Or is it the time before the rock-climber, clinging nail and toe to the rock face with the rope snapped suddenly taut, feels it at last slacken and sees the hands gripping safely come into sight?
Perhaps the greenhorn, rifle a-waver, watching the glimpse of tawny color in the veldt-grass and waiting the thunder and the charge, could say.
They’d all be wrong. It’s much longer.
Long enough for Johnny to think of a dozen precautions he could have taken, a dozen better ways to rig this or that. Long enough to worry about whether the gyros were really running up as they should. A thousand queries and doubts piled mountainously upward to an almost unbearable peak of tension till suddenly the browns and greens below flashed a shade lighter and it was time, and the savage snap on the lanyard a blessed relief and total committal.
In the few seconds after the firing of the prime and before the busy little timer snapped the valves wide open Johnny managed to slip his toes under the jet pedals to avoid accidental firing. At the same time he braced himself as rigidly as possible with aching arms against the walls of the cylinder.
He saw briefly the flare of the jet reflected off the remnants of his cloud of station stores before deceleration with all its unpleasantness began.
The lip of the cylinder’s mouth swept up past his helmet as he was rammed deep into the absorbent mass of ribbon chute. This wasn’t a padded contour chair under a mild 3G lift. The chutes took the first shock, but Johnny took the rest the hard way, standing bolt upright.
He found with some surprise his head was right down through the neck ring and inside the suit proper, his arms half withdrawn from the sleeves, knees buckled to an almost unbelievable angle considering the dimensions of the lower case.