"It was a good idea to get a good night's sleep," said the general.
"Yes, sir," said McCauley.
"You've got your orders," said the general. "They give you a lot of leeway."
"Yes, sir," said McCauley.
"It's hoped you'll pass over the setup checkpoints, of course," said the general. "But the satellite watching stations will pick up your signal in any case. The main thing is to make a straight orbit. Anything short of a full twenty-four-thousand-mile course will cost you an impossible amount of fuel."
"Yes, sir," said McCauley. "I'm aware of it, sir."
It was one of the paradoxes of the flight that it would take much more fuel to make a shorter flight than a longer one. A course around the northern hemisphere, for example, not crossing the equator and the antipodes, would be extravagant in terms of the fuel required simply to stay aloft. But if McCauley established a proper orbit, he'd use fuel only to take off and to land. Landing would be as tricky a job as taking off, or even trickier. But McCauley had tried all the alternative landing processes in the training mock-up. His orders permitted him to choose the landing process himself, but it was not likely that he'd have any actual choice. The decision would be made by events.
Meanwhile there was nothing to do. McCauley stood around and watched as the general was doing. Figures moved here and there about the ship a hundred yards away. Men came up to a truck parked near it and handed in completed checklists and were given other lists to check. Once there was earnest discussion and a jeep went rushing away to the base and came rushing back, and a man took a small object over to the ship, where somebody had evidently decided that something had better be replaced. Furness avoided McCauley's eye. The whole process grew tedious. The officers, including the two who would presently fly the ship, simply stood at a distance to be out of the way and vigilantly watched men who knew what they were doing. The general had an air of vast satisfaction as matters progressed with no delays and no lack of decision at the proper level. When something is well-prepared, the commanding officer's job is finished when the action starts. The general in command of Quartermain Base had prepared things well.
The men around the ship moved away from it. They piled into personnel trucks and rolled off toward the base buildings. Other trucks came out with men in fueling suits. They took their places briskly. The hydrazine truck came up. It rolled into place as if on a railroad track, so great was its precision. The fueling crew briskly and deftly loaded the ship with its full portion of hydrazine. The tanks topped off. The truck coiled its hose and moved away.
"We'll move the ship a couple of hundred yards," said the general curtly, "before loading the nitric."