Gant Nerley began a running patter of instructions. Those favored few who have ever seen the control room of a spacecraft can possibly grasp the implications of the problem. One does not step into the pilot's chair of a complex device such as a galactic cruiser, push a pedal and then steer any more than a Wall Street Accountant could step into the cockpit of a six-engine airliner and take off, just like that. There was the pre-flight checkoff, probably performed by the competent Marandanian Pilot in a matter of minutes, and quite possibly done with an automatic reflex action which would permit the accomplished pilot to daydream about the girl on the next planet meanwhile; only the appearance of the wrong pilot-lamp response would bring him out of his automatic response with an abrupt recognition of something awry.
But Dusty was not a pilot, and certainly not a pilot of a Marandanian Spacecraft. So the pre-flight checkoff took almost an hour. Nearly ninety-nine percent of the time Dusty was following Gant Nerley's instructions blindly: Is the pilot lamp registering power source showing red or green? Is the spacelock indicator showing closed? Turn the atmosphere control to Internal. Set the autogravity corrector to Controlled. Co-stator circuits to Regulated; antimagnetic response dial to zero; space-coordinate servo control to Stellar Display. Planetary Drive to Automatic Threshold; match the Gravitic Constant to the Power Delivery. Set the Master Control to Pre-flight Warm-up.
"Now," said Gant Nerley, "take it slow and easy. Take the 'Tee' bar gently. Find the thumb-buttons and press them both evenly; spread your knees against the paddles under the control panel slowly and press the Force pedal with your right foot. Tell me, what is your trans-atmospheric velocity?"
"It says 416."
"Too high. Press the Compensator pedal with your left foot until the TAV meter reads 312."
"Now."
"Hold it that way until the Matter Per Cubic Meter indicator drops below the red line."
"The TAV meter is dropping below 312."
"Good. Let up on the Compensator pedal and depress the Force pedal more. Keep the TAV meter at 312."