Space Platform

by Murray Leinster

  7

  Nobody could have gone through the changes of emotion Joe hadexperienced that morning and remained quite matter-of-fact. Seeing adead man who had more or less deliberately killed himself so that hewouldn't have to kill Joe--for one--had its effect. Knowing that it wascertainly possible the man hadn't killed himself in time had another.Being checked over for radiation burns which would mean that he'd diequite comfortably within three or four days, and then learning that noburns existed, was something of an ordeal. And Sally--of course herfeelings shouldn't have been as vivid as his own, but the fact thatshe'd been scared for him held some significance. When, on top of allthe rest, he went into the Space Platform for the first time, Joe wasdefinitely keyed up.

  But he talked technology. He examined the inner skin and its liningbefore going beyond the temporary entrance. The plating of the Platformwas actually double. The outer layer was a meteor-bumper against whichparticles of cosmic dust would strike and explode without damage to theinner skin. They could even penetrate it without causing a leak of air.Inside the inner skin there was a layer of glass wool for heatinsulation. Inside the glass wool was a layer of material servingexactly the function of the coating of a bulletproof gasoline tank. Nometeor under a quarter-inch size could hope to make a puncture, even atthe forty-five-mile-per-second speed that is the theoretical maximum formeteors. And if one did, the selfsealing stuff would stop the leakimmediately. Joe could explain the protection of the metal skins. Hedid.

  "When a missile travels fast enough," he said absorbedly, "it stopsacquiring extra puncturing ability. Over a mile a second, impact can'tbe transmitted from front to rear. The back end of the thing that hitshas arrived at the hit place before the shock of arrival can travel backto it. It's like a train in a collision which doesn't stop all at once.A meteor hitting the Platform will telescope on itself like the cars ofa railroad train that hits another at full speed."

  Sally listened enigmatically.

  "So," said Joe, "the punching effect isn't there. A meteor hitting thePlatform won't punch. It'll explode. Part of it will turn tovapor--metallic vapor if it's metal, and rocky vapor if it's stone.It'll blow a crater in the metal plate. It'll blow away as much weightof the skin as it weighs itself. Mass for mass. So that weight forweight, pea soup would be just as effective armor against meteors ashardened steel."

  Sally said: "Dear me! You must read the newspapers!"

  "The odds figure out, the odds are even that the Platform won't get anactual meteor puncture in the first twenty thousand years it's floatinground the Earth."

  "Twenty thousand two seventy, Joe," said Sally. She was trying to teasehim, but her face showed a little of the strain. "I read the magazinearticles too. In fact I sometimes show the tame article writers around,when they're cleared to see the Platform."

  Joe winced a little. Then he grinned wryly.

  "That cuts me down to size, eh?"

  She smiled at him. But they both felt queer. They went on into theinterior of the huge space ship.

  "Lots of space," said Joe. "This could've been smaller."

  "It'll be nine-tenths empty when it goes up," said Sally. "But you knowabout that, don't you?"

  Joe did know. The reasons for the streamlining of rockets to be firedfrom the ground didn't apply to the Platform. Not with the same urgency,anyhow. Rockets had to burn their fuel fast to get up out of the denseair near the ground. They had to be streamlined to pierce the thick,resisting part of the atmosphere. The Platform didn't. It wouldn't climbby itself. It would be carried necessarily at slow speed up to the pointwhere jet motors were most efficient, and then it would be carriedhigher until they ceased to be efficient. Only when it was up where airresistance was a very small fraction of ground-level drag would its ownrockets fire. It wouldn't gain much by being shaped to cut thin air, andit would lose a lot. For one thing, the launching process planned forthe Platform allowed it to be built complete so far as its hull wasconcerned. Once it got out into its orbit there would be no moreworries. There wouldn't be any gamble on the practicability ofassembling a great structure in a weightless "world."

  The two of them--and the way they both felt, it seemed natural for Joeto be helping Sally very carefully through the corridors of thePlatform--the two of them came to the engine room. This wasn't the placewhere the drive of the Platform was centered. It was where the servicemotors and the air-circulation system and the fluid pumps were powered.Off the engine room the main gyros were already installed. They waitedonly for the pilot gyros to control them as a steering engine controlsan Earth ship's rudder. Joe looked very thoughtfully at the gyroassembly. That was familiar, from the working drawings. But he let Sallyguide him on without trying to stop and look closely.

  She showed him the living quarters. They centered in a great open spacesixty feet long and twenty wide and high. There were bookshelves, andtwo balconies, and chairs. Private cabins opened from it on differentlevels, but there were no steps to them. Yet there were comfortablechairs with straps so that when a man was weightless he could fastenhimself in them. There were ash trays, ingeniously designed to look likeexactly that and nothing else. But ashes would not fall into them, butwould be drawn into them by suction. There was unpatterned carpet on thefloor _and_ on the ceiling.

  "It's going to feel queer," said Sally, oddly quiet, "when all this isout in space, but it will look fairly normal. I think that's important.This room will look like a big private library more than anything else.One won't be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he'sliving in a strictly synthetic environment. He won't feel cramped. Ifall the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. Atleast this way he can pretend that things are normal."

  Her mind was not wholly on her words. She'd been frightened for Joe. Andhe was acutely aware of it, because he felt a peculiar after-effecthimself.

  "Normal," he said drily, "except that he doesn't weigh anything."

  "I've worried about that," said Sally. "Sleeping's going to be a bigproblem."

  "It'll take getting used to," Joe agreed.

  There was a momentary pause. They were simply looking about the greatroom. Sally stirred uneasily.

  "Tell me what you think," she said. "You've been in an elevator thatstarted to drop like a plummet. When the Platform is orbiting it'll belike that all the time, only worse. No weight. Joe, if you were in anelevator that seemed to be dropping and dropping and dropping for hourson end--do you think you could go to sleep?"

  Joe hadn't thought about it. And he was acutely conscious of Sally, justthen, but the idea startled him.

  "It might be hard to adjust to," he admitted.

  "It'll be hard to adjust to, awake," said Sally. "But getting adjustedto it asleep should be worse. You've waked up from a dream that you'refalling?"

  "Sure," said Joe. Then he whistled. "Oh-oh! I see! You'd drop off tosleep, and you'd be falling. So you'd wake up. Everybody in the Platformwill be falling around the Earth in the Platform's orbit! Every timethey doze off they'll be falling and they'll wake up!"

  He managed to think about it. It was true enough. A man awake couldremind himself that he only thought and felt that he was falling, andthat there was no danger. But what would happen when he tried to sleep?Falling is the first fear a human being ever knows. Everybody in theworld has at one time waked up gasping from a dream of precipices downwhich he plunged. It is an inborn terror. And no matter how thoroughly aman might know in his conscious mind that weightlessness was normal inemptiness, his conscious mind would go off duty when he went to sleep. Acompletely primitive subconscious would take over then, and it would notbe satisfied. It might wake him frantically at any sign of dozing untilhe cracked up from sheer insomnia ... or else let him sleep only whenexhaustion produced unconsciousness rather than restful slumber.

  "That's a tough one!" he said disturbedly, and noticed that she stillshowed signs of her recent distress. "There's not much to be done aboutit, either!"

  "I suggested something," said Sa
lly, "and they built it in. I hope itworks!" she explained uncomfortably. "It's a sort of blanket with a topthat straps down, and an inflatable underside. When a man wants tosleep, he'll inflate this thing, and it will hold him in his bunk. Itwon't touch his head, of course, and he can move, but it will pressagainst him gently."

  Joe thought over what Sally had just explained. He noticed that theywere quite close together, but he put his mind on her words.

  "It'll be like a man swimming?" he asked. "One can go to sleep floating.There's no sensation of weight, but there's the feeling of pressure allabout. A man might be able to sleep if he felt he were floating. Yes,that's a good idea, Sally! It'll work! A man will think he's floating,rather than falling!"

  Sally flushed a little.

  "I thought of it another way," she said awkwardly. "When we go to sleep,we go way back. We're like babies, with all a baby's fears and needs. It_might_ feel like floating. But--I tried one of those bunks. It feelslike--it feels sort of dreamy, as if someone were--holding one quitesafe. It feels as if one were a baby and--beautifully secure. But ofcourse I haven't tried it weightless. I just--hope it works."

  As if embarrassed, she turned abruptly and showed him the kitchen. Everypan was covered. The top of the stove was alnico-magnet strips, arrangedrather like the top of a magnetic chuck. Pans would cling to it. And thecovers had a curious flexible lining which Joe could not understand.

  "It's a flexible plastic that's heatproof," said Sally. "It inflates andholds the food down to the hot bottom of the pan. They expected the crewto eat ready-prepared food. I said that it would be bad enough to haveto drink out of plastic bottles instead of glasses. They hung one ofthese stoves upside down, for me, and I cooked bacon and eggs andpancakes with the cover of the pan pointing to the floor. They said thepsychological effect would be worth while."

  Joe was stirred. He followed her out of the kitchen and said warmly--themore warmly because these contributions to the Space Platform came ontop of a personal anxiety on his own account: "You must be the firstgirl in the world who thought about housekeeping in space!"

  "Girls will be going into space, won't they?" she asked, not looking athim. "If there are colonies on the other planets, they'll have to. Andsome day--to the stars...."

  She stood quite still, and Joe wanted to do something about her and theworld and the way he felt. The interior of the Platform was very silent.Somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulation was incomplete, thesound of workmen was audible, but the inner corridors of the Platformwere not resonant. They were lined with a material to destroy remindersthat this was merely a metal shell, an artificial world that would swimin emptiness. Here and now, Joe and Sally seemed very private and alone,and he felt a sense of urgency.

  He looked at her yearningly. Her color was a little higher than usual.She was not just a nice kid, she was swell! And she was good to look at.Joe had noticed that before, but now with the memory of her frightbecause he'd been in danger, her worry because he might have beenkilled, he thought of her very absurd but honest offer to cry for him.

  Joe found himself twisting at the ring on his finger. He got it off, andthere was some soot and grease on it from the work he'd been doing. Heknew that she saw what he was about, but she looked away.

  "Look, Sally," he said awkwardly, "we've known each other a long time.I've--uh--liked you a lot. And I've got some things to do first,but----" He stopped. He swallowed. She turned and smiled at him. "Look,"he said desperately, "what's a good way to ask if you'd like to wearthis?"

  She nodded, her eyes shining a little.

  "That was a good way, Joe. I'd like it a lot."

  There was an interlude, then, during which she very ridiculously criedand explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life somuch! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. Itwas the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppyululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed andwailed and wailed.

  "That's the alarm," exclaimed Sally. She was still misty-eyed."Everybody out of the Shed. Come on, Joe."

  They started back the way they'd come in. And Sally looked up at Joe andgrinned suddenly.

  "When I have grandchildren," she told him, "I'm going to brag that I wasthe very first girl in all the world ever to be kissed in a space ship!"

  But before Joe could do anything about the comment, she was out on thestairs, in plain view and going down. So he followed her.

  The Shed was emptying. The bare wood-block floor was dotted with figuresmoving steadily toward the security exit. There was no hurry, becausesecurity men were shouting that this was not an alarm but aprecautionary measure, and there was no need for haste. Each securityman had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkie he wore. By itevery guard could be told anything he needed to know, either on thefloor of the Shed, or on the catwalks aloft or even in the Platformitself.

  Trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go out the swing-up doors. Mencame down from the scaffolds after putting their tools in properbetween-shifts positions--for counting and inspection--and other menwere streaming quietly from the pushpot assembly line. Except for thegigantic object in the middle, and for the fact that every man was inwork clothes, the scene was surprisingly like the central waiting roomof a very large railroad station, with innumerable people moving brisklyhere and there.

  "No hurry," said Joe, catching the word from a security man as he passedit on. "I'll go see what my gang found out."

  The trio--Haney and Mike and the Chief--were just arriving by the pilesof charred but now uncovered wreckage. Sally flushed ever so slightlywhen she saw the Chief eye Joe's ring on her finger.

  "Rest of the day off, huh?" said the Chief. "Look! We found most of thestuff we need. They're gonna give us a shop to work in. We'll move thisstuff there. We're gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe wepicked, an' then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in betweenthe chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line."

  That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel to the axis of theearth. Joe nodded.

  "We'll be able to get set up in the mornin'," added Haney, "and getstarted. You got the parts list off to the plant for your folks to getbusy on?"

  Sally said quickly: "He's sending that by facsimile now. Then----"

  The Chief beamed in benign mockery. "What you goin' to do after that,Joe? If we got the rest of the day off----?"

  Sally said hurriedly: "We were--he was going off on a picnic with me. ToRed Canyon Lake. Do you really need to talk business--all afternoon?"

  The Chief laughed. He'd known Sally, at least by sight, back at theKenmore plant.

  "No, ma'am!" he told her. "Just askin'. I worked on that Red Canyon damjob, years back. That dam that made the lake. It ought to be rightpretty around there now. Okay, Joe. See you as soon as work starts up.In the mornin', most likely."

  Joe started away with Sally. Mike the midget called hoarsely: "Joe! Justa minute!"

  Joe drew back. The midget's seamed face was very earnest. He said in hisodd voice: "Here's something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hardto keep you from getting those gyros here. They might work hard to keepthem from getting repaired. That's why we asked for a special shop towork in. It's occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs wouldbe to stop us. Not everybody would've figured out how to rebalance thisthing. You get me?"

  "Sure!" said Joe. "You three had better look out for yourselves."

  Mike stared at him and grimaced.

  "You don't get it," he said brittlely. "All right. I may be crazy, atthat."

  Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but heapproved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to thesecurity building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm andefficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stopall work. As they went toward Major Holt's office, Joe heard somebodydictating in a matter-of-fact voice: "... this attempt at atomicsabotage was defeated outside
the Shed, but it never had a chance ofsuccess. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt tosmuggle radioactive material into the Shed...."

  Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.

  "That's for a publicity release?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "It's true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without passingclose to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though theydon't set the sirens to screaming."

  Joe said: "I'll get my order for new parts off on the facsimilemachine."

  But he had to get Major Holt's secretary to show him where to feed inthe list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and thenbe rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set themachine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of thedocument. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.

  "You and Sally," remarked Sally's father's secretary with a morose sigh,"can go and relax this afternoon. But there's no relaxation for MajorHolt. Or for me."

  Joe said unhopefully: "I'm sure Sally'd be glad if you came with us."

  Major Holt's plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.

  "I haven't had a day off since the work began here," she said frowning."The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You're goingto Red Canyon Lake?"

  "Yes," agreed Joe. "Sally thought it might be pleasant."

  "It's terribly dry and arid here," said Miss Ross sadly. "That's theonly body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it's pretty there.I've never seen it."

  She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. Anexact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existencemore than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the KenmorePrecision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be noquestion of errors in transmission! It had to be right!

  Sally came out, smiled at her father's secretary, and led Joe down tothe entrance.

  "I have the car," she said cheerfully, "and there'll be a lunch basketwaiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold forswimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it's nice to look at."

  They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were justbeginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black carwas waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. Sheregarded the men swarming on the busses.

  "There'll be bulletins all over Bootstrap," she observed, "saying thatBraun tried to dust-bomb the Shed. They'll say that he may have carriedthe cobalt about with him, and so he may have burned other people--in arestaurant, a movie theater, anywhere--while he was carrying the dustand dying without knowing it. So everybody's supposed to report to thehospital for a check-up for radiation burns. Some people may really havethem. But Dad thinks that since you weren't burned, Braun didn't carryit around. If anyone is burned, it'll be the person who brought thecobalt here to give him. And--well--he'll turn up because everybodydoes, and because he's burned he'll be asked plenty of questions."

  Joe stepped on the starter. Then he pressed the accelerator and the carsped forward.

  They stopped at the house in the officers'-quarters area on the otherside of the Shed. Sally picked up the lunch basket that her father'shousekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions. They drove away.

  Red Canyon was eighty miles from the Shed, and the only way to get therewas through Bootstrap, because the only highway away from the Shed ledto that small, synthetic town. It was irritating, though they had noschedule, to find that the long line of busses was ahead of them on thattwenty-mile stretch. The busses ran nose to tail and filled the road fora half-mile or more. It was not possible to pass so long a string ofclose-packed vehicles. There was just enough traffic in the oppositedirection to make that impracticable.

  They had to trail the line of busses as far as Bootstrap and crawlthrough the crowded streets. Once beyond the town they came to asecurity stop. Here Sally's pass was good. Then they went rolling on andon through an empty, arid, sun-baked terrain toward the hills to thewest. It looked remarkably lonely. Joe thought for the first time aboutgas. He looked carefully at the fuel gauge. Sally shook her head.

  "Don't worry. Plenty of gas. Security takes care of that. When I saidwhere we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everythingchecked. If I live through this, I'll bet I stay a fanatic aboutcautiousness all my life!"

  Joe said distastefully: "I suppose it gets everybody. Mike--the midget,you know--called me back just now to suggest that the people who triedto spoil the gyros might try to harm the four of us to hinder theirrepair!"

  "It's not just foolishness," Sally admitted. "The strain is pretty bad,especially when you know things. You've noticed that Dad's getting gray.That's strain. And Miss Ross is about as tense. Things leak out in themost remarkable way--and Dad can't find out how. Once there was a caseof sabotage and he could have sworn that nobody had the information thatpermitted it but himself and Miss Ross. She had hysterics. She insistedthat she wanted to be locked up somewhere so she couldn't be suspectedof telling anybody anything. She'd resign tomorrow if she could. It'sghastly." Then she hesitated and smiled faintly: "In fact, so Dadwouldn't worry about me this afternoon----"

  He took his eyes off the road to glance at her.

  "What?"

  "I promised we wouldn't go swimming and----" Then she said awkwardly:"There are two pistols in the glove compartment. Dad knows you. So Ipromised you'd put one in your pocket up at the lake."

  Joe drew a deep breath. She opened the glove compartment and handed hima pistol. He looked at it: .38, hammerless. A good safe weapon. Heslipped it in his coat pocket. But he frowned.

  "I was looking forward to--not worrying for a while," he said wryly."But now I'll have to remember to keep looking over my shoulder all thetime!"

  "Maybe," said Sally, "you can look over my shoulder and I'll look overyours, and we can glance at each other occasionally."

  She laughed, and he managed to smile. But the trace of a frown remainedon his forehead.

  Joe drove and drove and drove. Once they came to a very small town. Itmay have contained a hundred people. There were gas pumps and arestaurant and two or three general stores, which were certainly toomany for the permanent residents. But there were cow ponies hitchedbefore the stores, and automobiles were also in view. The ground herewas slightly rolling. The mountains had grown to good-sized rampartsagainst the sky. Joe drove carefully down the single street, turning outwidely once to dodge a dog sleeping placidly in an area normallyreserved for traffic.

  Finally they came to the foothills, and then the road curved andrecurved as it wound among them. And two hours from Bootstrap theyreached Red Canyon. They first saw the dam from downstream. It was amonstrous structure of masonry, alone in the mountains. From its top aplume of falling water jetted out.

  "The dam's for irrigation," said Sally professionally, "and the Shedgets all its power from here. One of Dad's nightmares is that somebodymay blow up this dam and leave Bootstrap and the Shed without power."

  Joe said nothing. He drove on up the trail as it climbed the canyon wallin hairpin slants. It was ticklish driving. But then, quite suddenly,they reached the top of the canyon wall and the top of the dam and thelevel of the lake at once. Here there was a sheet of water that reachedback among the barren hillsides for miles and miles. It twisted out ofsight. There were small waves on its surface, and grass at its edge.There were young trees. The powerhouse was a small squat structure inthe middle of the dam. Not a person was visible anywhere.

  "Here we are," said Sally, when Joe stopped the car.

  He got out and went around to open the door for her. But she was alreadystepping out with the lunch basket in her hand when he arrived. Hereached for it, and she held on, and they moved companionably away fromthe car carrying the basket between them.

  "There's a nice place," said Sally, pointing.

  A small ridge of rock stretched out into the lake, and rose, and spread,and formed what was
almost a miniature island some fifty feet across.There were some young trees on it. Sally and Joe climbed down the slopeand out the rocky isthmus that connected it with the shore.

  Sally let down the lunch box on a stone and laughed for no reason at allas the wind blew her hair. It was a cool wind from over the water. AndJoe realized with a shock of surprise that the air felt different andsmelled different when it blew over open water like this. Up to now hehadn't thought of the dryness of the air in Bootstrap and the Shed.

  The lunch basket was tilted a little. Joe picked it up and settled itmore solidly. Then he said: "Hungry?"

  There was literally nothing on his mind at the moment but the luxurious,satisfied feeling of being off somewhere with grass and a lake andSally, and a good part of the afternoon to throw away. It felt good. Sohe lifted the lid of the lunch basket.

  There was a revolver there. It was the other one from the glovecompartment of the car. Sally hadn't left it behind. Joe regarded it andsaid ironically: "Happy, carefree youth--that's us! Which are the hamsandwiches, Sally?"