from our umbilical stopped, which let me know our
tanks had been topped off and sealed, and that we were about to blast
off.

"This is it, Seaman," Sid Stein said. "Now for Pete's sake don't move,
don't speak, just lie there. I've got the con."

That was a bunch of baloney. He really had nothing to do until we were
in orbit. The delicate accelerometers and inertial guidance components
did all the piloting until the second stage kicked us loose. But I
kept my mouth shut. He'd have some work to do before the ride was
over, and I might need him.

* * * * *

When the lift-off came, it was gentle as a dove's wing. But as we
burned off fuel, the twenty-million pound thrust of our Apollo booster
began to tell, and my vision started to go black. The gee-meter said
we were pulling about ten gees when I could no longer read it, and I
learned later we peaked out at eleven gees in the final seconds before
first-stage burn-out. I didn't like it a little bit.

The liquid hydrogen second stage kicked in like a hopped up mule, and
we pulled ten gees, right at the limit of my vision, for its whole
four minutes of burning. My earphones were talking now as Sid gave it
the A-OK and Roger bit all the way. This was the stuff, kid!

Our Dyna-Soar had been modified to some degree for this mission. It's
essentially a big delta-winged glider with a squarish fuselage in the
center. The mods had consisted of tying a third rocket stage out
behind, so that Sid could move us around the orbit from one Telstar to
the next if my work on the first one proved out. The retro-rockets had
several times their normal complement of fuel, so that he could stop
after he got started. The same was true of our steering jets.

The ship was not pressurized on the lift off. Cabin pressure fell
rather quickly, as we could feel from the inflation of our suits, to
their three and a half-pound pressure. No bends for either of us,
because of the helium substitution for nitrogen. Because there were
two of us, we could chuck and unchuck airtanks for each other as we
needed fresh supplies. We had enough air and water for forty-eight
hours. Together with our low-residue diet for the final week, they
figured we could sweat it out in our suits for two days. We had suit
radios, of course, and could talk with each other for a distance of a
mile or so.

Burnout of the second stage came suddenly, and we heaved slightly
against our belts as th