 What is White Sands?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954. One thousand seventy-five miles above the wrinkled surface of Earth, a woman was in pain. 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. Outside its bright steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away. How long will it before we can contact White Sands?" We're over Eastern Europe now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam a call in." Major Banes was all smiles and cheer now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. "The question is: what do we do next? "Lieutenant Britton, it is my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a general practitioner, either! 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. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity, you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. And then, only half an hour ago, a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock, no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through the shielding of the station. The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of space. "Something wrong, doctor?" "Incubator," he said, without taking his eyes off the clock. 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. Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of the globe beneath them.
 A rocket base in New Mexico.
 A city in New Mexico.  A rocket base in New Mexico.  An obstetrics facility in New Mexico.  A mission control base in New Mexico.