Space Tug Part 22

"It'll be a human base on the Moon," said Brent relievedly. "An expedition will start in six weeks, according to plan. As long as we're the only American base in s.p.a.ce, we're going to be shot at. But a base on the Moon will be invulnerable. So they're going ahead with it."

Joe said hopefully:

"Any orders for me to join it?"

Brent shook his head. "We're to be loaded up with supplies for the Moon expedition. We're to be ready to take a robot ship every round.

Actually, they can't hope to send us more than two a day for a while, but even that'll be eighty tons of supplies to be stored away."

The Chief grumbled, but somehow his grumbling did not sound genuine.

"They're going to the Moon--and leave us here to do stevedore stuff?"

His tone was odd. He looked at a letter he'd been reading and gave up pretense. He said self-consciously: "Listen, you guys.... My tribe's got all excited. I just got a letter from the council. They've been having an argument about me. Wanna hear?"

He was a little amused, and a little embarra.s.sed, but something had happened to make him feel good.

"Let's have it," said Joe. Mike was very still in another chair. He didn't look up, though he must have heard. Haney c.o.c.ked an interested ear.

The Chief said awkwardly, "You know--us Mohawks are kinda proud. We got something to be proud of. We were one of the Five Nations, when that was a sort of United Nations and all Europe was dog-eat-dog. My tribe had a big pow-wow about me. There's a tribe member that's a professor of anthropology out in Chicago. He was there. And a couple of guys that do electronic research, and doctors and farmers and all sorts of guys. All Mohawks. They got together in tribal council."

He stopped and flushed under his dark skin. "I wouldn't tell you, only you guys are in on it."

Still he hesitated. Joe found a curious picture forming in his mind.

He'd known the Chief a long time, and he knew that part of the tribe lived in Brooklyn, and individual members were widely scattered. But still there was a certain remote village which to all the tribesmen was home. Everybody went back there from time to time, to rest from the strangeness of being Indians in a world of pale-skinned folk.

Joe could almost imagine the council. There'd be old, old men who could nearly remember the days of the tribe's former glory, who'd heard stories of forest warfare and zestful hunts, and scalpings and heroic deeds from their grandfathers. But there were also doctors and lawyers and technical men in that council which met to talk about the Chief.

"It's addressed to me," said the Chief with sudden clumsiness, "in the World-by-itself Canoe. That's the Platform here. And it says--I'll have to translate, because it's in Mohawk." He took a deep breath. "It says, 'We your tribesmen have heard of your journeyings off the Earth where men have never traveled before. This has given us great pride, that one of our tribe and kin had ventured so valiantly.'" The Chief grinned abashedly. He went on. "'In full a.s.sembly, the elders of the tribe have held counsel on a way to express their pride in you, and in the friends you have made who accompanied you. It was proposed that you be given a new name to be borne by your sons after you. It was proposed that the tribe accept from each of its members a gift to be given you in the name of the tribe. But these were not considered great enough. Therefore the tribe, in full council, has decreed that your name shall be named at every tribal council of the Mohawks from this day to the end of time, as one the young braves would do well to copy in all ways. And the names of your friends Joe Kenmore, Mike Scandia, and Thomas Haney shall also be named as friends whose like all young braves should strive to seek out and to be.'"

The Chief sweated a little, but he looked enormously proud. Joe went over to him and shook hands warmly. The Chief almost broke his fingers.

It was, of course, as high an honor as could be paid to anybody by the people who paid it.

Haney said awkwardly, "Lucky they don't know me like you do, Chief. But it's swell!"

Which it was. But Mike hadn't said a word. The Chief said exuberantly:

"Did you hear that, Mike? Every Mohawk for ten thousand years is gonna be told that you were a swell guy! Crazy, huh?"

Mike said in an odd voice: "Yeah. I didn't mean that, Chief. It's fine!

But I--I got a letter. I--never thought to get a letter like this."

He looked unbelievingly at the paper in his hands.

"Mash note?" asked the Chief. His tone was a little bit harsh. Mike was a midget. And there were women who were fools. It would be unbearable if some half-witted female had written Mike the sort of gushing letter that some half-witted females might write.

Mike shook his head, with an odd, quick smile.

"Not what you think, Chief. But it is from a girl. She sent me her picture. It's a--swell letter. I'm--going to answer it. You can look at her picture. She looks kind of--nice."

He handed the Chief a snapshot. The Chief's face changed. Haney looked over his shoulder. He pa.s.sed the picture to Joe and said ferociously: "You Mike! You doggoned Don Juan! The Chief and me have got to warn her what kinda guy you are! Stealing from blind men! Fighting cops----"

Joe looked at the picture. It was a very sweet small face, and the eyes that looked out of the photograph were very honest and yearning. And Joe understood. He grinned at Mike. Because this girl had the distinctive look that Mike had. She was a midget, too.

"She's--thirty-nine inches tall," said Mike, almost stunned. "She's just two inches shorter than me. And--she says she doesn't mind being a midget so much since she heard about me. I'm going to write her."

But it would be, of course, a long time before there was a way for mail to get down to Earth.

It was a long time. Now it was possible to send up robot rockets to the Platform. They came up. When the second arrived, Haney went out to pull it in. Joe forgot to notify Brown, in writing, an hour before launching a rocket recovery vehicle (s.p.a.ce wagon) according to paragraph 3 of the formal memo, nor the time of launching in hours, minutes, etc., by Greenwich Mean Time (paragraph 4), nor was the testing of all equipment made before moving it into the airlock. This was because the testing equipment was in the airlock, where it belonged. And the commands for launching were not given by Brown or an officer designated by him, because Joe forgot all about it.

Brown made a stormy scene about the matter, and Joe was honestly apologetic, but the Chief and Haney and Mike glared venomously.

The result was completely inconclusive. Joe had not been put under Brown's command. He and his crew were the only people on the Platform physically in shape to operate the s.p.a.ce wagons, considering the acceleration involved. Brent and the others were wearing gravity simulators, and were building back to strength. But they weren't up to par as yet. They'd been in s.p.a.ce too long.

So there was nothing Brown could do. He retreated into icily correct, outraged dignity. And the others hauled in and unloaded rockets as they arrived. They came up fast. The processes of making them had been improved. They could be made faster, heated to sintering temperature faster, and the hulls cooled to usefulness in a quarter of the former time. The production of s.p.a.ce ship hulls went up to four a day, while the molds for the Moonship were being worked even faster. The Moonship, actually, was a.s.sembled from precast individual cells which then were welded together. It would have features the Platform lacked, because it was designed to be a base for exploration and military activities in addition to research.

But only twenty days after the recovery and docking of the first robot ship to rise, a new sort of ship entirely came blindly up as a robot.

The little s.p.a.ce wagons hauled it to the airlock and inside. They unloaded it--and it was no longer a robot. It was a modified hull designed for the duties of a tug in s.p.a.ce. It could carry a crew of four, and its cargohold was accessible from the cabin. It had an airlock. More, it carried a cargo of solid-fuel rockets which could be shifted to firing racks outside its hull. Starting from the platform, where it had no effective weight, it was capable of direct descent to the Earth without spiralling or atmospheric braking. To make that descent it would, obviously, expend four-fifths of its loaded weight in rockets. And since it had no weight at the Platform, but only ma.s.s, it was capable of far-ranging journeying. It could literally take off from the Platform and reach the Moon and land on it, and then return to the Platform.

But that had to wait.

"Sure we could do it," agreed Joe, when Mike wistfully pointed out the possibility. "It would be good to try it. But unfortunately, s.p.a.ce exploration isn't a stunt. We've gotten this far because--somebody wanted to do something. But----" Then he said, "It could be done and the United Nations wouldn't do it. So the United States had to, or--somebody else would have. You can figure who that would be, and what use they'd make of s.p.a.ce travel! So it's important. It's more important than stunt flights we could make!"

"n.o.body could stop us if we wanted to take off!" Mike said rebelliously.

"True," Joe said. "But we four can stand three gravities acceleration and handle any more manned rockets that start out here. We've lived through plenty more than that! But Brent and the others couldn't put up a fight in s.p.a.ce. They're wearing harness now, and they're coming back to strength. But we're going to stay right here and do stevedoring--and fighting too, if it comes to that--until the job is done."

And that was the way it was, too. Of stevedoring there was plenty. Two robot ships a day for weeks on end. Three ships a day for a time. Four.

Sometimes things went smoothly, and the little s.p.a.ce wagons could go out and bring back the great, rocket-scarred hulls from Earth. But once in three times the robots were going too fast or too slow. The s.p.a.ce wagons couldn't handle them. Then the new ship, the s.p.a.ce tug, went out and hooked onto the robot with a chain and used the power it had to bring them to their destination. And sometimes the robots didn't climb straight. At least once the s.p.a.ce tug captured an erratic robot 400 miles from its destination and hauled it in. It used some heavy solid-fuel rockets on that trip.

The Platform had become, in fact, a port in s.p.a.ce, though so far it had had only arrivals and no departures. Its storage compartments almost bulged with fuel stores and food stores and equipment of every imaginable variety. It had a stock of rockets which were enough to land it safely on Earth, though there was surely no intention of doing so. It had food and air for centuries. It had repair parts for all its own equipment. And it had weapons. It contained, in robot hulls anch.o.r.ed to its sides, enough fissionable material to conduct a deadly war--which was only stored for transfer to the Moon base when that should be established.

And it had communication with Earth of high quality. So far the actual mail was only a one-way service, but even entertainment came up, and news. Once there was a television shot of the interior of the Shed. It was carefully scrambled before transmission, but it was a heartening sight. The Shed on the TV screen appeared a place of swarming activity.

Robot hulls were being made. They were even improved, fined down to ten tons of empty weight apiece, and their controls were a.s.sembly line products now. And there was the s.p.a.ce flight simulator with men practicing in it, although for the time being only robots were taking off from Earth. And there was the Moonship.

It didn't look like the Platform, but rather like something a child might have put together out of building blocks. It was built up out of welded-together cells with strengthening members added. It was 60 feet high from the floor and twice as long, and it did not weigh nearly what it seemed to. Already it was being clad in that thick layer of heat insulation it would need to endure the two-week-long lunar night. It could take off very soon now.

The pictured preparations back on Earth meant round-the-clock drudgery for Joe and the others. They wore themselves out. But the storage s.p.a.ce on the Platform filled up. Days and weeks went by. Then there came a time when literally nothing else could be stored, so Joe and his crew made ready to go back to Earth.

They ate hugely and packed a very small cargo in their ship. They picked up one bag of mail and four bags of scientific records and photographs which had only been transmitted by facsimile TV before. They got into the s.p.a.ce tug. It floated free.

"_You will fire in ten seconds_," said a crisp voice in Joe's headphones. "_Ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... fire!_"

Joe crooked his index finger. There was an explosive jolt. Rockets flamed terribly in emptiness. The s.p.a.ce tug rushed toward the west. The Platform seemed to dwindle with startling suddenness. It seemed to rush away and become lost in the myriads of stars. The s.p.a.ce tug accelerated at four gravities in the direction opposed to its...o...b..tal motion.

As the acceleration built up, it dropped toward Earth and home like a tumbled stone.

10