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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.
He went up the steps which would be pulled down before the Platform's launching and went actually inside the Space Platform for the first time. It was a moment of extreme vividness for him. Within the past hour he'd come to think detachedly of the possibility of death for himself, and then had learned that he would live for a while yet.
And they didn't know, not till a long time afterward, that they had met only a little while before. It had been dark at the platform's end. Perry had caught nothing save a canine grin. There are certain people, good people to whom orthodox precepts and preachments are more than the constant evidence of their own eyes, who will find displeasure in this story.
And because of the four of you, they've been able to advance the Platform's take-off time to just two days off! It leaked out, and now it's official. And you made it possible!" This was a slight exaggeration, but it was pardonable because of Sally's partiality for Joe. He went groggily into the special shower arrangement in the Platform.
Normally one sleeps because he's tired. We had trouble sleeping until our muscles got so weak we tired anyhow!" Another drone came in and was unloaded. And another and another. But the last of them wasn't only unloaded. Haney took over the Platform's control board and grinning to himself sent faint, especially-tuned short wave impulses to the steering-rockets of the drone.
That was Mike's gang miniature humans popping out of hiding to offer battle with missiles carefully prepared beforehand against their alleged associates in sabotage. One of the associates had drawn a gun and fired. But Mike's gang had help. Out of small air locks devised to make the Platform's skin accessible to its crew on every side provided they wore space suits dark-skinned men appeared.
But what they couldn't do was match its orbital velocity, which was zero. They had the Platform's eastward speed to start with over 200 miles a minute. No matter how desperately they fired braking-rockets, they couldn't stop and maneuver around the rising control-ship. Inevitably they would simply flash past it in the fraction of an instant.
Owing to the accident, they've no doubt had two trainloads to handle instead of one. But the platform's emptying; shall we look for a place?" They managed to enter a car, though the stream of passengers, pouring in by the two vestibules, met within in dire confusion, choking up the passage with their baggage.
Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works. But I won't look forward to a serene old age until the Platform's out of atmosphere! Not me!" He went to put the pilot's empty cup in the disposal slot. The plane went on. There wasn't anything underneath but clouds, and there wasn't anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down, and the sky was simply up.
He and the Chief were speeding Earthward away from the Platform at more than four miles a minute, but it was not enough. The manned rocket was accelerating at a great deal more than that rate. And if the Platform's enemies down on Earth had sent a manned rocket up to destroy the Platform, the man in it would have ways of defending himself.
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