A woman sat down on the barstool beside him and said, “I wonder what they’re thinking now.” He turned to look at her, his interest momentarily captured by a glimpse of thigh. She was a sleek and sunny blonde, with one of those blandly perfect faces whose features one forgets within an hour of parting. “What who’s thinking?” he asked.

“The astronauts. I wonder if they’re thinking, Oh, shit, what’d I get myself into?”

He shrugged and took a sip of scotch. “They’re not thinking anything right now. They’re all asleep.”

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

“Their circadian rhythm’s completely readjusted. They probably went to bed two hours ago.”

“No, I mean, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. I’d be Lying awake thinking up ways to get out of it.”

He laughed. “I guarantee you, if they’re awake, it’s because they can’t wait to climb on board that baby and blast off.”

She looked at him curiously. “You’re with the program, aren’t you?”

“Was. Astronaut corps.”

“Not now?”

He lifted the drink to his lips, felt the ice cubes clink sharply against his teeth. “I retired.”

Setting down his empty glass, he got to his feet and saw disappointment flash in the woman’s eyes. He allowed himself a moment’s consideration of how the rest of the evening could go were he to stay and continue the conversation.

Pleasant company. The promise of more to follow.

Instead he paid his bar tab and walked out of the Hilton.

At midnight, standing on the beach at Jetty Park, he gazed across the water toward pad 39B. I’m here, he thought. Even if she don’t know it, I’m with you.

He sat down on the sand and waited for dawn.

July 24

“There’s a high-pressure system over the Gulf, which is expected to keep skies clear over Cape Canaveral, so RTLS landing is a go.

Edwards Air Force Base is seeing intermittent clouds, but that’s expected to clear by launch. TAL site in Zaragoza, Spain, is current and forecast go. TAL site in Moron, Spain, is also and go. Ben Guerir, Morocco, is experiencing high winds and sandstorms, and at this time is not a viable TAL site.” The first weather briefing of the day, broadcast simultaneously to Cape Canaveral, brought satisfactory news, and Flight Director Carpenter was happy. The launch was still a go. The poor landing conditions at Ben Guerir airport was only a minor concern, since the two alternate transatlantic-abort landing sites in Spain were clear.

It was all backups within backups, anyway, the sites would be needed only in case of a major malfunction.

He glanced around at the rest of the ascent team to see if there were any new concerns. The nervous tension in the Flight Control Room was palpable and mounting, as it always was prior to a launch, and that was good. The day they weren’t tense was the day they made mistakes.

Carpenter wanted his people on edge, with all synapses snapping—a level of alertness that, at midnight, an extra dose of adrenaline.

Carpenter’s nerves were as taut as everyone else’s, despite the fact that the countdown was right on schedule. The inspection team at Kennedy had finished their checks. The flight dynamics team had reconfirmed the launch time to the second. In the meantime, a far-flung cast of thousands was watching the same countdown clock.

At Cape Canaveral, where the shuttle was poised for launch, the same tension would be building in the firing room of the Launch Control Center, where a parallel team sat at their consoles, preparing for liftoff. As soon as the solid rocket boosters ignited, Houston’s Mission Control would take over. Though thousands of miles apart, the two control rooms in Houston and Canaveral were so closely interconnected by communications they might as well have been located in the same building.

In Huntsville, Alabama, at Marshall Space Flight Center, research teams were waiting for their experiments to be launched.

One hundred sixty miles north-northeast of Cape Canaveral, Navy ships waited at sea to recover the solid rocket boosters, would separate from the shuttle after burnout.

At contingency landing sites and tracking stations around the world, from NORAD in Colorado to the international airfield at Banjul, Gambia, men and women watched the clock.

And at this moment, seven people are preparing to place their lives in our hands.

Carpenter could see the astronauts now on closed-circuit TV as they were helped into their orange launch-and-entry suits. The images were live from Florida, but without audio. Carpenter found himself pausing for a moment to study their faces. Though none of them revealed a trace of fear, he knew it had to be there, beneath their beaming expressions. The racing pulse, the zing of nervousness. They knew the risks, and they had to be scared.

Seeing them on the screen was a sobering reminder to ground personnel that seven human beings were counting on them to do their jobs right.

Carpenter tore his gaze from the video monitor and focused his attention back on his team of flight controllers, seated at the consoles. Though he knew each member of the team by name, he addressed them by their mission-command positions, their titles reduced to the shorthand call signs that was NASA-speak. The guidance officer was nicknamed GDO. The spacecraft communicator was Capcom. The propulsion systems engineer was Prop. The trajectory officer was Traj. Flight surgeon was shortened to Surgeon.

And Carpenter went by the call sign of Flight.

The countdown came out of the scheduled T-minus-three-hours hold. The mission was still a go.

Carpenter stuck his hand in his pocket and gave his shamrock key ring a jingle. It was his private good-luck ritual. Even have their superstitions.

Let nothing go wrong, he thought. Not on my watch.

Cape Canaveral

The Astrovan ride from the O and C building to launchpad 39B took fifteen minutes. It was a strangely silent ride, none of the saying much. Just a half hour before, while suiting up, they had been joking and laughing in that sharp and electric tone that comes when one’s nerves are raw with excitement. The tension had been building since the moment they had been awakened at two-thirty for the traditional steak and eggs breakfast. Through the weather briefing, the suiting up, the prelaunch ritual of dealing out cards for the best poker hand, they had all been a little too and cheerful, all engines roaring with confidence.

Now they’d fallen silent.

The van came to a stop. Chenoweth, the rookie, seated beside Emma, muttered, “I never thought diaper rash would be one of the job hazards.” She had to laugh. They were all wearing Depend adult diapers under their bulky flight suits, it would be a long three hours liftoff.

They accepted help from the launchpad technicians, Emma stepped out of the van.

For a moment she paused on the pad, gazing up in wonder at the thirty-story shuttle, ablaze with spotlights. The last she’d visited the pad, five days ago, the only sounds she’d heard were sea wind and the birds. Now the spacecraft itself had come to life, rumbling and smoking like a waking dragon, as volatile propellants boiled inside the fuel tank.

They rode the elevator up to Level 195 and stepped onto the grated catwalk. It was still night, but the sky was washed out by pad lights, and she could barely get a glimpse of the stars overhead.

The blackness of space was waiting.

In the sterile white room, technicians in lint-free “bunny” suits helped the crew, one by one, through the hatch and into the orbiter.

The commander and pilot were seated first. Emma, assigned to middeck, was the last to be assisted. She settled back into her seat, buckles secured, helmet in place, and gave a thumbs-up.