Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (12 page)

She showed him the living quarters. They centered in a great open space
sixty feet long and twenty wide and high. There were bookshelves, and
two balconies, and chairs. Private cabins opened from it on different
levels, but there were no steps to them. Yet there were comfortable
chairs with straps so that when a man was weightless he could fasten
himself in them. There were ash trays, ingeniously designed to look like
exactly that and nothing else. But ashes would not fall into them, but
would be drawn into them by suction. There was unpatterned carpet on the
floor
and
on the ceiling.

"It's going to feel queer," said Sally, oddly quiet, "when all this is
out in space, but it will look fairly normal. I think that's important.
This room will look like a big private library more than anything else.
One won't be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he's
living in a strictly synthetic environment. He won't feel cramped. If
all the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. At
least this way he can pretend that things are normal."

Her mind was not wholly on her words. She'd been frightened for Joe. And
he was acutely aware of it, because he felt a peculiar after-effect
himself.

"Normal," he said drily, "except that he doesn't weigh anything."

"I've worried about that," said Sally. "Sleeping's going to be a big
problem."

"It'll take getting used to," Joe agreed.

There was a momentary pause. They were simply looking about the great
room. Sally stirred uneasily.

"Tell me what you think," she said. "You've been in an elevator that
started to drop like a plummet. When the Platform is orbiting it'll be
like that all the time, only worse. No weight. Joe, if you were in an
elevator that seemed to be dropping and dropping and dropping for hours
on end—do you think you could go to sleep?"

Joe hadn't thought about it. And he was acutely conscious of Sally, just
then, but the idea startled him.

"It might be hard to adjust to," he admitted.

"It'll be hard to adjust to, awake," said Sally. "But getting adjusted
to it asleep should be worse. You've waked up from a dream that you're
falling?"

"Sure," said Joe. Then he whistled. "Oh-oh! I see! You'd drop off to
sleep, and you'd be falling. So you'd wake up. Everybody in the Platform
will be falling around the Earth in the Platform's orbit! Every time
they doze off they'll be falling and they'll wake up!"

He managed to think about it. It was true enough. A man awake could
remind himself that he only thought and felt that he was falling, and
that there was no danger. But what would happen when he tried to sleep?
Falling is the first fear a human being ever knows. Everybody in the
world has at one time waked up gasping from a dream of precipices down
which he plunged. It is an inborn terror. And no matter how thoroughly a
man might know in his conscious mind that weightlessness was normal in
emptiness, his conscious mind would go off duty when he went to sleep. A
completely primitive subconscious would take over then, and it would not
be satisfied. It might wake him frantically at any sign of dozing until
he cracked up from sheer insomnia ... or else let him sleep only when
exhaustion produced unconsciousness rather than restful slumber.

"That's a tough one!" he said disturbedly, and noticed that she still
showed signs of her recent distress. "There's not much to be done about
it, either!"

"I suggested something," said Sally, "and they built it in. I hope it
works!" she explained uncomfortably. "It's a sort of blanket with a top
that straps down, and an inflatable underside. When a man wants to
sleep, he'll inflate this thing, and it will hold him in his bunk. It
won't touch his head, of course, and he can move, but it will press
against him gently."

Joe thought over what Sally had just explained. He noticed that they
were quite close together, but he put his mind on her words.

"It'll be like a man swimming?" he asked. "One can go to sleep floating.
There's no sensation of weight, but there's the feeling of pressure all
about. A man might be able to sleep if he felt he were floating. Yes,
that's a good idea, Sally! It'll work! A man will think he's floating,
rather than falling!"

Sally flushed a little.

"I thought of it another way," she said awkwardly. "When we go to sleep,
we go way back. We're like babies, with all a baby's fears and needs. It
might
feel like floating. But—I tried one of those bunks. It feels
like—it feels sort of dreamy, as if someone were—holding one quite
safe. It feels as if one were a baby and—beautifully secure. But of
course I haven't tried it weightless. I just—hope it works."

As if embarrassed, she turned abruptly and showed him the kitchen. Every
pan was covered. The top of the stove was alnico-magnet strips, arranged
rather like the top of a magnetic chuck. Pans would cling to it. And the
covers had a curious flexible lining which Joe could not understand.

"It's a flexible plastic that's heatproof," said Sally. "It inflates and
holds the food down to the hot bottom of the pan. They expected the crew
to eat ready-prepared food. I said that it would be bad enough to have
to drink out of plastic bottles instead of glasses. They hung one of
these stoves upside down, for me, and I cooked bacon and eggs and
pancakes with the cover of the pan pointing to the floor. They said the
psychological effect would be worth while."

Joe was stirred. He followed her out of the kitchen and said warmly—the
more warmly because these contributions to the Space Platform came on
top of a personal anxiety on his own account: "You must be the first
girl in the world who thought about housekeeping in space!"

"Girls will be going into space, won't they?" she asked, not looking at
him. "If there are colonies on the other planets, they'll have to. And
some day—to the stars...."

She stood quite still, and Joe wanted to do something about her and the
world and the way he felt. The interior of the Platform was very silent.
Somewhere far away where the glass-wool insulation was incomplete, the
sound of workmen was audible, but the inner corridors of the Platform
were not resonant. They were lined with a material to destroy reminders
that this was merely a metal shell, an artificial world that would swim
in emptiness. Here and now, Joe and Sally seemed very private and alone,
and he felt a sense of urgency.

He looked at her yearningly. Her color was a little higher than usual.
She was not just a nice kid, she was swell! And she was good to look at.
Joe had noticed that before, but now with the memory of her fright
because he'd been in danger, her worry because he might have been
killed, he thought of her very absurd but honest offer to cry for him.

Joe found himself twisting at the ring on his finger. He got it off, and
there was some soot and grease on it from the work he'd been doing. He
knew that she saw what he was about, but she looked away.

"Look, Sally," he said awkwardly, "we've known each other a long time.
I've—uh—liked you a lot. And I've got some things to do first,
but—" He stopped. He swallowed. She turned and smiled at him. "Look,"
he said desperately, "what's a good way to ask if you'd like to wear
this?"

She nodded, her eyes shining a little.

"That was a good way, Joe. I'd like it a lot."

There was an interlude, then, during which she very ridiculously cried
and explained that he must be more careful and not risk his life so
much! And then there was a faint, faint sound outside the Platform. It
was the yapping sound of a siren, crying out in short and choppy
ululations as it warmed up. Finally its note steadied and it wailed and
wailed and wailed.

"That's the alarm," exclaimed Sally. She was still misty-eyed.
"Everybody out of the Shed. Come on, Joe."

They started back the way they'd come in. And Sally looked up at Joe and
grinned suddenly.

"When I have grandchildren," she told him, "I'm going to brag that I was
the very first girl in all the world ever to be kissed in a space ship!"

But before Joe could do anything about the comment, she was out on the
stairs, in plain view and going down. So he followed her.

The Shed was emptying. The bare wood-block floor was dotted with figures
moving steadily toward the security exit. There was no hurry, because
security men were shouting that this was not an alarm but a
precautionary measure, and there was no need for haste. Each security
man had been informed by the miniature walkie-talkie he wore. By it
every guard could be told anything he needed to know, either on the
floor of the Shed, or on the catwalks aloft or even in the Platform
itself.

Trucks lined up in orderly fashion to go out the swing-up doors. Men
came down from the scaffolds after putting their tools in proper
between-shifts positions—for counting and inspection—and other men
were streaming quietly from the pushpot assembly line. Except for the
gigantic object in the middle, and for the fact that every man was in
work clothes, the scene was surprisingly like the central waiting room
of a very large railroad station, with innumerable people moving briskly
here and there.

"No hurry," said Joe, catching the word from a security man as he passed
it on. "I'll go see what my gang found out."

The trio—Haney and Mike and the Chief—were just arriving by the piles
of charred but now uncovered wreckage. Sally flushed ever so slightly
when she saw the Chief eye Joe's ring on her finger.

"Rest of the day off, huh?" said the Chief. "Look! We found most of the
stuff we need. They're gonna give us a shop to work in. We'll move this
stuff there. We're gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe we
picked, an' then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in between
the chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line."

That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel to the axis of the
earth. Joe nodded.

"We'll be able to get set up in the mornin'," added Haney, "and get
started. You got the parts list off to the plant for your folks to get
busy on?"

Sally said quickly: "He's sending that by facsimile now. Then—"

The Chief beamed in benign mockery. "What you goin' to do after that,
Joe? If we got the rest of the day off—?"

Sally said hurriedly: "We were—he was going off on a picnic with me. To
Red Canyon Lake. Do you really need to talk business—all afternoon?"

The Chief laughed. He'd known Sally, at least by sight, back at the
Kenmore plant.

"No, ma'am!" he told her. "Just askin'. I worked on that Red Canyon dam
job, years back. That dam that made the lake. It ought to be right
pretty around there now. Okay, Joe. See you as soon as work starts up.
In the mornin', most likely."

Joe started away with Sally. Mike the midget called hoarsely: "Joe! Just
a minute!"

Joe drew back. The midget's seamed face was very earnest. He said in his
odd voice: "Here's something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard
to keep you from getting those gyros here. They might work hard to keep
them from getting repaired. That's why we asked for a special shop to
work in. It's occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would
be to stop us. Not everybody would've figured out how to rebalance this
thing. You get me?"

"Sure!" said Joe. "You three had better look out for yourselves."

Mike stared at him and grimaced.

"You don't get it," he said brittlely. "All right. I may be crazy, at
that."

Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but he
approved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to the
security building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm and
efficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stop
all work. As they went toward Major Holt's office, Joe heard somebody
dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: "... this attempt at atomic
sabotage was defeated outside the Shed, but it never had a chance of
success. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt to
smuggle radioactive material into the Shed...."

Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.

"That's for a publicity release?" he asked.

She nodded.

"It's true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without passing
close to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though they
don't set the sirens to screaming."

Joe said: "I'll get my order for new parts off on the facsimile
machine."

But he had to get Major Holt's secretary to show him where to feed in
the list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and then
be rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set the
machine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of the
document. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.

"You and Sally," remarked Sally's father's secretary with a morose sigh,
"can go and relax this afternoon. But there's no relaxation for Major
Holt. Or for me."

Joe said unhopefully: "I'm sure Sally'd be glad if you came with us."

Major Holt's plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.

"I haven't had a day off since the work began here," she said frowning.
"The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You're going
to Red Canyon Lake?"

"Yes," agreed Joe. "Sally thought it might be pleasant."

"It's terribly dry and arid here," said Miss Ross sadly. "That's the
only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it's pretty there.
I've never seen it."

She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An
exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence
more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore
Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no
question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!