CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Courtesy--With Claws

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Spacefall

CHAPTER TWENTY: On the Platform




CHAPTER ONE

Spacebound


A thousand miles above Earth's surface the great space platform sped
from daylight into darkness. Once every two hours it circled the earth
completely, spinning along through space like a mighty wheel of steel and
plastic.

Through a telescope on Earth the platform looked to be a lifeless, lonely
disk, but within it, hundreds of spacemen and Planeteers went about their
work.

In a ready room at the outer edge of the platform, a Planeteer officer
faced a dozen slim, black-clad young men who wore the single golden
orbits of lieutenants. This was a graduating class, already commissioned,
having a final informal get-together.

The officer, who wore the three-orbit insignia of a major, was lean and