The remote control cockpit was occupied by a Space Service officer—a Major Hamacher, who had been ordered up from a tour of inspection at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He was a square-faced, clear-eyed, prematurely graying man in his early thirties.
MacIlheny was relieved when he saw the major; the officer looked as though he could do the job. MacIlheny had wanted to use one of the Company pilots, but the President had vetoed that idea. If the ship was going to be insured by the government, then piloting it would be the government's job, too.
It had been nearly an hour, now, since the accident which had disabled Satellite Number Four. She had been carefully tracked by several observatories across the face of the Earth, and the figures had been carefully checked and rechecked.
Lower and lower the satellite dropped, as it spun around Earth in its elongated orbit. At a hundred and fifty miles altitude, the air is thin—thinner than the air in any but the very best vacuum tubes. But it is still dense enough to slow down anything traveling as fast as the satellite. The slight friction would be enough to alter the course of the flying moon.
Major Hamacher sat in the control chair, his hat off and his sleeves rolled up. As soon as the satellite started up again and her new orbit stabilized, the major would take off the RJ-37 and guide it to Number Four.
The men waited tensely. MacIlheny gnawed impatiently at the stem of his pipe, which had gone dead minutes before without his noticing it.
They waited. Very soon, now, Number Four would hit perigee.
It never did.
The observatories saw what happened. As the satellite came lower and lower, it looked as though it were following a perfectly normal path. Then, quite suddenly, there was a flare of light from beneath her! She leaped up again, under the driving thrust of her underjets.
Number Four had—somehow—changed her own orbit before the tenuous atmosphere could even begin to drag her down.