There was an eruption of rocket fumes from the side of the Platform.
Something went foaming away toward Earth. It dwindled with incredible
rapidity. Then Joe said:
"Chief, I think we'd better go down and meet that rocket. We'll learn to
handle these wagons on the way. I think we're going to have a fight on
our hands. Whoever's in that rocket isn't coming up just to shake hands
with us."
He steadied the small red vehicle and pointed it for Earth. He added:
"I'm firing a six-two solid-fuel job, Chief. Counting three.
Three--two--one."
His mount vanished in rocket fumes. But after six seconds at two
gravities acceleration the rocket burned out. The Chief had fired a
matching rocket. They were miles apart, but speeding Earthward on very
nearly identical courses.
The Platform grew smaller. That was their only proof of motion.
A very, very long time passed. The Chief fired his steering rockets to
bring him closer to Joe. It did not work. He had to aim for Joe and fire
a blast to move noticeably nearer. Presently he would have to blast
again to keep from passing.
Joe made calculations in his head. He worried. He and the Chief were
speeding Earthward--away from the Platform--at more than four miles a
minute, but it was not enough. The manned rocket was accelerating at a
great deal more than that rate. And if the Platform's enemies down on
Earth had sent a manned rocket up to destroy the Platform, the man in it
would have ways of defending himself. He would expect guided
missiles--but he probably wouldn't expect to be attacked by space
wagons.
Joe said suddenly:
"Chief! I'm going to burn a twelve-two. We've got to match velocities
coming back. Join me? Three--two--one."
He fired a twelve-two. Twelve seconds burning, two gravities
acceleration. It built up his speed away from the Platform to a rate
which would have been breathless, on Earth. But here there was no
sensation of motion, and the distances were enormous. Things which
happen in space happen with insensate violence and incredible swiftness.
But long, long, long intervals elapse between events. The twelve-two
rocket burned out. The Chief had matched that also.
Brown's voice in the headphones said, "_The rocket's cut acceleration.
It's floating up, now. It should reach our orbit fifty miles behind us.
But our missile should hit it in forty seconds._"
"I wouldn't bet on that," said Joe coldly. "Figure interception data for
the Chief and me. Make it fast!"
He spotted the Chief, a dozen miles away and burning his steering
rockets to close, again. The Chief had the hang of it, now. He didn't
try to steer. He drove toward Joe.
But nothing happened. And nothing happened. And nothing happened. The
two tiny space wagons were 90 miles from the Platform, which was now
merely a glittering speck, hardly brighter than the brightest stars.
There was a flare of light to Earthward. It was brighter than the sun.
The light vanished.
Brown's voice came in the headphones, "_Our missile went off 200 miles
short! He sent an interceptor to set it off!_"
"Then he's dangerous," said Joe. "There'll be war rockets coming up any
second now for him to control from right at hand. We won't be fighting
rockets controlled from 4,000 miles away! They've found proximity fuses
don't work, so he's going to work in close. Give us our course and data,
quick! The Chief and I have got to try to smash things!"
The two tiny space wagons--like stick-insects in form, absurdly painted
a brilliant red--seemed inordinately lonely. It was hardly possible to
pick out the Platform with the naked eyes. The Earth was thousands of
miles below. Joe and the Chief, in space suits, rode tiny metal
frameworks in an emptiness more vast, more lonely, more terrible than
either could have imagined.
Then the war rockets started up. There were eight of them. They came out
to do murder at ten gravities acceleration.
9
But even at ten gravities' drive it takes time to travel 4,000 miles. At
three, and coasting a great deal of the way, it takes much longer. The
Platform circled Earth in four hours and a little more. Anything
intending interception and rising straight up needed to start skyward
long before the Platform was overhead. A three-g rocket would start
while the Platform was still below the western horizon from its
launching-spot. Especially if it planned to coast part of its
journey--and a three-gravity rocket would have to coast most of the way.
So there was time. Coasting, the rising manned rocket would be losing
speed. If it planned to go no higher than the Platform's orbit, its
upward velocity would be zero there. If it were intercepted 500 miles
down, it would be rising at an almost leisurely rate, and Joe and the
Chief could check their Earthward plunge and match its rising rate.
This they did. But what they couldn't do was match its orbital velocity,
which was zero. They had the Platform's eastward speed to start
with--over 200 miles a minute. No matter how desperately they fired
braking-rockets, they couldn't stop and maneuver around the rising
control-ship. Inevitably they would simply flash past it in the fraction
of an instant. To fire their tiny guided missiles on ahead would be
almost to assure that they would miss. Also, the enemy ship was manned.
It could fight back.
But Joe had been on the receiving end of one attack in space. It wasn't
much experience, but it was more than anybody but he and his own crew
possessed.
"Chief," said Joe softly into his helmet-mike, as if by speaking softly
he could keep from being overheard, "get close enough to me to see what
I do, and do it too. I can't tell you more. Whoever's running this
rocket might know English."
There was a flaring of vapor in space. The Chief was using his
steering-rockets to draw near.
Joe spun his little space wagon about, so that it pointed back in the
direction from which he had come. He had four guided missiles,
demolition type. Very deliberately, he fired the four of them
astern--away from the rising rocket. They were relatively low-speed
missiles, intended to blow up a robot ship that couldn't be hooked onto,
because it was traveling too much faster or slower than the Platform it
was intended to reach. The missiles went away. Then Joe faced about
again in the direction of his prospective target. The Chief fumed--Joe
heard him--but he duplicated Joe's maneuver. He faced his own eccentric
vessel in the direction of its line of flight.
Then his fuming suddenly ceased. Joe's headphones brought his explosive
grunt when he suddenly saw the idea.
"_Joe! I wish you could talk Indian! I could kiss you for this trick!_"
Brown's voice said anxiously: "_I'm going to let that manned rocket have
a couple more shots._"
"Let us get by first," said Joe. "Then maybe you can use them on the
bombs coming up."
He could see the trails of war-rockets on the way out from Earth. They
were infinitesimal threads of vapor. They were the thinnest possible
filaments of gossamer white. But they enlarged as they rose. They were
climbing at better than two miles per second, now, and still increasing
their speed.
But the arena in which this conflict took place was so vast that
everything seemed to take place in slow motion. There was time to reason
out not only the method of attack from Earth, but the excuse for it. If
the Platform vanished from space, no matter from what cause, its enemies
would announce vociferously that it had been destroyed by its own
atomic bombs, exploding spontaneously. Even in the face of proof of
murder, enemy nations would stridently insist that bombs intended for
the enslavement of humanity--in the Platform--had providentially
detonated and removed that instrument of war-mongering scoundrelly
imperialists from the skies. There might be somebody, somewhere, who
would believe it.
Joe and the Chief were steadied now nearly on a line to intercept the
rising manned rocket. They had already fired their missiles, which
trailed them. They went into battle, not prepared to shoot, but with
their ammunition expended. For which there was excellent reason.
Something came foaming toward them from the nearby man-carrying rocket.
It seemed like a side-spout from the column of vapor rising from Earth.
Actually it was a guided missile.
"Now we dodge," said Joe cheerfully. "Remember the trick of this
maneuvering business!"
It was simple. Speeding toward the rising assassin, and with his
missiles rushing toward them, the relative speeds of the wagons and the
missiles were added together. If the space wagons dodged, the missile
operator had less time to swing his guided rockets to match the change
of target course. And besides, the attacker hadn't made a single turn in
space. Not yet. He might know that a rocket doesn't go where it's
pointed, as a matter of theory. He might even know intellectually that
the final speed and course of a rocket is the sum of all its previous
speeds and courses. But he hadn't used the knowledge Joe and the Chief
had.
Something rushed at them. They went into evasive action. And they didn't
merely turn the noses of their space wagons. They flung them about
end-for-end, and blasted. They used wholly different accelerations at
odd angles. Joe shot away from Earth on steering rocket thrust, and
touched off a four-three while he faced toward Earth's north pole, and
halfway along that four-second rush he flipped his craft in a somersault
and the result was nearly a right-angled turn. When the four-three
burned out he set off a twelve-two, and halfway through its burning
fired a three-two with it, so that at the beginning he had two gravities
acceleration, then four gravities for three seconds, and then two again.
With long practice, a man might learn marksmanship in space. But all a
man's judgment of speeds is learned on Earth, where things always,
always, always move steadily. Nobody making his first space-flight could
possibly hit such targets as Joe and the Chief made of themselves. The
man in the enemy rocket was making his first flight. Also, Joe and the
Chief had an initial velocity of 200 miles a minute toward him. The
marksman in the rising rocket hadn't a chance. He fired four more
missiles and tried desperately to home them in. But----
They flashed past his rising course. And then they were quite safe from
his fire, because it would take a very long time indeed for anything he
shot after them to catch up. But their missiles had still to pass
him--and Joe and the Chief could steer them without any concern about
their own safety or anything else but a hit.
They made a hit.
Two of the eight little missiles flashed luridly, almost together, where
the radar-pips showed the rocket to be. Then there were two parts to the
rocket, separating. One was small and one was fairly large. Another
demolition-missile hit the larger section. Still another exploded as
that was going to pieces. The smaller fragment ceased to be important.
The explosions weren't atomic bombs, of course. They were only
demolition-charges. But they demolished the manned rocket admirably.
Brown's voice came in the headphones, still tense. "_You got it! How
about the others?_"
Joe felt a remarkable exhilaration. Later he might think about the poor
devil--there could have been only one--who had been destroyed some 3,700
miles above the surface of the Earth. He might think unhappily of that
man as a victim of hatred rather than as a hater. He might become
extremely uncomfortable about this, but at the moment he felt merely
that he and the Chief had won a startling victory.
"I think," he said, "that you can treat them with silent contempt. They
won't have proximity fuses. Those friends of ours who want so badly to
kill us have found that proximity fuses don't work. Unless one is on a
collision course I don't think you need to do anything about them."
The Chief was muttering to himself in Mohawk, twenty miles away. Joe
said:
"Chief, how about getting back to the Platform?"
The Chief growled. "_My great-grandfather would disown me! Winning a
fight and no scalp to show! Not even counting coup! He'd disown me!_"
But Joe saw his rockets flare, away off against the stars.
The war rockets were very near, now. They still emitted monstrous
jettings of thick white vapor. They climbed up with incredible speed.
One went by Joe at a distance of little more than a mile, and its fumes
eddied out to half that before they thinned to nothingness. They went on
and on and on....
They burned out somewhere. It would be a long time before they fell back
to Earth. Hours, probably. Then they would be meteors. They'd vaporize
before they touched solidity. They wouldn't even explode.
But Joe and the Chief rode back to the Platform. It was surprising how
hard it was to match speed with it again, to make a good entrance into
the giant lock. They barely made it before the Platform made its plunge
into that horrible blackness which was the Earth's shadow. And Joe was
very glad they did make it before then. He wouldn't have liked to be
merely astride a skinny framework in that ghastly darkness, with the
monstrous blackness of the Abyss seeming to be trying to devour him.
Haney met them in the airlock. He grinned.
"Nice job, Joe! Nice job, Chief!" he said warmly. "Uh--the Lieutenant
Commander wants you to report to him, Joe. Right away."
Joe cocked an eyebrow at him.
"What for?"
Haney spread out his hands. The Chief grunted. "That guy bothers me.
I'll bet, Joe, he's going to explain you shouldn't've gone out when he
didn't want you to. Me, I'm keeping away from him!"
The Chief shed his space suit and swaggered away, as well as anyone
could swagger while walking on what happened to be the ceiling, from
Joe's point of view. Joe put his space gear in its proper place. He went
to the small cubbyhole that Brown had appropriated for the office of the
Platform Commander. Joe went in, naturally without saluting.
Brown sat in a fastened-down chair with thigh grips holding him in
place. He was writing. On Joe's entry, he carefully put the pen down on
a magnetized plate that would hold it until he wanted it again.
Otherwise it could have floated anywhere about the room.
"Mr. Kenmore," said Brown awkwardly, "you did a very nice piece of work.
It's too bad you aren't in the Navy."
Joe said: "It did work out pretty fortunately. It's lucky the Chief and
I were out practicing, but now we can take off when a rocket's reported,
any time."
Brown cleared his throat. "I can thank you personally," he said
unhappily, "and I do. But--really this situation is intolerable! How can
I report this affair? I can't suggest commendation, or a promotion,
or--anything! I don't even know how to refer to you! I am going to ask
you, Mr. Kenmore, to put through a request that your status be
clarified. I would imagine that your status would mean a rank--hm--about
equivalent to a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy."
Joe grinned.
"I have--ah--prepared a draft you might find helpful," said Brown
earnestly. "It's necessary for something to be done. It's urgent! It's
important!"
"Sorry," said Joe. "The important thing to me is getting ready to load
up the Platform with supplies from Earth. Excuse me."
He went out of the office. He made his way to the quarters assigned
himself and his crew. Mike greeted him with reproachful eyes. Joe waved
his hand.
"Don't say it, Mike! The answer is yes. See that the tanks are refilled,
and new rockets put in place. Then you and Haney go out and practice.
But no farther than ten miles from the Platform. Understand?"
"No!" said Mike rebelliously. "It's a dirty trick!"
"Which," Joe assured him, "I commit only because there's a robot ship
from Bootstrap coming up any time now. And we'll need to pick it up and
tow it here."
He went to the control-room to see if he could get a vision connection
to Earth.
He got the beam, and he got Sally on the screen. A report of the attack
on the Platform had evidently already gone down to Earth. Sally's
expression was somehow drawn and haunted. But she tried to talk lightly.
"Derring-do and stuff, Joe?" she asked. "How does it feel to be a
victorious warrior?"
"It feels rotten," he told her. "There must have been somebody in the
rocket we blew up. He felt like a patriot, I guess, trying to murder us;
But I feel like a butcher."
"Maybe you didn't do it," she said. "Maybe the Chief's bombs----"
"Maybe," said Joe. He hesitated. "Hold up your hand."
She held it up. His ring was still on it. She nodded. "Still there. When
will you be back?"
He shook his head. He didn't know. It was curious that one wanted
so badly to talk to a girl after doing something that was
blood-stirring--and left one rather sickish afterward. This business of
space travel and even space battle was what he'd dreamed of, and he
still wanted it. But it was very comforting to talk to Sally, who hadn't
had to go through any of it.
"Write me a letter, will you?" he asked. "We can't tie up this beam very
long."
"I'll write you all the news that's allowed to go out," she assured him.
"Be seeing you, Joe."
Her image faded from the screen. And, thinking it over, he couldn't see
that either of them had said anything of any importance at all. But he
was very glad they'd talked together.
The first robot ship came up some eight hours later--two revolutions
after the television call. Mike was ready hours in advance, fidgeting.
The robot ship started up while the Platform was over the middle of the
Pacific. It didn't try to make a spiral approach as all other ships had
done. It came straight up, and it started from the ground. No pushpots.
Its take-off rockets were monsters. They pushed upward at ten gravities
until it was out of atmosphere, and then they stepped up to fifteen.
Much later, the robot turned on its side and fired orbital speed rockets
to match velocity with the Platform.
There were two reasons for the vertical rise, and the high acceleration.
If a robot ship went straight up, it wouldn't pass over enemy territory
until it was high enough to be protected by the Platform. And--it costs
fuel to carry fuel to be burned. So if the rocketship could get up speed
for coasting to orbit in the first couple of hundred miles, it needn't
haul its fuel so far. It was economical to burn one's fuel fast and get
an acceleration that would kill a human crew. Hence robots.
The landing of the first robot ship at the Platform was almost as
matter-of-fact as if it had been done a thousand times before. From the
Platform its dramatic take-off couldn't be seen, of course. It first
appeared aloft as a pip on a radar screen. Then Mike prepared to go out
and hook on to it and tow it in. He was in his space suit and in the
landing lock, though his helmet faceplate was still open. A loudspeaker
boomed suddenly in Brown's voice: "_Evacuate airlock and prepare to take
off!_"