The agent bowed slightly so that Desmond could fit the helmet instead of just handing it over. “There’s a certain amount of dust on the surface anyway,” he said without inflection.
“Yes, the raised platform was only to lessen the accumulation,” the physicist agreed as he lowered the helmet, “not to eliminate it.” His voice becoming muffled as the padded thermoplastic slid down over Kelly’s ears, he continued, “It burns off cleanly in the laser flux. We’ve retrieved enough of the earlier test units to be sure that wasn’t the cause of failure.”
The locking cogs began to snap into place around the base of the helmet. Very softly, the veteran heard Desmond conclude, “Enough pieces.”
There was a crackle in Kelly’s ears as the project scientist connected the earphones to the power pack. “Do we have a link?” demanded a compressed voice. “Dancer One, do you read me? Over.”
“Yes,” Kelly said as he mounted the steps, bending forward at the waist because the base of the helmet cut off his normal downward peripheral vision. The pure oxygen he was now breathing flooded his sinuses like a seepage of ice water. “Now get off the air. Please.”
“Dancer One, are you having difficulties with the boarding bridge? Should we get you some personnel to help? Over.”
Kelly paused, found the power connection with his gloved hand, and unplugged the radio. Then he resumed trudging to the middle of the walkway where the railing had been cut away. He lowered himself carefully, one leg at a time, into the cramped cockpit. Where they thought there’d be room for anybody to lend a hand with the process was beyond him. Maybe a gantry, but there weren’t any available on-site.
His position in the saucer was roughly that of an F-16 pilot or a Russian tank driver: flat on his back with his head raised less than would’ve been comfortable for reading in bed. In the contemplated operational use, there would have been a condenser screen in front of the pilot and a projector between his knees to throw instrument data onto that screen.
For this run, the heads-up display had been removed so that the fuel and pressure tanks of Kelly’s additional gear could fill the space. More than fill it, as a matter of fact; what would have been a tight fit now nearly required a shoehorn. The boarding bridge clattered as a technician and Dr. Desmond climbed on from opposite ends.
“I’m all right, dammit!” Kelly snapped, his scowl evident through the face shield, though his words must have been unintelligible.
The physicist nodded approvingly, reached down for the throat of the fuel tank, and lifted it the fraction of an inch that permitted Kelly’s legs to clear to either side. The veteran sank back thankfully onto the seat, aware of his previous tension once he had released it.
The technician began to close half the cockpit cover. His hands were gloved; a handprint in body oils on the reflective surface would dangerously concentrate the initial laser pulse. Desmond stopped the man, pointed at Kelly’s helmet, and then mimed on his own neck the process of reconnecting the veteran’s radio. It would be next to impossible for Kelly to mate the plugs himself in the strait cockpit.
Kelly smiled but shook his head, and the doors above shut him into blackness.
Then there was nothing to do save wait; but Tom Kelly, like a leopard, was ‘very good at waiting for a kill.
Kelly’s mind had drifted so that when the monocle ferry took off, its passenger flashed that he was again riding an armored personnel carrier which had just rolled over a mine.
That – the feeling at least – was an apt analogy for the event. The ferry lifted off without the buildup of power inevitable in any fuel-burning system. The laser flux converted the air trapped between the pad and the mirrored concavity of the ferry’s underside into plasma expanding with a suddenness greater than the propagation rate of high explosive. Kelly left the ground as if shot from a gun.
The roaring acceleration was so fierce that it trapped the hand which reflex tried to thrust down to the shotgun holstered alongside Kelly’s right calf. The ferry shifted to pulsejet mode as soon as the initial blast lifted it from the pad. The low-frequency hammering of the chambers firing in quick succession, blasting out as plasma air that they had earlier sucked in, so nearly resembled the vibration of a piston engine about to drop a valve that anticipation kept the veteran rigid for long seconds after g-forces had decreased to a level against which he could have moved had he continued to try.