Then she requested a free-fall drop from a stall with the provision he this time place his attention on the instrument panel—"with no peeking outside." He complied, watching the altimeter trace forty miles toward the basement, and experienced effects no different than usual.
After a while, he came to consider it a game and might have gained amusement from it, were it not for the tiredness creeping in behind his eyes and the fact two dozen technicians somewhere down there were hoping to trip a fatal, hidden synapse.
"How much more of this?" Grant transmitted finally.
"Getting tired?" Bridget replied, and paused for an answer.
"Let's say I don't feel like six sets of tennis."
"A few more, major, and we'll authorize your glide-in." If there was disappointment in her voice, it did not manifest itself. "Your next exercise is manual navigation with Jupiter as your fix."
Grant took down the figures she gave in acute disinterest. Boredom had settled heavily over his outlook on the operation. No longer did it matter that his facial reactions were being televised to the syk-happy probers; and it made no difference to him any more that his every breath, swallow, heart beat, tension, and sweat-secretion was magnified by inky needles along moving rolls of paper.
His exercise target was a southwestern New Mexico town, and he swung back from the Gulf area and coaxed the responsive craft until the planet gleamed brightly in the crosshairs of the navigational sight. That put him four degrees off the horizontal, he noted, but Jupiter was setting; he adjusted his velocity to maintain the planet's relative skyward position in the west.
In some irritation he stepped up the thrust. This one could easily take too long. The faint hum of the power plant provided music as the bright point of light danced slightly from the sight's center.