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There was the sound of pumping, which grew fainter. The outer lock-door opened. The moon-jeep rolled outside. Babs stared with passionate rapture out of a shielded port. There were impossibly jagged stones, preposterously steep cliffs. There had been no weather to remove the sharp edge of anything in a hundred million years.
He drew back and slammed the inner lock-door. There was the sound of pumping. Pop put his helmet back on and sealed it. The outer door opened. Outrushing air tugged at Pop. After a second or two he went out and climbed down the welded-on ladder-bars to the ground. He headed back toward his shack. Somehow, the mention of Sattell had made his mind work better. It always did.
The Chief struck it smartly with his space-gloved hand. "I'm counting coup on the Moon!" he said zestfully "Tie that, you guys!" Then he joined the others on their way to the Moonship's main lock. "Shall we knock?" asked Mike humorously. "I doubt they've got a door-bell!" But the lock-door was opening to admit them. They crowded inside.
But it was not easy for him. The ground-car stopped. An exit-port in the space yacht opened and an extension-stair came down. The three of them mounted it. The inner lock-door opened and they entered the Sylva. An incredibly fat woman regarded Bors with warm and sentimental eyes. A man no older than Bors, but with prematurely gray hair, nodded at him.
Their searchlight beam glared into it. They saw the metal floor, and the bulging plastic sidewalls, restrained by nets. They saw the inner lock-door. It seemed that men should be visible to welcome them. There were none. The airlock swallowed them. They touched against something solid. There were more clankings. They seemed to crunch against the metal floor magnetic flooring-grapples.
He looked at the container with a horrible, lustful desire. The thick-eyeglassed man clucked at him, as if at a caged animal one wishes to soothe. The man beyond the glass yawned hysterically. He seemed to whimper. He could not take his eyes from the container in the doctor's hands. "So!" said Dr. Lett. He pressed a button. A lock-door opened. He put the container inside it. The door closed.
He'd made his line fast outside. He closed the outer lock-door. Air surged into the lock and Haney crowded in. Again the pumping. Then Haney went out, and was anchored to the Platform not only by his magnetic boots but by a rope fastened to a hand-hold. Brent went out. Mike. Joe came next. They stood on the hull of the Space Platform, waiting in the incredible harsh sunshine of emptiness.
A crewman named Corey moved into an airlock with one of the bags of empty tin cans. Brent watched in a routine fashion through a glass in the lock-door. The pumps began to exhaust the air from the airlock. Corey's space suit inflated visibly. Presently the pump stopped. Corey opened the outer door. He went out, paying plastic rope behind him. An instant later he reappeared and removed the rope.
But with this it could journey to Weald with almost any complement on board. Maril stayed on Dara when the Med Ship left. Murgatroyd protested shrilly when he discovered her about to be closed out by the closing lock-door. "Chee!" he said indignantly. "Chee! Chee!" "No," said Calhoun, "we'll be crowded enough anyhow. We'll see her later."
The men were specks of humanity standing on a shining metal hull, and all about them there was the desolation of nothingness. But Joe felt strangely proud. The seventh man came out of the lock-door. They tied their plastic ropes together and spread out in a long line which went almost around the Platform. The man next to the lock was anchored to a steel hand-hold.
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