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The jatos of the pushpots used the beryllium-fluorine fuel that had lifted the Platform and that filled the take-off rockets of Joe's ship. These jatos gave the pushpots themselves an acceleration of ten gravities, but it had to be shared with the cage and the ship. Still.... Joe felt himself slammed back into his seat with irresistible, overwhelming force.
But certainly jatos flared briefly at some point, and the object reached ninety thousand feet where a jet motor would certainly be useless. And then, almost certainly, rockets flared once more and well south of the Dakotas it started down in a trajectory like that of an artillery shell, but with considerably higher speed than most artillery shells achieve.
They had to start off on one course with a slight spread as a safety measure and at one time. So the firing-circuits were keyed to relays in series. Only when all seven firing-keys were down at the same time would any of the jatos fire. Then all would blast together. The pilots in the cockpit-bubbles of the pushpots had an extraordinary view of the scene.
After the pushpots and their jatos had served as the first two stages of a multiple-rocket aggregation, the Platform carried rocket fuel as the third stage. But the Platform was a highly special ballistic problem. It would take off almost horizontally a great advantage in fueling matters.
The pilot did things to the levers on the column between the two pilots' seats. He said curtly: "Arm the jatos." The co-pilot did something mysterious and said: "Check." All this took place in seconds. The pilot said, "I see something!" and instantly there was swift, tense teamwork in action. A call by radio, asking for help. The plane headed up for greater clearance between it and the clouds.
Then the jatos burned out. There was that ghastly feeling of lunging forward to weightlessness. One instant, Joe's body weighed half a ton. The next instant, it weighed less than a dust grain. His head throbbed twice as if his skull were about to split open and let his brains run out. But these things he had experienced before. There were pantings in the cabin about him. The ship fell.
Very probably, at that moment, it was stretched far past the limit of strain for which even its factor of safety was designed. One rocket had let go. The others went with it. The rockets had had proximity fuses. If they had ringed the transport ship and gone off with it enclosed, it would now be a tumbling mass of wreckage. But the jatos had thrown the plane out ahead of the target area.
You should fire your jatos when practical. You have some leeway in rocket power." Joe spoke into the extraordinary maze of noise waves and pressure systems in the air of the cabin. "We should blast. I'm throwing in the series circuit for jatos. Try to line up. We want the drones above us and with a spread, remember! Go to it!"
They were eight miles up when the pushpots fired their jatos, an' twelve miles up when the pushpots let go they musta near broke their pilots' necks when they caught their motors again! And the Platform's rockets fired just right, makin' flames a mile long, an' they were goin' then what were they makin'?" "Who cares?" asked the Chief peacefully. "Plenty!"
Then the threads of smoke became the thickness of cables, of columns! They should have ringed the transport plane in. But the jatos had jumped it crazily forward and were still thrusting fiercely to make it go faster than any prop-plane could. The acceleration made the muscles at the front of Joe's throat ache as he held his head upright against it. "They'll be proximity " Then the plane bucked.
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