- The Planet Strappers: I
- The Archer Five came in a big packing box, bound with steel ribbons and marked, This end up—handle with care. It was delivered at a subsidized government surplus price of fifty dollars to Hendricks’ Sports and Hobbies Center, a store in Jarviston, Minnesota, that used to deal mostly in skin diving equipment, model plane kits, parts for souping up old cars, and the like. The Archer Five was a bit obsolete for the elegant U.S. Space Force…
- The Planet Strappers: II
- Gimp Hines put the finishing touches on the first full-scale ionic during that next week. The others of the Bunch, each working when he could, completed cementing the segments of the first bubb together.
- The Planet Strappers: III
- On June first, ten days before blastoff, David Lester came back to the shop, sheepishness, pleasure and worry showing in his face.
- The Planet Strappers: IV
- Frank Nelsen’s view of empire-building on the Moon was brief, all encompassing, and far too sketchy to be very satisfying, as Rodan—turned about in his universal-gimbaled pilot seat—spiralled his battered rocket down backwards, with the small nuclear jets firing forward in jerky, tooth-cracking bursts, to check speed further.
- The Planet Strappers: V
- “It’s the life of Reilly, Paul,” Ramos was beaming back to Jarviston, Minnesota, not many hours after Frank Nelsen, Gimp Hines and he started out from the Moon, with their ultimate destination—after the delivery of their loads of supplies to the Kuzaks—tentatively marked in their minds as Pallastown on Pallas, the Golden Asteroid.
- The Planet Strappers: VI
- The asteroid, Pallas, was a chunk of rich core material, two hundred-some miles in its greatest dimension. It had a mottled, pinkish shine, partly from untarnished lead, osmium, considerable uranium, some iron, nickel, silver, copper. The metals were alloyed, here; almost pure, there. There was even a little rock. But thirty-five percent of Pallas’ roughly spherical mass was said to be gold.
- The Planet Strappers: VII
- Frank Nelsen meant the journey to be vagabond escape, an interlude of to hell with it relief from the grind, and from the increasingly uncertain mainstream of the things he knew best.
- The Planet Strappers: VIII
- Frank Nelsen missed the first shambles at Pallastown, of course, since even at high speed, the rescue unit with which he came did not arrive until days after the catastrophe.
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- The Planet Strappers•
- Very retro view of space flight; a very fifties ethos of people buying their way into space to make their fortune. A lot of fun.
