Sabotage -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space stations -- Fiction
"She's--thirty-nine inches tall," said Mike, almost stunned. "She's just
two inches shorter than me. And--she says she doesn't mind being a
midget so much since she heard about me. I'm going to write her."
But it would be, of course, a long time before there was a way for mail
to get down to Earth.
It was a long time. Now it was possible to send up robot rockets to the
Platform. They came up. When the second arrived, Haney went out to pull
it in. Joe forgot to notify Brown, in writing, an hour before launching
a rocket recovery vehicle (space wagon) according to paragraph 3 of the
formal memo, nor the time of launching in hours, minutes, etc., by
Greenwich Mean Time (paragraph 4), nor was the testing of all equipment
made before moving it into the airlock. This was because the testing
equipment was in the airlock, where it belonged. And the commands for
launching were not given by Brown or an officer designated by him,
because Joe forgot all about it.
Brown made a stormy scene about the matter, and Joe was honestly
apologetic, but the Chief and Haney and Mike glared venomously.
The result was completely inconclusive. Joe had not been put under
Brown's command. He and his crew were the only people on the Platform
physically in shape to operate the space wagons, considering the
acceleration involved. Brent and the others were wearing gravity
simulators, and were building back to strength. But they weren't up to
par as yet. They'd been in space too long.
So there was nothing Brown could do. He retreated into icily correct,
outraged dignity. And the others hauled in and unloaded rockets as they
arrived. They came up fast. The processes of making them had been
improved. They could be made faster, heated to sintering temperature
faster, and the hulls cooled to usefulness in a quarter of the former
time. The production of space ship hulls went up to four a day, while
the molds for the Moonship were being worked even faster. The Moonship,
actually, was assembled from precast individual cells which then were
welded together. It would have features the Platform lacked, because it
was designed to be a base for exploration and military activities in
addition to research.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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