Pitov turned on a couple of view-screens, one from a pickup on the roof
of the bunker and another from the launching-pad. They sat down side by
side and waited. Richardson got his pipe out and began loading it. The
loudspeaker was saying: "_Minus two minutes, one fifty nine, fifty
eight, fifty seven_--"
He let his mind drift away from the test, back to the world that had
been smashed around his ears in the autumn of 1969. He was doing that so
often, now, when he should be thinking about--
"_Two seconds, one second_. FIRING!"
It was a second later that his eyes focussed on the left hand
view-screen. Red and yellow flames were gushing out at the bottom of the
rocket, and it was beginning to tremble. Then the upper jets, the ones
that furnished power for the generators, began firing. He looked
anxiously at the meters; the generators were building up power. Finally,
when he was sure that the rocket would be blasting off anyhow, the
separator-charges fired and the heavy cables fell away. An instant
later, the big missile started inching upward, gaining speed by the
second, first slowly and jerkily and then more rapidly, until it passed
out of the field of the pickup.
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