They knew where he was. He realised this, his mind crying out at the jolt its apparent immunity from attack and detection had been given, the sudden draining of confidence.
He could not believe it. The missiles had to be heat-seeking, homing on the exhaust gases of the sky's hottest point. Somehow he was visible to them. And he knew how. The Firechain station had to be using its infra-red equipment to search for the imprint of his exhaust. He was invisible on radar; on an infra-red screen, he would be revealed as a point of orange light. Radar immunity of something which yet gave off hot exhaust gases — it would have to be him. They would have been told that much on the ground. The removing of his immunity stunned him. He watched in paralysed fascination as the cluster of three glowing orange spots on his own screen enlarged as the missiles closed on the Firefox.
Seven
SEARCH AND DESTROY
Contact time, seven seconds. The moment of Gant's stunned failure to respond passed. He pulled his gaze from the three orange spots on the screen. Also registering on the screen was the bright green blip of the Badger, now no more than a few short miles away and moving away below him now and to port. The single screen which constituted the detection 'eye' of the Firefox's electronics was built to register infra-red emissions of heat as orange spots, while radar images appeared as green blips. The missiles behind him were in the lower half of the screen, while the Badger ahead was in the upper half. He was still heading towards it, and it lay along the central ranging bar of the screen.
The Badger was the key to his safety, he realised. Here was a way he could misdirect the seeking missiles. He had to create a hotter spot than his own engines in the sky on to which they would home. He had to destroy the Badger, let it burn like a bonfire.
He pulled the Firefox onto a collision course with the Russian plane. He ignored, with every effort his mind could make, the three orange blips closing towards the centre of the screen. Contact time, five seconds. He pushed open the throttles; he had to be closer to the Badger before he loosed one of his own missiles. The anti-G suit tightened round him, then relaxed as it countered the increased pressure of his speed and dive. The three orange blips slipped across his screen, then centred again as they followed him. The green spot of the Badger enlarged. Gant flicked the 'Weapon Arming' switch on the console to his left. His thumb then flicked the switches to activate the thought-trigger and guidance systems. These switches safeguarded against the inadvertent firing and guiding of the weapons-system at any time. Gant could guide his missiles visually by direct observations of missile and target, or on the screen. What he saw with his eyes, and required the missile to perform, was converted in the brain into electrical impulses, detected by the electrodes in his helmet, and fed into the weapons-system which transmitted a steering signal to the missile. As the distance-to-target read-out indicated the optimum moment for a hit, the thought-guided system automatically launched one of the missiles under the wing. The missile left its bracket, then pulled up and away from the track he had been following. For a moment, light flicked at the corner of his eye as he caught the firing of its motor.
Three seconds to contact time. He began to hope. He saw the outline of the Badger clearly for a moment, directly ahead of him, an enlarging slim grey shape. He pulled the Firefox into a sudden turn to the right, away as acutely as possible from the Badger. Two seconds. On the screen the orange spot almost seemed to be merging with, overflying, the single green blip.
The Badger was in the centre of the screen: it was like a flower opening, a huge flower, orange, the hottest part of the sky as his own missile detonated. Contact time, zero seconds. The flower bloomed even brighter, just below the centre of the screen as he left the maelstrom behind — full bloom as the missiles detonated amid the inferno of the Badger's destruction.
He realised he was sweating freely inside the pressure-suit, and he felt a wave of relief, sharp as nausea, pass through him. Below him on the ground, the infra-red screens which had picked him up would now be confused, filled with light from the massive detonation. When it cleared, he would be out of range. He hoped they would draw the conclusion that he had himself perished in the explosion.
He checked his speed. Just below seven hundred mph. He could not go supersonic as he neared the coast. Too many trained ears, listening for the supersonic wake of his passage.
Now that he had survived, he began to take stock of the Firefox. The thought-guided weapons-system worked, as he had been certain it would. It had been Baranovich's project and, despite the fact that it was difficult to recall his face and the sound of his voice, as though a gulf of time separated them, there had been an unconscious, deep assurance that had been associated with the Russian Jew. He had seen only the tip of the iceberg. He had not needed to react at the speed of thought, but had had to make a conscious decision. But, when he had formed the thought, regarding the port wingtip missile, the advanced Anab-type of AAM, it had fired. All he had felt was the slight roll as the missile had detached itself.
He glanced again at the TFR. He was crossing the coastal strip. The mist that had clung to the coastal mountains had now become what he guessed must be a sea-fog — light, threatening to dissipate, but concealing. Best of all, it provided a sound-muffler, dispersing the noise of his engines so that a sound-trace such as the Russians were known to possess would be confused by echoes.
Then he saw the coast as an uneven line across the TFR screen. The narrow neck of sea formed the furthest inland penetration of the Gulf of Kara. His memory supplied the next set of coordinates as the Firefox passed out over the water, even as he pushed the nose down and lost more height, keeping within the slim belt of fog which slipped past the cabin, grey and formless, removing him from the world. The read-out supplied him with the required heading, and he obeyed the intertial navigator, turning onto the heading that would take him towards the twin islands of Novaya Zemlya, north-west of his present position.
He registered that the altimeter stated two hundred feet, checked the TFR, and eased back the throttles. The engine revolutions dropped, and he saw it register on the airspeed indicator. He levelled the aircraft, keeping it at a steady height of two hundred feet, and still eased back the throttles. While in the fog, he had the opportunity to conserve fuel, and thus make less engine noise. If he was heard, he wanted to sound as little like a fleeing thief as possible, and as much like an authorised search-plane as he could. At 250 mph, he steadied.
He reached up and his hand closed upon the transistor radio's innards, the special device developed for him at Farnborough, solely for the task which he now hoped it would perform. It was a homer pick-up, working on an incredibly complex pre-set pattern, searching for a beacon set on the same alternating pattern of signal frequencies. The signal remained on one frequency only long enough to be dismissed by anyone picking it up as static, or as unimportant. Gant could not tell, but the machine could, at what point it entered the sequence when switched on. The device had to be as complicated as it was because voice communication of any kind, however brief or cryptic, was open to being monitored by the Russians. He nicked the switch on the face of the apparently purposeless piece of hardware. Nothing, but at that moment he was unsurprised.