"This certainly is the mountain that labored and brought forth a mouse," Sage grumbled. "It's been a hundred years since the first trip was made to the Moon and we're still hanging on here by our eye-lashes. For every ship that blasts off from Moon Station for Mars or Venus, ten robot freighters have to stagger up from Earth with fuel and supplies for it."
"Plutonium's not good enough," agreed Tom, who had flown space ships in his time. "Fission just can't supply enough power to make interplanetary travel pay. Fact is, if the Moon weren't here, we'd still be earthbound."
"Um! Think of all the trade that could go on if ships could carry worthwhile payloads. I suppose they'd have closed Moon Base long ago, except for the U 235 which is exported by Wildoatia."
"Oh, I don't know." Old Tom was puffing as he kept up with the younger man's long strides. "We clear a bit of oricalchum from Mars, tungsten and commercial diamonds from Earth, plus a fair trade in jewels and other lightweight luxury items. Tourist traffic is brisk. We manage here, but we'll never get much farther without a better fuel.... Well, here comes the mail packet."
A man in a lead-armored suit had run past them and was wigwagging with a checkered flag. Other men were sweating a twenty-ton cradle into the middle of the floor. Then the mechanics scuttled for the barriers.
Frank and Tom followed their example. As they watched over the top of a thick wall surrounding the "field", a shutter in the center of the roof snapped open. They had a glimpse of the ship cushioning down on her atomic jets before they ducked out of range of the deadly gamma rays.
"One nice thing about landing where there's no atmosphere," said Frank. "You don't have to shift to those confounded peroxide jets." He found that he was shouting, but that his voice sounded far-away and thin. Even with the comparatively small air loss through the shutter opening, pressure within the dome was dropping so rapidly that they found it difficult to breathe. The almost instantaneous loss of air and heat into the absolute zero vacuum of space caused a snowstorm to swirl within the dome. Then the rocket blaze died, the packet dropped neatly into her cradle and the shutter closed.
"Whew! You really take a landing seriously," whistled the S.P. man. "What if a ship should miss the shutter and come down through another part of the roof?"
"Don't mention it." Tom's voice was strained.