ould you like to come
along?"

He wiped his hands on a piece of waste.

"Naturally! My gang is off picking out tools. I can't do much until they
come back."

He fell into step beside her. They walked toward the Platform. And it
was still magic, no matter how often Joe looked at it. It was huge
beyond belief, though it was surely not heavy in proportion to its size.
Its bright plating shone through the gossamer scaffolding all about it.
There was always a faint bluish mist in the air, and there were the
marsh-fire lights of welding torches playing here and there. The sounds
of the Shed were a steady small tumult in Joe's ears. He was getting
accustomed to them, though.

"How is it you can go around so freely?" he asked abruptly. "I have to
be checked and rechecked."

"You'll get a full clearance," she told him. "It has to go through
channels. Me--I have influence. I always come in through security, and I
have the door guards trained. And I do have business in the Platform."

He turned his head to look at her.

"Interior decoration," she explained. "And don't laugh! It isn't
prettifying. It's psychology. The Platform was designed by engineers and
physicists and people with slide rules. They made a beautiful
environment for machinery. But there will be men living in it, and they
aren't machines."

"I don't see----"

"They designed the hydroponic garden," said Sally with a certain scorn.
"They calculated very neatly that eleven square feet of leaf surface of
a pumpkin plant will purify all the air a resting man uses, and so much
more will purify the air a man uses when he's working hard. So they
designed the gardens for the most efficient production of the greatest
possible leaf surface--of pumpkin plants! They figured food would be
brought up by the tender rockets! But can you imagine the men in the
Platform, floating among the stars, living on dehydrated food and
stuffing themselves hungrily with pumpkins because that is the only
fresh food they have?"

Joe saw the irony.

"They're thinking of mechanical efficiency," said Sally indignantly. "I
don't know anything about machinery, but I've wasted an awful lot of
time at school and otherwise if I don't know something about human
beings! I argued, and the garden now isn't as mechanically efficient,
but it'll be a nice place for a man to go into. He won't smell pumpkin
plants all the time, either. I've even gotten them to include some
flowers!"

They were ve