Space Platform, Murray Leinster [primary phonics books .TXT] 📗

be one of the first men ever to make a real space journey—and now it was gone. He couldn’t resent the decision against him. If it had been put up to him, he’d probably have made the same hard decision himself. But it hurt to have had even a crazy hope taken away.

Sally said, trying hard to interest him, “These rockets hold an awful lot of fuel, Joe! And it’s better than scientists thought a chemical fuel could ever be!”

“Yes,” said Joe.

“Fluorine-beryllium,” said Sally urgently. “It fits in with the pushpots’ having pressurized cockpits. Rockets like that couldn’t be used on the ground! The fumes would be poisonous!”

But Joe only nodded in agreement. He was apathetic. He was uninterested. He was still thinking of that lost trip in space. He realized that Sally was watching his face.

“Joe,” she said unhappily, “I wish you wouldn’t look like that!”

“I’m all right,” he told her.

“You act as if you didn’t care about anything,” she protested, “and you do!”

“I’m all right,” he repeated.

“I’d like to go outside somewhere,” she said abruptly, “but after what happened up at the lake, I mustn’t. Would you like to go up to the top of the Shed?”

“If you want to,” he agreed without enthusiasm.

He followed when she went to a doorway—with a security guard beside it—in the sidewall. She flashed her pass and the guard let them through. They began to walk up an inclined, endless, curving ramp. It was between the inner and outer skins of the Shed. There had to be two skins because the Shed was too big to be ventilated properly, and the hot desert sunshine on one side would have made “weather” inside. There’d have been a convection-current motion of the air in the enclosed space, and minor whirlwinds, and there could even be miniature thunderclouds and lightning. Joe remembered reading that such things had happened in a shed built for Zeppelins before he was born.

They came upon an open gallery, and there was a security man looking down at the floor and the Platform. He had a very good view of all that went on.

They went around another long circuit of the slanting gallery, dimly lighted with small electric bulbs. They came to a second gallery, and saw the Platform again. There was another guard here.

They were halfway up the globular wall now, and were visibly suspended over emptiness. The view of the Platform was impressive. There were an astonishing number of rocket tubes being fastened to the outside of that huge object. Three giant cranes, working together, hoisted a tube to the last remaining level of scaffolding, and men swarmed on it and fastened it to the swelling hull. As soon as it was fast, other men hurried into it with the white pasty stuff to line it from end to end. The tubes would nearly hide the structure they were designed to propel. But they’d all be burned away when it reached its destination.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” asked Sally hopefully.

Joe looked, and said without warmth, “It’s the most wonderful thing that anybody ever even tried to do.”

Which was true enough, but the zest of it had unreasonably departed for Joe for the time being. His disappointment was new.

Halfway around again, Sally opened a door, and Joe was almost surprised out of his lethargy. Here was a watching post on the outside of the monstrous half-globe. There were two guards here, with fifty-caliber machine guns under canvas hoods. Their duties were tedious but necessary. They watched the desert. From this height it stretched out for miles, and Bootstrap could be seen as a series of white specks far away with hills behind it.

Ultimately Sally and Joe came to the very top of the Shed into the open air. From here the steep plating curved down and away in every direction. The sunshine was savagely bright and shining, but there was a breeze. And here there was a considerable expanse fenced in—almost an acre, it seemed. There were metal-walled small buildings with innumerable antennae of every possible shape for the reception of every conceivable wave length. There were three radar bowl reflectors turning restlessly to scan the horizon, and a fourth which went back and forth, revolving, to scan the sky itself. Sally told Joe that in the very middle—where there was a shed with a domelike roof which wasn’t metal—there was a wave-guide radar that could spot a plane within three feet vertically, and horizontally at a distance of thirty miles, with greater distances in proportion.

There were guns down in pits so their muzzles wouldn’t interfere with the radar. There were enough non-recoil anti-aircraft guns to defend the Shed against anything one could imagine.

“And there are jet planes overhead too,” said Sally. “Dad asked to have them reinforced, and two new wings of jet fighters landed yesterday at a field somewhere over yonder. There are plenty of guards!”

The Platform was guarded as no object in all history had ever been guarded. It was ironic that it had to be protected so, because it was actually the only hope of escape from atomic war. But that was why some people hated the Platform, and their hatred had made it seem obviously an item of national defense. Ironically that was the reason the money had been provided for its construction. But the greatest irony of all was that its most probable immediate usefulness would be the help it would give in making nuclear experiments that weren’t safe enough to make on Earth.

That was pure irony. Because if those experiments were successful, they should mean that everybody in the world would in time become rich beyond envy.

But Joe couldn’t react to the fact. He was drained and empty of emotion because his job was done and he’d lost a very flimsy hope to be one of the Platform’s first crew.

He didn’t really feel better until late that night, when suddenly he realized that life was real and life was earnest, because a panting man was trying to strangle Joe with his bare hands. Joe was hampered in his self-defense because a large number of battling figures trampled over him and his antagonist together. They were underneath the Platform, and Joe expected to be blown to bits any second.

11

Joe sat on the porch of Major Holt’s quarters in the area next to the Shed. It was about eight-thirty, and dark, but there was a moon. And Joe had come to realize that his personal disappointment was only his personal disappointment, and that he hadn’t any right to make a nuisance of himself about it. Therefore he didn’t talk about the thing nearest in his mind, but something else that was next nearest or farther away still. Yet, with the Shed filling up a full quarter of the sky, and a gibbous moon new-risen from the horizon, it was not natural for a young man like Joe to speak purely of earthly things.

“It’ll come,” he said yearningly, staring at the moon. “If the Platform gets up day after tomorrow, it’s going to take time to ferry up the equipment it ought to have. But still, somebody ought to land on the moon before too long.”

He added absorbedly: “Once the Platform is fully equipped, it won’t take many rocket pay loads to refill a ship’s tanks at the Platform, before it can head on out.”

Mathematically, a rocket ship that could leave the Platform with full fuel tanks should have fuel to reach the moon and land on it, and take off again and return to the Platform. The mathematical fact had a peculiar nagging flavor. When a dream is subjected to statistical analysis and the report is in its favor, a dreamer’s satisfaction is always diluted by a subconscious feeling that the report is only part of the dream. Everybody worries a little when a cherished dream shows a likelihood of coming true. Some people take firm steps to stop things right there, so a romantic daydream won’t be spoiled by transmutation into prosaic fact. But Joe said doggedly: “Twenty ferry trips to pile up fuel, and the twenty-first ship should be able to refuel and go on out. And then somebody will step out on the moon!”

He was disappointed now. He wouldn’t be the one to do it. But somebody would.

“You might try for the ferry service,” said Sally uneasily.

“I will,” said Joe grimly, “but I won’t be hoping too much. After all, there are astronomers and physics sharks and such things, who’ll be glad to learn to run rockets in order to practice their specialties out of atmosphere.”

Sally said mournfully: “I can’t seem to say anything to make you feel better!”

“But you do,” said Joe. He added grandiloquently, “But for your unflagging faith in me, I would not have the courage to bear the burdens of everyday life.”

She stamped her foot.

“Stop it!”

“All right.” But he said quietly, “You are a good kid, Sally. You know, it’s not too bright of me to mourn.”

She drew a deep breath.

“That’s better! Now, I want——”

There was a gangling figure walking down the concrete path between the trim, monotonous cottages that were officers’ quarters at the Shed.

Joe said sharply: “That’s Haney! What’s he doing here?” He called, “Haney!”

Haney’s manner took on purpose. He came across the grass—the lawns around the officers’ quarters contained the only grass in twenty miles.

“Hiya,” said Haney uncomfortably. He spoke politely to Sally. “Hiya. Uh—you want to get in on the party, Joe?”

“What kind?”

“The party Mike was talkin’ about,” said Haney. “He’s set it up. He wants me to get you and a kinda—uh—undercover tip-off to Major Holt.”

Joe stirred. Sally said hospitably: “Sit down. You’ve noticed that my father gave you full security clearance, so you can go anywhere?”

Haney perched awkwardly on the edge of the porch.

“Yeah. That’s helped with the party. It’s how I got here, as far as that goes. Mike’s on top of the world.”

“Shoot it,” said Joe.

“Y’know he’s been pretty bitter about things,” said Haney carefully. “He’s been sayin’ that little guys like him ought to be the spacemen. There’s half a dozen other little guys been working on the Platform too. They can get in cracks an’ buck rivets an’ so on. Useful. He’s had ’em all hopped up on the fact that the Platform coulda been finished months ago if it’d been built for them, an’ they could get to the moon an’ back while full-sized guys couldn’t an’ so on. Remember?”

“I remember,” said Sally.

“They’ve all been beefin’ about it,” explained Haney. “People know how they feel. So today Mike went and talked to one or two of ’em. An’ they started actin’ mysterious, passin’ messages back an’ forth an’ so on. Little guys, actin’ important. Security guys wouldn’t notice ’em much. Y’don’t take a guy Mike’s size serious, unless you know him. Then he’s the same as anybody else. So the security guys didn’t pay any attention to him. But some other guys did. Some special other guys. They saw those little fellas actin’ like they were cookin’ up somethin’ fancy. An’ they bit.”

“Bit?” asked Sally.

“They got curious. So Mike an’ his gang got confidential. An’ they’re going to have help sabotagin’ the Platform when the next shift changes. The midgets gettin’ even for bein’ laughed at, see? They’re pretending their plan is that when the Platform’s sabotaged—not smashed, but just messed up so it can’t take off—the big brass will let ’em take a ferry rocket up in a hurry, an’ get it in orbit, an’ use it for a Platform until the big Platform can be mended an’ sent up. Once they’re up there, there’s no use tryin’ to stop the big Platform. So it can go ahead.”

Joe said dubiously: “I think I see....”

“Mike and his gang of little guys are bein’ saps—on purpose. If anybody’s goin’ to pull some fast