Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
Overhead he could see the dark, girder-lined roof of the Shed. On either side, though, he could see only the scratched, dented, flat undersides of the pushpots ready to lift the ship upward. "You can start on the pushpot motors, Haney," he said curtly. Joe moved to his own, the pilot's seat. Haney pushed a button. Through the fabric of the ship came the muted uproar of a pushpot engine starting.
The pushpot lifted from the vehicle on which it rode, and the vehicle put on speed and got away from under it with frantic agility. The vehicle swerved to one side, and Joe stared with amazed eyes at the pushpot, some twenty feet aloft. It had a flat underside, and a topside that still looked to him like the rounded top half of a loaf of baker's bread.
He saw the remnants of ham and eggs and coffee. He was hungry. There was the uproar to be expected of a basso-profundo banshee in pain. Another pushpot was taking off. "How do I get breakfast?" he asked. The co-pilot pointed to a chair. He rapped sharply on a drinking glass. A door opened, he pointed at Joe, and the door closed. "Breakfast coming up," said the co-pilot. "Look!
Another pushpot came soaring wildly into view, making hysterical outcries. It touched and banged violently to earth. Others appeared in the air beyond the construction Shed. One flopped so hard on landing that its tail rose in the air and it attempted a somersault. It made ten times more noise than before the flame from its tail making wild gyrations and flopped back again with a crash.
I want to stay alive." The Major regarded him with irony. "I was thinking of the fact that when you worked out the matter of the doctored pushpot fuel, you did not try to be a hero and prove it yourself. You referred it to me. That was the proper procedure.
There was a different mind at work. In the afternoon Joe watched the landings, while the young lieutenant followed him patiently about. A pushpot landing was quite unlike the landing of any other air-borne thing. It came flying down with incredible clumsiness, making an uproar out of all proportion to its landing speed.
Meanwhile your ah work crew will start to repair the one that is here." "Yes, sir." "And," said the Major, "I am sending you to the pushpot airfield. I intend to scatter the targets the saboteurs might aim at. You are one of them. Your crew is another. From time to time you will confer with them and verify their work. If any of them should be disposed of, you will be able to instruct others."
Haney pushed both hands down, raised one, pushed again. The Chief had one finger down. Mike had both firing buttons depressed.... The Chief pushed down his second button, quietly. There was a monstrous impact. Every jato in every pushpot about every launching cage fired at once. Joe felt himself flung back into his acceleration chair. Six gravities.
Naturally! At the fuel pump, the attendant can draw on any of those underground tanks he chooses." The Major said curtly: "Obviously! What of it?" "The pushpot motors explode," said Joe. "And they shouldn't. No bomb could be gotten into them without going off the instant they started, and they don't blow that way.
It would make history as the first serious attempt by human beings to reach the Moon. Joe and his followers would go along simply to handle guided missiles if it came to a fight, and to tow the Moonship to its wharf the Platform and out into midstream again when it resumed its journey. And that was all. The Moonship lifted from the floor of the Shed to the sound of hundreds of pushpot engines.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking