he most
gigantic of possible solid objects. It curved away and away to mistiness
at its horizons, and it moved visibly as the spaceship floated on.

Invisible microwaves flung arrowlike through emptiness. They traveled
for thousands of miles, spreading as they traveled, and then struck the
strange shape of the Platform. They splashed from it. Some of them
rebounded to Earth, where spies and agents of foreign powers tried
desperately to make sense of the incredible syllables. They failed.

There was a relay system in operation now, from spaceship to Platform to
Earth and back again. In the ship Chief Bender, Mohawk and steelman
extraordinary, talked to the Shed and to one Charley Red Fox. They
talked in Mohawk, which is an Algonquin Indian language, agglutinative,
complicated, and not to be learned in ten easy lessons. It was not a
language which eavesdroppers were likely to know as a matter of course.
But it was a language by which computations could be asked for, so that
a very forlorn hope might be attempted with the best possible chances of
success.

Naturally, none of this appeared in the look of things. The small ship
floated on and on. It reached an altitude of 3,500 miles. The Earth was
visibly farther away. Behind the ship the Atlantic with its stately
cloud-formations was sunlit to the very edge of its being. Ahead, the
edge of night appeared beyond India. And above, the Platform appeared as
a speck of molten light, quarter-illuminated by the sun above it.

Spaceship and Platform moved on toward a meeting place. The ship moved a
trifle faster, because it was climbing. The speeds would match exactly
when they met. The small torpedo-shaped shining ship and the bulging
glowing metal satellite floated with a seeming vast deliberation in
emptiness, while the most gigantic of possible round objects filled all
the firmament beneath them. They were 200 miles apart. It seemed that
the huge Platform overtook the shining ship. It did. They were only 50
miles apart and still closing in.

By that time the twilight band of Earth's surface was nearly at the
center of the planet, and night filled more than a quarter of its disk.

By that time, too, even to the naked eye through the ports of the
supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein
of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The
vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be
jetting into exis