James also performed a last-second engine instrument check. But he had no bar graphs to check out with his eyes. ANTARES reported information not only through the visual nervous system in the form of words, numbers and symbols that he could “see,” but, to avoid overload of the visual senses, also as sensations that he could detect with his other senses. He could feel the power of the engine as clear and as real as air inflating his lungs or strength rippling down his arms. He knew in an instant that the engine was at full military thrust. At a thought-command, a computer that metered fuel flow performed a retrim of the engine to compensate for pressure altitude and outside temperature, which yielded a few hundred pounds extra thrust. The engine-fuel trim would be accomplished every six seconds thereafter as DreamStar began its test flight, accomplished as easily and as subconsciously as a person might ride a bike or drive a car along a much-traveled highway.
James briefly activated the search radar, which transmitted its signals as visual images — no obstructions or targets within thirty miles. A fast scan of VHF or UHF frequencies — no emergency calls, air traffic control challenges, no abort call from the tower. One quick check of hydraulic systems — all running normally. Electrical — one generator on the engine running a bit hot. On a mental suggestion, a digital flight-data recorder logged the time, conditions and readouts on the left generator for the crew chiefs to analyze after the flight.
The check of the secondary systems, including the flight-data recorder entry, had taken less time than it took J. C. Powell to tighten his grip on his throttle quadrant.
James now ordered the brakes to be released …
J.C. saw DreamStar shoot forward. “Here we go,” he said.
Patrick took a firm grip on the steel “handlebars” surrounding the instrument panel in the aft cockpit. Without a stick, throttle, or pedals, Patrick could do nothing during takeoff but watch the engine instruments and hang on. He glanced at the large yellow-and-black-painted handgrip between his legs underneath the center of the instrument panel — the ejection handle — and mentally measured the distance to it …
DreamStar shot forward like a dragster popping off the starting line. James commanded the engine to max afterburner, increasing thrust to well over eighty thousand pounds. At almost the same instant he also commanded activation of the auto-alpha flight mode. Louvers on the top of the engine nozzle swung open, diverting one-third of the engine thrust diagonally upward, compressing the rear main landing gear struts to their lowest position and allowing the nose-gear strut to extend fully. DreamStar was now pointing ten degrees upward, in full unstick, takeoff attitude.
The trailing edges of the two canards deflected downward. The engine, coupled with the foreplanes, was now shoving DreamStar’s nose skyward — its computers controlling the canards kept the one-hundred-thousand-pound fighter from flipping backward out of control. As speed increased and the canards began to fly the nose, the louvers diverting the engine thrust upward gradually swung downward, allowing the thrust to accelerate the fighter and lift the tail off the runway. At one hundred knots airspeed DreamStar’s nose gear lifted off the runway. The pitch attitude increased to thirty degrees, held just below the stall by the computer-controlled foreplanes. At one hundred and fifty knots DreamStar lifted off the runway, and because the wings, foreplanes and engine were commanded for maximum lift, she rose like an elevator.
In just over one thousand feet, the same distance a small general-aviation plane used at takeoff, the fifty-ton jet fighter had left the ground. Once airborne, thrust again was automatically diverted to optimize climb performance. DreamStar was now a rocket, being propelled skyward at well over twenty thousand feet per minute. By the time it reached the end of the two-mile-long camouflaged runway, it was over eight thousand feet above the ground.
J. C. Powell’s promise to keep up with DreamStar was kept for about five seconds.
He and McLanahan saw James give the signal to release brakes. “Two good engines,” McLanahan called out from the aft cockpit as J.C. eased both engines into max afterburner.
“Roger. Two good cookers.”
They saw DreamStar dash forward, then saw its forward fuselage jut into the sky and its canard’s trailing edges snap downward …
Then DreamStar disappeared.
J.C. cursed. “Hang on.” But try as he did, Powell could not match DreamStar’s spectacular liftoff or climb rate. While DreamStar’s pitch, power, and thrust controls were automatic, Cheetah’s were mostly hand-controlled, relying on reaction time rather than electronics to trim the aircraft. When DreamStar disappeared from view, J.C.’s first reaction was to pull back on the stick to try to follow. But Cheetah had not reached unstick speed, and Cheetah’s computerized canard pushed the nose down to the runway to gain speed.
“Command override,” the computerized voice suddenly interjected as Cheetah’s nose fell and the nosewheel struts compressed. “Stall warning.”
“Damn, too much,” J.C. murmured, and let the nose fall a few feet and watched the airspeed rise. “So much for a short takeoff record.” He let the airspeed rebuild to one hundred eighty knots, then eased back on the stick. Cheetah glided gently off the runway. This time, with plenty of “smash,” Cheetah’s canards responded by pulling the nose higher into the air to take advantage of the extra speed.
J.C. touched the compute interactive control on his stick. “Gear up.”
Three red “LANDING GEAR UNSAFE” lights illuminated, and Patrick could feel the rumble as the two main wheels and the nosewheel lifted through the slipstream. “Landing gear unsafe,” the computerized voice said. Five seconds later: “Landing gear up and locked.”
“Gear’s up,” Patrick said. “Two hundred knots. Passing six thousand feet.”
J.C. began pulling the engines one by one out of afterburner to conserve fuel. “Left engine to MIL power … right engine to MIL … Okay, where is he?”
“Four o’clock high, coming down—”
DreamStar had appeared out of nowhere; it was in a full-power descent, nose aimed straight at Cheetah’s canopy.
J.C. jammed both throttles back into max afterburner and began a hard roll to the right.
“Too late, he’s gonna hit …”
Cheetah lunged forward but DreamStar kept on coming. Patrick could now see DreamStar’s canards, deployed diagonally underneath the fighter’s belly in their high-maneuverability position. He could even see DreamStar’s thirty millimeter Vulcan cannon muzzle screaming in closer and closer …
But DreamStar did not hit. The closer it came, the more the fighter began to flatten its flight path. It resembled a giant eagle swooping in on its prey. The cannon muzzle never strayed off Cheetah’s canopy, even as DreamStar reached its prey’s aititude — it began to fly sideways, keeping the gun dead on target, paralleling Cheetah’s right turn. As Cheetah began to accelerate, DreamStar snapped out of its sideways flight path and maneuvered into a right rear quartering missile-attack aspect.
“He hosed us,” Patrick said. “He’s at our six. He made a gun pass on us on our climbout. He’s in infrared missile-launch position. Roll out and get him back into fingertip formation.”
J.C. rolled wings level, paused, then rocked his wings twice. A few seconds later DreamStar was tucked in on Cheetah’s right wing, so close that they could have had overlapping wingtips. “Only got a glimpse of him,” J.C. said, “but he looked like he was haulin’ ass. Tell him to stay with the ROE.”