Space Tug

by Murray Leinster

  4

  There was a babbling of angry, strained, tense voices in Joe'sheadphones. Then the Chief roared for silence. It fell, save forSanford's quiet, hysterical chuckling. Joe found himself rather absurdlythinking that Sanford was not actually insane, except as any man may bewho believes only in his own cleverness. Sooner or later it is bound tofail him. On Earth, Sanford's pride in his own intellect had beenuseful. He had been brilliant because he accepted every problem andevery difficulty as a challenge. But with the Platform's situationseemingly hopeless, he'd been starkly unable to face the fact that hewasn't clever or brilliant or intelligent enough. If Joe's solution tothe proximity fuse bombs had been offered before his emotional collapse,he could have accepted it grandly, and in so doing have made it his own.But it was too late for that now. He'd given up and worked up a franticscorn for the universe he could not cope with. For Joe's trick to workwould have made him inferior even to Joe in his own view. And hecouldn't have that! Even to die, with the prospect that others wouldsurvive him, was an intolerable prospect. He had to be smarter thananybody else.

  So he chuckled. The Chief roared wrathfully into his transmitter:"Quiet! This crazy fool's tried to commit suicide for all of us! Howabout it? Why can't we get back in? How many locks----"

  Joe found himself thinking hard. He could be angry later. Now therewasn't time. Thirty or forty minutes of breathing. No tools. A steelhull. The airlocks were naturally arranged for the greatest possiblesafety under normal conditions. In every airlock it had naturally beenarranged so that the door to space and the door to the interior couldnot be open at the same time. That was to save lives. To save air, itwould naturally be arranged that the door to space couldn't be openeduntil the lock was pumped empty.

  That in itself could be an answer. Joe said sharply, "Hold it, Chief!Somebody watch Sanford! All we've got to do is find which lock he cameout of. He couldn't get out until he pumped it empty--and that unlocksthe outer door!"

  But Sanford laughed once more. He sounded like someone in the highest ofhigh good humor.

  "Heroic again, eh? But I took a compressed air bottle in the lock withme. When the outer door was open, I opened the stopcock and shut thedoor. The air bottle filled the lock behind me. Naturally I'd fasten thedoor after I came out! One must be intelligent!"

  Joe heard Brent muttering, "Yes, he'd do that!"

  "Somebody check it!" snapped Joe. "Make sure! It might amuse him towatch us die while he knew we could get back in if we were as smart ashe is."

  There were clankings on the hull. Men moved, unfastening the lines whichheld them to the hull to get freedom of movement, but not breaking thelinks which bound them to each other. Joe saw Haney go grimly back tothe task of throwing away the stuff that they had brought out for thepurpose. Then Mike's voice, brittle and cagey: "Haney! Quit it!"

  Sanford's voice again, horribly amused. "By all means! Don't throw awayour garbage! We may need it!"

  A voice snapped, "This lock's fastened." Another voice: "And this...."Other voices, with increasing desperation, verified that every airlockwas implacably sealed fast by the presence of air pressure inside thelock itself.

  Time was passing. Joe had never noticed, before, the minute noises ofthe air pressure apparatus strapped to his back. His exhaled breath wentto a tiny pump that forced it through a hygroscopic filter which at onceextracted excess moisture and removed carbon dioxide. The same pumpcarefully measured a volume of oxygen equal to the removed CO_2 andadded it to the air it released. The pump made very small sounds indeed,and the valves were almost noiseless, but Joe could hear theirclickings.

  Something burned him. He had been standing perfectly still while tryingto concentrate on a way out. Sunshine had shone uninterruptedly on oneside of his space suit for as long as five minutes. Despite theinsulation inside, that was too long. He turned quickly to exposeanother part of himself to the sunlight. He knew abstractedly that themetal underfoot would sear bare flesh that touched it. A few yards away,in the shadow, the metal of the hull would be cold enough to freezehydrogen. But here it was fiercely hot. It would melt solder. It might--

  Mike was fumbling tin cans out of the net bag from which Haney had beenthrowing them away. He was a singular small figure, standing on shiningsteel, looking at one tin can after another and impatiently putting themaside.

  He found one that seemed to suit him. It was a large can. He knelt withit, pressing a part of it to the hot metal of the satellite's hull. Amoment later he was ripping it apart. The solder had softened. Heunrolled a sort of cylinder, then bent again, using the curved innersurface to concentrate the intolerable sunshine.

  Joe caught his breath at the implication. Concentrated sunshine can beincredibly hot. Starting with unshielded, empty-space sunshine,practically any imaginable temperature is possible with a large enoughmirror. Mike didn't have a concave mirror. He had only a cylindricalone. He couldn't reflect light to a point, but only to a line. Mikecouldn't hope to do more than double or triple the temperature of agiven spot. But considering what he wore on his back--!

  Joe made his way clumsily to the spot where Mike now gesticulated toHaney, trying to convey his meaning by gestures since Sanford wouldoverhear any spoken word.

  "I get it, Mike," said Joe. "I'll help." He added: "Chief! You watchSanford. The rest of you try to flatten out some tin cans or find somewith flat round ends!"

  He reached the spot where Mike bent over the plating. His hand moved tocast a shadow where the light had played.

  "I need more reflectors," Mike said brusquely, "but we can do it!"

  Joe beckoned. There were more, hurried clankings. Space-suited figuresgathered about.

  The Platform rolled on through space. Where it was bright it was very,very bright, and where it was dark it was blackness. Off in emptinessthe many-colored mass of Earth shone hugely, rolling past. Innumerableincurious stars looked on. The sun flamed malevolently. The moon floatedabstractedly far away.

  Mike was bent above a small round airlock door. He had a distortedhalf-cylinder of sheet tin between his space-gloved hands. It reflecteda line of intensified sunlight to the edge of the airlock seal. Haneyripped fiercely at other tin cans. Joe held another strip of polishedmetal. It focused crudely--very crudely--on top of Mike's line ofreflected sunshine. Someone else held the end of a tin can to reflectmore sunshine. Someone else had a larger disk of tin.

  They stood carefully still. It looked completely foolish. There were sixmen in frozen attitudes, trying to reflect sunshine down to a singleblindingly-bright spot on an airlock door. They seemed breathlesslytense. They ignored the glories of the firmament. They were utterlyabsorbed in trying to make a spot of unbearable brightness glow morebrightly still.

  Mike moved his hand to cast a shadow. The steel was a little more thanred-hot for the space of an inch. It would not melt, of course. It couldnot. And they had no tools to bend or pierce the presumably softenedmetal. But Mike said fiercely:

  "Keep it hot!"

  He squirmed. His space suit was fabric, like the rest, but it had beencut down to permit him to use it. It was bulkier on him than the suitsof the others. He shifted his shoulder pack. The brass valve-nipple bywhich the oxygen tank was filled....

  He jammed a ragged fragment of tin in place. He pressed down fiercely. Ablazing jet of fierce, scintillating, streaking sparks leaped up fromthe spot where the metal glowed brightly. A hollow in the metal plateappeared. The metal disintegrated in gushing flecks of light....

  White-hot iron in pure oxygen happens to be inflammable. Iron is notincombustible at all. Powdered steel, ground fine enough, will burn ifsimply exposed to air. Really fine steel wool will make an excellentblaze if a match is touched to it. White-hot iron, with a jet of oxygenplayed upon it, explodes to steaming sparks. Technically, Mike had usedthe perfectly well-known trick of an oxygen lance to pierce the airlockdoor, let the air out of the lock, and so allow the outer door to beopened.

  There was a rush of vapor. The door was drilled through. Haney
pickedMike up bodily, Joe heaved the door open, and Haney climbed into it,practically carrying Mike by the scruff of the neck. Joe panted, "Plugthe hole from the inside. Sit on it if you have to!" and slammed thedoor shut.

  They waited. Sanford's voice came in the ear-phones. It was higher inpitch than it had been.

  "You fools!" he raged. "It's useless! It's stupid to do useless things!It's stupid to do anything at all--"

  There were sudden scuffling clankings. Joe swung about. The Chief andSanford were struggling. Sanford flailed his arms about, trying to breakthe Chief's faceplate while he screamed furious things about futility.

  The Chief got exactly the hold he wanted. He lifted Sanford from themetal deck. He could have thrown him away to emptiness, then, but he didnot.

  He set Sanford in mid-space as if upon a shelf. The raging man hung inthe void an exact man-height above the Platform's surface. The Chiefdrew back and left him there, Sanford could writhe there for a centurybefore the Platform's infinitesimal gravity brought him down.

  "Huh!" said the Chief wrathfully. "How's Haney and Mike making out?"

  Almost on the instant, twenty yards away, a tiny airlock door thrust outfrom the surface of glittering metal, and helmet and antenna appeared.

  "You guys can come in now," said Haney's voice in Joe's headphones."It's all okay. Mike's pumping out the other locks too, so you can comein at any of 'em."

  The space-suited figures clumped loudly to airlock doors. There were adozen or more small airlocks in various parts of the hull, besides thegreat door to admit supply ships. The Chief growled and moved towardSanford now raging like the madman his helplessness made him.

  "No," said Joe shortly. "He'd fight again. Go inside. That's an order,Chief."

  The Chief grunted and obeyed. Joe went to the nearest airlock andentered the great steel hull.

  Sanford floated in emptiness, two yards from the Space Platform he wouldhave turned into a derelict. He did not move farther away. He did notfall toward it. There was nobody to listen to him. He cried out inblood-curdling fury because other men were smarter than he was. Othermen had solved problems he could not solve. Other men were hissuperiors. He screamed his rage.

  Presently the Platform revolved slowly beneath him. It was turned, ofcourse, by the monster gyros which in turn were controlled by the pilotgyros Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike had repaired when saboteurssmashed them.

  The Platform rotated sedately. A great gap appeared in it. The door ofthe supply ship lock moved until Sanford, floating helplessly, wasopposite its mouth.

  A rod with a rounded object at its end appeared past the docked supplyship. It reached out and touched Sanford's helmet. It was the magneticgrapple which drew space ships into their dock.

  It drew Sanford, squirming and streaming, into the great lock. The outerdoors closed. Before air was admitted to the inside, Sanford wentsuddenly still.

  When they took him out of his suit he was apparently unconscious. Hecould not be roused. Freed, he drew his knees up to his chin in theposition in which primitive peoples bury their dead. He seemed to sleep.Brent examined him carefully.

  "Catatonia," he said distastefully. "He spent his life thinking he wassmarter than anybody else--smarter, probably, than all the universe. Hebelieved it. He couldn't face the fact that he was wrong. He couldn'tstay conscious and not know it. So he's blacked out. He refuses to beanything unless he can be smartest. We'll have to do artificial feedingand all that until we can get him down to Earth to a hospital." Heshrugged.

  "We'd better report this down to Earth," Joe said. "By the way, betternot describe our screen of tin cans on radio waves. Not even microwaves.It might leak. And we want to see if it works."

  Just forty-two hours later they found out that it did work. A singlerocket came climbing furiously out from Earth. It came from thenight-side, and they could not see where it was launched, though theycould make excellent guesses. They got a single guided missile ready tocrash it if necessary.

  It wasn't necessary. The bomb from Earth detonated 300 miles below theartificial satellite. Its proximity fuse, sending out small radar-typewaves, had them reflected back by an empty sardine can thrown away fromthe Platform by Mike Scandia forty-some hours ago. The sardine can hadbeen traveling in its own private orbit ever since. The effect of Mike'smuscles had not been to send it back to Earth, but to change the centerof the circular orbit in which it floated. Sometimes it floated abovethe Platform--that was on one side of Earth--and sometimes below it. Itwas about 300 miles under the Platform when it reflected urgent,squealing radar frequency waves to a complex proximity fuse in theclimbing rocket. The rocket couldn't tell the difference between asardine can and a Space Platform.

  It exploded with a blast of pure brightness like that of the sun.

  The Platform went on its monotonous round about the planet from which ithad risen only weeks before. Sanford was strapped in a bunk and fedthrough a tube, and on occasion massaged and variously tended to keephim alive. The men on the Platform worked. They made telephoto maps ofEarth. They took highly magnified, long-exposure photographs of Mars,pictures that could not possibly be made with such distinctness from thebottom of Earth's turbulent ocean of air.

  There was a great deal of official business to be done. Weatherobservations of the form and distribution of cloud masses were animportant matter. The Platform could make much more precise measurementsof the solar constant than could be obtained below. The flickering radarwas gathering information for studies of the frequency and size ofmeteoric particles outside the atmosphere. There was the extremelyimportant project for securing and sealing in really good vacua invarious electronic devices brought up by Joe and his crew in the supplyship.

  But sometimes Joe managed to talk to Sally.

  It was very satisfying to see her on the television screen in personalconversation. Their talk couldn't be exactly private, because it couldbe picked up elsewhere. It probably was. But she told Joe how she felt,and she wanted to read him the newspaper stories based on the reportsBrent had sent down. Brent was in command of the Platform now thatSanford lay in a resolute coma in his bunk. But Joe discouraged suchwaste of time.

  "How's the food?" asked Sally. "Are you people getting any freshvegetables from the hydroponic garden?"

  They were, and Joe told her so. The huge chamber in which sun-lampsglowed for a measured number of hours in each twenty-four producedincredibly luxuriant vegetation. It kept the air of the ship breathable.It even changed the smell of it from time to time, so that there was nofeeling of staleness.

  "And the cooking system's really good?" she wanted to know. Sally waspartly responsible for that, too. "And how about the bunks?"

  "I sleep now," Joe admitted.

  That had been difficult. It was possible to get used to weightlessnesswhile awake. One would slip, sometimes, and find himself suddenly tenseand panicky because he'd abruptly noticed all over again that he wasfalling. But--and yet again Sally was partly responsible--the bunks weredesigned to help in that difficulty. Each bunk had an inflatable topblanket. One crawled in and settled down, and turned the petcock thatinflated the cover. Then it held one quite gently but reassuringly inplace. It was possible to stir and to turn over, but the feeling ofbeing held fast was very comforting. With a little care about what onethought of before going to sleep, one could get a refreshing eighthours' rest. The bunks were luxury.

  Sally said: "The date and time's a secret, of course, because it mightbe overheard, but there'll be another ship up before too long. It'sbringing landing rockets for you to come back with."

  "That's good!" said Joe. It would feel good to set foot on solid groundagain. He looked at Sally and said eagerly, "We've got a date theevening I get back?"

  "We've got a date," she said, nodding.

  But it couldn't very well be a definite date. There were people withideas that ran counter to plans for Joe to get back to Earth and a datewith Sally Holt. The Space Platform was not admired uniformly by all thenations
of Earth. The United States had built it because the UnitedNations couldn't, and one of the attractions of the idea had been thatonce it got out to space and was armed, peace must reign upon Earthbecause it could smack down anybody who made war.

  The trouble was that it wasn't armed well enough. Six guided missilescouldn't defend it indefinitely. It looked as helpless as isolatedBerlin did before the first airlift proved what men and planes could doin the way of transport. And the Platform's enemies didn't intend for itto be saved by a rocketlift. They would try to smash it before such alift could get started.

  A week after Joe got to it with the guided missiles, three rocketsattacked. They went up from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. Oneblew up 250 miles below the Platform. Another detonated 190 miles away.For safety's sake the third was crashed--at the cost of one guidedmissile--when it had come within 50 miles.

  The screen of tin cans worked, but it wasn't thick enough. The occupantsof the Platform went about hunting for sheet metal that could be spared.They pulled out minor partitions here and there, and went out on thesurface and threw away thousands of small glittering scraps of metal inall directions.

  Two weeks later, there was another attack. It could be calculated thatJoe couldn't have carried up more than six guided missiles. There mightbe as few as two of them left. So eight rockets came up together--andthe first of them went off 400 miles from the Platform. Only one got asclose as 200 miles. No guided missiles were expended in defense.

  The Platform's enemies tried once more. This time the rockets arched upabove the Platform's orbit and dived on the satellite from above. Therewere two of them. They went off at 180 and 270 miles from the Platform.Joe's trash screen would not work on Earth, but in space it was anadequate defense against anything equipped with proximity fuses. Itcould be assumed that in a full-scale space-war nuts, bolts, rusty nailsand beer bottle caps would become essential military equipment.

  Three days after this last attack, a second supply ship took off fromEarth. Lieutenant Commander Brown was a passenger. Its start was justlike the one Joe's ship had made. Pushpots lifted it, jatos hurled iton, and then the furious, flaming take-off rockets drove it valiantlyout toward the stars.

  Joe's ship had been moved out of the landing lock and was moored againstthe Platform's hull. The second ship made contact in two hours andseventeen minutes from take-off. It arrived with its own landing rocketsintact, and it brought a set of forty-foot metal tubes for Joe's ship toget back to Earth with. But those landing rockets and LieutenantCommander Brown constituted all its payload. It couldn't bring upanything else.

  And Lieutenant Commander Brown called a very formal meeting in the hugeliving space at the Platform's center. He stood up grandly in fulluniform--and had to hook his feet around a chair leg to keep fromfloating absurdly in mid-air. This detracted slightly from the dignityof his stance, but not from the official voice with which he read twodocuments aloud.

  The first paper detached Lieutenant Commander Brown from his regularnaval duties and assigned him pro tem to service with the SpaceExploration Project. The second was an order directing him to takecommand and assume direction of the Space Platform.

  Having read his orders, he cleared his throat and said cordially, "I amhonored to serve here with you. Frankly, I expect to learn much from youand to have very few orders to give. I expect merely to exercise suchauthority as experience at sea has taught me is necessary for a tightand happy ship. I trust this will be one."

  He beamed. Nobody was impressed. It was perfectly obvious that he'dsimply been sent up to acquire experience in space for later naval use,and that he'd been placed in command because it was unthinkable that heserve under anyone without official rank and authority. And he quitehonestly believed that his coming, with experience in command, was ablessing to the Platform. In fact, there was no danger that thiscommander of the Platform would crack up under stress as Sanford had.

  But it was too bad that he hadn't brought some long-range guidedmissiles with him.

  Joe's ship had brought up twenty tons of cargo and twenty tons oflanding rockets. The second ship brought up twenty tons of landingrockets for Joe, and twenty tons of landing rockets for itself. That wasall. The second trip out to the Space Platform was a rescue mission andnothing else. Arithmetic wouldn't let it be anything else. And therecouldn't be any idea of noble self-sacrifice and staying out at thePlatform, either, because only four ships like Joe's had been begun, andonly two were even near completion. Joe's had taken off the instant itwas finished. The second had done the same. The second pair ofspaceships wouldn't be ready for two months or more. The ships thatcould be used had to be used.

  So, only thirty-six hours after the arrival of the second rocketship atthe Platform, the two of them took off together to return to Earth.Joe's ship left the airlock first. Sanford was loaded in the cabin ofthe other ship as cargo. Lieutenant Commander Brown stayed out at thePlatform to replace him.

  Obviously, in order to get back to Earth they headed away from it infleet formation. They pointed their rounded noses toward the Milky Way.

  The upward course was an application of the principle that made thescreen of tin cans and oddments remain about the Platform. Each ofthose small objects had had the Platform's own velocity and orbit.Thrown away from it, the centers of their orbits changed. In theory,the center of the Platform's orbit was the center of Earth. But thecenters of the orbits of the thrown-away objects were pushed a fewmiles--twenty--fifty--a hundred--away from the center of Earth.

  The returning space ships also had the orbit and speed of the Platform.They wanted to shift the centers of their orbits by very nearly 4,000miles, so that at one point they would just barely graze Earth'satmosphere, lose some speed to it, and then bounce out to empty spaceagain before they melted. Cooled off, they'd make another grazingbounce. After eight such bounces they'd stay in the air, and the stubbyfins would give them a sort of gliding angle and controllability, whilethe landing rockets would let them down to solid ground. Or so it washoped.

  Meanwhile they headed out instead of in toward Earth. They went out ontheir steering-rockets only, using the liquid fuel that had not beenneeded for course correction on the way out. At 4,000 miles up, theforce of gravity is just one-fourth of that at the Earth's surface. Itstill exists; it is merely canceled out in an orbit. The ships couldmove outward at less cost in fuel than they could move in.

  So they went out and out on parallel courses, and the Platform dwindledbehind them. Night flowed below until the hull of the artificialsatellite shone brightly against a background of seeming sheernothingness.

  The twilight zone of Earth's shadow reached the Platform. It glowedredly, glowed crimson, glowed the deepest possible color that could beseen, and winked out. The ships climbed on, using their tiny steeringrockets.

  Nothing happened. The ships drew away from each other for safety. Theywere 50, then 60 miles apart. One glowed red and vanished in the shadowof the Earth. The other was extinguished in the same way. Then they wenthurtling through the blackness of the night side of Earth. Microwavesfrom the ground played upon them--radar used by friend and foealike--and the friendly radar guided tight-beam communicator waves tothem with comforting assurance that their joint course and height andspeed were exactly the calculated optimum. But they could not be seen atall.

  When they appeared again they were still farther out from Earth than thePlatform's orbit, but no farther from each other. And they weredescending. The centers of their orbits had been displaced very, veryfar indeed.

  Going out, naturally, the ships had lost angular speed as they gainedin height. Descending, they gained in angular velocity as they lostheight. They were not quite 30 miles apart as they sped with increasing,headlong speed and rushed toward the edge of the world's disk. When theywere only 2,000 miles high, the Earth's surface under them moved muchfaster than it had on the way up. When they were only 1,000 miles high,the seas and continents seemed to flow past like a rushing river. At 500miles, mountains and
plains were just distinguishable as they raced pastunderneath. At 200 miles there was merely a churning, hurtling surfaceon which one could not focus one's eyes because of the speed of itsmovement.

  They missed the solid surface of Earth by barely 40 miles. They weremoving at a completely impossible speed. The energy of their position4,000 miles high had been transformed into kinetic energy of motion. Andat 40 miles there is something very close to a vacuum, compared tosea-level. But compared to true emptiness, and at the speed of meteors,the thin air had a violent effect.

  A thin humming sound began. It grew louder. The substance of the shipwas responding to the impact of the thin air upon it. The sound rose toa roar, to a bellow, to a thunderous tumult. The ship quivered andtrembled. It shook. A violent vibration set up and grew more and moresavage. The whole ship shook with a dreadful persistence, each vibrationmore monstrous, more straining, more ominous than before.

  The four in the space ship cabin knew torture. Weight returned to them,weight more violent than the six gravities they had known for a barefourteen seconds at take-off. But that, at least, had been smoothlyapplied. This was deceleration at a higher figure yet, and accompaniedby the shaking of bodies which weighed seven times as much as everbefore--and bodies, too, which for weeks past had been subject to noweight at all.

  They endured. Nothing at all could be done. At so many miles per secondno possible human action could be determined upon and attempted in timeto have any effect upon the course of the ship. Joe could see out aquartzite port. The ground 40 miles below was merely a blur. There wasa black sky overhead, which did not seem to stir. But cloud-massesrushed at express-train speed below him, and his body weighed more thanhalf a ton, and the ship made the sound of innumerable thunders andshook, and shook and shook....

  And then, when it seemed that it must fly utterly to pieces, the thunderdiminished gradually to a bellow, and the bellow to a roar, and theroaring.... And the unthinkable weight oppressing him grew less.

  The Earth was farther away and moving farther still. They were 100 mileshigh. They were 200 miles high....

  There was no longer any sound at all, except their gaspings for breath.Their muscles had refused to lift their chests at all during the mostbrutal of the deceleration period.

  Presently Joe croaked a question. He looked at the hull-temperatureindicators. They were very, very high. He found that he was bruisedwhere he had strapped himself in. The places where each strap had heldhis heavy body against the ship's vibrations were deeply black-and-blue.

  The Chief said thickly: "Joe, somehow I don't think this is going towork. When do we hit again?"

  "Three hours plus or minus something," said Joe, dry-throated. "We'llhear from the ground."

  Mike said in a cracked voice: "Radar reports we went a little bit toolow. They think we weren't tilted up far enough. We didn't bounce assoon as we should."

  Joe unstrapped himself.

  "How about the other ship?"

  "It did better than we did," said Mike. "It's a good 200 miles ahead.Down at the Shed, they're recalculating for us. We'll have to land withsix grazes instead of eight. We lost too much speed."

  Joe went staggering, again weightless, to look out a port for the othership. He should have known better. One does not spot an eighty-footspace ship with the naked eye when it is 200 miles away.

  But he saw something, though for seconds he didn't know what it was.

  Now the little ship was 300 miles high and still rising. Joe was dazedand battered by the vibration of the ship in the graze just past. Thesister space ship hadn't lost speed so fast. It would be travelingfaster. It would be leaving him farther behind every second. It wasrising more sharply. It would rise higher.

  Joe stared numbly out of a port, thinking confusedly that his hull wouldbe dull red on its outer surface, though the heating had been so fastthat the inner surfaces of the plating might still be cold. He saw thevast area which was the curve of the edge of the world. He saw thesunlight upon clouds below and glimpses of the surface of the Earthitself.

  And he saw something rising out of the mists at the far horizon. It wasa thread of white vapor. The other rocketship was a speck, a mote,invisible because of its size and distance. This thread of vapor wasalready 100 miles long, and it expanded to a column of whiteness half amile across before it seemed to dissipate. It rose and rose, as iffollowing something which sped upward. It was a rocket trail. Theviolence of its writhings proved the fury with which the rocket climbed.

  It was on its way to meet the other space ship.

  It did. Joe saw the thread of vapor extend and grow until it was higherthan he was. He never saw the other ship, which was too small. But hesaw the burst of flame, bright as the sun itself, which was theexplosion of a proximity fuse bomb. He knew, then, that nothing butincandescent, radioactive gas remained of the other ship and its crew.

  Then he saw the trail of the second rocket. It was rising to meet him.