13
On the day of the take-off there were a number of curious side-effectsfrom the completion of the Space Platform. There was a very smallcountry on the other side of the world which determined desperately torisk its existence on the success of the Platform's flight. It had tochoose between abject submission to a powerful neighbor, or thepossibility of a revolution in which its neighbor's troops would take onthe semblance of citizens for street-fighting purposes. If the Platformgot aloft, it could defy its neighbor. And in a grim gamble, it did.
There was also a last-ditch fight in the United Nations, wherein thePlatform was denounced and a certain block of associated countriesissued an ultimatum, threatening to bolt the international organizationif the Platform went aloft. And again there had to be a grim gamble. Ifthe Platform did not take to space and so furnish ultimately a guaranteeof peace, the United Nations would face the alternatives of becoming amilitary alliance for atomic war, or something less than aninternational debating society.
Of course there were less significant results. There were alreadyfourteen popular songs ready for broadcast, orchestrated and rehearsedwith singers ready to saturate the ears of the listening public. Theyranged from _We've Got a Warship in the Sky_, which was more or lessjingoistic, to a boy-and-girl melody entitled _We'll Have a Moon Justfor Us Two_. The latter tune had been stolen from a hit of four yearsbefore, which in turn had been stolen from a hit of six years beforethat, and it had been stolen from a still earlier bit of Bach, so it wasa rather pretty melody.
And of course there was a super-colossal motion picture epic in colorand with musical numbers, champing in its film cans for simultaneousfirst-run showings in eight different key cities. It was titled _To theStars_, and three separate endings had been filmed, of which theappropriate one would of course be used in the eight separate world_premieres_. One ending had the Platform fail due to sabotage, and thehero--played by an actor who had interrupted his seventh honeymoon toplay the part--splendidly prepared to build it all over again. Thesecond ending closed with the Platform headed for Alpha Centaurus--whichwas hardly the intention of anybody outside of filmdom. The third endingwas secret, but it was said that hard-boiled motion-picture executiveshad cried like babies when it was thrown on preview screens.
These, of course, were merely sidelights. They were not very importantin the Shed. There, work went on at a feverish rate although there wasno longer any construction work to be done. In theory, therefore, themembers of welders and pipe-fitters and steel-construction andelectrical and other unions should have retired gracefully to Bootstrap.Members of building-maintenance and rigging and wrecking and otherassorted unions should have been gathered together in far cities,screened by security, and brought to Bootstrap and paid overtime to pullup wood-block flooring and unbolt and jack out the proper sections ofthe Shed's eastern wall.
But if there had been anything of that sort tried, it would haveproduced bloodshed. The men who'd built the Platform were going to seeit depart this Earth or else. They'd never have a second chance. Itwould work the first time or it wouldn't work at all.
So the Platform was made ready for its take-off by the men who had madeit. A gigantic section--two full gores--of the Shed's wall was unboltedin two pieces, and each piece thrust outward at the top and bottom, sothat they were offset from the rest of the huge half-globe. There werehundreds of wheels at their bottom which for the first time touched thesixteen lines of rails laid with unbelievable solidity around theoutside of the Shed. And then the monstrous sections were rolled aside.A vast opening resulted, and morning sunlight smote for the first timemankind's very first space craft.
Joe saw the sunlight strike, and his first sensation was ofdisappointment. The normal shape of the Platform was ungainly, but nowit was practically hidden by the solid-fuel rockets which would consumethemselves in their firing. Also, the floor of the Shed looked strange.It was littered with the clumsy shapes of pushpots, trucked to thisplace in an unending stream all night long. A very young lieutenant fromthe pushpot airfield hunted up Joe and assured him that every drop offuel in every pushpot's tanks had been tested twice--once in the storagetanks, and again in the pushpots. Joe thanked him very politely.
There was no longer any scaffolding. There were no trucks left excepttwo gigantic cranes, which could handle the pushpots like so many toys.And the effect of sunlight pouring into the Shed seemed strange indeed.
Outside, there were carpenters hammering professionally upon a hastygrandstand of timber. Most of the carpenters would have been handierwith rivet guns or welding torches, but it would have been indiscreet tocomment. As fast as a final timber was spiked in place, somebody hastilywound it with very tawdry bunting. Men were stringing wires to thegrandstand, and other men were setting up television and movie cameras.Two Security men grimly stood by each camera amid a glitteringmiscellany of microphones.
Joe was lucky. Or perhaps Sally pulled wires. Anyhow, the two of themhad a vantage point for which many other people would have paidastonishing sums. They waited where the circular ramp between the twoskins of the Shed was broken by the removal of the doorway. They werehalfway up the curve of the Shed's roof, at the edge of the greatopening, and they could see everything, from the pushpot pilots as theywere checked into their contraptions, to the sedate arrival of the bigbrass at the grandstand below.
There was a reverberant humming from the Shed now. It might have beenthe humming of wind blowing across its open section. Joe and Sally saw agrim knot of Security men escorting four crew members to a flight ofwooden steps that led up to a lower air-lock door--Joe had reason toremember that door--and watched them enter and close the air lock behindthem. Then the security men pulled away the wooden stairs and hauledthem completely away. There were a very few highly trusted men makingfinal inspections of the Platform's exterior. One of them was nearly ona level with Joe and Sally. Other men were already lowering themselvesdown on ropes that they later jerked free, but this last man on top dida very human thing. When he'd finished his check-up to the last leastdetail, he pulled something out of his hip pocket. It was a tobacco canfull of black paint. There was a brush with it. He painted his name onthe silvery plates of the Platform, "C. J. Adams, Jr.," and satisfiedlybegan his descent to the ground. His name would go up with the Platformand be visible for uncounted generations--if all went well. He reachedthe ground and walked away, contented.
The cranes began their task. Each one reached down deliberately andpicked up a pushpot. They swung the pushpots to vertical positions andpresented them precisely to the Platform's side. They clung thereridiculously. Magnetic grapples, of course. Joe and Sally, at the end ofthe corridor in the wall, could see the heads of the pushpot pilots intheir plastic domes.
Music blared from behind the grandstand. The seats were being filled.But naturally, the least important personages were arriving first. Therewere women in costumes to which they had given infinite thought--andnobody looked at them except other women. There was khaki. There weregray business suits--slide-rule men, these, who had done the brain-workbehind the Platform's design. Then black broadcloth. Politicians, pastquestion. There is nothing less impressive from a height of two hundredfeet than a pot-bellied man in black broadcloth walking on the ground.
There were men in uniforms which were not of the United States armedforces. They ran heavily to medals, which glittered. There were morearrivals, and more, and more. The newsreel and TV cameras nosed around.
The cranes worked methodically. They dipped, and deftly picked up athing shaped like the top half of a loaf of bread. They swung that metalthing to the Platform's side. Each time it clung fast, like a snail orslug to the surface on which it crawls. Many pushpots clung even to therocket tubes--the same tubes that would presently burn away and vanish.So Joe and Sally saw the pushpots in a new aspect: blunt metal slugswith gaping mouths which were their air scoops.
The tinny music from below cut off. Somebody began an oration. The menwho had built the Platform were not interest
ed in fine phrases, but thisevent was broadcast everywhere, and some people might possibly tune tothe channels that carried the speakers and their orations rather thanthe channels that showed the huge, bleak, obscured shape of the monsterthat was headed either for empty space or pure disaster.
The speaker stopped, and another took his place. Then another. One manspoke for less than a minute, and the stands went wild! But the one whofollowed made splendid gestures. He talked and talked and talked. Thecranes cleaned up the last of the waiting pushpots, and the Platformitself was practically invisible.
The cranes backed off and went away, clanking. The orator raised hisvoice. It made small echoes in the vast cavern that was the Shed.Somebody plucked the speaker's arm. He ended abruptly and sat down,wiping his forehead with a huge blue handkerchief.
There was a roar. A pushpot had started its motor. Another roar.Another. One by one, the multitude of clustering objects added to thedin. In the open a single jet was appalling. Here, the noise became asound which was no longer a sound. It became a tumult which by purevolume ceased to be anything one's ears could understand. It reached apeak and held there. Then, abruptly, all the motors slackened in unison,and then roared more loudly. The group controls within the Platform werebeing tested. Three--four--five times the tumult faded to the merelyunbearable and went up to full volume again.
Joe felt Sally plucking at his arm. He turned, and saw a jet plane'sunderbelly, very close, and its swept-back wings. It was climbingstraight up. Then he saw another jet plane streaking for the greatdome's open door. It moved with incredible velocity. It jerked upwardand climbed over the Shed's curve and was gone. But there were othersand others and others.
These were the fighter ships of the jet-plane guard. For months on endthey had flown above the Shed, protecting it. Now they were going aloftto relieve the present watchers. They were rising to spread out as aninterceptor screen for hundreds of miles in every direction, in casesomebody should be so foolish as to try again the exploit of the nightbefore. They would not see the monster in the Shed again. So in a singleline which reached to the horizon, they made this roaring run for theone last glimpse which was their right. Joe saw tiny specks comestreaking down out of the sky to queue up for this privileged view ofthe Platform before it rose.
Suddenly they were gone, and Joe felt that tingling sense of pride whichnever comes from the sensation of sharing in mere power or splendor orpompous might, but is so certain when the human touch modifiesmagnificence.
And then the roaring of the pushpot engines achieved an utterlyimpossible volume. The whole interior of the Shed was misty now, butshining in the morning light.
And the Platform moved.
At first it was a mere stirring. It turned ever so slightly to one side,pivoting on the ways that had supported it during building. It turnedback and to the other side. The vapor thickened. From each jet motor ablast of blue-white flame poured down, and the moisture in the earth wasturning into steam and stray wood-blocks into acrid smoke. The Platformturned precisely and exactly back to its original position, and Joe'sheart pounded in his throat, because he knew that the turning had beendone with the gyros, and they had been handled by the pilot gyros forwhich he was responsible.
Then the Platform moved again. It lifted by inches and swayed forward.It checked, and lurched again, and went staggering toward the greatopening before it. A part of its base gouged a deep furrow in theearthen floor.
The noise increased from the incredible to the inconceivable. It seemedas if all the thunders since time began had returned to bellow becausethe Platform moved.
And it floated and bumped out of the Shed. It staggered toward the east.Its keel was perhaps, at this point, as much as three feet above theground, but the jet motors cast up blinding clouds of dust and smoke andeven those afoot could not be sure.
There was confusion. The smoke and vapor splashed out in every possibledirection. Joe saw frantic movement, and he realized that the uniformsand the frock coats were scrambling to escape the fumes. Thekhaki-tinted specks which were men seemed to run. The frock coats ran.The carefully-thought-out brighter specks which were women ran gaspingand choking from the smoke. One stout figure toppled, scrambled up, andscuttled frantically for safety.
But the Platform was in motion now. It was a hundred yards beyond theShed wall. Two hundred. Three.... It slowly gathered speed. A half-milefrom the Shed it was definitely clear of the ground. It left a trail ofscorched, burnt desert behind....
It moved almost swiftly, now. Two miles from the Shed it was fifteenfeet above the earth. Three miles, and a clear strip of sunlight showedbeneath it. And it was still accelerating. At four miles and five andsix....
It was aloft, climbing with seemingly infinite slowness, with all thehundreds of straining, thrusting, clumsy pushpots clinging to it andpushing it ever ahead and upward.
It went smoothly toward the east. It continued to gain speed. It did notseem to dip toward the horizon at all. It went on and on, dwindling froma giant to a spot and then to a little dark speck in the sky that stillwent on and on until even Joe could not pretend to himself that he stillsaw it. Even then there was probably a tiny droning noise in the air,but nobody who had watched the take-off could possibly hear it.
Then Joe looked at Sally and she at him. And Joe was grinning like anape with excitement and relief and triumph which was at once his own andthat of all his dreams. Sally's eyes were shining and exultant. Shehugged him in purest exuberance, crying that the Space Platform was up,was up, was up....
* * * * *
At sundown they were waiting on the porch of the Major's quarters behindthe Shed. The Major was there, and Haney and the Chief and Mike and Joe.The Major's whole look had changed. He seemed to have shrunk, and helooked more tired than any man should ever be allowed to get. But hisjob was done, and the reaction was enough to explain everything. He satin an easy chair with a glass beside him, and he looked as if nothing onearth could make him move a finger. But nevertheless he was waiting.
Sally came out with a tray. She gravely passed around the glasses andthe cakes that went with them. Then she sat down on the porch stepsbeside Joe. She looked at him and nodded in friendly fashion. And Joewas inordinately approving of Sally, but he felt awkward at showing ittoo plainly in her father's presence.
Mike said defiantly: "But still it woulda been easier to get it up thereif it'd been built for guys like me!"
Nobody contradicted him. He was right. Anyhow every one of them felt toomuch relaxed and relieved to enter into argument.
Haney said dreamily: "Everything broke right. Everything! They got in ajet stream like they expected, and it gave 'em three hundred miles extraeast-speed. They were eight miles up when the pushpots fired theirjatos, an' twelve miles up when the pushpots let go--they musta nearbroke their pilots' necks when they caught their motors again! And thePlatform's rockets fired just right, makin' flames a mile long, an' theywere goin' then--what were they makin'?"
"Who cares?" asked the Chief peacefully. "Plenty!"
"Six hundred from the pushpots," murmured Haney, frowning, "an' threehundred from the jet stream, and then there was the jatos that all letgo at once, an' then there was eight hundred from the earthrotatin'----"
"They had ten per cent of their rockets unfired when they got into theirorbit," said Mike authoritatively. "They were two thousand miles up whenthey passed over India and now they're four thousand miles up and theorbit's stable. This is their third round, isn't it?"
"Will be," said the Chief.
Joe and Sally sat watching the west. The Space Platform went around theEarth from west to east, like Earth's natural moon, but because of itsspeed it would rise in the west and set in the east six times in everytwenty-four hours.
Major Holt spoke suddenly. The austerity had gone out of his manner withhis energy. He said quietly: "You four--you gave me the worst scare I'veever had in my life. But do you realize that that sabotage attempt withthe two truc
k-loads of explosive--do you realize that they'd have gottenthe Platform if it hadn't been for that crazy trick you four planned,and the precautions we took because of it?"
Joe said depreciatingly: "It was just luck that they happened to pickthe same time, and that Haney was up there with those machine-gunners atthe right moment. It was good luck, but it was luck."
The Major said effortfully: "There are people called accident prones.Accidents happen all around them, and nobody knows why. Youfour--perhaps Joe especially--are not accident prones. You seem to besomething antithetic to accidents. I would hesitate to credit yourusefulness to your brains. Especially Joe's brains. I have known him toolong. But--ah--Washington does not look at it in exactly the same way."
Sally touched Joe warningly. But her face was very bright and proud. Joefelt queer.
"Joe," said the Major tiredly, "was an alternate for membership in thePlatform's crew. But for penicillin, or something of the sort that madea sick man get well quickly, Joe would be up there in the Platform'sorbit now. His--ah--record in the instruction he did take wassatisfactory. And--ah--all four of you were very useful in the laststages of the building of the Platform. Again Joe especially.His--ah--co-operation with higher authorities has produced--ah--veryfavorable comments. So it is felt that he should have some recognition.All of you, of course, but Joe especially. So----"
Joe felt himself going white.
"Joe," said the Major, "is to be offered an appointment as skipper ofa ferry rocket, carrying supplies and crew reliefs to the Platform.His rocket will carry a crew of four, including himself.His--ah--recommendations for membership in his crew will haveconsiderable weight."
There was a buzzing in Joe's ears. He wanted to cry and to dance, andespecially right then he would have liked very much to kiss Sally. Itwould have been the only really appropriate way to express his emotions.
Mike said in a fierce, strained voice: "Joe! I can do anything a bigelephant of a guy can do, and I only use a quarter of the grub and air!You've got to take me, Joe! You've got to!"
The Chief said benignly: "H'm.... I'm gonna be in charge of the engineroom, an' Haney'll be bos'n--let Joe try to take off without us!--an'that don't leave you a rating, Mike, unless you're willin' to be justplain crew!"
Slowly Sally turned her face away from Joe and looked up.
Then they all saw it. A telescope, maybe, would have shown it as thething they'd worked on and fought for. But it didn't look like that tothe naked eye. It was just a tiny speck of incandescence gliding withgrave deliberation across the sky. It was a sliver of sunlight, movingas they watched.
There were a good many millions of people watching it, just then, as itfloated aloft in emptiness. To some it meant peace and hope andconfidence of a serene old age and a life worth living for theirchildren and their children's children. To some it was a fascinatingtechnical achievement. To a few it meant that if wars had ended, andturmoil was no longer the norm of life on earth, this thing would betheir destruction. But it meant something to everybody in the world. Tothe people who had been unable to do anything to help it except to prayfor it, perhaps it meant most of all.
Joe said quietly: "We'll be going up there to visit it. All of us."
He realized that Sally's hand was tightly clasped in his. She said: "Metoo, Joe?"
"Some day," said Joe, "you too."
He stood up to watch more closely. Sally stood beside him. The otherscame to look. They made a group on the lawn, as people were groupedeverywhere in all the world to gaze up at it.
The Space Platform, a tiny sliver of sunshine, an infinitesimal speck ofgolden light, moved sedately across the deepening blue toward the east.Toward the night.
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TOP SECRET
In the little desert town of Bootstrap stands a huge metal shed. In theshed men are building an object that can change the history of mankind.It is a Space Platform. Propelled to an orbit 4000 miles from Earth thisplatform will serve as the starting place for man's exploration ofmysterious outer space.
SPACE PLATFORM tells the exciting story of a young man helping to buildthis first station. With scientific accuracy and imagination MurrayLeinster, one of the world's top science-fiction writers, describes thebuilding and launching of the platform. Here is a fast-paced story ofsabotage and murder directed against a project more secret and valuablethan the atom bomb!
Cover illustration by Earle Bergey
THIS IS A GENUINEPOCKET BOOKROCKEFELLER CENTER NEW YORK 20, N. Y.25c
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Transcriber's Note
The chemical symbol for carbon dioxide is shown asCO_2 to represent subscript 2.
In the following compound words, the hyphen wasremoved to conform to majority use in text: exhaust-blast exhaust blast jet-motors jet motors jet-planes jet planes pilot-gyros pilot gyros space-travel space travel wing-flaps wing flaps
The following compounds, with and without a hyphen, wereleft as found because of equal prevalence of both forms: blood-stained bloodstained wood-blocks wood blocks
One compound was split since joined it suggested aninapposite meaning: cherrystone cherry stone
A host of compounds were left both hyphenated and separatedepending on their part of speech, for example: science-fiction science fiction (adjective) (noun)
One typo was corrected: spendid splendid
Space Platform Page 14
