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30 MINUTES TO LIVE!
Joe Kenmore heard the airlock close with a sickening wheeze and then a clank. In desperation he turned toward Haney. "My God, we've been locked out!"
Through the transparent domes of their space helmets, Joe could see a look of horror and disbelief pass across Haney's face. But it was true! Joe and his crew were locked out of the Space Platform.
Four thousand miles below circled the Earth. Under Joe's feet rested the solid steel hull of his home in outer space. But without tools there was no hope of getting back inside. Joe looked at his oxygen meter. It registered thirty minutes to live.
_Space Tug_ by Murray Leinster is an independent sequel to the author's popular _Space Platform_, which is also available in a POCKET BOOK edition. Both books were published originally by Shasta Publishers.
_Of other books by Murray Leinster, the following are science-fiction:_
[A]SPACE PLATFORM
SIDEWISE IN TIME
MURDER MADNESS
THE LAST SPACE SHIP
THE LAWS OF CHANCE(_anthology_)
GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION(_editor_)
[A] Published in a POCKET BOOK edition.
_Murray Leinster_
SPACE TUG
_Pocket Books, Inc.__New York, N. Y._
This Pocket Book includes every word contained in the original,higher-priced edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made fromcompletely reset, clear, easy-to-read type.
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SPACE TUG
Shasta edition published November, 1953
POCKET BOOK edition published January, 19551st printing November, 1954
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not bereproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher,except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.For information, address: Shasta Publishers, 5525 South BlackstoneAvenue, Chicago 37, Illinois.
_Copyright, 1953, by Will F. Jenkins. This_ POCKET BOOK _edition ispublished by arrangement with Shasta Publishers. Library of CongressCatalog Card Number: 53-7292. Printed in the U. S. A._
+--------------------------------------------------------------+| Transcriber's Note || || No evidence has been found that the copyright of this book || has been renewed. || |+--------------------------------------------------------------+
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Pocket Book]
_Notice_: POCKET BOOK editions are published in the United States byPocket Books, Inc., in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada, Ltd. TradeMarks registered in the United States and British Patent Offices byPocket Books, Inc., and registered in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada,Ltd.
_To Joan Patricia Jenkins_
1
To the world at large, of course, it was just another day. A differentsort entirely at different places on the great, round, rolling Earth,but nothing out of the ordinary. It was Tuesday on one side of the DateLine and Monday on the other. It was so-and-so's wedding anniversary andso-and-so's birthday and another so-and-so would get out of jail today.It was warm, it was cool, it was fair, it was cloudy. One looked forwardto the future with confidence, with hope, with uneasiness or with terroraccording to one's temperament and one's geographical location and pasthistory. To most of the human race this was nothing whatever but justanother day.
But to Joe Kenmore it was a most particular day indeed. Here, it was thegray hour just before sunrise and already there were hints of reddishcolorings in the sky. It was chilly, and somehow the world seemed stilland breathless. To Joe, the feeling of tensity marked this morning offfrom all the other mornings of his experience.
He got up and began to dress, in Major Holt's quarters back of thatgiant steel half-globe called the Shed, near the town of Bootstrap. Hefelt queer because he felt so much as usual. By all the rules, he shouldhave experienced a splendid, noble resolution and a fiery exaltation,and perhaps even an admirable sensation of humility and unworthiness toaccomplish what was expected of him today. And, deep enough inside, hefelt suitable emotion. But it happened that he couldn't take time tofeel things adequately today.
He was much more aware that he wanted some coffee rather badly, and thathe hoped everything would go all right. He looked out of the windows atempty, dreary desert under the dawn sky. Today was the day he'd beleaving on a rather important journey. He hoped that Haney and theChief and Mike weren't nervous. He also hoped that nobody had gotten atthe fuel for the pushpots, and that the slide-rule crew that hadcalculated everything hadn't made any mistakes. He was also botheredabout the steering-rocket fuel, and he was uncomfortable about thebusiness of releasing the spaceship from the launching cage. There was,too, cause for worry in the take-off rockets--if the tube linings hadshrunk there would be some rather gruesome consequences--and there couldalways be last-minute orders from Washington to delay or even canceleverything.
In short, his mind was full of strictly practical details. He didn'thave time to feel noble aspirations or sensations of high destiny. Hehad a very tricky and exacting job ahead of him.
The sky was growing lighter outside. Stars faded in a paling blue andthe desert showed faint colorings. He tied his necktie. A deep-tonedkeening set up off to the southward, over the sere and dreary landscape.It was a faraway noise, something like the lament of a mountain-sizedcalf bleating for its mother. Joe took a deep breath. He looked, but sawnothing. The noise, though, told him that there'd been no cancellationof orders so far. He mentally uncrossed one pair of fingers. He couldn'tpossibly cross fingers against all foreseeable disasters. There weren'tenough fingers--or toes either. But it was good that so far the scheduleheld.
He went downstairs. Major Holt was pacing up and down the living room ofhis quarters. Electric lights burned, but already the windows werebrightening. Joe straightened up and tried to look casual. Strictlyspeaking, Major Holt was a family friend who happened also to besecurity officer here, in charge of protecting what went on in the giantconstruction Shed. He'd had a sufficiently difficult time of it in thepast, and the difficulties might keep on in the future. He was also theranking officer here and consequently the immediate boss of Joe'senterprise. Today's affair was still highly precarious. The whole thingwas controversial and uncertain and might spoil the career of somebodywith stars on his collar if it should fail. So nobody in the high brasswanted the responsibility. If everything went well, somebody suitablewould take the credit and the bows. Meanwhile Major Holt was boss bydefault.
He looked sharply at Joe. "Morning."
"Good morning, sir," said Joe. Major Holt's daughter Sally had a sort ofunderstanding with Joe, but the major hadn't the knack of cordiality,and nobody felt too much at ease with him. Besides, Joe was wearing auniform for the first time this morning. There were only eight suchuniforms in the world, so far. It was black whipcord, with an Eisenhowerjacket, narrow silver braid on the collar and cuffs, and a silver rocketfor a badge where a plane pilot wears his wings. It was strictlypractical. Against accidental catchings in machinery, the trousers werenarrow and tucked into ten-inch soft leather boots, and the wide leatherbelt had flat loops for the attachment of special equipment. Its widthwas a brace against the strains of acceleration. Sally had had much todo with its design.
But it hadn't yet been decided by the Pentagon whether the SpaceExploration Project would be taken over by the Army or the Navy or theAir Corps, so Joe wore
no insignia of rank. Technically he was still acivilian.
The deep-toned noise to the south had become a howl, sweeping closer andtrailed by other howlings.
"The pushpots are on the way over, as you can hear," said the majordetachedly, in the curious light of daybreak and electric bulbstogether. "Your crew is up and about. So far there seems to be no hitch.You're feeling all right for the attempt today?"
"If you want the truth, sir, I'd feel better with about ten years'practical experience behind me. But my gang and myself--we've had allthe training we can get without an actual take-off. We're thebest-trained crew to try it. I think we'll manage."
"I see," said the major. "You'll do your best."
"We may have to do better than that," admitted Joe wrily.
"True enough. You may." The major paused. "You're well aware that thereare--ah--people who do not altogether like the idea of the United Statespossessing an artificial satellite of Earth."
"I ought to know it," admitted Joe.
The Earth's second, man-constructed moon--out in space for just sixweeks now--didn't seem nowadays like the bitterly contested achievementit actually was. From Earth it was merely a tiny speck of light in thesky, identifiable for what it was only because it moved so swiftly andserenely from the sunset toward the east, or from night's darkness intothe dawn-light. But it had been fought bitterly before it was launched.It was first proposed to the United Nations, but even discussion in theCouncil was vetoed. So the United States had built it alone. Yet thenations which objected to it as an international project liked it evenless as a national one, and they'd done what they could to wreck it.
The building of the great steel hull now out there in emptiness had beenfought more bitterly, by more ruthless and more highly trainedsaboteurs, than any other enterprise in history. There'd been twoattempts to blast it with atomic bombs. But it was high aloft, rollinggrandly around the Earth, so close to its primary that its period waslittle more than four hours; and it rose in the west and set in the eastsix times a day.
Today Joe would try to get a supply ship up to it, a very smallrocket-driven cargo ship named Pelican One. The crew of the Platformneeded food and air and water--and especially the means of self-defense.Today's take-off would be the first attempt at a rocket-lift to space.
"The enemies of the Platform haven't given up," said the majorformidably. "And they used spectroscopes on the Platform's rocket fumes.Apparently they've been able to duplicate our fuel."
Joe nodded.
Major Holt went on: "For more than a month Military Intelligence hasbeen aware that rockets were under construction behind the Iron Curtain.They will be guided missiles, and they will carry atom bomb heads. Oneor more may be finished any day. When they're finished, you can betthat they'll be used against the Platform. And you will carry up thefirst arms for the Platform. Your ship carries half a dozen long-rangeinterceptor rockets to handle any attack from Earth. It's vitallyimportant for them to be delivered."
"They'll attack the Platform?" demanded Joe angrily. "That's war!"
"Not if they deny guilt," said the major ironically, "and if we havenothing to gain by war. The Platform is intended to defend the peace ofthe world. If it is destroyed, we won't defend the peace of the world bygoing to war over it. But while the Platform can defend itself, it isnot likely that anyone will dare to make war. So you have a veryworthwhile mission. I suggest that you have breakfast and report to theShed. I'm on my way there now."
Joe said, "Yes, sir."
The major started for the door. Then he stopped. He hesitated, and saidabruptly, "If my security measures have failed, Joe, you'll be killed.If there has been sabotage or carelessness, it will be my fault."
"I'm sure, sir, that everything anybody could do--"
"Everything anybody can do to destroy you has been done," said the majorgrimly. "Not only sabotage, Joe, but blunders and mistakes andstupidities. That always happens. But--I've done my best. I suspect I'masking your forgiveness if my best hasn't been good enough."
Then, before Joe could reply, the major went hurriedly away.
Joe frowned for a moment. It occurred to him that it must be prettytough to be responsible for the things that other men's lives dependon--when you can't share their danger. But just then the smell of coffeereached his nostrils. He trailed the scent. There was a coffeepotsteaming on the table in the dining-room. There was a note on a plate.
_Good luck. I'll see you in the Shed.
Sally_
Joe was relieved. Sally Holt had been somewhere around underfoot allhis life. She was a swell girl, but he was grateful that he didn't haveto talk to her just now.
He poured coffee and looked at his watch. He went to the window. Thefaraway howling was much nearer, and dawn had definitely arrived. Smallcloudlets in a pale blue sky were tinted pinkish by the rising sun.Patches of yucca and mesquite and sage out beyond the officers' quartersarea stretched away to a far-off horizon. They were now visiblydifferent in color from the red-yellow earth between them, and castlong, streaky shadows. The cause of the howling was still invisible.
But Joe cared nothing for that. He stared skyward, searching. And he sawwhat he looked for.
There was a small bright sliver of sunlight high aloft. It moved slowlytoward the east. It showed the unmistakable glint of sunshine uponpolished steel. It was the artificial satellite--a huge steelhull--which had been built in the gigantic Shed from whose shadow Joelooked upward. It was the size of an ocean liner, and six weeks sincesome hundreds of pushpots, all straining at once, had gotten it out ofthe Shed and panted toward the sky with it. They'd gotten it twelvemiles high and speeding eastward at the ultimate speed they couldmanage. They'd fired jato rockets, all at once, and so pushed its speedup to the preposterous. Then they'd dropped away and the giant steelthing had fired its own rockets--which made mile-long flames--and swepton out to emptiness. Before its rockets were consumed it was in an orbit4,000 miles above the Earth's surface, and it hurtled through space atsomething over 12,000 miles an hour. It circled the Earth in exactlyfour hours, fourteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds. And it wouldcontinue its circling forever, needing no fuel and never descending. Itwas a second moon for the planet Earth.
But it could be destroyed.
Joe watched hungrily as it went on to meet the sun. Smoothly,unhurriedly, serenely, the remote and twinkling speck floated on out ofsight. And then Joe went back to the table and ate his breakfastquickly. He wolfed it. He had an appointment to meet that minute specksome 4,000 miles out in space. His appointment was for a very few hourshence.
He'd been training for just this morning's effort since before thePlatform's launching. There was a great box swinging in twenty-footgimbal rings over in the Shed. There were motors and projectors and overtwo thousand vacuum tubes, relays and electronic units. It was a spaceflight simulator--a descendant of the Link trainer which once taughtplane pilots how to fly. But this offered the problems and thesensations of rocketship control, and for many hours every day Joe andthe three members of his crew had labored in it. The simulatorduplicated every sight and sound and feeling--all but heavyacceleration--to be experienced in the take-off of a rocketship tospace. The similitude of flight was utterly convincing. Sometimes it wasappallingly so when emergencies and catastrophes and calamities werestaged in horrifying detail for them to learn to respond to. In sixweeks they'd learned how to handle a spaceship so far as anybody couldlearn on solid ground--if the simulator was correctly built. Nobodycould be sure about that. But it was the best training that could bedevised.
In minutes Joe had finished the coffee and was out of Major Holt'squarters and headed for the Shed's nearest entrance. The Shed was agigantic metal structure rising out of sheer flat desert. There werehills to the westward, but only arid plain to the east and south andnorth. There was but one town in hundreds of miles and that wasBootstrap, built to house the workmen who'd built the Platform and thestill invisible, ferociously howling pushpots and now the small su
pplyships, the first of which was to make its first trip today.
The Shed seemed very near because of its monstrous size. When he wasactually at the base of its wall, it seemed to fill half the firmamentand more than half the horizon. He went in, and felt self-conscious whenthe guard's eyes fell on his uniform. There was a tiny vestibule. Thenhe was in the Shed itself, and it was enormous.
There were acres of wood-block flooring. There was a vast,steel-girdered arching roof which was fifty stories high in the center.All this size had been needed when the Space Platform was being built.Men on the far side were merely specks, and the rows of windows toadmit light usually did no more than make a gray twilight inside. Butthere was light enough today. To the east the Shed's wall was split fromtop to bottom. A colossal triangular gore had been loosened and thrustout and rolled aside, and a doorway a hundred and fifty feet wide let inthe sunshine. Through it, Joe could see the fiery red ball which was thesun just leaving the horizon.
But there was something more urgent for him to look at. Pelican One hadbeen moved into its launching cage. Only Joe, perhaps, would really haverecognized it. Actually it was a streamlined hull of steel, eighty feetlong by twenty in diameter. There were stubby metal fins--useless inspace, and even on take-off, but essential for the planned method oflanding on its return. There were thick quartz ports in the bow-section.But its form was completely concealed now by the attached, exteriortake-off rockets. It had been shifted into the huge cradle of steelbeams from which it was to be launched. Men swarmed about it and overit, in and out of the launching cage, checking and rechecking everypossible thing that could make for the success of its flight to space.
The other three crew-members were ready--Haney and Chief Bender and MikeScandia. They were especially entitled to be the crew of this firstsupply ship. When the Platform was being built, its pilot-gyros had beenbuilt by a precision tool firm owned by Joe's father. He'd gone by planewith the infinitely precise apparatus to Bootstrap, to deliver andinstall it in the Platform. And the plane was sabotaged, and the gyroswere ruined. They'd consumed four months in the building, and fourmonths more for balancing with absolute no-tolerance accuracy. ThePlatform couldn't wait so long for duplicates. So Joe had improvised amethod of repair. And with Haney to devise special machine-tool setupsand the Chief to use fanatically fine workmanship, and Mike and Joeaiding according to their gifts, they'd rebuilt the apparatus in animpossibly short time. The original notion was Joe's, but he couldn'thave done the job without the others.
And there had been other, incidental triumphs by the team of four. Theywere not the only ones who worked feverishly for the glory of havinghelped to build the Earth's first artificial moon, but they hadaccomplished more than most. Joe had even been appointed to be analternate member of the Platform's crew. But the man he was to havesubstituted for recovered from an illness, and Joe was left behind atthe Platform's launching. But all of them had rated some reward, and itwas to serve in the small ships that would supply the man-madesatellite.
Now they were ready to begin. The Chief grinned exuberantly as Joeducked through the bars of the launching cage and approached the ship.He was a Mohawk Indian--one of that tribe which for two generations hadsupplied steel workers to every bridge and dam and skyscraper job on thecontinent. He was brown and bulky and explosive. Haney looked tense andstrained. He was tall and lean and spare, and a good man in any sort oftrouble. Mike blazed excitement. Mike was forty-one inches high and hewas full-grown. He had worked on the Platform, bucking rivets and makingwelds and inspections in places too small for a normal-sized man toreach. He frantically resented any concessions to his size and he was asgood a man as any. He simply was the small, economy size.
"Hiya, Joe," boomed the Chief. "All set? Had breakfast?"
Joe nodded. He began to ask anxious questions. About steering-rocketfuel and the launching cage release and the take-off rockets and thereduction valve from the air tanks--he'd thought of that on the wayover--and the short wave and loran and radar. Haney nodded to somequestions. Mike said briskly, "I checked" to others.
The Chief grunted amiably, "Look, Joe! We checked everything last night.We checked it again this morning. I even caught Mike polishing theejection seats, because there wasn't anything else to make sure of!"
Joe managed a smile. The ejection seats were assuredly the most unlikelyof all devices to be useful today. They were supposedly life-savingdevices. If the ship came a cropper on take-off, the four of them weresupposed to use ejection-seats like those supplied to jet pilots. Theywould be thrown clear of the ship and ribbon-parachutes might open andmight let them land alive. But it wasn't likely. Joe had objected totheir presence. If a feather dropped to Earth from a height of 600miles, it would be falling so fast when it hit the atmosphere that itwould heat up and burn to ashes from pure air-friction. It wasn't likelythat they could get out of the ship if anything went wrong.
Somebody marched stiffly toward the four of them. Joe's expression grewrueful. The Space Project was neither Army nor Navy nor Air Corps, butsomething that so far was its own individual self. But the man marchingtoward Joe was Lieutenant Commander Brown, strictly Navy, assigned tothe Shed as an observer. And there were some times when he baffled Joe.Like now.
He halted, and looked as if he expected Joe to salute. Joe didn't.
Lieutenant Commander Brown said, formally: "I would like to offer mybest wishes for your trip, Mr. Kenmore."
"Thanks," said Joe.
Brown smiled distantly. "You understand, of course, that I considernavigation essentially a naval function, and it does seem to me that anyship, including a spaceship, should be manned by naval personnel. But Iassuredly wish you good fortune."
"Thanks," said Joe again.
Brown shook hands, then stalked off.
Haney rumbled in his throat. "How come, Joe, he doesn't wish all of usgood luck?"
"He does," said Joe. "But his mind's in uniform too. He's been trainedthat way. I'd like to make a bet that we have him as a passenger out tothe Platform some day."
"Heaven forbid!" growled Haney.
There was an outrageous tumult outside the wide-open gap in the Shed'swall. Something went shrieking by the doorway. It looked like themagnified top half of a loaf of baker's bread, painted gray and equippedwith an air-scoop in front and a plastic bubble for a pilot. It howledlike a lost baby dragon, its flat underside tilted up and up until itwas almost vertical. It had no wings, but a blue-white flame spurtedout of its rear, wobbling from side to side for reasons best known toitself. It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet planebecause it could not possibly fly. Only it did. It settled down on itsflame-spouting tail, and the sparse vegetation burst into smoky flameand shriveled, and the thing--still shrieking like a fog-horn in atunnel--flopped flat forward with a resounding _clank!_ It was abruptlysilent.
But the total noise was not lessened. Another pushpot came soaringwildly into view, making hysterical outcries. It touched and bangedviolently to earth. Others appeared in the air beyond the constructionShed. One flopped so hard on landing that its tail rose in the air andit attempted a somersault. It made ten times more noise than before--theflame from its tail making wild gyrations--and flopped back again with acrash. Two others rolled over on their sides after touching ground. Oneended up on its back like a tumble-bug, wriggling.
They seemed to land by hundreds, but their number was actually indozens. It was not until the last one was down that Joe could makehimself heard. The pushpots were jet motors in frames and metal skin,with built-in jato rocket tubes besides their engines. On the groundthey were quite helpless. In the air they were unbelievably clumsy. Theywere actually balanced and steered by vanes in the blasts of their jets,and they combined the absolute maximum of sheer thrust with theirreducible minimum of flyability.
Crane-trucks went out to pick them up. Joe said anxiously, "We'd bettercheck our flight plan again. We have to know it absolutely!"
He headed across the floor to the flight data b
oard. He passed the hullof another ship like his own, which was near completion, and the bareskeletons of two others which needed a lot of work yet. They'd beenbegun at distant plants and then hauled here on monstrous trailers forcompletion. The wooden mockup of the design for all the ships--in whichevery possible arrangement of instruments and machinery had been testedout--lay neglected by the Shed wall.
The four stood before the flight data board. It listed the readingsevery instrument should show during every instant of the flight. Thereadings had been calculated with infinite care, and Joe and the othersneeded to know them rather better than they knew their multiplicationtables. Once they started out, they wouldn't have time to wonder ifeverything was right for the time and place. They needed to know.
They stood there, soaking up the information the board contained,forming mental pictures of it, making as sure as possible that any oneof them would spot anything wrong the instant it showed up, and wouldinstantly know what had to be done about it.
A gigantic crane-truck came in through the wide doorway. It dangled apushpot. It rolled over to the launching cage in which the spaceship layand set the unwieldy metal object against that cage. There was a _clank_as the pushpot caught hold of the magnetic grapples. The crane went outagain, passing a second crane carrying a second pushpot. The secondbeetle-like thing was presented to the cage. It stuck fast. The cranewent out for more.
Major Holt came across the floor of the Shed. It took him a long time towalk the distance from the Security offices to the launching cage. Whenhe got there, he looked impatiently around. His daughter Sally came outof nowhere and blew her nose as if she'd been crying, and pointed to thedata board. The major shrugged his shoulders and looked uneasily at her.She regarded him with some defiance. The major spoke to her sternly.They waited.
The cranes brought in more pushpots and set them up against the steellaunching cage. The ship had been nearly hidden before by the rockettubes fastened outside its hull. It went completely out of sight behindthe metal monsters banked about it.
The major looked at his watch and the group about the data board. Theymoved away from it and back toward the ship. Joe saw the major andswerved over to him.
"I have brought you," said the major in an official voice, "the invoiceof your cargo. You will deliver the invoice with the cargo and bringback proper receipts."
"I hope," said Joe.
"_We_ hope!" said Sally in a strained tone. "Good luck, Joe!"
"Thanks."
"There is not much to say to you," said the major without visibleemotion. "Of course the next crew will start its training immediately,but it may be a month before another ship can take off. It is extremelydesirable that you reach the Platform today."
"Yes, sir," said Joe wrily. "I have even a personal motive to get there.If I don't, I break my neck."
The major ignored the comment. He shook hands formally and marched away.Sally smiled up at Joe, but her eyes were suddenly full of tears.
"I--do hope everything goes all right, Joe," she said unsteadily."I--I'll be praying for you."
"I can use some of that, too," admitted Joe.
She looked at her hand. Joe's ring was on her finger--wrapped withstring on the inside of the band to make it fit. Then she looked upagain and was crying unashamedly.
"I--will," she repeated. Then she said fiercely, "I don't care ifsomebody's looking, Joe. It's time for you to go in the ship."
He kissed her, and turned and went quickly to the peculiar mass ofclustered pushpots, touching and almost overlapping each other.
He ducked under and looked back. Sally waved. He waved back. Then heclimbed up the ladder into Pelican One's cabin. Somebody pulled theladder away and scuttled out of the cage.
The others were in their places. Joe slowly closed the door from thecabin to the outer world. There was suddenly a cushioned silence abouthim. Out the quartz-glass ports he could see ahead, out the end of thecage through the monstrous doorway to the desert beyond. Overhead hecould see the dark, girder-lined roof of the Shed. On either side,though, he could see only the scratched, dented, flat undersides of thepushpots ready to lift the ship upward.
"You can start on the pushpot motors, Haney," he said curtly.
Joe moved to his own, the pilot's seat. Haney pushed a button. Throughthe fabric of the ship came the muted uproar of a pushpot enginestarting. Haney pushed another button. Another. Another. More jetengines bellowed. The tumult in the Shed would be past endurance, now.
Joe strapped himself into his seat. He made sure that the Chief at thesteering-rocket manual controls was fastened properly, and Mike at theradio panel was firmly belted past the chance of injury.
Haney said with enormous calm, "All pushpot motors running, Joe."
"Steering rockets ready," the Chief reported.
"Radio operating," came from Mike. "Communications room all set."
Joe reached to the maneuver controls. He should have been sweating. Hishands, perhaps, should have quivered with tension. But he was too muchworried about too many things. Nobody can strike an attitude or go intoa blue funk while they are worrying about things to be done. Joe heardthe small gyro motors as their speed went up. A hum and a whine and thena shrill whistle which went up in pitch until it wasn't anything at all.He frowned anxiously and said to Haney, "I'm taking over the pushpots."
Haney nodded. Joe took the over-all control. The roar of engines outsidegrew loud on the right-hand side, and died down. It grew thunderous tothe left, and dwindled. The ones ahead pushed. Then the ones behind. Joenodded and wet his lips. He said: "Here we go."
There was no more ceremony than that. The noise of the jet motorsoutside rose to a thunderous volume which came even through the littleship's insulated hull. Then it grew louder, and louder still, and Joestirred the controls by ever so tiny a movement.
Suddenly the ship did not feel solid. It stirred a little. Joe held hisbreath and cracked the over-all control of the pushpots' speed a tinytrace further. The ship wobbled a little. Out the quartz-glass windows,the great door seemed to descend. In reality the clustered pushpots andthe launching cage rose some thirty feet from the Shed floor and hoveredthere uncertainly. Joe shifted the lever that governed the vanes in thejet motor blasts. Ship and cage and pushpots, all together, waveredtoward the doorway. They passed out of it, rocking a little and pitchinga little and wallowing a little. As a flying device, the combination wasa howling tumult and a horror. It was an aviation designer's nightmare.It was a bad dream by any standard.
But it wasn't meant as a way to fly from one place to another on Earth.It was the first booster stage of a three-stage rocket aimed at outerspace. It looked rather like--well--if a swarm of bumblebees clungfiercely to a wire-gauze cage in which lay a silver minnow wrapped inmatch-sticks; and if the bees buzzed furiously and lifted it in astraining, clumsy, and altogether unreasonable manner; and if theappearance and the noise together were multiplied a good many thousandsof times--why--it would present a great similarity to the take-off ofthe spaceship under Joe's command. Nothing like it could be graceful orneatly controllable or even very speedy in the thick atmosphere near theground. But higher, it would be another matter.
It _was_ another matter. Once clear of the Shed, and with flat, seredesert ahead to the very horizon, Joe threw on full power to the pushpotmotors. The clumsy-seeming aggregation of grotesque objects began toclimb. Ungainly it was, and clumsy it was, but it went upward at a ratea jet-fighter might have trouble matching. It wobbled, and it swungaround and around, and it tipped crazily, the whole aggregation of jetmotors and cage and burden of spaceship as a unit. But it rose!
The ground dropped so swiftly that even the Shed seemed to shrivel likea pricked balloon. The horizon retreated as if a carpet were hastilyunrolled by magic. The barometric pressure needles turned.
"Communications says our rate-of-climb is 4,000 feet a minute and goingup fast," Mike announced. "It's five.... We're at 17,000 feet ...18,000. We should get some eastward velocity at 32,000
feet. Our heightis now 21,000 feet...."
There was no change in the feel of things inside the ship, of course.Sealed against the vacuum of space, barometric pressure outside made nodifference. Height had no effect on the air inside the ship.
At 25,000 feet the Chief said suddenly: "We're pointed due east, Joe.Freeze it?"
"Right," said Joe. "Freeze it."
The Chief threw a lever. The gyros were running at full operating speed.By engaging them, the Chief had all their stored-up kinetic energyavailable to resist any change of direction the pushpots might produceby minor variations in their thrusts. Haney brooded over the reportsfrom the individual engines outside. He made minute adjustments to keepthem balanced. Mike uttered curt comments into the communicator fromtime to time.
At 33,000 feet there was a momentary sensation as if the ship weretilted sharply. It wasn't. The instruments denied any change from levelrise. The upward-soaring complex of flying things had simply risen intoa jet-stream, one of those wildly rushing wind-floods of the upperatmosphere.
"Eastern velocity four hundred," said Mike from the communicator. "Nowfour-twenty-five.... Four-forty."
There was a 300-mile-an-hour wind behind them. A tail-wind, west toeast. The pushpots struggled now to get the maximum possible forwardthrust before they rose out of that east-bound hurricane. They added afierce push to eastward to their upward thrust. Mike's cracked voicereported 500 miles an hour. Presently it was 600.
At 40,000 feet they were moving eastward at 680 miles an hour. Ajet-motor cannot be rated except indirectly, but there was over 200,000horsepower at work to raise the spacecraft and build up the highestpossible forward speed. It couldn't be kept up, of course. The pushpotscouldn't carry enough fuel.
But they reached 55,000 feet, which is where space begins for humankind.A man exposed to emptiness at that height will die just as quickly asanywhere between the stars. But it wasn't quite empty space for thepushpots. There was still a very, very little air. The pushpots couldstill thrust upward. Feebly, now, but they still thrust.
Mike said: "Communications says get set to fire jatos, Joe."
"Right!" he replied. "Set yourselves."
Mike flung a switch, and a voice began to chatter behind Joe's head. Itwas the voice from the communications-room atop the Shed, now far belowand far behind. Mike settled himself in the tiny acceleration-chairbuilt for him. The Chief squirmed to comfort in his seat. Haney took hishands from the equalizing adjustments he had to make so that Joe's useof the controls would be exact, regardless of moment-to-momentdifferences in the thrust of the various jets.
"We've got a yaw right," said the Chief sharply. "Hold it, Joe!"
Joe waited for small quivering needles to return to their properregistrations.
"Back and steady," said the Chief a moment later. "Okay!"
The tinny voice behind Joe now spoke precisely. Mike had listened to itwhile the work of take-off could be divided, so that Joe would not bedistracted. Now Joe had to control everything at once.
The roar of the pushpots outside the ship had long since lost the volumeand timbre of normal atmosphere. Not much sound could be transmitted bythe near-vacuum outside. But the jet motors did roar, and the soundwhich was not sound at such a height was transmitted by the metal cageas so much pure vibration. The walls and hull of the spaceship picked upa crawling, quivering pulsation and turned it into sound. Standing wavesset up and dissolved and moved erratically in the air of the cabin.Joe's eardrums were strangely affected. Now one ear seemed muted by atemporary difference of air pressure where a standing wave lingered fora second or two. Then the other eardrum itched. There were creepingsensations as of things touching one and quickly moving away.
Joe swung a microphone into place before his mouth.
"All set," he said evenly. "Brief me."
The tinny voice said:
"_You are at 65,000 feet. Your curve of rate-of-climb is flattening out.You are now rising at near-maximum speed, and not much more forwardvelocity can be anticipated. You have an air-speed relative to surfaceof six-nine-two miles per hour. The rotational speed of Earth at thislatitude is seven-seven-eight. You have, then, a total orbital speed ofone-four-seven-oh miles per hour, or nearly twelve per cent of yourneeded final velocity. Since you will take off laterally and practicallywithout air resistance, a margin of safety remains. You are authorizedto blast._"
Joe said:
"Ten seconds. Nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ...three ... two ... one...."
He stabbed the master jato switch. And a monstrous jato rocket, builtinto each and every one of the pushpots outside, flared chemical fumesin a simultaneous, gigantic thrust. A small wire-wound jato forjet-assisted-take-off will weigh a hundred and forty pounds and delivera thousand pounds of thrust for fourteen seconds. And that is forrockets using nonpoisonous compounds. The jatos of the pushpots used theberyllium-fluorine fuel that had lifted the Platform and that filled thetake-off rockets of Joe's ship. These jatos gave the pushpots themselvesan acceleration of ten gravities, but it had to be shared with the cageand the ship. Still....
Joe felt himself slammed back into his seat with irresistible,overwhelming force. The vibration from the jets had been bad. Now hedidn't notice it. He didn't notice much of anything but the horriblesensations of six-gravity acceleration.
It was not exactly pain. It was a feeling as if a completely intolerableand unbearable pressure pushed at him. Not only on the outside, like ablow, but inside too, like nothing else imaginable. Not only his chestpressed upon his lungs, but his lungs strained toward his backbone. Notonly the flesh of his thighs tugged to flatten itself against hisacceleration-chair, but the blood in his legs tried to flow into andburst the blood-vessels in the back of his legs.
The six-gravity acceleration seemed to endure for centuries. Actually,it lasted for fourteen seconds. In that time it increased the speed ofthe little ship by rather more than half a mile per second, somethingover 1,800 miles per hour. Before, the ship had possessed an orbitalspeed of a shade over 1,470 miles an hour. After the jato thrust, it wastraveling nearly 3,400 miles per hour. It needed to travel somethingover 12,000 miles per hour to reach the artificial satellite of Earth.
The intolerable thrust ended abruptly. Joe gasped. But he could allowhimself only a shake of the head to clear his brain. He jammed down thetake-off rocket firing button. There was a monstrous noise and a mightysurging, and Haney panted, "Clear of cage...."
And then they were pressed fiercely against their acceleration chairsagain. The ship was no longer in its launching cage. It was no longerupheld by pushpots. It was free, with its take-off rockets flaming. Itplunged on up and out. But the acceleration was less. Nobody can standsix gravities for long. Anybody can take three--for a while.
Joe's body resisted movement with a weight of four hundred and fiftypounds, instead of a third as much for normal. His heart had to pumpagainst three times the normal resistance of gravity. His chest felt asif it had a leaden weight on it. His tongue tried to crowd the back ofhis mouth and strangle him. The sensation was that of a nightmare ofimpossible duration. It was possible to move and possible to see. Onecould breathe, with difficulty, and with titanic effort one could speak.But there was the same feeling of stifling resistance to every movementthat comes in nightmares.
But Joe managed to keep his eyes focused. The dials of the instrumentssaid that everything was right. The tinny voice behind his head, itstimbre changed by the weighting of its diaphragm, said: "_All readingscheck within accuracy of instruments. Good work!_"
Joe moved his eyes to a quartz window. The sky was black. But there werestars. Bright stars against a black background. At the same instant hesaw the bright white disks of sunshine that came in the cabin portholes.Stars and sunshine together. And the sunshine was the sunshine ofspace. Even with the polarizers cutting off some of the glare it wasunbearably bright and hot beyond conception. He smelled overheatedpaint, where the sunlight smote on a metal bulkhead. Stars and s
uper-hotsunshine together....
It was necessary to pant for breath, and his heart pounded horribly andhis eyes tried to go out of focus, but Joe Kenmore strained in hisacceleration-chair and managed to laugh a little.
"We did it!" he panted. "In case you didn't notice, we're out of--theatmosphere and--out in space! We're--headed to join the Space Platform!"