Мюррей Лейнстер - Space Tug

It exploded with a blast of pure brightness like that of the sun.

The Platform went on its monotonous round about the planet from which it had risen only weeks before. Sanford was strapped in a bunk and fed through a tube, and on occasion massaged and variously tended to keep him alive. The men on the Platform worked. They made telephoto maps of Earth. They took highly magnified, long–exposure photographs of Mars, pictures that could not possibly be made with such distinctness from the bottom of Earth's turbulent ocean of air.

There was a great deal of official business to be done. Weather observations of the form and distribution of cloud masses were an important matter. The Platform could make much more precise measurements of the solar constant than could be obtained below. The flickering radar was gathering information for studies of the frequency and size of meteoric particles outside the atmosphere. There was the extremely important project for securing and sealing in really good vacua in various electronic devices brought up by Joe and his crew in the supply ship.

But sometimes Joe managed to talk to Sally.

It was very satisfying to see her on the television screen in personal conversation. Their talk couldn't be exactly private, because it could be picked up elsewhere. It probably was. But she told Joe how she felt, and she wanted to read him the newspaper stories based on the reports Brent had sent down. Brent was in command of the Platform now that Sanford lay in a resolute coma in his bunk. But Joe discouraged such waste of time.

"How's the food?" asked Sally. "Are you people getting any fresh vegetables from the hydroponic garden?"

They were, and Joe told her so. The huge chamber in which sun–lamps glowed for a measured number of hours in each twenty–four produced incredibly luxuriant vegetation. It kept the air of the ship breathable. It even changed the smell of it from time to time, so that there was no feeling of staleness.

"And the cooking system's really good?" she wanted to know. Sally was partly responsible for that, too. "And how about the bunks?"

"I sleep now," Joe admitted.

That had been difficult. It was possible to get used to weightlessness while awake. One would slip, sometimes, and find himself suddenly tense and panicky because he'd abruptly noticed all over again that he was falling. But—and yet again Sally was partly responsible—the bunks were designed to help in that difficulty. Each bunk had an inflatable top blanket. One crawled in and settled down, and turned the petcock that inflated the cover. Then it held one quite gently but reassuringly in place. It was possible to stir and to turn over, but the feeling of being held fast was very comforting. With a little care about what one thought of before going to sleep, one could get a refreshing eight hours' rest. The bunks were luxury.

Sally said: "The date and time's a secret, of course, because it might be overheard, but there'll be another ship up before too long. It's bringing landing rockets for you to come back with."

"That's good!" said Joe. It would feel good to set foot on solid ground again. He looked at Sally and said eagerly, "We've got a date the evening I get back?"

"We've got a date," she said, nodding.

But it couldn't very well be a definite date. There were people with ideas that ran counter to plans for Joe to get back to Earth and a date with Sally Holt. The Space Platform was not admired uniformly by all the nations of Earth. The United States had built it because the United Nations couldn't, and one of the attractions of the idea had been that once it got out to space and was armed, peace must reign upon Earth because it could smack down anybody who made war.

The trouble was that it wasn't armed well enough. Six guided missiles couldn't defend it indefinitely. It looked as helpless as isolated Berlin did before the first airlift proved what men and planes could do in the way of transport. And the Platform's enemies didn't intend for it to be saved by a rocketlift. They would try to smash it before such a lift could get started.

A week after Joe got to it with the guided missiles, three rockets attacked. They went up from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. One blew up 250 miles below the Platform. Another detonated 190 miles away. For safety's sake the third was crashed—at the cost of one guided missile—when it had come within 50 miles.

The screen of tin cans worked, but it wasn't thick enough. The occupants of the Platform went about hunting for sheet metal that could be spared. They pulled out minor partitions here and there, and went out on the surface and threw away thousands of small glittering scraps of metal in all directions.

Two weeks later, there was another attack. It could be calculated that Joe couldn't have carried up more than six guided missiles. There might be as few as two of them left. So eight rockets came up together—and the first of them went off 400 miles from the Platform. Only one got as close as 200 miles. No guided missiles were expended in defense.

The Platform's enemies tried once more. This time the rockets arched up above the Platform's orbit and dived on the satellite from above. There were two of them. They went off at 180 and 270 miles from the Platform. Joe's trash screen would not work on Earth, but in space it was an adequate defense against anything equipped with proximity fuses. It could be assumed that in a full–scale space–war nuts, bolts, rusty nails and beer bottle caps would become essential military equipment.

Three days after this last attack, a second supply ship took off from Earth. Lieutenant Commander Brown was a passenger. Its start was just like the one Joe's ship had made. Pushpots lifted it, jatos hurled it on, and then the furious, flaming take–off rockets drove it valiantly out toward the stars.

Joe's ship had been moved out of the landing lock and was moored against the Platform's hull. The second ship made contact in two hours and seventeen minutes from take–off. It arrived with its own landing rockets intact, and it brought a set of forty–foot metal tubes for Joe's ship to get back to Earth with. But those landing rockets and Lieutenant Commander Brown constituted all its payload. It couldn't bring up anything else.

And Lieutenant Commander Brown called a very formal meeting in the huge living space at the Platform's center. He stood up grandly in full uniform—and had to hook his feet around a chair leg to keep from floating absurdly in mid–air. This detracted slightly from the dignity of his stance, but not from the official voice with which he read two documents aloud.

The first paper detached Lieutenant Commander Brown from his regular naval duties and assigned him pro tem to service with the Space Exploration Project. The second was an order directing him to take command and assume direction of the Space Platform.

Having read his orders, he cleared his throat and said cordially, "I am honored to serve here with you. Frankly, I expect to learn much from you and to have very few orders to give. I expect merely to exercise such authority as experience at sea has taught me is necessary for a tight and happy ship. I trust this will be one."

He beamed. Nobody was impressed. It was perfectly obvious that he'd simply been sent up to acquire experience in space for later naval use, and that he'd been placed in command because it was unthinkable that he serve under anyone without official rank and authority. And he quite honestly believed that his coming, with experience in command, was a blessing to the Platform. In fact, there was no danger that this commander of the Platform would crack up under stress as Sanford had.

But it was too bad that he hadn't brought some long–range guided missiles with him.

Joe's ship had brought up twenty tons of cargo and twenty tons of landing rockets. The second ship brought up twenty tons of landing rockets for Joe, and twenty tons of landing rockets for itself. That was all. The second trip out to the Space Platform was a rescue mission and nothing else. Arithmetic wouldn't let it be anything else. And there couldn't be any idea of noble self–sacrifice and staying out at the Platform, either, because only four ships like Joe's had been begun, and only two were even near completion. Joe's had taken off the instant it was finished. The second had done the same. The second pair of spaceships wouldn't be ready for two months or more. The ships that could be used had to be used.