"We've got a date," she said, nodding.
But it couldn't very well be a definite date. There were people with ideas that ran counter to plans for Joe to get back to Earth and a date with Sally Holt. The Space Platform was not admired uniformly by all the nations of Earth. The United States had built it because the United Nations couldn't, and one of the attractions of the idea had been that once it got out to space and was armed, peace must reign upon Earth because it could smack down anybody who made war.
The trouble was that it wasn't armed well enough. Six guided missiles couldn't defend it indefinitely. It looked as helpless as isolated Berlin did before the first airlift proved what men and planes could do in the way of transport. And the Platform's enemies didn't intend for it to be saved by a rocketlift. They would try to smash it before such a lift could get started.
A week after Joe got to it with the guided missiles, three rockets attacked. They went up from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. One blew up 250 miles below the Platform. Another detonated 190 miles away. For safety's sake the third was crashed—at the cost of one guided missile—when it had come within 50 miles.
The screen of tin cans worked, but it wasn't thick enough. The occupants of the Platform went about hunting for sheet metal that could be spared. They pulled out minor partitions here and there, and went out on the surface and threw away thousands of small glittering scraps of metal in all directions.
Two weeks later, there was another attack. It could be calculated that Joe couldn't have carried up more than six guided missiles. There might be as few as two of them left. So eight rockets came up together—and the first of them went off 400 miles from the Platform. Only one got as close as 200 miles. No guided missiles were expended in defense.
The Platform's enemies tried once more. This time the rockets arched up above the Platform's orbit and dived on the satellite from above. There were two of them. They went off at 180 and 270 miles from the Platform. Joe's trash screen would not work on Earth, but in space it was an adequate defense against anything equipped with proximity fuses. It could be assumed that in a full-scale space-war nuts, bolts, rusty nails and beer bottle caps would become essential military equipment.
Three days after this last attack, a second supply ship took off from Earth. Lieutenant Commander Brown was a passenger. Its start was just like the one Joe's ship had made. Pushpots lifted it, jatos hurled it on, and then the furious, flaming take-off rockets drove it valiantly out toward the stars.
Joe's ship had been moved out of the landing lock and was moored against the Platform's hull. The second ship made contact in two hours and seventeen minutes from take-off. It arrived with its own landing rockets intact, and it brought a set of forty-foot metal tubes for Joe's ship to get back to Earth with. But those landing rockets and Lieutenant Commander Brown constituted all its payload. It couldn't bring up anything else.
And Lieutenant Commander Brown called a very formal meeting in the huge living space at the Platform's center. He stood up grandly in full uniform—and had to hook his feet around a chair leg to keep from floating absurdly in mid-air. This detracted slightly from the dignity of his stance, but not from the official voice with which he read two documents aloud.