He watched the rising spout of fire from
the other screen until it passed from sight.
By that time, Pitov had twisted a dial and gotten another view on the
left hand screen, this time from close to the target. That camera was
radar-controlled; it had fastened onto the approaching missile, which
was still invisible. The stars swung slowly across the screen until
Richardson recognized the ones he had spotted at the zenith. In a
moment, now, the rocket, a hundred miles overhead, would be nosing down,
and then the warhead would open and the magnetic field inside would
alter and the mass of negamatter would be ejected.
The stars were blotted out by a sudden glow of light. Even at a hundred
miles, there was enough atmospheric density to produce considerable
energy release. Pitov, beside him, was muttering, partly in German and
partly in Russian; most of what Richardson caught was figures. Trying to
calculate how much of the mass of unnatural iron would get down for the
ground blast. Then the right hand screen broke into a wriggling orgy of
color, and at the same time every scrap of radio-transmitted apparatus
either went out or began reporting erratically.
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