lab, and he had timed his own tour aboard to start as the
ship reached completion, and the delicate job of turning her was ready
to begin.

U.N. Space Lab One was man's largest project to date in space. It
might not be tremendous in size by earth standards of construction,
but the two hundred thirty-two foot wheel represented sixty-four
million pounds of very careful engineering and assembly that had been
raised from Earth's surface to this thirty-six-hour orbit.

Many crews had come and gone in the eighteen months since the first
payload had arrived at this orbit--but now the first of the scientists
for whom the lab was built were aboard; and the pick of the crews
selected for the construction job had been shuttled up for the final
testing and spin-out.

Far off to Mike's left and slightly below him a flicker of flame
caught his eye, and he realized without even looking down that the
retro-rockets of the shuttle on which he had arrived were slowly
putting it out of orbit and tipping it over the edge of the long
gravitic well back to Earth. It would be two weeks before it returned.

Nearing the lock he grasped the cable with one hand, slowing himself,
turned with the skill of an acrobat, and landed catlike, feet first,
on the stat-magnetic walk around the lock.

He had gone over, minutely, the inside of the satellite before coming
to its surface. Now there was only one more inspection job before he
turned on the spin.

Around this south polar hub-lock, which would rotate with the wheel,
was the stationary anchor ring on which rode free both the stat-walk
and the anchor tubes for the smaller satellites that served as distant
components of the mother ship.

Kept rigid by air pressure, any deviation corrected by pressure tanks
in the stationary ring, the tubes served both to keep the smaller
bodies from drifting too close to Space Lab One, and prevented their
drifting off.

The anchor tubes were just over one foot in diameter, weighing less
than five ounces to the yard--gray plastic and fiber, air-rigid
fingers pointing away into space--but they could take over two
thousand pounds of compression or tension, far more than needed for
their job, which was to cancel out the light drift motion caused by
crews kicking in or out, or activities aboard. Uncanceled, these
motions might otherwise have caused the baby satellites to come
nudging against the space lab; or to scatter to the stars.

There had been talk of maki