Mike’s wizened face became tense and angry. Haney growled, “They smash the Platform before we get to it.”
“Uh-uh!” said Mike instantly. “They smash the Platformwhen we get to it! They smash us both up together. Where’ll we be at contact-time, Joe?”
“Over the Indian Ocean, south of the Bay of Bengal, to be exact,” said Joe. “But we’ll be moving fast. The worst of it is that it’s going to take time to get in the airlock and unload our guided missiles and get them in the Platform’s launching-tubes. I’d guess an hour. One bomb should get both of us above the Bay of Bengal, but we won’t be set to launch a guided missile in defense until we’re nearly over America again.”
The Chief said sourly, “Yeah. Sitting ducks all the way across the Pacific!”
“We’ll check with the Platform,” said Joe. “See if you can get them direct, Mike, will you?”
Then something occurred to him. Mike scrambled back to his communication board. He began feverishly to work the computer which in turn would swing the tight-beam transmitter to the target the computer worked out, He threw a switch and said sharply, “Calling Space Platform! Pelican One calling Space Platform! Come in, Space Platform!…” He paused. “Calling Space Platform.…”
Joe had a slide-rule going on another problem. He looked up, his expression peculiar.
“A solid-fuel rocket can start off at ten gravities acceleration,” he said quietly, “and as its rockets burn away it can go up a lot higher than that. But 4,000 miles is a long way to go straight up. If it isn’t launched yet—”
Mike snapped into a microphone: “Right!” To Joe he said, “Space Platform on the wire.”
Joe heard an acknowledgment in his headphones. “I’ve just had word from the Shed,” he explained carefully, “that there may be some guided missiles coming up from Earth to smash us as we meet. You’re still higher than we are, and they ought to be starting. Can you pick up anything with your radar?”
The voice from the Platform said: “We have picked something up. There are four rockets headed out from near the sunset-line in the Pacific. Assuming solid-fuel rockets like we used and you used, they are on a collision course.”
“Are you doing anything about them?” asked Joe absurdly.
The voice said caustically: “Unfortunately, we’ve nothing to do anything with.” It paused. “You, of course, can use the landing-rockets you still possess. If you fire them immediately, you will pass our scheduled meeting-place some hundreds of miles ahead of us. You will go on out to space. You may set up an orbit forty-five hundred or even five thousand miles out, and wait there for rescue.”
Joe said briefly: “We’ve air for only four days. That’s no good. It’ll be a month before the next ship can be finished and take off. There are four rockets coming up, you say?”
“Yes.” The voice changed. It spoke away from the microphone. “What’s that?” Then it returned to Joe. “The four rockets were sent up at the same instant from four separate launching sites. Probably as many submarines at the corners of a hundred-mile square, so an accident to one wouldn’t set off the others. They’ll undoubtedly converge as they get nearer to us.”
“I think,” said Joe, “that we need some luck.”
“I think,” said the caustic voice, “that we’ve run out of it.”
There was a click. Joe swallowed again. The three members of his crew were looking at him.
“Somebody’s fired rockets out from Earth,” said Joe carefully. “They’ll curve together where we meet the Platform, and get there just when we do.”
The Chief rumbled. Haney clamped his jaws together. Mike’s expression became one of blazing hatred.
Joe’s mind went rather absurdly to the major’s curious, almost despairing talk in his quarters that morning, when he’d spoken of a conspiracy to destroy all the hopes of men. The firing of rockets at the Platform was, of course, the work of men acting deliberately. But they were—unconsciously—trying to destroy their own best hopes. For freedom, certainly, whether or not they could imagine being free. But the Platform and the space exploration project in general meant benefits past computing for everybody, in time. To send ships into space for necessary but dangerous experiments with atomic energy was a purpose every man should want to help forward. To bring peace on Earth was surely an objective no man could willingly or sanely combat. And the ultimate goal of space travel was millions of other planets, circling other suns, thrown open to colonization by humanity. That prospect should surely fire every human being with enthusiasm. But something—and the more one thought about it the more specific and deliberate it seemed to be—made it necessary to fight desperately against men in order to benefit them.
Joe swallowed again. It would have been comforting to be dramatic in this war against stupidity and malice and blindness. Especially since this particular battle seemed to be lost. One could send back an eloquent, defiant message to Earth saying that the four of them did not regret their journey into space, though they were doomed to be killed by the enemies of their country. It could have been a very pretty gesture. But Joe happened to have a job to do. Pretty gestures were not a part of it. He had no idea how to do it. So he said rather sickishly:
“The Platform told me we could fire our landing-rockets as additional take-off rockets and get out of the way. Of course we’ve got missiles of our own on board, but we can’t launch or control them. Absolutely the only thing we can choose to do or not do is fire those rockets. I’m open to suggestions if anybody can think of a way to make them useful.”
There was silence. Joe’s reasoning was good enough. When one can’t do what he wants, one tries to make what he can do produce the results he wants. But it didn’t look too promising here. They could fire the rockets now, or later, or—
An idea came out of the blue. It wasn’t a good idea, but it was the only one possible under the circumstances. There was just one distinctly remote possibility. He told the others what it was. Mike’s eyes flamed. The Chief nodded profoundly. Haney said with some skepticism, “It’s all we’ve got. We’ve got to use it.”
“I need some calculations. Spread. Best time of firing. That sort of thing. But I’m worried about calling back in the clear. A beam to the Platform will bounce and might be picked up by the enemy.”
The Chief grinned suddenly. “I’ve got a trick for that, Joe. There’s a tribesman of mine in the Shed. Get Charley Red Fox to the phone, guy, and we’ll talk privately!”
The small spaceship floated on upward. It pointed steadfastly in the direction of its motion. The glaring sunshine which at its take-off had shone squarely in its bow-ports, now poured down slantingly from behind. The steel plates of the ship gleamed brightly. Below it lay the sunlit Earth. Above and about it on every hand were a multitude of stars. Even the moon was visible as the thinnest of crescents against the night of space.
The ship climbed steeply. It was meeting the Platform after only half a circuit of Earth, while the Platform had climbed upward for three full revolutions. Earth was now 3,000 miles below and appeared as the most gigantic of possible solid objects. It curved away and away to mistiness at its horizons, and it moved visibly as the spaceship floated on.
Invisible microwaves flung arrowlike through emptiness. They traveled for thousands of miles, spreading as they traveled, and then struck the strange shape of the Platform. They splashed from it. Some of them rebounded to Earth, where spies and agents of foreign powers tried desperately to make sense of the incredible syllables. They failed.
There was a relay system in operation now, from spaceship to Platform to Earth and back again. In the ship Chief Bender, Mohawk and steelman extraordinary, talked to the Shed and to one Charley Red Fox. They talked in Mohawk, which is an Algonquin Indian language, agglutinative, complicated, and not to be learned in ten easy lessons. It was not a language which eavesdroppers were likely to know as a matter of course. But it was a language by which computations could be asked for, so that a very forlorn ho
pe might be attempted with the best possible chances of success.
Naturally, none of this appeared in the look of things. The small ship floated on and on. It reached an altitude of 3,500 miles. The Earth was visibly farther away. Behind the ship the Atlantic with its stately cloud-formations was sunlit to the very edge of its being. Ahead, the edge of night appeared beyond India. And above, the Platform appeared as a speck of molten light, quarter-illuminated by the sun above it.
Spaceship and Platform moved on toward a meeting place. The ship moved a trifle faster, because it was climbing. The speeds would match exactly when they met. The small torpedo-shaped shining ship and the bulging glowing metal satellite floated with a seeming vast deliberation in emptiness, while the most gigantic of possible round objects filled all the firmament beneath them. They were 200 miles apart. It seemed that the huge Platform overtook the shining ship. It did. They were only 50 miles apart and still closing in.
By that time the twilight band of Earth’s surface was nearly at the center of the planet, and night filled more than a quarter of its disk.
By that time, too, even to the naked eye through the ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead of the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which seemed remarkably deliberate until one saw with what fury the rocket-fumes spat out to form the whitish threads. Then one could guess at a three-or even four-stage launching series, so that what appeared to be mere pinpoints would really be rockets carrying half-ton atomic warheads with an attained velocity of 10,000 miles per hour and more straight up.
The threads unraveled in a straight line aimed at the two metal things floating in emptiness. One was small and streamlined, with inadequate landing-rockets clamped to its body and with stubby fins that had no possible utility out of air. The other was large and clumsy to look at, but very, very stately indeed in its progress through the heavens. They floated smoothly toward a rendezvous. The rockets from Earth came ravening to destroy them at the instant of their intersection.
The little spaceship turned slowly. Its rounded bow had pointed longingly at the stars. Now it tilted downward. Its direction of movement did not change, of course. In the absence of air, it could tumble indefinitely without any ill effect. It was in a trajectory instead of on a course, though presently the trajectory would become an orbit. But it pointed nose-down toward the Earth even as it continued to hurtle onward.
The great steel hull and the small spaceship were 20 miles apart. An infinitesimal radar-bowl moved on the little ship. Tight-beam waves flickered invisibly between the two craft. The rockets raged toward them.
The ship and the Platform were 10 miles apart. The rockets were now glinting missiles leaping ahead of the fumes that propelled them.
The ship and the Platform were two miles apart. The rockets rushed upward.… There were minute corrections in their courses. They converged.…
Flames leaped from the tiny ship. Its landing-rockets spouted white-hot flame and fumes more thick and coiling than even the smoke of the bombs. The little ship surged momentarily toward the racing monsters. And then—
The rockets which were supposed to let the ship down to Earth flew free—flung themselves unburdened at the rockets which came with deadly intent to the meeting of the two Earth spacecraft.
The landing-rockets plunged down at forty gravities or better. They were a dwindling group of infinitely bright sparks which seemed to group themselves more closely as they dwindled. They charged upon the attacking robot things. They were unguided, of necessity, but the robot bombs had to be equipped with proximity fuses. No remote control could be so accurate as to determine the best moment for detonation at 4,000 miles’ distance. So the war rockets had to be devised to explode when near anything which reflected their probing radar waves. They had to be designed to be triggered by anything in space.
And the loosed landing-rockets plunged among them.
They did not detonate all at once. That was mathematically impossible. But no human eye could detect the delay. Four close-packed flares of pure atomic fire sprang into being between the Platform and Earth. Each was brighter than the sun. For the fraction of an instant there was no night where night had fallen on the Earth. For thousands of miles the Earth glowed brightly.
Then there was a twisting, coiling tumult of incandescent gases, which were snatched away by nothingness and ceased to be.
Then there were just two things remaining in the void. One was the great, clumsy, shining Platform, gigantic in size to anything close by. The other was the small spaceship which had climbed to it and fought for it and defended it against the bombs from Earth.
The little ship now had a slight motion away from the Platform, due to the instant’s tugging by its rockets before they were released.
It turned about in emptiness. Its steering-rockets spouted smoke. It began to cancel out its velocity away from the Platform, and to swim slowly and very carefully toward it.
3
Making actual contact with the platform was not a matter for instruments and calculations. It had to be done directly—by hand, as it were. Joe watched out the ports and played the controls of the steering jets with a nerve-racked precision. His task was not easy.
Before he could return to the point of rendezvous, the blinding sunlight on the Platform took on a tinge of red. It was the twilight-zone of the satellite’s orbit, when for a time the sunlight that reached it was light which had passed through Earth’s atmosphere and been bent by it and 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 appearance produced an almost superstitious terror. Formerly it had seemed a distant but sunlit world, flecked with white clouds and with sprawling differentiations of color beneath them.
Now it did not look like a solid thing at all. It looked like a hole in creation. One could see ten thousand million stars of every imaginable tint and shade. But where the Earth should be there seemed a vast nothingness. It looked like an opening to annihilation. It looked like the veritable Pit of Darkness which is the greatest horror men have ever imagined, and since those in the ship were without weight it seemed that they were falling into it.
Joe knew better, of course. So did the others. But that was the look of things, 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 to it. There were red and green and blue and harsh blue-white electric bulbs. They were bright and distinct, but the feeling of loneliness above that awful appearance of the Pit was appalling. No small child alone at night had ever so desolate a sensation of isolation as the four in the small ship.
But Joe painstakingly played the buttons of the steering-rocket control board. The ship surged, and turned, and surged forward again. Mike, at the communicator, said, “They say slow up, Joe.”
Joe obeyed, but he was tense. Haney and the Chief were at other portholes, looking out. The Chief said heavily, “Fellas, I’m going to admit 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-beam from the Platform. The small, brief surges of acceleration which sent the ship on produced tremendous emotional effects. When the Platform was only one mile away, Haney switched on the ship’s searchlights. They stabbed through emptiness with absolutely no sign of their existence until they touched the steel h
ull 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 after they had come so far to reach it.
They drifted slowly, slowly, slowly toward it. The monstrous Pit of Darkness which was the night side of Earth seemed almost about to engulf the Platform. They were a few hundred feet higher than the great metal globe, and the blackness was behind it. They were a quarter of a mile away. 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 all plausible. Nothing so slender should conceivably reach so far without bending of its own weight. But of course it had no weight here. It was a plastic flexible hose with air pressure in it. It groped for the spaceship.
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 Platform by the magnetic grapple. It was a landing-line. It was the means by which the ship would be docked in the giant lock which had been built to receive 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 valves swung wide. Their searchlight beam glared into it. They saw the metal floor, and the bulging plastic sidewalls, restrained by nets. They saw the inner lock-door. It seemed that men should be visible to welcome them. There were none.
The airlock swallowed them. They touched against something solid. There were more clankings. They seemed to crunch against the metal floor—magnetic flooring-grapples. Then, in solid contact with the substance of the Platform, they heard the sounds of the great outer doors swinging shut. They were within the artificial satellite of Earth. It was bright in the lock, and Joe stared out the cabin ports at the quilted 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 was spinning up toward normal sea-level air pressure.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 64
