The pilot grinned as his fingers danced on the yoke. He had danced around the missile with deft bursts of his turbines and dropped a headload of shredded aluminum dead in front of it, making the little jet stand up on its tail end and bookie like a drunken hummingbird. Now he settled back on to a normal flight pattern. The missile, confident that the target was on its nose, had obligingly discharged 500 feet below the jet and disintegrated into smithereens. The pilot nodded to the shapely young woman strapped into the seat next to his. "That's that," he smiled. "Recharge the decoy packets and tell the passenger he can climb down off the ceiling."