 CHAPTER IX. But even at ten gravities drive it takes time to travel four thousand miles. At three, and coasting a great deal of the way, it takes much longer. The platform circled Earth in four hours and a little more. Anything intending interception and rising straight up needed to start skyward long before the platform was overhead. A 3G rocket would start while the platform was still below the western horizon from its launching spot. Especially if it planned to coast part of its journey, and a three gravity rocket would have to coast most of the way. So there was time. Coasting the rising manned rocket would be losing speed. If it planned to go no higher than the platform's orbit its upward velocity would be zero there. If it were intercepted five hundred miles down it would be rising at an almost leisurely rate, and Joe and the Chief could check their earthward plunge and match its rising rate. Yes they did. But what they couldn't do was match its orbital velocity, which was zero. They had the platform's eastward speed to start with, over two hundred miles a minute. No matter how desperately they fired breaking rockets they couldn't stop and maneuver around the rising control ship. Inevitably they would simply flash past it in the fraction of an instant. To fire their tiny guided missiles on a head would be almost to assure that they would miss. Also the enemy ship was manned. It could fight back. But Joe had been on the receiving end of one attack in space. It wasn't much experience, but it was more than anybody but he and his own crew possessed. Chief, said Joe, softly into his helmet-mike, as if by speaking softly he could keep it from being overheard, get close enough to me to see what I do, and then do it too. I can't tell you more. Whoever's running this rocket might know English. There was a flaring of vapor in space. The Chief was using his steering rockets to draw near. Joe spun his little space wagon about so that it pointed back in the direction from which it had come. He had four guided missiles, demolition type. Very deliberately he fired the four of them a stern, away from the rising rocket. They were relatively low-speed missiles, intended to blow up a robot ship that couldn't be hooked on to, because it was traveling too much faster or slower than the platform it was intended to reach. The missiles went away. Then Joe faced about again in the direction of his prospective target. The Chief fumed, Joe heard him, but he duplicated Joe's maneuver. He faced his own eccentric vessel in the direction of its line in a flight. Then his fuming suddenly ceased. Joe's headphones brought his explosive grunts when he suddenly saw the idea. Joe, I wish you could talk Indian. I could kiss you for this trick. Brown's voice said anxiously, I'm going to let that manned rocket have a couple more shots. Let us get by first, said Joe. Then maybe you can use them on the bombs coming up. We could see the trails of war rockets on the way out from Earth. They were infinitesimal threads of vapor. They were the thinnest possible filaments of gossamer white. But they enlarged as they rose. They were climbing it better than two miles per second now and still increasing their speed. But the arena in which this conflict took place was so vast that everything seemed to take place in slow motion. It was time to reason out not only the method of attack from Earth, but the excuse for it. If the platform vanished from space, no matter from what cause, its enemies would announce vociferously that it had been destroyed by its own atomic bombs exploding spontaneously. Even in the face of proof of murder, enemy nations would stridently insist that bombs intended for the enslavement of humanity in the platform had providentially detonated and removed that instrument of war-mongering scoundrally imperialists from the skies. There might be somebody somewhere who would believe it. Joe and the Chief were steadied now, nearly on a line to intercept the rising manned rocket. They had already fired their missiles which trailed them. They went into battle, not prepared to shoot, but with their ammunition expended, for which there was excellent reason. Something came foaming toward them from the nearby man-carrying rocket. It seemed like a side-spout from the column of vapor rising from Earth. Actually, it was a guided missile. "'Now we dodge,' said Joe cheerfully. "'Remember the trick of this maneuvering business?' It was simple. Speeding toward the rising assassin and with his missiles rushing toward them, the relative speeds of the wagons and the missiles were added together. If the space wagons dodged, the missile operator had less time to swing his guided rockets to match the change of target course. And besides, the attacker hadn't made a single turn in space. Not yet. He might know that a rocket doesn't go where it's pointed as a matter of theory. He might even know intellectually that the final speed and course of a rocket is the sum of all its previous speeds and courses. But he hadn't used the knowledge Joe and the Chief had. Something rushed at them. They went into evasive action. They didn't merely turn the noses of their space wagons. They flung them about, in, for end, and blasted. They used wholly different accelerations at odd angles. Joe shot away from Earth on steering-rocket thrust and touched off a three-four while he faced toward Earth's North Pole. And halfway along that four-second rush he flipped his craft in a somersault, and the result was nearly a right-angled turn. When the four-three burned out he set off a twelve-two, and halfway through its burning fired a three-two with it, so that at the beginning he had two gravities acceleration, then four gravities for three seconds, and then two again. With long practice a man might learn marksmanship in space. But all a man's judgment of speeds is learned on Earth, where things always, always, always move steadily. Nobody making his first space flight could possibly hit such targets as Joe and the Chief made of themselves. The man in the enemy rocket was making his first flight. Also Joe and the Chief had an initial velocity of two hundred miles a minute toward him. The marksman in the rising rocket hadn't a chance. He fired four more missiles and tried desperately to home them in, but... They flashed past his rising course. And then they were quite safe from his fire, because it would take a very long time indeed for anything he shot after them to catch up. But their missiles had still to pass him. And Joe and the Chief could steer them without any concern about their own safety, or anything else, but a hit. They made a hit. Two of the eight little missiles flashed luridly, almost together, where the radar pips showed the rocket to be. Then there were two parts to the rocket separating. One was small and one was fairly large. Another demolition missile hit the larger section. Still another exploded as that was going to pieces. The smaller fragments ceased to be important. The explosions weren't atomic bombs, of course. They were only demolition charges. But they demolished the manned rocket admirably. Brown's voice came in the headphones, still tense. You got it. How about the others? Joe felt a remarkable exhilaration. Later he might think about the poor devil, there could have been only one, who had been destroyed some thirty-seven hundred miles above the surface of the earth. He might think unhappily of that man as a victim of hatred, rather than as a hater. He might become extremely uncomfortable about this, but at the moment he felt merely that he and the Chief had won a startling victory. I think, he said, that you can treat them with silent contempt. They won't have proximity fuses. Those friends of ours, who want so badly to kill us, have found that proximity fuses don't work. Unless one is on a collision course, I don't think you need to do anything about them. The Chief was muttering to himself in Mohawk, twenty miles away. Joe said, Chief, how about getting back to the platform? The Chief growled, my great-grandfather would disown me, winning a fight and no scalp to show, not even counting coup, he disowned me. But Joe saw his rockets flare away off against the stars. The war rockets were very near now. They still emitted monstrous jettings of thick white vapor. They climbed up with incredible speed. One went by Joe at a distance of little more than a mile, and its fumes eddied out to half that, before they thinned to nothingness. They went on, and on, and on. They burned out somewhere. It would be a long time before they fell back to earth, ours probably. Then they would be meteors. They'd vaporize before they touched Solidity. They wouldn't even explode. But Joe and the Chief rode back to the platform. It was surprising how hard it was to match speed with it again, to make a good entrance into the giant lock. They barely made it before the platform made its plunge into that horrible blackness which was the earth's shadow. And Joe was very glad they did make it before then. He wouldn't have liked to be merely astride a skinny framework in that ghastly darkness, with the monstrous blackness of the abyss seeming to be trying to devour him. He met them in the airlock. He grinned. "'Nice job, Joe. Nice job, Chief,' he said warmly. "'Um, the Lieutenant Commander wants you to report to him, Joe, right away.' Joe cocked an eyebrow at him. What for?' Haney spread out his hands. The Chief grunted. "'That guy bothers me. I'll bet Joe is going to explain you shouldn't have gone out when he didn't want you to. Me? I'm keeping away from him.' The Chief shed his spacesuit and swaggered away, as well as anyone could swagger while walking on what happened to be the ceiling, from Joe's point of view. Joe put his space gear in its proper place. He went to the small cubby-hole that Brown had appropriated for the office of the Platform Commander. Joe went in, naturally, without saluting. Brown sat in a fastened-down chair with thigh grips holding him in place. He was writing. When Joe's entry he carefully put the pen down on a magnetized plate that would hold it until he wanted it again. Otherwise, it could have floated anywhere about the room. "'Mr. Kenmore,' said Brown awkwardly, "'you did a very nice piece of work. It's too bad you aren't in the Navy.' Joe said, "'It did work out pretty fortunately. It's lucky that Chief and I were out practicing, but now we can take off when a rocket's reported any time.'" Brown cleared his throat. "'I can thank you personally,' he said unhappily, "'and I do. But really, this situation is intolerable. How can I report this affair? I can't suggest commendation or a promotion or anything. I don't even know how to refer to you. I'm going to ask you, Mr. Kenmore, to put through a request that your status be clarified. I would imagine that your status would mean a rank—hm—about equivalent to a Lieutenant Junior grade in the Navy.'" Joe grinned, "'I have, um, prepared a draft you might find helpful,' said Brown earnestly. "'It's necessary for something to be done. It's urgent. It's important.' "'Sorry,' said Joe, "'the important thing to me is getting ready to load up the platform with supplies from Earth. Excuse me.'" He went out of the office. He made his way to the quarters, assigned himself and his crew. Mike greeted him with reproachful eyes. Joe waved his hand. "'Don't say it, Mike. The answer is yes. See that the tanks are refilled and new rockets put in place. Then you and Haney go out and practice. But no farther than ten miles from the platform. Understand?' "'No,' said Mike rebelliously. "'It's a dirty trick.'" "'Witch,' Joe assured him, "'I commit only because there's a robot ship from Bootstrap coming up any time now. And we'll need to pick it up and tow it here.'" Joe went to the control room to see if he could get a vision connection to Earth. He got the beam and he got Sally on the screen. A report of the attack on the platform had evidently already gone down to Earth. Sally's expression was somehow drawn and haunted. But she tried to talk lightly. "'Do and stuff, Joe,' she asked. "'How does it feel to be a victorious warrior?' "'It feels rotten,' he told her. "'There must have been somebody in the rocket we blew up. He felt like a patriot, I guess, trying to murder us. But I feel like a butcher,' she said. "'Maybe the chief's bombs.'" "'Maybe,' said Joe. He hesitated. "'Hold up your hand.'" She held it up. His ring was still on it. She nodded. "'Still there?' He shook his head. He didn't know. It was curious that one wanted so badly to talk to a girl after doing something that was blood-stirring and left one rather sickish afterward. This business of space travel and even space battle was what he dreamed of, and he still wanted it. But it was very comforting to talk to Sally, who hadn't had to go through any of it. "'Write me a letter, will you?' he asked. "'We can't tie up this beam very long.'" "'I'll write you all the news that's allowed to go out,' she assured him. "'Be seeing it.'" Her image faded from the screen. And thinking it over, he couldn't see that either of them had said anything of any importance at all. But he was very glad they talked together. The first robot ship came up some eight hours later, two revolutions after the television call. Mike was ready hours in advance, fidgeting. The robot ship started up while the platform was over the middle of the Pacific. It didn't try to make a spiral approach as all the other ships had done. It came straight up, and it started from the ground. No pushpots. These take-off rockets were monsters. They pushed upward at ten gravities until it was out of atmosphere, and then they stepped up to fifteen. Much later the robot turned on its side and fired orbital speed rockets to match velocity with the platform. There were two reasons for the vertical rise and the high acceleration. If a robot ship went straight up it wouldn't pass over enemy territory until it was high enough to be protected by the platform, and it costs fuel to carry fuel to be burned. So if the rocket ship could get up speed for coasting to orbit in the first couple of hundred miles it needn't haul its fuel so far. It was economical to burn one's fuel fast and get an acceleration that would kill a human crew, hence robots. The landing of the first robot ship at the platform was almost as matter-of-fact as if it had been done a thousand times before. From the platform its dramatic take-off couldn't be seen, of course. It first appeared aloft as a pip on the radar screen. Then Mike prepared to go out and hook onto it and tow it in. He was in his space suit and in the landing-lock, though his helmet face-plate was still open. A loudspeaker boomed suddenly in Brown's voice. Evacuate airlock and prepare to take off. Joe roared, hold that. Brown's voice, very official, came. With hold execution of that order. You should not be in the airlock, Mr. Kenmore. You will please make way for operational procedure. We're checking the space wagon, snapped Joe. That's operational procedure, the loudspeaker said severely. The checking should have been done earlier. There was silence. Joe and Mike, together, painstakingly checked over the very many items that had to be made sure. Every rocket had to have its firing circuit inspected. The tank's contents and pressure verified. The air connection to Mike's space suit, the air pressure. The device that made sure that air was going to Mike's space suit was neither as hot as metal in burning sunlight, nor cold as the chill of a shadow in space. Everything checked. Mike straddled his red painted mount. Joe left the lock and said, curtly, OK to pump the airlock, OK to open airlock doors when ready, go ahead. Mike went out and Joe watched from a port in the platform's hull. The drone from Earth was five miles behind the platform in its orbit and 20 miles below. And all of 10 miles off course. Joe saw Mike scoot the red space wagon to it, stop short with a sort of cocky self-assurance, hook onto the tow-ring in the floating space barge's nose, and blast off back toward the platform with it in tow. Mike had to turn about and blast again to check his motion when he arrived. And then he and Haney, Haney and the other space wagon, hudged at it and tugged at it and got it in the great space lock. They went in after it and the lock doors closed. Neither Mike nor Haney were out of their space suits when Kent brought Joe a note. A note was an absurdity in the platform, but this was a formal communication from Brown. From Lieutenant Commander Brown to Mr. Kenmore, subject, one and courtesy in rocket recovery vehicle launchings. One, there is a regrettable lack of coordination and courtesy in the launching of rocket recovery vehicles, space wagons, in the normal operation of the platform. Two, the maintenance of discipline and efficiency requires that the commanding officer maintain overall control of all operations at all times. Three, hereafter, when a space vehicle of any type is to be launched, the commanding officer will be notified in writing not less than one hour before such launching. Four, the time of such proposed launching will be given in such notification in hours and minutes and seconds, Greenwich mean time. Five, all commands for launching will be given by the commanding officer or an officer designated by him. Joe received the memo as he was in the act of writing a painstaking report on the maneuver Mike had carried out. Mike was radiant as he discussed possible improvements with later and better equipment. After all, this had been a lucky landing. For a robot to end up no more than thirty miles from its target after a journey of four thousand miles and with a difference in velocity that was almost immeasurable, such good fortune couldn't be expected as a regular thing. The space wagons were tiny. If they had to travel long distances to recover erratic ships coming up from earth, Joe forgot all about Lieutenant Commander Brown and his memo when the mail was distributed. Joe had three letters from Sally. He read them in the great living compartment of the platform with its sixty-foot length and its carpet on floor and ceiling, and the galleries without stairs outside the sleeping cabins. He sat in a chair with thigh grips to hold him in place, and he wore a gravity simulation harness. It was necessary. The regular crew of the platform by this time couldn't have handled space wagons in action against enemy manned rockets. Joe meant to stay able to take acceleration. It was just as he finished his mail that Brent came in. "'Big news,' said Brent, "'they're building a big new ship of new design, almost half as big as the platform. With concreted metal they can do it in weeks. What's it for?' demanded Joe. "'It'll be a human base on the moon,' said Brent, relievedly. An expedition will start in six weeks, according to plan. As long as we're the only American base in space we're going to be shot at. But a base on the moon will be invulnerable, so they're going ahead with it.' Joe said, hopefully. "'Any orders for me to join it?' Brent shook his head. We're to be loaded up with supplies for the moon expedition. We're to be ready to take a robot ship every round. Actually, they can't hope to send us more than two a day for a while, but even that'll be eighty tons of supplies to be stored away.' The chief grumbled, but somehow his grumbling did not sound genuine. "'They're going to the moon, and leave us here to do stevedor stuff?' His tone was odd. He looked at a letter he'd been reading and gave up pretense. He said, self-consciously, "'Listen, you guys, my tribes got all excited. I just got a letter from the council. They've been having an argument about me. Want to hear?' He was a little amused and a little embarrassed, but something had happened to make him feel good. "'Let's have it,' said Joe. Mike was very still in another chair. He didn't look up, though he must have heard. He cocked an interested ear. The chief said, awkwardly, "'You know, us Mohawks are kind of proud. We got something to be proud of. We were one of the five nations, when that was a sort of United Nations and all Europe was dog-eat-dog. My tribe had a big pow-wow about me. There's a tribe member that's a professor of anthropology out in Chicago. He was there, and a couple of guys that do electronic research and doctors and farmers and all sorts of guys. All Mohawks, and they got together in tribal council. He stopped and flushed under his dark skin. "'I wouldn't tell you, only you guys are in on it.'" Still he hesitated. Joe found a curious picture forming in his mind. He'd known the chief a long time and he knew that part of the tribe lived in Brooklyn, and individual members were widely scattered. But still there was a certain remote village which to all tribesmen was home. Everybody went back there from time to time to rest from the strangeness of being Indians in a world of pale-skinned folk. Joe could almost imagine the council. There'd be old, old men who could nearly remember the days of the tribe's former glory, who'd heard stories of forest warfare and zestful hunts, and scalping and heroic deeds from their grandfathers. But there were also doctors and lawyers and technical men in that council which meant to talk about the chief. "'It's a dress to me,' said the chief with sudden clumsiness, "'in the world by itself canoe, that's the platform here, and it says, I'll have to translate because it's in Mohawk.' He took a deep breath. It says, we, your tribesmen, have heard of your journeyings off the earth, where men have never traveled before. This has given us great pride, that one of our tribe and kin had ventured so valiantly.' The chief grinned abashedly. He went on. In full assembly the elders of the tribe have held council on a way to express their pride in you, and in the friends you have made who accompanied you. It was proposed that you be given a new name to be born by your sons after you. It was proposed that the tribe accept from each of its members a gift to be given you in the name of the tribe, but these were not considered great enough. Therefore the tribe, in full council, has decreed that your name shall be named at every tribal council of the Mohawks, from this day to the end of time, as one the young braves would do well to copy in all ways, and the names of your friends, Joe Kenmore, Mike Scandia, and Thomas Haney, shall also be named as friends, whose like all young braves should strive to seek out and to be. The chief sweated a little, but he looked enormously proud. Joe went over to him and shook hands warmly. The chief almost broke his fingers. It was, of course, as high an honour as could be paid to anybody by the people who paid it. Haney said awkwardly, Lucky they don't know me like you do, chief, but it swell, which it was, but Mike hadn't said a word. The chief said exuberantly, Did you hear that, Mike? Every Mohawk for ten thousand years is going to be told that you were a swell guy, crazy, huh? Mike said, in an odd voice, Yeah, I didn't mean that, chief, it's fine, but I, I got a letter. I never thought to get a letter like this. He looked unbelievably at the paper in his hands. Mashed note, asked the chief, His tone was a little bit harsh. Mike was a midget, and there were women who were fools. It would be unbearable if some half-witted female had ridden Mike the sort of gushing letter that some half-witted females might write. Mike shook his head with an odd, quick smile. Not what you think, chief, but it is from a girl. She sent me her picture. It's a swell letter. I'm going to answer it. You can look at her picture. She looks kind of... nice. He handed the chief a snapshot. The chief's face changed. Haney looked over his shoulder. He passed the picture to Joe, who said ferociously, You, Mike! You dog on, Don Juan! The chief and me have got to warn her what kind of guy you are, stealing from blind men, fighting cops! Joe looked at the picture. It was a very sweet, small face, and the eyes that looked out of the photograph were very honest and yearning. Joe understood. He grinned at Mike. Because this girl had the distinctive look that Mike had. She was a midget too. She's 39 inches tall, said Mike, almost stunned. She's just two inches shorter than me. And she says she doesn't mind being a midget so much, since she heard about me. I'm going to write her. But it would be, of course, a long time before there was a way for male to get down to earth. It was a long time. Now it was possible to send up robot rockets to the platform. They came up. When the second arrived, Haney went out to pull it in. Joe forgot to notify Brown, in writing, an hour before launching a rocket recovery vehicle, Space Wagon, according to paragraph 3 of the formal memo, nor the time of the launching in hours, minutes, etc., by Greenwich Mean Time, paragraph 4, nor was the testing of all equipment made before moving it into the airlock. This was because the testing equipment was in the airlock where it belonged, and the commands for launching were not given by Brown or an officer designated by him, because Joe forgot all about it. Brown made a stormy scene about the matter, and Joe was honestly apologetic, but the chief and Haney and Mike glared venomously. The result was completely inconclusive. Joe had not been put under Brown's command. He and his crew were the only people on the platform physically in shape to operate the Space Wagons, considering the acceleration involved. Brent and the others were wearing gravity simulators and were building back to strength, but they weren't up to par as yet. They'd been in space too long. So there was nothing Brown could do. He retreated into icily correct, outraged dignity. And the others hauled in an unloaded rockets as they arrived. They came up fast. The processes of making them had been improved. They could be made faster, heated to sintering temperatures faster, and the hulls cooled to usefulness in a quarter of the former time. The production of Spaceship hulls went up to four a day, while the molds for the Moonship were being worked even faster. The Moonship actually was assembled from pre-cast individual cells, which then were welded together. It would have features the platform lacked, because it was designed to be a base for exploration and military activities in addition to research. 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 cargo hold 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. And from the platform, where it had no effective weight, it was capable of direct descent to the Earth, without spiraling 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 would have to wait. Sure we can 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 have 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 out 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, four weeks on end. Three ships a day for a time. Or 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 four hundred 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 fishnable 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. Find down to ten tons of empty weight of peace, 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 sixty 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 that 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. Joe crooked his index finger. There was an explosive jolt. Space-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. CHAPTER X 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 these 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 out 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, 19 miles. There was a tiny, straggling thread of white visible 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. 12 miles, said the speaker harshly. Rockets firing. The downward hurdling 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, calm 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 landing place. Other bulldozers began to circle methodically around and around, overturning the earth and burying the hot surface stuff. Water-truck 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 simulation harness. Brant'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've only got 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 looks startled, but your 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, said Joe 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 if 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 had 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 a space on the following day. He talked about it with Sally the night before the 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. I can't kick on my wanting to help in 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, wryly. 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, my gut a letter from this 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, try to make friends with her so when you come back I, maybe I can sort of matchmaker. 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 escape 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 central plane. 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 the 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 push-pot engines. Then the space tug roared skyward. Her take-off rockets here substituted for the push-pots. Her second-stage rockets were also of the non-poisonous variety because she fired them at a bare 60,000 feet. They were substitutes for the Jadoes the push-pots 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. By the time the two spacecraft floated toward India, above an area from which war rockets had been known to rise, there were more little weapons floating with them. One screen of missiles hurtled on before the space tug and another behind. Anything that came up from Earth would instantly be attacked by dozens of midget ships bent upon suicide. Radar probed the space formation, but enemies of the fleet and the platform very wisely did know more than probe. The moonship and its attendants went across the Pacific, still rising. Above the longitude of Washington, the space tug left its former post and climbed, nudging the moonship this way and that. And from behind, the platform came floating splendidly. Tiny figures and spacesuits extended the incredibly straight lines which were plastic hoses filled with air. Very, very gently indeed, the great Bulbas platform and the squat, flat moonship came together and touched. They moored in contact. And then the inert small missiles that had floated below all the way up flared simultaneously. Their rockets emitted smoke. In fine alignment, they plunged forward through emptiness, swerved with a remarkable precision and headed out for emptiness beyond the platform's orbit. Their function had been to protect the moonship on its way out. That function was performed. There were too many of them to recover, so they went out toward the stars. When the rockets burned out, they vanished. But a good hour later, when it was considered that they were as far out as they were likely to go, they began to blow up. Specs of flame, like the tiniest of new stars, flickered against the background of space. But Joe and the others were in the platform by then. They brought up mail for the crew and they were back on duty. The platform seemed strange with the moonship's crew aboard. It had been a gigantic artificial world with very few inhabitants. With 25 naval ratings about, plus the four of its regular crew, plus the space tugs complement, it seemed excessively crowded. And it was busy. There were 25 new men to be guided as they applied what they'd been taught aground about life in space. It was three full Earth days before the stores intended for the journey to the moon and the maintenance of a base there really began to move. The tug and the space wagons had to be moored outside and reached only by spacesuits through small personal airlocks. And there was the matter of discipline. Lieutenant Commander Brown had been put in command of the platform for experience in space. He was considered to be prepared for command of the moonship by that experience. So now he turned over the command of the platform to Brent. He made a neat ceremony of it and took over the ship that would go out to the moon. He made another ceremony out of that. In command of the moonship, his manner to Joe was absolutely correct. He followed regulations to the letter to a degree that left Joe blankly uncomprehending. But he wouldn't have gotten along in the Navy if he hadn't. He tried to do the same thing in the platform and it wasn't practical. But he ignored all differences between Joe and himself. He made no overtures of friendship but that was natural. Unintentionally, Joe had defied him. He now deliberately overlooked all that and Joe approved of him within limits. But Mike and Haney in the Chief did not. They laid for him. And they considered that they got him. When he took over the moonship, Lieutenant Commander Brown naturally maintained naval discipline and required snappy, official naval salutes on all suitable occasions, even in the platform. And Joe's gang privately tipped off the non-commissioned personnel of the moonship. Thereafter, no enlisted man ever saluted Lieutenant Brown without first, gently, detaching his magnet-sold shoes from the floor. When a man was free, a really snappy salute gave a diverting result. The man's body tilted forward to meet his rising arm. The upward impetus was one-sided and every man who saluted Brown immediately made a spectacular cow-tow which left him rigidly at salute floating somewhere overhead with his back to Lieutenant Brown. With a little practice, it was possible to add a somersault to the other features. On one historic occasion, Brown walked clanking into a storeroom where a dozen men were preparing supplies for transfer to the moonship. A voice cried, "'Shun!' And instantly, 12 men went floating splendidly about the storeroom, turning leisurely somersaults all rigidly at salute and all wearing regulation poker faces. And order abolishing salutes in weightlessness followed shortly after. It took four days to get the transfer of supplies properly started. It took eight to finish the job. A fixing fresh rockets to the outside of the moonship's hull alone called for long hours in spacesuits. During this time, Mike floated nearby in a space wagon. One of the Navy men was a trifle over courageous. He affected to despise safety lines. Completing the hook-off of a landing rocket, he straightened up too abruptly and went floating off toward the Milky Way. Mike brought him back. After that, there was less trouble. Even so, the moonship and the platform were linked together for 13 full days, during which the platform seemed extraordinarily crowded. On the 14th day, the two ships sealed off and separated. Joe and his crew in the space tug hauled the moonship a good five miles from the platform. The space tug returned to the platform. A blinker signal came across the five-mile interval. It was a very crisp, formal, Navy-like message. Then the newly affixed rockets on the moonship's hull spurted their fumes. The big ship began to move, not outward from Earth, of course. That was where it was going, but it had the platform's 12,000 miles per hour of orbital speed. If the bonds of gravitation could have been snapped at just the proper instant, that speed alone would have carried the moonship all the way to its destination. But they couldn't. So the moonship blasted to increase its orbital speed. It would swing out and out, and as the Earth's pull grew weaker with distance, the same weight of rockets would move the same mass farther and farther toward the moon. The moonship's course would be a sort of slowly flattening curve, receding from Earth and becoming almost a straight line where Earth's and the moon's gravitational fields canceled each other. From there, the moonship would only have to break its fall against a gravity one sixth that of Earth, and reaching out a vastly shorter distance. Joe and the others watched the roiling masses of rocket fumes as the ship seemed to grow infinitely small. We should have been on that ship, said Haney heavily when the naked eye could no longer pick it out. We could have beat her to the moon. Joe said nothing. He ached a little inside, but he reflected that the men who'd guided the platform to its orbit had been overshadowed by himself and Haney and the Chief and Mike. Later achievement always makes an earlier one look small. Now the four of them would be forgotten. History would remember the commander of the moonship. Forgotten, yes, perhaps, but the names of the four of them, Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike, would still be remembered in a language Joe couldn't speak. In a small village he couldn't name on those occasions when the Mohawk tribe met in formal counsel. The Chief grumbled. Mike stared out at the port with bitter envy. It was a dirty trick, growled the Chief. We should have been part of the first gang ever to land on the moon. Joe grimaced. His crew needed to be cured of the feeling the same way he did. I wouldn't say this outside of our gang, said Joe carefully, but if it hadn't been for us four, that ship wouldn't be on the way at all. He figured the trick that got us back to Earth the first time, or else we'd have been killed. If we had been killed, Mike wouldn't have figured out the metal-concrete business. But for him, that moonship wouldn't even be a gleam in anybody's eye, and if the Chief hadn't blown up that manned rocket we fought in the space wagons, there wouldn't be any platform up here to reload and refuel the moonship. So they left us behind. But just among the four of us, I think we can figure that if it hadn't been for us, they couldn't have made it. Haney grinned slowly at Joe. The Chief regarded him with irony. Mike said, Yeah, Haney and me and the Chief, we did it all. Uh-huh, said the Chief sardonically. Us three. Just us three. Joe didn't do anything. Just a bum he is. We ought to tell Sally he's no good, and she ought to pick herself out a guy that'll amount to something some day. He hit Joe between the shoulders. Sure, just a bum, Joe, that's all, but we got a weakness for you. We'll let you hang around with us just the same. Come on, guys, let's get something to eat. The four of them marched down a steel-floored corridor, their magnetic-sold shoes clanking on the plates. Their progress was uncertain and ungainly and altogether undignified. Suddenly the Chief began to bawl a completely irrelevant song to the effect that inhabitants of the Kingdom of Siam were never known to wash their dishes. Haney chimed in and Mike. They were all very close together and they were not at all impressive. But it hit Joe very hard, this sudden knowledge that the others didn't really care. It was the first time it had occurred to him that Haney and Mike and the Chief would rather be left behind with him as a gang than go on to individual high achievement in a first landing on the moon. It felt good. It felt real good. But that, and all other sources of satisfaction, was wiped out by the news that came back from the Moonship a bear six hours later. The Moonship was in trouble. The sequence and timing of its rocket blasts were worked out on Earth and checked by visual and radar observation. The computations were done by electronic brains the Moonship could not possibly have carried, and everything worked out. The ship was on course and its firings were on schedule. But then the unexpected happened. It was an error which no machine could ever have predicted, for which statistics and computations could never have compensated. It was a human error. At the signal for the final acceleration blast the pilot of the Moonship had fired the wrong set of rockets. In experience, stupidity, negligence, excitement, the reason didn't matter. After years of planning and working and dreaming one human finger had made a mistake. And the mistake was fatal. When the mistake was realized they had sensed enough to cut loose the still-firing rockets, but the damage had been done. The ship was still plunging on. It would reach the moon, but it wouldn't land in Aristarchus Crater as planned. It would crash. If every rocket remaining mounted on the hull were to be fired at the best possible instant, the Moonship would hit near Copernicus, and it would land with a terminal velocity of 800 feet per second, 540 miles an hour. It could even be calculated that when the Moonship landed the explosion ought to be visible from Earth with a fairly good telescope. It was due to take place in thirty-two hours, plus or minus a few minutes. CHAPTER X The others got the space-tug into the Platform's lock and did things to it in the way of loading that its designers never intended, while Joe was calling Earth for calculations. The result was infuriating. The Moonship had taken off for the moon on the other side of the Platform's orbit, when it had a velocity of more than 12,000 miles an hour in the direction it wished to go. The Platform, and of course the space-tug, was now on the reverse side of the Platform's orbit, and, of course, they now had a velocity of more than 12,000 miles per hour away from the direction in which it was urgently necessary for the space-tug to go. They could wait for two hours to take off, said Earth, or waste the time and fuel they need to throw away to duplicate the effect of waiting. But we can't wait, Rage Joe! Then he snapped, Look here, suppose we take off from here, dive at Earth, make a near graze, and let its gravity curve our course, like a cometary path. Figure that! That's what we've got to do! He kicked off his magnetic-sold shoes and went diving down to the airlock. Over his shoulder he panted an order for the radar duty man to relay anything from Earth down to him there. He arrived to find Haney and Mike in hot argument over whether it was possible to load an extra ton or two of mass. He stopped it. They would. Everything's loaded! He demanded. OK! Spacesuits! All set? Let's get out of this lock and start blasting! He drove them into the space-tug. He climbed in himself. He closed the entrance-port, the plastic walls of the lock bulged out, pulled back fast, and the steering-rockets jetted. The space-tug came out of the lock. It spun about. It aimed for Earth and monstrous bursts of rocket-trails spread out behind it. It dived. Naturally, when a ship from the Platform wanted to reach Earth for atmosphere deceleration, it was more economical to head away from it. Now that it was the most urgent of all possible necessities to get away from Earth, in the opposite direction to the space-tug's present motion, it was logical to dive toward it. The ship would plunge toward Earth, and Earth's gravity would help its rockets in the attainment of frenzied speed. But the tug still possessed its orbital speed. So it would not actually strike the Earth, but would be carried eastward past its disk, even though aimed for Earth's mid-bulge. Yet Earth would continue to pull. As the space-tug skimmed past, its path would be curved by the pull of gravity. At the nearest possible approach to Earth, the tug would fire its heaviest rockets for maximum acceleration. And it would swing around Earth's atmosphere, perhaps no more than five hundred miles high, just barely beyond the measurable presence of air, and come out of that crazy curve a good hour ahead of the Platform for a corresponding position. Traced on paper, the course of the tug would be a tight parabola. The ship dived, and it happened that it had left the Platform and plunged deep in Earth's shadow, so that the look and feel of things was that of an utterly suicidal plunge into oblivion. There was the seeming of a vast sack of pure blackness before the nose of the space-tug. She started for it at four gravities acceleration, and Joe got his headphones to his ears and lay panting while he waited for the figures and information he had to have. He got them. When the four gravity rockets burned out, the tug's crew painstakingly adjusted the ship's nose to a certain position. They flung themselves back into the acceleration chairs, and Joe fired a 6G blast. They came out of that, and he fired another. The three blasts gave the ship a downward speed of a mile and a half a second, and the Earth's pull added to it steadily. The Earth itself was drawing them down most of a 4,000-mile fall, which added to the speed their rockets built up. Down on Earth, radar bulls wavered dizzily, hunting for them to feed them observations of position and data for their guidance. Back on the Platform, members of the crew feverishly made their own computations. When the four in the space-tug were half-way to Earth, they were traveling faster than any humans had ever traveled before, relative to the Earth or the Platform itself. When they were a thousand miles from Earth, it was certain they would clear its edge. Joe proposed and received an OK to fire a salvo of Mark Tens, to speed the ship still more. When they burned to the release point and flashed away past the ports, the Chief and Haney panted up from their chairs and made their way aft. Going to reload the firing frames, gasped the Chief. They vanished. The space-tug could take rockets from its cargo and set them outside its hull for firing. No other ship could. Haney and the Chief came back. There was dead silence in the ship, save for a small, tinny voice in Joe's headphones. "'We'll pass Earth six hundred miles high,' said Joe in a flat voice. "'May be closer. I'm going to try to make it four-fifty. We'll be smack over enemy territory, but I doubt they could hit us. We'll be hitting better than six miles a second. If we wanted to, we could spend some more rockets and hit escape velocity. But we want to stop later. We'll ride it out.'" Silence, stillness, speed. Out the ports to Earthward there was purest blackness. On the other side a universe of stars. But the blackness grew and grew and grew until it neatly bisected the cosmos itself, and half of everything that was was blackness. Half was tiny, colored stars. Then there was a sound, a faint sound. It was a moan, it was a howl, it was a shriek, and then it was a mere thin moan again. Then it was not. "'We touched air,' said Joe calmly, at six and a quarter miles per second. Pretty thin, though. With that we may have left a meteor trail for the populace to admire." Nobody said anything at all. In a little while there was light ahead. There was brightness. Instantly it seemed they were out of night and there was a streaming tumult of clouds flashing past below. But they were eight hundred miles up now, and Joe's headphones rattled and he said, "'Now we can give a touch of course correction and maybe a trace of speed.'" Things droned and boomed and roared outside the hull. The earth fell away and away and presently it was behind, and they were plunging on after the moonship which was very, very, very far on before them. It was actually many hours before they reached it. They couldn't afford to overtake it gradually because they had to have time to work in after contact. But overtaking it swiftly cost extra fuel and they hadn't too much. So they compromised and came up behind the moonship at better than two thousand feet per second difference in speed. They approached it as fast as most rifle bullets travel, and all creation was blotted out by the fumes of the rockets they fired for deceleration. Then the space tug came cautiously close to the moonship. Mike climbed out on the outside of the tug's hull with the chief also in space equipment, paying out Mike's safety line. Mike leaped across two hundred yards of emptiness with light years of gulf beneath them. His metal soles clanked on the moonship's hull. Then the vision screen on the tug lighted up. Lieutenant Commander Brown looked out of it, quietly grim. Joe flicked on his transmitter. He nodded. "'Mr. Kenmore,' said Brown evenly, "'I did not contact you before because I was not certain that contact could be made. How many passengers can you take back to the platform?' Joe blinked at him. "'I haven't any idea,' he said. "'But I'm going to hitch on and use our rockets to land you.' "'I do not think it practicable,' said Brown calmly. "'I believe the only result of such a course will be the loss of both ships with all hands. I will give you a written authorization to return on my order. But since all my crew can't return, how many can you take? I have ten married men aboard, six have children. Can you take six or all ten?' Then he said, without a trace of emphasis, "'Of course, none of them will be officers. If I try to turn back now, I think my crew would mutiny,' Joe said coldly. I'd hate to think they wouldn't anyhow. We're going to hook on and play this out the way it lies.' There was a pause. Then Brown spoke again. "'Mr. Kenmore, I was hoping you'd say that. Actually—er, not to be quoted, you understand—actually, intelligent defiance has always been in the traditions of the Navy. Of course, you're not in the Navy, Kenmore, but right now it looks like the Navy is in your hands, like a battleship in the hands of a tug. Good luck, Kenmore.' Joe flicked off the screen. "'You know,' he said, winking at Mike. I guess Brown isn't such a bad egg, after all. Let's go.' In minutes the space-tug had a line made fast, and half an hour the two spacecraft were bound firmly together, but far enough apart for the rocket blasts to dissipate before they reached the moonship. Mike returned to the tug. A pair of the big, marked twenty rockets burned frenziedly in emptiness. The moonship was slowed by a fraction of its speed. The deceleration was hardly perceptible. There were more burnings. Back on Earth there were careful measurements. A tight beam tends to attenuate when it is thrown a hundred thousand miles. It tends to—when speech is conducted over it, the lag between comment and reply is perceptible. It's not great, just over half a second, but one notices it. That lag was used to measure the speed and distance of the two spacecraft. The prospect didn't look too good. The space-tug burned rocket after rocket after rocket. There was no effect that Joe could detect, of course. It would have been like noticing the effect of single ore-strokes in a rowboat miles from shore. But the instruments on Earth found a difference. They made very, very, very careful computations. And the electronic brains did the calculations which battalions of mathematicians would have needed years to work out. The electronic calculations which could not make a mistake said that it was a toss-up. The moon came slowly to float before the two linked ships. It grew slowly, slowly larger. The word from Earth was that considering the rocket still available in the space-tug, and those that should have been fired but weren't on the moonship, there must be no more blasts just yet. The two ships must pass together through the neutral point where the gravities of Earth and moon exactly cancel out. They must fall together toward the moon. Forty miles above the lunar surface, such and such rockets were to be fired. At twenty miles, such and such others. At five miles, the moonship itself must fire its remaining fuel-store. With luck it was a toss-up. Safety or a smash. But there was a long time to wait. Joe and his crew relaxed in the space-tug. The chief looked out a port and observed, I can see the ring-mountains now. Make-it-eye stuff, too. I wonder if anybody ever saw that before. Not likely, said Joe. Mike stared out a port. Haney looked also. How are we going to get back, Joe? The moonship has rockets on board, Joe told him. They can't stick them in the firing-racks outside. They're stowed away, all ship-shape, navy-fashion. After we land, we'll ask politely for rockets to get back to the platform with. It'll be a tedious run, mostly coasting, falling free, but we'll make it. If everything doesn't blow when we land, said the chief. Joe said uncomfortably. It won't. Not that somebody won't try. Then he stopped. After a moment he said awkwardly, Look, it's necessary that we humans get to the stars, or ultimately we'll crowd the earth until we won't be able to stay human. We'd have to have wars and plagues and such things to keep our numbers down. It's, it seems to me, and I think it's been said before, that it looks like there's something, somewhere, that's afraid of us humans. It doesn't want us to reach the stars. It didn't want us to fly. Before that it didn't want us to learn how to cure disease, or have steam, or anything that makes men different from beasts. Then he turned his head. He listened intently. Maybe it sounds superstitious, said Joe uneasily, but there's always been somebody trying to smash everything the rest of us wanted. As if, as if something alien and hateful went around whispering hypnotically into men's ears while they slept, commanding them irresistibly to do things to smash all their own hopes. The chief grunted, Huh, do you think that's new stuff, Joe? No, admitted Joe, but it's true, something fights us. You can make wild guesses. Maybe things on far planets know that if we ever reach there there's something that hates men and it tries to make us destroy ourselves. Sure, said Haney mildly. I learned about that in Sunday school, Joe. Maybe I mean that, said Joe helplessly, but anyhow there's something we fight, and there's something that fights us. So I think we're going to get the moonship down all right. Mike said sharply, You mean you think this has all worked out in advance, that we'd be here, we'd get here? The chief said impatiently. Things figured out so we can do it if we got the innards. We got the chance. We can duck it. But if we duck it, it's bad, and somebody else has to have the chance later. I know what Joe's saying. Us men, we got to get to the stars. There's millions of them, and we need the planets they've got swimming around them. Haney said, Some of them have planets, that's known, yeah. Joe's planets ain't going to go on forever with nobody using them, grunted the chief. It don't make sense, and things in general do make sense. All but us humans, he finished with a grin. And I'd like us anyhow. Joe's right, we'll get by this time, and if we don't, some other guys will have to do the job of landing on the moon, but it'll be done as a starter. I can see lots of mountains down there, plain, Mike said quietly. What's the radar say? Joe looked. Back at the platform it had shown the curve of the surface of Earth. Here a dim line was beginning to show on the vertical plane screen. It was the curve of the surface of the moon. We might as well get set, said Joe. We've got time, but we might as well. The suit's on, I'll tighten up the chain, steering rockets'll do that, then we'll take a last look. All firing racks loaded outside? Yeah, said Haney, he grinned riley. You know, Joe, I know what I know, but I'm still scared. Me too, said Joe. But there were things to do, they took their places, they watched out the ports. The moon had seemed a vast round ball a little while back, now it appeared to be flattening. Its edges still curved away beyond a surprisingly nearby horizon. The ring mountains were amazingly distinct. They were incredibly wide, smooth spaces with mottled colorings. But the mountains, when the ships were forty miles high, the space tug blasted valorously, and all the panorama of the moon's surface was momentarily hidden by the racing clouds of mist. The rockets burned out. Haney and the chief replaced the burned-out rockets. They were gigantic, heavy-bore tubes, which they couldn't have stirred on earth. Now they loaded them into the curious locks, which conveyed them outside the hull into firing position. The ring mountains were gigantic when they blasted again. They were only twenty miles up then, and some of the peaks rose four miles from their inner crater floors. The ships were still descending fast, Joe spoke into his microphone. The Moonship, calling, he stopped and said matter-of-factly, I suggest we fire our last blast together. Shall I give the word? Right. The surface of the moon came toward them, craters, cracks, frozen mountains of stone, swelling undulations of ground interrupted without rhyme or reason by the gigantic splashings of missiles from the sky a hundred thousand million years ago. The colors were unbelievable. There were reds and browns and yellows. There were grays and dusty deep blues and streaks of completely impossible tints in combination. But Joe couldn't watch that. He kept his eyes on a very special gadget which was a radar range finder. He hadn't used it about the platform because there were too many tin cans and such trivia floating about. It wouldn't be dependable. But it did measure the exact distance to the nearest solid object. Fair for firing on a count of five, said Joe quietly. Five, four, three, two, one, fire. The space-tug's rockets blasted. For the first time since they overtook the Moonship, the tug now had help. The remaining rockets outside the Moonship's hull blasted furiously. Out the ports there was nothing but hurtling whitenesses. The rockets droned and rumbled and roared. The main rockets burned out. The steering rockets still boomed. Joe had thrown them on for what good their lift might do. Joe, said Haney in a surprised tone, I feel weight. Not much, but some, and the main rockets are off. Joe nodded. He watched the instruments before him. He shifted a control and the space-tug swayed. It swayed over to the limit of the tow-chain it had fastened to the Moonship. Joe shifted his controls again. There was a peculiar, gritty contact somewhere. Joe cut the steering rockets and it was possible to look out. There were more gritty noises. The space-tug settled a little and leaned a little. It was still. Then there was no noise at all. Yes, said Joe, we've got some weight. We're on the moon. They went out of the ship in a peculiarly solemn procession. With them reared cliffs such as no man had ever looked on before save in dreams. Above their heads hung a huge round greenish globe with a white polar ice cap plainly visible. It hung in mid-sky and was four times the size of the moon as seen from Earth. If one stood still and looked at it, it would undoubtedly be seen to be revolving, once in some twenty-four hours. Mike scuffled in the dust in which he walked. Nobody had emerged from the Moonship yet. The four of them were literally the first human beings ever to set foot on the surface of the moon. But none of them mentioned the fact, though all were acutely aware of it. Mike kicked up dust. It rose in a curiously liquid-like fashion. There was no air to scatter it. It settled deliberately back again. Mike spoke with an odd constraint. No green cheese, he said absurdly. No, agreed Joe. Let's go over to the Moonship. It looks all right. It couldn't have landed hard. They went toward the bulk of the ship from Earth, which now was a base for the military occupation of a globe with more land area than all Earth's continents put together, but not a drop of water. The Moonship was tilted slightly askew, but it was patently unharmed. There were faces at every port in the hull. The Chief stopped suddenly. A sizable boulder rose from the dust. The Chief struck it smartly with his space-gloved hand. I'm counting a coup on the moon! He said zestfully, tie that! Then he joined the others on their way to the Moonship's main lock. Asked Mike humorously, I doubt they've got a doorbell. But the locked door was opening to admit them. They crowded inside. Commander Brown was waiting for them with an outstretched hand. Glad to have you aboard! And there was a genuine smile creeping across his face. Joe talked with careful distinctness into a microphone. His voice took a little over a second to reach its destination. Then there was a pause of the same length before the first syllable of Sally's reply came to him from Earth. I've reported to your father, he said carefully, and the Moonship has reported to the Navy. In a couple of hours Haney and the Chief and Mike and I will be taking off to go back to the Platform. We got rockets from the stores of the Moonship. Sally's voice was surprisingly clear. It wavered a little, but there was no sound of static to Mar reception. Then what, Joe? I'm bringing written reports and photographs and the first specimens of geology from the moon, Joe told her. I'm a mailman. It'll probably be sixty hours back to the Platform, free fall most of the way, and then we'll refuel and I'll come down to Earth to deliver the reports and such. Pause. One second and a little for his voice to go. Another second and something over for her voice to return. And then? That's what I'm trying to find out, said Joe. Tuesday, said Sally, after the inevitable pause, it's ten o'clock Tuesday morning at the shed. Joe made calculations in his mind. Then he said, I ought to land on Earth some time next Monday. Pause. Yes, said Sally. I wondered, said Joe, how about a date that night? Another pause. Then Sally's voice. She sounded glad. It's a date, Joe, and do you know I must be the first girl in the world to make a date with the man in the moon? The End of Space Tug by Murray Leinster.