Again that strange feeling of decoupling settled over her, as if she was paralysed by her anxiety, as if she could no longer make her body function in conjunction with her will. She wanted to just sit here, listening to GNC’s brisk voice outlining the technical options.

It’s as if I was hit by that damn missile, whatever it was, rather than the Shuttle. We’re all just flawed, limited beings, struggling to cope with these monstrous machines we create, and failing.

I can’t do this any more, she thought.

But I must.

She thought about her assets. After all, the Shuttle’s main engines were the most complicated ever built. They were throttleable, and had to deliver high thrust with great efficiency. They had inbuilt control systems, so they could monitor their own performance. They were heavily over-engineered, made to be rugged for multiple reuse. Each of the engines on Endeavour today had flown a dozen or more times before, on different orbiters, running up thousands of seconds of hot-fire time each.

The hell with it, she thought. Those engines are tough. No asshole is going to shoot us down. Especially as they all but missed.

She felt determination gathering in her, dispelling her doubts.

She turned to Marcus White, her capcom.

When White came back on the loop, he sounded more decisive.

“Endeavour,Houston. Abort to orbit.”

Angel glanced at Libet. “Say again, Marcus.”

“Endeavour,Houston. We’re going to abort to orbit, Bill.”

“About fucking time,” Angel said.

He reached down to a small panel close to his right hand, and turned a rotary switch from OFF to its extreme right position, ATO. Then, on the same panel, he pushed a button to confirm the abort. Now they had a course of action ahead, Angel looked as if he was actually enjoying this, as if he was already thinking ahead to the sea stories he could spin out of it.

He was one unimaginative asshole, Benacerraf thought angrily. And yet right now, her life was in his hands…

“Uh-oh,” Libet said.

“What? What now?”

“I got temperature rises in the remaining main engines.”

“Which one?”

“Both of them, Bill. Look here.”

“Oh, shit.”

Benacerraf tried to remember what the procedure would be if they lost another main engine now. She had a sinking feeling that there wasn’t one.

Is this how, after all, human spaceflight is to finish, for the foreseeable future?

Beyond the pilot’s windows, the sky was growing dark.

“Endeavour,Houston. We copy your temperature rises, Bill. Here’s what you have to do. We want you to override the main engine auto shutdown.”

“Say again.”

“Override the shutdown. Don’t let the engines shut themselves off.”

Angel and Libet hesitated for one second. Then they began to work switches.

The first engine had shut itself off when its internal multisensor noted the pump operating temperature exceeding its safety limit. Perhaps Mission Control were speculating that the readings were flaky, that identical temperature rises in the other pumps were unlikely. If that was so, then a well-meant auto shutdown of a perfectly functioning engine might be the greatest hazard facing the crew.

On the other hand, if the sensor readings were not ratty — if the operating temperatures in those pumps really was rising as the data showed — then probably, before they reached orbit, one of the pumps would blow itself to pieces. And that would finish Endeavour anyhow.

After all, they had all heard and felt that bang. There was more than just a telemetry problem here.

Fahy, Benacerraf sensed, was taking a hell of a gamble.

Maybe she is compensating, still, for what happened with Columbia. Even overcompensating.

But what choice do I have but to trust her?

“Okay, Houston, Endeavour. Auto shutdown disabled. Now what?”

“Endeavour,we’re going to ask you to burn your remaining two main engines for an extra forty-nine seconds. And the OMS one burn will be extended. And augmented with an aft RCS burn. Do you copy all that?”

Benacerraf had scribbled down the instructions on a scratchpad. “Forty-nine seconds, then an extended OMS. We have that, Houston.”

Meanwhile the orbiter continued its climb.

They were eighty miles high, and moving at Mach fifteen.

Now Benacerraf felt the orbiter pitch further over, almost onto its back.

“Okay,” Angel said, “we have single engine press to ATO. Houston, Endeavour. Single engine press to ATO.”

“Copy that, Endeavour. We’re breathing a little easier down here.”

“Keep your pacemaker charged up, Marcus.”

Another barrier had been passed. Now, even if another main engine failed, the Shuttle could still continue to MECO — main engine cut-off — with one engine, and so, presumably, achieve some kind of orbit, even if lower than planned.

Benacerraf knew that the risk of catastrophic failure had receded a little.

“Main engine throttle down.”

“Throttle down, copy.”

“Seven minutes forty. Endeavour, Houston. Engines down to sixty-five percent. You’re looking good.”

“Sure we are.”

She could see a muscle ticking in Angel’s cheek. He was itching to do something, she saw. The launch sequence was so automated that there was almost nothing the crew could do to influence events. They could only sit here, gripping checklists and seat frames, wait while some piece of abort-procedure software flew the craft, hope that nobody had screwed up. No wonder the astronauts had always fought to retain control systems in their ships. Inactivity drove them rapidly crazy.

“Eight minutes thirty-eight,” Angel said. “Okay, people. Now we’re in the extended thrust regime. Here we go…”

According to the original timeline, MECO should have come at eight thirty-eight. They were off the flight profile, then.

“Endeavour,Houston. Coming up on MECO at revised time of nine minutes twenty-seven.”

“Copy that, Marcus.”

“At this time you are go for MECO.”

“We’re relieved to hear it.”

“Coming up on MECO, on my mark.”

As the tanks emptied, the acceleration built up to its dynamic crescendo, shoving Benacerraf harder back in her seat.

“Three, two, one. Mark.”

The acceleration faded immediately.

Benacerraf was not thrown forward. The force which had pressed her back simply vanished.

She still had a sensation of motion, of high velocity, as if she could feel the huge energy which had been invested in her body and the rest of the orbiter’s mass.

Her arms, limp, floated up from her lap before her.

“MECO on schedule,” Angel said. “Houston, Endeavour. I got me three red engine status lights.” He turned and grinned through his faceplate at Benacerraf. “Those balky main engines can’t hurt us now.”

“Endeavour,Houston. Bill, you are go for ET separation. On my mark. Three, two, one. Mark.”

There was a remote boom.

“ET sep is good,” Angel said. “Beginning minus zee translation.”

“Paula,” Libet said. She pointed upwards. “Look out there.”

The orbiter, without its External Tank, was still flying upside down, almost parallel to the Earth’s surface. So when Benacerraf squinted upwards, she could see the blue skin of the Indian Ocean.

And there, dark and ugly against the ocean, was the bullet shape of the External Tank. The brown insulation foam over its aluminum-lithium lightweight honeycomb shell was battered and badly charred, by the air friction of the ascent and rocket exhausts. It would fall back into the atmosphere to a height of a hundred and sixty thousand feet, where, glowing white hot, its fragments would hail down over an empty slice of Indian Ocean.

“It looks more beat-up than I expected,” Benacerraf said.