Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Meanwhile, last-minute deliveries continued right up until countdown: cranes, girders, bales of fibreglass, cement vats, crude oil, medical supplies… At the sound of a warning buzzer, the ground crews would take cover wherever they could – in the antiradiation bunkers, in special armoured crawlers – and were back at their jobs before the pads had had time to cool. By ten o’clock a smoky, crimson, bloated sun hung over the horizon, the concrete safety barriers dividing the stands were already cracked, blackened with soot, and eaten away by exhaust. The deeper fissures were immediately doused with quick-dry cement, which shot up out of the hoses in a fountainlike sprat, while antiradiation crews in helmeted suits piled out of transport vehicles and sandblasted the residue of radioactive fallout. Black-and-red-checkered patrol jeeps careened in and out, their sirens wailing. Someone in the control tower was yelling himself hoarse over a megaphone. Hude, boomerang-shaped radar dishes combed the skies from the tops of gaunt towers… In a word, a routine workday.