"I shall ask for clarification of your status," he said worriedly. "It shouldn't have been left unclear. I'd better attend to it at once."
He looked at Joe as if expecting a salute. He didn't get it. He clanked away, his magnetic shoe-soles beating out a singularly martial rhythm. He must have practised that walk, in private.
Joe got out of the airlock as another of the space barges was warped in. Brent, the crew's psychologist, joined him when he went to unload. Brent nodded in a friendly fashion to Joe.
"Quite a change, eh?" he said drily. "Sanford turned out to be a crackpot with his notions of grandeur. I'm not sure that Brown's notions of discipline aren't worse."
Joe said, "I've something rather important to pass on," and told about the newly discovered physical effects of a long stay where there was no gravity. The doctors now predicted that anybody who spent six months without weight would suffer a deterioration of muscle tone which could make a return to Earth impossible without a long preliminary process of retraining. One's heart would adjust to the absence of any need to pump blood against gravity.
"Which," said Joe, "means that you're going to have to be relieved before too long. But we brought up some gravity-simulator harness that may help."
Brent said desolately: "And I was so pleased! We all had trouble with insomnia, at first, but lately we've all been sleeping well! Now I see why! Normally one sleeps because he's tired. We had trouble sleeping until our muscles got so weak we tired anyhow!"
Another drone came in and was unloaded. And another and another. But the last of them wasn't only unloaded. Haney took over the Platform's control board and—grinning to himself—sent faint, especially-tuned short wave impulses to the steering-rockets of the drone. The liquid-fuel rockets were designed to steer a loaded ship. With the airlock door open, the silvery ship leaped out of the dock like a frightened horse. The liquid-fuel rocket had a nearly empty hull to accelerate. It responded skittishly.
Joe watched out a port as it went hurtling away. The vast Earth rolled beneath it. It sped on and vanished. Its fumes ceased to be visible. Joe told Brent:
"Another nice job, that! We sent it backward, slowing it a little. It'll have a new orbit, independent of ours and below it. But come sixty hours it will be directly underneath. We'll haul it up and refuel it. And our friends the enemy will hate it. It's a radio repeater. It'll pick up short-wave stuff beamed to it, and repeat it down to Earth. And they can try to jam that!"