Space Tug

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

e this was nothing whate

eady there were hints of reddish colorings in the sky. It was chilly, and somehow the world seemed still and b

as usual. By all the rules, he should have experienced a splendid, noble resolution and a fiery exaltation, and perhaps even an admirable sensation of humility and unworthine

ief and Mike weren't nervous. He also hoped that nobody had gotten at the fuel for the pushpots, and that the slide-rule crew that had calculated everything hadn't made any mistakes. He was also bothered about the steering-rocket fuel, and he was uncomfortable about the business o

didn't have time to feel noble aspirations or sensations of hi

as a faraway noise, something like the lament of a mountain-sized calf bleating for its mother. Joe took a deep breath. He looked, but saw nothing. The noise, though, told him that there'd been no cancellation of ord

of protecting what went on in the giant construction Shed. He'd had a sufficiently difficult time of it in the past, and the difficulties might keep on in the future. He was also the ranking officer here and consequently the immediate boss of Joe's enterprise. Today's affair was still highly precarious.

arply at Joe

nly eight such uniforms in the world, so far. It was black whipcord, with an Eisenhower jacket, narrow silver braid on the collar and cuffs, and a silver rocket for a badge where a plane pilot wears his wings. It was strictly practical. Against accidental catchings

tion Project would be taken over by the Army or the Navy or the Air Corp

had become a howl, sweeping clos

he curious light of daybreak and electric bulbs together. "Your crew is up and about

ence behind me. But my gang and myself-we've had all the training we can get withou

he major. "You'

better than that,"

hat there are-ah-people who do not altogether like the idea of

know it,"

t it was only because it moved so swiftly and serenely from the sunset toward the east, or from night's darkness into the dawn-light. But it had been fought bitterly before it was launched. It was first proposed to the United Nations,

s, than any other enterprise in history. There'd been two attempts to blast it with atomic bombs. But it was high aloft, rolling grandly around

med Pelican One. The crew of the Platform needed food and air and water-and especially the

formidably. "And they used spectroscopes on the Platform's ro

no

d they will carry atom bomb heads. One or more may be finished any day. When they're finished, you can bet that they'll be used against the Platform. And you will carry up th

atform?" demanded Joe

. If it is destroyed, we won't defend the peace of the world by going to war over it. But while the Platform can defend itself, it is not likely that

d, "Yes

id abruptly, "If my security measures have failed, Joe, you'll be kil

that everything

y sabotage, Joe, but blunders and mistakes and stupidities. That always happens. But-I've

ld reply, the major

er men's lives depend on-when you can't share their danger. But just then the smell of coffee reached his nostrils.

'll see you

a

underfoot all his life. She was a swell girl, but he wa

blue sky were tinted pinkish by the rising sun. Patches of yucca and mesquite and sage out beyond the officers' quarters area stretched away to a far-off horiz

. He stared skyward, searching

once, had gotten it out of the Shed and panted toward the sky with it. They'd gotten it twelve miles high and speeding eastward at the ultimate speed they could manage. They'd fired jato rockets, all at once, and so pushed its speed up to the preposterous. Then they'd dropped away and the giant steel thing had fired its own rockets-which made mile-long flames-and swept on out to

ould be

floated on out of sight. And then Joe went back to the table and ate his breakfast quickly. He wolfed it. He had an

to fly. But this offered the problems and the sensations of rocketship control, and for many hours every day Joe and the three members of his crew had labored in it. The simulator duplicated every sight and sound and feeling-all but heavy acceleration-to be experienced in the take-off of a rocketship to space. The similitude of flight was utterly convincing. Som

flat desert. There were hills to the westward, but only arid plain to the east and south and north. There was but one town in hundreds of miles and that was Bootstrap, built to h

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

de 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

tubby metal fins-useless in space, and even on take-off, 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 take-off rockets. I

apparatus to Bootstrap, to deliver and install it in the Platform. And the plane was sabotaged, and the gyros were ruined. They'd consumed four months in the building, and four months more for balancing with absolute no-tolerance accuracy. The Platform couldn't wait so long for duplicates. So Joe had improvised a

l 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 fro

and skyscraper job on the continent. He was brown and bulky and explosive. Haney looked tense and strained. He was tall and lean and spare, and a good man in any sort of trouble. Mike blazed excitement. Mike was forty-one inches high and he was full-grown.

d the Chief. "All

d the take-off rockets and the reduction valve from the air tanks-he'd thought of that on the way over-and

ht. We checked it again this morning. I even caught Mike polishing th

ection-seats like those supplied to jet pilots. They would be thrown clear of the ship and ribbon-parachutes might open and might let them land alive. But it wasn't likely. Joe had objected to their presence. If a feather dropped

y nor Air Corps, but something that so far was its own individual self. But the man marching toward Joe was Lieutenant Com

as if he expected Joe

mally: "I would like to offer my bes

s," sa

entially a naval function, and it does seem to me that any ship, including a space

" said J

hands, then

. "How come, Joe, he doesn'

's been trained that way. I'd like to make a bet that w

rbid!" gro

ike a lost baby dragon, its flat underside tilted up and up until it was almost vertical. It had no wings, but a blue-white flame spurted out of its rear, wobbling from side to side for reasons best known to itself. It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane b

beyond the construction Shed. One flopped so hard on landing that its tail rose in the air and it attempted a somersault. It made ten times more noise than before-the flame from it

tors in frames and metal skin, with built-in jato rocket tubes besides their engines. On the ground they were quite helpless. In the air they were unbelievably clumsy. They

aid anxiously, "We'd better check our flight

f two others which needed a lot of work yet. They'd been begun at distant plants and then hauled here on monstrous trailers for completion. The wooden mo

readings had been calculated with infinite care, and Joe and the others needed to know them rather better than they knew their multiplica

ctures of it, making as sure as possible that any one of them would spot anything w

set the unwieldy metal object against that cage. There was a clank as the pushpot caught hold of the magnetic grapples. The crane went out again, p

got there, he looked impatiently around. His daughter Sally came out of nowhere and blew her nose as if she'd been crying, and pointed to the data b

ge. The ship had been nearly hidden before by the rocket tubes fastened outside it

e data board. They moved away from it and back towar

ice, "the invoice of your cargo. You will deliver the

e," sa

ly in a strained to

ank

e the next crew will start its training immediately, but it may be a month before an

e even a personal motive to get th

formally and marched away. Sally smiled up at

right, Joe," she said unsteadil

e of that, too

apped with string on the inside of the band to make it

cely, "I don't care if somebody's looking,

to the peculiar mass of clustered pushpots,

. Then he climbed up the ladder into Pelican One's cabin. S

quartz-glass ports he could see ahead, out the end of the cage through the monstrous doorway to the desert beyond. Overhead he could see the dark, gird

e pushpot motors, Ha

hip came the muted uproar of a pushpot engine starting. Haney pushed another button. Anoth

the steering-rocket manual controls was fastened properly, and Mi

ous calm, "All pushpo

ts ready," the

me from Mike. "Commun

hings. Nobody can strike an attitude or go into a blue funk while they are worrying about things to be done. Joe heard the small gyro motors as their speed went up. A

e right-hand side, and died down. It grew thunderous to the left, and dwindled. The ones

hunderous volume which came even through the little ship's insulated hull. Then it gr

reality the clustered pushpots and the launching cage rose some thirty feet from the Shed floor and hovered there uncertainly. Joe shifted the lever that governed the vanes in the jet motor blasts. Ship and cage and pushpots, all together, wavered t

ay a silver minnow wrapped in match-sticks; and if the bees buzzed furiously and lifted it in a straining, clumsy, and altogether unreasonable manner; and if the appearance and the noise together were multiplied a good many thousands of times-why-

eming aggregation of grotesque objects began to climb. Ungainly it was, and clumsy it was, but it went upward at a rate a jet-fighter might have trouble matching

like a pricked balloon. The horizon retreated as if a carpet were

st," Mike announced. "It's five.... We're at 17,000 feet ... 18,000. We shoul

e. Sealed against the vacuum of space, barometric pressure outside

id suddenly: "We're pointed

aid Joe. "

lable to resist any change of direction the pushpots might produce by minor variations in their thrusts. Haney brooded over the reports from the

e instruments denied any change from level rise. The upward-soaring complex of flying things had

aid Mike from the communicator. "N

the maximum possible forward thrust before they rose out of that east-bound hurricane. They added a fierce p

irectly, but there was over 200,000 horsepower at work to raise the spacecraft and build up the highe

ht will die just as quickly as anywhere between the stars. But it wasn't quite empty space for the pushpots. The

ations says get set

replied. "Se

ind. Mike settled himself in the tiny acceleration-chair built for him. The Chief squirmed to comfort in his seat. Haney took his hands from the equalizing

t," said the Chief sh

ring needles to return to

said the Chief a mo

to it while the work of take-off could be divided, so that Joe w

ansmitted by the metal cage as so much pure vibration. The walls and hull of the spaceship picked up a crawling, quivering pulsation and turned it into sound. Standing waves set up and dissolved and moved erratically in the air of the cabin. Joe's eardrums

phone into place

e said evenl

ny voic

relative to surface of six-nine-two miles per hour. The rotational speed of Earth at this latitude is seven-seven-eight. You have, then, a total orbital speed of one-four-seven-oh miles per h

sa

. seven ... six ... five ... fo

ake-off will weigh a hundred and forty pounds and deliver a thousand pounds of thrust for fourteen seconds. And that is for rockets using nonpoisonous compounds. The jatos of the pushpots used the beryllium-fluorine fue

e. The vibration from the jets had been bad. Now he didn't notice it. He didn't

side too, like nothing else imaginable. Not only his chest pressed upon his lungs, but his lungs strained toward his backbone. Not only the flesh of his thi

her more than half a mile per second, something over 1,800 miles per hour. Before, the ship had possessed an orbital speed of a shade over 1,470 miles an hour. Afte

hake of the head to clear his brain. He jammed down the take-off rocket firing button.

ing cage. It was no longer upheld by pushpots. It was free, with its take-off rockets flaming. It plunged on up a

chest felt as if it had a leaden weight on it. His tongue tried to crowd the back of his mouth and strangle him. The sensation was that of a nightmare of impossible duration. It was possible to mo

thing was right. The tinny voice behind his head, its timbre changed by the weighting

of sunshine that came in the cabin portholes. Stars and sunshine together. And the sunshine was the sunshine of space. Even with the polarizers cutting off some of the gla

ribly and his eyes tried to go out of focus, but Joe Kenmore s

tice, we're out of-the atmosphere and-out in s