 Why can't Lieutenant Britton go back to Earth?
[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. 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. "Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!" "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. 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. The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been enough to start labor. 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.
 The G-forces the body is subjected to during space travel would affect the fetus.
 There are no ships available to go to Earth at this time.  There is no one else trained to replace her as Chief Radar Technician on the space station.  The replacement Radar Technician was killed in a car wreck on his way to White Sands. A new technician will have to be trained.  The G-forces the body is subjected to during space travel would affect the fetus.