Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
"Uh-uh!" said Mike instantly. "They smash the Platform when we get to it! They smash us both up together. Where'll we be at contact-time, Joe?" "Over the Indian Ocean, south of the Bay of Bengal, to be exact," said Joe. "But we'll be moving fast. The worst of it is that it's going to take time to get in the airlock and unload our guided missiles and get them in the Platform's launching-tubes.
And then Joe went back to the table and ate his breakfast quickly. He wolfed it. He had an appointment to meet that minute speck some 4,000 miles out in space. His appointment was for a very few hours hence. He'd been training for just this morning's effort since before the Platform's launching. There was a great box swinging in twenty-foot gimbal rings over in the Shed.
One tiny foot dabbed at the platform's edge; the other twinkled patent leather and silver buckle at the step, missed it, plunged with a giant stride for the pavement. "Mercy!" she cried, and came like a shower of roses swirling into George's arms. Completely he caught her.
Joe saw a Security man step out of sight in the scaffolding. He saw his own assigned security man speak to another, who wandered casually toward the Platform's base. Minutes passed. Only Joe could have noticed, because he was watching for it. There were eight or nine Security men posted within call.
They were not the only ones who worked feverishly for the glory of having helped to build the Earth's first artificial moon, but they had accomplished more than most. Joe had even been appointed to be an alternate member of the Platform's crew. But the man he was to have substituted for recovered from an illness, and Joe was left behind at the Platform's launching.
So eight rockets came up together and the first of them went off 400 miles from the Platform. Only one got as close as 200 miles. No guided missiles were expended in defense. The Platform's enemies tried once more. This time the rockets arched up above the Platform's orbit and dived on the satellite from above. There were two of them. They went off at 180 and 270 miles from the Platform.
And the desert vegetation miles below the hell bomb showed signs of searing when the morning came. But the thing from the north was vaporized, utterly, some forty-five miles from its target. The damage it did was negligible. The work on the preparation for the Platform's take-off went on. When the all-clear signal sounded inside the Shed, nobody paid any attention. They were too busy.
His air and mood when he stepped to the platform for the public Meeting had undergone a radiant change; all the more radiant, we noticed, if the children who had hailed him from the waysides had been many and strenuous. There was something of the child in his own face as he stepped to the platform's edge, and replied to the enthusiasm of the house by clapping his own hands to the people.
The smoke died away on that stretch of trench, as the foam of a swell dies in the angle of a harbour wall, and broke out afresh half a mile lower down. In its apparent laziness, in its awful deliberation, and its quick spasms of wrath, it was more like the work of waves than of men; and our high platform's gentle sway and glide was exactly the motion of a ship drifting with us toward that shore.
When he stood still his stomach queasy because of weightlessness he found himself tilting undignifiedly forward or back or, with equal unpredictability, sidewise. He would have to learn an entirely new method of walking. A man came in the lock, and Joe knew who it was. Sanford, the senior scientist of the Platform's crew.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking