"Georges, what do you think?" Cally asked. "Can it be saved?"
"Well, first the good news. The Fujitsu is okay." He wheeled around
from the workstation. Command was a shambles, but he had managed to
find one auxiliary terminal that would still function. That
workstation, and the lights, were on, but not much else. "It was buried
deep enough in the bedrock that it escaped the EMP, the electromagnetic
pulse, from the blast. If we'd lost our sweetheart, we'd be dead in the
water."
"Any telemetry?"
"Yep." He smiled. "The tapes were on. We had Doppler, almost from
liftoff. The Cyclops computed our acceleration from it, and the results
look to be right on the money. The not-so-good news is that the last
telemetry we recorded, just before the bomb went off and the Cyclops
crashed, showed that VX-1 was about three minutes away from capturing
orbit. I think we probably made it, but I still can't say. However,
since Big Benny was already reducing power, getting ready to shut it
off anyway, maybe, just maybe we got lucky."