Мюррей Лейнстер - Space Tug

Brent stared at him incredulously. Haney looked solemnly at him. The Chief regarded Joe thoughtfully out of the corner of his eye. Then Mike shouted gleefully. The Chief blinked, and a moment later grunted wrathful unintelligible syllables of Mohawk, and then tried to pound Joe on the back and because of his want of weight went head over heels into the air between the six walls of the kitchen.

Haney said disgustedly, "Joe, there are times when a guy wants to murder you! Why didn't I think of that?"

But Brent was looking at the four of them with a lively, helpless curiosity. "Will you guys let me in on this?"

They told him. Joe began to explain it carefully, but the Chief broke in with a barked and impatient description, and then Mike interrupted to snap a correction. But by that time Brent's expression had changed with astonishing suddenness.

"I see! I see!" he said excitedly. "All right! Have you got space suits in your ship? We have them. So we'll go out and pelt the stars with garbage. I think we'd better get at it right now, too. In under two hours we'll be a fine target for more bombs, and it would be good to start ahead of time."

Mike made a gesture and went floating out of the kitchen, air–swimming to go get space suits from the ship. The grin on his small face threatened to cut his throat. Joe asked, "Sanford's in command. How'll he like this idea?"

Brent hesitated. "I'm afraid," he said regretfully, "he won't like it. If you solve a problem he gave up, it will tear his present adjustment to bits. He's gone psychotic. I think, though, that he'll allow it to be tried while he swears at us for fools. He's most likely to react that way if you suggest it."

"Then," agreed Joe, "I suggest it. Chief―"

The Chief raised a large brown hand.

"I got the program, Joe," he said. "We'll all get set."

And Joe went floating unhappily through passage–tubes to the control room. He heard Sanford's voice, sardonic and mocking, as he reached the communications room door.

"What do you expect?" Sanford was saying derisively. "We're clay pigeons. We're a perfect target. We've just so much ammunition now. You say you may send us more in three weeks instead of a month. I admire your persistence, but it's really no use! This is all a very stupid business…."

He felt Joe's presence. He turned, and then sharply struck the communicator switch with the heel of his hand. The image on the television screen died. The voice cut off. He said blandly: "Well?"

"I want," said Joe, "to take a garbage–disposal party out on the outside of the Platform. I came to ask for authority."

Sanford looked at him in mocking surprise.

"To be sure it seems as intelligent as anything else the human race has ever done," he observed. "But why does it appeal to you as something you want to do?"

"I think," Joe told him, "that we can make a defense against bombs from Earth with our empty tin cans."

Sanford raised his eyebrows.

"If you happen to have a four–leaf clover with you," he said in fine irony, "I'm told they're good, too."

His eyes were bright and scornful. His manner was feverishly derisive. Joe would have done well to let it go at that. But he was nettled.

"We set off the last bombs," he said doggedly, "by shooting our landing rockets at them. They didn't collide with the bombs. They simply touched off the bombs' proximity fuses. If we surround the Platform with a cluster of tin cans and such things, they may do as well. Things we throw away won't drop to Earth. Ultimately, they'll actually circle us, like satellites themselves. But if we can get enough of them between us and Earth, any bombs that come up will have their proximity fuses detonated by the floating trash we throw out."

Sanford laughed.

"We might ask for aluminum–foil ribbon to come up in the next supply ship," said Joe. "We could have masses of that, or maybe metallic dust floating around us."

"I much prefer used tin cans," said Sanford humorously. "I'll take the watch here and let everybody go out with you. By all means we must defend ourselves. Forward with the garbage! Go ahead!"

His eyes were almost hysterically scornful as he waited for Joe to leave. Joe did not like it at all, but there was nothing to do but get out.

He found the Chief with a net bag filled with emptied tin cans. Haney had another. There were two more, carried by members of the Platform's four–man crew. They were donning their space suits when Joe came upon them. Mike was grotesque in the cut–down outfit built for him. Actually, the only difference was in the size of the fabric suit and the length of the arms and legs. He could carry a talkie outfit with its batteries, and the oxygen tank for breathing as well as anybody, since out here weight did not count at all. There were plastic ropes, resistant to extremes of temperature.

Joe got into his own space suit. It was no such self–contained space craft in itself as the fantastic story tellers dreamed of. It was not much more than an altitude suit, aluminized to withstand the blazing heat of sunshine in emptiness, and with extravagantly insulated soles to the magnetic boots. In theory, there simply is no temperature in space. In practice, a metal hull heats up in sunshine to very much more than any record–hot–day temperature on Earth. In shadow, too, a metal hull will drop very close to minus 250 degrees Centigrade, which is something like 400 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. But mainly the space boots were insulated against the almost dull–red–heat temperatures of long–continued sunshine.

A crewman named Corey moved into an airlock with one of the bags of empty tin cans. Brent watched in a routine fashion through a glass in the lock–door. The pumps began to exhaust the air from the airlock. Corey's space suit inflated visibly. Presently the pump stopped. Corey opened the outer door. He went out, paying plastic rope behind him. An instant later he reappeared and removed the rope. He'd made his line fast outside. He closed the outer lock–door. Air surged into the lock and Haney crowded in. Again the pumping. Then Haney went out, and was anchored to the Platform not only by his magnetic boots but by a rope fastened to a hand–hold. Brent went out. Mike. Joe came next.

They stood on the hull of the Space Platform, waiting in the incredible harsh sunshine of emptiness. The bright steel plates of the hull swelled and curved away on every hand. There were myriads of stars and the vast round bulk of Earth seemed farther away to a man in a space suit than to a man looking out a port. Where shadows cut across the Platform's irregular surface, there was utter blackness. Also there was horrible frigidity. Elsewhere it was blindingly bright. The men were specks of humanity standing on a shining metal hull, and all about them there was the desolation of nothingness.

But Joe felt strangely proud. The seventh man came out of the lock–door. They tied their plastic ropes together and spread out in a long line which went almost around the Platform. The man next to the lock was anchored to a steel hand–hold. The third man of the line also anchored himself. The fifth. The seventh. They were a straggling line of figures with impossibly elongated shadows, held together by ropes. They were peculiarly like a party of weirdly costumed mountaineers on a glacier of gleaming silver.

But no mountain climbers ever had a background of ten thousand million stars, peering up from below them as well as from overhead. Nor did any ever have a mottled greenish planet rolling by 4,000 miles beneath them, nor a blazing sun glaring down at them from a sky such as this.

In particular, perhaps, no other explorers ever set out upon an expedition whose purpose was to throw tin cans and dried refuse at all the shining cosmos.

They set to work. The space suits were inevitably clumsy. It was not easy to throw hard with only magnetism to hold one to his feet. It was actually more practical to throw straight up with an underhand gesture. But even that would send the tin cans an enormous distance, in time. There was no air to slow them.