ce. Somehow, I know it. Don't you let them do it
to anyone else unless there are manual controls from the ejection
onwards. Don't do it. This isn't just nosing into the Slot, over the
reef between the town and the island and letting go then, and
beginning to sweat. This is much more, Harry. This is bloody
frightening. Are the three minutes up yet? My stomach is crawling at
the thought of you pushing that button and nothing happening. Listen,
Bannister, you're not getting me down, so forget any assurances. I
hope they never let you put anybody else up here like this. It's black
again. We've swung away."

Bannister looked at my eyes. "It's almost time," he said.

Eight seconds later they pushed the button. Perhaps it would have been
better if nothing happened then. But that part worked. They got him
out of the parabolic curve and headed back down. They fired reverse
rockets that slowed him. They threw him into a broad equatorial orbit
and let him ride. It took over an hour to be sure he was in orbit. I
admired them that, but began to hate them very much. They ascertained
the orbit and began new calculations. Here was where he should have
had the controls on in.

* * * * *

The escape vehicle was a small delta shaped craft. The wings, if one
could call them that, spanned just under seven feet. They planned to
bring him down in a pattern based on very orthodox principles of
flight. There remained sufficient fuel for a twelve second burst of
power. This would decelerate the craft to a point where it would drop
from orbit and begin a descent. I later utilized the same pattern by
letting down easy into the atmosphere after the power ran down and
sort of bouncing off the upper layers several times to further
decelerate and finally gliding down through it at about Mach 5,
decelerating rapidly then, almost too rapidly, and finally passing
through the exosphere into the ionosphere. The true stratosphere
begins between sixty and seventy miles up, and once you've passed
through that level and not burnt up, the rest of it is with the pilot
and his craft.

It takes hours. I came down gradually, approaching within striking
distance west of Australia, then finally nosed in and took my chance
on stretching it to one of the ten mile strips for a powerless
landing. I did it in Australia. But if I had not had orthodox
controls, had I even gotten that far, I would have churned up a good
part of the Coral