Murray Leinster - Space Tug

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SPACE TUG

A BELMONT BOOK—August 1965

Second printing—November 1963

SPACE TUG

Published by Belmont Productions, Inc.

1116 First Ave., New York, N.Y. 10021

PRINTED IN CANADA COVER PRINTED IN U.S.A.

TO THE WORLD at large it was, of course, just another day. A different sort entirely at different places on

the great, round, rolling Earth, but nothing out of the ordinary. It was Tuesday on one side of the date line

and Monday on the other. It was so-and-so's wedding anniversary and so-and-so's birthday and another so-

and-so would get out of jail today. It was warm, it was cool, it was fair, it was cloudy. One looked to the

future with confidence, with hope, with uneasiness or with terror according to one's temperament and

geographical location and past history. But to most of the human race it was nothing remarkable. It was

just another day.

To Joe Kenmore, though, it was a most particular day indeed. Where he was, it was the gray hour just

before sunrise, and already there were hints of reddish colorings in the sky. It was chilly, and somehow the

world seemed still and breathless. To Joe, the feeling of tensity marked this morning off from all the other

mornings of his experience.

He got up and began to dress, in Major Holt's quarters back of that giant steel half-globe called the Shed,

near the town of Bootstrap. He felt queer because he felt much as usual. By all the rules he should have

experienced a splendid, noble sensation of high resolve and fiery exaltation. Perhaps he should have felt a

praiseworthy sense of humility and unworthiness to accomplish what would presently be expected of him.

And as a matter of fact he did feel suitable emotions very far deep down inside him. But it happened that

he couldn't spare the time for appropriate reactions today.

He was definitely aware that he wanted coffee, and that he hoped everything would go all right. He looked

out a window at empty, dreary desert under the dawn sky. Today was the day he'd be leaving on a rather

important journey. He hoped Haney and the chief and Mike weren't nervous. He also hoped that nobody

had gotten at the fuel for the pushpots, and that the sHderule wielders had calculated everything correctly.

He was also bothered about the steering rocket fuel, and he was uncomfortable about breaking clear of the

launching cage. There was cause for worry in the takeoff rockets. If the tube linings had shrunk the

consequences would be gruesome. And there could always be last minute orders from Washington to

postpone or even cancel everything.

In short, his mind was full of strictly practical details. He didn't have time for suitably heroic sensations or

sensations of high destiny. He had a very tricky and exacting job ahead of him.

The sky was growing lighter outside. Stars faded in a paling blue and the desert showed faint colorings.

He tied his necktie. A deep-toned keening set up to the southward. It was a faraway noise, something like

the lament of a mountain-sized calf bleating for its mother. Joe took a deep breath. He searched for the

source of the sound, but saw nothing. The noise, though, told him that at least there'd been no cancellation

of orders so far. He mentally uncrossed two fingers. But he couldn't have enough fingers crossed against

all foreseeable disasters. There weren't enough fingers. Or toes. But it was good that so far the schedule

held.

He went downstairs. Major Holt was pacing up and down the living room of his quarters. Electric lights

burned, but already the windows were brightening. Joe straightened up and tried to look casual. Strictly

speaking, Major Holt was a friend of his family who also happened to be security officer here, in charge of

what went on in the great construction shed. He'd had a bad enough time before today, and his troubles

might keep on into the future. He was also the ranking officer here and consequently the boss of Joe's

enterprise. Today's program was still very doubtful. The whole thing was controversial and uncertain and

might spoil the careers of everybody connected with it if it should happen to fail. Nobody with eagles or

stars on their shoulders wanted the responsibility. So Major Holt was in charge. If everything went well,

somebody outranking him would step forward for the credit. Meanwhile—

He looked sharply at Joe.

"Morning."

"Good morning, sir," said Joe. Major Holt's daughter Sally had a sort of understanding with Joe, but the

major hadn't the knack of cordiality. Nobody ever felt too.much at ease with him. Besides, Joe was

wearing a uniform this morning. It was the first time, and there were only eight such uniforms in the

world, so far. Joe's was black whipcord, with an Eisenhower jacket, narrow silver braid on the collar and

cuffs, and a silver rocket on the spot where a plane pilot wears wings. It was strictly practical. Against

accidental catchings in machinery the trouser legs were narrow and tucked into ten-inch soft-leather boots,

and the wide leather belt had flat loops for the attachment of special equipment. Its width was a brace

against violent acceleration. Sally'd had something to do with its design.

But it still hadn't been decided by the Pentagon whether the Space Exploration Project would be taken

over by the Army or Navy or Air Force sections of the now-combined armed forces, so Joe wore no

insignia of rank. Technically he was still a civilian.

The deep-toned noise to the south became a howling uproar, sweeping closer and trailed by other

howlings. The major said, "The pushpots are on the way over, as you can hear. You're feeling all right?"

"If you want the truth, sir," Joe admitted, "I'd feel better if I'd had a few years of experience. But we've

had all the experience to be had aground. I think we'll manage."

"You're saying you'll do your best," said the major curtly.

"We may have to do better than that," Joe answered. "We'll try."

"Hmmmmm," said the major. He said somehow formidably, "You're well enough aware that there are—

ah— people who don't like the idea of the United States having a manned artificial satellite aloft."

"I should know it," agreed Joe.

The Earth's second inhabitable moon had been out in space just six weeks, today. It no longer seemed a

bitterly contested achievement. One tended to take it for granted. From Earth it was only a tiny speck of

light in the sky, identifiable only because it moved swiftly and serenely from the sunset toward the east, or

from night's darkness into the dawnlight. But it had been fought savagely before it was launched. It was

first proposed to the United Nations, but was vetoed before it reached the Council. So the United States

had built it alone. Yet the nations who'd opposed it as an international project liked it even less as a

national one, and they'd done what they could to wreck it.

The building of the great globe out in emptiness had been fought more bitterly, by more ruthless and

highly trained saboteurs, than any other enterprise in history. There'd been two attempts to blast it with

atomic bombs. But now it was high aloft, rolling grandly around the Earth. And today Joe would try to get

a supply ship up to it. The crew of the Space Platform needed food and air and water, and especially

means of self-defense. Today's takeoff would be the first attempt at the carrying of a cargo out to space.

"The—ah—opponents of the Platform haven't given up," said the major. "They used spectroscopes on the

Platform's rocket fumes when it went up. It seems likely they've duplicated the fuel."

Joe nodded. The major continued restlessly: "For more than a month Military Intelligence has been aware

that very special rockets were being rushed into production abroad. Behind the Iron Curtain, that is. There

are plenty of satellites in orbit, and the trick of getting them there is no secret. It shouldn't be too difficult

to get one into collision orbit with the Platform. With an atomic missile head—it's unpleasant. So you'll

take up some interceptor rockets to be used against anything of the sort. Of course you know all this!"

"It would seem to me," said Joe carefully, "that an attack on the Platform would be an act of war."

"Once upon a time, yes," said the major with irony,

"but now it will be—ah—anonymous. Everybody will wonder aloud who would be so unkind as to blast

the Platform. Especially the people who do it. But we're building for peace. To start a war because

somebody interrupted it wouldn't be consistent. So—the Platform has to defend itself, for the moment.

You have a very worthwhile mission. I suggest that you have breakfast and get over to the Shed. I'm

leaving for there now."

"Yes, sir."

The major started for the door, then stopped.1 He said abruptly, "I'm quite aware, Joe, that if you're killed

by sabotage or carelessness, it's my fault."

"I'm sure, sir, that anybody can do—"

"Anything anybody can do to destroy you will be tried," said the major. He was grim. "I'll have done my

best. Try to believe it."

Before Joe could answer, the major went out. Joe frowned for a moment. It occurred to him that it can't be

very pleasant to feel responsible for the things that other men's lives depend on, especially when you don't

share their danger. But just then the smell of coffee reached his nostrils. He trailed the scent. There was a

coffee pot steaming on the table in the dining room. There was a note on a plate;

"Good luck! I'll see you in the Shed. Sally."

Joe was relieved. Major Holt's daughter had been somewhere around underfoot all his life. He liked Sally,

but he was glad he didn't have to talk to her just now.

He poured coffee and looked at his watch. He went to the window, because the monstrous howling noises

were much nearer and dawn had definitely arrived. Patches of yucca and mesquite and sage stretched

away to a far-off horizon. They were now visibly different from the red-yellow earth between them. They

cast long, streaky shadows. The cause of the howling was still undiscoverable.

Joe stared skyward, searching. He saw the Platform.

It was a small bright sliver of sunlight high aloft. It moved slowly toward the east, showing the

unmistakable glint of sunshine upon polished steel. It was the huge steel hull which had been built in the

gigantic Shed from whose shadow Joe now looked up. The Space Platform was the size of an ocean liner,

and six weeks since some hundreds of pushpots, all straining at once, had gotten it out of the Shed. They'd

panted toward the sky with it. They'd gotten twelve miles high and speeding eastward at the topmost rate

they could manage. Then they'd fired jatos, all at once, and so pushed their and the Platform's speed up to

the preposterous. And then they'd dropped away and the giant steel object had fired its own rockets—

which made flames a mile long—and swept on out to space. It circled the Earth above the equator for

strategic reasons. Most of the inhabited parts of the earth passed under it within clear view. And it would

continue its circling forever, needing no fuel and never descending. It was a second moon for the planet

Earth.

But it could be destroyed.

Joe watched it hungrily as it went on to meet the sun. Smoothly, unhurriedly, serenely, the remote and

twinkling speck floated on out of sight. And then Joe went back to the table and ate his breakfast quickly.

He wolfed it. He had an appointment to meet that glittering speck some thousands of miles out in

emptiness. His appointment was for a very few hours hence.

He'd been training for just this appointment since before the Platform's launching. There was a great box

swinging in twenty-foot gymbal rings over hi the Shed. There were motors and projectors and thousands

of transistors. It was a space flight simulator—a descendent of the Link trainer which once taught pilots

how to fly. But this offered all the problems and all the sensations but one to be experienced in the takeoff

of a rocketship for space. The one missing sensation was heavy acceleration. The similitude of flight,

though, was utterly convincing. In six weeks they'd learned how to handle a spaceship so far as it could be

learned aground. They'd learned to face emergencies and calamities staged in horrifying detail. More than

once they'd come out of that training apparatus drenched with sweat and the feeling that they were lucky

to be alive.

Joe realized how fully they had to depend on that training as he left Major Holt's quarters and headed for

the Shed's nearest entrance. The Shed was gigantic. There were hills to the westward, but only flat and

arid plain to the east and south and north. There was but one town in hundreds of miles, and that was

Bootstrap, built to house the workmen who'd built the Platform and the still invisible, ferociously howling

pushpots and now the small supply ships for it, of which the first was to thrust out to meet the Platform

today.

The Shed seemed very near because of its monstrous size. When he was actually at the base of its wall, it

seemed to fill half the firmament and more than half the horizon. He went in, and felt self-conscious when

the guard's eyes fell on his uniform. There was a tiny vestibule, then he was in the Shed itself, and it was

gigantic.

There were acres of wood-block flooring. There was a vast, steel-girdered arching roof which was fifty

storeys high. All this had been needed when the Space Platform was built. Men on the far side were

merely specks, and the rows of windows to admit light usually did no more than make a gray twilight

inside. But there was light enough today. To the east the Shed's wall was split from top to bottom. A

colossal triangular gore had been loosened and thrust out and rolled aside, and a doorway a hundred and

fifty feet wide let in the sunshine. Through it, Joe could see the fiery red ball which was the sun just

leaving the world's edge.

But there was something more urgent for him to look at. The small supply ship had been moved into its

launching cage. Only Joe, perhaps, would really have recognized it. Actually it was a streamlined hull of

steel, eighty feet long by twenty in diameter. There were stubby metal fins—useless in space and even on

takeoff, but essential for the planned method of landing on its return. There were thick quartz ports in the

bow section. But its form was completely concealed now by the attached, exterior takeoff rockets. It had

been shifted into a huge cradle of steel beams from which it was to rise to space. Men swarmed about it

and over it, checking and re-checking every possible thing that could make or mar its ascent to emptiness.

The other three crew members were ready—Haney and Chief Bender and Mike Scandia. They were

especially entitled to be the crew of this first supply ship. When the Platform was being built, its pilot

gyros had been built by a precision tool firm owned by Joe's father. He'd accompanied the infinitely

precious device to Bootstrap, by plane. He was to deliver and install the gyros in the Platform. And the

plane was sabotaged and the gyros ruined. They'd required four months to make, and four months more

for balancing to absolute no-tolerance accuracy. The Platform couldn't wait so long for duplicates. So Joe

had improvised a process for repair. And with Haney to devise special machine tool setups, and the chief

to use fanatically fine workmanship, and Mike and Joe aiding according to their gifts, they'd rebuilt the

apparatus in an impossibly short tune. The idea was Joe's, but he couldn't have done the job without the

others.

And there had been other, incidental triumphs. They were not the only ones who worked feverishly for the

glory of having helped to build the Earth's first actually inhabitable artificial moon. But they had

accomplished more than most. Joe had even been appointed to be an alternate member of the Platform's

crew. But the man he was to have substituted for recovered from an illness, and Joe was left behind at the

Platform's launching. But all four of them had demonstrated special qualities, and as a team they were

very special indeed. So, as a team, they were chosen to serve in the small ships that would supply the

Platform.

Now they were ready to begin. The chief grinned exuberantly as Joe ducked through the bars of the

launching cage and approached the ship. He was a Mohawk Indian—one of that tribe which for two

generations has supplied steelworkers to every bridge and dam and skyscraper job on the continent. He

was brown and bulky and explosive. Haney looked tense and strained. He was tall and lean and a good

man in any sort of trouble. Mike blazed excitement. He was forty-one inches high and he was full-grown.

He had worked on the Platform, bucking rivets and making welds and inspections in places too small for a

normal-sized man to reach. He frantically resented any concession to his size, and in fact he was all man,

only the small economy size.

"Hi Joe!" boomed the chief. "Had breakfast?"

Joe nodded. He began to ask anxious questions. About steering rocket fuel and the launching cage release

and the takeoff rockets and the reduction valve from the air tanks—he'd thought of that on the way over—

and the shortwave and loran and radar. Haney nodded to some questions. Mike said briskly, "I checked" to

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摘要：

SPACETUGABELMONTBOOK—August1965Secondprinting—November1963SPACETUGPublishedbyBelmontProductions,Inc.1116FirstAve.,NewYork,N.Y.10021©1953,3965,byWillF.Jenkins.Allrightsreserved.PRINTEDINCANADACOVERPRINTEDINU.S.A.1TOTHEWORLDatlargeitwas,ofcourse,justanotherday.Adifferentsortentirelyatdifferentplaceson...

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Murray Leinster - Space Tug

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