Page 20 - Unlikely Stories 5

On His Own Petard

Minsk continued the pretense of ignorance, happy no one could
see his face. “So it had to be destroyed. Well, at least it’s over the
ocean, where it couldn’t do any damage.”
“No, Sir, I’m sorry to report that whatever went wrong on the
rocket included knocking out its communications and the circuitry
that would have made it blow up immediately.”
“Oh.”
“Instead it headed off course and, as luck would have it, ran into
an old space station—you remember Spylab?—and the fuel left in the
rocket caused a terrible explosion. Fragments of both of them shot
out in several directions.”
“Well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later. Just too many
hazards out there in the exosphere.”
“I’m not through, Boss. One of those chunks hit the elevator way
station. Destroyed it. Miles and miles of ribbon came down. Most of
it burned up in the atmosphere. But a few pieces of the way station
came down with it and crashed into Tetsubashi’s floating base
station. Messed it up pretty bad, according to preliminary reports.”
Minsk could barely contain his glee. “What a tragedy! I hope there
weren’t any casualties.”
“Too soon to tell. But that’s not the end of it. A huge piece of the
debris from the Spylab collision survived re-entry and made a direct
hit on our new floating launch pad.”
“What! Ours? What about the Corsair 7: is it okay.”
“No, Boss. A chemical fire started—the rocket was completely
fueled. The pad and the rocket are smoking debris.”

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