“I’m all right,” he repeated.
“I’d like to go outside somewhere,” she said abruptly, “but after what happened up at the lake, I mustn’t. Would you like to go up to the top of the Shed?”
“If you want to,” he agreed without enthusiasm.
He followed when she went to a doorway—with a security guard beside it—in the sidewall. She flashed her pass and the guard let them through. They began to walk up an inclined, endless, curving ramp. It was between the inner and outer skins of the Shed. There had to be two skins because the Shed was too big to be ventilated properly, and the hot desert sunshine on one side would have made “weather” inside. There’d have been a convection-current motion of the air in the enclosed space, and minor whirlwinds, and there could even be miniature thunderclouds and lightning. Joe remembered reading that such things had happened in a shed built for Zeppelins before he was born.
They came upon an open gallery, and there was a security man looking down at the floor and the Platform. He had a very good view of all that went on.
They went around another long circuit of the slanting gallery, dimly lighted with small electric bulbs. They came to a second gallery, and saw the Platform again. There was another guard here.
They were halfway up the globular wall now, and were visibly suspended over emptiness. The view of the Platform was impressive. There were an astonishing number of rocket tubes being fastened to the outside of that huge object. Three giant cranes, working together, hoisted a tube to the last remaining level of scaffolding, and men swarmed on it and fastened it to the swelling hull. As soon as it was fast, other men hurried into it with the white pasty stuff to line it from end to end. The tubes would nearly hide the structure they were designed to propel. But they’d all be burned away when it reached its destination.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” asked Sally hopefully.
Joe looked, and said without warmth, “It’s the most wonderful thing that anybody ever even tried to do.”
Which was true enough, but the zest of it had unreasonably departed for Joe for the time being. His disappointment was new.