Space Platform

by Murray Leinster

  6

  Major Holt wasn't to be found when Joe got out to the Shed. And hewasn't in the house in the officers'-quarters area behind it. There wasonly the housekeeper, who yawned pointedly as she let Joe in. Sally waspresumably long since asleep. And Joe didn't know any way to get hold ofthe Major. He assured himself that Braun was a good guy--if he weren'the wouldn't have insisted on taking a licking before he apologized--andhe hadn't said there was any hurry. Tomorrow, he'd said. So Joe uneasilylet himself be led to a room with a cot, and he was asleep in whatseemed seconds. But just the same he was badly worried.

  In fact, next morning Joe woke at a practically unearthly hour withBraun's message pounding on his brain. He was downstairs waiting whenthe housekeeper appeared. She looked startled.

  "Major Holt?" he asked.

  But the Major was gone. He must have done with no more than three orfour hours' sleep. There was an empty coffee cup whose contents he'dgulped down before going back to the security office.

  Joe trudged to the barbed-wire enclosure around the officers'-quartersarea and explained to the sentry where he wanted to go. A sleepy driverwhisked him around the half-mile circle to the security building and hefound his way to Major Holt's office.

  The plain and gloomy secretary was already on the job, too. She led himin to face Major Holt. He blinked at the sight of Joe.

  "Hm.... I have some news," he observed. "We back-tracked the parcel thatexploded when it was dumped from the plane."

  Joe had almost forgotten it. Too many other things had happened since.

  "We've got two very likely prisoners out of that affair," said theMajor. "They may talk. Also, an emergency inspection of other transportplanes has turned up three other grenades tucked away in front-wheelwells. Ah--CO_2 bottles have turned out to have something explosive inthem. A very nice bit of work, that! The sandy-haired man who fueledyour plane--ah--disappeared. That is bad!"

  Joe said politely: "That's fine, sir."

  "All in all, you've been the occasion of our forestalling a good deal ofsabotage," said the Major. "Bad for you, of course.... Did you find themen you were looking for?"

  "I've found them, but--."

  "I'll have them transferred to work under your direction," said theMajor briskly. "Their names?"

  Joe gave the names. The Major wrote them down.

  "Very good. I'm busy now----"

  "I've a tip for you," said Joe. "I think it should be checked rightaway. I don't feel too good about it."

  The Major waited impatiently. And Joe explained, very carefully, aboutthe fight on the Platform the day before, Braun's insistence onfinishing the fight in Bootstrap, and then the tip he'd given Joe aftereverything was over. He repeated the message exactly, word for word.

  The Major, to do him justice, did not interrupt. He listened with anexpression that varied between grimness and weariness. When Joe ended hepicked up a telephone. He talked briefly. Joe felt a reluctant sort ofapproval. Major Holt was not a man one could ever feel very close to,and the work he was in charge of was not likely to make him popular, buthe did think straight--and fast. He didn't think "hot" meant"significant," either. When he'd hung up the phone he said curtly: "Whenwill your work crew get here?"

  "Early--but not yet," said Joe. "Not for some time yet."

  "Go with the pilot," said the Major. "You'd recognize what Braun meantas soon as anybody. See what you see."

  Joe stood up.

  "You--think the tip is straight?"

  "This isn't the first time," said Major Holt detachedly, "that a man hasbeen blackmailed into trying sabotage. If he's got a family somewhereabroad, and they're threatened with death or torture unless he doessuch-and-such here, he's in a bad fix. It's happened. Of course he can'ttell me! He's watched. But he sometimes finds an out."

  Joe was puzzled. His face showed it.

  "He can try to do the sabotage," said the Major precisely, "or he canarrange to be caught trying to do it. If he's caught--he tried; and theblackmail threat is no threat at all so long as he keeps his mouth shut.Which he does. And--ah--you would be surprised how often a man whowasn't born in the United States would rather go to prison for sabotagethan commit it--here."

  Joe blinked.

  "If your friend Braun is caught," said the Major, "he will be punished.Severely. Officially. But privately, someone will--ah--mention this tipand say 'thanks.' And he'll be told that he will be released from prisonjust as soon as he thinks it's safe. And he will be. That's all."

  He turned to his papers. Joe went out. On the way to meet the pilotwho'd check on his tip, he thought things over. He began to feel a sortof formless but very definite pride. He wasn't quite sure what he wasproud of, but it had something to do with being part of a country towardwhich men of wholly different upbringing could feel deep loyalty. If aman who was threatened unless he turned traitor, a man who might noteven be a citizen, arranged to be caught and punished for an apparentcrime against a country rather than commit it--that wasn't bad. Therecan be a lot of things wrong with a nation, but if somebody from anotherone entirely can come to feel that kind of loyalty toward it--well--it'snot too bad a country to belong to.

  Joe had a security guard with him this time, instead of Sally, as hewent across the vast, arc-lit interior of the Shed and past theshimmering growing monster that was the Platform. He went all the way tothe great swinging doors that let in materials trucks. And there wereguards there, and they checked each driver very carefully before theyadmitted his truck. But somehow it wasn't irritating. It wasn't scornfulsuspicion. There'd be snide and snappy characters in the Security force,of course, swaggering and throwing their weight about. But even theywere guarding something that men--some men--were willing to throw awaytheir lives for.

  Joe and his guard reached one of the huge entrances as a ten-wheelertruck came in with a load of shining metal plates. Joe's escort wentthrough the opening with him and they waited outside. The sun had barelyrisen. It looked huge but very far away, and Joe suddenly realized whyjust this spot had been chosen for the building of the Platform.

  The ground was flat. All the way to the eastern horizon there wasn'teven a minor hillock rising above the plain. It was bare, arid,sun-scorched desert. It was featureless save for sage and mesquite andtall thin stalks of yucca. But it was flat. It could be a runway. It wasa perfect place for the Platform to start from. The Platform shouldn'ttouch ground at all, after it was out of the Shed, but at least itwouldn't run into any obstacles on its way toward the horizon.

  A light plane came careening around the great curved outer surface ofthe Shed. It landed and taxied up to the door. It swung smartly aroundand its side door opened. A bandaged hand waved at Joe. He climbed in.The pilot of this light, flimsy plane was the co-pilot of the transportof yesterday. He was the man Joe had helped to dump cargo.

  Joe climbed in and settled himself. The small motor pop-poppedvaliantly, the plane rushed forward over hard-packed desert earth, andwent swaying up into the air.

  The co-pilot--pilot now--shouted cheerfully above the din: "Hiya. Youcouldn't sleep either? Burns hurt?"

  Joe shook his head.

  "Bothered," he shouted in reply. Then he added, "Do I do something tohelp, or am I along just for the ride?"

  "First we take a look," the pilot called over the motor racket. "Twokilometers due north of the Shed, eh?"

  "That's right."

  "We'll see what's there," the pilot told him.

  The small plane went up and up. At five hundred feet--nearly level withthe roof of the Shed--it swung away and began to make seemingly erraticdartings out over the spotty desert land, and then back. Actually, itwas a search pattern. Joe looked down from his side of the smallcockpit. This was a very small plane indeed, and in consequence itsmotor made much more noise inside its cabin than much more powerfulengines in bigger ships.

  "Those burns I got," shouted the pilot, staring down, "kept me awake. SoI got up and was just walking around when the call came for somebody todrive one of
these things. I took over."

  Back and forth, and back and forth. From five hundred feet in the earlymorning the desert had a curious appearance. The plane was low enoughfor each smallest natural feature to be visible, and it was early enoughfor every shrub or hummock to cast a long, slender shadow. The groundlooked streaked, but all the streaks ran the same way, and all wereshadows.

  Joe shouted: "What's that?"

  The plane banked at a steep angle and ran back. It banked again. Thepilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a button. Therewas a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw apuff of smoke in the air.

  The pilot shouted: "It's a man. He looks dead."

  He swung directly over the small prone object and there was a secondpuff of smoke.

  "They've got range finders on us from the Shed," he called across thetwo-foot space separating him from Joe. "This marks the spot. Now we'llsee if there's anything to the hot part of that tip."

  He reached over behind his seat and brought out a stubby pole like afishpole with a very large reel. There was also a headset, and somethingvery much like a large aluminum fish on the end of the line.

  "You know Geiger counters?" called the pilot. "Stick on these headphonesand listen!"

  Joe slipped on the headset. The pilot threw a switch and Joe heardclickings. They had no pattern and no fixed frequency. They wereclickings at strictly random intervals, but there was an averagefrequency, at that.

  "Let the counter out the window," called the pilot, "and listen. Tell meif the noise goes up."

  Joe obeyed. The aluminum fish dangled. The line slanted astern from thewind. It made a curve between the pole and the aluminum plummet, whichwas hollow in the direction of the plane's motion. The pilot squinteddown and began to swing in a wide circle around the spot where anapparently dead man had been sighted, and above which puffs of smoke nowfloated.

  Three-quarters of the way around, the random clickings suddenly became aroar.

  Joe said: "Hey!"

  The pilot swung the plane about and flew back. He pointed to the buttonhe'd pushed.

  "Poke that when you hear it again."

  The clickings.... They roared. Joe pushed the button. He felt the tinyimpact.

  "Once more," said the pilot.

  He swung in nearer where the dead man lay. Joe had a sickening idea ofwho the dead man might be. A sudden rush of noise in the headphones andhe pushed the button again.

  "Reel in now!" shouted the pilot. "Our job's done."

  Joe reeled in as the plane winged steadily back toward the Shed. Therewere puffs of smoke floating in the air behind. They had been ranged onat the instant they appeared. Somebody back at the Shed knew thatsomething that needed to be investigated was at a certain spot, and thetwo later puffs of smoke had said that radioactivity was notable in theair along the line the two puffs made. Not much more information wouldbe needed. The meaning of Braun's warning that his tip was "hot" wasdefinite. It was "hot" in the sense that it dealt with radioactivity!

  The plane dipped down and landed by the great doors again. It taxied upand the pilot killed the motor.

  "We've been using Geigers for months," he said pleasedly, "and never gota sign before. This is one time we were set for something."

  "What?" asked Joe. But he knew.

  "Atomic dust is one good guess," the pilot told him. "It was talked ofas a possible weapon away back in the Smyth Report. Nobody's ever triedit. We thought it might be tried against the Platform. If somebodymanaged to spread some really hot radioactive dust around the Shed, allthree shifts might get fatally burned before it was noticed. _They'd_think so, anyhow! But the guy who was supposed to dump it opened up thecan for a look. And it killed him."

  He climbed out of the plane and went to the doorway. He took a telephonefrom a guard and talked crisply into it. He hung up.

  "Somebody coming for you," he said amiably. "Wait here. Be seeing you."

  He went out, the motor kicked over and caught, and the tiny plane racedaway. Seconds later it was aloft and winging southward.

  Joe waited. Presently a door opened and something came clanking out. Itwas a tractor with surprisingly heavy armor. There were men in it, alsowearing armor of a peculiar sort, which they were still adjusting. Thetractor towed a half-track platform on which there were a crane and avery considerable lead-coated bin with a top. It went briskly off intothe distance toward the north.

  Joe was amazed, but comprehending. The vehicle and the men were armoredagainst radioactivity. They would approach the dead man from upwind, andthey would scoop up his body and put it in the lead-lined bin, and withit all deadly radioactive material near him. This was the equipment thatmust have been used to handle the dud atom bomb some months back. It hadbeen ready for that. It was ready for this emergency. Somebody had triedto think of every imaginable situation that could arise in connectionwith the Platform.

  But in a moment a guard came for Joe and took him to where the Chief andHaney and Mike waited by the still incompletely-pulled-away crates. Theyhad some new ideas about the job on hand that were better than theoriginal ones in some details. All four of them set to work to make acareful survey of damage--of parts that would have to be replaced and ofthose that needed to be repaired. The discoveries they made would haveappalled Joe earlier. Now he merely made notes of parts necessary to bereplaced by new ones that could be had within the repair time forrebalancing the rotors.

  "This is sure a mess," said Haney mournfully, as they worked. "It's twodays just getting things cleaned up!"

  The Chief eyed the rotors. There were two of them, great four-foot diskswith extraordinary short and stubby shafts that were brought tobeautifully polished conical ends to fit in the bearings. The bearingswere hollowed to fit the shaft ends, but they were intricately scored toform oil channels. In operation, a very special silicone oil would bepumped into the bearings under high pressure. Distributed by thechannels, the oil would form a film that by its pressure would hold thecone end of the bearing away from actual contact with the metal. Therotors, in fact, would be floated in oil just as the high-speedcentrifuge the Chief had mentioned had floated on compressed air. Butthey had to be perfectly balanced, because any imbalance would make theshaft pierce the oil film and touch the metal of the bearing--and when ashaft is turning at 40,000 r.p.m. it is not good for it to touchanything. Shaft and bearing would burn white-hot in fractions of asecond and there would be several devils to pay.

  "We've got to spin it in a lathe," said the Chief profoundly, "to holdthe chucks. The chucks have got to be these same bearings, becausenothing else will stand the speed. And we got to cut out the bed plateof any lathe we find. Hm. We got to do our spinning with the shaft linedup with the earth's axis, too."

  Mike nodded wisely, and Joe knew he'd pointed that out. It was trueenough. A high-speed gyro could only be run for minutes in one singledirection if its mount were fixed. If a precisely mounted gyro had itsshaft pointed at the sun, for example, while it ran, its axis would tryto follow the sun. It would try not to turn with the earth, and it wouldwreck itself. They had to use the cone bearings, but in order to protectthe fine channellings for oil they'd have to use cone-shaped shims atthe beginning while running at low speed. The cone ends of the shaftwould need new machining to line them up. The bearings had to be fixed,yet flexible. The----

  They had used many paper napkins the night before, merely envisioningthese details. New problems turned up as the apparatus itself was beinguncovered and cleaned.

  They worked for hours, clearing away soot and charred material. Joe'slist of small parts to be replaced from the home plant was as long ashis arm. The motors, of course, had to be scrapped and new onessubstituted. Considering their speed--the field strength at operatingrate was almost imperceptible--they had to be built new, which wouldmean round-the-clock work at Kenmore.

  A messenger came for Joe. The security office wanted him. Major Holt'sgloomy secretary did not even glance up as he entered. Major Holthim
self looked tired.

  "There was a man out there," he said curtly. "I think it is your friendBraun. I'll get you to look and identify."

  Joe had suspected as much. He waited.

  "He'd opened a container of cobalt powder. It was in a beryllium case.There was half a pound of it. It killed him."

  "Radioactive cobalt," said Joe.

  "Definitely," said the Major grimly. "Half a pound of it gives off theradiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium. One can guess that hehad been instructed to get up as high as he could in the Shed and dumpthe powder into the air. It would diffuse--scatter as it sifted down. Itwould have contaminated the whole Shed past all use for years--let alonekilling everybody in it."

  Joe swallowed.

  "He was burned, then."

  "He had the equivalent of two hundred and fifty pounds of radium withininches of his body," the Major said unbendingly, "and naturally it wasnot healthy. For that matter, the container itself was not adequateprotection for him. Once he'd carried it in his pocket for a very fewminutes, he was a dead man, even though he was not conscious of thefact."

  Joe knew what was wanted of him.

  "You want me to look at him," he said.

  The Major nodded.

  "Yes. Afterward, get a radiation check on yourself. It is hardly likelythat he was--ah--carrying the stuff with him last night, in Bootstrap.But if he was--ah--you may need some precautionary treatment--you andthe men who were with you."

  Joe realized what that meant. Braun had been given a relatively smallcontainer of the deadliest available radioactive material on Earth.Milligrams of it, shipped from Oak Ridge for scientific use, wereencased in thick lead chests. He'd carried two hundred and fifty gramsin a container he could put in his pocket. He was not only dead as hewalked, under such circumstances. He was also death to those who walkednear him.

  "Somebody else may have been burned in any case," said the Majordetachedly. "I am going to issue a radioactivity alarm and check everyman in Bootstrap for burns. It is--ah--very likely that the man whodelivered it to this man is burned, too. But you will not mention this,of course."

  He waved his hand in dismissal. Joe turned to go. The Major addedgrimly: "By the way, there is no doubt about the booby-trapping ofplanes. We've found eight, so far, ready to be crashed when a string waspulled while they were serviced. But the men who did the booby-trappinghave vanished. They disappeared suddenly during last night. They werewarned! Have you talked to anybody?"

  "No sir," said Joe.

  "I would like to know," said the Major coldly, "how they knew we'd foundout their trick!"

  Joe went out. He felt very cold at the pit of his stomach. He was toidentify Braun. Then he was to get a radiation check on himself. In thatorder of events. He was to identify Braun first, because if Braun hadcarried a half-pound of radioactive cobalt on him in Sid's Steak Jointthe night before, Joe was going to die. And so were Haney and the Chiefand Mike, and anybody else who'd passed near him. So Joe was to do theidentification before he was disturbed by the information that he wasdead.

  He made the identification. Braun was very decently laid out in alead-lined box, with a lead-glass window over his face. There was nosign of any injury on him except from his fight with Haney. Theradiation burns were deep, but they'd left no marks of their own. He'ddied before outer symptoms could occur.

  Joe signed the identification certificate. He went to be checked for hisown chances of life. It was a peculiar sensation. The most peculiar wasthat he wasn't afraid. He was neither confident that he was not burnedinside, nor sure that he was. He simply was not afraid. Nobody reallyever believes that he is going to die--in the sense of ceasing to exist.The most arrant coward, stood before a wall to be shot, or strapped inan electric chair, finds that astoundingly he does not believe that whathappens to his body is going to kill him, the individual. That is why agreat many people die with reasonable dignity. They know it is not worthmaking too much of a fuss over.

  But when the Geiger counters had gone over him from head to foot, andhis body temperature was normal, and his reflexes sound--when he wasassured that he had not been exposed to dangerous radiation--Joe feltdistinctly weak in the knees. And that was natural, too.

  He went trudging back to the wrecked gyros. His friends were gone,leaving a scrawled memo for him. They had gone to pick out the machinetools for the work at hand.

  He continued to check over the wreckage, thinking with a detachedcompassion of that poor devil Braun who was the victim of men who hatedthe idea of the Space Platform and what it would mean to humanity. Menof that kind thought of themselves as superior to humanity, and of humanbeings as creatures to be enslaved. So they arranged for planes to crashand burn and for men to be murdered, and they practiced blackmail--orrewarded those who practiced it for them. They wanted to prevent thePlatform from existing because it would keep them from trying to pullthe world down in ruins so they could rule over the wreckage.

  Joe--who had so recently thought it likely that he would die--consideredthese actions with an icy dislike that was much deeper than anger. Itwas backed by everything he believed in, everything he had ever wanted,and everything he hoped for. And anger could cool off, but the way hefelt about people who would destroy others for their own purposes couldnot cool off. It was part of him. He thought about it as he worked, withall the noises of the Shed singing in his ears.

  A voice said: "Joe."

  He started and turned. Sally stood behind him, looking at him verygravely. She tried to smile.

  "Dad told me," she said, "about the check-up that says you're all right.May I congratulate you on your being with us for a while?--on thecobalt's not getting near you?--or the rest of us?"

  Joe did not know exactly what to say.

  "I'm going inside the Platform," she told him. "Would you like to comealong?"

  He wiped his hands on a piece of waste.

  "Naturally! My gang is off picking out tools. I can't do much until theycome back."

  He fell into step beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And itwas still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was hugebeyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size.Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it.There was always a faint bluish mist in the air, and there were themarsh-fire lights of welding torches playing here and there. The soundsof the Shed were a steady small tumult in Joe's ears. He was gettingaccustomed to them, though.

  "How is it you can go around so freely?" he asked abruptly. "I have tobe checked and rechecked."

  "You'll get a full clearance," she told him. "It has to go throughchannels. Me--I have influence. I always come in through security, and Ihave the door guards trained. And I do have business in the Platform."

  He turned his head to look at her.

  "Interior decoration," she explained. "And don't laugh! It isn'tprettifying. It's psychology. The Platform was designed by engineers andphysicists and people with slide rules. They made a beautifulenvironment for machinery. But there will be men living in it, and theyaren't machines."

  "I don't see----"

  "They designed the hydroponic garden," said Sally with a certain scorn."They calculated very neatly that eleven square feet of leaf surface ofa pumpkin plant will purify all the air a resting man uses, and so muchmore will purify the air a man uses when he's working hard. So theydesigned the gardens for the most efficient production of the greatestpossible leaf surface--of pumpkin plants! They figured food would bebrought up by the tender rockets! But can you imagine the men in thePlatform, floating among the stars, living on dehydrated food andstuffing themselves hungrily with pumpkins because that is the onlyfresh food they have?"

  Joe saw the irony.

  "They're thinking of mechanical efficiency," said Sally indignantly. "Idon't know anything about machinery, but I've wasted an awful lot oftime at school and otherwise if I don't know something about humanbeings! I argued, and the garden now isn't as mechanically efficient,but i
t'll be a nice place for a man to go into. He won't smell pumpkinplants all the time, either. I've even gotten them to include someflowers!"

  They were very near the Platform. And it was very near to completion.Joe looked at it hungrily, and he felt a great sense of urgency. Hetried to strip away the scaffolding in his mind and see it floatingproudly free in emptiness, with white-hot sunshine glinting from it, andonly a background of unwinking stars.

  Sally's voice went on: "And I've really put up an argument about theliving quarters. They had every interior wall painted aluminum! I arguedthat in space or out of it, where people have to live, it'shousekeeping. This is going to be their home. And they ought to feelhuman in it!"

  They passed into one of the openings in the maze of uprights. All aboutthem there were trucks, and puffing engines, and hoists. Joe draggedSally aside as a monstrous truck-and-trailer came from where it haddelivered some gigantic item of interior use. It rumbled past them, andshe led the way to a flight of temporary wooden stairs with two securityguards at the bottom. Sally talked severely to them, and they grinnedand waved for Joe to go ahead. He went up the steps--which would bepulled down before the Platform's launching--and went actually insidethe Space Platform for the first time.

  It was a moment of extreme vividness for him. Within the past hour he'dcome to think detachedly of the possibility of death for himself, andthen had learned that he would live for a while yet. He knew that Sallyhad been scared on his account, and that her matter-of-fact manner waspartly assumed. She was at least as much wrought up as he was.

  And this was the first time he was going into what would be the firstspace ship ever to leave the Earth on a non-return journey.