Not that it was recognized as such, by NASA.

Maybe today would be a kind of vindication, Deeke thought.

And now, the moment was approaching.

“Everything looks good here.”

“Manifold and lines looking good. Launch light going on.”

Still no cancellation.

“And we’ll call that three, two, one, launch—”

“Three minutes. Orbiter main engines gimballed to launch positions. T minus two fifty-five. External Tank oxygen vents closed. Pressurization of the tank has started. You’re configured for lift-off. Two minutes. Set APU to inhibit.”

Libet turned a switch. “APU auto shutdown to inhibit.”

“Sound suppression power bus armed.”

Angel said, “Visors down.”

“Launch crew calls Godspeed, Endeavour.”

Thank you for that, Marcus.”

Benacerraf pulled closed her big faceplate. It clicked shut, and the whir of the cabin’s pumps and fans was muffled.

“Endeavour,control. Thirty-five seconds. Software mode 101 loaded. Hydrogen tank at flight pressure. APUs have started in the Solid Rocket Boosters. Go for redundant set launch sequence start. Twenty-five seconds. Smooth sailing, guys. Endeavour, control. You are on your on-board computer. Software mode now 101.”

“Copy that.”

Now the GPCs, the redundant general purpose computers on board the orbiter, had taken control of the launch sequence. Only one more command, for main engine start, would be sent from the ground.

Bit by bit, Benacerraf thought, Endeavour was cutting her ties to Earth.

Angel read off the continuing prelaunch events from his displays. “Pyrotechnics armed. Sound suppression system activated.”

“Fifteen seconds,” Libet said.

“SRB pyro initiation controller in its voltage limits… We got a live SRB destruct system.”

“Endeavour,we have a go for main engine start.”

“Rog,” Angel said. “Time to kick those tires and light that fire. Eight seconds. Position vector loaded…”

The geographic location of the launch pad had been turned into positional data inside the orbiter’s computers. Endeavour had become aware of its location as an object in three-dimensional space, only temporarily and accidentally clinging to the surface of a planet.

Angel said, “Engine flares ignited. Five, four. We have main engine start.”

There was a remote bang, a premonitory shudder.

“There they go, guys,” Angel shouted. Three at a hundred.”

The orbiter cabin creaked. Benacerraf could feel the displacement of the twang, through all of two feet: the Shuttle stack, pinned to the pad by posts at the base of its SRBs, flexed forward as it accommodated the thrust of its main engines.

Angel and Libet spoke at once. “Main engine pressure above ninety percent, all three.”

“Engine status lights all green.”

“Two, one. SRB ignition.”

For a few seconds, Jackie could make out a shower of sparks, bursting from the nozzles of the orbiter’s three main engines. Now a mist of propellants — liquid hydrogen and oxygen — was injected into the sparks, and a bright clear white light erupted at the base of the orbiter, and white smoke squirted out to either side.

The SRBs ignited. The plume of yellow light from the solid rockets was bright — dazzling, like sunlight, liquid light. There was a brief flash, as pyrotechnics severed the hold-down bolts pinning the stack to the pad.

The stack lifted off the ground, startlingly quickly, trailing a column of white smoke which glowed orange within, as if on fire. The movement of the huge Shuttle stack seemed impossible, as if a piece of a cathedral had suddenly taken leave of the Earth.

At the moment of launch there was a kind of release among the press flacks gathered in the stand. As one they stood, and there was clapping, cheering.

Jackie lifted her face to the rocket light that, for a few moments at least, was banishing the grey of winter.

It was, she conceded, a shame the boys weren’t here to see this.

And then the noise came, not a single roar but a succession of coughs and barks and crackles, like the popping of some immense oil fire. The ground shook, a rattling she could feel through her feet, on the bleachers.

To Benacerraf it was a shove in the back. It wasn’t a sharp spike of thrust — the Shuttle was much too heavy for that — more like riding an elevator of immense power, suddenly hurling her upwards, but an elevator that would keep on going until it burst, cartoon-style, through the roof.

The cabin shook violently, and the noise engulfed her. The cockpit was filled with yellow-white light, diffused from the rockets’ glare, eighty feet below her. She could see chunks of ice, breaking off the hull of the External Tank, clattering against the pilots’ windows.

The mood of quiet calm which had characterized the preflight prep was dissipated in an instant. She was riding a rocket, and it felt like it.

A new voice came on the loop. “Endeavour, Houston. Launch tower cleared. Eight seconds. All engines looking good.”

“Copy that, Marcus.” Angel’s voice sounded thin, and it trembled with the vibration.

Mission Control at Houston took control of the flight once the Shuttle stack cleared the launch tower. Marcus White, voluntarily brought out of retirement once more, was the capcom there today. It had been done as a PR stunt — a Moonwalker in Mission Control — by the NASA PAO, desperate to milk this last moment of attention for all it was worth. But to Benacerraf, immersed in noise and vibration, it felt comforting to have White’s gravelly tones on the other end of the line.

“Eleven seconds,” Angel said. “Initiating roll maneuver.”

The orbiter went through a hundred and twenty degree roll to the right and pitched over as it climbed, to ease the aerodynamic loads on the complex stack.

Thus, thirty seconds after launch, she was suspended upside down, and hanging from her straps. The ground was visible above the heads of the pilots, receding quickly. Like her first Sight, Benacerraf was surprised by the violence and speed of the maneuver.

“Shit hot!” Libet shouted.

It was like being shot downwards, out of a cannon; it felt as if the X-15 had just exploded off the hooks.

The violence of the moment was bracing, exhilarating, an intrusion of reality. My God, he thought. It’s real. We’re really doing this.

Immediately the plane began to roll to the right. X-15 always had a tendency to do that, because of flow effects around the B-52’s launch pylon. He worked the left aileron to compensate.

He was basically in free fall right now, falling away from the B-52.

He felt adrenaline pump crisply into his system. It was time. He pressed his launch switch.

There was an explosive noise, like a shout. The main combustion chamber had ignited.

The bird was hurled forward.

He was pressed back, hard, into his seat and headrest. Another memory he’d suppressed. And he started to develop tunnel vision, with blackness shrouding the periphery of his view. He tried to remember what kind of instrument panel scan pattern he used back then. So much he’d forgotten.

The engine noise built up into a banshee squeal.

He rolled his wings level and pulled his nose up to a ten-degree angle of attack. The acceleration swivelled around, from the eyeballs-in of the launch to eyeballs-down at pullup. He felt as if he was climbing straight up, or even going over onto his back. He knew he had to discount the sensations, and just watch his instruments.

The B-52 — flying at Mach point eight — just fell away behind him, as if it wasn’t moving at all.

The rocket engine was putting out full thrust. Now, for the next eighty or ninety seconds, it was Deeke’s job to ride this bull, to keep X-15 on the track that had been programmed for it on the ground.