She vanished. She came back with the uniformed man who’d driven Major Holt. She put her hand momentarily on Joe’s arm.
“If it’s really bad, Joe, tell me. You won’t let yourself cry, but I’ll cry for you.” She searched his eyes. “Really, Joe!”
He grinned feebly and went out to the car.
The feeling on the way to the airfield was not a good one. It was twenty-odd miles from the Shed, but Joe dreaded what he was going to see. The black car burned up the road. It turned to the right off the white highway, onto the curved short cut—and there was the field.
And there was the wreck of the transport plane, still where it had crashed and burned. There were still armed guards about it, but men were working on the wreck, cutting it apart with torches. Already some of it was dissected.
Joe went to the remains of the four crates.
The largest was bent askew by the force of the crash or an explosion, Joe didn’t know which. The smallest was a twisted mass of charcoal. Joe gulped, and dug into them with borrowed tools.
The pilot gyros of the Space Platform would apply the torque that would make the main gyros shift it to any desired position, or else hold it absolutely still. They were to act, in a sense, as a sort of steering engine on the take-off and keep a useful function out in space. If a star photograph was to be made, it was essential that the Platform hold absolutely still while the exposure lasted. If a guided missile was to be launched, it must be started right, and the pilot gyros were needed. To turn to receive an arriving rocket from Earth....
The pilot gyros were the steering apparatus of the Space Platform. They had to be more than adequate. They had to be perfect! On the take-off alone, they were starkly necessary. The Platform couldn’t hope to reach its orbit without them.
Joe chipped away charred planks. He pulled off flame-eaten timbers. He peeled off carbonized wrappings—but some did not need to be peeled: they crumbled at a touch—and in twenty minutes he knew the whole story. The rotor motors were ruined. The couplers—pilot-to-main-gyro connections—had been heated red hot and were no longer hardened steel; their dimensions had changed and they would no longer fit. But these were not disastrous items. They were serious, but not tragic.