It was a day. The transport plane by the door of a on this field, and well from it and looked it over. A man over the and one small in the of the stabilizer. A had gone through when the nearby. The pilot that the had no inside. He nodded. The very over the two holes, upper and lower. He to go over the fuselage. The pilot away.
“I’ll go talk to Bootstrap,” he told the co-pilot. “You keep an on things.”
“I’ll keep two on them,” said the co-pilot.
The pilot toward the tower of the field. Joe looked around. The transport ship very large, on the with its landing let down. It a insect, high on supporting legs. Its fuselage, in particular, did not look right for an aircraft. The top of the to the fins, but the did not taper. It ended in a clumsy-looking that was closed by a pair of doors, opening astern. It was that way, of course, so that large objects be direct into the hold, but it was neither graceful.
“Did anything into the hold?” asked Joe in anxiety. “Did the cases I’m with hit?”
After all, four had near the ship. If one had struck, others might have.
“Nothing big, anyhow,” the co-pilot told him. “We’ll know presently.”
But no other of the ship’s to destruction. It had been overstressed, certainly, but ships are to take beatings. A spot check on where of the would have up—a big ship’s are not perfectly rigid: they’d come to pieces in the air if they were—presented no of damage. The ship was to take off again.
The co-pilot until the one to the lines. The was not cordial. He and all the others the ship and Joe and the co-pilot with disfavor. They on jets, and to that men who on were not of complete did not set well with them. The co-pilot noticed it.
“They think I’m a heel,” he said to Joe, “but I have to be. The best and in the world have been to up the Platform. When are made, they’ll be sent over here to busy!”
The pilot came from the tower.
“Special orders,” he told his companion. “We top off with fuel and going.”
Mechanics got out the fuel hose, it from the pit. One man up on the wing. Other men up the hose. Joe was moved to comment, but the co-pilot was reading the new instructions. It was one of those moments of to which and is liable. The two men of the ship’s had it in mind to be of their ship. But it was so an operation that they by while it on. They had the orders to read and memorize, anyhow.
One was full. A big, man with the under the nose of the plane to take it to the other tank. Close by the nose wheel he and himself by the which to the wheel’s hub. His position for a moment was ungraceful. When he up, his arm into the wheel well. But he the the of the way and passed it on up. Then that was full and capped. The got to the ground and the to the which it. That was all. But somehow Joe the sandy-haired man and his arm going up the wheel well for a of a second.
The pilot read one part of the orders again and them across. One part he touched his pocket to. It burned. He yet again to the co-pilot, and they up and in the pilots’ doorway. Joe followed.
They settled in their places in the cabin. The pilot a and pressed a knob. One over stiffly, and caught. The second. Third. Fourth. The pilot listened, was satisfied, and on the throttle. The plane away. Minutes later it the long runway, a voice from the tower spoke out of a loud-speaker under the instruments, and the plane the field. In it and around in a great half-circle.
“Okay,” said the pilot. “Wheels up.”
The co-pilot obeyed. The lights that the briefly. The men relaxed.
“You know,” said the co-pilot, “there was the of a time the War with sabotage. Down in Brazil there was a used to take off from to to Africa. But they’d take off, out to sea, a miles offshore, and then up. We must’ve a dozen that way! Then it broke. There was a guy—a sergeant—in the who was a hand up in the nose wheel wells. German, he was, and very tidy about it, and nobody him. Everything looked and okay. But when the ship was well away and the up the wheels, that a and it the pin out of the grenade. It off.... The master him and nearly killed him the MPs stop him. We’ve got to be careful, the ground like it or not.”
Joe said drily: “You were, when they were off. You took that for granted.” He told about the sandy-haired man. “He hadn’t time to anything in the wheel well, though,” he added.
The co-pilot blinked. Then he looked annoyed. “Confound it! I didn’t watch! Did you?”
The pilot his head, his compressed.
The co-pilot said bitterly: “And I I was security-conscious! Thanks for telling me, fella. No done this time, but that was a slip!”
He at the him. The plane on.
This was the last leg of the trip, and now it should be no more than an hour and a they their destination. Joe a of elation. The Space Platform was a realization—or the of it—of a that had been Joe’s since he was a very small boy. It was also the of most other small boys at the time. The Space Platform would make space travel possible. Of it wouldn’t make to the moon or itself, but it would sail about the Earth in an some four thousand miles up, and it would the world in four hours fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. It would atom-headed missiles, and every city in the world would be against it. Nobody for world so long as it on its round. Which, naturally, was why there were such to it its completion.
But Joe, about the Platform, did not think about it as a weapon. It was the on the to the stars. From it the moon would be reached, certainly. Mars next, most likely. Then Venus. In time the of Saturn, and the zone of Mercury, and some day the of Jupiter. Possibly a landing be on that itself, despite its gravity.
The co-pilot spoke suddenly. “How do you this by plane?” he asked curiously. “Mostly have to go on the ground. You plenty. How?”
Joe his from satisfied imagining. It hadn’t to him that it was that he should be allowed to the from the plant to their destination. His family had them, so it had natural to him. He wasn’t used to the idea that looked to a security officer with the safety of the Platform.
“Connections? I haven’t any,” said Joe. Then he said, “I do know somebody on the job. There’s a Major Holt out there. He might have me. Known my family for years.”
“Yeah,” said the co-pilot drily. “He might. As a of fact, he’s the senior security officer for the whole job. He’s in of everything, from the security to the screens and the jet-plane and the of the men who work in the Shed. If he says you’re all right, you are.”
Joe hadn’t meant to impressive. He explained: “I don’t know him too well. He my father, and his Sally’s been kicking around most of my life. I her how to shoot, and she’s a than I am. She was a kid when she was little. I got to like her when she out of a tree and her arm and didn’t whimper. That how long ago it was!” He grinned. “She was trying to act grown-up last time I saw her.”
The co-pilot nodded. There was a somewhere. The pilot ahead to the course-correction knob. The plane course. Sunshine as it into the cabin. The ship was on pilot well above the cloud level, and at an even-numbered number of thousands of altitude, as was for traveling south or west. Now it on its new course, forty-five from the original. Joe himself that one of the security for the Platform might be that they should not come too near on a direct line to it, they give to on the ground.
Time on. Joe to his about the Platform. There was always, in his mind, the picture of a man-made thing in Earth and moon. But he to he hadn’t paid too much attention to before.
Opposition to the idea of a Space Platform, for instance, from the moment it was proposed. Every bitterly. Even politicians out of office it a for rabble-rousing harangues. The political parties, the of hate, the of discord—every in the world had something to say against the Platform from the first. When they did not it as impious, they that it was a by which the United States would put itself in position to all the Earth. As a of fact, the United States had it as a United Nations enterprise, so that that politicians good politics actually very sense. But it did not past the General Assembly. The was so on every that it was not passed up to the Council—where it would have been anyhow.
But it was that which put the Platform through the United States Congress, which had to the money for its construction.
In Joe’s and in the of most of those who for it from the beginning, the Platform’s great was that it was the necessary step toward travel, with star ships yet to come. But most scientists wanted it, desperately, for their own ends. There were low-temperature experiments, experiments, weather observations, star-temperature measurements, observations.... Any man in any of science name for it to be built. Even the scientists had one, and nearly the best. Their was that there were new of that needed to be out, but should not be out on Earth. There were some that ought to unlimited power for all the world from materials. But there was one in fifty that they wouldn’t be safe, just the materials were so abundant. No man would a two-per-cent of Earth and all its people, yet those should be tried. In a space ship some millions of miles out in they be. Either they’d be safe or they would not. But the only way to a space ship a safe from Earth was to make a Space Platform as a starting point. Then a ship shoot away from Earth with zero and full fuel tanks. The Platform should be so ahead to new heights!
But despite these excellent reasons, it was the Platform’s who got it built. The American Congress would have for a Platform for pure scientific research, no what it promised. It was the of those who it that it to Congress as a measure for national defense. And in a it was.
These were Joe hadn’t about before, just as he hadn’t about the need to the Platform while it was being built. Defending it was Sally’s father’s job, and he wouldn’t have a popular time. Joe how Sally liked out where the most job on Earth was being done. She was a kid. He that she’d up to be a very good-looking girl. He to her mostly as the who him swimming, but the last time he’d her, come to think of it, he’d been to how she’d grown. He didn’t know who ought to be better-looking.... She was a girl....
He came to himself again. There was a in the look of the sky ahead. There was no horizon, of course. There was a white that into the cloud so that it was to tell where the sky ended and the clouds or earth began. But presently there were in the clouds. The ship on, and it over the of such a hole, and looking was very much like looking over the of a at solid earth below.
The in number. Then there were no at all, but only clouds up the clear view of the ground beneath. And presently again the clouds were left and the air was clear—but still there was no horizon—and there was earth with small green and was range. At seventeen thousand there were no details.
Soon the clouds were a white-tipped of the white to the and behind. And then there came a new above the of the motors. Joe it—and then he saw.
Something had from nowhere. It on ahead and steeply. It was a jet, and for an Joe saw the range to and in its blast. It watchfully.
The transport pilot something. There was a in the of the motors. Joe the co-pilot’s eyes. The was up astern, to its speed. It the transport very slowly. And then the transport’s pilot touched one of the prop-controls gently, and again, and again. Joe, looking at the jet, saw it through the blades. There was an effect. One of the two propellers, through the other, took on a look which was not that of at all, but of writhing, solidity. The vanished, and came again, and and appeared yet again it completely.
The on ahead. Its retracted. It a graceful, wallowing, dive, and then almost vertically. It out of sight.
“Visual check,” said the co-pilot drily, to Joe. “We had a to give. Individual to this plane. We didn’t tell it to you. You couldn’t it.”
Joe it out painfully. The of one through another—that was identification. It was not a type of an or would expect.
“Also,” said the co-pilot, “we have a television camera in the yonder. We’ve it on now. The of the is being from the ground. No more like the and the bomb that didn’t ‘explode.’”
Joe sat still. He noticed that the plane was downward. His to the that at two and three hundred a minute. That was for his benefit. The was pressurized, though it did not attempt to sea-level pressure. It was a good than the air, however, and yet too quick a meant discomfort. Two to three hundred minute is about right.
The ground took on features. Small gulleys. Patches of too small to be from up. The of speed increased. After long minutes the plane was only a thousand up. The pilot took over manual from the pilot. He to wait. There was a plaintive, beep-beep and he course.
“You’ll see the Shed in a minute or two,” said the co-pilot. He added vexedly, as if the thing had been him, “I wish I hadn’t missed that sandy-haired guy his hand in the wheel well! Nothing happened, but I shouldn’t have missed it!”
Joe watched. Very, very away there were mountains, but he the of the ground over which they were flying. From the of the world, behind, to the very of these far-distant hills, the ground was flat. There were and here and there, but no hills. It was flat, flat, flat....
The plane on. There was a of sunlight. Joe his eyes. The from the possible on the earth. It as the plane on. It was a stone. It was an orange, with gores. It was the top of a that was too to have been by men.
There was a thin of white that ran across the dun-colored range and that half-ball and then ended. It was a highway. Joe that the half-globe was the Shed, the for the of the Space Platform. It was gigantic. It was colossal. It was the most thing that men had created.
Joe saw a near the of it. It was an office for and and other white-collar workers. He his again and saw a on the highway. It looked flat. Then he saw that it wasn’t a single but a of them. A long way back, the white was marked by a dot. That was a bus.
There was no of activity anywhere, the was so great. Movement there was, but the that moved were too small to be by with the Shed. The huge, round, half-sphere of metal in the of emptiness.
It was than the pyramids.
The plane on, descending. Joe his neck, and then he was to gawk. He looked ahead, and away there were white that would be buildings: Bootstrap, the town for the men who the Space Platform. In it they slept and ate and in the that men on a job on their time off.
The plane noticeably.
“Airfield off to the right,” said the co-pilot. “That’s for the town and the job. The jets—there’s an air overhead all the time—have a else. The have a of their own, too, where they’re pilots.”
Joe didn’t know what a was, but he didn’t ask. He was about the Shed, which was the put up, and had been to the for the world’s peace while it was put together. He’d be in the Shed presently. He’d work there, setting up the of the in the space, and them in the Platform itself.
The pilot said: “Pitot and heaters?”
“Off,” said the co-pilot.
“Spark and advance——”
Joe didn’t listen. He looked at the small town with white-painted and a and an obvious, designed area that nobody would use. The plane was making a great half-circle. The noise as Joe in his of the Space Platform and having a hand in its building.
The co-pilot said sharply: “Hold everything!”
Joe his around. The co-pilot had his hand on the wheel release. His was tense.
“It don’t right,” he said very, very quietly. “Maybe I’m crazy, but there was that sandy-haired guy who put his hand up in the wheel well at that last field. And this don’t right!”
The plane on. The passed it. The co-pilot very let go of the wheel release, which when should let the from their to lock themselves in landing position. He moved from his seat. His were and tight. He at a metal plate in the flooring. He it and looked down. A moment later he had a flashlight. Joe saw the of a mirror. There were two there, in fact. One look through of them into the wheel well.
The co-pilot sure. He up, the plate off the opening in the floor.
“There’s something in the wheel well,” he said in a tone. “It looks to me like a grenade. There’s a to it. At a guess, that sandy-haired guy set it up like that in Brazil. Only—it rolled a little. And this one goes off when the go down. I think, too, if we belly-land——Better go around again, huh?”
The pilot nodded. “First,” he said evenly, “we word to the ground about the sandy-haired guy, so they’ll him regardless.”
He up the above and him and to speak into it. The transport plane started to in wide, circles over the the while the pilot that there was a in the nose wheel well, set to if the wheel were let or, undoubtedly, if the ship came in to a landing.
Joe himself unafraid. But he was with a rage. He the people who wanted to the pilot they were to the Space Platform. He them more than he had he anybody. He was so with that it did not to him that in any crash or landing that would the gyros, he would be killed.
