"Yes, sir," said the noncom. "I believe it was slated for later, sir, but something came up and I understand that Major Furness--he's the general's aide, sir, besides being your observer--Major Furness assured the general that an earlier take-off would be quite all right, so the ship was checked out yesterday for fueling. The general likes things done ahead of time, sir. He says that if you do today all the things you could put off until tomorrow, you can take tomorrow off." "Major Furness," repeated McCauley, "okayed the earlier take-off time." "Yes, sir," said the noncom. When the noncom closed the door behind him, McCauley burned. There can be trivial things about the feel of a ship that nobody can realize but the pilot. Certainly he should decide when an experimental ship is right to take up. He'd been denied this right. Take-off was tomorrow. But on the other hand, he was vulnerable. He'd had a lot of publicity from that Aerobee ride he'd taken. There were a bunch of people waiting for him to put on a grand air. If he protested anything, they'd say he was putting on an act out of self-importance. So that, short of something glaringly wrong, he had to go along with a decision he hadn't made or subscribed to. He was always in danger of seeming to have a swelled head and an inflated ego and other undesirable symptoms. He needed to avoid them carefully. Right now he smoked a cigarette to kill time lest he seem overanxious to look at the X-21. He didn't expect to be surprised by the ship. Most of the time she was building he'd been sweating out the details of the job of flying her. In Dayton there'd been a mock-up with instruments and controls in a cabin which exactly matched the ship that was not yet completed. An elaborate simulator-trainer controlled the controls and dials. When he got into the mock-up and worked it, the instrument readings, sounds, vibrations, and sensations were exactly what painstaking calculation foretold for the actual ship. It was an adaptation of the training devices that equip submarine crews to function like well-oiled machines the instant they're transferred from training to active service. It was much, much better than the dual-control planes they used to use for teaching fledgling pilots. The mock-up supplied not only the instrument readings of actual flight, but the feel of it. And not only that, it convincingly presented hair-raising emergencies. A man could experience all the griefs of a lifetime of flying in a few hours in such a mock-up. McCauley'd had them. In the nature of things, the X-21 couldn't be given a test flight. It couldn't be tucked under a bomber's wing and lifted aloft to see how it behaved. Nothing could be done with it but take off and try to ride it where no other pilot-controlled ship had ever been, and then try to get it back down again.... If possible! If everything went well, it would be a very good job to have done. If anything went wrong, it would be too bad. Period.