He remembered that there'd been a patrol of American destroyers in the
Arabian Sea, as everywhere under the orbit of the Platform. Their radar
had reported the destruction of one space ship and the frantic diving of
the other, its division into two parts, and then the tiny objects, which
flew out from the smaller cabin section, which had descended as only
ejection-seat parachutes could possibly have done. Two destroyers
steamed onward underneath those drifting specks, to pick them up when
they should come down. But the other nearby destroyers had other
business in hand.

The two trailing destroyers reached Goa harbor within hours of the
landing of the four from space. A helicopter found the first three of
them within hours after that. They were twenty miles inland and thirty
south from Goa. Mike wasn't located until the next day. He'd been shot
out of the ship's cabin earlier and higher; he was lighter, and he'd
floated farther.

But things--satisfying things--had happened in the interval. Sitting
almost dizzily on the bunk in the swiftly roaring plane while blood
began sluggishly to flow through his body, Joe remembered the gleeful,
unofficial news passed around on the destroyers. They waited for Mike to
be brought in. But they rejoiced vengefully.

The report was quite true, but it never reached the newspapers. Nobody
would ever admit it, but the rockets aimed at the returning space ships
had been spotted by Navy radar as they went up from the Arabian Sea. And
the ships of the radar patrol couldn't do anything about the rockets,
but they could and did converge savagely upon the places from which they
had been launched. Planes sped out to spot and bomb. Destroyers arrived.