Мюррей Лейнстер - Space Tug

Mike said sharply: "Slow up some more, Joe."

He obeyed again. It would not be a good idea to ram the Platform after they had come so far to reach it.

They drifted slowly, slowly, slowly toward it. The monstrous Pit of Darkness which was the night side of Earth seemed almost about to engulf the Platform. They were a few hundred feet higher than the great metal globe, and the blackness was behind it. They were a quarter of a mile away. The distance diminished.

A thin straight line seemed to grow out toward them. There was a small, bulb–like object at its end. It reached out farther than was at all plausible. Nothing so slender should conceivably reach so far without bending of its own weight. But of course it had no weight here. It was a plastic flexible hose with air pressure in it. It groped for the spaceship.

The four in the ship held their breaths.

There was a loud, metallic clank!

Then it was possible to feel the ship being pulled toward the Platform by the magnetic grapple. It was a landing–line. It was the means by which the ship would be docked in the giant lock which had been built to receive it.

As they drew near, they saw the joints of the plating of the Platform. They saw rivets. There was the huge, 30–foot doorway with its valves swung wide. Their searchlight beam glared into it. They saw the metal floor, and the bulging plastic sidewalls, restrained by nets. They saw the inner lock–door. It seemed that men should be visible to welcome them. There were none.

The airlock swallowed them. They touched against something solid. There were more clankings. They seemed to crunch against the metal floor—magnetic flooring–grapples. Then, in solid contact with the substance of the Platform, they heard the sounds of the great outer doors swinging shut. They were within the artificial satellite of Earth. It was bright in the lock, and Joe stared out the cabin ports at the quilted sides. There was a hissing of air, and he saw a swirling mist, and then the bulges of the sidewall sagged. The air pressure gauge was spinning up toward normal sea–level air pressure.

Joe threw the ready lever of the steering rockets to Off . "We're landed."

There was silence. Joe looked about him. The other three looked queer. It would have seemed natural for them to rejoice on arriving at their destination. But somehow they didn't feel that they had.

Joe said wrily, "It seems that we ought to weigh something, now we've got here. So we feel queer that we don't. Shoes, Mike?"

Mike peeled off the magnetic–soled slippers from their place on the cabin wall. He handed them out and opened the door. A biting chill came in it. Joe slipped on the shoe–soles with their elastic bands to hold them. He stepped out the door.

He didn't land. He floated until he reached the sidewall. Then he pulled himself down by the netting. Once he touched the floor, his shoes seemed to be sticky. The net and the plastic sidewalls were, of course, the method by which a really large airlock was made practical. When this ship was about to take off again, pumps would not labor for hours to pump the air out. The sidewalls would inflate and closely enclose the ship's hull, and so force the air in the lock back into the ship. Then the pumps would work on the air behind the inflated walls—with nets to help them draw the wall–stuff back to let the ship go free. The lock could be used with only fifteen minutes for pumping instead of four hours.

The door in the back of the lock clanked open. Joe tried to walk toward it. He discovered his astounding clumsiness. To walk in magnetic–soled shoes in weightlessness requires a knack. When Joe lifted one foot and tried to swing the other forward, his body tried to pivot. When he lifted his right foot, he had to turn his left slightly inward. His arms tried to float absurdly upward. When he was in motion and essayed to pause, his whole body tended to continue forward with a sedate toppling motion that brought him down flat on his face. He had to put one foot forward to check himself. He seemed to have no sense of balance. When he stood still—his stomach queasy because of weightlessness—he found himself tilting undignifiedly forward or back—or, with equal unpredictability, sidewise. He would have to learn an entirely new method of walking.

A man came in the lock, and Joe knew who it was. Sanford, the senior scientist of the Platform's crew. Joe had seen him often enough on the television screen in the Communications Room at the Shed. Now Sanford looked nerve–racked, but his eyes were bright and his expression sardonic.

"My compliments," he said, his voice tight with irony, "for a splendidly futile job well done! You've got your cargo invoice?"

Joe nodded. Sanford held out his hand. Joe fumbled in his pocket and brought out the yellow sheet.

"I'd like to introduce my crew," said Joe. "This is Haney, and Chief Bender, and Mike Scandia." He waved his hand, and his whole body wobbled unexpectedly.

"We'll know each other!" said Sanford sardonically. "Our first job is more futility—to get the guided missiles you've brought us into the launching tubes. A lot of good they'll do!"

A huge plate in the roof of the lock—but it was not up or down or in any particular direction—withdrew itself. A man floated through the opening and landed on the ship's hull; another man followed him.

"Chief," said Joe, "and Haney. Will you open the cargo doors?"

The two swaying figures moved to obey, though with erratic clumsiness. Sanford called sharply: "Don't touch the hull without gloves! If it isn't nearly red–hot from the sunlight, it'll be below zero from shadow!"

Joe realized, then, the temperature effects the skin on his face noticed. A part of the spaceship's hull gave off heat like that of a panel heating installation. Another part imparted a chill.

Sanford said unpleasantly, "You want to report your heroism, eh? Come along!"

He clanked to the doorway by which he had entered. Joe followed, and Mike after him.

They went out of the lock. Sanford suddenly peeled off his metal–soled slippers, put them in his pocket, and dived casually into a four–foot metal tube. He drifted smoothly away along the lighted bore, not touching the sidewalls. He moved in the manner of a dream, when one floats with infinite ease and precision in any direction one chooses.

Joe and Mike did not share his talent. Joe launched himself after Sanford, and for perhaps 20 or 30 feet the lighted aluminum sidewall of the tube sped past him. Then his shoulder rubbed, and he found himself skidding to an undignified stop, choking the bore. Mike thudded into him.

"I haven't got the hang of this yet," said Joe apologetically.

He untangled himself and went on. Mike followed him, his expression that of pure bliss. He was a tiny man, was Mike, but he had the longings and the ambitions of half a dozen ordinary–sized men in his small body. And he had known frustration. He could prove by mathematics that space exploration could be carried on by midgets at a fraction of the cost and risk of the same job done by normal–sized men. He was, of course, quite right. The cabins and air and food supplies for a spaceship's crew of midgets would cost and weigh a fraction of similar equipment for six–footers. But people simply weren't interested in sending midgets out into space.

But Mike had gotten here. He was in the Space Platform. There were full–sized men who would joyfully have changed places with him, forty–one inch height and all. So Mike was blissful.

The tube ended and Joe bounced off the wall that faced its end. Sanford was waiting. He grinned with more than a hint of spite.

"Here's our communications room," he said. "Now you can talk down to Earth. It'll be relayed, now, but in half an hour you can reach the Shed direct."