isolation he had heard NASA men talk about after orbiting the earth in one of the Skylabs, or returning from testing the newest re-entry vehicles. Once he had met Collins one of the lunar astronauts. He had said the same. In his own way, Gant had always felt that removed when his aircraft was on auto-pilot. There was nothing, except a cabin, pressurised, stable, warm — and the human multitude and their planet fled by formlessly as the mist through which he had travelled. That utter isolation was something he had never rid himself of on the ground, not even in violent drinking-jags, or in the relief of Saigon prostitutes. And the reason he sought that lonely superiority of the skies was because the ground had never offered him more than an inferior copy of the same empty isolation. It was just after nine and the mist was clearing at his height, shredding away from the cockpit, so sunlight glanced from the perspex, and the faded blue of the morning sky was revealed. Oh his present heading, he knew he would pass over the Gulf of Kara, that sharp intrusion of the Kara Sea to the west of the Yamal Peninsula within minutes, at this present speed. With the cross-check of a visual bearing on the neck of the gulf, he would be able to feed in the next set of coordinates to the intertial navigator.
He looked ahead. Visibility was not good. There was no sign of water, only the hazy, grey absence of a horizon. He knew he would have to drop down as low as he could, risking visual sighting from the ground, risking the gauntlet of the Firechain which looped across this northern coast. Nevertheless, he had to do it.
The last northern strand of the mountains, limping towards the sea, neared again as he changed altitude, sliding down towards the pockets of mist not yet dispersed by the strengthening sun. He saw the small town of Vorkuta away to port, and knew that his heading was correct and that the sea lay only minutes ahead of him.
Suddenly then, the edge of his radar screen showed the presence of an aircraft, higher and away to starboard; big, probably a Badger long-range reconnaissance plane no doubt returning from a routine patrol out over the Kara Sea and the Arctic Ocean.
Moments passed in which he seemed content just with the knowledge that he was closing on the Badger, judging he would pass well behind it. He assumed that, with a minimum of luck, most of the electronic detection equipment on board the Badger would be shut down that close to its home base. Then, almost with disbelief, three bright orange spots registered on the screen, glowing, climbing, nearing. An infra-red source. Someone on the ground had loosed a bracket of missiles from a Firechain station.
They knew where he was. He realised this, his mind crying out at the jolt its apparent immunity from attack and detection had been given, the sudden draining of confidence.
He could not believe it. The missiles had to be heat-seeking, homing on the exhaust gases of the sky's hottest point. Somehow he was visible to them. And he knew how. The Firechain station had to be using its infra- red equipment to search for the imprint of his exhaust. He was invisible on radar; on an infra-red screen, he would be revealed as a point of orange light. Radar immunity of something which yet gave off hot exhaust gases — it would have to be him. They would have been told that much on the ground. The removing of his immunity stunned him. He watched in paralysed fascination as the cluster of three glowing orange spots on his own screen enlarged as the missiles closed on the Firefox.
Seven
SEARCH AND DESTROY
Contact time, seven seconds. The moment of Gant's stunned failure to respond passed. He pulled his gaze from the three orange spots on the screen. Also registering on the screen was the bright green blip of the Badger, now no more than a few short miles away and moving away below him now and to port. The single screen which constituted the detection 'eye' of the Firefox's electronics was built to register infra-red emissions of heat as orange spots, while radar images appeared as green blips. The missiles behind him were in the lower half of the screen, while the Badger ahead was in the upper half. He was still heading towards it, and it lay along the central ranging bar of the screen.
The Badger was the key to his safety, he realised. Here was a way he could misdirect the seeking missiles. He had to create a hotter spot than his own engines in the sky on to which they would home. He had to destroy the Badger, let it burn like a bonfire.
He pulled the Firefox onto a collision course with the Russian plane. He ignored, with every effort his mind could make, the three orange blips closing towards the centre of the screen. Contact time, five seconds. He pushed open the throttles; he had to be closer to the Badger before he loosed one of his own missiles. The anti-G suit tightened round him, then relaxed as it countered the increased pressure of his speed and dive. The three orange blips slipped across his screen, then centred again as they followed him. The green spot of the Badger enlarged. Gant flicked the 'Weapon Arming' switch on the console to his left. His thumb then flicked the switches to activate the thought-trigger and guidance systems. These switches safeguarded against the inadvertent firing and guiding of the weapons-system at any time. Gant could guide his missiles visually by direct observations of missile and target, or on the screen. What he saw with his eyes, and required the missile to perform, was converted in the brain into electrical impulses, detected by the electrodes in his helmet, and fed into the weapons-system which transmitted a steering signal to the missile. As the distance-to-target read-out indicated the optimum moment for a hit, the thought-guided system automatically launched one of the missiles under the wing. The missile left its bracket, then pulled up and away from the track he had been following. For a moment, light flicked at the corner of his eye as he caught the firing of its motor.
Three seconds to contact time. He began to hope. He saw the outline of the Badger clearly for a moment, directly ahead of him, an enlarging slim grey shape. He pulled the Firefox into a sudden turn to the right, away as acutely as possible from the Badger. Two seconds. On the screen the orange spot almost seemed to be merging with, overflying, the single green blip.
The Badger was in the centre of the screen: it was like a flower opening, a huge flower, orange, the hottest part of the sky as his own missile detonated. Contact time, zero seconds. The flower bloomed even brighter, just below the centre of the screen as he left the maelstrom behind — full bloom as the missiles detonated amid the inferno of the Badger's destruction.
He realised he was sweating freely inside the pressure-suit, and he felt a wave of relief, sharp as nausea, pass through him. Below him on the ground, the infra-red screens which had picked him up would now be confused, filled with light from the massive detonation. When it cleared, he would be out of range. He hoped they would draw the conclusion that he had himself perished in the explosion.
He checked his speed. Just below seven hundred mph. He could not go supersonic as he neared the coast. Too many trained ears, listening for the supersonic wake of his passage.
Now that he had survived, he began to take stock of the Firefox. The thought-guided weapons-system worked, as he had been certain it would. It had been Baranovich's project and, despite the fact that it was difficult to recall his face and the sound of his voice, as though a gulf of time separated them, there had been an unconscious, deep assurance that had been associated with the Russian Jew. He had seen only the tip of the iceberg. He had not needed to react at the speed of thought, but had had to make a conscious decision. But, when he had formed the thought, regarding the port wingtip missile, the advanced Anab-type of AAM, it had fired. All he had felt was the slight roll as the missile had detached itself.
He glanced again at the TFR. He was crossing the coastal strip. The mist that had clung to the coastal mountains had now become what he guessed must be a sea-fog — light, threatening to dissipate, but concealing. Best of all, it provided a sound-muffler, dispersing the noise of his engines so that a sound-trace such as the Russians were known to possess would be confused by echoes.
Then he saw the coast as an uneven line across the TFR screen. The narrow neck of sea formed the furthest inland penetration of the Gulf of Kara. His memory supplied the next set of coordinates as the Firefox passed out over the water, even as he pushed the nose down and lost more height, keeping within the slim belt of fog which slipped past the cabin, grey and formless, removing him from the world. The read-out supplied him with the required heading, and he obeyed the intertial navigator, turning onto the heading that would take him towards the twin islands of Novaya Zemlya, north-west of his present position.
He registered that the altimeter stated two hundred feet, checked the TFR, and eased back the throttles. The engine revolutions dropped, and he saw it register on the airspeed indicator. He levelled the aircraft, keeping it at a steady height of two hundred feet, and still eased back the throttles. While in the fog, he had the opportunity to
