going quietly nuts."

* * * * *

The Launch Control Officer wasn't going nuts. Anyone who went nuts under
stress simply didn't pass the psychological tests required of
prospective Launch Control Officers. However, he was decidedly unhappy.
He sat in a dimly-lighted room, facing three oscilloscope screens. On
each of them a pie-wedge section was illuminated by a white line which
swept back and forth like a windshield wiper. Unlike a windshield wiper,
however, it put little white blobs on the screen, instead of removing
them. Each blob represented something which had returned a radar echo.
The center screen was his own radar. The outer two were televised images
of the radar screens at the stations a hundred miles on either side of
him, part of a chain of stations extending from Alaska to Greenland. In
the room, behind him, and facing sets of screens similar to his, sat his
assistants. They located the incoming objects on the screen and set
automatic computers to determining velocity, trajectory, and probable
impact point.

This information appeared as coded symbols beside the tracks on the
center screen of the Launch Control Officer, as well as all duplicate
screens. The Launch Control Officer, and he alone, had the
responsibility to determine whether the parameters for a given track
were compatible with an invading Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or
whether the track represented something harmless. If he failed to launch
an interceptor at a track that turned out to be hostile, it meant the
death of an American city. However, if he made a habit of launching
interceptors at false targets, he would soon run out of interceptors.
And only under the pressure of actual war would the incredible cost of
shipping in more interceptors during the winter be paid without a second
thought. Normally, no more could be shipped in until spring. That would
mean a gap in the chain that could not be covered adequately by
interceptors from the adjacent stations.

His screens were never completely clear. And to complicate things, the
Quadrantids, which start every New Year's Day and last four days, were
giving him additional trouble. Each track had to be analyzed, and the
presence of the meteor shower greatly increased the number of tracks he
had to worry about. However, the worst was past. One more day and they
would be over. The clutter on his screens would drop back to normal.

Even under the best of