Altogether it’s a weird contraption, appearing mole blind and not at all aerodynamic. There’s something eerie about the way it rolls to the end of the runway, turns, fires up the jets and shoots down the runway and up into the dark blue sky. Who’s minding the store? Hamilton is grinning at the sight, and McPherson can feel that he is too. There’s something awfully … ingenious about the thing. It really is quite a machine.

The intercom has been giving takeoff specs and such; now, as the RPV’s rocket booster cuts in and it recedes to nothing but a flame dot in the sky, they listen. “Test vehicle three three five now approaching seventy thousand feet. Test program three three five beginning T minus ten seconds. Test program beginning now.”

Ten of the dozen men on the deck start the stopwatch functions of their wristwatches. Some of them have binoculars around their necks, but there won’t be a chance to use them until after the test strike is made; there’s nothing to be seen in the sky, it’s a clean, dark blue, darker than any sky ever seen in OC. Nothing in it. McPherson finds that he’s not breathing regularly, and he concentrates on hitting a steady rhythm. Scanning the sky, in the area where the RPV was last seen, probably not where it will reappear, look around more … his eyesight is remarkably sharp, and un-focusing his attention so that he sees all the expanse of blue above him, he notices a tiny flaw, there far to the north.

“Up there,” he says quickly, and points. The chip of light moves overhead and then quicker than any of them can really follow it the black thing darts down zips over the boom white dunes and the tanks become orange blooms of fire as the thing turns up and fires back into the stratosphere like a rocket. Mach 7, really too fast for the eye to see: the whole pass has taken less than three seconds. The tanks are black clouds of smoke, BoomBoom B-B-B-B-BOOOOM! The sound finally reaches them. Empty blue sky, white dunes marred by six pillars of oily flame, off there on the horizon. Every tank gone.

They were shouting when the booms hit. Now they’re shaking hands and laughing, all talking at once. No matter how many tests they’ve witnessed, the extreme speed of this craft, and the tremendous volume and power of the explosions, inevitably impresses them. It’s a physical, sensory shock, for one thing, and then conceptually it’s exhilarating to think that their calculations, their work, can result in such an awesome display. Hamilton is grinning broadly. “Those Badgers and Armadillos didn’t even have time to register incoming, I’ll bet! The data will show how far they got.”