"Zero minus one half hour, Colonel. We start alert count in fifteen minutes."
"Right," Colonel Jennings spoke softly, showing none of the excitement he felt. He replaced the field phone on its hook and spoke to the two men in front of him.
"This is it. Apparently this time we'll go through with it."
Major Eddy's shoulders hunched a trifle, as if he were getting set to have a load placed upon them.
Professor Stein gave no indication that he had heard. His thin body was stooped over his instrument bank, intense, alert, as if he were a runner crouched at the starting mark, as if he were young again.
Colonel Jennings walked over to the periscope slit again and peered through the shimmer of heat to where the silvery ship lay arrowed in her cradle. The last few moments of waiting, with a brassy taste in his mouth, with the vision of the test ship before him; these were the worst.
Everything had been done, checked and rechecked hours and days ago. He found himself wishing there were some little thing, some desperate little error which must be corrected hurriedly, just something to break the tension of waiting.
"You're all right, Sam, Prof?" he asked the major and professor unnecessarily.
"A little nervous," Major Eddy answered without moving.