Now what? Had the enemy camouflaged the warhead so that it looked like a section of the missile's skin? Not likely. Had he made a mistake in his identification of the fragments? Possibly, but there wasn't time to recheck every fragment. He decided that the most likely event was that the warhead was hidden by one of the other fragments. He swung the ship; headed it straight for the object shielding him from the jammer, which had turned out to be a section from the fuel tank. A short blast from the rockets sent him drifting toward the object. One image on the screen broadened; split in two. A hidden fragment emerged from behind one of the ones he had examined. He rejected it immediately. Its temperature was too low. He was almost upon the fragment shielding him from the jammer. If he turned to avoid it, the jammer would blank-out his radar again. He thought back to his first look at the cloud of fragments. There had been nothing between his shield and the jammer. The only remaining possibility, then, was that the warhead was being hidden from him by the jammer itself. He would have to look on the other side of the jammer, using the ship itself as a shield.
He swung out from behind the shielding fragment, and saw his radar images blotted out. He switched off the radar, and aimed the ship slightly to one side of the infrared image of the jammer. Another blast from the rockets sent him towards the jammer. Without range information from the radar, he would have to guess its distance by noting the rate at which it swept across the screen. The image of the jammer started to expand as he approached it. Then it became dumbbell shaped and split in two.
As he passed by the jammer, he switched the radar back on. That second image was something which had been hidden by the jammer. He looked around. No other new objects appeared on the screen. This had to be the warhead. He checked it anyway. Temperature was minus 40° F. A smile flickered on his lips as he caught the significance of the temperature. He hoped the launching crew had gotten their fingers frozen off while they were going through the countdown. The object showed no anomalous radar behavior. Beyond doubt, it was the warhead.
Then he noted the range. A mere thirteen hundred yards! His own missile carried a small atomic warhead. At that range it would present no danger to him. But what if it triggered the enemy warhead? He and the ship would be converted into vapor within microseconds. Even a partial, low-efficiency explosion might leave the ship so weakened that it could not stand the stresses of return through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this range was not much different from playing Russian Roulette with a fully-loaded revolver.
Could he move out of range of the explosion and then fire? No. There were only twelve seconds left before he had to start the pull-out. It would take him longer than that to get to a safe range, get into position, and fire. He'd be dead anyway, as the ship plunged into the atmosphere and burned up. And to pull out without firing would be saving his own life at the cost of the lives he was under oath to defend. That would be sheer cowardice.
He hesitated briefly, shrugged his shoulders as well as he could inside his flying suit, and snapped a switch on the instrument panel. A set of cross hairs sprang into existence on the screen. He gripped a small lever which projected up from his right armrest; curled his thumb over the firing button on top of it. Moving the lever, he caused the cross hairs to center on the warhead. He flicked the firing button, to tell the fire control system that this was the target. A red light blinked on, informing him that the missile guidance system was tracking the indicated target.
He hesitated again. His body tautened against the straps holding it in the acceleration couch. His right arm became rigid; his fingers petrified. Then, with a convulsive twitch of his thumb, he closed the firing circuit. He stared at the screen, unable to tear his eyes from the streak of light that leaped away from his ship and toward the target. The missile reached the target, and there was a small flare of light. His radiation counter burped briefly. The target vanished from the radar, but the infrared detector insisted there was a nebulous fog of hot gas, shot through with a rain of molten droplets, where the target had been. That was all. He had destroyed the enemy warhead without setting it off. He stabbed the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED button, and flicked the red-handled toggle switch, resigning his status as pilot. Then he collapsed, nerveless, into the couch.
The autopilot returned to control. It signaled the Air Defense network that this hostile track was no longer dangerous. It received instructions about a safe corridor to return to the ground, where it would not be shot at. As soon as the air was thick enough for the control surfaces to bite, the autopilot steered into the safe corridor. It began the slow, tedious process of landing safely. The ground was still a long way down. The kinetic and potential energy of the ship, if instantly transformed into heat, was enough to flash the entire ship into vapor. This tremendous store of energy had to be dissipated without harm to the ship and its occupant.
Major Harry Lightfoot, fighter pilot, lay collapsed in his couch, exhibiting somewhat less ambition than a sack of meal. He relaxed to the gentle massage of his gee-suit. The oxygen control winked reassuringly at him as it maintained a steady flow. The cabin temperature soared, but he was aware of it only from a glance at a thermometer; the air conditioning in his suit automatically stepped up its pace to keep him comfortable. He reflected that this might not be so bad after all. Certainly none of his ancestors had ever had this comfortable a ride home from battle.