CHAPTER XV
The Open Hatchway
Pegasus was ready.
The dry run was over and only the final checkout remained.
At zero minus sixteen hours Rick stood at the base of the huge rocket and looked up, studying every inch of it. He knew he would never have the opportunity again.
About fifty feet up he could make out the smooth, stainless-steel connecting ring where the second stage joined the first. Explosive bolts, set off by one of the electronic circuits, would blow the stages apart. The second stage, still carrying the final stage, would accelerate away on its own motors until they, too, had consumed all available fuel. Again, explosive bolts would destroy the connection and the final stage would be on its own. The motors would flare briefly, providing less than a minute's acceleration, then the final stage would coast on its momentum to maximum altitude nearly three hundred miles above the earth.
Not until the final stage started its downward plunge would Jerry Lipton take over. His job, then, would be to control the plunging flight, to use up the excess of energy by maneuvering the rocket into the atmosphere and out, to prevent its burning up like a meteor. In slow, careful stages, he would let it come lower and lower, until most of its energy was used up. Then he would try to land it. The landing speed would be terrific—nearly a thousand miles an hour.
Gee-Gee Gould came up and stood beside him. "It's a beautiful thing, Rick. And it's ours. Yours, mine, Dick's, Frank's, Charlie's—it belongs to every one of the crew."
Rick knew. It was his rocket. If it worked, it would be because of the care and devotion with which he had done his job. He knew others felt the same, and they were equally right. All of them had built part of themselves into Pegasus.