"The Shed says three separate ships are getting out of formation. And we
need due east pointing. Check it."
The Chief muttered, "Something whacky here ... come round, you! Okay,
Joe."
Joe had no time for reflection. He was in charge of the clumsiest
operation ever designed for an exact result. The squadron went wallowing
toward the sky. The noise was horrible. A tinny voice in his headphones:
"_You are at 65,000 feet. Your rate-of-climb curve is flattening. You
should fire your jatos when practical. You have some leeway in rocket
power._"
Joe spoke into the extraordinary maze of noise waves and pressure
systems in the air of the cabin.
"We should blast. I'm throwing in the series circuit for jatos. Try to
line up. We want the drones above us and with a spread, remember! Go to
it!"
He watched his direction indicator and the small graphic indicators
telling of the drones. The sky outside the ports was dark purple. The
launching cage responded sluggishly. Its open end came around toward the
east. It wobbled and wavered. It touched the due-east point. Joe stabbed
the firing-button.
Nothing happened. He hadn't expected it. The seven ships had to keep in
formation. They had to start off on one course--with a slight spread as
a safety measure--and at one time. So the firing-circuits were keyed to
relays in series. Only when all seven firing-keys were down at the same
time would any of the jatos fire. Then all would blast together.
The pilots in the cockpit-bubbles of the pushpots had an extraordinary
view of the scene. At something over twelve miles height, seven
aggregations of clumsy black things clung to frameworks of steel,
pushing valorously. Far below there were clouds and there was Earth.
There was a horizon, which wavered and tilted. The pushpots struggled
with seeming lack of purpose. One of the seven seemed to drop below the
others. They pointed vaguely this way and that--all of them. But
gradually they seemed to arrive at an uncertain unanimity.
Joe pushed the firing-button again as his own ship touched the due-east
mark. Again nothing happened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Haney
pressing down both buttons. The Chief's finger lifted. Mike pushed down
one button and held off the other.
Roarings and howlings of pushpots. Wobblings and heart-breaking
clumsinesses of the drone-ships. They hung in the sky while the pushpots
used up their fuel.
"We've got to make it soon," said Joe grimly. "We've got forty seconds.
Or we'll have to go down and try again."
There was a clock dial with a red sweep-hand which moved steadily and
ominously toward a deadline time for firing. Up to that deadline, the
pushpots could let the ships back down to Earth without crashing them.
After it, they'd run out of fuel before a landing could be made.
The deadline came closer and closer. Joe snapped:
"Take a degree leeway. We've got ten seconds."
He had the manned ship nearly steady. He held down the firing-button,
holding aim by infinitesimal movements of the controls. Haney pushed
both hands down, raised one, pushed again. The Chief had one finger
down. Mike had both firing buttons depressed.... The Chief pushed down
his second button, quietly.
There was a monstrous impact. Every jato in every pushpot about every
launching cage fired at once. Joe felt himself flung back into his
acceleration chair. Six gravities. He began the horrible fight to stay
alive, while the blood tried to drain from the conscious forepart of his
brain, and while every button of his garments pressed noticeably against
him, and objects in his pockets pushed. The sides of his mouth dragged
back, and his cheeks sagged, and his tongue strove to sink back into his
throat and strangle him.
It was very bad. It seemed to last for centuries.
Then the jatos burned out. There was that ghastly feeling of lunging
forward to weightlessness. One instant, Joe's body weighed half a ton.
The next instant, it weighed less than a dust grain. His head throbbed
twice as if his skull were about to split open and let his brains run
out. But these things he had experienced before.
There were pantings in the cabin about him. The ship fell. It happened
to be going up, but the sensation and the fact was free fall. Joe had
been through this before, too. He gasped for breath and croaked,
"Drones?"
"Right," said Haney.