There wasn’t anything but clouds, and there wasn’t anything overhead but sky. Joe Kenmore looked out the plane window past the co-pilot’s shoulder. He ahead to where the sky and cloud bank joined—it was many miles away—and to picture the job him. Back in the space of the plane there were four big crates. They the pilot for the most object then being on Earth, and it wouldn’t work properly without them. It was Joe’s job to take that specialized, to its destination, help to it, and see to its after it was installed.
He uneasy. Of the pilot and co-pilot—the only two other people on the transport plane—knew their stuff. Every would be taken to make sure that a device like the pilot would safely where it belonged. It would be—it was being—treated as if it were a of eggs of metal, and and to a of. But just the same Joe was worried. He’d the pilot made. He’d helped on it. He how many times a thousandth of an had been in its bearings, and the breath-weight of its moving parts. He’d have liked to be in the with it, but only the pilot’s was pressurized, and the ship was at eighteen thousand feet, west by south.
He to his mind off that by that at eighteen thousand a good of the air on Earth was him, and by that the other would be as easy to above when the were in place and starting out for space. The gyros, of course, were now on their way to be in the to be up and set in an around the Earth as the stage of that by which men would make their attempt to the stars. Until that Space Platform left the ground, the were Joe’s responsibility.
The plane’s co-pilot in his chair and luxuriously. He his safety and got up. He past the the right- and left-hand pilot seats. That a of the and the of a modern multi-engine plane have to watch and handle. The co-pilot to the and a switch. Joe again on his seat. Again he that he be in with the crates. But it would be to on in the compartment.
There was a in the cabin—the motors. One’s ears got to it, and by now the noise as if it were through cushions. Presently the bubbled, unheard. The co-pilot a cigarette. Then he a paper cup of coffee and it to the pilot. The pilot to some of dials, all of which were on the right-hand, co-pilot’s side. The co-pilot at Joe.
“Coffee?”
“Thanks,” said Joe. He took the paper cup.
The co-pilot said: “Everything with you?”
“I’m all right,” said Joe. He that the co-pilot talkative. He explained: “Those I’m traveling with——. The family firm’s been on that for months. It was with the final done with dusters. I can’t help about it. There was four months’ work in just the and rotors. We a once, for an in South Africa, but to this we on that one blindfolded!”
“Pilot gyros, eh?” said the co-pilot. “That’s what the said. But if they were all right when they left the plant, they’ll be all right when they are delivered.”
Joe said ruefully: “Still I’d there with them.”
“Sabotage at the plant?” asked the co-pilot. “Tough!”
“Sabotage? No. Why should there be sabotage?” Joe.
The co-pilot said mildly: “Not is to see the Space Platform take off. Not everybody! What on earth do you think is the biggest problem out where they’re it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Joe. “Keeping the weight down? But there is a new fuel that’s to be all right for sending the Platform up. Wasn’t that the problem? Getting a fuel with power pound?”
The co-pilot his coffee and a face. It was too hot.
“Fella,” he said drily, “that was easy! The slide-rule boys did that. The big job in making a new moon for the Earth is it from being up it can out to space! There are a who on power politics. They know that once the Platform’s around the Earth, with a stock of atom-headed on board, power politics is finished. So they’re doing what they can to keep the world as it’s always been—equipped with just one moon and many armies. And they’re doing plenty, if you ask me!”
“I’ve heard——” Joe.
“You haven’t the of it,” said the co-pilot. “The Air Transport has nearly as many and more men on this particular than it did in Korea while that was the big job. I don’t know how many other men have been killed. But there’s a local going on out where we’re headed. No barred! Hadn’t you heard?”
It exaggerated. Joe said politely: “I there was cloak-and-dagger going on.”
The pilot his cup and it to the co-pilot. He said: “He thinks you’re him.” He to the of the him and the view out the plastic of the windows.
“He does?” The co-pilot said to Joe, “You’ve got security around your plant. They weren’t put there for fun. It’s a hundred times where the whole Platform’s being built.”
“Security?” said Joe. He shrugged. “We know who at the plant. We’ve them all their lives. They’d if we started to stuffy. We don’t bother.”
“That I’d like to see,” said the co-pilot skeptically. “No wire around the plant? No identity you wear when you go in? No security officer every five minutes? What do you think all that’s for? You these pilot gyros! You had to have that security stuff!”
“But we didn’t,” Joe. “Not any of it. The plant’s been in the same village for eighty years. It started and plows, and now it out machine and machinery. It’s the only around, and who there to with else, and so did our fathers, and we know one another!”
The co-pilot was unconvinced. “No kidding?”
“No kidding,” Joe him. “In World War Two the only in the village was an FBI man who came around looking for spies. The village locked him up and wouldn’t in his credentials. They had to send somebody from Washington to him out of jail.”
The co-pilot reluctantly. “I there are such places,” he said enviously. “You should’ve the Platform! It’s different on this job! We can’t talk to a girl without security for an beforehand, and we can’t speak to men or go out alone after dark—.”
The pilot grunted. The co-pilot’s changed. “Not that bad,” he admitted, “but it’s bad! It’s bad! We three last week. I you’d call it in action against saboteurs. One to pieces in mid-air. Sabotage. Carrying stuff. One on take-off, instruments. Somebody’d put a in a servo-motor. And one in its landing and smack-dab into its landing field. They had to it up. When this ship got a major two ago, we it with our for four running. Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works. But I won’t look to a old age until the Platform’s out of atmosphere! Not me!”
He to put the pilot’s empty cup in the slot.
The plane on. There wasn’t anything but clouds, and there wasn’t anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down, and the sky was up. Joe looked and saw a spot of with a hint of colors around it. It was the of that for a when a plane is high above the clouds. It over the upper surface of the cloud layer. The plane and flew. Nothing at all. This was two hours from the from which it had taken off with the pilot cases as its last item of cargo. Joe how the two members had from it on the ground, those who actually the cases, and how one of the two had them every second.
Joe fidgeted. He didn’t know how to take the co-pilot’s talk. The Kenmore Precision Tool plant was owned by his family, but it wasn’t so much a family as a enterprise. The men of the village up to with the matter-of-factness for or deep-sea fishing. Joe’s father owned it, and some day Joe might it, but he couldn’t to keep the respect of the men in the plant unless he every tool on the place and a thousandth at least five ways. Ten would be better! But as long as the at the plant as it was now, there’d be a security problem there.
If the co-pilot was telling the truth, though—.
Joe a slow him. He had a picture in his mind that was a dream. It was of something big and and in with a of it. The were pin points of light. They were and there was no air where this thing floated. The them was this was space itself. The thing that was a moon. A man-made moon. It was an of Earth. Men were now it. Presently it would as Joe of it, and where the sun it, it would be bright, and where there were shadows, they would be black—except, perhaps, when from the would it in a fashion.
There would be men in the thing that in space. It in a about the world that had it. Sometimes there were small ships that—so Joe imagined—would their way up to it, great of smoke, and food and fuel to its crew. And presently one of those small ships would its fuel to the point from the fuel other ships had brought—and yet the ship would have no weight. So it would away from the thing in space, and its would and fumes, and it would out and away from Earth. And it would be the to out for the stars!
That was the picture Joe had of the Space Platform and its meaning. Maybe it was romantic, but men were right now to make that come true. This transport plane was to a small town called Bootstrap, one of the most for the Platform’s equipment. In the near Bootstrap there was a shed. Inside that men were the object that Joe pictured to himself. They were trying to a men have for decades—the necessary space that would be the dock, the wharf, the starting point from which the of space start for infinity. The idea that want to such an Joe Kenmore burn.
The co-pilot out his cigarette. The ship with more than a car on rails. There was the of the motors. It was all very matter-of-fact.
But Joe said angrily: “Look! Is any of what you said—well—kidding?”
“I wish it were, fella,” said the co-pilot. “I can talk to you about it, but most of it’s up. I tell you——”
“Why can you talk to me?” Joe suspiciously. “What makes it all right for you to talk to me?”
“You’ve got passage on this ship. That means something!”
“Does it?” asked Joe.
The pilot in his seat to at Joe.
“Do you think we regularly?” he asked mildly.
“Why not?”
Pilot and co-pilot looked at each other.
“Tell him,” said the pilot.
“About five months ago,” said the co-pilot, “there was an Army a to Bootstrap on a plane. The plane took off. It all right until twenty miles from Bootstrap. Then it stopped checking. It for the Shed the Platform’s being in. It was down. When it hit, there was an explosion.” The co-pilot shrugged. “You won’t me, maybe. But a week later they the colonel’s east. Somebody’d him.”
Joe blinked.
“It wasn’t the who as a passenger,” said the co-pilot. “It was somebody else. Twenty miles from Bootstrap he’d the and taken the controls. That’s what they figure, anyhow. He meant to into the Shed. Because—very, very cleverly—they’d managed to a bomb in the plane as cargo. They got the men who’d done that, later, but it was late.”
Joe said dubiously: “But would one bomb the Shed and the Platform?”
“This one would,” said the co-pilot. “It was an bomb. But it wasn’t a good one. It didn’t properly. It was a fizz-off.”
Joe saw the implications. Cranks and couldn’t of the materials for bombs. It took the of a large nation for that. But a nation that didn’t start an open might try to in one bomb to the space station. Once the Platform was no other nation of world domination. The United States wouldn’t go to if the Platform was destroyed. But there be a local war.
The pilot said sharply: “Something below!”
The co-pilot into his right-hand seat, his safety in a heartbeat.
“Check,” he said in a new tone. “Where?”
The pilot pointed.
“I saw something dark,” he said briefly, “where there was a in the cloud.”
The co-pilot a switch. Within a new entered the cabin. Beep-beep-beep-beep. They were thin squeaks, a full half-second apart, that rose to in in the of a second they lasted. The co-pilot a hand phone from the above his and it to his lips.
“Flight two-twenty calling,” he said crisply. “Something’s got a on us. We saw it. Get a on us and come a-running. We’re at eighteen thousand and”—here the of the markedly—“now we’re climbing. Get a on us and come a-running. Over!”
He took the phone from his and said conversationally: “Radar’s a giveaway. This is no fly-way. You wouldn’t think he’d take that much of a chance, would you?”
Joe his hands. The pilot did to the on the the two pilots’ seats. He said curtly: “Arm the jatos.”
The co-pilot did something and said: “Check.”
All this took place in seconds. The pilot said, “I see something!” and there was swift, in action. A call by radio, for help. The plane up for it and the clouds. The for firing. They were the jet-assisted take-off which on a or would the motors’ for a of seconds. In they should make the plane ahead like a rabbit. But they wouldn’t last long.
“I don’t like this,” said the co-pilot in a voice. “I don’t see what he do——”
Then he stopped. Something out of a cloud. The action was improbable. The thing that appeared looked commonplace. It was a silver-winged private plane, the that at one hundred and seventy-five and can nearly two-fifty if pushed. It was expensive, but not large. It came up out of the cloud and over on its and into the cloud again. It looked like somebody for his own private pleasure—the of thing some people do, and for which there is no possible explanation.
But there was an for this.
At the very top of the loop, of white appeared. They should have been against the cloud. But for the of an they were against the wings. And they were not of vapor. They were dense, trails.
They upward, out. They with incredible, ever-increasing velocity.
The pilot something with the of his hand. There was a heart-stopping delay. Then the transport with a to stop one’s breath. The were furiously, and the ship jumped. There was a that out the of the engines. Joe was on the of the cabin. He against the that pushed him tailward. He the pilot saying calmly: “That plane at us. If they’re we’re sunk.”
Then the of the of cables, of columns! They should have the transport plane in. But the had jumped it and were still to make it go than any prop-plane could. The the at the of Joe’s as he his against it.
“They’ll be proximity——”
Then the plane bucked. Very probably, at that moment, it was past the limit of for which its of safety was designed. One had let go. The others with it. The had had fuses. If they had the transport ship and gone off with it enclosed, it would now be a of wreckage. But the had the plane out ahead of the area. Suddenly they cut off, and it as if the ship had braked. But the pilot steeply, for speed.
The co-pilot was saying into the microphone: “He rockets. Looked like Army issue three point with proximities. They missed. And we’re lonely!”
The transport on, the cloud bank below. They moved their as they out the windows, so that by no possibility any part of the plane something that they should see. As they searched, the co-pilot spoke into the at his lips: “He wouldn’t more than four rockets, and he’s his and now. But he might have a friend with him. Better here quick if you want to catch him. He’ll be the private pilot you saw in no time!”
Then the pilot grunted. Something was across the cloud far, ahead. Three things. They were planes, and they not so much to approach as to in size. They were at than five hundred knots—ten miles a minute—and the transport was for them at its top speed of three hundred knots. The transport and the of each other at the of a mile in less than four seconds.
The co-pilot said crisply: “Silver Messner with red wing-tips. The number began——” He gave the and of the plane’s official designation, without which it not take off from or be at any field.
Joe an insistent, beep-beep-beep-beep which would be the of the jets. He not any that might the co-pilot as he talked to who would his to the fighters.
One of them off and into the cloud layer. The others came on. They set up in great circles about the transport, it, above it, around it, which gave the of around an object not in motion at all.
The pilot on, frowning. The co-pilot said: “Yes. Sure! I’m listening!” There was a pause. Then he said: “Check. Thanks.”
He the where it belonged, above his and him. He his brow. He looked at Joe.
“Maybe,” he said mildly, “you me when I tell you there’s a of on, to keep the Platform from taking off.”
The pilot grunted. “Here’s the third up.”
It was true. The that had into the clouds came up out of the cloud with somehow an air of satisfaction.
“Did they spot the guy?”
“Yeah,” said the co-pilot. “He must’ve up my report. He didn’t his radar. He in the cloud bank. When the came for him—spotting him with its night-fighter stuff—he to ram. Tried for a collision. So the gave him the works. Blew him apart. Couldn’t make him land. Maybe they’ll up something from the wreckage.”
Joe wet his lips.
“I—saw what happened,” he said. “He to us with rockets. Where’d he them? How were they in?”
The co-pilot shrugged. “Maybe in. Maybe stolen. They been from a on a good many thousand miles of coast. They been in a station wagon. The plane was a private-type ship. Plenty of them around. It could’ve been easily enough. All they’d need would be a farm where it land and they on a and put in a radar. And they’d need information. Probably be a good lead, this business. Only just so many people know what was on this ship, and what it was flying, and so on. Security will have to check from that angle.”
A upon the transport ship. A past from above it. It its and course.
“We’ve got to land and be for damage,” said the co-pilot negligently. “These will circle us and lead the way—as if we needed it!”
Joe subsided. He still had in his mind the and picture of the Space Platform in its orbit, with white-hot on it and a of beyond. He had been in that of the job that with the method of and the by which the Platform be to work.
Now he had a light on the of thing that has to be done when anything is achieved. Figuring out how a thing can be done is only part of the job. Overcoming the to the steps is nine-tenths of the difficulty. It had to him that the most of the Space Platform had been the of a design that would work in space, that be up into space, and that be in under experienced. Now he saw that the materials to the spot where they were needed called for nearly as much and effort. Screening out and destructionists—that would be an achievement!
He to a respect and for the people who were doing ordinary jobs in the of the Platform. And he about his own more than ever.
Presently the transport ship toward the clouds. It through them, stone-blind from the mist. And then there was a small below, and the pilot and co-pilot a pattern of conversation.
“Pitot and heaters?” asked the pilot.
The co-pilot put his hand on two controls.
“Off.”
“Spark advance?”
The co-pilot moved his hands.
“Take-off and climb?” said the co-pilot.
“Blowers?”
“Low.”
“Fuel selectors?”
The co-pilot moved his hands again to the controls, that they were as he reported them.
“Main on,” he said matter-of-factly, “crossfeed off.”
The transport plane for the landing that had looked so small at first, but as they near.
Joe himself frowning. He to see how big a job it was to a Space Platform to take off for a that in should last forever. It was to think that a space ship be and and with there had to be such plans out as a proper check of for the piston-engine ships that parts to the job. The were innumerable!
But the job was still doing. Joe was he was going to have a in it.
