"Impossible," he said, dabbing at sherbet spots on his trousers. "The general would react faster than to a red alert."
"Your concern may be the general's reactions, but mine's not," Bridget snapped. "I just want an objective engineering answer, yes or no."
Grant threw up his hands. "O.K., O.K. With a live pilot, yes, you can get a TV transmitter in an atomjet with some doing. You'd have to jerk out the extra oxygen space and--"
"Wonderful! When can you have it for me?"
"Bridget, what I'm getting at, the general will take this as a slap at him and his pilots. We've had TV transmission from robotized atomjets dozens of times--"
"With no results," Grant admitted, "but that doesn't mean that with a pilot you'll necessarily get any, either."
"No, but why hasn't someone tried?" Bridget waited for him to answer a decent two seconds and then added, "The general, naturally."
They left the base lunchroom in silence, Bridget pouting a lip-edge more than Grant. Before entering the office, Grant brought up a rebuttal.
"Another thing, no pilot is going to push up under those conditions, with you down there hoping something will happen."
Bridget had her hand on the door, but instead of opening it, paused. "The pilot would have to trust me." Her eyes darkened, widened, split Grant emotionally down the middle. He could understand, for an instant when he let himself, how a man could be inveigled to do anything for a woman.
"Yeah," he said. "A pilot like that might be hard to find. I'll see what I can do."
As he walked toward the hangars, he heard the office door close softly behind him.
At the engineering conference after supper Grant had never seen General Morrison looking quite that old. The man was sustaining an overload of responsibility, and probably self-imposed guilt on top of it.
The mechanical engineers made their report, followed by the electronic engineers, followed by the physicist--all negative. But each group had a suspicion that another had overlooked something. Before it regressed to a high-school debate, the general bellowed the conference to order.
Grant was surprised at the twinge of emotion he experienced when he realized the general was not going to ask for a report from syk. Why should Grant care, anyway? The position meant nothing to him, Syk Coördinator.