 Why can't they build an incubator?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954. There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely around the planet, watching what went on below. Why, I wouldn't let you get into an airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! The terrible pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within her. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to the hub she went, the less her weight became. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity, you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been enough to start labor. "Something wrong, doctor?" "Incubator," he said, without taking his eyes off the clock. "Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an incubator." But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands, I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. It will be at least three hours before they can get a ship up here.
 There are no spare parts aboard the space station.
 They don't have the right kind of lights aboard the space station.  It does not occur to them to build an incubator.  None of them no how to build an incubator and the asteroid knocked out communications.  There are no spare parts aboard the space station.