Gershon found it and pushed. The jet throttled back, and the MLTV dipped briefly. Then a new, throaty rocket roar opened up, and the trainer stabilized.

“All right,” Curval said. “Now, the secret of the MLTV is that it has two independent propulsion systems. Right now, your turbofan jet is throttling back to absorb two-thirds of your weight. So if everything else cut out, you’d fall under one-third of a G — just like on Mars. You got that? The jet is knocking out gravity, just enough to make it feel like Mars.”

“Sure.”

“But you don’t fall, because of the two hydrogen peroxide lift rockets under your ass which have just cut in to hold you up. And it’s the lift rockets which are emulating the landing system of the MEM, and that’s what you have to control to bring her in to land. You throttle down the rockets until you land. Like an ICBM trying to land on its tail.”

“Okay.”

“You have two more controls there, Ralph. Your attitude control on the right, and your thrust control on the left. You want to try those babies out?”

“Sure.”

The controls were familiar to Gershon from his sim runs. The attitude control moved in clicks; every time he turned the control the reaction rockets would bang and the MLTV would tip over, by a degree at a time. The thrust control was a toggle switch; every time Gershon closed it the lift rockets roared, to give it a delta-vee of a foot per second.

After the free-flight mode it was surprisingly difficult to handle the trainer; it was like being immersed in some viscous, sticky liquid. Because of the one-third effective gravity, he had to tip the bird three times as far as before to get the same push in any direction. And once he started moving, he just kept on going, until he changed the attitude again, and the craft took some time to respond because of the sluggishness. He found that he had to think out the simplest maneuver well in advance.

Flying like this — balancing on a rocket — was harder than he’d expected, harder than any of the sims had led him to believe. Everything he had painfully learned in a lifetime of flying planes, he realized, was useless.

“Okay, guy. Now, you’ve got a little computer up there running a PGNS program for you.” Curval pronounced it pings. PGNS was a guidance and navigation software package. “If you’re such a hotshot sim jockey, you don’t need me to tell you how you have to let the computer fly you down. All you get to do is to point and squirt—”

“I know it. Come on, Ted. I’m running out of juice out here. Let me bring this thing down.”

“Okay. First off, look through your windshield and pick a place you want to come down. And you’ll see a number on your CRT—”