Space Tug

by Murray Leinster

  3

  Making actual contact with the platform was not a matter for instrumentsand calculations. It had to be done directly--by hand, as it were. Joewatched out the ports and played the controls of the steering jets witha nerve-racked precision. His task was not easy.

  Before he could return to the point of rendezvous, the blinding sunlighton the Platform took on a tinge of red. It was the twilight-zone of thesatellite's orbit, when for a time the sunlight that reached it waslight which had passed through Earth's atmosphere and been bent by itand colored crimson by the dust in Earth's air. It glowed a fiery red,and the color deepened, and then there was darkness.

  They were in Earth's shadow. There were stars to be seen, but no sun.The Moon was hidden, too. And the Earth was a monstrous, incredible,abysmal blackness which at this first experience of its appearanceproduced an almost superstitious terror. Formerly it had seemed adistant but sunlit world, flecked with white clouds and with sprawlingdifferentiations of color beneath them.

  Now it did not look like a solid thing at all. It looked like a hole increation. One could see ten thousand million stars of every imaginabletint and shade. But where the Earth should be there seemed a vastnothingness. It looked like an opening to annihilation. It looked likethe veritable Pit of Darkness which is the greatest horror men have everimagined, and since those in the ship were without weight it seemed thatthey were falling into it.

  Joe knew better, of course. So did the others. But that was the look ofthings, and that was the feeling. One did not feel in danger of death,but of extinction--which, in cold fact, is very much worse.

  Lights glowed on the outside of the Platform to guide the supply ship toit. There were red and green and blue and harsh blue-white electricbulbs. They were bright and distinct, but the feeling of lonelinessabove that awful appearance of the Pit was appalling. No small childalone at night had ever so desolate a sensation of isolation as the fourin the small ship.

  But Joe painstakingly played the buttons of the steering-rocket controlboard. The ship surged, and turned, and surged forward again. Mike, atthe communicator, said, "They say slow up, Joe."

  Joe obeyed, but he was tense. Haney and the Chief were at otherportholes, looking out. The Chief said heavily, "Fellas, I'm going toadmit I never felt so lonesome in my life!"

  "I'm glad I've got you fellows with me!" Haney admitted guiltily.

  "The job's almost over," said Joe.

  The ship's own hull, outside the ports, glowed suddenly in a light-beamfrom the Platform. The small, brief surges of acceleration which sentthe ship on produced tremendous emotional effects. When the Platform wasonly one mile away, Haney switched on the ship's searchlights. Theystabbed through emptiness with absolutely no sign of their existenceuntil they touched the steel hull of the satellite.

  Mike said sharply: "Slow up some more, Joe."

  He obeyed again. It would not be a good idea to ram the Platform afterthey had come so far to reach it.

  They drifted slowly, slowly, slowly toward it. The monstrous Pit ofDarkness which was the night side of Earth seemed almost about to engulfthe Platform. They were a few hundred feet higher than the great metalglobe, and the blackness was behind it. They were a quarter of a mileaway. The distance diminished.

  A thin straight line seemed to grow out toward them. There was a small,bulb-like object at its end. It reached out farther than was at allplausible. Nothing so slender should conceivably reach so far withoutbending of its own weight. But of course it had no weight here. It was aplastic flexible hose with air pressure in it. It groped for thespaceship.

  The four in the ship held their breaths.

  There was a loud, metallic _clank!_

  Then it was possible to feel the ship being pulled toward the Platformby the magnetic grapple. It was a landing-line. It was the means bywhich the ship would be docked in the giant lock which had been built toreceive it.

  As they drew near, they saw the joints of the plating of the Platform.They saw rivets. There was the huge, 30-foot doorway with its valvesswung wide. Their searchlight beam glared into it. They saw the metalfloor, and the bulging plastic sidewalls, restrained by nets. They sawthe inner lock-door. It seemed that men should be visible to welcomethem. There were none.

  The airlock swallowed them. They touched against something solid. Therewere more clankings. They seemed to crunch against the metalfloor--magnetic flooring-grapples. Then, in solid contact with thesubstance of the Platform, they heard the sounds of the great outerdoors swinging shut. They were within the artificial satellite of Earth.It was bright in the lock, and Joe stared out the cabin ports at thequilted sides. There was a hissing of air, and he saw a swirling mist,and then the bulges of the sidewall sagged. The air pressure gauge wasspinning up toward normal sea-level air pressure.

  Joe threw the ready lever of the steering rockets to _Off_. "We'relanded."

  There was silence. Joe looked about him. The other three looked queer.It would have seemed natural for them to rejoice on arriving at theirdestination. But somehow they didn't feel that they had.

  Joe said wrily, "It seems that we ought to weigh something, now we'vegot here. So we feel queer that we don't. Shoes, Mike?"

  Mike peeled off the magnetic-soled slippers from their place on thecabin wall. He handed them out and opened the door. A biting chill camein it. Joe slipped on the shoe-soles with their elastic bands to holdthem. He stepped out the door.

  He didn't land. He floated until he reached the sidewall. Then he pulledhimself down by the netting. Once he touched the floor, his shoes seemedto be sticky. The net and the plastic sidewalls were, of course, themethod by which a really large airlock was made practical. When thisship was about to take off again, pumps would not labor for hours topump the air out. The sidewalls would inflate and closely enclose theship's hull, and so force the air in the lock back into the ship. Thenthe pumps would work on the air behind the inflated walls--with nets tohelp them draw the wall-stuff back to let the ship go free. The lockcould be used with only fifteen minutes for pumping instead of fourhours.

  The door in the back of the lock clanked open. Joe tried to walk towardit. He discovered his astounding clumsiness. To walk in magnetic-soledshoes in weightlessness requires a knack. When Joe lifted one foot andtried to swing the other forward, his body tried to pivot. When helifted his right foot, he had to turn his left slightly inward. His armstried to float absurdly upward. When he was in motion and essayed topause, his whole body tended to continue forward with a sedate topplingmotion that brought him down flat on his face. He had to put one footforward to check himself. He seemed to have no sense of balance. When hestood still--his stomach queasy because of weightlessness--he foundhimself tilting undignifiedly forward or back--or, with equalunpredictability, sidewise. He would have to learn an entirely newmethod of walking.

  A man came in the lock, and Joe knew who it was. Sanford, the seniorscientist of the Platform's crew. Joe had seen him often enough on thetelevision screen in the Communications Room at the Shed. Now Sanfordlooked nerve-racked, but his eyes were bright and his expressionsardonic.

  "My compliments," he said, his voice tight with irony, "for a splendidlyfutile job well done! You've got your cargo invoice?"

  Joe nodded. Sanford held out his hand. Joe fumbled in his pocket andbrought out the yellow sheet.

  "I'd like to introduce my crew," said Joe. "This is Haney, and ChiefBender, and Mike Scandia." He waved his hand, and his whole body wobbledunexpectedly.

  "We'll know each other!" said Sanford sardonically. "Our first job ismore futility--to get the guided missiles you've brought us into thelaunching tubes. A lot of good they'll do!"

  A huge plate in the roof of the lock--but it was not up or down or inany particular direction--withdrew itself. A man floated through theopening and landed on the ship's hull; another man followed him.

  "Chief," said Joe, "and Haney. Will you open the cargo doors?"

  The two swaying figures moved to obey, though with erratic
clumsiness.Sanford called sharply: "Don't touch the hull without gloves! If itisn't nearly red-hot from the sunlight, it'll be below zero fromshadow!"

  Joe realized, then, the temperature effects the skin on his facenoticed. A part of the spaceship's hull gave off heat like that of apanel heating installation. Another part imparted a chill.

  Sanford said unpleasantly, "You want to report your heroism, eh? Comealong!"

  He clanked to the doorway by which he had entered. Joe followed, andMike after him.

  They went out of the lock. Sanford suddenly peeled off his metal-soledslippers, put them in his pocket, and dived casually into a four-footmetal tube. He drifted smoothly away along the lighted bore, nottouching the sidewalls. He moved in the manner of a dream, when onefloats with infinite ease and precision in any direction one chooses.

  Joe and Mike did not share his talent. Joe launched himself afterSanford, and for perhaps 20 or 30 feet the lighted aluminum sidewall ofthe tube sped past him. Then his shoulder rubbed, and he found himselfskidding to an undignified stop, choking the bore. Mike thudded intohim.

  "I haven't got the hang of this yet," said Joe apologetically.

  He untangled himself and went on. Mike followed him, his expression thatof pure bliss. He was a tiny man, was Mike, but he had the longings andthe ambitions of half a dozen ordinary-sized men in his small body. Andhe had known frustration. He could prove by mathematics that spaceexploration could be carried on by midgets at a fraction of the cost andrisk of the same job done by normal-sized men. He was, of course, quiteright. The cabins and air and food supplies for a spaceship's crew ofmidgets would cost and weigh a fraction of similar equipment forsix-footers. But people simply weren't interested in sending midgetsout into space.

  But Mike had gotten here. He was in the Space Platform. There werefull-sized men who would joyfully have changed places with him,forty-one inch height and all. So Mike was blissful.

  The tube ended and Joe bounced off the wall that faced its end. Sanfordwas waiting. He grinned with more than a hint of spite.

  "Here's our communications room," he said. "Now you can talk down toEarth. It'll be relayed, now, but in half an hour you can reach the Sheddirect."

  He floated inside. Joe followed cautiously. There was another crewmember on duty there. He sat before a group of radar screens, with thighgrips across his legs to hold him in his chair. He turned his head andnodded cheerfully enough.

  "Here!" snapped Sanford.

  Joe clambered awkwardly to the seat the senior crew member pointed out.He made his way to it by handholds on the walls. He fumbled into thechair and threw over the curved thigh grips that would hold him inplace.

  Suddenly he was oriented. He had seen this room before--before thePlatform was launched. True, the man at the radar screens wasupside-down with reference to himself, and Sanford had hooked a kneenegligently around the arm of a firmly anchored chair with his body atright angles to Joe's own, but at least Joe knew where he was and whathe was to do.

  "Go ahead and report," said Sanford sardonically. "You might tell themthat you heroically destroyed the rockets that attacked us, and thatyour crew behaved splendidly, and that you have landed in the SpacePlatform and the situation is well in hand. It isn't, but it will makenice headlines."

  Joe said evenly, "Our arrival's been reported?"

  "No," said Sanford, grinning. "Obviously the radar down onEarth--shipboard ones on this hemisphere, of course--have reported thatthe Platform still exists. But we haven't communicated since the bombswent off. They probably think we had so many punctures that we lost allour air and are all wiped out. They'll be glad to hear from you that wearen't."

  Joe threw a switch, frowning. This wasn't right. Sanford was the seniorscientist on board and hence in command, because he was best-qualifiedto direct the scientific observations the Platform was making. But therewas something specifically wrong.

  The communicator hummed. A faint voice sounded. It swelled to loudness."Calling Space Platform! _Calling Space Platform!_ CALLING SPACEPLATFORM!" Joe turned down the volume. He said into the microphone:

  "Space Platform calling Earth. Joe Kenmore reporting. We have madecontact with the Platform and completed our landing. Our cargo is nowbeing unloaded. Our landing rockets had to be expended againstpresumably hostile bombs, and we are now unable to return to Earth. Theship and the Platform, however, are unharmed. I am now waiting fororders. Report ends."

  He turned away from the microphone. Sanford said sharply, "Go on! Tellthem what a hero you are!"

  "I'm going to help unload my ship," Joe said shortly. "You report whatyou please."

  "Get back at that transmitter!" shouted Sanford furiously. "Tell 'emyou're a hero! Tell 'em you're wonderful! I'll tell 'em how useless itis!"

  Joe saw the other man in the room, the man at the radar screens, shakehis head. He got up and fumbled his way along the wall to the door.Sanford shouted after him angrily.

  Joe went out, found the four-foot tunnel, and floated not down but alongit back to the unloading lock. Wordlessly, he set to work to get thecargo out of the cargo hold of the spaceship.

  Handling objects in weightlessness which on Earth would be heavy was anart in itself. Two men could move tons. It needed only one man to starta massive crate in motion. However, one had either to lift or push anobject in the exact line it was to follow. To thrust hard for a shorttime produced exactly the same effect as to push gently for a longerperiod. Anything floated tranquilly in the line along which it wasmoved. The man who had to stop it, though, needed to use exactly as muchenergy as the man who sent it floating. He needed to check the floatingthing in exactly the same line. If one tried to stop a massive shipmentfrom one side, he would topple into it and he and the crate togetherwould go floundering helplessly over each other.

  The Chief had gone off to help maneuver two-ton guided missiles intolaunching tubes. One crew member remained with Haney, unloading thingsthat would have had to be handled with cranes on Earth. Joe foundhimself needed most in the storage chamber. A crate floated from theship to the crewman. Standing head downward, he stopped its originalmovement, braced himself, and sent it floating to Joe. He bracedhimself, stopped its flight, and very slowly--to move fast with anythingheavy in his hands would pull his feet from the floor--set it on a stackof similar objects which would presently be fastened in place.

  Everything had to be done in slow motion, or one would lose his footing.Joe worked painstakingly. He gradually began to understand the process.But the muscles of his stomach ached because of their continuous,instinctive cramp due to the sensation of unending fall.

  Mike floated through the hatchway from the lock. He twisted about as hefloated, and his magnetized soles clanked to a deft contact with thewall. He said calmly: "That guy Sanford has cracked up. He's potty. Ifthis were jail he'd be stir-crazy. He's yelling into the communicatornow that we'll all be dead in a matter of days, and the rocket missileswe brought up won't help. He's nasty about it, too!"

  Haney called from the cargo space of the ship in the lock: "All emptyhere! We're unloaded."

  There were sounds as he closed the cargo doors. Haney, followed by theChief, came into view, floating as Mike had done. But he didn't land asskillfully. He touched the wall on his hands and knees and bounced awayand tried helplessly to swim to a hand-hold. It would have been funnyexcept that Joe was in no mood for humor.

  Mike whipped off his belt and flipped the end of it to Haney. He caughtit and was drawn gently to the wall. Haney's shoes clicked to a hold.The Chief landed more expertly.

  "We need wings here," he said ruefully. "You reported, Joe?"

  Joe nodded. He turned to Brent, the crew member who'd been unloading. Heknew him too, from their two-way video conversations.

  "Sanford does act oddly," he said uncomfortably. "When he met me in thelock he said our coming was useless. He talked about the futility ofeverything while I reported. He sounds like he sneers at every possibleaction as useless."

  "Most lik
ely it is," Brent said mildly. "Here, anyhow. It does look asif we're going to be knocked off. But Sanford's taking it badly. Therest of us have let him act as he pleased because it didn't seem tomatter. It probably doesn't, except that he's annoying."

  Mike said truculently, "We won't be knocked off! We've got rockets ofour own up here now! We can fight back if there's another attack!"

  Brent shrugged. His face was young enough, but deeply lined. He said asmildly as before: "Your landing rockets set off four bombs on the wayfrom Earth. You brought us six more rocket missiles. How many bombs canwe knock down with them?"

  Joe blinked. It was a shock to realize the facts of life in anartificial satellite. If it could be reached by bombs from Earth, thebombs could be reached by guided missiles from the satellite. But itwould take one guided missile to knock down one bomb--with luck.

  "I see," said Joe slowly. "We can handle just six more bombs fromEarth."

  "Six in the next month," agreed Brent wrily. "It'll be that long beforewe get more. Somebody sent up four bombs today. Suppose they send eightnext time? Or simply one a day for a week?"

  Mike made an angry noise. "The seventh bomb shot at us knocks us out!We're sitting ducks here too!"

  Brent nodded. He said mildly:

  "Yes. The Platform can't be defended against an indefinite number ofbombs from Earth. Of course the United States could go to war becausewe've been shot at. But would that do us any good? We'd be shot down inthe war."

  Joe said distastefully, "And Sanford's cracked up because he knows he'sgoing to be killed?"

  Brent said earnestly. "Oh, no! He's a good scientist! But he's alwayshad a brilliant mind. Poor devil, he's never failed at anything in allhis life until now! Now he _has_ failed. He's going to be killed, and hecan't think of any way to stop it. His brains are the only things he'sever believed in, and now they're no good. He can't accept the idea thathe's stupid, so he has to believe that everything else is. It's anecessity for him. Haven't you known people who had to think everybodyelse was stupid to keep from knowing that they were themselves?"

  Joe nodded. He waited.

  "Sanford," said Brent earnestly, "simply can't adjust to the discoverythat he's no better than anybody else. That's all. He was a nice guy,but he's not used to frustration and he can't take it. Therefore hescorns everything that frustrates him--and everything else, bynecessity. He'll be scornful about getting killed when it happens. Butwaiting for it is becoming intolerable to him."

  He looked at his watch. He said apologetically, "I'm the crewpsychologist. That's why I speak so firmly. In five minutes we're due tocome out of the Earth's shadow into sunshine again. I'd suggest that youcome to watch. It's good to look at."

  He did not wait for an answer. He led the way. And the others followedin a strange procession. Somehow, automatically, they fell into singlefile, and they moved on their magnetic-soled slippers toward a passagetube in one wall. Their slipper soles clanked and clicked in an erraticrhythm. Brent walked with the mincing steps necessary for movement inweightlessness. The others imitated him. Their hands no longer hungnaturally by their sides, but tended to make extravagant gestures withthe slightest muscular impulse. They swayed extraordinarily as theywalked. Brent was a slender figure, and Joe was more thick-set, andHaney was taller, and lean. The burly Chief and the forty-one inchfigure of Mike the midget followed after them. They made a queerprocession indeed.

  Minutes later they were in a blister on the skin of the Platform. Therewere quartz glass ports in the sidewall. Outside the glass were metalshutters. Brent served out dense goggles, almost black, and touched thebuttons that opened the steel port coverings.

  They looked into space. The dimmer stars were extinguished by thegoggles they wore. The brighter ones seemed faint and widely spaced.Beneath their feet as they held to handrails lay the featurelessdarkness of Earth. But before them and very far away there was a vast,dim arch of deepest red.

  It was sunlight filtered through the thickest layers of Earth's air. Itbarely outlined the curve of that gigantic globe. As they stared, itgrew brighter. The artificial satellite required little more than fourhours for one revolution about its primary, the Earth. To those aboardit, the Earth would go through all its phases in no longer a time. Theysaw now the thinnest possible crescent of the new Earth. But inminutes--almost in seconds--the deep red sunshine brightened to gold.The hair-thin line of light widened to a narrow ribbon which describedan eight-thousand-mile half-circle. It brightened markedly at themiddle. It remained red at its ends, but in the very center it glowedwith splendid flame. Then a golden ball appeared, and swam up anddetached itself from the Earth, and the on-lookers saw the breath-takingspectacle of all of Earth's surface seemingly being born of the night.

  As if new-created before their eyes, seas and lands unfolded in thesunlight. They watched flecks of cloud and the long shadows ofmountains, and the strangely different colorings of its fields andforests.

  As Brent had told them, it was good to watch.

  It was half an hour later when they gathered in the kitchen of thePlatform. The man who had been loading launching tubes now brisklyworked to prepare a meal on the extremely unusual cooking-devices of ahuman outpost in interplanetary space.

  The food smelled good. But Joe noticed that he could smell growingthings. Green stuff. It was absurd--until he remembered that there was ahydroponic garden here. Plants grew in it under sunlamps which wereturned on for a certain number of hours every day. The plants purifiedthe Platform's air, and of course provided some fresh and nourishingfood for the crew.

  They ate. The food was served in plastic bowls, with elastic threadcovers through which they could see and choose the particular morselsthey fancied next. The threads stretched to let through the forks theyate with. But Brent used a rather more practical pair of tongs in abusinesslike manner.

  They drank coffee from cups which looked very much like ordinary cups onEarth. Joe remembered suddenly that Sally Holt had had much to do withthe design of domestic science arrangements here. He regarded his cupwith interest. It stayed in its saucer because of magnets in bothplastic articles. The saucer stayed on the table because the table wasmagnetic, too. And the coffee did not float out to mid-air in a hot,round brownish ball, because there was a transparent cover over the cup.When one put his lips to the proper edge, a part of the cover yielded asthe cup was squeezed. The far side of the cup was flexible. One pressed,and the coffee came into one's lips without the spilling of a drop.

  At that moment Joe really thought of Sally for the first time in a goodtwo hours. She'd been anxious that living in the Platform should be asnormal and Earth-like as possible. The total absence of weight would bebad enough. She believed it needed to be countered, as a psychologicalfactor in staying sane, by the effect of normal-seeming chairs andnormal-tasting food, and not too exotic systems for eating.

  Joe asked Brent about it.

  "Oh, yes," said Brent mildly. "It's likely we'd all have gone off thedeep end if there weren't some familiar things about. To have to drinkfrom a cup that one squeezes is tolerable. But we'd have felt hystericalat times if we had to drink everything from the equivalent of babybottles."

  "Sally Holt," said Joe, "is a friend of mine. She helped design thisstuff."

  "That girl has every ounce of brains that any woman can be trustedwith!" Brent said warmly. "She thought of things that would never haveoccurred to me! As a psychologist, I could see how good her ideas werewhen she brought them up, but as a male I'd never have dreamed of them."Then he grinned. "She fell down on just one point. So did everybodyelse. Nobody happened to think of a garbage-disposal system for thePlatform."

  It came into Joe's mind that garbage-disposal was hardly a subject onewould expect to be discussing in interplanetary space. But the Platformwasn't the same thing as a spaceship. A ship could jettison refuse andleave it behind, or store it during a voyage and dump it at either end.But the Space Platform would never land. It could roll on forever. Andif it heaved out its refu
se from airlocks--why--the stuff would stillhave the Platform's orbital speed and would follow it tirelessly aroundthe Earth until the end of time.

  "We dry and store it now," said Brent. "If we were going to live, we'dfigure out some way to turn it to fertilizer for the hydroponic gardens.It's hardly worth while as things are. Even then, though, the problem oftin cans could be hopeless."

  The Chief wiped his mouth deliberately. He had helped load fourguided-missile launching tubes, and he had been brought up to date onthe state of things in the Platform. He growled in a preliminary fashionand said, "Joe."

  Joe looked at him.

  "We brought up six two-ton guided missiles," said the Chief dourly."We'll have warning of other bombs coming up. We can send these missilesout to intercept 'em. Six of 'em. They can get close enough to set offtheir proximity fuses, anyhow. But what are we going to do, Joe, ifsomebody flings seven bombs at us? We can manage six--maybe. But what'llwe do with the one that's left over?"

  "Have you any ideas?" asked Joe.

  The Chief shook his head. Brent said mildly. "We've worked on that herein the Platform, I assure you. And as Sanford puts it quite soundly,about the only thing we can really do is throw our empty tin cans atthem."

  Joe nodded. Then he tensed. Brent had meant it as a rather mirthlessjoke. But Joe was astonished at what his own brain made of it. Hethought it over. Then he said, "Why not? It ought to be a very goodtrick."

  Brent stared at him incredulously. Haney looked solemnly at him. TheChief regarded Joe thoughtfully out of the corner of his eye. Then Mikeshouted gleefully. The Chief blinked, and a moment later gruntedwrathful unintelligible syllables of Mohawk, and then tried to pound Joeon the back and because of his want of weight went head over heels intothe air between the six walls of the kitchen.

  Haney said disgustedly, "Joe, there are times when a guy wants to murderyou! Why didn't I think of that?"

  But Brent was looking at the four of them with a lively, helplesscuriosity. "Will you guys let me in on this?"

  They told him. Joe began to explain it carefully, but the Chief broke inwith a barked and impatient description, and then Mike interrupted tosnap a correction. But by that time Brent's expression had changed withastonishing suddenness.

  "I see! I see!" he said excitedly. "All right! Have you got space suitsin your ship? We have them. So we'll go out and pelt the stars withgarbage. I think we'd better get at it right now, too. In under twohours we'll be a fine target for more bombs, and it would be good tostart ahead of time."

  Mike made a gesture and went floating out of the kitchen, air-swimmingto go get space suits from the ship. The grin on his small facethreatened to cut his throat. Joe asked, "Sanford's in command. How'llhe like this idea?"

  Brent hesitated. "I'm afraid," he said regretfully, "he won't like it.If you solve a problem he gave up, it will tear his present adjustmentto bits. He's gone psychotic. I think, though, that he'll allow it to betried while he swears at us for fools. He's most likely to react thatway if you suggest it."

  "Then," agreed Joe, "I suggest it. Chief----"

  The Chief raised a large brown hand.

  "I got the program, Joe," he said. "We'll all get set."

  And Joe went floating unhappily through passage-tubes to the controlroom. He heard Sanford's voice, sardonic and mocking, as he reached thecommunications room door.

  "What do you expect?" Sanford was saying derisively. "We're claypigeons. We're a perfect target. We've just so much ammunition now. Yousay you may send us more in three weeks instead of a month. I admireyour persistence, but it's really no use! This is all a very stupidbusiness...."

  He felt Joe's presence. He turned, and then sharply struck thecommunicator switch with the heel of his hand. The image on thetelevision screen died. The voice cut off. He said blandly: "Well?"

  "I want," said Joe, "to take a garbage-disposal party out on the outsideof the Platform. I came to ask for authority."

  Sanford looked at him in mocking surprise.

  "To be sure it seems as intelligent as anything else the human race hasever done," he observed. "But why does it appeal to you as something youwant to do?"

  "I think," Joe told him, "that we can make a defense against bombs fromEarth with our empty tin cans."

  Sanford raised his eyebrows.

  "If you happen to have a four-leaf clover with you," he said in fineirony, "I'm told they're good, too."

  His eyes were bright and scornful. His manner was feverishly derisive.Joe would have done well to let it go at that. But he was nettled.

  "We set off the last bombs," he said doggedly, "by shooting our landingrockets at them. They didn't collide with the bombs. They simplytouched off the bombs' proximity fuses. If we surround the Platform witha cluster of tin cans and such things, they may do as well. Things wethrow away won't drop to Earth. Ultimately, they'll actually circle us,like satellites themselves. But if we can get enough of them between usand Earth, any bombs that come up will have their proximity fusesdetonated by the floating trash we throw out."

  Sanford laughed.

  "We might ask for aluminum-foil ribbon to come up in the next supplyship," said Joe. "We could have masses of that, or maybe metallic dustfloating around us."

  "I much prefer used tin cans," said Sanford humorously. "I'll take thewatch here and let everybody go out with you. By all means we mustdefend ourselves. Forward with the garbage! Go ahead!"

  His eyes were almost hysterically scornful as he waited for Joe toleave. Joe did not like it at all, but there was nothing to do but getout.

  He found the Chief with a net bag filled with emptied tin cans. Haneyhad another. There were two more, carried by members of the Platform'sfour-man crew. They were donning their space suits when Joe came uponthem. Mike was grotesque in the cut-down outfit built for him. Actually,the only difference was in the size of the fabric suit and the length ofthe arms and legs. He could carry a talkie outfit with its batteries,and the oxygen tank for breathing as well as anybody, since out hereweight did not count at all. There were plastic ropes, resistant toextremes of temperature.

  Joe got into his own space suit. It was no such self-contained spacecraft in itself as the fantastic story tellers dreamed of. It was notmuch more than an altitude suit, aluminized to withstand the blazingheat of sunshine in emptiness, and with extravagantly insulated soles tothe magnetic boots. In theory, there simply is no temperature in space.In practice, a metal hull heats up in sunshine to very much more thanany record-hot-day temperature on Earth. In shadow, too, a metal hullwill drop very close to minus 250 degrees Centigrade, which is somethinglike 400 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. But mainly the space boots wereinsulated against the almost dull-red-heat temperatures oflong-continued sunshine.

  A crewman named Corey moved into an airlock with one of the bags ofempty tin cans. Brent watched in a routine fashion through a glass inthe lock-door. The pumps began to exhaust the air from the airlock.Corey's space suit inflated visibly. Presently the pump stopped. Coreyopened the outer door. He went out, paying plastic rope behind him. Aninstant later he reappeared and removed the rope. He'd made his linefast outside. He closed the outer lock-door. Air surged into the lockand Haney crowded in. Again the pumping. Then Haney went out, and wasanchored to the Platform not only by his magnetic boots but by a ropefastened to a hand-hold. Brent went out. Mike. Joe came next.

  They stood on the hull of the Space Platform, waiting in the incredibleharsh sunshine of emptiness. The bright steel plates of the hull swelledand curved away on every hand. There were myriads of stars and the vastround bulk of Earth seemed farther away to a man in a space suit than toa man looking out a port. Where shadows cut across the Platform'sirregular surface, there was utter blackness. Also there was horriblefrigidity. Elsewhere it was blindingly bright. The men were specks ofhumanity standing on a shining metal hull, and all about them there wasthe desolation of nothingness.

  But Joe felt strangely proud. The seventh man came out of the lock-door.They tied
their plastic ropes together and spread out in a long linewhich went almost around the Platform. The man next to the lock wasanchored to a steel hand-hold. The third man of the line also anchoredhimself. The fifth. The seventh. They were a straggling line of figureswith impossibly elongated shadows, held together by ropes. They werepeculiarly like a party of weirdly costumed mountaineers on a glacier ofgleaming silver.

  But no mountain climbers ever had a background of ten thousand millionstars, peering up from below them as well as from overhead. Nor did anyever have a mottled greenish planet rolling by 4,000 miles beneaththem, nor a blazing sun glaring down at them from a sky such as this.

  In particular, perhaps, no other explorers ever set out upon anexpedition whose purpose was to throw tin cans and dried refuse at allthe shining cosmos.

  They set to work. The space suits were inevitably clumsy. It was noteasy to throw hard with only magnetism to hold one to his feet. It wasactually more practical to throw straight up with an underhand gesture.But even that would send the tin cans an enormous distance, in time.There was no air to slow them.

  The tin cans twinkled as they left the Platform's steel expanse. Theymoved away at a speed of possibly 20 to 30 miles an hour. They floatedoff in all possible directions. They would never reach Earth, of course.They shared the Platform's orbital speed, and they would circle theEarth with it forever. But when they were thrown away, their orbits weredisplaced a little. Each can thrown downward just now, for example,would always be between the Platform and the Earth on this side of itsorbit. But on the other side of Earth it would be above the Platform.The Platform, in fact, became the center of a swarm, a cluster, a cloudof infinitesimal objects which would always accompany it and always bein motion with regard to it. Together, they should make up a screen noproximity fuse bomb could pierce without exploding.

  Joe heard clankings, transmitted to his body through his feet.

  "What's that?" he demanded sharply. "It sounds like the airlock!"

  Voices mingled in his ears. The other walkie-talkies allowed everybodyto speak at once. Most of them did. Then Joe heard someone laugh. It wasSanford's voice.

  Sandford's aluminized, space-suited figure came clanking around thecurve of the small metal world. The antenna of his walkie-talkieglittered above his head. He seemed to swagger against the background ofmany-colored stars.

  Brent spoke quickly, before anyone else could question Sanford. Histone was mild and matter of fact, but Joe somehow knew the tensionbehind it.

  "Hello, Sanford. You came out? Was it wise? Shouldn't there be someoneinside the Platform?"

  Sanford laughed again. "It was very wise. We're going to be killed, asyou fellows know perfectly well. It's futile to try to avoid it. So verysensibly I've decided to spare myself the nuisance of waiting to bekilled. I came out."

  There was silence in the ear-phones of Joe's space suit radio. He heardhis own heart beating loudly and steadily in the absolute stillness.

  "Incidentally," said Sanford with almost hysterical amusement, "I fixedit so that none of us can get back in. It would be useless, anyhow.Everything's futility. So I've put an end to our troubles for good. I'velocked us all out."

  He laughed yet again. And Joe knew that in Sanford's madness it wasperfectly possible for him to have done exactly what he said.

  There were eight human beings on the Platform. All were now outside it,on its outer skin. They wore space suits with from half an hour to anhour's oxygen supply. They had no tools with which to break back intothe satellite. And no help could possibly reach them in less than threeweeks.

  If they couldn't get back inside the Platform, Sanford, laughingproudly, had killed them all.