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There was horror in it. And what Soames could not know now was that at this same instant the same sound came out of every radio and television set in use in all the world. The noise stopped. Now a bright spot showed on each of the meteor-watch radar's twin screens. The screen indicating height said that the source of the dot was four miles high.
It was at the most extreme limit of the radar's range. A ship had come out of overdrive near the fourth planetary orbit of this solar system. Bors and the yeoman computer-operator figured its distance to six places of decimals. Bors set the microsecond timer. The Horus went into low-speed overdrive and out again.
Within the radar's range there were hundreds of tiny blips. Some were marked with a nimbus apiece. They were friends. Many, many more were not. The Mekinese fleet, too, could determine its own numbers in comparison to the defending fleet.
It stopped dead. It pointed, trembling a little as if with eagerness. It pointed somewhere east of due south, and above the horizon. "Here's a meteor. It's falling now," said Soames. Then he looked again. The radar's twin screens should have shown two dots of light, one to register the detected object's height, and another its angle and distance. But both screens were empty.
The pilot didn't see anything unusual. At 11:45P.M., according to the logbook in the tower, one of the operators called a nearby radar site and asked if they had an unidentified target on their scopes. They did. The FEAF intelligence officers who investigated the sighting made a special effort to try to find out if the radar's unidentified target and the light were the same object.
Get a fix on us and come a-running. We're at eighteen thousand and" here the floor of the cabin tilted markedly "now we're climbing. Get a fix on us and come a-running. Over!" He took the phone from his lips and said conversationally: "Radar's a giveaway. This is no fly-way. You wouldn't think he'd take that much of a chance, would you?" Joe clenched his hands.
And with all that other stuff around here, we might have missed this one and hit two others!" "Yeah," agreed Astro. "It must have been good, because I'm still here!" "Got your radar sweeping ahead, Roger?" asked Tom. "Any sign of an opening in this stuff?" "Radar's going all the time, Tom," replied Roger.
The radar picked up the F-86's soon after they were airborne, and had begun to direct them into the target when the target started to fade on the radarscope. At the time several of the operators thought that this fade was caused by the target's losing altitude rapidly and getting below the radar's beam.
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