Space Tug | Page 7

the major in an official voice, "the invoice of your cargo. You
will deliver the invoice with the cargo and bring back proper receipts."
"I hope," said Joe.
"We hope!" said Sally in a strained tone. "Good luck, Joe!"
"Thanks."
"There is not much to say to you," said the major without visible emotion. "Of course the
next crew will start its training immediately, but it may be a month before another ship
can take off. It is extremely desirable that you reach the Platform today."
"Yes, sir," said Joe wrily. "I have even a personal motive to get there. If I don't, I break
my neck."
The major ignored the comment. He shook hands formally and marched away. Sally
smiled up at Joe, but her eyes were suddenly full of tears.
"I--do hope everything goes all right, Joe," she said unsteadily. "I--I'll be praying for
you."
"I can use some of that, too," admitted Joe.
She looked at her hand. Joe's ring was on her finger--wrapped with string on the inside of
the band to make it fit. Then she looked up again and was crying unashamedly.
"I--will," she repeated. Then she said fiercely, "I don't care if somebody's looking, Joe.
It's time for you to go in the ship."
He kissed her, and turned and went quickly to the peculiar mass of clustered pushpots,
touching and almost overlapping each other.
He ducked under and looked back. Sally waved. He waved back. Then he climbed up the

ladder into Pelican One's cabin. Somebody pulled the ladder away and scuttled out of the
cage.
The others were in their places. Joe slowly closed the door from the cabin to the outer
world. There was suddenly a cushioned silence about him. Out the quartz-glass ports he
could see ahead, out the end of the cage through the monstrous doorway to the desert
beyond. Overhead he could see the dark, girder-lined roof of the Shed. On either side,
though, he could see only the scratched, dented, flat undersides of the pushpots ready to
lift the ship upward.
"You can start on the pushpot motors, Haney," he said curtly.
Joe moved to his own, the pilot's seat. Haney pushed a button. Through the fabric of the
ship came the muted uproar of a pushpot engine starting. Haney pushed another button.
Another. Another. More jet engines bellowed. The tumult in the Shed would be past
endurance, now.
Joe strapped himself into his seat. He made sure that the Chief at the steering-rocket
manual controls was fastened properly, and Mike at the radio panel was firmly belted
past the chance of injury.
Haney said with enormous calm, "All pushpot motors running, Joe."
"Steering rockets ready," the Chief reported.
"Radio operating," came from Mike. "Communications room all set."
Joe reached to the maneuver controls. He should have been sweating. His hands, perhaps,
should have quivered with tension. But he was too much worried about too many things.
Nobody can strike an attitude or go into a blue funk while they are worrying about things
to be done. Joe heard the small gyro motors as their speed went up. A hum and a whine
and then a shrill whistle which went up in pitch until it wasn't anything at all. He frowned
anxiously and said to Haney, "I'm taking over the pushpots."
Haney nodded. Joe took the over-all control. The roar of engines outside grew loud on
the right-hand side, and died down. It grew thunderous to the left, and dwindled. The
ones ahead pushed. Then the ones behind. Joe nodded and wet his lips. He said: "Here we
go."
There was no more ceremony than that. The noise of the jet motors outside rose to a
thunderous volume which came even through the little ship's insulated hull. Then it grew
louder, and louder still, and Joe stirred the controls by ever so tiny a movement.
Suddenly the ship did not feel solid. 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. Joe shifted the lever that governed the vanes in the jet motor blasts.

Ship and cage and pushpots, all together, wavered toward the doorway. They passed out
of it, rocking a little and pitching a little and wallowing a little. As a flying device, the
combination was a howling tumult and a horror. It was an aviation designer's nightmare.
It was a bad dream by any standard.
But it wasn't meant as a way to fly from one place to another on Earth. It was the first
booster stage