The beautiful, wonderful voice burst loud and clear from the radio and then vanished in a blurb of static.
"Oh God!" Kevin breathed. It was a prayer.
"We hear you," he shouted, procedure gone with the desperate need to communicate with home. "Come in White Sands. Please come in!"
Faintly now the voice blurred in and out, lost altogether for vital moments:
"... your plot. Altiac computer ... your orbit ... rocket on standby ... as you pass."
"Yes!" Kevin shouted, gripping the short wave set with white fingers, trying to project his words into the microphone, across the dwindling thousands of miles of space. "Yes. Send the rocket!"
"Can they do it?" Jones asked. "The rocket, I mean."
"I don't know," Kevin said. "They're all pre-set, mass produced now, and fuel is adjusted to come into the old orbit. They can be rigged, I think, if there's enough time."
The coast of California loomed below them now, a brown fringe holding back the dazzling flood of the Pacific. They were 3000 miles above the Earth, dropping sharply on the down leg of the ellipse.