The Sling and the Stone

On the morning of the first day, floating in the cold of space, they inflated the station. It puffed up tightly to a silvery doughnut, and four men whose names were Krylov, Mirkov, Stolyakhin and Davchenko went to live inside. 

He saw the thing clearly in the late morning sun, rising in an enormous, shining tube from the hard-baked floor of the desert, but it was obviously impossible. He was taken on an elevator one hundred feet into the air and ushered through a door into the side of the thing, not believing any of it for an instant. He was told, rather kindly for once, that he was to be taken up in this thing and not to worry, because it had been tested.