hours' rest. The bunks were luxury.

Sally said: "The date and time's a secret, of course, because it might
be overheard, but there'll be another ship up before too long. It's
bringing landing rockets for you to come back with."

"That's good!" said Joe. It would feel good to set foot on solid ground
again. He looked at Sally and said eagerly, "We've got a date the
evening I get back?"

"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.