On the Trail of the Space Pirates, page 119 by Carey Rockwell
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quadron and direct operations. I'll relay course to you as soon as we're in space."
"O.K., Steve," replied Randolph. "I'm ready to raise ship."
"I'll go up first. Form up around me at about five thousand miles. End transmission!"
"End transmission!"
"All right, Tom," ordered Strong, "let's get out of here!"
The young cadet strapped himself into his acceleration chair, then picked up the control panel intercom and began calling out orders crisply.
"Stand by to raise ship! All stations check in!"
"Power deck standing by!" replied Astro from below.
"Radar bridge standing by!" acknowledged Roger over the intercom.
"Energize the cooling pumps!"
The whine of the mighty pumps began to fill the ship almost as quickly as Astro acknowledged the order.
"Feed reactant!" snapped Strong, strapping himself in beside Tom.
A low-muted hiss joined the sound of the whining pumps as Tom opened the valves. "Reactant feeding at D-9 rate, sir," he reported.
"Roger," called Strong into the intercom, "do we have a clear trajectory?"
"Clear as space, skipper!" was Roger's breezy answer.
"All right, Tom," said Strong, "cut in take-off gyros."
The cadet closed the master switch on the control panel and the noise from the power deck below began to build to an unbearable crescendo!
Watching the sweeping second hand of the chronometer, Tom called out, "Blast off minus five--four--three--two--one--zero!"
With a mighty roar, all main rockets of the spaceship exploded into life. Shuddering under the sudden surge of power, the ship rose from the ground, accelerated at the rate of seven miles per second, and arrowed into the sky, space-borne!
On the Academy spaceport, ships of Squadron L began to blast off one by one behind the Polaris at ten-second intervals. Three rocket cruisers, six destroyers, and twelve rocket scouts. The explosive blast of one hardly rolling away across the surrounding hills b