But only twenty days after the recovery and docking of the first robot ship to rise, a new sort of ship entirely came blindly up as a robot. The little space wagons hauled it to the airlock and inside. They unloaded it—and it was no longer a robot. It was a modified hull designed for the duties of a tug in space. It could carry a crew of four, and its cargohold was accessible from the cabin. It had an airlock. More, it carried a cargo of solid-fuel rockets which could be shifted to firing racks outside its hull. Starting from the platform, where it had no effective weight, it was capable of direct descent to the Earth without spiralling or atmospheric braking. To make that descent it would, obviously, expend four-fifths of its loaded weight in rockets. And since it had no weight at the Platform, but only mass, it was capable of far-ranging journeying. It could literally take off from the Platform and reach the Moon and land on it, and then return to the Platform.
But that had to wait.
“Sure we could do it,” agreed Joe, when Mike wistfully pointed out the possibility. “It would be good to try it. But unfortunately, space exploration isn’t a stunt. We’ve gotten this far because—somebody wanted to do something. But—”Then he said, “It could be done and the United Nations wouldn’t do it. So the United States had to, or—somebody else would have. You can figure who that would be, and what use they’d make of space travel! So it’s important. It’s more important than stunt flights we could make!”
“Nobody could stop us if we wanted to take off!” Mike said rebelliously.
“True,” Joe said. “But we four can stand three gravities acceleration and handle any more manned rockets that start out here. We’ve lived through plenty more than that! But Brent and the others couldn’t put up a fight in space. They’re wearing harness now, and they’re coming back to strength. But we’re going to stay right here and do stevedoring—and fighting too, if it comes to that—until the job is done.”
And that was the way it was, too. Of stevedoring there was plenty. Two robot ships a day for weeks on end. Three ships a day for a time. Four. Sometimes things went smoothly, and the little space wagons could go out and bring back the great, rocket-scarred hulls from Earth. But once in three times the robots were going too fast or too slow. The space wagons couldn’t handle them. Then the new ship, the space tug, went out and hooked onto the robot with a chain and used the power it had to bring them to their destination. And sometimes the robots didn’t climb straight. At least once the space tug captured an erratic robot 400 miles from its destination and hauled it in. It used some heavy solid-fuel rockets on that trip.
The Platform had become, in fact, a port in space, though so far it had had only arrivals and no departures. Its storage compartments almost bulged with fuel stores and food stores and equipment of every imaginable variety. It had a stock of rockets which were enough to land it safely on Earth, though there was surely no intention of doing so. It had food and air for centuries. It had repair parts for all its own equipment. And it had weapons. It contained, in robot hulls anchored to its sides, enough fissionable material to conduct a deadly war—which was only stored for transfer to the Moon base when that should be established.
And it had communication with Earth of high quality. So far the actual mail was only a one-way service, but even entertainment came up, and news. Once there was a television shot of the interior of the Shed. It was carefully scrambled before transmission, but it was a heartening sight. The Shed on the TV screen appeared a place of swarming activity. Robot hulls were being made. They were even improved, fined down to ten tons of empty weight apiece, and their controls were assembly line products now. And there was the space flight simulator with men practicing in it, although for the time being only robots were taking off from Earth. And there was the Moonship.
It didn’t look like the Platform, but rather like something a child might have put together out of building blocks. It was built up out of welded-together cells with strengthening members added. It was 60 feet high from the floor and twice as long, and it did not weigh nearly what it seemed to. Already it was being clad in that thick layer of heat insulation it would need to endure the two-week-long lunar night. It could take off very soon now.
The pictured preparations back on Earth meant round-the-clock drudgery for Joe and the others. They wore themselves out. But the storage space on the Platform filled up. Days and weeks went by. Then there came a time when literally nothing else could be stored, so Joe and his crew made ready to go back to Earth.
They ate hugely and packed a very small cargo in their ship. They picked up one bag of mail and four bags of scientific records and photographs which had only been transmitted by facsimile TV before. They got into the space tug. It floated free.
“You will fire in ten seconds,” said a crisp voice in Joe’s headphones. “Ten…nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…one…fire!”
Joe crooked his index finger. There was an explosive jolt. Rockets flamed terribly in emptiness. The space tug rushed toward the west. The Platform seemed to dwindle with startling suddenness. It seemed to rush away and become lost in the myriads of stars. The space tug accelerated at four gravities in the direction opposed to its orbital motion.
As the acceleration built up, it dropped toward Earth and home like a tumbled stone.
10
There was bright sunshine at the Shed, not a single cloud in all the sky. The radar bowls atop the roof—they seemed almost invisibly small compared with its vastness—wavered and shifted and quivered. Completely invisible beams of microwaves lanced upward. Atop the Shed, in the communication room, there was the busy quiet of absolute intentness. Signals came down and were translated into visible records which fed instantly into computers. Then the computers clicked and hummed and performed incomprehensible integrations, and out of their slot-mouths poured billowing ribbons of printed tape. Men read those tapes and talked crisply into microphones, and their words went swiftly aloft again.
Down by the open eastern door of the Shed at the desert’s edge, Sally Holt and Joe’s father waited together, watching the sky. Sally was white and scared. Joe’s father patted her shoulder reassuringly.
“He’ll make it, all right,” said Sally, dry-throated.
Joe’s father nodded. “Of course he will!” But his voice was not steady.
“Nothing could happen to him now!” said Sally fiercely.
“Of course not,” said Joe’s father.
A loudspeaker close to them said abruptly: “Nineteen miles.”
There was a tiny, straggling thread of white visible in the now. It thinned out to nothingness, but its nearest part flared out and flared out and flared out. It grew larger, came closer with a terrifying speed.
“Twelve miles,” said the speaker harshly. “Rockets firing.”
The downward-hurtling trail of smoke was like a crippled plane falling flaming from the sky, except that no plane ever fell so fast.
At seven miles the white-hot glare of the rocket flames was visible even in broad daylight. At three miles the light was unbearably bright. At two, the light winked out. Sally saw something which glittered come plummeting toward the ground, unsupported.
It fell almost half a mile before rocket fumes flung furiously out again. Then it checked. Visibly, its descent was slowed. It dropped more slowly, and more slowly, and more slowly still.…
It hung in mid-air a quarter-mile up. Then there was a fresh burst of rocket fumes, more monstrous than ever, and it went steadily downward, touched the ground, and stayed there spurting terrible incandescent flames for seconds. Then the bottom flame went out. An instant later there were no more flames at all.
Sally began to run toward the ship. She stopped. A procession of rumbling, clanking, earth-moving machinery moved out of the Shed and toward the upright space tug. Prosaically, a bulldozer lowered its wide blade some fifty yards from the ship. It pushed a huge mass of earth before it, covering over the scorched and impossibly hot sand about the rocket’s landin
g place. Other bulldozers began to circle methodically around and around, overturning the earth and burying the hot surface stuff. Water trucks sprayed, and thin steam arose.
But also an exit-port opened and Joe stood in the opening.
Then Sally began to run again.
* * * *
Joe sat at dinner in the major’s quarters. Major Holt was there, and Joe’s father, and Sally.
“It feels good,” said Joe warmly, “to use a knife and fork again, and to pick food up from a plate where it stays until it’s picked up!”
“The crew of the Platform—” Major Holt began.
“They’re all right,” said Joe, with his mouth full. “They’re wearing gravity simulator harness. Brent’s got his up to three-quarters gravity. They get tired, wearing the harness. They sleep better. Everything’s fine! They can handle the space wagons we left and they’ve got guided missiles to spare! They’re all right!”
Joe’s father said unsteadily, “You’ll stay on Earth a while now, son?”
Sally moved quickly. She looked up, tense. But Joe said, “They’re going to get the Moonship up, sir. We came back—my gang and me—to help train the crew. We only have a week to do it in, but we’ve got some combat tactics to show them on the training gadget in the Shed.” He added anxiously, “And, sir—they’ll have to take the Moonship off in a spiral orbit. She can’t go straight up! That means she’s got to pass over enemy territory, and—we’ve got to have a real escort for her. A fighting escort. It’s planned for the space tug to take off a few minutes after the Moonship and blast along underneath. We’ll dump guided missiles out—like drones—and if anything comes along we can start their rockets and fight our way through. And we four have had more experience than anybody else. We’re needed!”
“You’ve done enough, surely!” Sally cried.
“The United States,” said Joe awkwardly, “is going to take over the Moon. I—can’t miss having a hand in that! Not if it’s at all possible!”
“I’m afraid you will miss it, Joe,” Major Holt said detachedly. “The occupation of the Moon will be a Navy enterprise. Space Exploration Project facilities are being used to prepare for it, but the Navy won the latest battle of the Pentagon. The Navy takes over the Moon.”
Joe looked startled. “But—”
“You’re Space Exploration personnel,” said the major with the same coolness. “You will be used to instruct naval personnel, and your space tug will be asked to go along to the Platform as an auxiliary vessel. For purposes of assisting in the landing of the Moonship at the Platform, you understand. You’ll haul her away from the Platform when she’s refueled and supplied, so she can start off for the Moon. But the occupation of the Moon will be strictly Navy.”
Joe’s expression became carefully unreadable. “I think,” he said evenly, “I’d better not comment.”
Major Holt nodded. “Very wise—not that we’d repeat anything you did say. But the point is, Joe, that just one day before the Moonship does take off, the United Nations will be informed that it is a United States naval vessel. The doctrine of the freedom of space—like the freedom of the seas—will be promulgated. And the United States will say that a United States naval task force is starting off into space on an official mission. To attack a Space Exploration ship is one thing. That’s like a scientific expedition. But to fire on an American warship on official business is a declaration of war. Especially since that ship can shoot back—and will.”
Joe listened. He said, “It’s daring somebody to try another Pearl Harbor?”
“Exactly,” said the major. “It’s time for us to be firm—now that we can back it up. I don’t think the Moonship will be fired on.”
“But they’ll need me and my gang just the same,” said Joe slowly, “for tugboat work at the Platform?”
“Exactly,” said the major.
“Then,” Joe said doggedly, “they get us. My gang will gripe about being edged out of the trip. They won’t like it. But they’d like backing out still less. We’ll play it the way it’s dealt—but we won’t pretend to like it.”
Major Holt’s expression did not change at all, but Joe had an odd feeling that the major approved of him.
“Yes. That’s right, Joe,” his father added. “You—you’ll have to go aloft once more, son. After that, we’ll talk it over.”
Sally hadn’t said a word during the discussion, but she’d watched Joe every second. Later, out on the porch of the major’s quarters, she had a great deal to say. But that couldn’t affect the facts.
The world at large, of course, received no inkling of the events in preparation. The Shed and the town of Bootstrap and all the desert for a hundred-mile circle round about, were absolutely barred to all visitors. Anybody who came into that circle stayed in. Most people were kept out. All that anyone outside could discover was that enormous quantities of cryptic material had poured and still were pouring into the Shed. But this time security was genuinely tight. Educated guesses could be made, and they were made; but nobody outside the closed-in area save a very few top-ranking officials had any real knowledge. The world only knew that something drastic and remarkable was in prospect.
Mike, though, was able to write a letter to the girl who’d written him. Major Holt arranged it. Mike wrote his letter on paper supplied by Security, with ink supplied by Security, and while watched by Security officers. His letter was censored by Major Holt himself, and it did not reveal that Mike was back on Earth. But it did invite a reply—and Mike sweated as he waited for one.
The others had plenty to sweat about. Joe and Haney and the Chief were acting as instructors to the Moonship’s crew. They taught practical space navigation. At first they thought they hadn’t much to pass on, but they found out otherwise. They had to pass on data on everything from how to walk to how to drink coffee, how to eat, sleep, why one should wear gravity harness, and the manners and customs of ships in space. They had to show why in space fighting a ship might send missiles on before it, but would really expect to do damage with those it left behind. They had to warn of the dangers of unshielded sunshine, and the equal danger of standing in shadow for more than five minutes, and—
They had material for six months of instruction courses, but there was barely a week to pass it on. Joe was run ragged, but in spite of everything he managed to talk at some length with Sally. He found himself curiously anxious to discuss any number of things with his father, too, who suddenly appeared to be much more intelligent than Joe had ever noticed before.
He was almost unhappy when it was certain that the Moonship would take off for space on the following day. He talked about it with Sally the night before take-off.
“Look,” he said awkwardly. “As far as I’m concerned this has turned out a pretty sickly business. But when we have got a base on the Moon, it’ll be a good job done. There will be one thing that nobody can stop! Everybody’s been living in terror of war. If we hold the Moon the cold war will be ended. You can’t kick on my wanting to help end that!”
Sally smiled at him in the moonlight.
“And—meanwhile,” said Joe clumsily, “well—when I come back we can do some serious talking about—well—careers and such things. Until then—no use. Right?”
Sally’s smile wavered. “Very sensible,” she agreed wrily. “And awfully silly, Joe. I know what kind of a career I want! What other fascinating topic do you know to talk about, Joe?”
“I don’t know of any. Oh, yes! Mike got a letter from his girl. I don’t know what she said, but he’s walking on air.”
“But it isn’t funny!” said Sally indignantly. “Mike’s a person! A fine person! If he’ll let me, I’ll write to his girl myself and—try to make friends with her so when you come back I—maybe I can be a sort of match-maker.”
“That, I like!” Joe said warmly. “You’re swell sometimes, Sally!”
Sally looked at him enigmatically in the moonlight.
“There are times when it seems to e
scape your attention,” she observed.
* * * *
The next morning she cried a little when he left her, to climb in the space tug which was so small a part of today’s activity. Joe and his crew were the only living men who had ever made a round trip to the Platform and back. But now there was the Moonship to go farther than they’d been allowed. It was even clumsier in design than the Platform, though it was smaller. But it wasn’t designed to stay in space. It was to rest on the powdery floor of a ring-mountain’s central plain.
Let it get off into space, and somehow get to the Platform to reload. Then let it replace the rockets it would burn in this take-off and it could go on out to emptiness. It would make history as the first serious attempt by human beings to reach the Moon.
Joe and his followers would go along simply to handle guided missiles if it came to a fight, and to tow the Moonship to its wharf—the Platform—and out into midstream again when it resumed its journey. And that was all.
The Moonship lifted from the floor of the Shed to the sound of hundreds of pushpot engines.
Then the space tug roared skyward. Her take-off rockets here substituted for the pushpots. Her second-stage rockets were also of the nonpoisonous variety, because she fired them at a bare 60,000 feet. They were substitutes for the jatos the pushpots carried.
She was out in space when the third-stage rockets roared dully outside her hull.
When the Moonship crossed the west coast of Africa, the space tug was 400 miles below and 500 miles behind. When the Moonship crossed Arabia, the difference was 200 miles vertically and less than 100 in line.
Then the Moonship released small objects, steadied by gyroscopes and flung away by puffs of compressed air. The small objects spread out. Haney and Mike and the Chief had reloaded the firing racks from inside the ship, and now were intent upon control boards and radar. They pressed buttons. One by one, little puffs of smoke appeared in space. They had armed the little space missiles, setting off tiny flares which had no function except to prove that each missile was ready for use.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 75
