Three quarters of a day later Grunfeld felt a spasm of futile fear and
revolt as the pressure suit closed like a thick-fleshed carnivorous
plant on his drugged and tired body. Relax, he told himself. Fine thing
if you cooked up a fuss when even Croker didn't. He thought of forty
things to re-check. Relax, he repeated--the work's over; all that
matters is in Copperhead's memory tanks now, or will be as soon as the
captain's suited up.
The suit held Grunfeld erect, his arms at his sides--the best attitude,
except he was still facing forward, for taking high G, providing the
ship herself didn't start to tumble. Only the cheekpieces and visor
hadn't closed in on his face--translucent hand-thick petals as yet
unfolded. He felt the delicate firm pressure of built-in fingertips
monitoring his pulses and against his buttocks the cold smooth muzzles
of the jet hypodermics that would feed him metronomic drugs during the
high-G stretch and stimulants when they were in free-fall again. When.
He could swing his head and eyes just enough to make out the suits of
Croker and Ness to either side of him and their profiles wavy through
the jutting misty cheekpieces. Ahead to the left was Jackson--just
the back of his suit, like a black snowman standing at attention,
pale-olive-edged by the great glow of Uranus. And to the right the
captain, his legs suited but his upper body still bent out to the side
as he checked the monitor of his suit with its glowing blue button and
the manual controls that would lie under his hands during the maneuver.
Beyond the captain was the spaceshield, the lower quarter of it
still blackness and stars, but the upper three-quarters filled with
the onrushing planet's pale mottled green that now had the dulled
richness of watered silk. They were so close that the rim hardly showed
curvature. The atmosphere must have a steep gradient, Grunfeld thought,
or they'd already be feeling decel. That stuff ahead looked more like
water than any kind of air. It bothered him that the captain was still
half out of his suit.
There should be action and shouted commands, Grunfeld thought, to fill
up these last tight-stretched minutes. Last orders to the fleet, port
covers being cranked shut, someone doing a countdown on the firing of
their torpedo. But the last message had gone to the fleet minutes ago.
Its robot pilots were set to follow _Prospero_ and imitate, nothing
else. And all the rest was up to Copperhead. Still....