"You just had heart failure," Dick reported.
They continued work, checking the radar equipment, the photon counters, cameras, the temperature-sensing devices, and myriad other instruments. Each instrument would feed its information to the oscillator, through the measurand transmitter and into the telemetering circuit, traveling by radio circuit back to the blockhouse. In the blockhouse it would appear in several forms. The information from the marmoset's instruments would appear as a series of waves on continually moving strips of special paper, in a machine called the display.
Finally Rick and Gee-Gee left the nose section and started to work down. It was already dark outside. The nose section was finished. The cameraman had arrived and loaded the cameras and departed. Now it remained only to place Prince Machiavelli, which was among the very last things to be done. Rick had hoped to carry the little monk to his seat, but Frank Miller and Dr. Bond had been given that job. He and Gee-Gee would be too busy with last-minute checks.
Gee-Gee was hard to satisfy. He told a guard, "Watch the nose section. No one is authorized to enter now until the monk is placed at zero minus thirty minutes." Then he led Rick across the desert to the blockhouse.
There were sandwiches and coffee on a table near the door. They helped themselves, then went and stood behind Dick Earle, who was paired off with Charlie Kassick.
"Punch up the nose section," Gee-Gee requested.
Dick ticked off the circuits as he pressed the buttons. One by one the red lights switched to green. All were operating. Only then did Gee-Gee nod his satisfaction. "Okay, Rick. Let's get back to work. Most of it's done, but we still have some checking to do in the first and second stages."
As they mounted the crane again Rick looked up at the festooned cables that terminated in the nose cone. At the moment of firing, the cables would drop off. After that, Pegasus would be on its own.
It was after dawn when the two emerged from the final check. The fueling crews were already at work. The loud-speaker on the crane emitted, "The time is zero minus twenty-five."
Gee-Gee departed for the blockhouse. Rick started after him, then as he cleared the gate he saw Scotty. His pal was waiting patiently in the jeep.