Chapter IV: Part 4

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?"

Sally said quickly: "He's sending that by facsimile now. Then----"

The Chief beamed in benign mockery. "What you goin' to do after that, Joe? If we got the rest of the day off----?"

Sally said hurriedly: "We were--he was going off on a picnic with me. To Red Canyon Lake. Do you really need to talk business--all afternoon?"

The Chief laughed. He'd known Sally, at least by sight, back at the Kenmore plant.

"No, ma'am!" he told her. "Just askin'. I worked on that Red Canyon dam job, years back. That dam that made the lake. It ought to be right pretty around there now. Okay, Joe. See you as soon as work starts up. In the mornin', most likely."

Joe started away with Sally. Mike the midget called hoarsely: "Joe! Just a minute!"

Joe drew back. The midget's seamed face was very earnest. He said in his odd voice: "Here's something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard to keep you from getting those gyros here. They might work hard to keep them from getting repaired. That's why we asked for a special shop to work in. It's occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would be to stop us. Not everybody would've figured out how to rebalance this thing. You get me?"

"Sure!" said Joe. "You three had better look out for yourselves."

Mike stared at him and grimaced.

"You don't get it," he said brittlely. "All right. I may be crazy, at that."

Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but he approved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to the security building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm and efficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stop all work. As they went toward Major Holt's office, Joe heard somebody dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: "... this attempt at atomic sabotage was defeated outside the Shed, but it never had a chance of success. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt to smuggle radioactive material into the Shed...."

Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.

"That's for a publicity release?" he asked.

She nodded.

"It's true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without passing close to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though they don't set the sirens to screaming."

Joe said: "I'll get my order for new parts off on the facsimile machine."

But he had to get Major Holt's secretary to show him where to feed in the list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and then be rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set the machine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of the document. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.

"You and Sally," remarked Sally's father's secretary with a morose sigh, "can go and relax this afternoon. But there's no relaxation for Major Holt. Or for me."

Joe said unhopefully: "I'm sure Sally'd be glad if you came with us."

Major Holt's plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.

"I haven't had a day off since the work began here," she said frowning. "The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You're going to Red Canyon Lake?"

"Yes," agreed Joe. "Sally thought it might be pleasant."

"It's terribly dry and arid here," said Miss Ross sadly. "That's the only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it's pretty there. I've never seen it."

She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!

Sally came out, smiled at her father's secretary, and led Joe down to the entrance.

"I have the car," she said cheerfully, "and there'll be a lunch basket waiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold for swimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it's nice to look at."

They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were just beginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black car was waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. She regarded the men swarming on the busses.

"There'll be bulletins all over Bootstrap," she observed, "saying that Braun tried to dust-bomb the Shed. They'll say that he may have carried the cobalt about with him, and so he may have burned other people--in a restaurant, a movie theater, anywhere--while he was carrying the dust and dying without knowing it. So everybody's supposed to report to the hospital for a check-up for radiation burns. Some people may really have them. But Dad thinks that since you weren't burned, Braun didn't carry it around. If anyone is burned, it'll be the person who brought the cobalt here to give him. And--well--he'll turn up because everybody does, and because he's burned he'll be asked plenty of questions."

Joe stepped on the starter. Then he pressed the accelerator and the car sped forward.

They stopped at the house in the officers'-quarters area on the other side of the Shed. Sally picked up the lunch basket that her father's housekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions. They drove away.

Red Canyon was eighty miles from the Shed, and the only way to get there was through Bootstrap, because the only highway away from the Shed led to that small, synthetic town. It was irritating, though they had no schedule, to find that the long line of busses was ahead of them on that twenty-mile stretch. The busses ran nose to tail and filled the road for a half-mile or more. It was not possible to pass so long a string of close-packed vehicles. There was just enough traffic in the opposite direction to make that impracticable.

They had to trail the line of busses as far as Bootstrap and crawl through the crowded streets. Once beyond the town they came to a security stop. Here Sally's pass was good. Then they went rolling on and on through an empty, arid, sun-baked terrain toward the hills to the west. It looked remarkably lonely. Joe thought for the first time about gas. He looked carefully at the fuel gauge. Sally shook her head.

"Don't worry. Plenty of gas. Security takes care of that. When I said where we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everything checked. If I live through this, I'll bet I stay a fanatic about cautiousness all my life!"

Joe said distastefully: "I suppose it gets everybody. Mike--the midget, you know--called me back just now to suggest that the people who tried to spoil the gyros might try to harm the four of us to hinder their repair!"

"It's not just foolishness," Sally admitted. "The strain is pretty bad, especially when you know things. You've noticed that Dad's getting gray. That's strain. And Miss Ross is about as tense. Things leak out in the most remarkable way--and Dad can't find out how. Once there was a case of sabotage and he could have sworn that nobody had the information that permitted it but himself and Miss Ross. She had hysterics. She insisted that she wanted to be locked up somewhere so she couldn't be suspected of telling anybody anything. She'd resign tomorrow if she could. It's ghastly." Then she hesitated and smiled faintly: "In fact, so Dad wouldn't worry about me this afternoon----"

He took his eyes off the road to glance at her.

"What?"

"I promised we wouldn't go swimming and----" Then she said awkwardly: "There are two pistols in the glove compartment. Dad knows you. So I promised you'd put one in your pocket up at the lake."

Joe drew a deep breath. She opened the glove compartment and handed him a pistol. He looked at it: .38, hammerless. A good safe weapon. He slipped it in his coat pocket. But he frowned.

"I was looking forward to--not worrying for a while," he said wryly. "But now I'll have to remember to keep looking over my shoulder all the time!"

"Maybe," said Sally, "you can look over my shoulder and I'll look over yours, and we can glance at each other occasionally."

She laughed, and he managed to smile. But the trace of a frown remained on his forehead.

Joe drove and drove and drove. Once they came to a very small town. It may have contained a hundred people. There were gas pumps and a restaurant and two or three general stores, which were certainly too many for the permanent residents. But there were cow ponies hitched before the stores, and automobiles were also in view. The ground here was slightly rolling. The mountains had grown to good-sized ramparts against the sky. Joe drove carefully down the single street, turning out widely once to dodge a dog sleeping placidly in an area normally reserved for traffic.

Finally they came to the foothills, and then the road curved and recurved as it wound among them. And two hours from Bootstrap they reached Red Canyon. They first saw the dam from downstream. It was a monstrous structure of masonry, alone in the mountains. From its top a plume of falling water jetted out.

"The dam's for irrigation," said Sally professionally, "and the Shed gets all its power from here. One of Dad's nightmares is that somebody may blow up this dam and leave Bootstrap and the Shed without power."

Joe said nothing. He drove on up the trail as it climbed the canyon wall in hairpin slants. It was ticklish driving. But then, quite suddenly, they reached the top of the canyon wall and the top of the dam and the level of the lake at once. Here there was a sheet of water that reached back among the barren hillsides for miles and miles. It twisted out of sight. There were small waves on its surface, and grass at its edge. There were young trees. The powerhouse was a small squat structure in the middle of the dam. Not a person was visible anywhere.

"Here we are," said Sally, when Joe stopped the car.

He got out and went around to open the door for her. But she was already stepping out with the lunch basket in her hand when he arrived. He reached for it, and she held on, and they moved companionably away from the car carrying the basket between them.

"There's a nice place," said Sally, pointing.

A small ridge of rock stretched out into the lake, and rose, and spread, and formed what was almost a miniature island some fifty feet across. There were some young trees on it. Sally and Joe climbed down the slope and out the rocky isthmus that connected it with the shore.

Sally let down the lunch box on a stone and laughed for no reason at all as the wind blew her hair. It was a cool wind from over the water. And Joe realized with a shock of surprise that the air felt different and smelled different when it blew over open water like this. Up to now he hadn't thought of the dryness of the air in Bootstrap and the Shed.

The lunch basket was tilted a little. Joe picked it up and settled it more solidly. Then he said: "Hungry?"

There was literally nothing on his mind at the moment but the luxurious, satisfied feeling of being off somewhere with grass and a lake and Sally, and a good part of the afternoon to throw away. It felt good. So he lifted the lid of the lunch basket.

There was a revolver there. It was the other one from the glove compartment of the car. Sally hadn't left it behind. Joe regarded it and said ironically: "Happy, carefree youth--that's us! Which are the ham sandwiches, Sally?"

8

Nevertheless, the afternoon began splendidly. Joe dunked the bottled soft drinks in the lake to cool. Then he and Sally ate and talked and laughed. Joe, in particular, had more than the usual capacity for enjoyment today. He'd been through twenty-four hours of turmoil but now things began to look better. And there was the arrangement with Sally, which had a solid satisfactoriness about it. Sally was swell! If she'd been homely, Joe would have liked her just the same--to talk to and to be with. But she was pretty--and she was wearing his ring. She'd wrapped some string around the inside of the band to make it fit.

The only trouble was that Joe was occasionally conscious of the heavy weight in his right-hand coat pocket.

But they spent at least an hour in contented, satisfying, meaningless loafing that nobody can describe but that everybody likes to remember afterward. From time to time Joe looked ashore, when the weight in his pocket reminded him of danger.

But he didn't look often enough. He was pulling the chilled soft-drink bottles out of the lake when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, his hand in his pocket....

It was the Chief, with Haney and Mike the midget. They were striding across the rocky small peninsula.

Haney called sharply: "Everything okay?"

"Sure!" said Joe. "Everything's fine! What's the matter?"

"Mike had a hunch," said the Chief. "And--uh--I remembered I worked on the job when this dam was built twelve-fifteen years ago." He looked about him. "It looked different then."

Then he caught Joe's eye and jerked his head almost imperceptibly to one side. Joe caught the signal.

"I'll see about some more soft drinks," he said. "Come help me fish up the bottles."

Sally smiled at the other two. She was already inspecting the lunch basket.

"We still have some sandwiches," she said hospitably, "and some cake."

Haney came forward awkwardly. Mike advanced toward her with something of truculence. Joe knew what was in his mind. If Sally treated him like a freak.... But Joe knew with deep satisfaction that she wouldn't. He went down to the water's edge.

"What's up, Chief?" he asked in a low tone.

"Mike hadda hunch," rumbled the Chief. "Somebody tried to smash the stuff you brought. They did. But we started gettin' set to mend it. So what would they do? Polish us off. If they were set to atom-dust the whole Shed an' everybody in it, they wouldn't stop at four more murders."

Joe fished for a pop bottle.

"Mike said something like that back at the Shed," he observed.

"Yeah. But you were the one who figured things out. You'd be first target. Haney and Mike and me--we'd be hard to knock off in a crowd in Bootstrap. But you and her headed off by y'selves. Mike figured you mightn't be safe. So we checked."

Joe brought up one bottle and then another.

"We're all right. Haven't seen a soul."

"Don't mean a soul hasn't seen you," growled the Chief. "A car left Bootstrap less than twenty minutes behind you. There were three guys in it. It's parked down below the dam, outa sight. We saw it. And when we came up, careful, we spotted three guys hidin' out behind the rocks yonder. They look to me like they're waiting for somebody to go strolling back from the shoreline, so's--uh--maybe folks out at the powerhouse can't see 'em. That'd be you and her, huh?"

Joe went cold. Not for himself. For Sally.

"There's nobody else around," said the Chief. "Who'd they be waiting for but you two? Suppose they got a chance to kill you. They'd take the car keys. They'd drop your two bodies somewheres Gawdknowswhere. There'd be considerable of a hunt for you two. Major Holt would be upset plenty. Security might get loosened up. There might be breaks for guys who wanted to do a little extra sabotage--besides maybe hamperin' the repairin' of the pilot gyros. Then they could try for Haney and Mike and me."

Joe said coldly: "I've got a pistol and so has Sally. Shall we take those pistols and go ask those three if they want to start something?"

The Chief snorted.

"Use sense! It's good you got the pistols, though. I snagged a twenty-two rifle from a shooting gallery. It was all I could get in a hurry. But go huntin' trouble? Fella, I want to see that Platform go up! I'll take care of things now. Good layout here. They got to come across the open to get near. Don't say anything to Sally. But we'll keep our eyes open."

Joe nodded. He carried the chilled, dripping bottles back to where Haney solemnly ate a sandwich, sitting crosslegged with his back to the lake and regarding the shore. The Chief dragged a .22 repeating rifle from inside his belt, where it had hung alongside his thigh. He casually strolled over to Mike and dropped the rifle.

"You said you felt like target practice," he remarked blandly. "Here's your armament. Any more sandwiches, ma'am?"

Sally smilingly passed him the last. She left the top of the basket open. The pistol that had been there was gone. Then Sally's eyes met Joe's and she was aware that his three friends had not come here merely to crash a picnic. But she took it in stride. It was an additional reason for Joe to approve of Sally.

"Me," said the Chief largely, "I'm goin' to swim. I haven't had any more water around me than a shower bath for so long that I crave to soak and splash. I'll go yonder and dunk myself."

He wandered off, taking bites from the sandwich as he went. He vanished. Haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyes roving about the shoreline and the rocks and brush behind it.

Mike was talking in his crackling, high-pitched voice.

"But just the same it's crazy! Fighting sabotage when we little guys could take over in a week and make sabotage just plain foolish! We could do the whole job while the saboteurs weren't looking!"

Sally said with interest: "Have you got the figures? Were they ever passed on?"

"I spent a month's pay once," said Mike sardonically, "hiring a math shark to go over them. He found one mistake. It raised the margin of what we could do!"

Sally answered: "Joe! Listen to this! Mike says he has the real answer to sabotage, and, in a way, to space travel! Listen!"

Joe dropped to the ground.

"Shoot it," he said.

He was grimly alert, just the same. There were men waiting for them to start back to the car. These saboteurs were armed, and they intended to murder Sally and himself. Joe's jaws clamped tautly shut at the grim ideas that came into his mind.

But Mike was beginning to speak.

"Forget about the Platform a minute," he said, standing up to gesticulate, because he was only three and a half feet high. "Just figure on a rocket straight to the moon. With old-style rockets they'd a' had to have a mass ratio of a hundred and twenty to one. You'd have to burn a hundred and twenty tons of old-style fuel to land one ton on the moon. Now it could be done with sixty, and when the Platform's up, that figure'll drop again! Okay! You're gonna land a man on the moon. He weighs two hundred pounds. He uses up twenty pounds of food and drink and oxygen a day. Give him grub and air for two months--twelve hundred pounds. A cabin seven feet high and ten feet across. Sixteen hundred pounds, counting insulation an' braces for strength. That makes a pay load of a ton an' a half, and you'd have to burn a hundred an' eighty tons of fuel--old-style--to take it to the moon, and another hundred an' twenty for every ton the rocket ship weighed. You might get a man to the moon with a twelve-hundred-ton rocket--maybe. That's with the old fuels. He'd get there, an' he'd live two months, an' then he'd die for lack of air. With the new fuels you'd need ninety tons of fuel to carry the guy there, and sixty more for every ton the ship weighed itself. Call it six hundred tons for the rocket to carry one man to the moon."

Sally nodded absorbedly.

"I've seen figures like that," she agreed.

"But take a guy like me!" said Mike the midget bitterly. "I weigh forty-five pounds, not two hundred! I use four pounds of food and air a day. A cabin for me to live in would be four feet high an' five across. Bein' smaller, it wouldn't need so much bracing. You could do it for two hundred pounds. Three hundred for grub and air, fifty for me. Me on the moon supplied for two months would come to five-fifty pounds. Sixteen tons of fuel to get me to the moon direct! To carry the weight of the ship--it's smaller!--fifty tons maximum!"

"I--see...," said Sally, frowning.

He looked at her suspiciously, but there was no mockery in her face.

"It'd take a six-hundred-ton rocket to get a full-sized man to the moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "but a guy my size could do the same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it'd be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land, take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back--all in a sixty-ton rocket. That's just ten per cent of what it'd cost to take a full-sized man one way!"

He stamped his foot. Then he said coldly: "Haney, sittin' still you're a sittin' duck!"

The comment was just. Joe knew that Sally was on the lakeward side of this small island, and that there were impenetrable rocks between her and the mainland. But Haney sat crosslegged where he could watch the mainland, and he hadn't moved in a long while. If someone did intend to commit murder from a distance, Haney was offering a chance for a very fine target. He moved.

"Yeah!" said Mike with fine irony, reverting to his topic. "I could show you plenty of figures! There are other guys like me! We've got as much brains as full-sized people! If the big brass had figured on us small guys, they coulda made the Platform the size of a four-family house an' it'd ha' been up in the sky right now, with guys like me running it. Guys my size could man the ferry rockets bringin' up fuel for storage, and four of us could take a six-hundred-ton rocket an' slide out to Mars an' be back by springtime--next springtime!--with all the facts and the photographs to prove 'em! By golly----"

Then he made a raging, helpless gesture.

"But that's just the big picture," he said bitterly. "Right now, right at this minute, we could make it easy to finish the Platform the way it's building in the Shed! There are ferry rockets building somewhere else. You know about them?"

Sally said apologetically: "Yes. I know there'll be smaller rocket ships going up to the Platform. They'll carry fuel and stores and exchanges for the crew. Yes, I know there are ferry rockets building."

"Those ferry rockets," said Mike sardonically, "carry four men, plus two replacements for the crew. They'll carry air for ten days. But put four of us small guys in a ferry rocket! _We'd_ have air and grub for two months, almost! Pull out the pay load and put in a hydroponic garden and communicators and we'd _be_ a Platform, right then! Send up another ferry rocket to join us, and it could bring guided missiles! The ferry rockets could be finished quicker than the Platform! Send up three ferry rockets with midgets as crews, an' we could weld 'em together and have a Space Platform in orbit and working--and what'd be the use of sabotaging the big Platform then? The job would be done! There'd be no sense sabotaging the big Platform because the little one could do anything the big one could! It'd be up there and working! But," he demanded bitterly, "do you think anybody'll do anything as sensible as that?"

His small features were twisted in angry rebellion. And he was quite right in all his reasoning. Mankind could have made the journey to the planets in a hurry, and it could have had its Space Platform in the sky much more quickly, if only it could have consented to be represented by people like Mike--who would have represented mankind very valiantly.

Sally said distressedly: "Oh, Mike, it's all true and I'm so sorry!"

And she meant it. Joe liked Sally especially right then, because she didn't patronize Mike, or try to reason him out of his heartbreak.

Then Haney said abruptly: "Somebody's spotted the Chief."

Joe mentally kicked himself. The Chief had said he was going to swim. Now--but only now--Joe looked to see what he was doing.

He was far out from shore, swimming unhurriedly to the powerhouse at the middle of the dam. He would reach it, and swing up the ladder that could just be seen going down the lake side of the dam's top, and he would explain the situation on shore. A telephone call to Bootstrap would bring security men rushing at eighty miles an hour, and parachute troopers a good deal faster. But even before they arrived the Chief would lead the powerhouse crew ashore armed with the shotguns they kept for shooting waterfowl in and out of season.

The men on shore might or might not consider the Chief's swim to be proof that he knew their intentions. They were probably discussing the matter in some agitation right now. But they couldn't know that the party on the semi-island was armed.

Suddenly Mike said crisply: "We're goin' to have visitors."

He lay down carefully on the ground, fifteen feet uphill from Sally, where he could look over the ridge. He snuggled the .22 target rifle professionally to his shoulder. He drew a bead.

Three men very casually strolled out of the brushwood on the shore. They moved nonchalantly toward the strand of rocks that led out to the picnic spot. They looked like anybody else from Bootstrap. Casual, rough work clothing.... Haney bent down and picked up four good throwing stones. His expression was pained.

Joe said: "We've got pistols, Haney, and Sally's a good shot."

The men came on. Their manner was elaborately casual. Joe stepped up into view.

"No visitors!" he called. "We don't want company!"

One of the men held his hand to his ear, as if not understanding. They came on. They made no threatening gestures.

Then Joe took his hand out of his pocket, the pistol Sally'd given him gripped tightly.

"I mean that!" he said harshly. "Stand back!"

One of the three spoke sharply. On that instant three snub-nosed pistols appeared. Bullets whined as the men hurtled forward. The purpose was not so much murder at this moment as the demoralizing effect of bullets flying overhead while the three assassins got close enough to do their bloody job with precision.

A stone whizzed by Joe--Haney had thrown it--and the small target rifle in Mike's hands coughed twice. Joe held his fire. He had only six bullets and three targets to hit. With a familiar revolver he'd have started shooting now, but thirty yards is a long range with a strange pistol at a moving target.

One of the three killers stumbled and crashed to the ground. A second seemed suddenly to be grinning widely on one side of his face. A .22 bullet had slashed his cheek. The third ran head on into a rock thrown by Haney. It knocked the breath out of him and his pistol fell from his hand.

Joe fired deliberately at the widely grinning man and saw him spin around. Mike's target rifle spat again and the man Joe had hit wheeled and ran heavily, making incoherent yells. The one who'd tumbled scrambled to his feet and fled, hopping crazily, favoring one leg. Deserted, the third man turned and ran too, still doubled over and still gasping.

Mike's voice crackled. He was in a towering rage because of the way the target rifle shot. It threw high and to the right. The shooting gallery paid off in cigarettes for high scores--so the guns didn't shoot straight.

Until this moment Joe had been relatively calm, because he had something to do. But just then he heard Sally say "Oh!" in a queer voice. He whirled. Unknown to him, she had not been waiting under cover, but standing with her pistol out and ready. And her face was very white, and she was plucking at her hair. A strand came away in her fingers. A bullet had clipped it just above her shoulder.

Then Joe went sick ... weak ... trembling, and he disgraced himself by half-hysterically grabbing Sally and demanding to know if she was hurt, and raging at her for exposing herself to fire, while his throat tried to close and shut off his breath from horror.

There came loud pop-pop-popping noises. With the peculiar reverberation of sound over water, two motorcycles started from the powerhouse along the crest of the dam. They streaked for the shore carrying five men, one of whom was the Chief, with a red-checked tablecloth about his middle, brandishing a fire axe in default of other weapons.

The danger was over.

But the assassins couldn't be followed immediately. They still had at least two pistols. Eight men and a girl, counting Mike, with an armament of only two pistols, a .22 rifle, two shotguns and a fire axe were not a properly equipped posse to hunt down killers. Also by now it was close to sunset.

So the victors did the sensible thing. Joe and Sally and Haney and the Chief--his clothes retrieved--plus Mike headed back for Bootstrap. Joe and Sally rode in the Major's black car, and the other three in the jalopy they'd rented for the afternoon. On the way into the canyon below the dam, they stopped at the parked car their would-be assassins had come in. They removed its distributor and fan belt. The other men returned to the powerhouse with their shotguns and the fire axe, and telephoned to Bootstrap. The three gunmen who had planned murder became fugitives, with no means of transportation but their legs. They had a good many thousand square miles of territory to hide in, but it wasn't likely that they had food or any competence to find it in the wilds. Two were certainly hurt. With dogs and planes and organization, it should be possible to catch them handily, come morning.

So Joe and Sally drove back to Bootstrap with the other car following closely through all the miles that had to be covered in the dark. Halfway back, they met a grim search party in cars, heading for the dam to begin their man hunt in the morning. After that, Joe felt better. But his teeth still tended to chatter every time he thought of Sally's startled, scared expression as she pulled away a lock of her hair that had been severed by a bullet.

When they got back to the Shed, Major Holt looked tired and old. Sally explained breathlessly that her danger was her own fault. Joe'd thought she was safely under cover....

"It was my fault," said the Major detachedly. "I let you go away from the Shed. I do not blame Joe at all."

But he did not look kindly. Joe wet his lips, ready to agree that any disgrace he might be subjected to was justified, since he had caused Sally to be shot at.

"I blame myself a great deal, sir," he said grimly. "But I can promise I'll never take Sally away from safety again. Not until the Platform's up and there's no more reason for her to be in danger."

The Major said remotely: "I shall have to arrange for more than that. I shall put you in touch with your father by telephone. You will explain to him, in detail, exactly how the repair of your apparatus is planned. I understand that the gyros can be duplicated more quickly by the method you have worked out?"

Joe said: "Yes, sir. The balancing of the gyros can, which was the longest single job. But anything can be made quicker the second time. The patterns for the castings are all made, and the bugs worked out of the production process."

"You will explain that to your father," said the Major heavily. "Your father's plant will begin to duplicate these--ah--pilot gyros at once. Meanwhile your--ah--work crew will start to repair the one that is here."

"Yes, sir."

"And," said the Major, "I am sending you to the pushpot airfield. I intend to scatter the targets the saboteurs might aim at. You are one of them. Your crew is another. From time to time you will confer with them and verify their work. If any of them should be--disposed of, you will be able to instruct others."

"It's really the other way about, sir," objected Joe. "The Chief and Haney are pretty good, and Mike's got brains----"

The Major moved impatiently.

"I am looking at this from a security standpoint," he said. "I am trying to make it plainly useless to attack the gyros again. Duplicates will be in production at your father's plant. There will be three men repairing the smashed ones. There will be another man in another place--and this will be you--who can instruct new workmen in the repair procedure if anything should happen. Thus there will have to be three separate successful coups if the pilot gyros are not to be ready when the Platform needs them. Saboteurs might try one. Possibly two. But I think they will look for another weak spot to attack."

Joe did not like the idea of being moved away. He wanted to be on the job repairing the device that was primarily his responsibility. Besides, he had a feeling about Sally. If she were in danger, he wanted to be on hand.

"About Sally, sir----"

"Sally," said the Major tiredly, "is going to have to restrict herself to the point where she'll feel that jail would be preferable. But she will see the need for it. She will be guarded a good deal more carefully than before--and you may not know it, but she has been guarded rather well."

Joe saw Sally smiling ruefully at him. What the Major had said was unpleasant, but he was right. This was one of those arrangements that nobody likes, an irritating, uncomfortable, disappointing necessity. But such necessities are a part of every actual achievement. The difference between things that get done and things that don't get done is often merely the difference between patience and impatience with tedious details. This arrangement would mean that Joe couldn't see Sally very often. It would mean that the Chief and Haney and Mike would do the actual work of getting the gyros ready. It would take all the glamour out of Joe's contribution. These deprivations shouldn't be necessary. But they were.

"All right, sir," said Joe gloomily. "When do I go over to the field?"

"Right away," said the Major. "Tonight." Then he added detachedly: "Officially, the excuse for your presence there will be that you have been useful in uncovering sabotage methods. You have. After all, through you a number of planes that would have been blown up have now had their booby traps removed. I know you do not claim credit for the fact, but it is an excuse for keeping you where I want you to be for another reason entirely. So it will be assumed that you are at the pushpot field for counter-sabotage inspection."

The Major nodded dismissal with an indefinable air of irony, and Joe went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length. His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new set of pilot gyros at once.

A little later Sally came out of her father's office.

"I'm sorry, Joe!"

He grinned unhappily.

"So am I. I don't feel very heroic, but if this is what has to be done to get the Platform out of the Shed and on the way up--it's what has to be done. I suppose I can phone you?"

"You can," said Sally. "And you'd better!"

They had talked a long time that afternoon, very satisfyingly and without any cares at all. Neither could have remembered much of what had been said. It probably was not earth-shaking in importance. But now there seemed to be a very great deal of other similar conversation urgently needing to be gone through.

"I'll call you!" said Joe.

Then somebody approached to take him to the pushpot airfield. They separated very formally under the eyes of the impersonal security officer who would drive Joe to his destination.

It was a tedious journey through the darkness. This particular security officer was not companionable. He was one of those conscientious people who think that if they keep their mouths shut it will make up for their inability to keep their eyes open. Socially he treated Joe as if he were a highly suspect person. It could be guessed that he treated everybody that way.

Joe went to sleep in the car.

He was only half-awake when he arrived, and he didn't bother to rouse himself completely when he was shown to a cubbyhole in the officers' barracks. He went to bed, making a half-conscious note to buy himself some clothes--especially fresh linen--in the morning.

Then he knew nothing until he was awaked in the early morning by what sounded exactly like the crack of doom.

9

It was not, however, the crack of doom. When Joe stared out the window by the head of his cot, he saw gray-red dawn breaking over the landing field. There were low, featureless structures silhouetted against the sunrise. As the crimson light grew brighter, Joe realized that the angular shapes were hangars. Improbable crane poles loomed above them. One was in motion, handling something he could not make out, but the noise that had awakened him was less, now. It seemed to circle overhead, and it had an angry, droning, buzzing quality that was not natural in any motor he had ever heard before.

Joe shivered, standing at the window. It was cold and dank in the dawn light at this altitude, but he wanted to know what that completely unbelievable roar had been. A crane beam by the hangars tilted down, slowly, and then lifted as if released of a great weight. The light was growing slowly brighter. Joe saw something on the ground. Rather, it was not quite on the ground. It rested on something on the ground.

Suddenly that unholy uproar began again. Something moved. It ran heavily out from the masking dark of the hangars. It picked up speed. It acquired a reasonable velocity--forty or fifty miles an hour. As it scuttled over the dimly lighted field, it made a din like all the boiler factories in the world and all the backfiring motors in creation trying to drown each other's noise out--and all of them being very successful.

It was a pushpot. Joe recognized it with incredulity. It was one of those utterly ungainly creations that were built around one half of the sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome flirtings from side to side.