Then it was possible to feel the ship being pulled toward the Platform
by the magnetic grapple. It was a landing-line. It was the means by
which the ship would be docked in the giant lock which had been built to
receive it.
As they drew near, they saw the joints of the plating of the Platform.
They saw rivets. There was the huge, 30-foot doorway with its valves
swung wide. Their searchlight beam glared into it. They saw the metal
floor, and the bulging plastic sidewalls, restrained by nets. They saw
the inner lock-door. It seemed that men should be visible to welcome
them. There were none.
The airlock swallowed them. They touched against something solid. There
were more clankings. They seemed to crunch against the metal
floor--magnetic flooring-grapples. Then, in solid contact with the
substance of the Platform, they heard the sounds of the great outer
doors swinging shut. They were within the artificial satellite of Earth.
It was bright in the lock, and Joe stared out the cabin ports at the
quilted sides. There was a hissing of air, and he saw a swirling mist,
and then the bulges of the sidewall sagged. The air pressure gauge was
spinning up toward normal sea-level air pressure.
Joe threw the ready lever of the steering rockets to _Off_. "We're
landed."
There was silence. Joe looked about him. The other three looked queer.
It would have seemed natural for them to rejoice on arriving at their
destination. But somehow they didn't feel that they had.
Joe said wrily, "It seems that we ought to weigh something, now we've
got here. So we feel queer that we don't. Shoes, Mike?"
Mike peeled off the magnetic-soled slippers from their place on the
cabin wall. He handed them out and opened the door. A biting chill came
in it. Joe slipped on the shoe-soles with their elastic bands to hold
them. He stepped out the door.
He didn't land. He floated until he reached the sidewall. Then he pulled
himself down by the netting. Once he touched the floor, his shoes seemed
to be sticky. The net and the plastic sidewalls were, of course, the
method by which a really large airlock was made practical. When this
ship was about to take off again, pumps would not labor for hours to
pump the air out. The sidewalls would inflate and closely enclose the
ship's hull, and so force the air in the lock back into the ship. Then
the pumps would work on the air behind the inflated walls--with nets to
help them draw the wall-stuff back to let the ship go free. The lock
could be used with only fifteen minutes for pumping instead of four
hours.
The door in the back of the lock clanked open. Joe tried to walk toward
it. He discovered his astounding clumsiness. To walk in magnetic-soled
shoes in weightlessness requires a knack. When Joe lifted one foot and
tried to swing the other forward, his body tried to pivot. When he
lifted his right foot, he had to turn his left slightly inward. His arms
tried to float absurdly upward. When he was in motion and essayed to
pause, his whole body tended to continue forward with a sedate toppling
motion that brought him down flat on his face. He had to put one foot
forward to check himself. He seemed to have no sense of balance. When he
stood still--his stomach queasy because of weightlessness--he found
himself tilting undignifiedly forward or back--or, with equal
unpredictability, sidewise. He would have to learn an entirely new
method of walking.
A man came in the lock, and Joe knew who it was. Sanford, the senior
scientist of the Platform's crew. Joe had seen him often enough on the
television screen in the Communications Room at the Shed. Now Sanford
looked nerve-racked, but his eyes were bright and his expression
sardonic.
"My compliments," he said, his voice tight with irony, "for a splendidly
futile job well done! You've got your cargo invoice?"
Joe nodded. Sanford held out his hand. Joe fumbled in his pocket and
brought out the yellow sheet.
"I'd like to introduce my crew," said Joe. "This is Haney, and Chief
Bender, and Mike Scandia." He waved his hand, and his whole body wobbled
unexpectedly.
"We'll know each other!" said Sanford sardonically. "Our first job is
more futility--to get the guided missiles you've brought us into the
launching tubes. A lot of good they'll do!"
A huge plate in the roof of the lock--but it was not up or down or in
any particular direction--withdrew itself. A man floated through the
opening and landed on the ship's hull; another man followed him.
"Chief," said Joe, "and Haney. Will you open the cargo doors?"
The two swaying figures moved to obey, though with erratic clumsiness.
Sanford called sharply: "Don't touch the hull without gloves! If it
isn't nearly red-hot from the sunlight, it'll be below zero from
shadow!"
Joe realized, then, the temperature effects the skin on his face
noticed. A part of the spaceship's hull gave off heat like that of a
panel heating installation. Another part imparted a chill.
Sanford said unpleasantly, "You want to report your heroism, eh? Come
along!"
He clanked to the doorway by which he had entered. Joe followed, and
Mike after him.
They went out of the lock. Sanford suddenly peeled off his metal-soled
slippers, put them in his pocket, and dived casually into a four-foot
metal tube. He drifted smoothly away along the lighted bore, not
touching the sidewalls. He moved in the manner of a dream, when one
floats with infinite ease and precision in any direction one chooses.
Joe and Mike did not share his talent. Joe launched himself after
Sanford, and for perhaps 20 or 30 feet the lighted aluminum sidewall of
the tube sped past him. Then his shoulder rubbed, and he found himself
skidding to an undignified stop, choking the bore. Mike thudded into
him.
"I haven't got the hang of this yet," said Joe apologetically.
He untangled himself and went on. Mike followed him, his expression that
of pure bliss. He was a tiny man, was Mike, but he had the longings and
the ambitions of half a dozen ordinary-sized men in his small body. And
he had known frustration. He could prove by mathematics that space
exploration could be carried on by midgets at a fraction of the cost and
risk of the same job done by normal-sized men. He was, of course, quite
right. The cabins and air and food supplies for a spaceship's crew of
midgets would cost and weigh a fraction of similar equipment for
six-footers. But people simply weren't interested in sending midgets
out into space.
But Mike had gotten here. He was in the Space Platform. There were
full-sized men who would joyfully have changed places with him,
forty-one inch height and all. So Mike was blissful.
The tube ended and Joe bounced off the wall that faced its end. Sanford
was waiting. He grinned with more than a hint of spite.
"Here's our communications room," he said. "Now you can talk down to
Earth. It'll be relayed, now, but in half an hour you can reach the Shed
direct."
He floated inside. Joe followed cautiously. There was another crew
member on duty there. He sat before a group of radar screens, with thigh
grips across his legs to hold him in his chair. He turned his head and
nodded cheerfully enough.
"Here!" snapped Sanford.
Joe clambered awkwardly to the seat the senior crew member pointed out.
He made his way to it by handholds on the walls. He fumbled into the
chair and threw over the curved thigh grips that would hold him in
place.
Suddenly he was oriented. He had seen this room before--before the
Platform was launched. True, the man at the radar screens was
upside-down with reference to himself, and Sanford had hooked a knee
negligently around the arm of a firmly anchored chair with his body at
right angles to Joe's own, but at least Joe knew where he was and what
he was to do.
"Go ahead and report," said Sanford sardonically. "You might tell them
that you heroically destroyed the rockets that attacked us, and that
your crew behaved splendidly, and that you have landed in the Space
Platform and the situation is well in hand. It isn't, but it will make
nice headlines."