Haney left a moment later to carry the list of arrangements to the Chief and to Mike. And Joe went into the Shed to do his part.
There was little difference in the appearance of the Shed by night. In the daytime there were long rows of windows in the roof, which let in a vague, dusky, inadequate twilight. At night those windows were shuttered. This meant that the shadows were a little sharper and the contrasts of light and shade a trifle more abrupt. All other changes that Joe could see were the normal ones due to the taking down of scaffolding and the fastening up of rocket tubes. It was clear that the shape of the Platform proper would be obscure when all its rocket tubes were fast in place.
Joe went to look at the last pushpots, and they were ready to be taken over to their own field for their flight test before use. There were extras, anyhow, beyond the number needed to lift the Platform. He found himself considering the obvious fact that after the Platform was aloft, they would be used to launch the ferry rockets, too.
Then he moved toward the center of the Shed. A whole level of scaffolding came apart and its separate elements were bundled together as he watched. Slings lowered the bundles down to waiting trucks which would carry them elsewhere. There were mixing trucks still pouring out their white paste for the lining of the rocket tubes, and their product went up and vanished into the gaping mouths of the giant wire-wound pipes.
Presently Joe went into the maze of piers under the Space Platform itself. He came to the temporary stairs he had reason to remember. He nodded to the two guards there.
“I want to take another look at that gadget we installed,” he said.
One of the guards said good-naturedly: “Major Holt said to pass you any time.”
He ascended and went along the curious corridor—it had handgrips on the walls so a man could pull himself along it when there was no weight—and went to the engine room. He heard voices. They were speaking a completely unintelligible language. He tensed.
Then the Chief grinned at him amiably. He was in the engine room and with him were no fewer than eight men of his own coppery complexion.
“Here’s some friends of mine,” he explained, and Joe shook hands with black-haired, dark-skinned men who were named Charley Spotted Dog and Sam Fatbelly and Luther Red Cow and other exotic things. The Chief said exuberantly, “Major Holt told the guards to let me pass in some Indian friends, so I took my gang on a guided tour of the Platform. None of ’em had ever been inside before. And——”