Axel was a big, raw-boned Swede, which is a description you could give of a large portion of the male population of his home town in Minnesota. He had light brown hair, blue eyes and a long straight nose. His jaw looked big and solid enough to crush concrete. He winked at me and I walked over to him.
"Willy is doing fine," he said, which was an accolade. Axel made his words count. "Doc has thrown everything at him but a flock of asteroids and Willy hasn't missed a pitch."
"Good!" I said. "Where is Willy now?"
Axel nodded toward a screen on the left wall. On it was projected a portion of a globe showing Northern Siberia. A little spot of light showed up in the middle of it.
"In thirty minutes he'll begin his last orbit."
"How did he do on the emergencies?" I asked.
Axel grinned. "He acted like they were the real thing."
The space capsule carrying Willy was the old-fashioned type, with room enough for only one man. However, it had special controls which made its manual operation similar to that used on the plasma craft. Throughout the flight, Willy was in charge of the operation. Without warning, certain simulated emergencies were signaled to instruments aboard the capsule and Willy was expected to meet them.
Although space flight sounds dangerous, most of it isn't because space is more empty than anything most of us ever saw. The only critical times are usually at the lift-off, the re-entry and the landing. However, other emergencies can arise. The worst would be the sudden appearance of a large meteor, meaning a pebble a quarter of an inch in diameter or bigger. Since about 95 per cent of the meteors in space are less than that size, chances of meeting one, even on a trip lasting two-and-a-half years, are remote. But it could happen.
The plasma ship was equipped with meteor bumpers which would vaporize anything smaller than a quarter of an inch. Larger ones might puncture the sides, but even then there was patching fluid in the walls of the craft which would prevent too much air loss. A tremendously large meteor can be detected by radar and avoided. Willy'd had to make the right maneuver to avoid such a meteor.