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Updated: June 25, 2025
There was but one town in hundreds of miles and that was Bootstrap, built to house the workmen who'd built the Platform and the still invisible, ferociously howling pushpots and now the small supply ships, the first of which was to make its first trip today. The Shed seemed very near because of its monstrous size.
They came with hysterical cries from their airfield to the south, and they flopped flat with extravagant crashings on the desert outside the eastern door. By the time the pushpots had been hauled in, one by one, and had attached themselves to the launching cages, Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike had climbed into the cabin of the one ship which was not a drone.
A man exposed to emptiness at that height will die just as quickly as anywhere between the stars. But it wasn't quite empty space for the pushpots. There was still a very, very little air. The pushpots could still thrust upward. Feebly, now, but they still thrust. Mike said: "Communications says get set to fire jatos, Joe." "Right!" he replied. "Set yourselves."
It stirred a little. Joe held his breath and cracked the over-all control of the pushpots' speed a tiny trace further. The ship wobbled a little. Out the quartz-glass windows, the great door seemed to descend. In reality the clustered pushpots and the launching cage rose some thirty feet from the Shed floor and hovered there uncertainly.
All the sensations were familiar, the small fleet of improbable objects rose and rose. Of all flying objects ever imagined by man, the launching cages supported by pushpots were most irrational. The squadron, though, went bumbling upward. In the manned ship, Joe was more tense than on his other take-off if such a thing was possible. His work was harder this trip.
The others looked at him all but Joe, who stared at the wall. "There hasn't been one set of guys trying to smash the Platform," said Mike excitedly. "There's been four or five. Joe found a gang sabotaging the pushpots that didn't think like the gang that blackmailed Braun. And the gang that tried to kill us up at Red Canyon may be another.
Up to that deadline, the pushpots could let the ships back down to Earth without crashing them. After it, they'd run out of fuel before a landing could be made. The deadline came closer and closer. Joe snapped: "Take a degree leeway. We've got ten seconds." He had the manned ship nearly steady. He held down the firing-button, holding aim by infinitesimal movements of the controls.
Joe said between mouthfuls: "Funny way for anything to take off, riding on it looked like a truck." "It is a truck," said Talley. "A high-speed truck. Fifty of them specially made to serve as undercarriages so pushpot pilots can practice. The pushpots are really only expected to work once, you know." Joe nodded. "They aren't to take off," Talley explained. "Not in theory.
By engaging them, the Chief had all their stored-up kinetic energy available to resist any change of direction the pushpots might produce by minor variations in their thrusts. Haney brooded over the reports from the individual engines outside. He made minute adjustments to keep them balanced. Mike uttered curt comments into the communicator from time to time.
I know you're Joe Kenmore. I'm Brick Talley and this is Captain no less than Captain! Thomas J. Walton. Impressed?" "Very much," said Joe. He sat down. "What about the control surfaces on pushpots?" "They're in the jet blast!" said the co-pilot, now identified as Brick Talley. "Like the V Two rockets when the Germans made 'em. Vanes in the exhaust blast, no kidding!
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