trucks left except
two gigantic cranes, which could handle the pushpots like so many toys.
And the effect of sunlight pouring into the Shed seemed strange indeed.

Outside, there were carpenters hammering professionally upon a hasty
grandstand of timber. Most of the carpenters would have been handier
with rivet guns or welding torches, but it would have been indiscreet to
comment. As fast as a final timber was spiked in place, somebody hastily
wound it with very tawdry bunting. Men were stringing wires to the
grandstand, and other men were setting up television and movie cameras.
Two Security men grimly stood by each camera amid a glittering
miscellany of microphones.

Joe was lucky. Or perhaps Sally pulled wires. Anyhow, the two of them
had a vantage point for which many other people would have paid
astonishing sums. They waited where the circular ramp between the two
skins of the Shed was broken by the removal of the doorway. They were
halfway up the curve of the Shed's roof, at the edge of the great
opening, and they could see everything, from the pushpot pilots as they
were checked into their contraptions, to the sedate arrival of the big
brass at the grandstand below.

There was a reverberant humming from the Shed now. It might have been
the humming of wind blowing across its open section. Joe and Sally saw a
grim knot of Security men escorting four crew members to a flight of
wooden steps that led up to a lower air-lock door--Joe had reason to
remember that door--and watched them enter and close the air lock behind
them. Then the security men pulled away the wooden stairs and hauled
them completely away. There were a very few highly trusted men making
final inspections of the Platform's exterior. One of them was nearly on
a level with Joe and Sally. Other men were already lowering themselves
down on ropes that they later jerked free, but this last man on top did
a very human thing. When he'd finished his check-up to the last least
detail, he pulled something out of his hip pocket. It was a tobacco can
full of black paint. There was a brush with it. He painted his name on
the silvery plates of the Platform, "C. J. Adams, Jr.," and satisfiedly
began his descent to the ground. His name would go up with the Platform
and be visible for uncounted generations--if all went well. He reached
the ground and walked away, contented.

The cranes began their task. Each one reached down deliberately and
picked up a pushpot. T