August 16, 2025 • 39 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Push button wore by Joseph P. Martine. In one place,
a descendant of the Vikings rode a ship such as
Leif never dreamed of. From another one of the descendants
of Caesars, and here an Apache rowed a steed such
as never roam the plains. But they were warriors. All
(00:21):
the hatch swung open, admitting a blast of Arctic air
and a man clad in a heavy fur lined parker.
He quickly closed the hatch and turned to the man
in the pilot's couch. Okay, Harry, I'll take over now.
Anything to report. The heading gyro in the autopilot is
still drifting. Did you write it up for maintenance? Yeah?
(00:41):
They said that to replace it they'd have to put
the whole ship in the hangar, and it's full now.
With ships going through periodic inspection, I guess we'll have
to wait. They can't just give us another ship either.
With the hanger so full, we must be pretty close
to the absolute minimum for ships on the line and
ready to fly. O. Ka, let me check out with
the tower and should be all yours. He thumbed the
intercom button and spoke into the mic R I two
(01:03):
seven six to tower major lightfoot going off watch. When
the tower acknowledged, he began to disconnect himself from the
ship With smooth, experienced motions. He disconnected the mic cable,
the oxygen hose, air pressure hose, cooling air hose, electrical
heating cable, and dehumidifier hose which connected his flying suit
to the ship. He donned the parker and gloves his
(01:24):
relief had worn, and stepped through the hatch into the
gantry crane elevator. Even through the heavy parker, the cold
air had a bite to it. As the elevator descended,
he glanced to the south, knowing as he did so
that there would be nothing to see. The sun had
set on November seventeenth and was not due up for
three more weeks. At noon, there would be a faint
(01:45):
glow on the horizon as the sun gave a reminder
of its existence, But now at four in the morning,
there was nothing. As he stepped off the elevator, the
ground crew prepared to roll the gantry crane away from
the ship. He opened the door of the waiting personnel
carrier and swung aboard. The inevitable cry of close that
door greeted him as he entered, He brushed the Parker
(02:06):
hood back from his head and sank into the first
empty seat. The heater struggled valiantly with the arctic cold
to keep the interior of the personnel carrier at a
tolerable temperature, but it never seemed to be able to
do much with the floor. He propped his feet on
the footrest of the seat ahead of him spoke to
the other occupant of the seat. I might, hi, Harry, say,
(02:28):
what's your watch schedule? Now? I've got four hours off,
back on for four then sixteen off. Why well, a
few of us are getting up a friendly little game
before we go back on watch. I thought you might
want to join us. Well, I come on, now, what's
your excuse this time for not playing cards? To start with?
I'm scheduled for a half hour in the simulator and
another half hour in the procedural trainer. Then if I
(02:51):
finished the exam in my correspondence, cause I can get
it on this week's mail plane. If I don't get
it in the mail now, I'll have to wait until
next week. All right, I'll let you off this time.
How's the course coming? This is the final exam? If
I pass I'll have forty two more credits to go
before I have my degree in animal husbandry on Earth?
Do you want a degree like that? I keep telling
(03:13):
you when I retire, I'm going back to Oklahoma and
raise horses. If I got into all the card games
you try to organize, I'll retire with neither the knowledge
to run a horse ranch nor the money to start one.
Why raise horses cabbages? I can see tomatoes, yes, but
why horses. Partly that's because there's always a market for them,
so I'll have a fair amount of business to keep
(03:34):
me eating regularly, but mostly because I like horses. I
practically grew up in the saddle by the time I
was old enough to do much riding. Dad had his
own ranch, and I helped my keep by working for him.
Under those circumstances, I just naturally learned to like horses.
Guess I never thought of it like that. I was
a silly boy myself. Nearly horses I ever saw were
(03:55):
the ones the cops rode. I didn't get much chance
to become familiar with the beasts. Well, you don't know
what you've missed. It's just impossible to describe what it's
like to use a highest spirited and well trained horse
in your daily work. The horse almost gets to sense
what you want him to do next. You don't have
to direct his every move. Just a word or two
and a touch with your heel or a pressure of
(04:15):
a knee against his side, and he's got the idea.
A well trained horse is perfectly capable of cutting a
particular cow out of a herd without any instruction beyond
showing him which one you want. Too bad, the Army
did away with a cavalry sounds like you belong there.
Not in the Air Force, no, because if there's anything
I like better than riding a good horse, it's flying
(04:36):
a fast and responsive airplane. I've been flying fighters for
almost seventeen years now, and I'll be quite happy to
keep flying them as long as they'll let me. When
I can't fly fighters any more, then I'll go back
to horses, and as much as I like horses, I
hope that's going to be a long time. Yet you
must hate this assignment, then how come I never hear
you complain about it? The only reason I don't complain
(04:59):
about this aside it is that I volunteered for it,
and I've been kicking myself ever since. When I heard
about the rocket interceptors, I was really excited. Imagine a
plane fast enough to catch up with an invading ballistic
missile and shoot it down. I decided this was for
me and jumped at the assignment. They sounded like the
hot fider planes to end all hot fider planes. And
what do I find? They're so expensive to fly that
(05:21):
we don't get any training missions. I've been up in
one just once, and that was my familiarization flight when
I got into this assignment last year, and then it
was only a ride in the second seat of that
two seater version they use for checking out new pilots.
I just lay there through the whole flight. As far
as I could see, the pilot didn't do much more.
He just watched things while the auto pilot did all
(05:41):
the work. Well, don't take it too hard. You might
get some flights, that's true. They do mistake a meteor
for a missile now and then, but that only happens
to her three times a year. That's not enough. I
want some regular flying. Haven't got any flying time in
me for more than a year. The nearest I come
to flying is my time in the procedural trainer to
(06:02):
teach me what buttons to push, and in the simulator
to give me the feel of what happens when I
pushed the buttons. That's okay. They still give you flying pay,
I know, but that's not what I'm after. I fly
because I love flying. I use the flying pay just
to keep up the extra premiums the insurance companies keep
on sisting so long as I indulge my passion for
fighter planes. I guess about the only way you could
(06:24):
get any regular flying on this job would be for
a water come along. That's about it. Would fly just
as often as they could recover our ships and send
us back up here for another launch. And that would
go on until the economy on both sides broke down
so far they couldn't afford to send any more missiles
for us to chase, or boosters to send us up
after them. No thanks, I don't want to fly that badly.
(06:46):
I like civilization. In the meantime, then you ought to
enjoy it here. Where else can you spend most of
your working hours lying flat on your back on the
most comfortable couch science can devise. That's the trouble, Just
lying there where you can't read, write, talk, or listen.
Might be okay for a hermit, but I'd rather fly
fighter planes. Here's the trainer building. I've got to get
(07:08):
out seven o'clock. Harry Lightfoot licked the flap of the envelope,
sealed it shut, stuck some stamps on the front, and
scrawled air mail under the stamps. He dropped the letter
into the state side slot. The exam hadn't been so bad.
What did they think he was, anyway? A city slicker
who had never seen a live cow in his life.
(07:29):
He ambled into the off duty pilot's lounge. He had
an hour to kill before going on watch, and this
was as good a place as any to kill it.
The lounge was almost empty. Most of the pilots must
have been asleep. They couldn't all be in Mike's game.
He leaned over a low table in the center of
the room and started sorting through the stack of magazines,
looking for anything in particular. Harry. He turned to face
(07:51):
the speaker. No, just going through these fugitives from a
dentist's office to see if there's anything I haven't read yet.
I can't figure out where all the new magazine means go.
The ones in here allway seemed to be exactly two
months old. Is this month's Western Stories? I just finished it. It
had some pretty good stories in it. No thanks, The
wrong side always wins in that one. The wrong Oh,
(08:12):
I forgot. I guess they don't write stories where your
side wins. It's not really a question of my side.
My tribe gave up the practice of tribal life and
tribal customs over fifty years ago. I had the same
education in a public school as any other American child.
I read the same newspapers, watched the same TV shows
as anyone else. My apache ancestry means as little to
(08:34):
me as the nationality of his immigrant ancestors means to
the average American. I certainly don't consider myself to be
part of a nation still at war with the pale faces.
Then what's wrong with the Western Stories where the United
States cavalry wins. That's a different thing entirely. Some of
the earliest memories I have are of listening to my
grandfather tell me about how he and his friends fought
(08:55):
against the horse soldiers when he was a young man.
I imagine he put more romance than his dorical accuracy
into his stories. After all, he was telling an eager
kid about the adventures he had over fifty years before.
At any rate, he definitely fixed my emotions on the
side of the Indians and against the United States cavalry.
And the fact that culturally undescended from the cavalry rather
than from the apache Indians doesn't change my emotions any
(09:18):
I imagine that would have a strong effect on you.
These stories are really cheering at the death of some
of your grandfather's friends. Oh it's worse than that. In
a lot of hack written stories, the Indians are just
convenient targets for the hero to shoot at while the
author gets on with the story. These stories are bad enough,
but the worst are the ones where the Indians are
depicted as brutal savages with no redeeming virtues. My grandfather
(09:41):
had an elaborate code of honor which governed his conduct
in battle. It was different from the code of people
he fought, but it was at least as rigid, and
deviations from it were punished severely. He never read Klauswitz.
To him, war wasn't an instrument of national policy. It
was a chance for the individual warrior. To demonstrate his
skill and bravery. His code put a high premium on
(10:01):
the individual courage and combat, and the weakly or coward
was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the
Indian treatment of captured civilians and non combatants. But nevertheless,
I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and
views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him
so falsely represented by authors of the run of the mill,
western's story or movie. Well, those writers have to eat too,
(10:26):
and maybe they can't hold an honest job. Besides, you
don't still look at war the way your grandfather did,
do you. Civilization requires plenty of other virtues besides courage
and combat. We've plenty of better ways to display those virtues.
And the real goal of the fighting man is to
be alive after the war so we can go home
to enjoy the things he was fighting for. No, I
hadn't been in carea long before I lost any notions
(10:48):
I might have had of war as a glorious adventure.
My grandfather described it to be. It's nothing but a
bloody business and should be resorted to only if everything
else fails. But I still think the individual fighter could
do a lot worse than follow the code that my
grandfather believed in hats so, especially since the coward usually
gets shot anyway, if not by the enemy, then by
his own side. Hey, it's getting late. I've got some
(11:10):
things to do before going on watch. Be seeing you, okay,
I'll try to find something else here. I haven't read yet.
Eight o'clock. Still no sign of the sun. The stars
didn't have the sky to themselves. However, two or three
times a minute a meteor would be visible, most of
them appearing to come from a point about halfway between
the pole Star and the eastern horizon. Harry Lightfoot stopped
(11:33):
the elevator, opened the hatch, and stepped in. She's all yours, Harry.
I've checked out with the tower. Okay, that gyro any worse? No,
it seems to have said it a bit. Nothing else
gone wrong either. Looks like we're in luck for a change.
Let me have the Parker and i'll clear out. I'll
think of you up here while I'm relaxing. Just imagine
(11:53):
a whole twenty four hours off and not even a
training scheduled. Someone slipped up. I'll bet byway be sure
to look at the fireworks when you go out, the
better now than I've seen them at any time since
they started the media shower. You mean, thanks, I'll take
a look. I bet they're really cluttering up the radar screens.
The launch control officer must be going quietly nuts. The
(12:15):
launch control officer wasn't going nuts. Anyone who went nuts
under stress simply didn't pass the psychological tests required of
the prospective launch control officers. However, he was decidedly unhappy.
He sat in a dimly littered room, facing three ocilloscope screens.
On each of them, a pie wedge section was illuminated
(12:35):
by a white line which swept back and forth like
a windshield wiper. Unlike a windshield wiper, however, it put
little white blobs on the screen instead of removing them.
Each blob represented something which had returned a radar echo.
The center screen was his own radar. The outer two
were televised images of the radar screens at the stations
a hundred miles on either side of him, part of
(12:57):
a chain of stations extending from Alaska to Green In
the room behind him, and facing sets of screens similar
to his sat his assistance they located the incoming objects
on the screen and set automatic computers to determine the velocity, trajectory,
and probable impact point. This information appeared as coded symbols
beside the tracks on the center screen of the launch
(13:19):
control officer, as well as all duplicate screens. The launch
control officer and he alone had the responsibility to determine
whether the parameters for a given track were compatible with
an invading intercontinental ballistic missile or whether the track represented
something harmless. If he failed to launch an interceptor at
a track that turned out to be hostile, it meant
(13:39):
the death of an American city. However, if he made
a habit of launching interceptors at false targets, he would
soon run out of interceptors, and only under the pressure
of actual war could the incredible cost of shipping in
more interceptors during the winter be paid without a second thought. Normally,
no more could be shipped until spring. That would mean
again app in the chain that could not be covered
(14:01):
adequately by interceptors from the adjacent stations. His screens were
never completely clear, and to complicate things, the quadrantids, which
start every New Year's Day and last four days were
giving him additional trouble. Each track had to be analyzed,
and the presence of the meteor shower greatly increased the
number of tracks he had to worry about. However, the
(14:22):
worst was past one more day and they would be over.
The clutter on his screens were dropped back to normal.
Even under the best of circumstances, his problem was bad.
He was hemmed in on one side by physics and
on the other by arithmetic. The most probable direction for
an attack was from over the pole. His radar beam
bent only slightly to follow the curve of the Earth
(14:45):
at great range, the lower edge of the beam was
too far above the Earth's surface to detect anything of
military significance. On a minimum altitude trajectory, an ICBM aimed
at North America would not be visible until it reached
eighty three degrees north latitude on the other side of
the pole. One of his interceptors took three hundred eighty
five seconds to match trajectories with such a missile, and
(15:06):
the match occurred only two degrees of latitude south of
the station. The invading missile traveled one degree of latitude
in fourteen seconds. Thus he had to launch the interceptor
when the missile was twenty seven degrees from intercept. This
turned out to be eighty five degrees north latitude on
the other side of the pole. This left him at
most thirty seconds to decide whether or not to intercept
(15:27):
a track crossing the pole, and if several tracks were present,
he had to split that time among them. If too
many tracks appeared, he would have to turn over portions
of the sky to his assistance and let them make
decisions about launching. This would happen only if he felt
an attack was in progress. However, low altitude satellites presented
him with a serious problem, since there is not a
(15:49):
whole lot of difference between the orbit of such a
satellite and the trajectory of an ICB M. Fortunately, most
satellite orbits were catalog and available for comparison with incoming tracks. However,
once in a while an unannounced satellite was launched, and
these could cause trouble. Only the previous week, at a
station down the line, an interceptor had been launched at
(16:10):
an unannounced satellite. Had the pilot not realized what he
was chasing and held his fire, the international complications could
have been serious. He was hard to imagine World War
three being started by an erroneous interceptor launching, but the
State Department would be hard put to soothe the feelings
of some intensely nationalistic country whose expensive new satellite had
been shot down. Such mistakes were bound to occur, but
(16:33):
the launch control officer preferred that they were made when
some one else, not he was on watch. For this reason,
he attempted to anticipate all known satellites so they would
be recognized as soon as they appeared. According to the
notes he had made before coming on watch, one of
the Yuen's weather satellites was due over Shortly, a blip
appeared on the screen just beyond the eighty three degree
(16:54):
latitude line across the pole. He checked the time with
the satellite ephemeris. If this were the satellite, it was
ninety seconds early. That was too much error in the
predicted orbit of the well known satellite. Symbols sprang into
existence beside the track. It was not quite high enough
for the satellite and the velocity was too low, and
the white line swept back across the screen again. More
(17:16):
symbols appeared beside the track. Probable impact point was about
forty degrees latitude. It certainly wasn't the satellite. Two more
blips appeared on the screen at velocities and altitudes similar
to the first. Each swipe of the white line left
more new tracks on the screen, and the screens of
the adjacent stations were showing similar behavior. These couldn't be meteors.
(17:39):
The launch control officer slapped his hand down on a
red push button set into the arm of his chair
and spoke into his mic read alert attack is in progress.
Then switching to another channel, he spoke to his assistance,
take your preassigned sectors, launched one interceptor at each track
identified as hostile. He hadn't enough interceptors to double up
on an attack of this size, and a quick glance
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at the screens for the adjacent stations showed he could
expect no help from them. They would have their hands full.
In theory, one interceptor could handle a missile all by itself,
but the theory had never been tried in combat. That
lack was about to be supplied. Harry Lightfort heard the
alarm over the intercom. He vaguely understood what would happen
(18:20):
before his launch order came. As each track was identified
as hostile, a computer would be assigned to it. He
would compute the correct time of launch, select an interceptor,
and order it off the ground at the correct time.
During the climb to intercept, the computer would radio steering
signals to the interceptor to assure that the intercept took
place in the most efficient fashion. He knew ri I
(18:42):
two seven six had been selected when a green light
on the instrument panel flashed on and a clock dial
started indicating the seconds until launch. Just as the clock
reached zero, a relay closed behind the instrument panel. The
solid fuel booster ignited with a roar. He was squashed
back into his couch under four g's acceleration gyroscopes and
acceleration measuring instruments determine the actual trajectory of the ship.
(19:05):
The navigation computer compared the actual trajectory with the trajectory
set in before take off. When a deviation from the
preset trajectory occurred, the autopilot steered the ship back to
the proper trajectory. As the computer on the ground obtained
better velocity and position information about the missile from the
ground radar, it sent course corrections to the ship, which
(19:26):
were accepted in the computer. As changes to the preset trajectory.
The navigation computer hummed and buzzed. Lights flickered on and
off on the instrument panel, Relays clicked behind the panel.
The ship steered itself towards the correct intercept point. All
this automatic operation was required because no merely human pilot
had reflexes fast enough to carry out the intercept at
(19:47):
twenty six thousand feet per second, and even had his
reflexes been fast enough, he could not have done the
precise piloting required while being pummeled by this acceleration. As
it was, Major Harry Lightfoot fighter pilot lay motionless in
his acceleration couch. His face was distorted by the acceleration,
his breathing was labored. Compressed air bladders in the legs
(20:09):
of his G suit alternately expanded and contracted, squeezing him
like the obscene embrace of some giant snake as the
G suit tried to keep his blood from pooling in
his legs. Without the g suit, he would have blacked out,
and eventually his brain would have been permanently damaged from
the lack of blood to carry oxygen to it. A
red light on the instrument panel blinked bayfully at him
(20:30):
as it measured out the oxygen he required. Other instruments
on the panel informed him about the amount of cooling
air flowing through his suit to keep his temperature with
intolerable range, and the amount of moisture the dehumidifier had
to carry away from him so that his suit didn't
become a steam bath. He was surrounded by hundreds of
pounds of equipment which added nothing to the performance of
the ship, which couldn't be counted as payload, which cut
(20:53):
down on the speed and altitude the ship might have
reached without them. Their sole purpose was to keep this magnificent,
high performance ELF steering machine from killing its load of
fragile human flesh. At one hundred twenty eight seconds after launch,
the acceleration suddenly dropped to zero. He breathed deeply again
and swallowed repeatedly to get the salty taste out of
(21:13):
his throat. His stomach was uneasy, but he wasn't space sick.
Had he been prone to spaceckness, he would never have
been accepted as a rocket interceptor pilot. Rocket interceptor pilots
had to be capable of taking all the punishment their
ships could dish out he knew there would be fifty
seconds of free fall before the rockets fired again. One
solid fuel stage had imparted to the ship a velocity
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which would carry it to the altitude of the missile
lips to intercept. A second solid fuel stage would match
trajectories with the missile. Final corrections would be made with
the liquid fuel rockets in the third stage. The third
stage would then become a glider, which eventually would carry
him back to Earth. Before the second stage was fired, however,
the ship had to be orientated properly. The autopilot consulted
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its gyro, took some star sights, and asked the navigation
computer some questions. The answers came back in seconds, an
interval which was several hours shorter than a human pilot
would have required. Using the answers, the autopilot started to
swing the ship about, using small compressed gas jets for
the purpose. Finally satisfied with the ship's orientation, the autopilot
(22:21):
rested it patiently awaited the moment, precisely calculated by the
computer on the ground, when it would fire the second stage.
Major Harry Lightfoot fighter pilot waited idly for the next
move of his ship, he could only fume inwardly. This
was no way for an apache warrior to ride into battle.
What would his grandfather think of a steed which directed
(22:42):
itself into battle, and which could kill its rider not
by accident, but by its normal operation. He should be
actively hunting for that missile instead of lying here strapped
into his couch, so he wouldn't hurt himself while the
ship did all the work. As for the missile, it
was far to the north and slightly above the ship.
With purpose of its own, but obedient to the laws
(23:02):
of mister Newton and the wishes of its makers. It
came on inexorably. It was a sleek aluminum cylinder, glinting
in the sunlight it had just recently entered. On one
end was a rocket motor, now silent but still warm
with the memory of flaming gas that had poured forth
from it only minutes ago. On the other end was
a sleek aerodynamic shape, the product of thousands of hours
(23:24):
of design work. It was designed to enter the atmosphere
at meteoric speed, but without burning up. It was intended
to survive the passage through the air and convey its
contents intact to the ground. The contents might have been
virulent bacteria or toxic gas, according to the intention of
its makers among its brothers. Elsewhere in the sky this
morning there were such noxious loads. This one, however, was
(23:48):
carrying the complex mechanism of the hydrogen bomb. Its destination
was an American city. Its object to replace that city
with an expanding cloud of star hot gas. Suddenly, the
sleek cylinder disappeared in a puff of smoke, which quickly
dissipated in the surrounding vacuum. What had been a precisely
built rocket had been reduced by carefully placed charges of
(24:10):
explosive to a collection of chunks of metal. Some were
plates from the skin and fuel tanks. Others were large
lumps from the computer banks, gyro platform, fuel pumps, and
other more massive components. This was not wanton destruction, however,
it was more careful planning by the same brains which
had devised the missile itself. To a radar set on
(24:31):
the ground near the target, each fragment was indistinguishable from
the nose cone carrying the warhead. In fact, since the
fragments were separating only very slowly, they would never appear
as distinct objects. By the time the cloud of decoys
entered the atmosphere, its more than two dozen members would
appear to the finest radar available on the ground as
a single echo twenty five miles across. It would be
(24:54):
a giant haystack in the sky, concealing the most deadly
needle of all time. No ground controlled intercept scheme had
any hope of selecting the warhead from among that deceptive
cloud and destroying it. The cloud of fragments possessed the
same trajectory as the missile originally had. At the rate
it was overtaking RI two seven six, it would soon
pass the ship by The auto pilot of RI two
(25:17):
seven six had no intention of letting this happen. Of course,
at the correct instant, Stage two thundered into life, and
Harry Lightfoot was again smashed back into his acceleration couch.
Almost absent mindedly, the ship continued to minister to his needs.
Its attention was focused on its mission. After a while,
the ground computer sent some instructions to the ship. The
(25:38):
navigation computer converted these into a direction and pointed a
radar antanner in that direction. The antenna sent forth a
stream of questing pulses, which quickly returned, confirming the direction
and distance to the oncoming cloud of missile fragments. A
little while later, fuel pumps began to whine somewhere in
the tail of the ship. Then the acceleration dropped to zero.
(26:00):
The second stage thrust was terminated. There was a series
of thumps as explosive bolts released the second stage. The
wine of the pumps dropped him pitch as fuel gushed
through them, and acceleration returned in a rush. The acceleration
lasted for a few seconds, tapered off quickly and ended.
A light winked on in the instrument panel as the
ship announced its mission was accomplished. Major Harry lightfort Fighter
(26:24):
pilot felt a glow of satisfaction as he saw the
light come on. He might not have the reflexes fast
enough to pilot the ship up here. He might not
be able to survive the climb to intercept without the
help of a lot of fancy equipment, but he was
still necessary. He was still one step ahead of this
complex robot which had carried him up here. It was
(26:44):
his human judgment and his ability to react correctly in
an unpredictable situation which was needed to locate the warhead
from among the cluster of decoys and destroy it. This
was a job no merely logical machine could do. When
all was said and done, the only purpose for the
existence of this magnificent machine was to put him where
he was now, in the same trajectory as the missile
(27:05):
and slightly behind it. Harry Lightfoot reached for a red
handled toggle switch at the top of the instrument panel,
clicked it from auto to manual, and changed his status
from passenger to pilot. He had little enough time to work.
He could not follow the missile down into the atmosphere,
his ship would burn up. He must begin his pull
out at no less than two hundred miles altitude. That
(27:26):
left him one hundred and eighty three seconds in which
to locate and destroy the warhead. The screen in the
center of his instrument panel could show a composite image
of the space in front of his ship based on
data from a number of sensing elements and detectors. He
switched on an infrared scanner. A collection of spots appeared
on the screen, each spot indicating by its color the
(27:47):
temperature of the object it represented. The infrared detector gave
him no range information, of course, but if the autopilot
had done its job well, the nearest fragment would be
about ten miles away. Thus, even if he said off
the enemy warhead, he would be safe. At that range,
the ship would not suffer any structural damage from the heat,
and he could be down on the ground in a
(28:08):
hospital before any radiation effects could become serious. He reflected
quickly on the possible temperature range of the missile components.
The missile had been launched from Central Asia at night
in January. There was no reason to suppose that the
warhead had been temperature controlled during the pre launch countdown.
Thus it probably was at ambient temperature of the launch site.
(28:29):
If it had been fired in the open, that might
be as low as minus seventy degrees fahrenheit. Had it
been fired from a shelter, that might be as high
as seventy degrees fahrenheit. To leave a safety margin, he
decided to reject only those objects outside the range of
plus or minus one hundred degrees fahrenheit. There were two
fragments at five hundred degrees. He rejected these as probable
(28:49):
fragments of the engine. Six more exhibited a temperature of
nearly minus three hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit. These probably
came from the liquid oxygen tanks. They could be rejected.
That eliminated eight of the objects on the screen. He
had nineteen to go. It would be a lot slower
for the rest too. He switched on a radar transmitter.
The screen blanked out almost completely. The miss isrel had
(29:12):
included a microwave transmitter to act as a jammer. It
must have been triggered on by his approach. It obviously
hadn't been operating while the ship was maneuvering into position.
Had it been transmitting, then the autopilot would simply have
homed on it. He switched the radar to a different frequency.
That didn't work. The screen was still blank, indicating that
the jammer was sweeping in frequency. He next tried to
(29:35):
synchronize the radar pulses with the jammer in order to
be looking when it was quiet. The enemy, anticipating him,
had given the jammer a variable pulse repetition rate. He
switched off the transmitter and scanned the radar antenna manually.
He slowly swung it back and forth, attempting to fix
the direction of the jammer. By finding the direction of
maximum's signal strength, he found that the enemy had anticipated
(29:57):
him again, and the jammer's signal strength vary. However, he
finally stopped the antenna, satisfied that he had pointed it
at the jammer. The infrared detector confirmed that there was
something in the direction the antenna was pointed, but it
appeared to be too small to be the warhead. He
then activated the manual piloting controls. He started the fuel
pumps winding up, and swung the ship to point normal
(30:19):
to the line of sight to the jammer. A quick
blast from the rocket sent the image of the jammer
moving sideways across the screen, but of greater importance, two
other objects moved across the screen faster than the jammer,
indicating they were nearer to the ship than was the jammer.
He picked the one which appeared the nearest to him,
and with a series of maneuvers and blasts from the rocket,
placed the object between himself and the jammer. He switched
(30:42):
the radar on again. Some of the jammer signal was
still leaking through, but the object, whatever it was, made
an effective shield. The radar images were quite sharp and clear.
He glanced at the clock. Nullifying the jammer had cost
him seventy five seconds. He'd have to hurry in order
to make up for that time. The red detector showed
two targets, which the radar insisted weren't there. He shifted
(31:05):
radar frequency. They still weren't there. He decided they were
small fragments which didn't reflect much radar energy, and rejected them.
He set the radar to a linear polarized mode. Eight
of the targets showed a definite amplitude modulation on the
echo that meant they were rotating slowly. He switched to
circular polarization to see if they presented a constant area
(31:26):
to the radar beam. He compared the echoes for both
modes of polarization. Five of the targets were skin fragments
spinning about an axis skewed with respect to the radar beam.
These he rejected. Two more were structural spars. They couldn't
conceal a warhead. He rejected them. After careful examination of
the fine structure of the echo from the last object,
(31:48):
he was able to classify it as a large irregular mass,
probably a section of computer waving some cables about its irregularity.
Weighed against its containing the warhead. Even if it didn't
burn up in the aptmosis sphere, his trajectory would be
too unpredictable. He turned to the rest of the targets.
Time was getting short. He extracted every conceivable bit of
(32:09):
information out of what his detectors told him. He checked
each fragment for resonant frequencies, getting an idea of the
size and shape of each. He checked the radiated infrared spectrum.
He checked the decrement of the reflected radar pulse. Each
scrap of information was an indication about the identity of
the fragments. With frequent glances at the clock constantly reminding
(32:30):
him of how rapidly his time was running out, he
checked and cross checked the data come in in to him.
Fighting to keep his mind calm and his thoughts clear,
he deduced, inferred, and decided. One fragment after another, he
sought it, discarded, rejected, eliminated, excluded, until the screen was empty.
Now what had the enemy camouflaged the warhead so that
(32:52):
it looked like a section of the missile's skin. Not likely.
Had he made a mistake in his identification of the fragments, possibly,
but there wasn't time to recheck every fragment. He decided
that the most likely event was that the warhead was
hidden by one of the other fragments. He swung the
ship headed it straight for the object shielding him from
the jammer, which had turned out to be a section
(33:13):
from the fuel tank. A short blast from the rockets
sent him drifting towards the object. One image on the
screen broadened split in two. A hidden fragment emerged from
behind one of the ones he had examined. He rejected
it immediately, its temperature was too low. He was almost
upon the fragment shielding him from the jammer. If he
turned to avoid it, the jammer would blank out his
(33:35):
radar again. He thought back to his first look at
the cloud of fragments. There had been nothing between his
shield and the jammer. The only remaining possibility then, was
that the warhead was being hidden from him by the
jammer itself. He would have to look on the other
side of the jammer. Using the ship itself as a shield,
He swung out from behind the shielding fragment and saw
(33:55):
his radar images blotted out. He switched off the radar
and named the ship's slight to one side of the
infrared image of the jammer. Another blast from the rocket
sent him towards the jammer. Without range information from the radar,
he would have to guess its distance by noting the
rate at which it swept across the screen. The image
of the jammer started to expand as he approached it.
(34:16):
Then it became dumbbell shaped and split in two. As
he passed by the jammer, he switched the radar back on.
That second image was something which had been hidden by
the jammer. He looked around, No other new objects appeared
on the screen. This had to be the warhead. Checked
it anyway. Temperature was minus forty degrees fahrenheit. A smile
flickered on his lips as he caught the significance of
(34:38):
the temperature. He hoped the launching crew had gotten their
fingers frozen off while they were going through the countdown.
The object showed no anomalous radar behavior. Beyond doubt it
was the warhead. Then he noted the range a mere
thirteen hundred yards. His own missile carried a small atomic warhead.
At that range, it would present no danger to him,
(34:58):
but what if it triggered the enemy war He and
the ship would be converted into vapor within milliseconds. Even
a partial, low efficiency explosion might leave the ship so
weakened that it could not stand the stresses of return
through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this
range was not much different from playing Russian roulette with
a fully loaded revolver. Could he move out of range
(35:19):
of the explosion and then fire, No, there were only
twelve seconds left before he had to start the pull out.
It would take him longer than that to get to
a safe range, get into position, and then fire. He'd
be dead anyway as the ship plunged into the atmosphere
and burned up, and to pull out without firing would
be saving his own life at the cost of the
lives he was under oath to defend. That would be
(35:42):
sheer cowardice. He hesitated, briefly, shrugged his shoulders as well
as he could inside his flying suit, and snapped a
switch on the instrument panel. A set of crosshairs sprang
into existence on the screen. He gripped a small lever
which projected up from his right armrest, called his thumb
over the firing button on top of it. Moving the lever,
he caused the crosshairs to center on the warhead. He
(36:04):
flicked the firing button to tell the fire control system
that this was the target. A red light blinked on,
informing him that the missile guiden system was tracking the
indicated target. He hesitated again, His body tortened against the
straps holding it in the acceleration couch. His right arm
became rigid, his fingers petrified. Then with a convulsive twitch
(36:25):
of his thumb, he closed the firing circuit. He stared
at the screen, unable to tear his eyes from the
streak of light that leaped away from his ship and
towards the target. The missile reached the target and there
was a small flare of light. His radiation counter burped briefly.
The target vanished from the radar, but the infrared detector insisted.
(36:46):
There was a nebulous fog of hot gas shot through
with a rain of molten droplets where the target had been.
That was all. He had destroyed the enemy warhead without
setting it off. He stabbed the mission accomplished button and
flicked the red handled toggle switch, designing his status as
pilot then he collapsed nerveless into the couch. The autopilot
returned to control. It signaled the air defense network that
(37:09):
this hostile track was no longer dangerous. It received instructions
about a safe corridor to return to the ground where
it would not be shot at. As soon as the
air was thick enough for the control surfaces to bite,
the autopilot steered into the safe corridor. He began the slow,
tedious process of landing safely. The ground was still a
long way down. The kinetic and potential energy of the ship,
(37:31):
if instantly transformed into heat, was enough to flash the
entire ship into vapor. This tremendous store of energy had
to be dissipated without harm to the ship and its occupant.
Major Harry Lightfoot Fighter pilot lay collapsed in his couch,
exhibiting somewhat less ambition than a sack of meal. He
relaxed to the gentle massage of his g suit. The
(37:52):
oxygen control winked reassuringly at him as it maintained a
steady flow. The cabin temperature soared, but he was aware
of it only from a glance at the thermometer. The
air conditioning in his suit automatically stepped up its pace
to keep him comfortable. He reflected that this might not
be so bad, after all. Certainly, none of his ancestors
had ever had this comfortable a ride home from battle.
(38:15):
After a while, the ship had reduced its speed and
altitude to reasonable values. The autopilot requested and received clearance
to land at its pre assigned base. It lined itself
up with a runway, precisely followed the correct glide path,
and flared out just over the end of the runway.
The smoothness of the touchdown was broken only by the
jerk of the drag parachute popping open. The ship came
(38:37):
to a halt near the other end of the rumway.
Harry Lightfoot disconnected himself from the ship and opened the hatch,
carefully avoiding contact with the still hot metal of the
skin of the ship. He jumped the short distance to
the ground. The low pair of a motor behind him
announced the arrival of a tractor to tow the ship
off the runway. You'll have to ride the tractor with me, sir.
We're a bit short of transportation now, okay, sir, be
(39:00):
careful hooking up. She's still hot, how was the flight
Sir No Sweat. She flies herself most of the time.
The End of push Button War by Joseph P. Martine
Push button wore by Joseph P. Martine. In one place,
a descendant of the Vikings rode a ship such as
Leif never dreamed of. From another one of the descendants
of Caesars, and here an Apache rowed a steed such
as never roam the plains. But they were warriors. All
(00:21):
the hatch swung open, admitting a blast of Arctic air
and a man clad in a heavy fur lined parker.
He quickly closed the hatch and turned to the man
in the pilot's couch. Okay, Harry, I'll take over now.
Anything to report. The heading gyro in the autopilot is
still drifting. Did you write it up for maintenance? Yeah?
(00:41):
They said that to replace it they'd have to put
the whole ship in the hangar, and it's full now.
With ships going through periodic inspection, I guess we'll have
to wait. They can't just give us another ship either.
With the hanger so full, we must be pretty close
to the absolute minimum for ships on the line and
ready to fly. O. Ka, let me check out with
the tower and should be all yours. He thumbed the
intercom button and spoke into the mic R I two
(01:03):
seven six to tower major lightfoot going off watch. When
the tower acknowledged, he began to disconnect himself from the
ship With smooth, experienced motions. He disconnected the mic cable,
the oxygen hose, air pressure hose, cooling air hose, electrical
heating cable, and dehumidifier hose which connected his flying suit
to the ship. He donned the parker and gloves his
(01:24):
relief had worn, and stepped through the hatch into the
gantry crane elevator. Even through the heavy parker, the cold
air had a bite to it. As the elevator descended,
he glanced to the south, knowing as he did so
that there would be nothing to see. The sun had
set on November seventeenth and was not due up for
three more weeks. At noon, there would be a faint
(01:45):
glow on the horizon as the sun gave a reminder
of its existence, But now at four in the morning,
there was nothing. As he stepped off the elevator, the
ground crew prepared to roll the gantry crane away from
the ship. He opened the door of the waiting personnel
carrier and swung aboard. The inevitable cry of close that
door greeted him as he entered, He brushed the Parker
(02:06):
hood back from his head and sank into the first
empty seat. The heater struggled valiantly with the arctic cold
to keep the interior of the personnel carrier at a
tolerable temperature, but it never seemed to be able to
do much with the floor. He propped his feet on
the footrest of the seat ahead of him spoke to
the other occupant of the seat. I might, hi, Harry, say,
(02:28):
what's your watch schedule? Now? I've got four hours off,
back on for four then sixteen off. Why well, a
few of us are getting up a friendly little game
before we go back on watch. I thought you might
want to join us. Well, I come on, now, what's
your excuse this time for not playing cards? To start with?
I'm scheduled for a half hour in the simulator and
another half hour in the procedural trainer. Then if I
(02:51):
finished the exam in my correspondence, cause I can get
it on this week's mail plane. If I don't get
it in the mail now, I'll have to wait until
next week. All right, I'll let you off this time.
How's the course coming? This is the final exam? If
I pass I'll have forty two more credits to go
before I have my degree in animal husbandry on Earth?
Do you want a degree like that? I keep telling
(03:13):
you when I retire, I'm going back to Oklahoma and
raise horses. If I got into all the card games
you try to organize, I'll retire with neither the knowledge
to run a horse ranch nor the money to start one.
Why raise horses cabbages? I can see tomatoes, yes, but
why horses. Partly that's because there's always a market for them,
so I'll have a fair amount of business to keep
(03:34):
me eating regularly, but mostly because I like horses. I
practically grew up in the saddle by the time I
was old enough to do much riding. Dad had his
own ranch, and I helped my keep by working for him.
Under those circumstances, I just naturally learned to like horses.
Guess I never thought of it like that. I was
a silly boy myself. Nearly horses I ever saw were
(03:55):
the ones the cops rode. I didn't get much chance
to become familiar with the beasts. Well, you don't know
what you've missed. It's just impossible to describe what it's
like to use a highest spirited and well trained horse
in your daily work. The horse almost gets to sense
what you want him to do next. You don't have
to direct his every move. Just a word or two
and a touch with your heel or a pressure of
(04:15):
a knee against his side, and he's got the idea.
A well trained horse is perfectly capable of cutting a
particular cow out of a herd without any instruction beyond
showing him which one you want. Too bad, the Army
did away with a cavalry sounds like you belong there.
Not in the Air Force, no, because if there's anything
I like better than riding a good horse, it's flying
(04:36):
a fast and responsive airplane. I've been flying fighters for
almost seventeen years now, and I'll be quite happy to
keep flying them as long as they'll let me. When
I can't fly fighters any more, then I'll go back
to horses, and as much as I like horses, I
hope that's going to be a long time. Yet you
must hate this assignment, then how come I never hear
you complain about it? The only reason I don't complain
(04:59):
about this aside it is that I volunteered for it,
and I've been kicking myself ever since. When I heard
about the rocket interceptors, I was really excited. Imagine a
plane fast enough to catch up with an invading ballistic
missile and shoot it down. I decided this was for
me and jumped at the assignment. They sounded like the
hot fider planes to end all hot fider planes. And
what do I find? They're so expensive to fly that
(05:21):
we don't get any training missions. I've been up in
one just once, and that was my familiarization flight when
I got into this assignment last year, and then it
was only a ride in the second seat of that
two seater version they use for checking out new pilots.
I just lay there through the whole flight. As far
as I could see, the pilot didn't do much more.
He just watched things while the auto pilot did all
(05:41):
the work. Well, don't take it too hard. You might
get some flights, that's true. They do mistake a meteor
for a missile now and then, but that only happens
to her three times a year. That's not enough. I
want some regular flying. Haven't got any flying time in
me for more than a year. The nearest I come
to flying is my time in the procedural trainer to
(06:02):
teach me what buttons to push, and in the simulator
to give me the feel of what happens when I
pushed the buttons. That's okay. They still give you flying pay,
I know, but that's not what I'm after. I fly
because I love flying. I use the flying pay just
to keep up the extra premiums the insurance companies keep
on sisting so long as I indulge my passion for
fighter planes. I guess about the only way you could
(06:24):
get any regular flying on this job would be for
a water come along. That's about it. Would fly just
as often as they could recover our ships and send
us back up here for another launch. And that would
go on until the economy on both sides broke down
so far they couldn't afford to send any more missiles
for us to chase, or boosters to send us up
after them. No thanks, I don't want to fly that badly.
(06:46):
I like civilization. In the meantime, then you ought to
enjoy it here. Where else can you spend most of
your working hours lying flat on your back on the
most comfortable couch science can devise. That's the trouble, Just
lying there where you can't read, write, talk, or listen.
Might be okay for a hermit, but I'd rather fly
fighter planes. Here's the trainer building. I've got to get
(07:08):
out seven o'clock. Harry Lightfoot licked the flap of the envelope,
sealed it shut, stuck some stamps on the front, and
scrawled air mail under the stamps. He dropped the letter
into the state side slot. The exam hadn't been so bad.
What did they think he was, anyway? A city slicker
who had never seen a live cow in his life.
(07:29):
He ambled into the off duty pilot's lounge. He had
an hour to kill before going on watch, and this
was as good a place as any to kill it.
The lounge was almost empty. Most of the pilots must
have been asleep. They couldn't all be in Mike's game.
He leaned over a low table in the center of
the room and started sorting through the stack of magazines,
looking for anything in particular. Harry. He turned to face
(07:51):
the speaker. No, just going through these fugitives from a
dentist's office to see if there's anything I haven't read yet.
I can't figure out where all the new magazine means go.
The ones in here allway seemed to be exactly two
months old. Is this month's Western Stories? I just finished it. It
had some pretty good stories in it. No thanks, The
wrong side always wins in that one. The wrong Oh,
(08:12):
I forgot. I guess they don't write stories where your
side wins. It's not really a question of my side.
My tribe gave up the practice of tribal life and
tribal customs over fifty years ago. I had the same
education in a public school as any other American child.
I read the same newspapers, watched the same TV shows
as anyone else. My apache ancestry means as little to
(08:34):
me as the nationality of his immigrant ancestors means to
the average American. I certainly don't consider myself to be
part of a nation still at war with the pale faces.
Then what's wrong with the Western Stories where the United
States cavalry wins. That's a different thing entirely. Some of
the earliest memories I have are of listening to my
grandfather tell me about how he and his friends fought
(08:55):
against the horse soldiers when he was a young man.
I imagine he put more romance than his dorical accuracy
into his stories. After all, he was telling an eager
kid about the adventures he had over fifty years before.
At any rate, he definitely fixed my emotions on the
side of the Indians and against the United States cavalry.
And the fact that culturally undescended from the cavalry rather
than from the apache Indians doesn't change my emotions any
(09:18):
I imagine that would have a strong effect on you.
These stories are really cheering at the death of some
of your grandfather's friends. Oh it's worse than that. In
a lot of hack written stories, the Indians are just
convenient targets for the hero to shoot at while the
author gets on with the story. These stories are bad enough,
but the worst are the ones where the Indians are
depicted as brutal savages with no redeeming virtues. My grandfather
(09:41):
had an elaborate code of honor which governed his conduct
in battle. It was different from the code of people
he fought, but it was at least as rigid, and
deviations from it were punished severely. He never read Klauswitz.
To him, war wasn't an instrument of national policy. It
was a chance for the individual warrior. To demonstrate his
skill and bravery. His code put a high premium on
(10:01):
the individual courage and combat, and the weakly or coward
was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the
Indian treatment of captured civilians and non combatants. But nevertheless,
I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and
views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him
so falsely represented by authors of the run of the mill,
western's story or movie. Well, those writers have to eat too,
(10:26):
and maybe they can't hold an honest job. Besides, you
don't still look at war the way your grandfather did,
do you. Civilization requires plenty of other virtues besides courage
and combat. We've plenty of better ways to display those virtues.
And the real goal of the fighting man is to
be alive after the war so we can go home
to enjoy the things he was fighting for. No, I
hadn't been in carea long before I lost any notions
(10:48):
I might have had of war as a glorious adventure.
My grandfather described it to be. It's nothing but a
bloody business and should be resorted to only if everything
else fails. But I still think the individual fighter could
do a lot worse than follow the code that my
grandfather believed in hats so, especially since the coward usually
gets shot anyway, if not by the enemy, then by
his own side. Hey, it's getting late. I've got some
(11:10):
things to do before going on watch. Be seeing you, okay,
I'll try to find something else here. I haven't read yet.
Eight o'clock. Still no sign of the sun. The stars
didn't have the sky to themselves. However, two or three
times a minute a meteor would be visible, most of
them appearing to come from a point about halfway between
the pole Star and the eastern horizon. Harry Lightfoot stopped
(11:33):
the elevator, opened the hatch, and stepped in. She's all yours, Harry.
I've checked out with the tower. Okay, that gyro any worse? No,
it seems to have said it a bit. Nothing else
gone wrong either. Looks like we're in luck for a change.
Let me have the Parker and i'll clear out. I'll
think of you up here while I'm relaxing. Just imagine
(11:53):
a whole twenty four hours off and not even a
training scheduled. Someone slipped up. I'll bet byway be sure
to look at the fireworks when you go out, the
better now than I've seen them at any time since
they started the media shower. You mean, thanks, I'll take
a look. I bet they're really cluttering up the radar screens.
The launch control officer must be going quietly nuts. The
(12:15):
launch control officer wasn't going nuts. Anyone who went nuts
under stress simply didn't pass the psychological tests required of
the prospective launch control officers. However, he was decidedly unhappy.
He sat in a dimly littered room, facing three ocilloscope screens.
On each of them, a pie wedge section was illuminated
(12:35):
by a white line which swept back and forth like
a windshield wiper. Unlike a windshield wiper, however, it put
little white blobs on the screen instead of removing them.
Each blob represented something which had returned a radar echo.
The center screen was his own radar. The outer two
were televised images of the radar screens at the stations
a hundred miles on either side of him, part of
(12:57):
a chain of stations extending from Alaska to Green In
the room behind him, and facing sets of screens similar
to his sat his assistance they located the incoming objects
on the screen and set automatic computers to determine the velocity, trajectory,
and probable impact point. This information appeared as coded symbols
beside the tracks on the center screen of the launch
(13:19):
control officer, as well as all duplicate screens. The launch
control officer and he alone had the responsibility to determine
whether the parameters for a given track were compatible with
an invading intercontinental ballistic missile or whether the track represented
something harmless. If he failed to launch an interceptor at
a track that turned out to be hostile, it meant
(13:39):
the death of an American city. However, if he made
a habit of launching interceptors at false targets, he would
soon run out of interceptors, and only under the pressure
of actual war could the incredible cost of shipping in
more interceptors during the winter be paid without a second thought. Normally,
no more could be shipped until spring. That would mean
again app in the chain that could not be covered
(14:01):
adequately by interceptors from the adjacent stations. His screens were
never completely clear, and to complicate things, the quadrantids, which
start every New Year's Day and last four days were
giving him additional trouble. Each track had to be analyzed,
and the presence of the meteor shower greatly increased the
number of tracks he had to worry about. However, the
(14:22):
worst was past one more day and they would be over.
The clutter on his screens were dropped back to normal.
Even under the best of circumstances, his problem was bad.
He was hemmed in on one side by physics and
on the other by arithmetic. The most probable direction for
an attack was from over the pole. His radar beam
bent only slightly to follow the curve of the Earth
(14:45):
at great range, the lower edge of the beam was
too far above the Earth's surface to detect anything of
military significance. On a minimum altitude trajectory, an ICBM aimed
at North America would not be visible until it reached
eighty three degrees north latitude on the other side of
the pole. One of his interceptors took three hundred eighty
five seconds to match trajectories with such a missile, and
(15:06):
the match occurred only two degrees of latitude south of
the station. The invading missile traveled one degree of latitude
in fourteen seconds. Thus he had to launch the interceptor
when the missile was twenty seven degrees from intercept. This
turned out to be eighty five degrees north latitude on
the other side of the pole. This left him at
most thirty seconds to decide whether or not to intercept
(15:27):
a track crossing the pole, and if several tracks were present,
he had to split that time among them. If too
many tracks appeared, he would have to turn over portions
of the sky to his assistance and let them make
decisions about launching. This would happen only if he felt
an attack was in progress. However, low altitude satellites presented
him with a serious problem, since there is not a
(15:49):
whole lot of difference between the orbit of such a
satellite and the trajectory of an ICB M. Fortunately, most
satellite orbits were catalog and available for comparison with incoming tracks. However,
once in a while an unannounced satellite was launched, and
these could cause trouble. Only the previous week, at a
station down the line, an interceptor had been launched at
(16:10):
an unannounced satellite. Had the pilot not realized what he
was chasing and held his fire, the international complications could
have been serious. He was hard to imagine World War
three being started by an erroneous interceptor launching, but the
State Department would be hard put to soothe the feelings
of some intensely nationalistic country whose expensive new satellite had
been shot down. Such mistakes were bound to occur, but
(16:33):
the launch control officer preferred that they were made when
some one else, not he was on watch. For this reason,
he attempted to anticipate all known satellites so they would
be recognized as soon as they appeared. According to the
notes he had made before coming on watch, one of
the Yuen's weather satellites was due over Shortly, a blip
appeared on the screen just beyond the eighty three degree
(16:54):
latitude line across the pole. He checked the time with
the satellite ephemeris. If this were the satellite, it was
ninety seconds early. That was too much error in the
predicted orbit of the well known satellite. Symbols sprang into
existence beside the track. It was not quite high enough
for the satellite and the velocity was too low, and
the white line swept back across the screen again. More
(17:16):
symbols appeared beside the track. Probable impact point was about
forty degrees latitude. It certainly wasn't the satellite. Two more
blips appeared on the screen at velocities and altitudes similar
to the first. Each swipe of the white line left
more new tracks on the screen, and the screens of
the adjacent stations were showing similar behavior. These couldn't be meteors.
(17:39):
The launch control officer slapped his hand down on a
red push button set into the arm of his chair
and spoke into his mic read alert attack is in progress.
Then switching to another channel, he spoke to his assistance,
take your preassigned sectors, launched one interceptor at each track
identified as hostile. He hadn't enough interceptors to double up
on an attack of this size, and a quick glance
(18:00):
at the screens for the adjacent stations showed he could
expect no help from them. They would have their hands full.
In theory, one interceptor could handle a missile all by itself,
but the theory had never been tried in combat. That
lack was about to be supplied. Harry Lightfort heard the
alarm over the intercom. He vaguely understood what would happen
(18:20):
before his launch order came. As each track was identified
as hostile, a computer would be assigned to it. He
would compute the correct time of launch, select an interceptor,
and order it off the ground at the correct time.
During the climb to intercept, the computer would radio steering
signals to the interceptor to assure that the intercept took
place in the most efficient fashion. He knew ri I
(18:42):
two seven six had been selected when a green light
on the instrument panel flashed on and a clock dial
started indicating the seconds until launch. Just as the clock
reached zero, a relay closed behind the instrument panel. The
solid fuel booster ignited with a roar. He was squashed
back into his couch under four g's acceleration gyroscopes and
acceleration measuring instruments determine the actual trajectory of the ship.
(19:05):
The navigation computer compared the actual trajectory with the trajectory
set in before take off. When a deviation from the
preset trajectory occurred, the autopilot steered the ship back to
the proper trajectory. As the computer on the ground obtained
better velocity and position information about the missile from the
ground radar, it sent course corrections to the ship, which
(19:26):
were accepted in the computer. As changes to the preset trajectory.
The navigation computer hummed and buzzed. Lights flickered on and
off on the instrument panel, Relays clicked behind the panel.
The ship steered itself towards the correct intercept point. All
this automatic operation was required because no merely human pilot
had reflexes fast enough to carry out the intercept at
(19:47):
twenty six thousand feet per second, and even had his
reflexes been fast enough, he could not have done the
precise piloting required while being pummeled by this acceleration. As
it was, Major Harry Lightfoot fighter pilot lay motionless in
his acceleration couch. His face was distorted by the acceleration,
his breathing was labored. Compressed air bladders in the legs
(20:09):
of his G suit alternately expanded and contracted, squeezing him
like the obscene embrace of some giant snake as the
G suit tried to keep his blood from pooling in
his legs. Without the g suit, he would have blacked out,
and eventually his brain would have been permanently damaged from
the lack of blood to carry oxygen to it. A
red light on the instrument panel blinked bayfully at him
(20:30):
as it measured out the oxygen he required. Other instruments
on the panel informed him about the amount of cooling
air flowing through his suit to keep his temperature with
intolerable range, and the amount of moisture the dehumidifier had
to carry away from him so that his suit didn't
become a steam bath. He was surrounded by hundreds of
pounds of equipment which added nothing to the performance of
the ship, which couldn't be counted as payload, which cut
(20:53):
down on the speed and altitude the ship might have
reached without them. Their sole purpose was to keep this magnificent,
high performance ELF steering machine from killing its load of
fragile human flesh. At one hundred twenty eight seconds after launch,
the acceleration suddenly dropped to zero. He breathed deeply again
and swallowed repeatedly to get the salty taste out of
(21:13):
his throat. His stomach was uneasy, but he wasn't space sick.
Had he been prone to spaceckness, he would never have
been accepted as a rocket interceptor pilot. Rocket interceptor pilots
had to be capable of taking all the punishment their
ships could dish out he knew there would be fifty
seconds of free fall before the rockets fired again. One
solid fuel stage had imparted to the ship a velocity
(21:36):
which would carry it to the altitude of the missile
lips to intercept. A second solid fuel stage would match
trajectories with the missile. Final corrections would be made with
the liquid fuel rockets in the third stage. The third
stage would then become a glider, which eventually would carry
him back to Earth. Before the second stage was fired, however,
the ship had to be orientated properly. The autopilot consulted
(21:59):
its gyro, took some star sights, and asked the navigation
computer some questions. The answers came back in seconds, an
interval which was several hours shorter than a human pilot
would have required. Using the answers, the autopilot started to
swing the ship about, using small compressed gas jets for
the purpose. Finally satisfied with the ship's orientation, the autopilot
(22:21):
rested it patiently awaited the moment, precisely calculated by the
computer on the ground, when it would fire the second stage.
Major Harry Lightfoot fighter pilot waited idly for the next
move of his ship, he could only fume inwardly. This
was no way for an apache warrior to ride into battle.
What would his grandfather think of a steed which directed
(22:42):
itself into battle, and which could kill its rider not
by accident, but by its normal operation. He should be
actively hunting for that missile instead of lying here strapped
into his couch, so he wouldn't hurt himself while the
ship did all the work. As for the missile, it
was far to the north and slightly above the ship.
With purpose of its own, but obedient to the laws
(23:02):
of mister Newton and the wishes of its makers. It
came on inexorably. It was a sleek aluminum cylinder, glinting
in the sunlight it had just recently entered. On one
end was a rocket motor, now silent but still warm
with the memory of flaming gas that had poured forth
from it only minutes ago. On the other end was
a sleek aerodynamic shape, the product of thousands of hours
(23:24):
of design work. It was designed to enter the atmosphere
at meteoric speed, but without burning up. It was intended
to survive the passage through the air and convey its
contents intact to the ground. The contents might have been
virulent bacteria or toxic gas, according to the intention of
its makers among its brothers. Elsewhere in the sky this
morning there were such noxious loads. This one, however, was
(23:48):
carrying the complex mechanism of the hydrogen bomb. Its destination
was an American city. Its object to replace that city
with an expanding cloud of star hot gas. Suddenly, the
sleek cylinder disappeared in a puff of smoke, which quickly
dissipated in the surrounding vacuum. What had been a precisely
built rocket had been reduced by carefully placed charges of
(24:10):
explosive to a collection of chunks of metal. Some were
plates from the skin and fuel tanks. Others were large
lumps from the computer banks, gyro platform, fuel pumps, and
other more massive components. This was not wanton destruction, however,
it was more careful planning by the same brains which
had devised the missile itself. To a radar set on
(24:31):
the ground near the target, each fragment was indistinguishable from
the nose cone carrying the warhead. In fact, since the
fragments were separating only very slowly, they would never appear
as distinct objects. By the time the cloud of decoys
entered the atmosphere, its more than two dozen members would
appear to the finest radar available on the ground as
a single echo twenty five miles across. It would be
(24:54):
a giant haystack in the sky, concealing the most deadly
needle of all time. No ground controlled intercept scheme had
any hope of selecting the warhead from among that deceptive
cloud and destroying it. The cloud of fragments possessed the
same trajectory as the missile originally had. At the rate
it was overtaking RI two seven six, it would soon
pass the ship by The auto pilot of RI two
(25:17):
seven six had no intention of letting this happen. Of course,
at the correct instant, Stage two thundered into life, and
Harry Lightfoot was again smashed back into his acceleration couch.
Almost absent mindedly, the ship continued to minister to his needs.
Its attention was focused on its mission. After a while,
the ground computer sent some instructions to the ship. The
(25:38):
navigation computer converted these into a direction and pointed a
radar antanner in that direction. The antenna sent forth a
stream of questing pulses, which quickly returned, confirming the direction
and distance to the oncoming cloud of missile fragments. A
little while later, fuel pumps began to whine somewhere in
the tail of the ship. Then the acceleration dropped to zero.
(26:00):
The second stage thrust was terminated. There was a series
of thumps as explosive bolts released the second stage. The
wine of the pumps dropped him pitch as fuel gushed
through them, and acceleration returned in a rush. The acceleration
lasted for a few seconds, tapered off quickly and ended.
A light winked on in the instrument panel as the
ship announced its mission was accomplished. Major Harry lightfort Fighter
(26:24):
pilot felt a glow of satisfaction as he saw the
light come on. He might not have the reflexes fast
enough to pilot the ship up here. He might not
be able to survive the climb to intercept without the
help of a lot of fancy equipment, but he was
still necessary. He was still one step ahead of this
complex robot which had carried him up here. It was
(26:44):
his human judgment and his ability to react correctly in
an unpredictable situation which was needed to locate the warhead
from among the cluster of decoys and destroy it. This
was a job no merely logical machine could do. When
all was said and done, the only purpose for the
existence of this magnificent machine was to put him where
he was now, in the same trajectory as the missile
(27:05):
and slightly behind it. Harry Lightfoot reached for a red
handled toggle switch at the top of the instrument panel,
clicked it from auto to manual, and changed his status
from passenger to pilot. He had little enough time to work.
He could not follow the missile down into the atmosphere,
his ship would burn up. He must begin his pull
out at no less than two hundred miles altitude. That
(27:26):
left him one hundred and eighty three seconds in which
to locate and destroy the warhead. The screen in the
center of his instrument panel could show a composite image
of the space in front of his ship based on
data from a number of sensing elements and detectors. He
switched on an infrared scanner. A collection of spots appeared
on the screen, each spot indicating by its color the
(27:47):
temperature of the object it represented. The infrared detector gave
him no range information, of course, but if the autopilot
had done its job well, the nearest fragment would be
about ten miles away. Thus, even if he said off
the enemy warhead, he would be safe. At that range,
the ship would not suffer any structural damage from the heat,
and he could be down on the ground in a
(28:08):
hospital before any radiation effects could become serious. He reflected
quickly on the possible temperature range of the missile components.
The missile had been launched from Central Asia at night
in January. There was no reason to suppose that the
warhead had been temperature controlled during the pre launch countdown.
Thus it probably was at ambient temperature of the launch site.
(28:29):
If it had been fired in the open, that might
be as low as minus seventy degrees fahrenheit. Had it
been fired from a shelter, that might be as high
as seventy degrees fahrenheit. To leave a safety margin, he
decided to reject only those objects outside the range of
plus or minus one hundred degrees fahrenheit. There were two
fragments at five hundred degrees. He rejected these as probable
(28:49):
fragments of the engine. Six more exhibited a temperature of
nearly minus three hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit. These probably
came from the liquid oxygen tanks. They could be rejected.
That eliminated eight of the objects on the screen. He
had nineteen to go. It would be a lot slower
for the rest too. He switched on a radar transmitter.
The screen blanked out almost completely. The miss isrel had
(29:12):
included a microwave transmitter to act as a jammer. It
must have been triggered on by his approach. It obviously
hadn't been operating while the ship was maneuvering into position.
Had it been transmitting, then the autopilot would simply have
homed on it. He switched the radar to a different frequency.
That didn't work. The screen was still blank, indicating that
the jammer was sweeping in frequency. He next tried to
(29:35):
synchronize the radar pulses with the jammer in order to
be looking when it was quiet. The enemy, anticipating him,
had given the jammer a variable pulse repetition rate. He
switched off the transmitter and scanned the radar antenna manually.
He slowly swung it back and forth, attempting to fix
the direction of the jammer. By finding the direction of
maximum's signal strength, he found that the enemy had anticipated
(29:57):
him again, and the jammer's signal strength vary. However, he
finally stopped the antenna, satisfied that he had pointed it
at the jammer. The infrared detector confirmed that there was
something in the direction the antenna was pointed, but it
appeared to be too small to be the warhead. He
then activated the manual piloting controls. He started the fuel
pumps winding up, and swung the ship to point normal
(30:19):
to the line of sight to the jammer. A quick
blast from the rocket sent the image of the jammer
moving sideways across the screen, but of greater importance, two
other objects moved across the screen faster than the jammer,
indicating they were nearer to the ship than was the jammer.
He picked the one which appeared the nearest to him,
and with a series of maneuvers and blasts from the rocket,
placed the object between himself and the jammer. He switched
(30:42):
the radar on again. Some of the jammer signal was
still leaking through, but the object, whatever it was, made
an effective shield. The radar images were quite sharp and clear.
He glanced at the clock. Nullifying the jammer had cost
him seventy five seconds. He'd have to hurry in order
to make up for that time. The red detector showed
two targets, which the radar insisted weren't there. He shifted
(31:05):
radar frequency. They still weren't there. He decided they were
small fragments which didn't reflect much radar energy, and rejected them.
He set the radar to a linear polarized mode. Eight
of the targets showed a definite amplitude modulation on the
echo that meant they were rotating slowly. He switched to
circular polarization to see if they presented a constant area
(31:26):
to the radar beam. He compared the echoes for both
modes of polarization. Five of the targets were skin fragments
spinning about an axis skewed with respect to the radar beam.
These he rejected. Two more were structural spars. They couldn't
conceal a warhead. He rejected them. After careful examination of
the fine structure of the echo from the last object,
(31:48):
he was able to classify it as a large irregular mass,
probably a section of computer waving some cables about its irregularity.
Weighed against its containing the warhead. Even if it didn't
burn up in the aptmosis sphere, his trajectory would be
too unpredictable. He turned to the rest of the targets.
Time was getting short. He extracted every conceivable bit of
(32:09):
information out of what his detectors told him. He checked
each fragment for resonant frequencies, getting an idea of the
size and shape of each. He checked the radiated infrared spectrum.
He checked the decrement of the reflected radar pulse. Each
scrap of information was an indication about the identity of
the fragments. With frequent glances at the clock constantly reminding
(32:30):
him of how rapidly his time was running out, he
checked and cross checked the data come in in to him.
Fighting to keep his mind calm and his thoughts clear,
he deduced, inferred, and decided. One fragment after another, he
sought it, discarded, rejected, eliminated, excluded, until the screen was empty.
Now what had the enemy camouflaged the warhead so that
(32:52):
it looked like a section of the missile's skin. Not likely.
Had he made a mistake in his identification of the fragments, possibly,
but there wasn't time to recheck every fragment. He decided
that the most likely event was that the warhead was
hidden by one of the other fragments. He swung the
ship headed it straight for the object shielding him from
the jammer, which had turned out to be a section
(33:13):
from the fuel tank. A short blast from the rockets
sent him drifting towards the object. One image on the
screen broadened split in two. A hidden fragment emerged from
behind one of the ones he had examined. He rejected
it immediately, its temperature was too low. He was almost
upon the fragment shielding him from the jammer. If he
turned to avoid it, the jammer would blank out his
(33:35):
radar again. He thought back to his first look at
the cloud of fragments. There had been nothing between his
shield and the jammer. The only remaining possibility then, was
that the warhead was being hidden from him by the
jammer itself. He would have to look on the other
side of the jammer. Using the ship itself as a shield,
He swung out from behind the shielding fragment and saw
(33:55):
his radar images blotted out. He switched off the radar
and named the ship's slight to one side of the
infrared image of the jammer. Another blast from the rocket
sent him towards the jammer. Without range information from the radar,
he would have to guess its distance by noting the
rate at which it swept across the screen. The image
of the jammer started to expand as he approached it.
(34:16):
Then it became dumbbell shaped and split in two. As
he passed by the jammer, he switched the radar back on.
That second image was something which had been hidden by
the jammer. He looked around, No other new objects appeared
on the screen. This had to be the warhead. Checked
it anyway. Temperature was minus forty degrees fahrenheit. A smile
flickered on his lips as he caught the significance of
(34:38):
the temperature. He hoped the launching crew had gotten their
fingers frozen off while they were going through the countdown.
The object showed no anomalous radar behavior. Beyond doubt it
was the warhead. Then he noted the range a mere
thirteen hundred yards. His own missile carried a small atomic warhead.
At that range, it would present no danger to him,
(34:58):
but what if it triggered the enemy war He and
the ship would be converted into vapor within milliseconds. Even
a partial, low efficiency explosion might leave the ship so
weakened that it could not stand the stresses of return
through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this
range was not much different from playing Russian roulette with
a fully loaded revolver. Could he move out of range
(35:19):
of the explosion and then fire, No, there were only
twelve seconds left before he had to start the pull out.
It would take him longer than that to get to
a safe range, get into position, and then fire. He'd
be dead anyway as the ship plunged into the atmosphere
and burned up, and to pull out without firing would
be saving his own life at the cost of the
lives he was under oath to defend. That would be
(35:42):
sheer cowardice. He hesitated, briefly, shrugged his shoulders as well
as he could inside his flying suit, and snapped a
switch on the instrument panel. A set of crosshairs sprang
into existence on the screen. He gripped a small lever
which projected up from his right armrest, called his thumb
over the firing button on top of it. Moving the lever,
he caused the crosshairs to center on the warhead. He
(36:04):
flicked the firing button to tell the fire control system
that this was the target. A red light blinked on,
informing him that the missile guiden system was tracking the
indicated target. He hesitated again, His body tortened against the
straps holding it in the acceleration couch. His right arm
became rigid, his fingers petrified. Then with a convulsive twitch
(36:25):
of his thumb, he closed the firing circuit. He stared
at the screen, unable to tear his eyes from the
streak of light that leaped away from his ship and
towards the target. The missile reached the target and there
was a small flare of light. His radiation counter burped briefly.
The target vanished from the radar, but the infrared detector insisted.
(36:46):
There was a nebulous fog of hot gas shot through
with a rain of molten droplets where the target had been.
That was all. He had destroyed the enemy warhead without
setting it off. He stabbed the mission accomplished button and
flicked the red handled toggle switch, designing his status as
pilot then he collapsed nerveless into the couch. The autopilot
returned to control. It signaled the air defense network that
(37:09):
this hostile track was no longer dangerous. It received instructions
about a safe corridor to return to the ground where
it would not be shot at. As soon as the
air was thick enough for the control surfaces to bite,
the autopilot steered into the safe corridor. He began the slow,
tedious process of landing safely. The ground was still a
long way down. The kinetic and potential energy of the ship,
(37:31):
if instantly transformed into heat, was enough to flash the
entire ship into vapor. This tremendous store of energy had
to be dissipated without harm to the ship and its occupant.
Major Harry Lightfoot Fighter pilot lay collapsed in his couch,
exhibiting somewhat less ambition than a sack of meal. He
relaxed to the gentle massage of his g suit. The
(37:52):
oxygen control winked reassuringly at him as it maintained a
steady flow. The cabin temperature soared, but he was aware
of it only from a glance at the thermometer. The
air conditioning in his suit automatically stepped up its pace
to keep him comfortable. He reflected that this might not
be so bad, after all. Certainly, none of his ancestors
had ever had this comfortable a ride home from battle.
(38:15):
After a while, the ship had reduced its speed and
altitude to reasonable values. The autopilot requested and received clearance
to land at its pre assigned base. It lined itself
up with a runway, precisely followed the correct glide path,
and flared out just over the end of the runway.
The smoothness of the touchdown was broken only by the
jerk of the drag parachute popping open. The ship came
(38:37):
to a halt near the other end of the rumway.
Harry Lightfoot disconnected himself from the ship and opened the hatch,
carefully avoiding contact with the still hot metal of the
skin of the ship. He jumped the short distance to
the ground. The low pair of a motor behind him
announced the arrival of a tractor to tow the ship
off the runway. You'll have to ride the tractor with me, sir.
We're a bit short of transportation now, okay, sir, be
(39:00):
careful hooking up. She's still hot, how was the flight
Sir No Sweat. She flies herself most of the time.
The End of push Button War by Joseph P. Martine
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