Space Platform Part 12

"If your friend Braun is caught," said the Major, "he will be punished.

Severely. Officially. But privately, someone will--ah--mention this tip and say 'thanks.' And he'll be told that he will be released from prison just as soon as he thinks it's safe. And he will be. That's all."

He turned to his papers. Joe went out. On the way to meet the pilot who'd check on his tip, he thought things over. He began to feel a sort of formless but very definite pride. He wasn't quite sure what he was proud of, but it had something to do with being part of a country toward which men of wholly different upbringing could feel deep loyalty. If a man who was threatened unless he turned traitor, a man who might not even be a citizen, arranged to be caught and punished for an apparent crime against a country rather than commit it--that wasn't bad. There can be a lot of things wrong with a nation, but if somebody from another one entirely can come to feel that kind of loyalty toward it--well--it's not too bad a country to belong to.

Joe had a security guard with him this time, instead of Sally, as he went across the vast, arc-lit interior of the Shed and past the shimmering growing monster that was the Platform. He went all the way to the great swinging doors that let in materials trucks. And there were guards there, and they checked each driver very carefully before they admitted his truck. But somehow it wasn't irritating. It wasn't scornful suspicion. There'd be snide and snappy characters in the Security force, of course, swaggering and throwing their weight about. But even they were guarding something that men--some men--were willing to throw away their lives for.

Joe and his guard reached one of the huge entrances as a ten-wheeler truck came in with a load of shining metal plates. Joe's escort went through the opening with him and they waited outside. The sun had barely risen. It looked huge but very far away, and Joe suddenly realized why just this spot had been chosen for the building of the Platform.

The ground was flat. All the way to the eastern horizon there wasn't even a minor hillock rising above the plain. It was bare, arid, sun-scorched desert. It was featureless save for sage and mesquite and tall thin stalks of yucca. But it was flat. It could be a runway. It was a perfect place for the Platform to start from. The Platform shouldn't touch ground at all, after it was out of the Shed, but at least it wouldn't run into any obstacles on its way toward the horizon.

A light plane came careening around the great curved outer surface of the Shed. It landed and taxied up to the door. It swung smartly around and its side door opened. A bandaged hand waved at Joe. He climbed in.

The pilot of this light, flimsy plane was the co-pilot of the transport of yesterday. He was the man Joe had helped to dump cargo.

Joe climbed in and settled himself. The small motor pop-popped valiantly, the plane rushed forward over hard-packed desert earth, and went swaying up into the air.

The co-pilot--pilot now--shouted cheerfully above the din: "Hiya. You couldn't sleep either? Burns hurt?"

Joe shook his head.

"Bothered," he shouted in reply. Then he added, "Do I do something to help, or am I along just for the ride?"

"First we take a look," the pilot called over the motor racket. "Two kilometers due north of the Shed, eh?"

"That's right."

"We'll see what's there," the pilot told him.

The small plane went up and up. At five hundred feet--nearly level with the roof of the Shed--it swung away and began to make seemingly erratic dartings out over the spotty desert land, and then back. Actually, it was a search pattern. Joe looked down from his side of the small c.o.c.kpit. This was a very small plane indeed, and in consequence its motor made much more noise inside its cabin than much more powerful engines in bigger ships.

"Those burns I got," shouted the pilot, staring down, "kept me awake. So I got up and was just walking around when the call came for somebody to drive one of these things. I took over."

Back and forth, and back and forth. From five hundred feet in the early morning the desert had a curious appearance. The plane was low enough for each smallest natural feature to be visible, and it was early enough for every shrub or hummock to cast a long, slender shadow. The ground looked streaked, but all the streaks ran the same way, and all were shadows.

Joe shouted: "What's that?"

The plane banked at a steep angle and ran back. It banked again. The pilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a b.u.t.ton. There was a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw a puff of smoke in the air.

The pilot shouted: "It's a man. He looks dead."

He swung directly over the small p.r.o.ne object and there was a second puff of smoke.

"They've got range finders on us from the Shed," he called across the two-foot s.p.a.ce separating him from Joe. "This marks the spot. Now we'll see if there's anything to the hot part of that tip."

He reached over behind his seat and brought out a stubby pole like a fishpole with a very large reel. There was also a headset, and something very much like a large aluminum fish on the end of the line.

"You know Geiger counters?" called the pilot. "Stick on these headphones and listen!"

Joe slipped on the headset. The pilot threw a switch and Joe heard clickings. They had no pattern and no fixed frequency. They were clickings at strictly random intervals, but there was an average frequency, at that.

"Let the counter out the window," called the pilot, "and listen. Tell me if the noise goes up."

Joe obeyed. The aluminum fish dangled. The line slanted astern from the wind. It made a curve between the pole and the aluminum plummet, which was hollow in the direction of the plane's motion. The pilot squinted down and began to swing in a wide circle around the spot where an apparently dead man had been sighted, and above which puffs of smoke now floated.

Three-quarters of the way around, the random clickings suddenly became a roar.

Joe said: "Hey!"

The pilot swung the plane about and flew back. He pointed to the b.u.t.ton he'd pushed.

"Poke that when you hear it again."

The clickings.... They roared. Joe pushed the b.u.t.ton. He felt the tiny impact.

"Once more," said the pilot.

He swung in nearer where the dead man lay. Joe had a sickening idea of who the dead man might be. A sudden rush of noise in the headphones and he pushed the b.u.t.ton again.

"Reel in now!" shouted the pilot. "Our job's done."

Joe reeled in as the plane winged steadily back toward the Shed. There were puffs of smoke floating in the air behind. They had been ranged on at the instant they appeared. Somebody back at the Shed knew that something that needed to be investigated was at a certain spot, and the two later puffs of smoke had said that radioactivity was notable in the air along the line the two puffs made. Not much more information would be needed. The meaning of Braun's warning that his tip was "hot" was definite. It was "hot" in the sense that it dealt with radioactivity!

The plane dipped down and landed by the great doors again. It taxied up and the pilot killed the motor.

"We've been using Geigers for months," he said pleasedly, "and never got a sign before. This is one time we were set for something."

"What?" asked Joe. But he knew.

"Atomic dust is one good guess," the pilot told him. "It was talked of as a possible weapon away back in the Smyth Report. n.o.body's ever tried it. We thought it might be tried against the Platform. If somebody managed to spread some really hot radioactive dust around the Shed, all three shifts might get fatally burned before it was noticed. _They'd_ think so, anyhow! But the guy who was supposed to dump it opened up the can for a look. And it killed him."

He climbed out of the plane and went to the doorway. He took a telephone from a guard and talked crisply into it. He hung up.

"Somebody coming for you," he said amiably. "Wait here. Be seeing you."

He went out, the motor kicked over and caught, and the tiny plane raced away. Seconds later it was aloft and winging southward.

Joe waited. Presently a door opened and something came clanking out. It was a tractor with surprisingly heavy armor. There were men in it, also wearing armor of a peculiar sort, which they were still adjusting. The tractor towed a half-track platform on which there were a crane and a very considerable lead-coated bin with a top. It went briskly off into the distance toward the north.

Joe was amazed, but comprehending. The vehicle and the men were armored against radioactivity. They would approach the dead man from upwind, and they would scoop up his body and put it in the lead-lined bin, and with it all deadly radioactive material near him. This was the equipment that must have been used to handle the dud atom bomb some months back. It had been ready for that. It was ready for this emergency. Somebody had tried to think of every imaginable situation that could arise in connection with the Platform.

But in a moment a guard came for Joe and took him to where the Chief and Haney and Mike waited by the still incompletely-pulled-away crates. They had some new ideas about the job on hand that were better than the original ones in some details. All four of them set to work to make a careful survey of damage--of parts that would have to be replaced and of those that needed to be repaired. The discoveries they made would have appalled Joe earlier. Now he merely made notes of parts necessary to be replaced by new ones that could be had within the repair time for rebalancing the rotors.

"This is sure a mess," said Haney mournfully, as they worked. "It's two days just getting things cleaned up!"

The Chief eyed the rotors. There were two of them, great four-foot disks with extraordinary short and stubby shafts that were brought to beautifully polished conical ends to fit in the bearings. The bearings were hollowed to fit the shaft ends, but they were intricately scored to form oil channels. In operation, a very special silicone oil would be pumped into the bearings under high pressure. Distributed by the channels, the oil would form a film that by its pressure would hold the cone end of the bearing away from actual contact with the metal. The rotors, in fact, would be floated in oil just as the high-speed centrifuge the Chief had mentioned had floated on compressed air. But they had to be perfectly balanced, because any imbalance would make the shaft pierce the oil film and touch the metal of the bearing--and when a shaft is turning at 40,000 r.p.m. it is not good for it to touch anything. Shaft and bearing would burn white-hot in fractions of a second and there would be several devils to pay.

"We've got to spin it in a lathe," said the Chief profoundly, "to hold the chucks. The chucks have got to be these same bearings, because nothing else will stand the speed. And we got to cut out the bed plate of any lathe we find. Hm. We got to do our spinning with the shaft lined up with the earth's axis, too."

Mike nodded wisely, and Joe knew he'd pointed that out. It was true enough. A high-speed gyro could only be run for minutes in one single direction if its mount were fixed. If a precisely mounted gyro had its shaft pointed at the sun, for example, while it ran, its axis would try to follow the sun. It would try not to turn with the earth, and it would wreck itself. They had to use the cone bearings, but in order to protect the fine channellings for oil they'd have to use cone-shaped shims at the beginning while running at low speed. The cone ends of the shaft would need new machining to line them up. The bearings had to be fixed, yet flexible. The----