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Updated: June 25, 2025
All other changes that Joe could see were the normal ones due to the taking down of scaffolding and the fastening up of rocket tubes. It was clear that the shape of the Platform proper would be obscure when all its rocket tubes were fast in place. Joe went to look at the last pushpots, and they were ready to be taken over to their own field for their flight test before use.
There were now seven cages in all to be hoisted toward the sky. A great double triangular gore had been jacked out and rolled aside to make an exit in the side of the Shed. Nearly as many pushpots, it seemed, were involved in this launching as in the take-off of the Platform itself. The routine test before take-off set the pushpot motors to roaring inside the Shed.
They went, in fact, completely under that colossal incomplete object. Sally indicated the sidewall. "Let's go look at the pushpots. They're fascinating!" She led the way. The enormous spaciousness of the Shed again became evident. There was a catwalk part way up the inward curving wall. Someone leaned on its railing and surveyed the interior of the Shed. He would probably be a security man.
The major spoke to her sternly. They waited. The cranes brought in more pushpots and set them up against the steel launching cage. The ship had been nearly hidden before by the rocket tubes fastened outside its hull. It went completely out of sight behind the metal monsters banked about it. The major looked at his watch and the group about the data board.
Had Joe known it, the lieutenant was deeply impressed by his attempt at concentration on the problem it had not been Major Holt's intention for Joe to consider. When Joe temporarily gave up, the young lieutenant eagerly showed him over the whole field and all its workings. In mid-morning another pushpot fell screaming from the skies. That made six pushpots and six pilots for this week two today.
They had to start off on one course with a slight spread as a safety measure and at one time. So the firing-circuits were keyed to relays in series. Only when all seven firing-keys were down at the same time would any of the jatos fire. Then all would blast together. The pilots in the cockpit-bubbles of the pushpots had an extraordinary view of the scene.
"The pushpots are on the way over, as you can hear," said the major detachedly, in the curious light of daybreak and electric bulbs together. "Your crew is up and about. So far there seems to be no hitch. You're feeling all right for the attempt today?" "If you want the truth, sir, I'd feel better with about ten years' practical experience behind me.
At something over twelve miles height, seven aggregations of clumsy black things clung to frameworks of steel, pushing valorously. Far below there were clouds and there was Earth. There was a horizon, which wavered and tilted. The pushpots struggled with seeming lack of purpose. One of the seven seemed to drop below the others. They pointed vaguely this way and that all of them.
The tinny voice behind Joe now spoke precisely. Mike had listened to it while the work of take-off could be divided, so that Joe would not be distracted. Now Joe had to control everything at once. The roar of the pushpots outside the ship had long since lost the volume and timbre of normal atmosphere. Not much sound could be transmitted by the near-vacuum outside.
There were exactly two people still visible over in a corner. Another din like the wailing of a baby volcano with a toothache. It began, and moved, and went through the series of changes that ended in a climbing, droning hum. Another. Another. The launching of pushpots for their morning flight was evidently getting well under way. Joe hesitated in the nearly empty mess hall.
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