of the rear joystick so that its weight would not shift in
flight. If the apparatus didn’t have to be collimated after
every flight, it could be left in the planebut it did, and
that was that.
“O.K.,” he said, pulling his head out of the greenhouse.
He was trembling slightly. These tomb-tapping expeditions
were hard on the nerves. No matter how much training in the
art of reading a dead mind you may have had, the actual
experience is different, and cannot be duplicated from the
long-stored corpses of the laboratory. The newly dead brain
is an inferno, almost by definition.
“Good,” Persons said. “Martinson, you’ll pilot. Mac, keep
on the air; we’re going to refuel the Airoknocker and get it
up by ten o’clock if we can. In any case we’ll feed you any
spottings we get from the Air Force as fast as they come in.
Martinson, refuel at Montgomery if you have to; don’t waste
time coming back here. Got it?”
“Roger,” Martinson said, scrambling into the front seat and
buckling his safety belt. McDonough put his foot hastily into
the stirrup and swung into the back seat.
“Cadets!” Persons said. “Pull chocks! Roll ‘eri”
Characteristically, Persons himself did the heavy work of
lifting and swinging the tail. The Cub bumped off the apron
and out on the grass into the brightening morning.
“Switch off!” the cadet at the nose called. “Gasi Brakes!”
“Switch off, brakes,” Martinson called back. “Mac, where
to? Got any ideas?”
While McDonough thought about it, the cadet pulled the
prop backwards through four turns. “Brakes! Contact!”