"Right," MacIlheny agreed. "And meteors just don't travel that fast in that direction."
"No—no, they don't."
MacIlheny felt a sense of frustration. The satellite was gone, vanished he knew not whither. It had disappeared into some limbo which, at the moment, was beyond his reach. Until it was located, either visually or by radar, it might as well not exist.
There was actually nothing further he could do until it was found; he couldn't find it himself.
"What's our next contact?" he asked.
"Satellite Number Eight. It'll be coming over the horizon in—" Jackson glanced at the chronometer. "—in eight minutes, twenty-seven seconds. We'll just have to hold on till then, I suppose."
MacIlheny thought about the stratoplanes he knew were up there. "Yeah," he said tightly. "Yeah. Just wait."
CHAPTER II
Four minutes came and went, while MacIlheny and the others smoked cigarettes and tried to maintain a certain amount of calm as they waited.