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Updated: June 12, 2025
"You can get a shower," she told him firmly, "and then I'll have some breakfast for you. Fresh clothes are waiting, too." Joe said peacefully: "The gyros are finished and they work!" "Don't I know?" demanded Sally. "Go get washed and come back for breakfast. The Chief and Haney and Mike are already awake.
Just a minute!" Joe drew back. The midget's seamed face was very earnest. He said in his odd voice: "Here's something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard to keep you from getting those gyros here. They might work hard to keep them from getting repaired. That's why we asked for a special shop to work in. It's occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would be to stop us.
Of course the main-gyro linkage to the fabric of the Shed had to be broken for this test, or the gyros would have twisted the giant upon its support and all the scaffolding around it would have been broken and the men on it killed. But the gyros worked! They visibly and unquestionably worked!
The pilot gyros were the steering apparatus of the Space Platform. They had to be more than adequate. They had to be perfect! On the take-off alone, they were starkly necessary. The Platform couldn't hope to reach its orbit without them. Joe chipped away charred planks. He pulled off flame-eaten timbers.
There will be another man in another place and this will be you who can instruct new workmen in the repair procedure if anything should happen. Thus there will have to be three separate successful coups if the pilot gyros are not to be ready when the Platform needs them. Saboteurs might try one. Possibly two. But I think they will look for another weak spot to attack."
After a long time Joe said, with very careful casualness, "Come to think of it, I was getting loaded up with astrogation theory when I had to stop and pitch in on the gyros. How's that sick crew member, Sally?" "I wouldn't know," answered Sally unconvincingly. "Have some more coffee?" Joe made his face go completely expressionless. There was nothing else to do.
The gyros on each projectile had been preset for a circular flight of fifteen minutes' duration. Soon they would be returning and the delicate job of bringing them safely aboard would begin. "Here comes number one," shouted Connel, as a small pinpoint of light appeared on the screen. "I'm ready!" said the professor.
There was no change in the feel of things inside the ship, of course. Sealed against the vacuum of space, barometric pressure outside made no difference. Height had no effect on the air inside the ship. At 25,000 feet the Chief said suddenly: "We're pointed due east, Joe. Freeze it?" "Right," said Joe. "Freeze it." The Chief threw a lever. The gyros were running at full operating speed.
"Those gyros are so perfect, sir," said Tom, working the controls quickly and smoothly, "that the only way you can throw them off balance is to confuse them." "Confuse them!" exclaimed Connel. "Yes, sir," said Tom. "It's a theory Roger and I worked out together. No gyro is perfect, and if you can get it bouncing back and forth in extreme turns, it will be thrown out of balance.
The Major nodded dismissal with an indefinable air of irony, and Joe went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length. His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new set of pilot gyros at once. A little later Sally came out of her father's office. "I'm sorry, Joe!" He grinned unhappily.
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