other, he sorted, discarded, rejected, eliminated, excluded. Until the
screen was empty.

Now what? Had the enemy camouflaged the warhead so that it looked like a
section of the missile's skin? Not likely. Had he made a mistake in his
identification of the fragments? Possibly, but there wasn't time to
recheck every fragment. He decided that the most likely event was that
the warhead was hidden by one of the other fragments. He swung the ship;
headed it straight for the object shielding him from the jammer, which
had turned out to be a section from the fuel tank. A short blast from
the rockets sent him drifting toward the object. One image on the screen
broadened; split in two. A hidden fragment emerged from behind one of
the ones he had examined. He rejected it immediately. Its temperature
was too low. He was almost upon the fragment shielding him from the
jammer. If he turned to avoid it, the jammer would blank-out his radar
again. He thought back to his first look at the cloud of fragments.
There had been nothing between his shield and the jammer. The only
remaining possibility, then, was that the warhead was being hidden from
him by the jammer itself. He would have to look on the other side of the
jammer, using the ship itself as a shield.

He swung out from behind the shielding fragment, and saw his radar
images blotted out. He switched off the radar, and aimed the ship
slightly to one side of the infrared image of the jammer. Another blast
from the rockets sent him towards the jammer. Without range information
from the radar, he would have to guess its distance by noting the rate
at which it swept across the screen. The image of the jammer started to
expand as he approached it. Then it became dumbbell shaped and split in
two.

As he passed by the jammer, he switched the radar back on. That second
image was something which had been hidden by the jammer. He looked
around. No other new objects appeared on the screen. This had to be the
warhead. He checked it anyway. Temperature was minus 40 deg. F. A smile
flickered on his lips as he caught the significance of the temperature.
He hoped the launching crew had gotten their fingers frozen off while
they were going through the countdown. The object showed no anomalous
radar behavior. Beyond doubt, it was the warhead.

Then he noted the range. A mere thirteen hundred yards! His own missile
carried a small atomic warhead. At that range it would present no danger
to him.