Delta Green - [17]

“I already owe you twelve dollars,” Haggar told him. “Let’s set up the rocket checklist instead.”

“How mundane,” Olsen said, but brought up the checklist on the small screen.

Haggar activated the rocket control panel. The two rocket motors operated on solid-fuel propellent and were considerably safer than liquid-fueled engines. The drawback to solid-fuel rocket motors had always been the lack of control. Typically, the solid fuel was encased in a cylinder, and once ignited, burned at a steady rate, raising pressures and exhausting through a nozzle, until the fuel was expended. For the MakoShark, the designers had developed a pelletized solid fuel which was stored internally in wing-mounted tanks. Under the pressure of compressed carbon dioxide, the pellets were forced into the combustion chambers at a rate determined by the opening of non-blowback valves. The valves were the throttle control, and Haggar could vary the thrust output from fifty-five percent to one hundred percent, from sixty-eight thousand to one hundred twenty-five thousand pounds of thrust on each of the two nacelle-mounted rocket motors.

Olsen double-checked her, using the same checklist on his own screen.

“How’s the fuel supply?”

“Ten-point-one thousand pounds,” Haggar said. “We’re showing two-two time.”

“And the CO-two reserve?”

“Twelve thousand, six hundred PSI.”

“Igniter test?”

“I’m testing now. We’ve got one, now two and three. There’s four.”

“Activate igniters one and two.”

Haggar flipped the toggles for the primary igniters in each of the rocket motors. Igniters three and four were backup systems.

“The igniters are hot, Swede”

“Open CO-two valves”

Haggar opened the valves, pressurizing the solid-fuel pellet tanks.

“Done.”

“Activate throttles, Country.”

“Active.”

“Throttles at standby position.”

She pushed the outboard throttle levers to their first detents.

“Throttles in standby,” Haggar reported.

“Comp Control?”

“Punching in one-zero-zero per cent” Haggar tapped the pad in the top row of buttons that read “RKT THRST,” keyed in the one and two zeros, stored the data in Random Access Memory, then tapped the “STDBY” pad.

With another code entered into the keyboard, she turned control of the MakoShark over to the computer. The computer thought about it for nearly a second, then reported out, via blue letters displayed in the upper left corner of the CRT.

REENTRY PATH ACCEPTED

REENTRY SEQUENCE INITIATED

TIME TO RETRO FIRE: 0.18.11

“You’re eleven seconds off, Swede.”

“I hate it when you insist on precision, Country Girl” That was because the precise numbers were always available somewhere in his brain, and he felt it unnecessary to verbalize them. At a bridge table — like the ones in the dining/recreation areas of the space station which utilized lightly magnetized cards on a magnetic surface — she suspected that Olsen knew within three plays where all of the other cards were and who was holding them. She keyed her helmet microphone, “Alpha, Delta Red.”

“Go Red.” Milt Avery was tending the command station. She reported their status, and he wished them luck. They waited out the time rechecking systems — twice was never enough for decent safety margins — and tightening straps. Olsen picked up the count near the end: “Six, five, four, three, two, one.”

The CRT countdown readout went to zero.

The mild vibration in the craft’s frame and the thrust indicators on the HUD rising to one hundred per cent told her when the computer ignited the rockets.

The view of Themis in the rearview screen diminished and slid off the top of the screen as white fire encroached on each side of the screen.

The display of Mach numbers began to move, decreasing rapidly.

The burn lasted for three-and-a-half minutes, until the speed was down to Mach 20, then the computer turned Delta Red over again, heading into her line of flight, with her nose held high.

Lynn Haggar had always thought the attitude very haughty and deservedly so. She herself always felt humbled and grateful for the Fates that had selected a woman from Georgia and dropped her into the cockpit of a MakoShark.

She was also grateful to Colonel Kevin McKenna, Earth-side representative of the Fates.

DELTA YELLOW

Directly ahead of Conover, the red digital numerals of the Head-Up Display floated in space. His altitude was reported at fifty thousand feet above sea level and his heading at 091 degrees. The readout for airspeed indicated that Delta Yellow was cruising at a meager 650 knots. The tailpipe temperatures were well down in the green.

Below the HUD, the instrument panel provided readouts in blue digital numerals and letters, many of them duplicates of what appeared on the HUD. The eight-inch cathode ray tube was centered in the panel and repeated the imaging mode selected by the weapons system operator in the backseat of the tandem cockpit. The screen had direct visual, map overlay, radar, infrared, and night vision capability and currently was displaying the magnified (images picked up by the nose-mounted video camera.

The pilot’s and WSO’s seats were semi-reclining lounges. Conover’s seat had four-way adjustable armrests on which his forearms rested. Near his left hand were the short throttle levers, and above them, the switch panels related to engine, radio, and environmental control. On his right were the armaments, electronics, trim, flaps, and landing gear control panels. To the rear of the panels on both sides of the cockpit were the less frequently used control panels and circuit breakers. The aerospace craft’s attitude was controlled from the stubby, ergonomically-designed handle that fit smoothly into the palm of his hand.