Space Tug, Murray Leinster [feel good books to read TXT] 📗

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[Pg 112] 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:[Pg 113]

"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[Pg 114] 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."

Brown's voice came very curt and worried. "Right."

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."[Pg 115]

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.[Pg 116]

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.[Pg 117]

"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