Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (18 page)

There was a definite hiatus in his consciousness. He came back to
awareness very slowly. He was half-awake and half-asleep for a long
time. He only knew contentedly that his job was finished. Then, slowly,
he realized that he was in a bunk in one of the Platform sleeping
cabins, and the inflated cover that was Sally's contribution to the
Platform held him very gently in place. Somehow it was infinitely
soothing, and he had an extraordinary sensation of peacefulness and
relaxation and fulfillment. The pilot gyros were finished and in
position. His responsibility to them was ended. And he had slept the
clock around three times. He'd slept for thirty-six hours. He was
starving.

Sally had evidently constituted herself a watch over Joe as he slept,
because she faced him immediately when he went groggily out of the cabin
to look for a place to wash. He was still covered with the grime of past
labor, and he had been allowed to sleep with only his shoes removed. He
was not an attractive sight. But Sally regarded him with an approval
that her tone belied.

"You can get a shower," she told him firmly, "and then I'll have some
breakfast for you. Fresh clothes are waiting, too."

Joe said peacefully: "The gyros are finished and they work!"

"Don't I know?" demanded Sally. "Go get washed and come back for
breakfast. The Chief and Haney and Mike are already awake. And because
of the four of you, they've been able to advance the Platform's take-off
time—to just two days off! It leaked out, and now it's official. And
you made it possible!"

This was a slight exaggeration, but it was pardonable because of Sally's
partiality for Joe. He went groggily into the special shower arrangement
in the Platform. In orbit, there would be no gravity, so a tub bath was
unthinkable. The shower cabinet was a cubbyhole with handgrips on all
four sides and straps into which one could slip his feet. When Joe
turned handles, needle sprays sprang at him from all sides, and
simultaneously a ventilator fan began to run. When in space that fan
could draw out what would otherwise become an inchoate mixture of air
and quite weightless water-drops. In space a man might drown in his own
shower bath without the fan. The apparatus for collecting the water
again was complex, but Joe didn't think about that at the moment. He
considered ruefully that however convenient this system might be out in
the Platform's orbit, it left something to be desired on Earth.

But there were clean clothes waiting when he came out. He dressed and
felt brand new and utterly peaceful and rested, and it seemed to him
very much like the way he had often felt on a new spring morning. It was
very, very good!

Then he smelled coffee and became ravenous.

There were the others in the Platform's kitchen, sitting in the chairs
that had straps on them so the crew needn't float about because of
weightlessness. There was an argument in progress. The Chief grinned at
Joe. Mike the midget looked absorbed. Haney was thinking something out,
rather painfully. Sally was busy at the Platform's very special stove.
She had ham and eggs and pancakes ready for Joe to eat.

"Gentlemen," she said, "you are about to eat the first meal ever cooked
in a space ship—and like it!"

She served them and sat companionably down with them all. But her eyes
were very warm when she looked at Joe.

"Leavin' aside what we were arguin' about," said the Chief blissfully,
"Sally here—mind if I call you Sally, ma'am?—she says the slide-rule
guys have given our job the works and they say it's a better job than
they designed. Take a bow, Joe."

Sally said firmly: "When the technical journals are through talking
about the job you did, you'll all four be famous for precision-machining
technique and improvements on standard practices."

"Which," said the Chief sarcastically, "is gonna make us feel fine when
we're back to welding and stuff!"

"No more welding," Sally told him. "Not on this job. The Platform's
closed in. They've started to take down the scaffolding."

The Chief looked startled. Haney asked: "Laying off men yet?"

"Not you," Sally assured him. "Definitely not you. You four have the
very top super-special security rating there is! I think you're the only
four people in the world my father is sure can't be reached, somehow, to
make you harm the Platform."

Mike said abruptly: "Yeah. The Major thought he had headaches before.
Now he's really got 'em!"

Mike hadn't seemed to be listening. He'd acted as if he were feverishly
absorbing the feel of being inside the Platform—not as a workman
building it, but as a man whose proper habitat it would become. But Joe
suddenly realized that his comment was exact. There'd been plenty of
sabotage to prevent the Platform from reaching completion. But now it
was ready to take off in two days. If it was to be stopped, it would
have to be stopped within forty-eight hours by people with plenty of
resources, who for their own evil ends needed it to be stopped. These
last two days would contain the last-ditch, most desperate, most
completely ruthless stepped-up attempts at destruction that could
possibly be made. And Major Holt had to handle them.

But the four at table—five, with Sally—were peculiarly relaxed. The
matter they'd handled had been conspicuous, perhaps, but it was still
only one of thousands that had to be accomplished before the Platform
could take off. But they had the infinitely restful feeling of a job
well done.

"No more welding," said Haney meditatively, "and our job on the gyros
finished. What are we gonna do?"

The Chief said forcefully: "Me, I'm gonna sweep floors or something, but
I'm sure gonna stick around and watch the take-off!"

Joe said nothing. He looked at Sally. She became very busy, making
certain the others did not want more to eat. After a long time Joe said,
with very careful casualness, "Come to think of it, I was getting loaded
up with astrogation theory when I had to stop and pitch in on the gyros.
How's that sick crew member, Sally?"

"I—wouldn't know," answered Sally unconvincingly. "Have some more
coffee?"

Joe made his face go completely expressionless. There was nothing else
to do. Sally hadn't said that his chances looked bad for making the crew
of the Platform when it went out to space. But Sally had ways of knowing
things. She would be sure to keep informed on a matter like that,
because she was wearing Joe's ring and it would have taken a great deal
of discouragement to keep her from finding out good news to tell him.
She didn't have any good news. So it must be bad.

Joe drank his coffee, trying to make himself believe that he'd known all
along he wasn't going to make the crew. He'd started late to learn the
things a crew member ought to know. He'd stopped at the most crucial
part of his training to work on the gyros, which were more crucial
still. He'd slept a day and a half. The platform would take off in
forty-eight hours. He tried to reason carefully that it was common sense
to use a man who was fully trained from the beginning for a place in the
crew, rather than a latecomer like himself. But it wasn't easy to take.

Mike the midget said suddenly: "I got a hunch."

"Shoot it," said the Chief, amiably.

"I got a hunch I know what kind of sabotage will be tried next—and
when," said Mike.

The others looked at him—all but Joe, who stared at the wall.

"There hasn't been one set of guys trying to smash the Platform," said
Mike excitedly. "There's been four or five. Joe found a gang sabotaging
the pushpots that didn't think like the gang that blackmailed Braun. And
the gang that tried to kill us up at Red Canyon may be another. There
could be others: fascists and commies and nationalists and crackpots of
all kinds. And they all know they've got to work fast, even if they have
to help each other. Get it?"

Haney growled.

"I'll buy what you've said so far," said the Chief. "Sure! Those
so-and-sos will all pile in everything they got at the last minute.
They'll even pull together to smash the Platform—and then double-cross
each other afterward. But what'll they do, an' when?"

"This time they'll try outright violence," said Mike coldly, "instead of
sneaking. They'll try something really rough. For sneaking, one time's
as good as another, but for really rough stuff, there's just one time
when the Platform hasn't got plenty of guys around ready to fight for
it."

The Chief whistled softly.

"You mean change-shift time! Which one?"

"The first one possible," said Mike briefly. "After every shift, things
will get tighter. So my guess is the next shift, if they can. And if one
gang starts something, the others will have to jump right in. You see?"

That made sense. One attempt at actual violence, defeated, would create
a rigidity of defense that would make others impossible. If a successful
attempt at violent sabotage was to be made, the efforts of all groups
would have to be timed to the first, or abandoned.

"I could—uh—set up a sort of smoke screen," said Mike. "We'll fake
we're going to smash something—and let those saboteurs find it out.
They'll see it as a chance to do their stuff with us to run interference
for them.—Sally, does your father sure-enough trust us?"

Sally nodded.

"He doesn't talk very cordially, but he trusts you."

"Okay," said Mike. "You tell him, private, that I'm setting up something
tricky. He can laugh off anything his security guys report that I'm
mixed up in. Joe'll see that he gets the whole picture beforehand. But
he ain't to tell anybody—not
any
body—that something is getting
framed up. Right?"

"I'll ask him," said Sally. "He is pretty desperate. He's sure some
last-minute frantic assault on the Platform will be made. But—"

"We'll tip him in plenty of time," said Mike with authority. "In time
for him to play along, but not for a leak to spoil things. Okay?"

"I'll make the bargain," Sally assured him, "if it can be made."

Mike nodded. He drained his coffee cup and slipped down from his chair.

"Come on, Chief! C'mon, Haney!"

He led them out of the room.

Joe fiddled with his spoon a moment, and then said: "The crewman I was
to have subbed for if he didn't get well—he did, didn't he?"

Sally answered reluctantly: "Y-yes."

Joe said measuredly: "Well, then—that's that! I guess it will be all
right for me to stick around and watch the take-off?"

Sally's eyes were misty.

"Of course it will, Joe! I'm so sorry!"

Joe grinned, but even to himself his face seemed like a mask.

"Into each life some rain must fall. Let's go out and see what's been
accomplished since I went to sleep. All right?"

They went out of the Platform together. And as soon as they reached the
floor of the Shed it was plain that the stage had been set for stirring
events.

The top five or six levels of scaffolding had already been removed, and
more of the girders and pipes were coming down in bundles on lines from
giraffelike cranes. There were some new-type trucks in view, too, giants
of the kind that carry ready-mixed concrete through city streets. They
were pouring a doughy white paste into huge buckets that carried it
aloft, where it vanished into the mouths of tubes that seemed to replace
the scaffolding along the Platform's sides.

"Lining the rockets," said Sally in a subdued voice.

Joe watched. He knew about this, too. It had been controversial for a
time. After the pushpots and their jatos had served as the first two
stages of a multiple-rocket aggregation, the Platform carried rocket
fuel as the third stage. But the Platform was a highly special ballistic
problem. It would take off almost horizontally—a great advantage in
fueling matters. This was practical simply because the Platform could be
lifted far beyond effective air resistance, and already have
considerable speed before its own rockets flared.

Moreover, it was not a space ship in the sense of needing rockets for
landing purposes. It wouldn't land. Not ever. And again there was the
fact that men would be riding in it. That ruled out the use of eight- and
ten- and fifteen-gravity acceleration. It had to make use of a long
period of relatively slow acceleration rather than a brief terrific
surge of power. So its very special rockets had been designed as the
answer.

They were solid-fuel rockets, though solid fuels had been long abandoned
for long-range missiles. But they were entirely unlike other solid-fuel
drives. The pasty white compound being hauled aloft was a self-setting
refractory compound with which the rocket tubes would be lined, with the
solid fuel filling the center. The tubes themselves were thin
steel—absurdly thin—but wound with wire under tension to provide
strength against bursting, like old-fashioned rifle cannon.

When the fuel was fired, it would be at the muzzle end of the rocket
tube, and the fuel would burn forward at so many inches per second. The
refractory lining would resist the rocket blast for a certain time and
then crumble away. Crumbling, the refractory particles would be hurled
astern and so serve as reaction mass. When the steel outer tubes were
exposed, they would melt and be additional reaction mass.

In effect, as the rocket fuel was exhausted, the tubes that contained it
dissolved into their own blast and added to the accelerating thrust,
even as they diminished the amount of mass to be accelerated. Then the
quantity of fuel burned could diminish—the tubes could grow smaller—so
the rate of speed gain would remain constant. Under the highly special
conditions of this particular occasion, there was a notable gain in
efficiency over a liquid-fuel rocket design. For one item, the Platform
would certainly have no use for fuel pumps and fuel tanks once it was in
its orbit. In this way, it wouldn't have them. Their equivalent in mass
would have been used to gain velocity. And when the Platform finally
rode in space, it would have expended every ounce of the driving
apparatus used to get it there.