He continued to check over the wreckage, thinking with a detached
compassion of that poor devil Braun who was the victim of men who hated
the idea of the Space Platform and what it would mean to humanity. Men
of that kind thought of themselves as superior to humanity, and of human
beings as creatures to be enslaved. So they arranged for planes to crash
and burn and for men to be murdered, and they practiced blackmail--or
rewarded those who practiced it for them. They wanted to prevent the
Platform from existing because it would keep them from trying to pull
the world down in ruins so they could rule over the wreckage.
Joe--who had so recently thought it likely that he would die--considered
these actions with an icy dislike that was much deeper than anger. It
was backed by everything he believed in, everything he had ever wanted,
and everything he hoped for. And anger could cool off, but the way he
felt about people who would destroy others for their own purposes could
not cool off. It was part of him. He thought about it as he worked, with
all the noises of the Shed singing in his ears.
A voice said: "Joe."
He started and turned. Sally stood behind him, looking at him very
gravely. She tried to smile.
"Dad told me," she said, "about the check-up that says you're all right.
May I congratulate you on your being with us for a while?--on the
cobalt's not getting near you?--or the rest of us?"
Joe did not know exactly what to say.
"I'm going inside the Platform," she told him. "Would you like to come
along?"
He wiped his hands on a piece of waste.
"Naturally! My gang is off picking out tools. I can't do much until they
come back."
He fell into step beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it
was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge
beyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size.
Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it.
There was always a faint bluish mist in the air, and there were the
marsh-fire lights of welding torches playing here and there. The sounds
of the Shed were a steady small tumult in Joe's ears. He was getting
accustomed to them, though.
"How is it you can go around so freely?" he asked abruptly. "I have to
be checked and rechecked."
"You'll get a full clearance," she told him. "It has to go through
channels. Me--I have influence. I always come in through security, and I
have the door guards trained. And I do have business in the Platform."
He turned his head to look at her.
"Interior decoration," she explained. "And don't laugh! It isn't
prettifying. It's psychology. The Platform was designed by engineers and
physicists and people with slide rules. They made a beautiful
environment for machinery. But there will be men living in it, and they
aren't machines."
"I don't see----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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