ke an old man. He
pictured himself lecturing to a group of eager kids.

_Had a couple of close calls, those last two missions._ That Red had
looked easy, the way he was wandering around. He hadn't spotted them
until they were well into their run, but when he got started he'd made
them look like slow motion, just the same. If he hadn't tried that
harebrained sudden deceleration.... Coulter shook his head at the
memory. And on the last mission they'd been lucky to get a draw. Those
boys were good shots.

* * * * *

"We're crossing his track, Paul. Turn to nine point five o'clock and
hold 4 G's for thirty-two seconds, starting on the count ...
five--four--three--two--one--go!" He completed the operation in silence,
remarking to himself how lucky he was to have Johnson. The boy loved a
chase. He navigated like a hungry hawk, though you had to admit his
techniques were a bit irregular.

Coulter chuckled at the ad lib way they operated, remembering the
courses, the tests, the procedures practiced until they could do them
backwards blindfolded. When they tangled with a Red, the Solter
co-ordinates went out the hatch. They navigated by the enemy. There were
times during a fight when he had no more idea of his position than what
the old ladies told him, and what he could see of the Sun, the Earth,
and the Moon.

And using "right side up" as a basis for navigation. He chuckled again.
Still, the service had had to concede on "right side up," in designing
the ships, so there was something to be said for it. They hadn't been
able to simulate gravity without fouling up the ships so they had to
call the pilot's head "up." There was something comforting about it.
He'd driven a couple of the experimental jobs, one with the cockpit set
on gimbals, and one where the whole ship rotated, and he hadn't cared
for them at all. Felt disoriented, with something nagging at his mind
all the time, as though the ships had been sabotaged. A couple of pilots
had gone nuts in the "spindizzy," and remembering his own feelings as he
watched the sky go by, it was easy to understand.

Anyway, "right side up" tied in perfectly with the old "clock" system
Garrity had dug out of those magazines he was always reading. Once they
got used to it, it had turned out really handy. Old Doc Hoffman, his
astrogation prof, would have turned purple if he'd ever dreamed they'd
use such a conglomeration. But it worked. And when you wer