The Chief got exactly the hold he wanted. He lifted Sanford from the metal deck. He could have thrown him away to emptiness, then, but he did not.
He set Sanford in mid-space as if upon a shelf. The raging man hung in the void an exact man-height above the Platform's surface. The Chief drew back and left him there, Sanford could writhe there for a century before the Platform's infinitesimal gravity brought him down.
"Huh!" said the Chief wrathfully. "How's Haney and Mike making out?"
Almost on the instant, twenty yards away, a tiny airlock door thrust out from the surface of glittering metal, and helmet and antenna appeared.
"You guys can come in now," said Haney's voice in Joe's headphones. "It's all okay. Mike's pumping out the other locks too, so you can come in at any of 'em."
The space-suited figures clumped loudly to airlock doors. There were a dozen or more small airlocks in various parts of the hull, besides the great door to admit supply ships. The Chief growled and moved toward Sanford now raging like the madman his helplessness made him.
"No," said Joe shortly. "He'd fight again. Go inside. That's an order, Chief."
The Chief grunted and obeyed. Joe went to the nearest airlock and entered the great steel hull.
Sanford floated in emptiness, two yards from the Space Platform he would have turned into a derelict. He did not move farther away. He did not fall toward it. There was nobody to listen to him. He cried out in blood-curdling fury because other men were smarter than he was. Other men had solved problems he could not solve. Other men were his superiors. He screamed his rage.
Presently the Platform revolved slowly beneath him. It was turned, of course, by the monster gyros which in turn were controlled by the pilot gyros Joe and Haney and the Chief and Mike had repaired when saboteurs smashed them.