Tom eased his own lanky frame onto a stool, his forehead wrinkling thoughtfully. He knew Bud was no quitter. If trouble had developed between him and his copilot, it must be near the battling stage for Bud even to think of resigning.
“What’s this fellow’s name?” Tom asked.
“Chippy Holbrook. He was a Navy pilot. Everyone calls him Lieutenant Holbrook.”
“Never heard of him.”
“I wish / hadn’t,” Bud retorted. “He’s young, but a real hard-nosed type.”
“Does he know his stuff?”
“Sure, he’s a good enough rocketeer,” Bud admitted. “He’s done a lot of tune-up flights down at Canaveral. But what a pest to work with! He bugs me practically every hour, on the hour!”
Holbrook’s usual tactics, Bud said, were to criticize his handling of the controls during checkout procedures or on simulated flight routine. He was constantly offering suggestions which Bud felt were mainly intended to rattle him-perhaps to the point of his making some mistake which might disqualify him as pilot for the Venus flight.
“Another stunt he likes to pull,” Bud went on, “is to throw a lot of needling questions at me whenever we have a skull session with Clarke or Franklin.”
“What sort of questions?” Tom asked.
56 MEGASCOPE SPACE PROBER
Bud answered irritably, “Oh, about the ion drive, and stuff like that. He was familiar with the design of the Astro-Meteor right from the start, so he knows it backwards, whereas I’m still learning its features.”
The Astro-Meteor, Bud explained, was the name of the space vehicle which would make the flight to Venus, after being hurled aloft by the Astrodyne booster.
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