Space Platform by Murray Leinster (miss read books .txt) 📗

Platform was very silent. Somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulation was incomplete, the sound of workmen was audible, but the inner corridors of the Platform were not resonant. They were lined with a material to destroy reminders that this was merely a metal shell, an artificial world that would swim in emptiness. Here and now, Joe and Sally seemed very private and alone, and he felt a sense of urgency.

He looked at her yearningly. Her color was a little higher than usual. She was not just a nice kid, she was swell! And she was good to look at. Joe had noticed that before, but now with the memory of her fright because he’d been in danger, her worry because he might have been killed, he thought of her very absurd but honest offer to cry for him.

Joe found himself twisting at the ring on his finger. He got it off, and there was some soot and grease on it from the work he’d been doing. He knew that she saw what he was about, but she looked away.

“Look, Sally,” he said awkwardly, “we’ve known each other a long time. I’ve—uh—liked you a lot. And I’ve got [Pg 82]some things to do first, but——” He stopped. He swallowed. She turned and smiled at him. “Look,” he said desperately, “what’s a good way to ask if you’d like to wear this?”

She nodded, her eyes shining a little.

“That was a good way, Joe. I’d like it a lot.”

There was an interlude, then, during which she very ridiculously cried and explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life so much! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. It was the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppy ululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed and wailed and wailed.

“That’s the alarm,” exclaimed Sally. She was still misty-eyed. “Everybody out of the Shed. Come on, Joe.”

They started back the way they’d come in. And Sally looked up at Joe and grinned suddenly.

“When I have grandchildren,” she told him, “I’m going to brag that I was the very first girl in all the world ever to be kissed in a space ship!”

But before Joe could do anything about the comment, she was out on the stairs, in plain view and going down. So he followed her.

The Shed was emptying. The bare wood-block floor was dotted with figures moving steadily toward the security exit. There was no hurry, because security men were shouting that this was not an alarm but a precautionary measure, and there was no need for haste. Each security man had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkie he wore. By it every guard could be told anything he needed to know, either on the floor of the Shed, or on the catwalks aloft or even in the Platform itself.

Trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go out the swing-up doors. Men came down from the scaffolds after putting their tools in proper between-shifts positions—for counting and inspection—and other men were streaming quietly from the pushpot assembly line. Except for the gigantic object in the middle, and for the fact that every man was in work clothes, the scene was surprisingly like the central waiting room of a [Pg 83]very large railroad station, with innumerable people moving briskly here and there.

“No hurry,” said Joe, catching the word from a security man as he passed it on. “I’ll go see what my gang found out.”

The trio—Haney and Mike and the Chief—were just arriving by the piles of charred but now uncovered wreckage. Sally flushed ever so slightly when she saw the Chief eye Joe’s ring on her finger.

“Rest of the day off, huh?” said the Chief. “Look! We found most of the stuff we need. They’re gonna give us a shop to work in. We’ll move this stuff there. We’re gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe we picked, an’ then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in between the chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line.”

That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel to the axis of the earth. Joe nodded.

“We’ll be able to get set up in the mornin’,” added Haney, “and get started. You got the parts list off to the plant for your folks to get busy on?”

Sally said quickly: “He’s sending that by facsimile now. Then——”

The Chief beamed in benign mockery. “What you goin’ to do after that, Joe? If we got the rest of the day off——?”

Sally said hurriedly: “We were—he was going off on a picnic with me. To Red Canyon Lake. Do you really need to talk business—all afternoon?”

The Chief laughed. He’d known Sally, at least by sight, back at the Kenmore plant.

“No, ma’am!” he told her. “Just askin’. I worked on that Red Canyon dam job, years back. That dam that made the lake. It ought to be right pretty around there now. Okay, Joe. See you as soon as work starts up. In the mornin’, most likely.”

Joe started away with Sally. Mike the midget called hoarsely: “Joe! Just a minute!”

Joe drew back. The midget’s seamed face was very earnest. He said in his odd voice: “Here’s something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard to keep you from getting [Pg 84]those gyros here. They might work hard to keep them from getting repaired. That’s why we asked for a special shop to work in. It’s occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would be to stop us. Not everybody would’ve figured out how to rebalance this thing. You get me?”

“Sure!” said Joe. “You three had better look out for yourselves.”

Mike stared at him and grimaced.

“You don’t get it,” he said brittlely. “All right. I may be crazy, at that.”

Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but he approved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to the security building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm and efficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stop all work. As they went toward Major Holt’s office, Joe heard somebody dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: “... this attempt at atomic sabotage was defeated outside the Shed, but it never had a chance of success. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt to smuggle radioactive material into the Shed....”

Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.

“That’s for a publicity release?” he asked.

She nodded.

“It’s true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without passing close to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though they don’t set the sirens to screaming.”

Joe said: “I’ll get my order for new parts off on the facsimile machine.”

But he had to get Major Holt’s secretary to show him where to feed in the list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and then be rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set the machine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of the document. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.

“You and Sally,” remarked Sally’s father’s secretary with a morose sigh, “can go and relax this afternoon. But there’s no relaxation for Major Holt. Or for me.”

[Pg 85]

Joe said unhopefully: “I’m sure Sally’d be glad if you came with us.”

Major Holt’s plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.

“I haven’t had a day off since the work began here,” she said frowning. “The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You’re going to Red Canyon Lake?”

“Yes,” agreed Joe. “Sally thought it might be pleasant.”

“It’s terribly dry and arid here,” said Miss Ross sadly. “That’s the only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it’s pretty there. I’ve never seen it.”

She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!

Sally came out, smiled at her father’s secretary, and led Joe down to the entrance.

“I have the car,” she said cheerfully, “and there’ll be a lunch basket waiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold for swimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it’s nice to look at.”

They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were just beginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black car was waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. She regarded the men swarming on the busses.

“There’ll be bulletins all over Bootstrap,” she observed, “saying that Braun tried to dust-bomb the Shed. They’ll say that he may have carried the cobalt about with him, and so he may have burned other people—in a restaurant, a movie theater, anywhere—while he was carrying the dust and dying without knowing it. So everybody’s supposed to report to the hospital for a check-up for radiation burns. Some people may really have them. But Dad thinks that since you weren’t burned, Braun didn’t carry it around. If anyone is burned, it’ll be the person who brought the cobalt here to give him. And—well—he’ll turn up because everybody does, and because [Pg 86]he’s burned he’ll be asked plenty of questions.”

Joe stepped on the starter. Then he pressed the accelerator and the car sped forward.

They stopped at the house in the officers’-quarters area on the other side of the Shed. Sally picked up the lunch basket that her father’s housekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions. They drove away.

Red Canyon was eighty miles from the Shed, and the only way to get there was through Bootstrap, because the only highway away from the Shed led to that small, synthetic town. It was irritating, though they had no schedule, to find that the long line of busses was ahead of them on that twenty-mile stretch. The busses ran nose to tail and filled the road for a half-mile or more. It was not possible to pass so long a string of close-packed vehicles. There was just enough traffic in the opposite direction to make that impracticable.

They had to trail the line of busses as far as Bootstrap and crawl through the crowded streets. Once beyond the town they came to a security stop. Here Sally’s pass was good. Then they went rolling on and on through an empty, arid, sun-baked terrain toward the hills to the west. It looked remarkably lonely. Joe thought for the first time about gas. He looked carefully at the fuel gauge. Sally shook her head.

“Don’t worry. Plenty of gas. Security takes care of that. When I said where we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everything checked. If I live through this, I’ll bet I stay a fanatic about cautiousness all my life!”

Joe said distastefully: “I suppose it gets everybody. Mike—the midget, you know—called me back just now to suggest that the people who tried to spoil the gyros might try to harm the four of us to hinder their repair!”

“It’s not just foolishness,” Sally admitted. “The strain is pretty bad, especially when you know things. You’ve noticed that Dad’s getting gray. That’s strain. And Miss Ross is about as tense. Things leak out in the most remarkable way—and Dad can’t find out how. Once there was a case of sabotage and he could have sworn that nobody had the information [Pg 87]that permitted it but himself and Miss Ross. She had hysterics. She insisted that she wanted to be locked up somewhere so she couldn’t be suspected of telling anybody anything. She’d resign tomorrow if she could. It’s ghastly.” Then she hesitated and smiled faintly: “In fact, so Dad wouldn’t worry about me this afternoon——”

He took his eyes off the road to glance at her.

“What?”

“I promised we wouldn’t go swimming and——” Then she said awkwardly: “There are two pistols in the glove compartment. Dad knows you. So I promised you’d put one in your pocket up at the lake.”

Joe drew a deep breath. She opened the glove compartment and handed him a pistol. He looked at it: .38, hammerless. A good safe weapon. He slipped it in his coat pocket. But he frowned.

“I was looking forward to—not worrying for a while,” he said wryly. “But now I’ll have to remember to keep looking over my shoulder all the time!”

“Maybe,” said Sally, “you can look over my shoulder and I’ll look over yours, and we can glance at each other occasionally.”

She laughed, and he managed