‘We radioed a description to base, asking for info, and identification. Their reply is just in. It reads: “No repeat no dispatch you since Number 377K four days ago stop design of object as described not repeat not known here stop Pentagon states not repeat not known them stop consider possible craft/missile hostile stop treat as hostile taking all precautions ends.” ‘
For some moments no one spoke. The helmets of the working party turned as they looked at one another in astonishment.
‘Hostile! For God’s sake! Why, every bloody thing out there’s hostile,’ somebody said.
‘Precautions!‘ said another voice. ‘What precautions?’
Ticker inquired:
‘Have we any interception missiles?’
‘No,’ said the voice from the hulk. ‘They’re scheduled, but they are away down the fitting-out list yet.’
‘Hostile?’ murmured another voice. ‘But who?’
‘Who do you think? Who’d rather we didn’t have a station out here?’
‘But “hostile”,’ the man said again. ‘It would be an act of war - to attack us, I mean.’
‘Act of nothing,’ said the second man. ‘Who even knows we’re up here, except the Department; and now, apparently, the Other Fellows. Say we were attacked, and blown up - what’d happen? Sweet damn all. Nothing but hush from both sides. Not even details... just hush.’
‘Everybody seems to be taking a lot for granted, considering that nobody even knows what the thing is,’ someone pointed out.
That, Ticker admitted, was true enough, but somewhat legalistic, for it was difficult to believe that anything could happen to be travelling this particular section of space by sheer accident, and if it were not accidental, then it followed that the intention of any visiting object that did not originate with their Department must be either observatory or hostile.
He turned his head again, surveying the myriad suns that flared in the blackness. The first comment had been right; it was
all
hostile. For a moment he felt that hostility all about him more keenly than at any time since he had first forced himself to push out of the hulk’s airlock into nothingness. His memory of that sensation had been dulled, but now, abruptly, he was the intruder again; the presumptuous creature thrusting out of his natural element; precariously self-launched among a wrack of perils. Odd, he thought, in a kind of parenthesis, that it should need the suspicion of human hostility to reawaken the sense of the greater hostility constantly about them.
He became conscious that the others were still talking. Someone had inquired about the object’s speed. The hulk was replying:
‘Difficult to estimate more than roughly, head on, but doesn’t seem to be high, relative to our own. Certainly unlikely to be more than two hundred miles an hour difference, we judge - could well be less. You ought to be able to see it soon. It’s starting to catch the earthlight.’
There was no sign of it in the Aries sector yet. Somebody said:
‘Should we get back aboard, Skip?’
‘No point in it ... It wouldn’t help at all if that thing
does
have a homer set on the hulk.’
‘True,’ agreed someone, and sang gently: ‘ “Dere’s no hidin’ place out here.” ‘
They went on working, casting occasional glances into the blackness. Ten minutes later, two men exclaimed simultaneously; they had caught one small, brief flare among the stardust.
‘Starboard jet correcting course,’ said the voice from the hulk. ‘That settles one thing. It’s live, and it is homing on us. Swinging now. It’ll recorrect in a moment.’
They watched intently. Presently, nearly all of them caught a glimpse of the little jet of flame that steadied the object’s swing. A man swore:
‘God damn it! And us here, like sitting pigeons. One little guided missile to meet it. That’s all that’s needed. Pity one of the Department’s great brains didn’t allow for that, isn’t it?’
‘What about an oxygen tube?’ someone suggested. ‘Fix up one of the dispatch homers on it, and let it jet itself along till they meet.’
‘Good idea - if we had a day or so to fix the homer,’ agreed another.
Presently the object caught more of the earthlight, and they were able to keep its location marked, though not yet able to distinguish its shape. A consultation went on between the leader of the working party and the commander of the hulk. It was decided not to take the party inboard. If the thing were indeed a missile and set to explode on contact or at close proximity, then the situation would be equally hopeless wherever one was; but should it, on the other hand, fail to explode on contact and simply cause impact damage to the hulk, it might be useful to have the party outside, ready to give what help it could.
On that decision, the men in space-suits started to push themselves off, and drift through the web of girders towards the hulkward side of the assembly. There they exchanged their local safety-lines for others attached to the hulk, and were ready to pull themselves across, if necessary.
They waited in an uneasy group, a surrealist cluster of grotesque figures anchored to the framework at eccentric angles by their magnetic soles while they watched the oncoming object, the ‘craft/missile’ grow slowly larger.
Soon they could distinguish the outline described; three small circles set about a larger. It was from the small circles that a correcting puff of flame came now and then.
‘It’s my guess, from the general look of the thing and its slow speed,’ the hulk Commander’s voice said, dispassionately, ‘that it’s half-missile, half-mine; a kind of hunting mine. I’d guess, too, by the way it is aligned on us that it is a contact type. Might be chemical, or nuclear - probably chemical; if it were nuclear a proximity fuse would be good enough. Besides, a nuclear explosion would be detectable from Earth. With a chemical explosion out here you’d want all the concentration of force you can get - hence contact.’
No one seemed disposed to question the Commander’s deductions. There could be no doubt that it was aligned on them. The swinging was so slight that they could see no more than the head-on view.
‘Estimated relative speed about one hundred and twenty miles an hour,’ added the Commander.
Slow, Ticker thought, very slow - probably to keep manoeuvrability in case of evasive action by its target. There was nothing one could do but stand there and wait for it.
‘E.T.A. now five minutes,’ the voice from the hulk told them, calmly.
They waited.
Ticker found a new understanding of the stringent security regulations. Hitherto, he had taken it for granted that their purpose was to preserve the lead. Clearly, once it should be known that any nation had a space-station under construction, those who had it only in the drawing-board stage would press on, and the pace would grow warmer. The best way to avoid that was secrecy, and if necessary to show astonishment that any such device was being seriously contemplated. That had seemed reasonable; there was nothing to be gained by creating a situation where construction would have to be rushed, and possibly a lot might be lost by it. The thought of an attack on the station before it was even finished had never occurred to him.
But if this were indeed a missile, and if it should get the hulk, nobody would survive. And if the Department were to be stung into denouncing the aggression? Well, the Other Fellows would just shrug and deny. ‘What, us! Why, we never even knew it existed. Obviously an accident,’ they would say. ‘An accident which has now been followed by a vicious and despicable slander in an effort to cover up those responsible.’
‘Three minutes,’ said the Commander.
Ticker took his eyes from the ‘craft/missile’ and looked about him. His gaze loitered on the moon, a clear, sharp coin, recently risen from behind the blue pearl of Earth. Scarred but serene, it hung on the sky; a silver medal, still waiting to be won. The next leap.
First there had been this little hop of ten thousand miles to make a stepping-stone for the leap of two hundred and twenty-four thousand miles, more or less - and then, not in his time, but some day, there would be still greater leaps beyond. For him, for now, the moon would be enough.
‘The moon,’ murmured Ticker. ‘ “The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other: the moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.” ‘
Suddenly he was swept with a shaking anger. A fury against stupidity and littleness, against narrow, scheming minds that were ready to wreck the greatest adventure of all, as a political move. What would happen now if their work were destroyed? The cost had been in proportion to the ambition. If all this were lost, would the government be willing, could they even afford, to make a new allocation and start again? Might it not be that, with such an example, all the rival nations would content themselves with arrangements to blow any other attempted space-stations out of existence? Would that be the end of the great adventure - to be kept earthbound by stalemate and futility...?
‘Two minutes,’ said the voice.
Ticker looked at the missile again. It was swinging a little more now, enough to give glimpses of length, instead of a flat diagram of circles. He watched it curiously. There was no doubt that the roving action was increasing. Correction and re-correction were stronger and more frequent.
‘What’s happening to the bastard?’ a voice asked. ‘Kind of losing its touch, isn’t it?’
They stared at it in horrid fascination, watching the yawing motion grow wider while the correcting jets spat more fiercely and rapidly. Soon it was swinging so much that they were getting broadside views of it - a fat, droplet-shaped body, buttressed by three smaller droplet shapes which housed its driving tubes. The small correcting tubes, so busily employed at this moment, branched laterally in radial clumps from the main-tube nacelles. Its method of working was obvious. Once the homing device had found a line on the target the main tubes would fire to give directional impetus. Then, either to keep down to manoeuvrable speed, or simply to economize, they would cut out, leaving it to coast easily to the target while the homer kept it on course by correcting touches from the side tubes. Less obvious was what had got into it now, and was causing it to bear down on them in a wildly drunken wobble.
‘Why the devil should it go nuts and start “hunting” at this stage?’ muttered the leader of the working party.
‘That’s
it
,’ said the Commander from the hulk, with a sudden hopeful note in his voice. ‘It has gone nuts; all bewitched and bewildered. It’s the masses, don’t you see? The mass of the hulk is about the same as that of the assembly and parts now. The thing is approaching on a line where they are both equidistant. Its computers are foozled: they can’t decide which to go for. It would be bloody funny if it weren’t serious. If it can’t decide in another few seconds at that speed it’ll overshoot any possibility of correcting in time.’
They kept watching the thing tensely. It had, in fact, already lost a little speed, for it was now yawing so widely that the steering tubes’ attempts to correct the swing were having some braking effect. For a half minute there was silence. Then someone breathed out, noisily.
‘He’s right, by God! It
is
going to miss,’ he said.
Other held breaths were released, and the earphones sounded a huge, composite sigh of relief. It was no longer possible to doubt that the missile would pass right between the hulk and the assembly.
In a final desperate effort to steady up, the port tubes fired a salvo that spun it right round on its own axis as it hurtled along.
‘Bloody thing’s started waltzing now,’ observed a voice.
Still wobbling wildly it careered on, in a flaring, soundless rush. Closer it reeled, and closer, until it was whirling madly past, between them and the hulk.
Ticker did not see what happened next. There was a sudden violent shock which banged his head against the inside of his helmet, and turned everything into dancing lights. For a few seconds he was dazed. Then it came to him that he was no longer holding on to the framework of the assembly. He groped, and found nothing. With an effort, he opened his eyes and forced them into focus. The first thing they showed him was the hulk and the half-built space-station dwindling rapidly in the distance.
Ticker kicked wildly, and managed to turn himself round, but it took him several moments to grasp what had happened. He found that he was floating in space in company with a collection of minor parts of the assembly and two other space-suited men, while, close by, the missile, now encumbered with a tangle of lines, was still firing its steering tubes while it cavorted and spun in an imbecilic fashion. By degrees he perceived that the missile had in its passage managed to entangle itself in a dozen or more tethers and safety-lines, and torn them away, together with whatever happened to be attached to them.
He closed his eyes for a moment. His head throbbed. He fancied that it was bleeding on the right side. He hoped the cut was small; if there was much blood it might float around loose in his helmet and get into his eyes. Suddenly the Commander’s voice in the phone said:
‘Quiet everyone.’ It paused, and went on: ‘Hullo, hullo there! Calling you three with the missile. Are you all right? Are you all right?’
Ticker ran his tongue over his lips, and swallowed.
‘Hullo, Skipper. Ticker here. I’m all right, Skip.’
‘You don’t sound so all right, Ticker.’
‘Bit muzzy. Knocked my head on my helmet. Better in a minute.’
‘What about the other two?’ A groggy voice broke in:
‘Nobby here, Skipper. I’m all right, too - I think. Been sick as a dog - not funny at all. Don’t know about the other. Who is it?’
‘Must be Dobbin. Hullo there, Dobbin! Are you all right?’
There was no reply.
‘It was a hell of a jerk, Skipper,’ said the groggy voice.
‘How’s your air?’
Ticker looked at the dials.
‘Normal supply, and reserve intact,’ he said.
‘My reserve isn’t registering. Fractured, maybe, but I’ve got nearly four hours,’ said Nobby.
‘Better cut loose, and make your way back by hand tubes,’ said the Commander. ‘You right away, Nobby. Ticker, you’ve got more air. Can you reach Dobbin? If you can, link him on to you, and bring him back with you. Think you can?’