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Updated: June 20, 2025
When a man's made ten complete flights he retires. One flight a week thereafter to keep in practice only, until the big day for the Platform's take-off. Those guys sweat!" "Is it that bad?" The pilot grunted. The co-pilot Talley spread out his hands. "It is that bad! Every so often one of them comes down untidily. There's something the matter with the motors.
The co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watched it land. He chose another box. He checked it. And another. Joe helped. They got them out of the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness. The plane soared on in circles. The desert, as seen through the opened clamshell doors, reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt, and reeled away again. Joe and the co-pilot labored furiously.
We've known them all their lives. They'd get mad if we started to get stuffy. We don't bother." "That I'd like to see," said the co-pilot skeptically. "No barbed wire around the plant? No identity badges you wear when you go in? No security officer screaming blue murder every five minutes? What do you think all that's for? You built these pilot gyros! You had to have that security stuff!"
But there is a new rocket fuel that's supposed to be all right for sending the Platform up. Wasn't that the worst problem? Getting a rocket fuel with enough power per pound?" The co-pilot sipped his coffee and made a face. It was too hot. "Fella," he said drily, "that stuff was easy! The slide-rule boys did that.
Presently the transport ship sank toward the clouds. It sped through them, stone-blind from the mist. And then there was a small airfield below, and the pilot and co-pilot began a pattern of ritualistic conversation. "Pitot and wing heaters?" asked the pilot. The co-pilot put his hand successively on two controls. "Off." "Spark advance?" The co-pilot moved his hands.
You men get yourselves attended to and report to Security at the Shed." The pilot and co-pilot turned away. Joe turned to go with them. Then he heard Sally's voice, a little bit wobbly: "Joe! Come with us, please!" Joe hadn't seen her, but she was in the car. She was pale. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Joe said stiffly: "I'll be all right. I want to look at those crates "
The co-pilot made his way to the rear and pulled a lever. Great, curved doors opened at the back of the plane. Instantly there was such a bellowing of motors that all speech was impossible. The co-pilot pulled out a clip of colored-paper slips and checked one with the nearest movable parcel. He painstakingly made a check mark and began to push the box toward the doors.
He realized that the co-pilot felt talkative. He explained: "Those crates I'm traveling with . The family firm's been working on that machinery for months. It was finished with the final grinding done practically with feather dusters. I can't help worrying about it. There was four months' work in just lapping the shafts and balancing rotors.
He reported that at 9:35P.M. he was on a westerly heading, approaching Las Vegas from the east, when he and his co-pilot saw what they first thought was a "shooting star." It was ahead and a little above them. But, the captain said, it took them only a split second to realize that whatever they saw was too low and had too flat a trajectory to be a meteor.
Suddenly they cut off, and it seemed as if the ship had braked. But the pilot dived steeply, for speed. The co-pilot was saying coldly into the microphone: "He shot rockets. Looked like Army issue three point fives with proximities. They missed. And we're mighty lonely!" The transport tore on, both pilots grimly watching the cloud bank below.
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