In his left hand
he clutched a sheaf of papers. He had just reread, for the fifth time, a
petition for reinstatement of space papers for Al Mason and Bill Loring.
It wasn't easy, as Strong well knew, to deprive a man of his right to
blast off and rocket through space, and the papers in question, issued
only by the Solar Guard, comprised the only legal license to blast off.
Originally issued as a means of preventing overzealous Earthmen from
blasting off without the proper training or necessary physical
condition, which resulted in many deaths, space papers had gradually
become the only effective means of controlling the vast expanding force
of men who made space flight their life's work. With the establishment
of the Spaceman's Code a hundred years before, firm rules and
regulations for space flight had been instituted. Disobedience to any
part of the code was punishable by suspension of papers and forfeiture
of the right to blast off.
One of these rules stated that a spaceman was forbidden to blast off
without authorization or clearance for a free orbit from a central
traffic control. Bill Loring and Al Mason were guilty of having broken
the regulation.
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