Mike had left his post when Joe took over. Now he made a swooping dart through the air of the cabin. The midget showed no signs of the fumbling uncertainty the others had displayed—but he'd been a member of a midget acrobatic team before he went to work at the Shed. He brought himself to a stop precisely at a hand-hold, grinning triumphantly at the nearly helpless Chief and Haney.
Major Holt said in the headphones: "It's worse than that. Radar may have told the country in question that you are on the way up. In that case, if it's even faintly possible to blast the Platform before your arrival with weapons for its defense, they'll blast."
"I don't like that idea," said Joe dourly. "Anything we can do?"
Major Holt laughed bitterly. "Hardly!" he said. "And do you realize that if you can't unload your cargo you can't get back to Earth?"
"Yes," said Joe. "Naturally!"
It was true. The purpose of the pushpots and the jatos and the ship's own take-off rockets had been to give it a speed at which it would inevitably rise to a height of 4,000 miles—the orbit of the Space Platform—and stay there. It would need no power to remain 4,000 miles out from Earth. But it would take power to come down. The take-off rockets had been built to drive the ship with all its contents until it attained that needed orbital velocity. There were landing rockets fastened to the hull now to slow it so that it could land. But just as the take-off rockets had been designed to lift a loaded ship, the landing-rockets had been designed to land an empty one.
The more weight the ship carried, the more power it needed to get out to the Platform. And the more power it needed to come down again.
If Joe and his companions couldn't get rid of their cargo—and they could only unload in the ship-lock of the Platform—they'd stay out in emptiness.
The Major said bitterly: "This is all most irregular, but—here's Sally."
Then Sally's voice sounded in the headphones Joe wore. He was relieved that Mike wasn't acting as communications officer at the moment to overhear. But Mike was zestfully spinning like a pin-wheel in the middle of the air of the control cabin. He was showing the others that even in the intramural pastimes a spaceship crew will indulge in, a midget was better than a full-sized man. Joe said: