Part 5 (1/2)

The s.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p to Platform to Earth and back again. In the s.h.i.+p 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 hope might be attempted with the best possible chances of success.

Naturally, none of this appeared in the look of things. The small s.h.i.+p floated on and on. It reached an alt.i.tude of 3,500 miles. The Earth was visibly farther away. Behind the s.h.i.+p 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.

s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and Platform moved on toward a meeting place. The s.h.i.+p moved a trifle faster, because it was climbing. The speeds would match exactly when they met. The small torpedo-shaped s.h.i.+ning s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ning s.h.i.+p. 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-s.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p were 20 miles apart. An infinitesimal radar-bowl moved on the little s.h.i.+p. Tight-beam waves flickered invisibly between the two craft. The rockets raged toward them.

The s.h.i.+p and the Platform were 10 miles apart. The rockets were now glinting missiles leaping ahead of the fumes that propelled them.

The s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. Its landing-rockets spouted white-hot flame and fumes more thick and coiling than even the smoke of the bombs.

The little s.h.i.+p surged momentarily toward the racing monsters. And then----

The rockets which were supposed to let the s.h.i.+p down to Earth flew free--flung themselves unburdened at the rockets which came with deadly intent to the meeting of the two Earth s.p.a.cecraft.

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 s.p.a.ce.

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed away by nothingness and ceased to be.

Then there were just two things remaining in the void. One was the great, clumsy, s.h.i.+ning Platform, gigantic in size to anything close by.

The other was the small s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p which had climbed to it and fought for it and defended it against the bombs from Earth.

The little s.h.i.+p 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.