"We could land much quicker on rockets, sir. And ... even when the landing-grid reaches out for us, since we've no gravity-coils, they'll have to handle us very cautiously or they'd break our necks!"
Hardwick nodded. Barnes was thinking straight enough, but it takes young officers a long time to think of thinking straight. They have to obey so many orders unquestioningly that they tend to stop doing anything else. Yet at each rise in grade some slight trace of increased capacity to think is required. In order to reach really high rank, an officer has to be capable of thinking which simply isn't possible unless he's kept in practice on the way up.
Young Barnes looked up, startled.
"Look here, sir!" he said, surprised. "If it takes them an hour to let down Senior Officer Werner from two planetary diameters, it'll take much longer to let us down from out here!"
"True," said Hardwick.
"And you don't want to spend three hours descending, sir, after waiting an hour for him!"
"I don't," admitted Hardwick. He could have given orders, of course. But if a junior officer were spurred to the practice of thinking, it might mean that some day he'd be a better senior officer. And Hardwick knew how desperately few men were really adequate for high authority. Anything that could be done to increase the number—
Young Barnes blinked.
"But it doesn't matter to the landing-grid how far out we are!" he said in an astonished voice. "They could lock on to us at ten diameters, or at one! Once they lock the field-focus on us, when they move it they move us!"
Hardwick nodded again.