"Seventy," said the calm voice. "Seventy-five."

The major had turned pale. He was staring at the changing numbers on the computer screen as if he could control them by willpower alone.

"Seventy-seven… seventy-nine… eighty… controls feel a little spongy. That's enough for now, leveling out."

"How'd Mad Cat do?" someone asked.

"Sixty-five," another someone replied, and the group chuckled.

"Was that his alpha, or his pucker factor?"

"I was sweating at fifty."

"We'll have to haul Mad Cat out of the cockpit. He won't have any starch left in his legs at all."

"Bet Breed's heart rate didn't even go up. He bleeds ice water, man, pure ice water."

Next, the aircraft pulled both negative and positive Gs, provoking more comments as the speakers carried the sounds of the grunts the pilots made to force more oxygen into their brains and keep from blacking out A trained pilot could normally withstand up to six positive Gs before gray-out began, but with specialized breathing techniques tolerance could be raised to about nine Gs for short periods of time.

The colonel was pulling ten Gs.

"Level out, level out," a captain said under his breath.

Major Deale was sweating. "Don't do this to me," he muttered. "Come on, Breed. Don't push it any further."

"Levelling out," a calm voice said over the radio, and she heard the quiet release of air from several pairs of lungs.

"That son of a bitch is a genetic freak," the captain said, shaking his head. "Nobody is supposed to be able to tolerate that. How long?"

"Not long," the second lieutenant at the monitor replied. "He actually hit ten for about four-tenths of a second. He's done it before."