The “hair net”the flexible network of electrodes which he would jam on the head of any dead man whose head had survived the bomber crashwas connected to them and hung in its clips under the seat, the leads strung to avoid fouling the plane’s exposed control cables. Nothing remained to do now but to secure the frequency analyzer, which was the heaviest of the units and had to be bolted down just forward 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”