This was precaution carried to an extreme. Surely nothing could be spilled on the ground here! But to fuel the nitric from an entirely new site would make assurance doubly sure. The ship's position was shifted. The group of officers moved with it. The nitric truck came out, with a fresh crew of fuelers who loaded the nitric tank.
"Now," said the general, "you and Furness can get into your flight suits, McCauley. Then I give no more orders. You'll be on your own."
"Yes, sir," said McCauley.
A jeep came up and stopped. McCauley got in the front seat. Furness got silently into the back. The jeep raced toward the base. Crunching pebbles and raising dust, it created an extraordinary effect of self-importance and busyness.
The flight suits were in the building behind the flagpole. There were noncoms to help them don the clumsy, tight, intricately gadgeted outfits which provided protection against the effects of high acceleration, abrupt decompression, heat, cold—everything but sudden death. There were helmets. There were oxygen bottles and parachute-packs and mikes and headphones. When the two of them were completely outfitted, they looked like oversized robots.
Furness did not speak on the way back to the ship. McCauley made one half-hearted attempt to end the constraint between them.
"Isn't your wife coming out to watch the take-off?" he asked.
"She'll know when we go," said Furness without expression.
He said no more. McCauley carefully did not shrug his shoulders. But now the immediate problems of the take-off had to be thought over for the thousandth time, and he could spare no more thought for Furness' injured dignity.
They reached the standing group of officers. The ship's fuel was all aboard. The jatos were mounted. Now one man was working alone at the very tail of the ship. He was bleeding the air out of the fuel lines between the tanks and the rocket engine. He came away with a small bucket. Unlike a more normal rocket which would stand nose up and have its fuel tanks vertically above the motor, in the X-21 a certain amount of fuel had to come through the lines almost to the engine, to make certain that the pumps would deliver the two fuel elements at absolutely the same instant for self-ignition, the instant the rocket motor was turned on.