He stood up, locked a deep breath inside him, and placed his fingers on the inverted T of control buttons for a second time.
North was the top of the viewscreen. What shown in it then must slide from the top down.
His fingertip caressed the bottom-most button. And there was a gentle surge of acceleration, and the screen picture was moving diagonally. First button on the right....
The picture swung slowly around. And then it was moving from top to bottom of the screen. He pushed the bottom button all the way in, and the velocity needles swung slowly up. A touch on the button above it, and the needle quivered five hundred ten.
And then on the horizon there was suddenly a light blue blur, and he braced himself against the shock of forward acceleration as he pushed the button all the way in. Its limit was close to two thousand miles per hour, and he locked it there.
Moments later he released it, eased pressure on it as the blue blur shaped itself into the coastline of the northern land mass. Gradually, he depressed the panel a full ninety degrees.
And the hurtling craft swung again on her blazing tail. Doug let the panel return to zero and held the bottom button in. The belly-jets had automatically cut out, and again he hovered, sinking slightly, this time not above the dark blue waste of the Venusian sea, but above the place where fantastic young armies with ten-year-old soldiers were writhing, dying.
The altimeter needle showed five thousand feet, and already he was able to discern the battle-lines of the two quadrants, no longer in close marching formation, but now spread wide to cover an irregular area of more than one hundred square miles. The lines surged first forward then back, as though joined in some Gargantuan tug-of-war—shifted, changed, like a great wounded serpent in its death-throes.
The lines were little more than a hundred yards in depth because deployment for the games provided for no rear echelons—there were only the battle echelons, with their ends defended mightily against encirclement, attack from the rear.