Space Platform

by Murray Leinster

  1

  There wasn't anything underneath but clouds, and there wasn't anythingoverhead but sky. Joe Kenmore looked out the plane window past theco-pilot's shoulder. He stared ahead to where the sky and cloud bankjoined--it was many miles away--and tried to picture the job before him.Back in the cargo space of the plane there were four big crates. Theycontained the pilot gyros for the most important object then being builton Earth, and it wouldn't work properly without them. It was Joe's jobto take that highly specialized, magnificently precise machinery to itsdestination, help to install it, and see to its checking after it wasinstalled.

  He felt uneasy. Of course the pilot and co-pilot--the only two otherpeople on the transport plane--knew their stuff. Every imaginableprecaution would be taken to make sure that a critically essentialdevice like the pilot gyro assembly would get safely where it belonged.It would be--it was being--treated as if it were a crate of eggs insteadof massive metal, smoothed and polished and lapped to a precisionpractically unheard of. But just the same Joe was worried. He'd seen thepilot gyro assembly made. He'd helped on it. He knew how many times athousandth of an inch had been split in machining its bearings, and thebreath-weight balance of its moving parts. He'd have liked to be back inthe cargo compartment with it, but only the pilot's cabin waspressurized, and the ship was at eighteen thousand feet, flying west bysouth.

  He tried to get his mind off that impulse by remembering that ateighteen thousand feet a good half of the air on Earth was underneathhim, and by hoping that the other half would be as easy to rise abovewhen the gyros were finally in place and starting out for space. Thegyros, of course, were now on their way to be installed in theartificial satellite to be blasted up and set in an orbit around theEarth as the initial stage of that figurative stepladder by which menwould make their first attempt to reach the stars. Until that SpacePlatform left the ground, the gyros were Joe's responsibility.

  The plane's co-pilot leaned back in his chair and stretched luxuriously.He loosened his safety belt and got up. He stepped carefully past thecolumn between the right- and left-hand pilot seats. That columncontained a fraction of the innumerable dials and controls the pilots ofa modern multi-engine plane have to watch and handle. The co-pilot wentto the coffeepot and flipped a switch. Joe fidgeted again on hisimprovised seat. Again he wished that he could be riding in back withthe crates. But it would be silly to insist on perching somewhere in thefreight compartment.

  There was a steady roaring in the cabin--the motors. One's ears gotaccustomed to it, and by now the noise sounded as if it were heardthrough cushions. Presently the coffeepot bubbled, unheard. The co-pilotlighted a cigarette. Then he drew a paper cup of coffee and handed it tothe pilot. The pilot seemed negligently to contemplate some dozens ofdials, all of which were duly duplicated on the right-hand, co-pilot'sside. The co-pilot glanced at Joe.

  "Coffee?"

  "Thanks," said Joe. He took the paper cup.

  The co-pilot said: "Everything okay with you?"

  "I'm all right," said Joe. He realized that the co-pilot felt talkative.He explained: "Those crates I'm traveling with----. The family firm'sbeen working on that machinery for months. It was finished with thefinal grinding done practically with feather dusters. I can't helpworrying about it. There was four months' work in just lapping theshafts and balancing rotors. We made a telescope mounting once, for anobservatory in South Africa, but compared to this gadget we worked onthat one blindfolded!"

  "Pilot gyros, eh?" said the co-pilot. "That's what the waybill said. Butif they were all right when they left the plant, they'll be all rightwhen they are delivered."

  Joe said ruefully: "Still I'd feel better riding back there with them."

  "Sabotage bad at the plant?" asked the co-pilot. "Tough!"

  "Sabotage? No. Why should there be sabotage?" demanded Joe.

  The co-pilot said mildly: "Not quite everybody is anxious to see theSpace Platform take off. Not everybody! What on earth do you think isthe biggest problem out where they're building it?"

  "I wouldn't know," admitted Joe. "Keeping the weight down? But there isa new rocket fuel that's supposed to be all right for sending thePlatform up. Wasn't that the worst problem? Getting a rocket fuel withenough power per pound?"

  The co-pilot sipped his coffee and made a face. It was too hot.

  "Fella," he said drily, "that stuff was easy! The slide-rule boys didthat. The big job in making a new moon for the Earth is keeping it frombeing blown up before it can get out to space! There are a few gentlemenwho thrive on power politics. They know that once the Platform'sfloating serenely around the Earth, with a nice stock of atom-headedguided missiles on board, power politics is finished. So they're doingwhat they can to keep the world as it's always been--equipped with justone moon and many armies. And they're doing plenty, if you ask me!"

  "I've heard----" began Joe.

  "You haven't heard the half of it," said the co-pilot. "The AirTransport has lost nearly as many planes and more men on this particularairlift than it did in Korea while that was the big job. I don't knowhow many other men have been killed. But there's a strictly local hotwar going on out where we're headed. No holds barred! Hadn't you heard?"

  It sounded exaggerated. Joe said politely: "I heard there wascloak-and-dagger stuff going on."

  The pilot drained his cup and handed it to the co-pilot. He said: "Hethinks you're kidding him." He turned back to the contemplation of theinstruments before him and the view out the transparent plastic of thecabin windows.

  "He does?" The co-pilot said to Joe, "You've got security checks aroundyour plant. They weren't put there for fun. It's a hundred times worsewhere the whole Platform's being built."

  "Security?" said Joe. He shrugged. "We know everybody who works at theplant. We've known them all their lives. They'd get mad if we started toget stuffy. We don't bother."

  "That I'd like to see," said the co-pilot skeptically. "No barbed wirearound the plant? No identity badges you wear when you go in? Nosecurity officer screaming blue murder every five minutes? What do youthink all that's for? You built these pilot gyros! You had to have thatsecurity stuff!"

  "But we didn't," insisted Joe. "Not any of it. The plant's been in thesame village for eighty years. It started building wagons and plows, andnow it turns out machine tools and precision machinery. It's the onlyfactory around, and everybody who works there went to school witheverybody else, and so did our fathers, and we know one another!"

  The co-pilot was unconvinced. "No kidding?"

  "No kidding," Joe assured him. "In World War Two the only spy scare inthe village was an FBI man who came around looking for spies. Thevillage cop locked him up and wouldn't believe in his credentials. Theyhad to send somebody from Washington to get him out of jail."

  The co-pilot grinned reluctantly. "I guess there are such places," hesaid enviously. "You should've built the Platform! It's plenty differenton this job! We can't even talk to a girl without security clearance foran interview beforehand, and we can't speak to strange men or go outalone after dark--."

  The pilot grunted. The co-pilot's tone changed. "Not quite that bad," headmitted, "but it's bad! It's really bad! We lost three planes lastweek. I guess you'd call it in action against saboteurs. One flew topieces in mid-air. Sabotage. Carrying critical stuff. One crashed ontake-off, carrying irreplaceable instruments. Somebody'd put a detonatorin a servo-motor. And one froze in its landing glide and flew smack-dabinto its landing field. They had to scrape it up. When this ship got amajor overhaul two weeks ago, we flew it with our fingers crossed forfour trips running. Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works.But I won't look forward to a serene old age until the Platform's out ofatmosphere! Not me!"

  He went to put the pilot's empty cup in the disposal slot.

  The plane went on. There wasn't anything underneath but clouds, andthere wasn't anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down,and the sky was simply up. Joe looked down and saw a faint spot ofracing brightness wi
th a hint of colors around it. It was the sort ofnimbus that substitutes for a shadow when a plane is high enough abovethe clouds. It raced madly over the irregular upper surface of the cloudlayer. The plane flew and flew. Nothing happened at all. This was twohours from the field from which it had taken off with the pilot gyrocases as its last item of collected cargo. Joe remembered how grimly thetwo crew members had prevented anybody from even approaching it on theground, except those who actually loaded the cases, and how one of thetwo had watched them every second.

  Joe fidgeted. He didn't quite know how to take the co-pilot's talk. TheKenmore Precision Tool plant was owned by his family, but it wasn't somuch a family as a civic enterprise. The young men of the village grewup to regard fanatically fine workmanship with the casualmatter-of-factness elsewhere reserved for plowing or deep-sea fishing.Joe's father owned it, and some day Joe might head it, but he couldn'thope to keep the respect of the men in the plant unless he could handleevery tool on the place and split a thousandth at least five ways. Tenwould be better! But as long as the feeling at the plant stayed as itwas now, there'd never be a security problem there.

  If the co-pilot was telling the truth, though--.

  Joe found a slow burn beginning inside him. He had a picture in his mindthat was practically a dream. It was of something big and bright andungainly swimming silently in emptiness with a field of stars behind it.The stars were tiny pin points of light. They were unwinking anddistinct because there was no air where this thing floated. Theblackness between them was absolute because this was space itself. Thething that floated was a moon. A man-made moon. It was an artificialsatellite of Earth. Men were now building it. Presently it would floatas Joe dreamed of it, and where the sun struck it, it would beunbearably bright, and where there were shadows, they would be abysmallyblack--except, perhaps, when earthshine from the planet below wouldoutline it in a ghostly fashion.

  There would be men in the thing that floated in space. It swam in asplendid orbit about the world that had built it. Sometimes there weresmall ships that--so Joe imagined--would fight their way up to it,panting great plumes of rocket smoke, and bringing food and fuel to itscrew. And presently one of those panting small ships would refill itsfuel tanks to the bursting point from the fuel other ships hadbrought--and yet the ship would have no weight. So it would drift awayfrom the greater floating thing in space, and suddenly its rockets wouldspout flame and fumes, and it would head triumphantly out and away fromEarth. And it would be the first vessel ever to strike out for thestars!

  That was the picture Joe had of the Space Platform and its meaning.Maybe it was romantic, but men were working right now to make thatromance come true. This transport plane was flying to a small townimprobably called Bootstrap, carrying one of the most essential devicesfor the Platform's equipment. In the desert near Bootstrap there was agigantic construction shed. Inside that shed men were building exactlythe monstrous object that Joe pictured to himself. They were trying torealize a dream men have dreamed for decades--the necessary spaceplatform that would be the dock, the wharf, the starting point fromwhich the first of human space explorers could start for infinity. Theidea that anybody could want to halt such an undertaking made JoeKenmore burn.

  The co-pilot painstakingly crushed out his cigarette. The ship flew withmore steadiness than a railroad car rolls on rails. There was the oddlycushioned sound 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 hushed up. I tell you----"

  "Why can you talk to me?" demanded Joe suspiciously. "What makes it allright for you to talk to me?"

  "You've got passage on this ship. That means something!"

  "Does it?" asked Joe.

  The pilot turned in his seat to glance at Joe.

  "Do you think we carry passengers 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 colonelwangled a ride to Bootstrap on a cargo plane. The plane took off. Itflew all right until twenty miles from Bootstrap. Then it stoppedchecking. It dove straight for the Shed the Platform's being built in.It was shot down. When it hit, there was an explosion." The co-pilotshrugged. "You won't believe me, maybe. But a week later they found thecolonel's body back east. Somebody'd murdered him."

  Joe blinked.

  "It wasn't the colonel who rode as a passenger," said the co-pilot. "Itwas somebody else. Twenty miles from Bootstrap he'd shot the pilots andtaken the controls. That's what they figure, anyhow. He meant to diveinto the construction Shed. Because--very, very cleverly--they'd managedto get a bomb in the plane disguised as cargo. They got the men who'ddone that, later, but it was rather late."

  Joe said dubiously: "But would one bomb destroy the Shed and thePlatform?"

  "This one would," said the co-pilot. "It was an atom bomb. But it wasn'ta good one. It didn't detonate properly. It was a fizz-off."

  Joe saw the implications. Cranks and crackpots couldn't get hold of thematerials for atom bombs. It took the resources of a large nation forthat. But a nation that didn't quite dare start an open war might try tosneak in one atom bomb to destroy the space station. Once the Platformwas launched no other nation could dream of world domination. The UnitedStates wouldn't go to war if the Platform was destroyed. But there couldbe a strictly local hot war.

  The pilot said sharply: "Something down below!"

  The co-pilot fairly leaped into his right-hand seat, his safety beltbuckled in half a heartbeat.

  "Check," he said in a new tone. "Where?"

  The pilot pointed.

  "I saw something dark," he said briefly, "where there was a deep dent inthe cloud."

  The co-pilot threw a switch. Within seconds a new sound entered thecabin. _Beep-beep-beep-beep._ They were thin squeaks, spaced a fullhalf-second apart, that rose to inaudibility in pitch in the fraction ofa second they lasted. The co-pilot snatched a hand phone from the wallabove his head and held it to his lips.

  "Flight two-twenty calling," he said crisply. "Something's got a radaron us. We saw it. Get a fix on us and come a-running. We're at eighteenthousand and"--here the floor of the cabin tilted markedly--"now we'reclimbing. Get a fix on us and come a-running. Over!"

  He took the phone from his lips and said conversationally: "Radar's agiveaway. This is no fly-way. You wouldn't think he'd take that much ofa chance, would you?"

  Joe clenched his hands. The pilot did things to the levers on the columnbetween the two pilots' seats. He said curtly: "Arm the jatos."

  The co-pilot did something mysterious and said: "Check."

  All this took place in seconds. The pilot said, "I see something!" andinstantly there was swift, tense teamwork in action. A call by radio,asking for help. The plane headed up for greater clearance between itand the clouds. The jatos made ready for firing. They were thejet-assisted take-off rockets which on a short or rough field woulddouble the motors' thrust for a matter of seconds. In straightawayflight they should make the plane leap ahead like a scared rabbit. Butthey wouldn't last long.

  "I don't like this," said the co-pilot in a flat voice. "I don't seewhat he could do----"

  Then he stopped. Something zoomed out of a cloud. The action wascompletely improbable. The thing that appeared looked absolutelycommonplace. It was a silver-winged private plane, the sort that cruisesat one hundred and seventy-five knots and can hit nearly two-fifty ifpushed. It was expensive, but not large. It came straight up out of thecloud layer and went lazily over on its back and dived down into thecloud layer again. It looked like somebody stunting for his own privatelunatic pleasure--the kind of crazy thing some people do, and for whichthere is no possible explanation.

  But there was an explanation for this.

  At the very top of the loop, threads o
f white smoke appeared. Theyshould have been unnoticeable against the cloud. But for the fraction ofan instant they were silhouetted against the silver wings. And they werenot misty wisps of vapor. They were dense, sharply defined rockettrails.

  They shot upward, spreading out. They unreeled with incredible,ever-increasing velocity.

  The pilot hit something with the heel of his hand. There was aheart-stopping delay. Then the transport leaped forward with a force tostop one's breath. The jatos were firing furiously, and the ship jumped.There was a bellowing that drowned out the sound of the engines. Joe wasslammed back on the rear wall of the cabin. He struggled against theforce that pushed him tailward. He heard the pilot saying calmly: "Thatplane shot rockets at us. If they're guided we're sunk."

  Then the threads of smoke became the thickness of cables, of columns!They should have ringed the transport plane in. But the jatos had jumpedit crazily forward and were still thrusting fiercely to make it gofaster than any prop-plane could. The acceleration made the muscles atthe front of Joe's throat ache as he held his head upright against it.

  "They'll be proximity----"

  Then the plane bucked. Very probably, at that moment, it was stretchedfar past the limit of strain for which even its factor of safety wasdesigned. One rocket had let go. The others went with it. The rocketshad had proximity fuses. If they had ringed the transport ship and goneoff with it enclosed, it would now be a tumbling mass of wreckage. Butthe jatos had thrown the plane out ahead of the target area. Suddenlythey cut off, and it seemed as if the ship had braked. But the pilotdived steeply, for speed.

  The co-pilot was saying coldly into the microphone: "He shot rockets.Looked like Army issue three point fives with proximities. They missed.And we're mighty lonely!"

  The transport tore on, both pilots grimly watching the cloud bank below.They moved their bodies as they stared out the windows, so that by nopossibility could any part of the plane mask something that they shouldsee. As they searched, the co-pilot spoke evenly into the microphone athis lips: "He wouldn't carry more than four rockets, and he's dumpinghis racks and firing equipment now. But he might have a friend with him.Better get here quick if you want to catch him. He'll be the innocentestprivate pilot you ever saw in no time!"

  Then the pilot grunted. Something was streaking across the cloudformation far, far ahead. Three things. They were jet planes, and theyseemed not so much to approach as to swell in size. They were coming atbetter than five hundred knots--ten miles a minute--and the transportwas heading for them at its top speed of three hundred knots. Thetransport and the flight of jets neared each other at the rate of a milein less than four seconds.

  The co-pilot said crisply: "Silver Messner with red wing-tips. Thenumber began----" He gave the letter and first digits of the vanishedplane's official designation, without which it could not take off fromor be serviced at any flying field.

  Joe heard an insistent, swift _beep-beep-beep-beep_ which would be theradars of the approaching jets. He could not hear any answers that mightreach the co-pilot as he talked to unseen persons who would relay hiswords to the jet fighters.

  One of them peeled off and sank into the cloud layer. The others cameon. They set up in great circles about the transport, crossing beforeit, above it, around it, which gave the effect of flying around anobject not in motion at all.

  The pilot flew on, frowning. The co-pilot said: "Yes. Sure! I'mlistening!" There was a pause. Then he said: "Check. Thanks."

  He hung the instrument back where it belonged, above his head and behindhim. He thoughtfully mopped his brow. He looked at Joe.

  "Maybe," he said mildly, "you believe me when I tell you there's a sortof hot war on, to keep the Platform from taking off."

  The pilot grunted. "Here's the third jet coming up."

  It was true. The jet that had dived into the clouds came up out of thecloud formation with somehow an air of impassive satisfaction.

  "Did they spot the guy?"

  "Yeah," said the co-pilot. "He must've picked up my report. He didn'tdump his radar. He stayed in the cloud bank. When the jet came forhim--spotting him with its night-fighter stuff--he tried to ram. Triedfor a collision. So the jet gave him the works. Blew him apart. Couldn'tmake him land. Maybe they'll pick up something from the wreckage."

  Joe wet his lips.

  "I--saw what happened," he said. "He tried to smash us with rockets.Where'd he get them? How were they smuggled in?"

  The co-pilot shrugged. "Maybe smuggled in. Maybe stolen. They couldabeen landed from a sub anywhere on a good many thousand miles of coast.They coulda been hauled anywhere in a station wagon. The plane was aprivate-type ship. Plenty of them flying around. It could've been boughteasily enough. All they'd need would be a farm somewhere where it couldland and they could strap on a rocket rack and put in a radar. Andthey'd need information. Probably be a good lead, this business. Onlyjust so many people could know what was coming on this ship, and whatcourse it was flying, and so on. Security will have to check back fromthat angle."

  A shadow fell upon the transport ship. A jet shot past from above it. Itwaggled its wings and changed course.

  "We've got to land and be checked for damage," said the co-pilotnegligently. "These guys will circle us and lead the way--as if weneeded it!"

  Joe subsided. He still had in his mind the glamorous and infinitelyalluring picture of the Space Platform floating grandly in its orbit,with white-hot sunshine on it and a multitude of stars beyond. He hadbeen completely absorbed in that aspect of the job that dealt with themethod of construction and the technical details by which the Platformcould be made to work.

  Now he had a side light on the sort of thing that has to be done whenanything important is achieved. Figuring out how a thing can be done isonly part of the job. Overcoming the obstacles to the apparentlycommonplace steps is nine-tenths of the difficulty. It had seemed to himthat the most dramatic aspect of building the Space Platform had beenthe achievement of a design that would work in space, that could begotten up into space, and that could be lived in under circumstancesnever before experienced. Now he saw that getting the materials to thespot where they were needed called for nearly as much brains and effort.Screening out spies and destructionists--that would be an even greaterachievement!

  He began to feel a tremendous respect and solicitude for the people whowere doing ordinary jobs in the building of the Platform. And he worriedabout his own share more than ever.

  Presently the transport ship sank toward the clouds. It sped throughthem, stone-blind from the mist. And then there was a small airfieldbelow, and the pilot and co-pilot began a pattern of ritualisticconversation.

  "Pitot and wing heaters?" asked the pilot.

  The co-pilot put his hand successively 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 appropriate controls,verifying that they were as he reported them.

  "Main on," he said matter-of-factly, "crossfeed off."

  The transport plane slanted down steeply for the landing field that hadlooked so small at first, but expanded remarkably as they drew near.

  Joe found himself frowning. He began to see how really big a job it wasto get a Space Platform even ready to take off for a journey that intheory should last forever. It was daunting to think that before a spaceship could be built and powered and equipped with machinery there had tobe such wildly irrelevant plans worked out as a proper check of controlsfor the piston-engine ships that flew parts to the job. The details wereinnumerable!

  But the job was still worth doing. Joe was glad he was going to have ashare in it.