"Checking phones. Do you hear me?"
"Sure," said McCauley. "I hear all right."
The phones clicked and were silent. The nose-cone door closed and McCauley was alone. Somehow he felt naked, because he knew that everything he felt and almost everything he thought was going on record via telemeter in the blockhouse. It was dark here.... No, two small electric bulbs were glowing. One was a spare. He saw the stuff laid out for later.
He knew what went on outside, but it was what was going on inside him that disturbed him. He didn't want the instruments in his suit to report anything wrong. He wanted to do this job right! For that reason he was consciously patient while he knew that men clinging to the launching tower were pulling away the last-minute cords that had been reporting everything functioning just right. Then everybody'd be getting out of the way. The Aerobee stood silent and still above a concrete pit filled with water. Somebody would use a last few seconds to coil up a cable that should have been put away before. In seconds now, though, everyone would pop out of sight. Over by the mountains they'd be working the trackers there to make sure they were all right. There'd be the warning blast. It ought to be about now. Ten—nine—eight—
A voice came into the helmet phones.
"Forty seconds more, Lieutenant. Everything's going fine so far!"
McCauley had a momentary impulse to try to make some crack or other that would be appropriate, express how he felt, and so on. But he didn't feel as he'd expected to. And anything like that would sound like showing off. So he just answered matter-of-factly:
"That's good."
He waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.
The voice in his helmet phones said abruptly: