3
The pilot made an examination down the floor-plate hole, with aflashlight to see by and two mirrors to show him the contents of a spothe could not possibly reach with any instrument. Joe heard his report,made to the ground by radio.
"It's a grenade," he said coldly. "It took time to fix it the way it is.At a guess, the ship was booby-trapped at the time of its last overhaul.But it was arranged that the booby trap had to be set, the triggercocked, by somebody doing something very simple at a different place andlater on. We've been flying with that grenade in the wheel well for twoweeks. But it was out of sight. Today, back at the airfield, asandy-haired man reached up and pulled a string he knew how to find.That loosened a slipknot. The grenade rolled down to a new position. Nowwhen the wheel goes down the pin is pulled. You can figure things outfrom that."
It was an excellent sabotage device. If a ship blew up two weeks afteroverhaul, it would not be guessed that the bomb had been placed so longbefore. Every search would be made for a recent opportunity for thebomb's placing. A man who merely reached in and pulled a string thatarmed the bomb and made it ready for firing would never be suspected.There might be dozens of planes, now carrying their own destructionabout with them.
The pilot said into the microphone: "Probably...." He listened. "Verywell, sir."
He turned away and nodded to the co-pilot, now savagely keeping the shipin wide, sweeping circles, the rims of which barely touched thefarthermost corner of the airport on the ground below.
"We've authority to jump," he said briefly. "You know where the chutesare. But there _is_ a chance I can belly-land without that grenadeblowing. I'm going to try that."
The co-pilot said angrily: "I'll get him a chute." He indicated Joe, andsaid furiously, "They've been known to try two or three tricks, just tomake sure. Ask if we should dump cargo before we crash-land!"
The pilot held up the microphone again. He spoke. He listened.
"Okay to dump stuff to lighten ship."
"You won't dump my crates," snapped Joe. "And I'm staying to see youdon't! If you can ride this ship down, so can I!"
The co-pilot got up and scowled at him.
"Anything I can move out, goes. Will you help?"
Joe followed him through the door into the cargo compartment.
The space there was very considerable, and bitterly cold. The cratesfrom the Kenmore plant were the heaviest items of cargo. Other objectswere smaller. The co-pilot made his way to the rear and pulled a lever.Great, curved doors opened at the back of the plane. Instantly there wassuch a bellowing of motors that all speech was impossible. The co-pilotpulled out a clip of colored-paper slips and checked one with thenearest movable parcel. He painstakingly made a check mark and began topush the box toward the doors.
It was not a conspicuously sane operation. So near the ground, the planetended to waver. The air was distinctly bumpy. To push a massive box outa doorway, so it would tumble down a thousand feet to desert sands, wasnot so safe a matter as would let it become tedious. But Joe helped.They got the box to the door and shoved it out. It went spinning down.The co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watched it land. He choseanother box. He checked it. And another. Joe helped. They got them outof the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness. The plane soared onin circles. The desert, as seen through the opened clamshell doors,reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt, and reeled away again. Joeand the co-pilot labored furiously. But the co-pilot checked each itembefore he jettisoned it.
It was a singularly deliberate way to dump cargo to destruction. Ametal-bound box. Over the edge of the cargo space floor. A piece ofmachinery, visible through its crate. A box marked _Instruments_._Fragile_. Each one checked off. Each one dumped to drop a thousand feetor more. A small crated dynamo. This item and that. A crate marked_Stationery_. It would be printed forms for the timekeepers, perhaps.But it wasn't.
It dropped out. The plane bellowed on. And suddenly there was a burst ofblue-white flame on the desert below. The box that should have containedtimecards had contained something very much more explosive. As the planeroared on--rocking from the shock wave of the explosion--Joe saw acrater and a boiling cloud of smoke and flying sand.
The co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously, in the blasting uproar ofthe motors. He vengefully marked the waybill of the parcel that hadexploded. But then they went back to the job of dumping cargo. Theyworked well as a team now. In no more than minutes everything was outexcept the four crates that were the gyros. The co-pilot regarded themdourly, and Joe clenched his fists. The co-pilot closed the clamshelldoors, and it became possible to hear oneself think again.
"Ship's lighter, anyhow," reported the co-pilot, back in the cabin."Tell 'em this is what exploded."
The pilot took the slip. He plucked down the microphone--exactly likesomebody picking up an interoffice telephone--and reported the waybillnumber and description of the case that had been an extra bomb. The shipcarrying the pilot gyros had been booby-trapped--probably with a numberof other ships--and a bomb had been shipped on it, and a specialsaboteur with a private plane had shot at it with rockets. The pilotgyros were critical devices. They had to be on board the Platform whenit took off, and they took months to make and balance. There had beenextra pains taken to prevent their arrival!
"I'm dumping gas now," said the pilot into the microphone, "and thencoming in for a belly landing."
The ship flew straightaway. It flew more lightly, and it bounced alittle. When gas is dumped one has to slow to not more than one hundredand seventy-five knots and fly level. Then one is supposed to fly fiveminutes after dumping with the chutes in the drain position--and eventhen there is forty-five minutes of flying fuel still in the tanks.
The ship swept around and headed back for the now far-distant field. Itwent slowly lower and lower and lower until it seemed barely to skim theminor irregularities in the ground. And low like this, the effect ofspeed was terrific.
The co-pilot thought of something. Quickly he went back into the cargospace. He returned with an armful of blankets. He dumped them on thefloor.
"If that grenade does go!" he said sourly.
Joe helped. In the few minutes before Bootstrap loomed near, they filledthe bottom of the cabin with blankets. Especially around the pilots'chairs. And there was a mound of blanketing above the actual place wherethe grenade might be. It made sense. Soft stuff like blankets wouldabsorb an explosion better than anything else. But the pilot thought thegrenade might not blow.
"Hold fast!" snapped the pilot.
The wing flaps were down. That slowed the ship a little. It had beenlightened. That helped. They went in over the edge of the field lessthan man-height high. Joe found his hands closing convulsively on ahandgrip. He saw a crash wagon starting out from the side of the runway.A fire truck started for the line the plane followed.
Four feet above the rushing sand. Three. The pilot eased back the stick.His face was craggy and very grim and very hard. The ship's tail wentdown and dragged. It bumped. Then the plane careened and slid andhalf-whirled crazily, and then the world seemed to come to an end.Crashes. Bangs. Shrieks of torn metal. Bumps, thumps and grindings. Thena roaring.
Joe pulled himself loose from where he had been flung--it seemed to himthat he peeled himself loose--and found the pilot struggling up, and hegrabbed him to help, and the co-pilot hauled at them both, and abruptlyall three of them were in the open air and running at full speed awayfrom the ship.
The roar abruptly became a bellowing. There was an explosion. Flamessprouted everywhere. The three men ran stumblingly. But even as theyran, the co-pilot swore.
"We left something!" he panted.
Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Somethingelse exploded dully. But he should be far enough away by now.
He turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckage immersed in roaringflames. The flames were monstrous. They rose sky-high, it seemed--moreflames than forty-five minutes of gasoline should have produced. As he
looked, something blew up shatteringly, and fire raged even morefuriously. Of course in such heat the delicately adjusted gyros would bewarped and ruined even if the crash hadn't wrecked them beforehand. Joemade thick, incoherent sounds of rage.
The plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton, licked through byflames. The crash wagon roared to a stop beside them.
"Anybody hurt? Anybody left inside?"
Joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairing rage. The fog wagonroared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles. Its tanks containedwater treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest ofdroplets when sprayed at four hundred pounds pressure. It drenched theburning wreck with that heavy mist, in which a man would drown. No firecould possibly sustain itself. In seconds, it seemed, there were onlysteam and white vapor and fumes of smoldering substances that graduallylessened.
But then there was a roaring of motorcycles racing across the field witha black car trailing them. The car pulled up beside the fog wagon, thensped swiftly to where Joe was coming out of wild rage and sinking intosick, black depression. He'd been responsible for the pilot gyros andtheir safe arrival. What had happened wasn't his fault, but it was nothis job merely to remain blameless. It was his job to get the gyrosdelivered and set up in the Space Platform. He had failed.
The black car braked to a stop. There was Major Holt. Joe had seen himsix months before. He'd aged a good deal. He looked grimly at the twopilots.
"What happened?" he demanded. "You dumped your fuel! What burned likethis?"
Joe said thickly: "Everything was dumped but the pilot gyros. Theydidn't burn! They were packed at the plant!"
The co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent sound of rage. "I've got it!"he said hoarsely. "I know----"
"What?" snapped Major Holt.
"They--planted that grenade at the--major overhaul!" panted theco-pilot, too enraged even to swear. "They--fixed it so--any troublewould mean a wreck! And I--pulled the fire-extinguisher releases just aswe hit! For all compartments! To flood everything with CO_2! But itwasn't CO_2! That's what burned!"
Major Holt stared sharply at him. He held up his hand. Somebodymaterialized beside him. He said harshly: "Get the extinguisher bottlessealed and take them to the laboratory."
"Yes, sir!"
A man went running toward the wreck. Major Holt said coldly: "That's anew one. We should have thought of it. You men get yourselves attendedto and report to Security at the Shed."
The pilot and co-pilot turned away. Joe turned to go with them. Then heheard Sally's voice, a little bit wobbly: "Joe! Come with us, please!"
Joe hadn't seen her, but she was in the car. She was pale. Her eyes werewide and frightened.
Joe said stiffly: "I'll be all right. I want to look at thosecrates----"
Major Holt said curtly: "They're already under guard. There'll have tobe photographs made before anything can be touched. And I want a reportfrom you, anyhow. Come along!"
Joe looked. The motorcycles were abandoned, and there were already armedguards around the still-steaming wreck, grimly watching the men of thefog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparks or flame. It wasnoticeable that now nobody moved toward the wreck. There were figureswalking back toward the edge of the field. What civilians were about,even to the mechanics on duty, had started out to look at the debris atclose range. But the guards were on the job. Nobody could approach. Theonlookers went back to their proper places.
"Please, Joe!" said Sally shakily.
Joe got drearily into the car. The instant he seated himself, it was inmotion again. It went plunging back across the field and out theentrance. Its horn blared and it went streaking toward the town andabruptly turned to the left. In seconds it was on a broad white highwaythat left the town behind and led toward the emptiness of the desert.
But not quite emptiness. Far, far away there was a great half-globerising against the horizon. The car hummed toward it, tires singing. AndJoe looked at it and felt ashamed, because this was the home of theSpace Platform, and he hadn't brought to it the part for which he alonewas responsible.
Sally moistened her lips. She brought out a small box. She opened it.There were bandages and bottles.
"I've a first-aid kit, Joe," she said shakily. "You're burned. Let mefix the worst ones, anyhow!"
Joe looked at himself. One coat sleeve was burned to charcoal. His hairwas singed on one side. A trouser leg was burned off around the ankle.When he noticed, his burns hurt.
Major Holt watched her spread a salve on scorched skin. He showed noemotion whatever.
"Tell me what happened," he commanded. "All of it!"
Somehow, there seemed very little to tell, but Joe told it baldly as thecar sped on. The great half-ball of metal loomed larger and larger butdid not appear to grow nearer as Sally practiced first aid. They came toa convoy of trucks, and the horn blared, and they turned out and passedit. Once they met a convoy of empty vehicles on the way back toBootstrap. They passed a bus. They went on.
Joe finished drearily: "The pilots did everything anybody could. Evenchecked off the packages as they were dumped. We reported the one thatblew up."
Major Holt said uncompromisingly: "Those were orders. In a sense we'vegained something even by this disaster. The pilots are probably rightabout the plane's having been booby-trapped after its last overhaul, andthe traps armed later. I'll have an inspection made immediately, andwe'll see if we can find how it was done.
"There's the man you think armed the trap on this plane. An order forhis arrest is on the way now. I told my secretary. And--hm.... ThatCO_2----"
"I didn't understand that," said Joe drearily.
"Planes have CO_2 bottles to put fires out," said the Major impatiently."A fire in flight lights a red warning light on the instrument panel,telling where it is. The pilot pulls a handle, and CO_2 floods thecompartment, putting it out. And this ship was coming in for a crashlanding so the pilot--according to orders--flooded all compartments withCO_2. Only it wasn't."
Sally said in horror: "Oh, no!"
"The CO_2 bottles were filled with an inflammable or an explosive gas,"said her father, unbending. "Instead of making a fire impossible, theymade it certain. We'll have to watch out for that trick now, too."
Joe was too disheartened for any emotion except a bitter depression anda much more bitter hatred of those who were ready to commit anycrime--and had committed most--in the attempt to destroy the Platform.
The Shed that housed it rose and rose against the skyline. It becamehuge. It became monstrous. It became unbelievable. But Joe could havewept when the car pulled up at an angular, three-story building builtout from the Shed's base. From the air, this substantial building hadlooked like a mere chip. The car stopped. They got out. A sentry salutedas Major Holt led the way inside. Joe and Sally followed.
The Major said curtly to a uniformed man at a desk: "Get some clothesfor this man. Get him a long-distance telephone connection to theKenmore Precision Tool Company. Let him talk. Then bring him to meagain."
He disappeared. Sally tried to smile at Joe. She was still quite pale.
"That's Dad, Joe. He means well, but he's not cordial. I was in hisoffice when the report of sabotage to your plane came through. Westarted for Bootstrap. We were on the way when we saw the firstexplosion. I--thought it was your ship." She winced a little at thememory. "I knew you were on board. It was--not nice, Joe."
She'd been badly scared. Joe wanted to thump her encouragingly on theback, but he suddenly realized that that would no longer be appropriate.So he said gruffly: "I'm all right."
He followed the uniformed man. He began to get out of his scorched andtattered garments. The sergeant brought him more clothes, and he putthem on. He was just changing his personal possessions to the newpockets when the sergeant came back again.
"Kenmore plant on the line, sir."
Joe went to the phone. On the way he discovered that the banging aroundhe'd had when the plane landed had made a number of places on his bodyhurt.
He talked to his father.
Afterward, he realized that it was a queer conversation. He felt guiltybecause something had happened to a job that had taken eight months todo and that he alone was escorting to its destination. He told hisfather about that. But his father didn't seem concerned. Not nearly somuch concerned as he should have been. He asked urgent questions aboutJoe himself. If he was hurt. How much? Where? Joe was astonished thathis father seemed to think such matters more important than the pilotgyros. But he answered the questions and explained the exact situationand also a certain desperate hope he was trying to cherish that thegyros might still be repairable. His father gave him advice.
Sally was waiting again when he came out. She took him into her father'soffice, and introduced him to her father's secretary. Compared to Sallyshe was an extraordinarily plain woman. She wore a sorrowful expression.But she looked very efficient.
Joe explained carefully that his father said for him to hunt up ChiefBender--working on the job out here--because he was one of the few menwho'd left the Kenmore plant to work elsewhere, and he was good. He andthe Chief, between them, would estimate the damage and the possibilityof repair.
Major Holt listened. He was military and official and harassed and curtand tired. Joe'd known Sally and therefore her father all his life, butthe Major wasn't an easy man to be relaxed with. He spoke into thin air,and immediately his sad-seeming secretary wrote out a pass for Joe. ThenMajor Holt gave crisp orders on a telephone and asked questions, andSally said: "I know. I'll take him there. I know my way around."
Her father's expression did not change. He simply included Sally in hisorders on the phone.
He hung up and said briefly: "The plane will be surveyed and taken apartas soon as possible. By the time you find your man you can probablyexamine the crates. I'll have you cleared for it."
His secretary reached in a drawer for order forms to fill out and handhim to sign. Sally tugged at Joe's arm. They left.
Outside, she said: "There's no use arguing with my father, Joe. He has aterrible job, and it's on his mind all the time. He hates being aSecurity officer, too. It's a thankless job--and no Security officerever gets to be more than a major. His ability never shows. What he doesis never noticed unless it fails. So he's frustrated. He's got poor MissRoss--his secretary, you know--so she just listens to what he says mustbe done and she writes it out. Sometimes he goes days without speakingto her directly. But really it's pretty bad! It's like a war with noenemy to fight except spies! And the things they do! They've been knowneven to booby-trap a truck after an accident, so anybody who tries tohelp will be blown up! So everything has to be done in a certain way oreverything will be ruined!"
She led him to an office with a door that opened directly into the Shed.In spite of his bitterness, Joe was morosely impatient to see inside.But Sally had to identify him formally as the Joe Kenmore who was thesubject of her father's order, and his fingerprints had to be taken, andsomebody had him stand for a moment before an X-ray screen. Then she ledhim through the door, and he was in the Shed where the Space Platformwas under construction.
It was a vast cavern of metal sheathing and spidery girders, filled withsound and detail. It took him seconds to begin to absorb what he saw andheard. The Shed was five hundred feet high in the middle, and it was allclear space without a single column or interruption. There were arclamps burning about its edges, and high up somewhere there were stripsof glass which let in a pale light. All of it resounded with many noisesand clanging echoes of them.
There were rivet guns at work, and there were the grumblings of motortrucks moving about, and the oddly harsh roar of welding torches. Butthe torch flames looked only like marsh fires, blue-white and eerieagainst the mass of the thing that was being built.
It was not too clear to the eye, this incomplete Space Platform. Thereseemed to be a sort of mist, a glamour about it, which was partly aveiling mass of scaffolding. But Joe gazed at it with an emotion thatblotted out even his aching disappointment and feeling of shame.
It was gigantic. It had the dimensions of an ocean liner. It wasstrangely shaped. Partly obscured by the fragile-seeming framework aboutit, there was bright plating in swelling curves, and the plating reachedup irregularly and followed a peculiar pattern, and above the platingthere were girders--themselves shining brightly in the light of many arclamps--and they rose up and up toward the roof of the Shed itself. ThePlatform was ungainly and it was huge, and it rested under a hollowmetal half-globe that could have doubled for a sky. It was more thanthree hundred feet high, itself, and there were men working on the barebright beams of its uppermost parts--and the men were specks. The farside of the Shed's floor had other men on it, and they were merelyjerkily moving motes. You couldn't see their legs as they walked. TheShed and the Platform were monstrous!
Joe felt Sally's eyes upon him. Somehow, they looked proud. He took adeep breath.
She said: "Come on."
They walked across acres of floor neatly paved with shining woodenblocks. They moved toward the thing that was to take mankind's firststep toward the stars. As they walked centerward, a big sixteen-wheeltruck-and-trailer outfit backed out of an opening under the lacy haze ofscaffolds. It turned clumsily, and carefully circled the scaffolding,and moved toward a sidewall of the Shed. A section of the wall--itseemed as small as a rabbit hole--lifted inward like a flap, and thesixteen-wheeler trundled out into the blazing sunlight. Four othertrucks scurried out after it. Other trucks came in. The sidewall sectionclosed.
There was the smell of engine fumes and hot metal and of ozone fromelectric sparks. There was that indescribable smell a man can gethomesick for, of metal being worked by men. Joe walked like someone in adream, with Sally satisfiedly silent beside him, until thescaffolds--which had looked like veiling--became latticework and he sawopenings.
They walked into one such tunnel. The bulk of the Platform above themloomed overhead with a crushing menace. There were trucks rumbling allaround underneath, here in this maze of scaffold columns. Some carriedready-loaded cages waiting to be snatched up by hoists. Crane grips camedown, and snapped fast on the cages, and lifted them up and up and outof sight. There was a Diesel running somewhere, and a man stood andstared skyward and made motions with his hands, and the Diesel adjustedits running to his signals. Then some empty cages came down and landedin a waiting truck body with loud clanking noises. Somebody cast off thehooks, and the truck grumbled and drove away.
Sally spoke to a preoccupied man in shirt sleeves with a badge on an armband near his shoulder. He looked carefully at the passes she carried,using a flashlight to make sure. Then he led them to a shaft up which ahoist ran. It was very noisy here. A rivet gun banged away overhead, andthe plates of the Platform rang with the sound, and the echoesscreeched, and to Joe the bedlam was infinitely good to hear. The manwith the arm band shouted into a telephone transmitter, and a hoist cagecame down. Joe and Sally stepped on it. Joe took a firm grip on hershoulder, and the hoist shot upward.
The hugeness of the Shed and the Platform grew even more apparent as thehoist accelerated toward the roof. The flooring seemed to expand.Spidery scaffold beams dropped past them. There were things being builtover by the sidewall. Joe saw a crawling in-plant tow truck moving pastthose enigmatic objects. It was a tiny truck, no more than four feethigh and with twelve-inch wheels. It dragged behind it flat plates ofmetal with upturned forward edges. They slid over the floor likesledges. Cryptic loads were carried on those plates, and the tow truckstopped by a mass of steel piping being put together, and began tounload the plates.
Then the hoist slowed abruptly and Sally winced a little. The hoiststopped.
Here--two hundred feet up--a welding crew worked on the skin of thePlatform itself. The plating curved in and there was a wide flat spaceparallel to the ground. There was also a great gaping hole beyond.Though girders rose roofward even yet, this was as high as the platinghad gone. That opening--Joe guessed--would ultimately be the door of anair lock
, and this flat surface was designed for a tender rocket toanchor to by magnets. When a rocket came up from Earth with supplies orreliefs for the Platform's crew, or with fuel to be stored for anexploring ship's later use, it would anchor here and then inch towardthat doorway....
There were half a dozen men in the welding crew. They should have beenworking. But two men battered savagely at each other, their tools throwndown. One was tall and lean, with a wrinkled face and an expression ofintolerable fury. The other was squat and dark with a look ofdesperation. A third man was in the act of putting down his weldingtorch--he'd carefully turned it off first--to try to interfere. Anotherman gaped. Still another was climbing up by a ladder from the scaffoldlevel below.
Joe put Sally's hand on the hoist upright, instinctively freeing himselffor action.
The lanky man lashed out a terrific roundhouse blow. It landed, but thestocky man bored in. Joe had an instant's clear sight of his face. Itwas not the face of a man enraged. It had the look of a man bothdesperate and despairing.
Then the lanky man's foot slipped. He lost balance, and the stocky man'sfist landed. The thin man reeled backward. Sally cried out, choking. Thelanky man teetered on the edge of the flat place. Behind him, theplating curved down. Below him there were two hundred feet of fallthrough the steel-pipe maze of scaffolds. If he took one step back hewas gone inexorably down a slope on which he could never stop.
He took that step. The stocky man's face abruptly froze in horror. Thelanky man stiffened convulsively. He couldn't stop. He knew it. He'd goback and on over the rounded edge, and fall. He might touch thescaffolding. It would not stop him. It would merely set his bodyspinning crazily as it dropped and crashed again and again before itlanded two hundred feet below.
It was horror in slow motion, watching the lean man stagger backward tohis death.
Then Joe leaped.
Space Platform Page 4
