Part 18 (2/2)

He looked at Joe as if expecting a salute. He didn't get it. He clanked away, his magnetic shoe-soles beating out a singularly martial rhythm.

He must have practised that walk, in private.

Joe got out of the airlock as another of the s.p.a.ce barges was warped in.

Brent, the crew's psychologist, joined him when he went to unload. Brent nodded in a friendly fas.h.i.+on to Joe.

”Quite a change, eh?” he said drily. ”Sanford turned out to be a crackpot with his notions of grandeur. I'm not sure that Brown's notions of discipline aren't worse.”

Joe said, ”I've something rather important to pa.s.s on,” and told about the newly discovered physical effects of a long stay where there was no gravity. The doctors now predicted that anybody who spent six months without weight would suffer a deterioration of muscle tone which could make a return to Earth impossible without a long preliminary process of retraining. One's heart would adjust to the absence of any need to pump blood against gravity.

”Which,” said Joe, ”means that you're going to have to be relieved before too long. But we brought up some gravity-simulator harness that may help.”

Brent said desolately: ”And I was so pleased! We all had trouble with insomnia, at first, but lately we've all been sleeping well! Now I see why! Normally one sleeps because he's tired. We had trouble sleeping until our muscles got so weak we tired anyhow!”

Another drone came in and was unloaded. And another and another. But the last of them wasn't only unloaded. Haney took over the Platform's control board and--grinning to himself--sent faint, especially-tuned short wave impulses to the steering-rockets of the drone. The liquid-fuel rockets were designed to steer a loaded s.h.i.+p. With the airlock door open, the silvery s.h.i.+p leaped out of the dock like a frightened horse. The liquid-fuel rocket had a nearly empty hull to accelerate. It responded skittishly.

Joe watched out a port as it went hurtling away. The vast Earth rolled beneath it. It sped on and vanished. Its fumes ceased to be visible. Joe told Brent:

”Another nice job, that! We sent it backward, slowing it a little. It'll have a new orbit, independent of ours and below it. But come sixty hours it will be directly underneath. We'll haul it up and refuel it. And our friends the enemy will hate it. It's a radio repeater. It'll pick up short-wave stuff beamed to it, and repeat it down to Earth. And they can try to jam that!”

It was a mildly malicious trick to play. Behind the Iron Curtain, broadcasts from the free world couldn't be heard because of stations built to emit pure noise and drown them out. But the jamming stations were on the enemy nations' borders. If radio programs came down from overhead, jamming would be ineffective at least in the center of the nations. Populations would hear the truth, even though their governments objected.

But that was a minor matter, after all. With s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p hulls coming into being by dozens, and with one convoy of hundreds of tons of equipment gotten aloft, the whole picture of supply for the Platform had changed.

Part of the new picture was two devices that Haney and the Chief were a.s.sembling. They were mostly metal backbone and a series of tanks, with rocket motors mounted on ball and socket joints. They looked like huge red insects, but they were officially rocket recovery vehicles, and Joe's crew referred to them as s.p.a.ce wagons. They had no cabin, but something like a saddle. Before it there was a control-board complete with radar-screens. And there were racks to which solid-fuel rockets of divers sizes could be attached. They were literally short-range tow craft for travel in s.p.a.ce. They had the stripped, barren look of farm machinery. So the name ”s.p.a.ce wagon” fitted. There were two of them.

”We're putting the pair together,” the Chief told Joe. ”Looks kinda peculiar.”

”It's only for temporary use,” said Joe. ”There's a bigger and better one being built with a regular cabin and hull. But some experience with these two will be useful in running a regular s.p.a.ce tug.”

The Chief said with a trace too much of casualness: ”I'm kind of looking forward to testing this.”

”No,” said Joe doggedly. ”I'm responsible. I take the first chance. But we should all be able to handle them. When this is a.s.sembled you can stand by with the second one. If the first one works all right, we'll try the second.”

The Chief grimaced, but he went back to the a.s.sembly of the spidery device.

Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses. He showed Brent how they worked. Brown hadn't official instructions to order their use, but Joe put one on himself, set for full Earth-gravity simulation. He couldn't imitate actual gravity, of course. Only the effect of gravity on one's muscles. There were springs and elastic webbing pulling one's shoulders and feet together, so that it was as much effort to stand extended--with one's legs straight out--as to stand upright on Earth. Joe felt better with a pull on his body.

Brent was upset when he found that to him more than a tenth of normal gravity was unbearable. But he kept it on at that. If he increased the pull a very little every day, he might be able to return to Earth, in time. Now it would be a very dangerous business indeed. He went off to put the other members of the crew in the same sort of harness.

After ten hours, a second drone broadcaster went off into s.p.a.ce. By that time the articulated red frameworks were a.s.sembled. They looked more than ever like farm machinery, save that their bulging tanks made them look insectile, too. They were actually something between small tow-boats and crash-wagons. A man in a s.p.a.ce suit could climb into the saddle of one of these creations, plug in the air-line of his suit to the crash-wagon's tanks, and travel in s.p.a.ce by means of the s.p.a.ce wagon's rockets. These weird vehicles had remarkably powerful magnetic grapples. They were equipped with steering rockets as powerful as those of a s.h.i.+p. They had banks of solid-fuel rockets of divers power and length of burning. And they even mounted rocket missiles, small guided rockets which could be used to destroy what could not be recovered. They were intended to handle unmanned rocket s.h.i.+pments of supplies to the Platform. There were reasons why the trick should be economical, if it should happen to work at all.

When they were ready for testing, they seemed very small in the great s.p.a.ce lock. Joe and the Chief very carefully checked an extremely long list of things that had to work right or nothing would work at all. That part of the job wasn't thrilling, but Joe no longer looked for thrills.

He painstakingly did the things that produced results. If a sense of adventure seemed to disappear, the sensations of achievement more than made up for it.

They got into s.p.a.ce suits. They were in an odd position on the Platform.

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