The mechanical voice said, "_Seven ... six ... five ... four ... three
... two ... one ... cut!_"
Joe pressed the release. The small, unburnt stubs of the take-off
rockets went hurtling off toward emptiness. They consumed themselves as
they went, and they attained an acceleration of fifty gravities once
they were relieved of all load but their own substance. They had to be
released lest one burn longer than another. It was also the only way to
stop acceleration by solid-fuel rockets. They couldn't be extinguished.
They had to be released.
From intolerably burdensome heaviness, there was abruptly no weight at
all in the ship. Joe's laboring heart beat twice with the violence the
weight had called for, though weight had ended. It seemed to him that
his skull would crack open during those two heart-beats. Then he lay
limply, resting.
There was a completely incredible stillness, for a time. The four of
them panted. Haney was better off than Joe, but the Chief was harder
hit. Mike's small body had taken the strain best of all, and he would
use the fact later in shrill argument that midgets were designed by
nature to be the explorers of space for their bulkier and less
spaceworthy kindred.
The ending of the steady, punishing drag was infinitely good, but the
new sensation was hardly pleasant. They had no weight. It felt as if
they and the ship about them were falling together down an abyss which
must have a bottom. Actually, they were falling up. But they felt a
physical, crawling apprehension--a cringing from an imaginary imminent
impact.
They had expected the sensation, but it was not the better for being
understood. Joe flexed and unflexed his fingers slowly. He stirred and
swallowed hastily. But the feeling persisted. He unstrapped himself from
his seat. He stood up--and floated to the ceiling of the cabin. But
there was of course no ceiling. Every way was up and every way was down.
His stomach cramped itself in a hard knot, in the instinctive tensity of
somebody in free fall.
He fended himself from the ceiling and caught at a hand-line placed
there for just this necessity to grip something. In his absorption, he
did not notice which way his heels went. He suddenly noticed that his
companions, with regard to him, were upside down and staring at him with
wooden, dazed expressions on their faces.
He tried to laugh, and gulped instead. He pulled over to the
quartz-glass ports. He did not put his hand into the sunlight, but
shifted the glare shutters over those ports which admitted direct
sunshine. Some ports remained clear. Through one of them he saw the
Earth seemingly at arm's length somewhere off. Not up, not down. Simply
out from where he was. It filled all the space that the porthole
showed. It was a gigantic mass of white, fleecy specks and spots which
would be clouds, and between the whiteness there was a muddy dark
greenish color which would be the ocean. Yet it seemed to slide very,
very slowly past the window.
He saw a tanness between the clouds, and it moved inward from the edge
of his field of view. He suddenly realized what it was.
"We've just about crossed the Atlantic," he said in a peculiar
astonishment. But it was true the ship had not been aloft nearly as much
as half an hour. "Africa's just coming into sight below. We ought to be
about 1,200 miles high and still rising fast. That was the calculation."
He looked again, and then drew himself across to the opposite porthole.
He saw the blackness of space, which was not blackness because it was a
carpet of jewels. They were infinite in number and variations in
brightness, and somehow of vastly more colorings than one noticed from
Earth.
He heard the Chief grunt, and Haney gulp. He was suddenly conscious that
his legs were floating rather ridiculously in mid-air with no particular
relationship to anything. He saw the Chief rise very cautiously, holding
on to the arms of his seat.
"Better not look at the sun," said Joe, "even though I've put on the
glare-shields."
The Chief nodded. The glare-shields would keep out most of the heat and
a very great deal of the ultraviolet the sun gave off. But even so, to
look at the sun directly might easily result in a retinal sunburn which
could result in blindness.
The loudspeaker behind Joe's chair clattered. It had seemed muted by the
weight of its diaphragm at three gravities. Now it blasted
unintelligibly, with no weight at all. Mike threw a switch and took the
message.
"Communications says radar says we're right on course, Joe," he reported
nonchalantly, "and our speed's okay. We'll reach maximum altitude in an
hour and thirty-six minutes. We ought to be within calculated distance
of the Platform then."
"Good," said Joe abstractedly.
He strained his eyes at the Earth. They were moving at an extraordinary
speed and height. It had been reached by just four human beings before
them. The tannishness which was the coast of Africa crept with
astonishing slowness toward the center of what he could see.
Joe headed back to his seat. He could not walk, of course. He floated.
He launched himself with a fine air of confidence. He misjudged. He was
floating past his chair when he reached down--and that turned his
body--and fumbled wildly. He caught hold of the back as he went by, then
held on and found himself turning a grandly dignified somersault. He
wound up in a remarkably foolish position with the back of his neck on
the back of the chair, his arms in a highly strained position to hold
him there, and his feet touching the deck of the cabin a good five feet
away.
Haney looked greenish, but he said hoarsely:
"Joe, don't make me laugh--not when my stomach feels like this!"
The feeling of weightlessness was unexpectedly daunting. Joe turned
himself about very slowly, with his legs floating indecorously in
entirely unintended kicks. He was breathing hard when he pulled himself
into the chair and strapped in once more.
"I'll take Communications," he told Mike as he settled his headphones.
Reluctantly, Mike switched over.
"Kenmore reporting to Communications," he said briefly. "We have ended
our take-off acceleration. You have our course and velocity. Our
instruments read--"
He went over the bank of instruments before him, giving the indication
of each. In a sense, this first trip of a ship out to the Platform had
some of the aspects of defusing a bomb. Calculations were useful, but
observations were necessary. He had to report every detail of the
condition of his ship and every instrument-reading because anything
might go wrong, and at any instant. Anything that went wrong could be
fatal. So every bit of data and every intended action needed to be on
record. Then, if something happened, the next ship to attempt this
journey might avoid the same catastrophe.
Time passed. A lot of time. The feeling of unending fall continued. They
knew what it was, but they had to keep thinking of its cause to endure
it. Joe found that if his mind concentrated fully on something else, it
jerked back to panic and the feel of falling. But the crew of the Space
Platform--now out in space for more weeks than Joe had been
quarter-hours--reported that one got partly used to it, in time. When
awake, at least. Asleep was another matter.
They were 1,600 miles high and still going out and up. The Earth as seen
through the ports was still an utterly monstrous, bulging mass, specked
with clouds above vast mottlings which were its seas and land. They
might have looked for cities, but they would be mere patches in a
telescope. Their task now was to wait until their orbit curved into
accordance with that of the Platform and they kept their rendezvous. The
artificial satellite was swinging up behind them, and was only a
quarter-circle about Earth behind them. Their speed in miles per second
was, at the moment, greater than that of the Platform. But they were
climbing. They slowed as they climbed. When their path intersected that
of the Platform, the two velocities should be exactly equal.
Major Holt's voice came on the Communicator.
"_Joe_," he said harshly, "_I have very bad news. A message came from
Central Intelligence within minutes of your take-off. I--ah--with Sally
I had been following your progress. I did not decode the message until
now. But Central Intelligence has definite information that more than
ten days ago the--ah--enemies of our Space Exploration Project_--" even
on a tight beam to the small spaceship, Major Holt did not name the
nation everybody knew was most desperately resolved to smash space
exploration by anybody but itself--"_completed at least one rocket
capable of reaching the Platform's orbit with a pay-load that could be
an atomic bomb. It is believed that more than one rocket was completed.
All were shipped to an unknown launching station._"
"Not so good," said Joe.
Mike had left his post when Joe took over. Now he made a swooping dart
through the air of the cabin. The midget showed no signs of the fumbling
uncertainty the others had displayed--but he'd been a member of a midget
acrobatic team before he went to work at the Shed. He brought himself to
a stop precisely at a hand-hold, grinning triumphantly at the nearly
helpless Chief and Haney.
Major Holt said in the headphones: "_It's worse than that. Radar may
have told the country in question that you are on the way up. In that
case, if it's even faintly possible to blast the Platform before your
arrival with weapons for its defense, they'll blast._"
"I don't like that idea," said Joe dourly. "Anything we can do?"
Major Holt laughed bitterly. "_Hardly!_" he said. "_And do you realize
that if you can't unload your cargo you can't get back to Earth?_"
"Yes," said Joe. "Naturally!"
It was true. The purpose of the pushpots and the jatos and the ship's
own take-off rockets had been to give it a speed at which it would
inevitably rise to a height of 4,000 miles--the orbit of the Space
Platform--and stay there. It would need no power to remain 4,000 miles
out from Earth. But it would take power to come down. The take-off
rockets had been built to drive the ship with all its contents until it
attained that needed orbital velocity. There were landing rockets
fastened to the hull now to slow it so that it could land. But just as
the take-off rockets had been designed to lift a loaded ship, the
landing-rockets had been designed to land an empty one.
The more weight the ship carried, the more power it needed to get out to
the Platform. And the more power it needed to come down again.
If Joe and his companions couldn't get rid of their cargo--and they
could only unload in the ship-lock of the Platform--they'd stay out in
emptiness.
The Major said bitterly: "_This is all most irregular, but--here's
Sally._"
Then Sally's voice sounded in the headphones Joe wore. He was relieved
that Mike wasn't acting as communications officer at the moment to
overhear. But Mike was zestfully spinning like a pin-wheel in the middle
of the air of the control cabin. He was showing the others that even in
the intramural pastimes a spaceship crew will indulge in, a midget was
better than a full-sized man. Joe said:
"Yes, Sally?"
She said unsteadily. "_I'm not going to waste your time talking to you,
Joe. I think you've got to figure out something. I haven't the faintest
idea what it is, but I think you can do it. Try, will you?_"
"I'm afraid we're going to have to trust to luck," admitted Joe
ruefully. "We weren't equipped for anything like this."
"_No!_" said Sally fiercely. "_If I were with you, you wouldn't think of
trusting to luck!_"
"I wouldn't want to," admitted Joe. "I'd feel responsible. But just the
same--"
"_You're responsible now!_" said Sally, as fiercely as before. "_If the
Platform's smashed, the rockets that can reach it will be duplicated to
smash our cities in war! But if you can reach the Platform and arm it
for defense, there won't be any war! Half the world would be praying for
you, Joe, if it knew! I can't do anything else, so I'm going to start on
that right now. But you try, Joe! You hear me?_"
"I'll try," said Joe humbly. "Thanks, Sally."
He heard a sound like a sob, and the headphones were silent. Joe himself
swallowed very carefully. It can be alarming to be the object of an
intended murder, but it can also be very thrilling. One can play up
splendidly to a dramatic picture of doom. It is possible to be one's own
audience and admire one's own fine disregard of danger. But when other
lives depend on one, one has the irritating obligation not to strike
poses but to do something practical.
Joe said somberly: "Mike, how long before we ought to contact the
Platform?"
Mike reached out a small hand, caught a hand-hold, and flicked his eyes
to the master chronometer.
"Forty minutes, fifty seconds. Why?"
Joe said wrily, "There are some rockets in enemy hands which can reach
the Platform. They were shipped to launchers ten days ago. You figure
what comes next."
Mike's wizened face became tense and angry. Haney growled, "They smash
the Platform before we get to it."
"Uh-uh!" said Mike instantly. "They smash the Platform _when_ we get to
it! They smash us both up together. Where'll we be at contact-time,
Joe?"
"Over the Indian Ocean, south of the Bay of Bengal, to be exact," said
Joe. "But we'll be moving fast. The worst of it is that it's going to
take time to get in the airlock and unload our guided missiles and get
them in the Platform's launching-tubes. I'd guess an hour. One bomb
should get both of us above the Bay of Bengal, but we won't be set to
launch a guided missile in defense until we're nearly over America
again."
The Chief said sourly, "Yeah. Sitting ducks all the way across the
Pacific!"
"We'll check with the Platform," said Joe. "See if you can get them
direct, Mike, will you?"
Then something occurred to him. Mike scrambled back to his communication
board. He began feverishly to work the computer which in turn would
swing the tight-beam transmitter to the target the computer worked out,
He threw a switch and said sharply, "Calling Space Platform! Pelican One
calling Space Platform! Come in, Space Platform!..." He paused. "Calling
Space Platform...."
Joe had a slide-rule going on another problem. He looked up, his
expression peculiar.
"A solid-fuel rocket can start off at ten gravities acceleration," he
said quietly, "and as its rockets burn away it can go up a lot higher
than that. But 4,000 miles is a long way to go straight up. If it isn't
launched yet--"
Mike snapped into a microphone: "Right!" To Joe he said, "Space Platform
on the wire."
Joe heard an acknowledgment in his headphones. "I've just had word from
the Shed," he explained carefully, "that there may be some guided
missiles coming up from Earth to smash us as we meet. You're still
higher than we are, and they ought to be starting. Can you pick up
anything with your radar?"
The voice from the Platform said: "_We have picked something up. There
are four rockets headed out from near the sunset-line in the Pacific.
Assuming solid-fuel rockets like we used and you used, they are on a
collision course._"
"Are you doing anything about them?" asked Joe absurdly.
The voice said caustically: "_Unfortunately, we've nothing to do
anything with._" It paused. "_You, of course, can use the
landing-rockets you still possess. If you fire them immediately, you
will pass our scheduled meeting-place some hundreds of miles ahead of
us. You will go on out to space. You may set up an orbit forty-five
hundred or even five thousand miles out, and wait there for rescue._"
Joe said briefly: "We've air for only four days. That's no good. It'll
be a month before the next ship can be finished and take off. There are
four rockets coming up, you say?"
"_Yes._" The voice changed. It spoke away from the microphone. "_What's
that?_" Then it returned to Joe. "_The four rockets were sent up at the
same instant from four separate launching sites. Probably as many
submarines at the corners of a hundred-mile square, so an accident to
one wouldn't set off the others. They'll undoubtedly converge as they
get nearer to us._"
"I think," said Joe, "that we need some luck."
"_I think_," said the caustic voice, "_that we've run out of it._"
There was a click. Joe swallowed again. The three members of his crew
were looking at him.
"Somebody's fired rockets out from Earth," said Joe carefully. "They'll
curve together where we meet the Platform, and get there just when we
do."
The Chief rumbled. Haney clamped his jaws together. Mike's expression
became one of blazing hatred.
Joe's mind went rather absurdly to the major's curious, almost
despairing talk in his quarters that morning, when he'd spoken of a
conspiracy to destroy all the hopes of men. The firing of rockets at
the Platform was, of course, the work of men acting deliberately. But
they were--unconsciously--trying to destroy their own best hopes. For
freedom, certainly, whether or not they could imagine being free. But
the Platform and the space exploration project in general meant benefits
past computing for everybody, in time. To send ships into space for
necessary but dangerous experiments with atomic energy was a purpose
every man should want to help forward. To bring peace on Earth was
surely an objective no man could willingly or sanely combat. And the
ultimate goal of space travel was millions of other planets, circling
other suns, thrown open to colonization by humanity. That prospect
should surely fire every human being with enthusiasm. But something--and
the more one thought about it the more specific and deliberate it seemed
to be--made it necessary to fight desperately against men in order to
benefit them.
Joe swallowed again. It would have been comforting to be dramatic in
this war against stupidity and malice and blindness. Especially since
this particular battle seemed to be lost. One could send back an
eloquent, defiant message to Earth saying that the four of them did not
regret their journey into space, though they were doomed to be killed by
the enemies of their country. It could have been a very pretty gesture.
But Joe happened to have a job to do. Pretty gestures were not a part of
it. He had no idea how to do it. So he said rather sickishly:
"The Platform told me we could fire our landing-rockets as additional
take-off rockets and get out of the way. Of course we've got missiles of
our own on board, but we can't launch or control them. Absolutely the
only thing we can choose to do or not do is fire those rockets. I'm open
to suggestions if anybody can think of a way to make them useful."
There was silence. Joe's reasoning was good enough. When one can't do
what he wants, one tries to make what he can do produce the results he
wants. But it didn't look too promising here. They could fire the
rockets now, or later, or--
An idea came out of the blue. It wasn't a good idea, but it was the only
one possible under the circumstances. There was just one distinctly
remote possibility. He told the others what it was. Mike's eyes flamed.
The Chief nodded profoundly. Haney said with some skepticism, "It's all
we've got. We've got to use it."
"I need some calculations. Spread. Best time of firing. That sort of
thing. But I'm worried about calling back in the clear. A beam to the
Platform will bounce and might be picked up by the enemy."
The Chief grinned suddenly. "I've got a trick for that, Joe. There's a
tribesman of mine in the Shed. Get Charley Red Fox to the phone, guy,
and we'll talk privately!"
The small spaceship floated on upward. It pointed steadfastly in the
direction of its motion. The glaring sunshine which at its take-off had
shone squarely in its bow-ports, now poured down slantingly from behind.
The steel plates of the ship gleamed brightly. Below it lay the sunlit
Earth. Above and about it on every hand were a multitude of stars. Even
the moon was visible as the thinnest of crescents against the night of
space.
The ship climbed steeply. It was meeting the Platform after only half a
circuit of Earth, while the Platform had climbed upward for three full
revolutions. Earth was now 3,000 miles below and appeared as the most
gigantic of possible solid objects. It curved away and away to mistiness
at its horizons, and it moved visibly as the spaceship floated on.
Invisible microwaves flung arrowlike through emptiness. They traveled
for thousands of miles, spreading as they traveled, and then struck the
strange shape of the Platform. They splashed from it. Some of them
rebounded to Earth, where spies and agents of foreign powers tried
desperately to make sense of the incredible syllables. They failed.
There was a relay system in operation now, from spaceship to Platform to
Earth and back again. In the ship Chief Bender, Mohawk and steelman
extraordinary, talked to the Shed and to one Charley Red Fox. They
talked in Mohawk, which is an Algonquin Indian language, agglutinative,
complicated, and not to be learned in ten easy lessons. It was not a
language which eavesdroppers were likely to know as a matter of course.
But it was a language by which computations could be asked for, so that
a very forlorn hope might be attempted with the best possible chances of
success.
Naturally, none of this appeared in the look of things. The small ship
floated on and on. It reached an altitude of 3,500 miles. The Earth was
visibly farther away. Behind the ship the Atlantic with its stately
cloud-formations was sunlit to the very edge of its being. Ahead, the
edge of night appeared beyond India. And above, the Platform appeared as
a speck of molten light, quarter-illuminated by the sun above it.
Spaceship and Platform moved on toward a meeting place. The ship moved a
trifle faster, because it was climbing. The speeds would match exactly
when they met. The small torpedo-shaped shining ship and the bulging
glowing metal satellite floated with a seeming vast deliberation in
emptiness, while the most gigantic of possible round objects filled all
the firmament beneath them. They were 200 miles apart. It seemed that
the huge Platform overtook the shining ship. It did. They were only 50
miles apart and still closing in.
By that time the twilight band of Earth's surface was nearly at the
center of the planet, and night filled more than a quarter of its disk.
By that time, too, even to the naked eye through the ports of the
supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein
of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The
vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be
jetting into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead of
the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which seemed remarkably
deliberate until one saw with what fury the rocket-fumes spat out to
form the whitish threads. Then one could guess at a three-or even
four-stage launching series, so that what appeared to be mere pinpoints
would really be rockets carrying half-ton atomic warheads with an
attained velocity of 10,000 miles per hour and more straight up.
The threads unraveled in a straight line aimed at the two metal things
floating in emptiness. One was small and streamlined, with inadequate
landing-rockets clamped to its body and with stubby fins that had no
possible utility out of air. The other was large and clumsy to look at,
but very, very stately indeed in its progress through the heavens. They
floated smoothly toward a rendezvous. The rockets from Earth came
ravening to destroy them at the instant of their intersection.
The little spaceship turned slowly. Its rounded bow had pointed
longingly at the stars. Now it tilted downward. Its direction of
movement did not change, of course. In the absence of air, it could
tumble indefinitely without any ill effect. It was in a trajectory
instead of on a course, though presently the trajectory would become an
orbit. But it pointed nose-down toward the Earth even as it continued to
hurtle onward.
The great steel hull and the small spaceship were 20 miles apart. An
infinitesimal radar-bowl moved on the little ship. Tight-beam waves
flickered invisibly between the two craft. The rockets raged toward
them.
The ship and the Platform were 10 miles apart. The rockets were now
glinting missiles leaping ahead of the fumes that propelled them.
The ship and the Platform were two miles apart. The rockets rushed
upward.... There were minute corrections in their courses. They
converged....
Flames leaped from the tiny ship. Its landing-rockets spouted white-hot
flame and fumes more thick and coiling than even the smoke of the bombs.
The little ship surged momentarily toward the racing monsters. And
then----
The rockets which were supposed to let the ship down to Earth flew
free--flung themselves unburdened at the rockets which came with deadly
intent to the meeting of the two Earth spacecraft.
The landing-rockets plunged down at forty gravities or better. They were
a dwindling group of infinitely bright sparks which seemed to group
themselves more closely as they dwindled. They charged upon the
attacking robot things. They were unguided, of necessity, but the robot
bombs had to be equipped with proximity fuses. No remote control could
be so accurate as to determine the best moment for detonation at 4,000
miles' distance. So the war rockets had to be devised to explode when
near anything which reflected their probing radar waves. They had to be
designed to be triggered by anything in space.
And the loosed landing-rockets plunged among them.
They did not detonate all at once. That was mathematically impossible.
But no human eye could detect the delay. Four close-packed flares of
pure atomic fire sprang into being between the Platform and Earth. Each
was brighter than the sun. For the fraction of an instant there was no
night where night had fallen on the Earth. For thousands of miles the
Earth glowed brightly.
Then there was a twisting, coiling tumult of incandescent gases, which
were snatched away by nothingness and ceased to be.
Then there were just two things remaining in the void. One was the
great, clumsy, shining Platform, gigantic in size to anything close by.
The other was the small spaceship which had climbed to it and fought for
it and defended it against the bombs from Earth.
The little ship now had a slight motion away from the Platform, due to
the instant's tugging by its rockets before they were released.
It turned about in emptiness. Its steering-rockets spouted smoke. It
began to cancel out its velocity away from the Platform, and to swim
slowly and very carefully toward it.
3
Making actual contact with the platform was not a matter for instruments
and calculations. It had to be done directly--by hand, as it were. Joe
watched out the ports and played the controls of the steering jets with
a nerve-racked precision. His task was not easy.
Before he could return to the point of rendezvous, the blinding sunlight
on the Platform took on a tinge of red. It was the twilight-zone of the
satellite's orbit, when for a time the sunlight that reached it was
light which had passed through Earth's atmosphere and been bent by it
and colored crimson by the dust in Earth's air. It glowed a fiery red,
and the color deepened, and then there was darkness.
They were in Earth's shadow. There were stars to be seen, but no sun.
The Moon was hidden, too. And the Earth was a monstrous, incredible,
abysmal blackness which at this first experience of its appearance
produced an almost superstitious terror. Formerly it had seemed a
distant but sunlit world, flecked with white clouds and with sprawling
differentiations of color beneath them.
Now it did not look like a solid thing at all. It looked like a hole in
creation. One could see ten thousand million stars of every imaginable
tint and shade. But where the Earth should be there seemed a vast
nothingness. It looked like an opening to annihilation. It looked like
the veritable Pit of Darkness which is the greatest horror men have ever
imagined, and since those in the ship were without weight it seemed that
they were falling into it.
Joe knew better, of course. So did the others. But that was the look of
things, and that was the feeling. One did not feel in danger of death,
but of extinction--which, in cold fact, is very much worse.
Lights glowed on the outside of the Platform to guide the supply ship to
it. There were red and green and blue and harsh blue-white electric
bulbs. They were bright and distinct, but the feeling of loneliness
above that awful appearance of the Pit was appalling. No small child
alone at night had ever so desolate a sensation of isolation as the four
in the small ship.
But Joe painstakingly played the buttons of the steering-rocket control
board. The ship surged, and turned, and surged forward again. Mike, at
the communicator, said, "They say slow up, Joe."
Joe obeyed, but he was tense. Haney and the Chief were at other
portholes, looking out. The Chief said heavily, "Fellas, I'm going to
admit I never felt so lonesome in my life!"
"I'm glad I've got you fellows with me!" Haney admitted guiltily.
"The job's almost over," said Joe.
The ship's own hull, outside the ports, glowed suddenly in a light-beam
from the Platform. The small, brief surges of acceleration which sent
the ship on produced tremendous emotional effects. When the Platform was
only one mile away, Haney switched on the ship's searchlights. They
stabbed through emptiness with absolutely no sign of their existence
until they touched the steel hull of the satellite.