Space Platform Part 25

Sally got up and went inside the house. She came back with an uneasy expression on her face.

"He's coming. But I couldn't very well tell him what was wanted, and--I'm not sure he's going to be in a mood to listen."

When the Major arrived he was definitely not in a mood to listen. He was a harried man, and he was keyed up to the limit by the multiplied strain due to the imminence of the Platform's take-off. He came back to his house from a grim conference on exactly the subject of how to make preparations against any possible sabotage incidents--and ran into a proposal to stimulate them! He practically exploded. Even if provocation should be given to saboteurs to lure them into showing their hands, this was no time for it! And if it were, it would be security business. It should not be meddled in by amateurs!

Joe said grimly: "I don't mean to be disrespectful, sir, but there's a point you've missed. It isn't thinkable that you'll be able to prevent something from being tried at a time the saboteurs pick. They've got just so much time left, and they'll use it! But Mike's plan would offer them a diversion under cover of which they could pull their own stuff!

And besides that, you know your office leaks! You couldn't set up a trick like this through security methods. And for a third fact, this is the one sort of thing no saboteur would expect from your security organization! We caught the saboteurs at the pushpot field by guessing at a new sort of thinking for sabotage. Here's a chance to catch the saboteurs who'll work their heads off in the next twenty-four hours or so, by using a new sort of thinking for security!"

Major Holt was not an easy man to get along with at any time, and this was the worst of all times to differ with him. But he did think straight. He stared furiously at Joe, growing crimson with anger at being argued with. But after he had stared a full minute, the angry flush went slowly away. Then he nodded abruptly.

"There you have a point," he said curtly. "I don't like it. But it is a point. It would be completely the reverse of anything my antagonists could possibly expect. So I accept the suggestion. Now--let us make the arrangements."

He settled down for a quick, comprehensive, detailed plan. In careful consultation with Haney, Joe worked it out. The all-important point was that the Major's part was to be done in completely unorthodox fashion.

He would take measures to mesh his actions with those of Mike, the Chief, Haney, and Joe. Each action the Major took and each order he gave he would attend to personally. His actions would be restricted to the last five minutes or less before shift-change time. His orders would be given individually to individuals, and under no circ.u.mstances would he transmit any order through anybody else. In every instance, his order would be devised to mean nothing intelligible to its recipient until the time came for obedience.

It was not an easy scheme for the Major to bind himself to. It ran counter to every principle of military thinking save one, which was that it was a good idea to outguess the enemy. At the end he said detachedly: "This is distinctly irregular. It is as irregular as anything could possibly be! But that is why I have agreed to it. It will be at least--unexpected--coming from me!"

Then he smiled without mirth and nodded to Joe and to Haney, and went striding away down the concrete walk to where his car waited.

Haney left a moment later to carry the list of arrangements to the Chief and to Mike. And Joe went into the Shed to do his part.

There was little difference in the appearance of the Shed by night. In the daytime there were long rows of windows in the roof, which let in a vague, dusky, inadequate twilight. At night those windows were shuttered. This meant that the shadows were a little sharper and the contrasts of light and shade a trifle more abrupt. All other changes that Joe could see were the normal ones due to the taking down of scaffolding and the fastening up of rocket tubes. It was clear that the shape of the Platform proper would be obscure when all its rocket tubes were fast in place.

Joe went to look at the last pushpots, and they were ready to be taken over to their own field for their flight test before use. There were extras, anyhow, beyond the number needed to lift the Platform. He found himself considering the obvious fact that after the Platform was aloft, they would be used to launch the ferry rockets, too.

Then he moved toward the center of the Shed. A whole level of scaffolding came apart and its separate elements were bundled together as he watched. Slings lowered the bundles down to waiting trucks which would carry them elsewhere. There were mixing trucks still pouring out their white paste for the lining of the rocket tubes, and their product went up and vanished into the gaping mouths of the giant wire-wound pipes.

Presently Joe went into the maze of piers under the s.p.a.ce Platform itself. He came to the temporary stairs he had reason to remember. He nodded to the two guards there.

"I want to take another look at that gadget we installed," he said.

One of the guards said good-naturedly: "Major Holt said to pa.s.s you any time."

He ascended and went along the curious corridor--it had handgrips on the walls so a man could pull himself along it when there was no weight--and went to the engine room. He heard voices. They were speaking a completely unintelligible language. He tensed.

Then the Chief grinned at him amiably. He was in the engine room and with him were no fewer than eight men of his own coppery complexion.

"Here's some friends of mine," he explained, and Joe shook hands with black-haired, dark-skinned men who were named Charley Spotted Dog and Sam Fatbelly and Luther Red Cow and other exotic things. The Chief said exuberantly, "Major Holt told the guards to let me pa.s.s in some Indian friends, so I took my gang on a guided tour of the Platform. None of 'em had ever been inside before. And----"

"I heard you talking Indian," said Joe.

"You're gonna hear some more," said the Chief. "We're the first war party of my tribe in longer'n my grandpa woulda thought respectable!"

Joe found it difficult to restrain a smile. The Chief took him off to one side.

"Fella," he said kindly, "it bothers you, this business, because it ain't organized. That's what this world needs, Joe. Everything figured out by slide rules an' such--it's civilized, but it ain't human! What everybody oughta be is a connoisseur of chaos, like me. Quit worryin'

an' get outside and pick up that security guy the Major was gonna send to meet you!"

He gave Joe an amiable shove and rejoined his fellow Mohawks, each of whom, Joe noticed suddenly, had somewhere on his person a twelve-inch Stillson wrench or a reasonable facsimile to serve as a subst.i.tute tomahawk. They grinned at him as he departed.

At the bottom of the flight of narrow wooden steps there was a third security man. He greeted Joe.

"Major Holt told me to pick you up," he observed.

Joe walked to one side with him. Major Holt had promised to send a first-cla.s.s man to meet Joe at this place, with orders to take instructions from Joe. Joe said curtly: "You're to snag as many Security men as you can, place them more or less out of sight under the Platform here, and tell them to turn off their walkie-talkies and wait. No matter what happens, they're to wait right here until they're needed, right here!"

He looked hara.s.sedly around him. The Security man nodded and moved casually away. This was close timing. Something made Joe look up. He saw the catwalk gallery nearly overhead. The expected guard was there.

Haney, though, was with him. There was nothing else in sight. Not yet.

But Haney was on the job. Joe saw a Security man step out of sight in the scaffolding. He saw his own a.s.signed security man speak to another, who wandered casually toward the Platform's base.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Only Joe could have noticed, because he was watching for it. There were eight or nine Security men posted within call. They had their walkie-talkies turned off and would be subject only to his orders if an emergency arose.

Gongs began to ring all around the edge of the Shed. They set up a horrendous clanging. This was not an alarm, but simply the notice of change-of-shift time.

There was a marked change in the noises overhead. A crane pulled back.

Hammerings dwindled and stopped. There were the sounds of pipes, combined to form the scaffolds, being taken apart for removal. A sling-load of pipe touched the floor and stayed there. The crane's internal-combustion motor stopped. Its operator stepped down to the floor and headed for the exit. Hoists descended and men moved across the floor. Other men scrambled down ladders. The floor became dotted with figures moving toward the doors through which men went out to get on the busses for Bootstrap.

Nothing happened. More long minutes pa.s.sed. The shift brought out by the busses was going through the check-over process in the incoming screen room. Joe knew that Major Holt had, within the past five minutes, gathered together a tight-knit bunch of armed security men to be available for anything that might turn up. The men doing the normal shift-change screening were shorthanded in consequence.

The floor next to the exits became crowded, but the central area of the floor was cleared. One truck was stalled at the swing-up truck doors.

Its driver ground the starter insistently.

Suddenly there was a high-pitched yell away up on the Platform. Then there was a shot. Its echoes rang horribly in the resonant interior of the Shed. Joe's own special security man hurried to him, his face tense.

"What about that?"

"Hold everything," said Joe grimly. "That's taken care of."

It was. That was Mike's gang--miniature humans popping out of hiding to offer battle with missiles carefully prepared beforehand against their alleged a.s.sociates in sabotage. One of the a.s.sociates had drawn a gun and fired. But Mike's gang had help. Out of small air locks devised to make the Platform's skin accessible to its crew on every side--provided they wore s.p.a.ce suits--dark-skinned men appeared.

The security man's walkie-talkie under his shoulder made a buzzing sound. He reached for it.

"Forget it!" snapped Joe. "That's not for you! You've got your orders!

Stay here!"

There was a sudden growling uproar where men were crowding to get out of the Shed. Thick, billowing smoke appeared. There was a crashing explosion. The men eddied and milled crazily.

The motor of the stalled truck caught. It moved toward the door, which opened, swinging up and high. Two trucks came roaring in. They raced for the Platform. And as they raced inside, their camouflaged loads clattered off and men showed instead. The guards by the doorway began to shoot.

"That's what we've got to stop!" snapped Joe.

He began to run, his pistol out. There was suddenly a small army--gathered by his orders--which materialized in the dim s.p.a.ce under the Platform. It raced to guard against this evidently well-planned invasion.

The harsh, tearing rattle of a machine gun sounded from somewhere high up. Joe knew what it was. Mike's whole scheme had been intended to force all sabotage efforts to take place at a single instant. Part of the preparation was authority for Haney to drag in two machine guns from an outer watching-post and mount them to cover the interior of the Shed when the general attack began.

Those machine guns were shooting at the trucks. Splinters sprang up from the wood-block floor. Then, abruptly, one of the trucks vanished in a monstrous, actinic flash of blue-white flame and a roar so horrible that it was not sound but pure concussion. The other truck keeled over and crashed from the blast, but did not explode. Men jumped from it. There must have been screamed orders, but Joe could hear nothing at all. He only saw men waving their arms, and others seized things from the toppled load and rushed toward him, and he began to shoot as he ran to meet them.

Now, belatedly, the sirens of the Shed screamed their alarm, and choppy yappings set up as the siren wails rose in pitch. Over by the exit pistols cracked. Something fell with a ghastly crash not ten feet from where Joe ran. It was a man's body, toppled from somewhere high up on the structure that was the most important man-made thing in all the world. A barbaric war whoop sounded among the echoes of other tumult.