a good idea, Sally! It'll work! A man will 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 all a baby's fears and needs. It
_might_ feel like floating. But--I tried one of those bunks. It feels
like--it feels sort of dreamy, as if someone were--holding one quite
safe. It feels as if one were a baby and--beautifully secure. But of
course I haven't tried it weightless. I just--hope it works."
As if embarrassed, she turned abruptly and showed him the kitchen. Every
pan was covered. The top of the stove was alnico-magnet strips, arranged
rather like the top of a magnetic chuck. Pans would cling to it. And the
covers had a curious flexible lining which Joe 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 the pan. They expected the crew
to eat ready-prepared food. I said that it would be bad enough to have
to drink out of plastic bottles instead of glasses. They hung one of
these stoves upside down, for me, and I cooked bacon and eggs and
pancakes with the cover of the pan pointing to the floor. They said the
psychological effect would be worth while."
Joe was stirred. He followed her out of the kitchen and said warmly--the
more warmly because these contributions to the 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 housekeeping in 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 do something about her and the
world and the way he felt. The interior of the Platform was very silent.
Somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulation was incomplete, the
sound of workmen was audible, but the inner corridors of the Platform
were not resonant. They were lined with a material to destroy reminders
that this was merely a metal shell, an artificial world that would swim
in emptiness. Here and now, Joe and Sally seemed very private and alone,
and he felt a sense of urgency.
He looked at her yearningly. Her color was a 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 with the memory of her fright
because he'd been in danger, her worry because he might have been
killed, he thought of her very absurd but honest offer to cry for him.
Joe found himself twisting at the ring on his finger. He got it off, and
there was some soot and grease on it from the work he'd been doing. He
knew that she saw what he was about, but she looked away.
"Look, Sally," he said awkwardly, "we've known each other a long time.
I've--uh--liked you a lot. And I've got some things to do first,
but----" He stopped. He swallowed. She turned and smiled at him. "Look,"
he said desperately, "what's a good way to ask if you'd like to wear
this?"
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 which she very ridiculously cried
and explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life so
much! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. It
was the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppy
ululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed and
wailed and wailed.
"That's the alarm," exclaimed Sally. She was still 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 ever to be kissed in a space ship!"
But before Joe could do anything about the comment, she was out on the
stairs, in plain view and going down. So he followed her.
The Shed was emptying. The bare wood-block floor was dotted with figures
moving steadily toward the security exit. There was no hurry, because
security men were shouting that this was not an alarm but a
precautionary measure, and there was no need for haste. Each security
man had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkie he wore. By it
every guard could be told anything he needed to know, either on the
floor of the Shed, or on the catwalks aloft or even in the Platform
itself.
Trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go out the swing-up doors. Men
came down from the scaffolds after putting their tools in proper
between-shifts positions--for counting and inspection--and other men
were streaming quietly from the pushpot assembly line. Except for the
gigantic object in the middle, and for the fact that every man was in
work clothes, the scene was surprisingly like the central waiting room
of a very large railroad station, with innumerable people moving briskly
here and there.
"No hurry," said Joe, catching the word from a security man as he passed
it on. "I'll go see what my gang found out."
The trio--Haney and Mike and the Chief--were just arriving by the piles
of charred but now uncovered wreckage. Sally flushed ever so slightly
when she saw the Chief eye Joe's ring on her finger.
"Rest of the day off, huh?" said the Chief. "Look! We found most of the
stuff we need. They're gonna give us a shop to work in. We'll move this
stuff there. We're gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe we
picked, an' then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in between
the chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line."
That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel 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 the plant for your folks to get
busy on?"