The phrasing, of course, was intentional--in case enemy ears were
listening. Actually, the small fleet was to use a variant on the tin can
shield which protected the Platform. It would be most effective if
visual observation was impossible. The fleet was seven ships in very
ragged formation. Most improbably, after the long three-gravity
acceleration, they were still within a fifty-mile globe of space. Number
Four loitered behind, but was being brought up by judicious bursts of
steering-rocket fire. Number Two was some distance ahead. The others
were simply scattered. They went floating on like a group of meteors.
Out the ports, two of them were visible. The others might be picked out
by the naked eye--but it wasn't likely.
Drone Two, far ahead and clearly visible, turned from a shining steel
speck to a reddish pin-point of light. The red color deepened. It winked
out. The sunlight in the ports of the mother-ship turned red. Then it
blacked out.
"Shoot the ghosts," said Joe.
The three drone-handlers pushed their buttons. Nothing happened that
anybody could see. Actually, though, a small gadget outside the hull
began to cough rhythmically. Similar devices on the drones coughed, too.
They were small, multiple-barreled guns. Rifle shells fired two-pound
missiles at random targets in emptiness. They wouldn't damage anything
they hit. They'd go varying distances, explode and shoot small lead shot
ahead to check their missile-velocity, and then emit dense masses of
aluminum foil. There was no air resistance. The shredded foil would
continue to move through emptiness at the same rate as the convoy-fleet.
The seven ships had fired a total of eighty-four such objects away into
the blackness of Earth's shadow. There were, then, seven ships and
eighty-four masses of aluminum foil moving through emptiness. They
could not be seen by telescopes.
And radars could not tell ships from masses of aluminum foil.
If enemy radars came probing upward, they reported ninety-one space
ships in ragged but coherent formation, soaring through emptiness toward
the Platform. And a fleet like that was too strong to attack.
The radar operators had been prepared to forward details of the speed
and course of a single ship to waiting rocket-launching submarines
half-way across the Pacific. But they reported to Very High Authority
instead.
He received the report of an armada--an incredible fleet--in space. He
didn't believe it. But he didn't dare disbelieve it.
So the fleet swam peacefully through the darkness that was Earth's
shadow, and no attempt at attack was made. They came out into sunlight
to look down at the western shore of America itself. With seven ships to
get on an exact course, at an exact speed, at an exact moment, time was
needed. So the fleet made almost a complete circuit of the Earth before
reaching the height of the Platform's orbit.
They joined it. A single man in a space suit, anchored to its outer
plates, directed a plastic hose which stretched out impossibly far and
clamped to one drone with a magnetic grapple. He maneuvered it to the
hull and made it fast. He captured a second, which was worked delicately
within reach by coy puffs of steering-rocket vapor.
One by one, the drones were made fast. Then the manned ship went in the
lock and the great outer door closed, and the plastic-fabric walls
collapsed behind their nets, and air came in.
Lieutenant Commander Brown was the one to come into the lock to greet
them. He shook hands all around--and it again seemed strange to all the
four from Earth to find themselves with their feet more or less firmly
planted on a solid floor, but their bodies wavering erratically to right
and left and before and back, because there was no up or down.
"Just had reports from Earth," Brown told Joe comfortably. "The news of
your take-off was released to avoid panic in Europe. But everybody who
doesn't like us is yelling blue murder. Somebody--you may guess who--is
announcing that a fleet of ninety-one war rockets took off from the
United States and now hangs poised in space while the decadent American
war-mongers prepare an ultimatum to all the world. Everybody's
frightened."
"If they'll only stay scared until we get unloaded," said Joe in some
satisfaction, "the government back home can tell them how many we were
and what we came up for. But we'll probably make out all right, anyhow."
"My crew will unload," said Brown, in conscious thoughtfulness. "You
must have gotten pretty well exhausted by that acceleration."
Joe shook his head. "I think we can handle the freight faster. We found
out a few things by going back to Earth."
A section of plating at the top of the lock--at least it had been the
top when the Platform was built on Earth--opened up as on the first
journey here. A face grinned down. But from this point on, the procedure
was changed. Haney and Joe went into the cargo-section of the rocketship
and heaved its contents smoothly through weightlessness to the storage
chamber above. The Chief and Mike stowed it there. The speed and
precision of their work was out of all reason. Brown stared
incredulously.
The fact was simply that on their first trip to the Platform, Joe and
his crew didn't know how to use their strength where there was no
weight. By the time they'd learned, their muscles had lost all tone. Now
they were fresh from Earth, with Earth-strength muscles--and they knew
how to use them.
"When we got back," Joe told Brown, "we were practically invalids. No
exercise up here. This time we've brought some harness to wear. We've
some for you, too."
They moved out of the airlock, and the ship was maneuvered to a mooring
outside, and a drone took its place. Brown's eyes blinked at the
unloading of the drone. But he said, "Navy style work, that!"
"Out here," said Joe, "you take no more exercise than an invalid on
Earth--in fact, not as much. By now the original crew would have trouble
standing up on a trip back to Earth. You'd feel pretty heavy, yourself."
Brown frowned.
"Hm. I--ah--I shall ask for instructions on the matter."
He stood erect. He didn't waver on his feet as the others did. But he
wore the same magnetic-soled shoes. Joe knew, with private amusement,
that Brown must have worked hard to get a dignified stance in
weightlessness.
"Mr. Kenmore," said Brown suddenly. "Have you been assigned a definite
rank as yet?"
"Not that I know of," said Joe without interest. "I skipper the ship I
just brought up. But----"
"Your ship has no rating!" protested Brown irritably. "The skipper of a
Navy ship may be anything from a lieutenant junior grade to a captain,
depending on the size and rating of the ship. In certain circumstances
even a noncommissioned officer. Are you an enlisted man?"
"Again, not that I know of," Joe told him. "Nor my crew, either."
Brown looked at once annoyed and distressed.
"It isn't regular!" he objected. "It isn't shipshape! I should know
whether you are under my command or not! For discipline! For
organization! It should be cleared up! I shall put through an urgent
inquiry."
Joe looked at him incredulously. Lieutenant Commander Brown was a
perfectly amiable man, but he had to have things in a certain pattern
for him to recognize that they were in a pattern at all. He was more
excited over the fact that he didn't know whether he ranked Joe, than
over the much more important matter of physical deterioration in the
absence of gravity. Yet he surely understood their relative importance.
The fact was, of course, that he could confidently expect exact
instructions about the last, while he had to settle matters of
discipline and routine for himself.
"I shall ask for clarification of your status," he said worriedly. "It
shouldn't have been left unclear. I'd better attend to it at once."
He looked at Joe as if expecting a salute. He didn't get it. He clanked
away, his magnetic shoe-soles beating out a singularly martial rhythm.
He must have practised that walk, in private.
Joe got out of the airlock as another of the space barges was warped in.
Brent, the crew's psychologist, joined him when he went to unload. Brent
nodded in a friendly fashion to Joe.
"Quite a change, eh?" he said drily. "Sanford turned out to be a
crackpot with his notions of grandeur. I'm not sure that Brown's notions
of discipline aren't worse."
Joe said, "I've something rather important to pass on," and told about
the newly discovered physical effects of a long stay where there was no
gravity. The doctors now predicted that anybody who spent six months
without weight would suffer a deterioration of muscle tone which could
make a return to Earth impossible without a long preliminary process of
retraining. One's heart would adjust to the absence of any need to pump
blood against gravity.
"Which," said Joe, "means that you're going to have to be relieved
before too long. But we brought up some gravity-simulator harness that
may help."
Brent said desolately: "And I was so pleased! We all had trouble with
insomnia, at first, but lately we've all been sleeping well! Now I see
why! Normally one sleeps because he's tired. We had trouble sleeping
until our muscles got so weak we tired anyhow!"
Another drone came in and was unloaded. And another and another. But the
last of them wasn't only unloaded. Haney took over the Platform's
control board and--grinning to himself--sent faint, especially-tuned
short wave impulses to the steering-rockets of the drone. The
liquid-fuel rockets were designed to steer a loaded ship. With the
airlock door open, the silvery ship leaped out of the dock like a
frightened horse. The liquid-fuel rocket had a nearly empty hull to
accelerate. It responded skittishly.
Joe watched out a port as it went hurtling away. The vast Earth rolled
beneath it. It sped on and vanished. Its fumes ceased to be visible. Joe
told Brent:
"Another nice job, that! We sent it backward, slowing it a little. It'll
have a new orbit, independent of ours and below it. But come sixty hours
it will be directly underneath. We'll haul it up and refuel it. And our
friends the enemy will hate it. It's a radio repeater. It'll pick up
short-wave stuff beamed to it, and repeat it down to Earth. And they can
try to jam that!"
It was a mildly malicious trick to play. Behind the Iron Curtain,
broadcasts from the free world couldn't be heard because of stations
built to emit pure noise and drown them out. But the jamming stations
were on the enemy nations' borders. If radio programs came down from
overhead, jamming would be ineffective at least in the center of the
nations. Populations would hear the truth, even though their governments
objected.
But that was a minor matter, after all. With space ship hulls coming
into being by dozens, and with one convoy of hundreds of tons of
equipment gotten aloft, the whole picture of supply for the Platform had
changed.
Part of the new picture was two devices that Haney and the Chief were
assembling. They were mostly metal backbone and a series of tanks, with
rocket motors mounted on ball and socket joints. They looked like huge
red insects, but they were officially rocket recovery vehicles, and
Joe's crew referred to them as space wagons. They had no cabin, but
something like a saddle. Before it there was a control-board complete
with radar-screens. And there were racks to which solid-fuel rockets of
divers sizes could be attached. They were literally short-range tow
craft for travel in space. They had the stripped, barren look of farm
machinery. So the name "space wagon" fitted. There were two of them.
"We're putting the pair together," the Chief told Joe. "Looks kinda
peculiar."
"It's only for temporary use," said Joe. "There's a bigger and better
one being built with a regular cabin and hull. But some experience with
these two will be useful in running a regular space tug."
The Chief said with a trace too much of casualness: "I'm kind of looking
forward to testing this."
"No," said Joe doggedly. "I'm responsible. I take the first chance. But
we should all be able to handle them. When this is assembled you can
stand by with the second one. If the first one works all right, we'll
try the second."
The Chief grimaced, but he went back to the assembly of the spidery
device.
Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses. He showed Brent how they
worked. Brown hadn't official instructions to order their use, but Joe
put one on himself, set for full Earth-gravity simulation. He couldn't
imitate actual gravity, of course. Only the effect of gravity on one's
muscles. There were springs and elastic webbing pulling one's shoulders
and feet together, so that it was as much effort to stand extended--with
one's legs straight out--as to stand upright on Earth. Joe felt better
with a pull on his body.
Brent was upset when he found that to him more than a tenth of normal
gravity was unbearable. But he kept it on at that. If he increased the
pull a very little every day, he might be able to return to Earth, in
time. Now it would be a very dangerous business indeed. He went off to
put the other members of the crew in the same sort of harness.
After ten hours, a second drone broadcaster went off into space. By that
time the articulated red frameworks were assembled. They looked more
than ever like farm machinery, save that their bulging tanks made them
look insectile, too. They were actually something between small
tow-boats and crash-wagons. A man in a space suit could climb into the
saddle of one of these creations, plug in the air-line of his suit to
the crash-wagon's tanks, and travel in space by means of the space
wagon's rockets. These weird vehicles had remarkably powerful magnetic
grapples. They were equipped with steering rockets as powerful as those
of a ship. They had banks of solid-fuel rockets of divers power and
length of burning. And they even mounted rocket missiles, small guided
rockets which could be used to destroy what could not be recovered. They
were intended to handle unmanned rocket shipments of supplies to the
Platform. There were reasons why the trick should be economical, if it
should happen to work at all.
When they were ready for testing, they seemed very small in the great
space lock. Joe and the Chief very carefully checked an extremely long
list of things that had to work right or nothing would work at all. That
part of the job wasn't thrilling, but Joe no longer looked for thrills.
He painstakingly did the things that produced results. If a sense of
adventure seemed to disappear, the sensations of achievement more than
made up for it.
They got into space suits. They were in an odd position on the Platform.
Lieutenant Commander Brown had avoided Joe as much as possible since his
arrival. So far he'd carefully avoided giving him direct orders, because
Joe was not certainly and officially his subordinate. Lacking exact
information, the only thing a conscientious rank-conscious naval officer
could do was exercise the maximum of tact and insistently ask authority
for a ruling on Joe's place in the hierarchy of rank.
Joe flung a leg over his eccentric, red-painted mount. He clipped his
safety-belt, plugged in his suit air-supply to the space wagon's tanks,
and spoke into his helmet transmitter.
"Okay to open the lock. Chief, you keep watch. If I make out all right,
you can join me. If I get in serious trouble, come after me in the ship
we rode up. But only if it's practical! Not otherwise!"
The Chief said something in Mohawk. He sounded indignant.
The plastic walls of the lock swelled inward, burying and overwhelming
them. Pumps pounded briefly, removing what air was left. Then the walls
drew back, straining against their netting, and Joe waited for the door
to open to empty space.
Instead, there came a sharp voice in his helmet-phones. It was Brown.
"_Radar says there's a rocket on the way up! It's over at what is the
edge of the world from here. Three gravities only. Better not go out!_"
Joe hesitated. Brown still issued no order. But defense against a single
rocket would be a matter of guided missiles--Brown's business--if the
tin can screen didn't handle it. Joe would have no part in it. He
wouldn't be needed. He couldn't help. And there'd be all the elaborate
business of checking to go through again. He said uncomfortably:
"It'll be a long time before it gets here--and three gravities is low!
Maybe it's a defective job. There have been misfires and so on. It won't
take long to try this wagon, anyhow. They're anxious to send up a robot
ship from the Shed and these have to be tested first. Give me ten
minutes."
He heard the Chief grumbling to himself. But one tested space wagon was
better than none.
The airlock doors opened. Huge round valves swung wide. Bright, remote,
swarming stars filled the opening. Joe cracked the control of his
forward liquid-fuel rockets. The lock filled instantly with swirling
fumes. And instantly the tiny space wagon moved. It did not have to lift
from the lock floor. Once the magnetic clamps were released it was free
of the floor. But it did have mass. One brief push of the rockets sent
it floating out of the lock. It was in space. It kept on.
Joe felt a peculiar twinge of panic. Nobody who is accustomed only to
Earth can quite realize at the beginning the conditions of handling
vehicles in space. But Joe cracked the braking rockets. He stopped. He
hung seemingly motionless in space. The Platform was a good half-mile
away.
He tried the gyros, and the space wagon went into swift spinning. He
reversed them and straightened out--almost. The vastness of all creation
seemed still to revolve slowly about him. The monstrous globe which was
Earth moved sedately from above his head to under his feet and continued
the slow revolution. The Platform rotated in a clockwise direction. He
was drifting very slowly away.
"Chief," he said wrily, "you can't do worse than I'm doing, and we're
rushed for time. You might come out. But listen! You don't run your
rockets! On Earth you keep a motor going because when it stops, you do.
But out here you have to use your motor to stop, but not to keep on
going. Get it? When you do come out, don't burn your rockets more than
half a second at a time."
The Chief's voice came booming:
"_Right, Joe! Here I come!_"
There was a billowing of frantically writhing fumes, which darted madly
in every direction until they ceased to be. The Chief in his insect-like
contraption came bolting out of the hole which was the airlock. He was a
good half-mile away. The rocket fumes ceased. He kept on going. Joe
heard him swear. The Chief felt the utterly helpless sensation of a man
in a car when his brakes don't work. But a moment later the braking
rockets did flare briefly, yet still too long. The Chief was not only
stopped, but drifting backwards toward the Platform. He evidently tried
to turn, and he spun as dizzily as Joe had done. But after a moment he
stopped--almost. There were, then, two red-painted things in space,
somewhat like giant water-spiders floating forlornly in emptiness. They
seemed very remote from the great bright steel Platform and that
gigantic ball which was Earth, turning very slowly and filling a good
fourth of all that could be seen.
"Suppose you head toward me, Chief," said Joe absorbedly. "Aim to pass,
and remember that what you have to estimate is not where I am, but where
you have to put on the brakes to stop close by. That's where you use
your braking-rockets."
The Chief tried it. He came to a stop a quarter-mile past Joe.
"_I'm heavy-handed_," said his voice disgustedly.
"I'll try to join you," said Joe.
He did try. He stopped a little short. The two weird objects drifted
almost together. The Chief was upside down with regard to Joe. Presently
he was sidewise on.
"This takes thinking," said Joe ruefully.
A voice in his headphones, from the Platform, said:
"_That rocket from Earth is still accelerating. Still at three
gravities. It looks like it isn't defective. It might be carrying a man.
Hadn't you better come in?_"
The Chief growled: "_We won't be any safer there! I want to get the hang
of this._" Then his voice changed sharply. "_Joe! D'you get that?_"
Joe heard his own voice, very cold.
"I didn't. I do now. Brown, I'd suggest a guided missile at that rocket
coming up. If there's a man in it, he's coming up to take over guided
missiles that'll overtake him, and try to smash the Platform by direct
control, since proximity fuses don't work. I'd smash him as far away as
possible."