nd a date
with Sally Holt. The Space Platform was not admired uniformly by all the
nations of Earth. The United States had built it because the United
Nations couldn't, and one of the attractions of the idea had been that
once it got out to space and was armed, peace must reign upon Earth
because it could smack down anybody who made war.

The trouble was that it wasn't armed well enough. Six guided missiles
couldn't defend it indefinitely. It looked as helpless as isolated
Berlin did before the first airlift proved what men and planes could do
in the way of transport. And the Platform's enemies didn't intend for it
to be saved by a rocketlift. They would try to smash it before such a
lift could get started.

A week after Joe got to it with the guided missiles, three rockets
attacked. They went up from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. One
blew up 250 miles below the Platform. Another detonated 190 miles away.
For safety's sake the third was crashed--at the cost of one guided
missile--when it had come within 50 miles.

The screen of tin cans worked, but it wasn't thick enough. The occupants
of the Platform went about hunting for sheet metal that could be spared.
They pulled out minor partitions here and there, and went out on the
surface and threw away thousands of small glittering scraps of metal in
all directions.

Two weeks later, there was another attack. It could be calculated that
Joe couldn't have carried up more than six guided missiles. There might
be as few as two of them left. So eight rockets came up together--and
the first of them went off 400 miles from the Platform. Only one got as
close as 200 miles. No guided missiles were expended in defense.

The Platform's enemies tried once more. This time the rockets arched up
above the Platform's orbit and dived on the satellite from above. There
were two of them. They went off at 180 and 270 miles from the Platform.
Joe's trash screen would not work on Earth, but in space it was an
adequate defense against anything equipped with proximity fuses. It
could be assumed that in a full-scale space-war nuts, bolts, rusty nails
and beer bottle caps would become essential military equipment.

Three days after this last attack, a second supply ship took off from
Earth. Lieutenant Commander Brown was a passenger. Its start was just
like the one Joe's ship had made. Pushpots lifted it, jatos hurled it
on, and then the furious, flaming take-off rockets drove it val