By the time the two space craft floated toward India, above an area from which war rockets had been known to rise, there were more little weapons floating with them. One screen of missiles hurtled on before the space tug, and another behind. Anything that came up from Earth would instantly be attacked by dozens of midget ships bent upon suicide.
Radar probed the space formation, but enemies of the fleet and the Platform very wisely did no more than probe. The Moonship and its attendants went across the Pacific, still rising. Above the longitude of Washington, the space tug left its former post and climbed, nudging the Moonship this way and that. And from behind, the Platform came floating splendidly.
Tiny figures in space suits extended the incredibly straight lines which were plastic hoses filled with air. Very, very gently indeed, the great, bulbous Platform and the squat, flat Moonship came together and touched. They moored in contact.
And then the inert small missiles that had floated below, all the way up, flared simultaneously. Their rockets emitted smoke. In fine alignment, they plunged forward through emptiness, swerved with a remarkable precision, and headed out for emptiness beyond the Platform's orbit. Their function had been to protect the Moonship on its way out. That function was performed. There were too many of them to recover, so they went out toward the stars.
When their rockets burned out they vanished. But a good hour later, when it was considered that they were as far out as they were likely to go, they began to blow up. Specks of flame, like the tiniest of new stars, flickered against the background of space.
But Joe and the others were in the Platform by then. They'd brought up mail for the crew. And they were back on duty.
The Platform seemed strange with the Moonship's crew aboard. It had been a gigantic artificial world with very few inhabitants. With twenty-five naval ratings about, plus the four of its regular crew, plus the space tug's complement, it seemed excessively crowded.
And it was busy. There were twenty-five new men to be guided as they applied what they'd been taught aground about life in space. It was three full Earthdays before the stores intended for the journey to the Moon and the maintenance of a base there really began to move. The tug and the space wagons had to be moored outside and reached only by space suits through small personnel airlocks.
And there was the matter of discipline. Lieutenant Commander Brown had been put in command of the Platform for experience in space. He was considered to be prepared for command of the Moonship by that experience. So now he turned over command of the Platform to Brent—he made a neat ceremony of it—and took over the ship that would go out to the Moon. He made another ceremony out of that.
In command of the Moonship, his manner to Joe was absolutely correct. He followed regulations to the letter—to a degree that left Joe blankly uncomprehending. But he wouldn't have gotten along in the Navy if he hadn't. He'd tried to do the same thing in the Platform, and it wasn't practical. But he ignored all differences between Joe and himself. He made no overtures of friendship, but that was natural. Unintentionally, Joe had defied him. He now deliberately overlooked all that, and Joe approved of him—within limits.