Chapter 4

For an instant, in mid-air, Joe was incongruously aware of all the noises in the Shed. The murky, girdered ceiling still three hundred feet above him. The swelling, curving, glittering surface of steel underneath. Then he struck. He landed beside the lean man, with his left arm outstretched to share his impetus with him. Alone, he would have had momentum enough to carry himself up the slope down which the man had begun to descend. But now he shared it. The two of them toppled forward together. Their arms were upon the flat surface, while their bodies dangled. The feel of gravity pulling them slantwise and downward was purest nightmare.

But then, as Joe’s innards crawled, the same stocky man who had knocked the lean man back was dragging frantically at both of them to pull them to safety.

Then there were two men pulling. The stocky man’s face was gray. His horror was proof that he hadn’t intended murder. The man who’d put down his welding torch pulled. The man who’d been climbing the ladder put his weight to the task of getting them back to usable footing. They reached safety. Joe scrambled to his feet, but he felt sick at the pit of his stomach. The stocky man began to shake horribly. The lanky one advanced furiously upon him.

“I didn’ mean to keel you, Haney!” the dark one panted.

The lanky one snapped: “Okay. You didn’t. But come on, now! We finish this--”

He advanced toward the workman who had so nearly caused his death. But the other man dropped his arms to his sides.

“I don’ fight no more,” he said thickly. “Not here. You keel me is okay. I don’ fight.”

The lanky man--Haney--growled at him.

“Tonight, then, in Bootstrap. Now get back to work!”

The stocky man picked up his tools. He was trembling.

Haney turned to Joe and said ungraciously: “Much obliged. What’s up?”

Joe still felt queasy. There is rarely any high elation after one has risked his life for somebody else. He’d nearly plunged two hundred feet to the floor of the Shed with Haney. But he swallowed.

“I’m looking for Chief Bender. You’re Haney? Foreman?”

“Gang boss,” said Haney. He looked at Joe and then at Sally who was holding convulsively to the upright Joe had put her hand on. Her eyes were closed. “Yeah,” said Haney. “The Chief took off today. Some kind of Injun stuff. Funeral, maybe. Want me to tell him something? I’ll see him when I go off shift.”

There was an obscure movement somewhere on this part of the Platform. A tiny figure came out of a crevice that would someday be an air lock. Joe didn’t move his eyes toward it. He said awkwardly: “Just tell him Joe Kenmore’s in town and needs him. He’ll remember me, I think. I’ll hunt him up tonight.”

“Okay,” said Haney.

Joe’s eyes went to the tiny figure that had come out from behind the plating. It was a midget in baggy, stained work garments like the rest of the men up here. He wore a miniature welding shield pushed back on his head. Joe could guess his function, of course. There’d be corners a normal-sized man couldn’t get into, to buck a rivet or weld a joint. There’d be places only a tiny man could properly inspect. The midget regarded Joe without expression.

Joe turned to the hoist to go down to the floor again. Haney waved his hand. The midget lifted his, in grave salutation.

The hoist dropped down the shaft. Sally opened her eyes.

“You--saved that man’s life, Joe,” she said unsteadily. “But you scared me to death!”

Joe tried to ignore the remark, but he still seemed to feel slanting metal under him and a drop of two hundred feet below. It had been a nightmarish sensation.

“I didn’t think,” he said uncomfortably. “It was a crazy thing to do. Lucky it worked out.”

Sally glanced at him. The hoist still dropped swiftly. Levels of scaffolding shot upward past them. If Joe had slipped down that rolling curve of metal, he’d have dropped past all these. It was not good to think about. He swallowed again. Then the hoist checked in its descent. It stopped. Joe somewhat absurdly helped Sally off to solid ground.

“It--looks to me,” said Sally, “as if you’re bound to make me see somebody killed. Joe, would you mind leading a little bit less adventurous life for a while? While I’m around?”

He managed to grin. But he still did not feel right.

“Nothing I can do until I can look at the plane,” he said, changing the subject, “and I can’t find the Chief until tonight. Could we sightsee a little?”

She nodded. They went out from under the intricate framework that upheld the Platform. They went, in fact, completely under that colossal incomplete object. Sally indicated the sidewall.

“Let’s go look at the pushpots. They’re fascinating!”

She led the way. The enormous spaciousness of the Shed again became evident. There was a catwalk part way up the inward curving wall. Someone leaned on its railing and surveyed the interior of the Shed. He would probably be a security man. Maybe the fist fight up on the Platform had been seen, or maybe not. The man on the catwalk was hardly more than a speck, and it occurred to Joe that there must be other watchers’ posts high up on the outer shell where men could search the sunlit desert outside for signs of danger.

But he turned and looked yearningly back at the monstrous thing under the mist of scaffolding. For the first time he could make out its shape. It was something like an egg, but a great deal more like something he couldn’t put a name to. Actually it was exactly like nothing in the world but itself, and when it was out in space there would be nothing left on Earth like it.

It would be in a fashion a world in itself, independent of the Earth that made it. There would be hydroponic tanks in which plants would grow to purify its air and feed its crew. There would be telescopes with which men would be able to study the stars as they had never been able to do from the bottom of Earth’s ocean of turbulent air. But it would serve Earth.

There would be communicators. They would pick up microwave messages and retransmit them to destinations far around the curve of the planet, or else store them and retransmit them to the other side of the world an hour or two hours later.

It would store fuel with which men could presently set out for the stars--and out to emptiness for nuclear experiments that must not be made on Earth. And finally it would be armed with squat, deadly atomic missiles that no nation could possibly defy. And so this Space Platform would keep peace on Earth.

But it could not make good will among men.

Sally walked on. They reached the mysterious objects being manufactured in a row around half the sidewall of the Shed. They were of simple design and, by comparison, not unduly large. The first objects were merely frameworks of metal pipe, which men were welding together unbreakably. They were no bigger than--say--half of a six-room house. A little way on, these were filled with intricate arrays of tanks and piping, and still farther--there was a truck and hoist unloading a massive object into place right now--there were huge engines fitting precisely into openings designed to hold them. Others were being plated in with metallic skins.

At the very end of this assembly line a crane was loading a finished object onto a flat-bed trailer. As it swung in the air, Joe realized what it was. It might be called a jet plane, but it was not of any type ever before used. More than anything else, it looked like a beetle. It would not be really useful for anything but its function at the end of Operation Stepladder. Then hundreds of these ungainly objects would cluster upon the Platform’s sides, like swarming bees. They would thrust savagely up with their separate jet engines. They would lift the Platform from the foundation on which it had been built. Tugging, straining, panting, they would get it out of the Shed. But their work would not end there. Holding it aloft, they would start it eastward, lifting effortfully. They would carry it as far and as high and as fast as their straining engines could work. Then there would be one last surge of fierce thrusting with oversize jato rockets, built separately into each pushpot, all firing at once.