E-text prepared by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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CHAPTER ONE: Spacebound
CHAPTER TWO: Rake That Radiation!
CHAPTER THREE: Capture and Drive!
CHAPTER FOUR: Find the Needle!
CHAPTER FIVE: The Gray World
CHAPTER SIX: Rip's Planet
CHAPTER SEVEN: Earthbound!
CHAPTER EIGHT: Duck—or Die!
CHAPTER NINE: Repel Invaders!
CHAPTER TEN: Get the Scorpion!
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Hard Words
CHAPTER TWELVE: Mercury Transit
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Peril!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Between Two Fires
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Rocketeers
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Ride the Planet!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Visitors!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Courtesy—With Claws
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Spacefall
CHAPTER TWENTY: On the Platform
A thousand miles above Earth's surface the great space platform spedfrom daylight into darkness. Once every two hours it circled the earthcompletely, spinning along through space like a mighty wheel of steel andplastic.
Through a telescope on Earth the platform looked to be a lifeless, lonelydisk, but within it, hundreds of spacemen and Planeteers went about theirwork.
In a ready room at the outer edge of the platform, a Planeteer officerfaced a dozen slim, black-clad young men who wore the single goldenorbits 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 andtrim. His short-cropped hair covered his head like a gray fur skull cap.One cheek was marked with the crisp whiteness of an old radiation burn.
"Stand easy," he ordered briskly. "The general instructions of theSpecial Order Squadrons say that it's my duty as senior officer to make afarewell speech. I intend to make a speech if it kills me—and you, too."
The dozen new officers facing him broke into grins. Maj. Joe Barris hadbeen their friend, teacher, and senior officer during six long years oftraining on the space platform. He could no more make a formal speechthan he could breathe high vacuum, and they all knew it.
Lt. Richar