He skidded to a stop, his bike spitting up dirt, and stared the moonlit ripples of sand at Apogee II, gleaming like a streak silver, her nose cone pointed at the stars. They had moved her to the launchpad yesterday. It was a slow and celebratory procession, the dozen Apogee employees honking horns and beating on their car roofs as they followed the flatbed truck across the desert. she had finally been hoisted into position and everyone squinted up against the blazing sun to look at her, they had suddenly fallen silent.

They all knew this was the last roll of the dice. In weeks, when Apogee II lifted off, she would be carrying all their hopes and dreams.

And my sorry carcass as well, thought Sullivan.

A chill shot through him as he realized he might be staring at his own coffin.

He goosed the Harley and roared back toward the road, bouncing across dunes, leaping over dips. He rode with abandon, his recklessness fueled by tequila and by the sudden and unshakable certainty that he was already a dead man. That in three weeks he would be riding that rocket to oblivion. Until then, nothing touch him, nothing could hurt him.

The promise of death had made him invincible.

He accelerated, flying across the bleak moonscape of his boyhood fantasies. And here I am in the lunar rover, speeding across the Sea of Tranquility. Roaring up a lunar hill. Launching off to soft landing … He felt the ground drop away. Felt himself soaring through the night, the Harley growling between his knees, the moon shining in his eyes. Still soaring. How far? How high?

The ground hit with such force he lost control and tumbled sideways, the Harley falling on top of him. For a moment he lay stunned, pinned between his bike and a flat rock. Well, this is fucking stupid position to be in, he thought.

Then the pain hit him. Deep and grinding, as though his hips were crushed to splinters.

He gave a cry and fell back, his face turned to the sky. The moon shone down, mocking him.

“His pelvis is fractured in three places,” said Bridget. “The pinned it last night. They tell me he’s gonna be confined to bed at least six weeks.” Casper Mulholland could almost hear the sound of his dreams popping, like the loud burst of a balloon. “Six … weeks?

“And then he’ll be in rehab for another three or four months.”

“Four months?”

“For God’s sake, Casper. Say something original.”

“We’re screwed.” He slapped his palm against his forehead, as though to punish himself for daring to dream they could ever succeed. It was that old Apogee curse again, cutting them off at ankles just as they reached the finish line. Blowing up their rockets.

Burning down their first office. And now, taking their only pilot of commission. He paced the waiting room, thinking, Nothing has ever gone right for us. They’d invested all their combined savings, their reputations, and the last thirteen years of their lives.

God’s way of telling them to give up. To cut their losses before something really bad happened.

“He was drunk,” said Bridget.

Casper halted and turned to look at her. She stood with her arms grimly crossed, her red hair like the flaming halo of an avenging angel.

“The doctors told me,” she said. “Blood alcohol level of point one nine. As pickled as a herring. This isn’t just our usual bad luck. This is our own dear Sully fucking up again. My only consolation that for the next six weeks, he’s gonna have a big tube stuck up his dick.”

Without a word, Casper walked out of the visitors’ waiting room, headed up the hall, and pushed into Sullivan’s hospital room. “You moron,” he said.

Sully looked up at him with morphine-glazed eyes. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

“You don’t deserve any. Three weeks before launch and you pull some goddamn Chuck Yeager stunt in the desert? Why didn’t you just finish the job? Splatter your brains while you were at it? Hell, we wouldn’t have known the difference!” Sully closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“You always are.”

“I screwed up. I know…”

“You promised them a manned flight. It wasn’t my idea, it was yours. Now they’re expecting it. They’re excited about it. When was the last time any investor was excited about us? This could have made the difference. If you’d just kept the bottle corked—”

“I was scared.”

Sully had spoken so softly Casper wasn’t sure he’d heard him right.

“What?” he said.

“About the launch. Had a … bad feeling.” A bad feeling. Slowly Casper sank into the bedside chair, all his anger instantly dissolving.

Fear is not something a man readily admits to. The fact that Sully, who regularly courted destruction, would confess to being afraid left Casper feeling shaken.

And, at last, sympathetic.

“You don’t need me for the launch,” said Sully.

“They expect to see a pilot climb into that cockpit.”

“You could put a goddamn monkey in my seat and they’d never know the difference. She doesn’t need a pilot, Cap. You can all the commands from the ground.” Casper sighed. They had no choice now, it would have to be an unmanned flight. Clearly they had a valid excuse not to launch Sully, but would the investors accept it? Or would they believe, instead, that Apogee had lost its nerve? That it lacked the confidence to risk a human life?

“I guess I just lost my nerve,” said Sully softly. “Got to last night. Couldn’t stop…” Casper understood his partner’s fear—the way he understood how one defeat can lead inexorably to another and then another until the only certainty in a man’s life is failure. No wonder he was scared, he had lost faith in their dream. In Apogee.

Maybe they all had.

Casper said, “We can still make this launch work. Even without a monkey in the cockpit.”

“Yeah. You could send up Bridget instead.”

“Then who’d answer the phones?”

“The monkey.” Both men laughed. They were like two old soldiers, mustering up a shred of cheer on the eve of certain defeat.

“So we’re gonna do it?” said Sully. “We’re gonna launch?”

“That was the whole idea of building a rocket.”

“Well, then.” Sully took a deep breath, and a ghost of the old bravado returned to his face. “Let’s do it right. Press release the wire services. One mother of a tent party with champagne. Hell, invite my sainted brother and his NASA pals. If she blows on the pad, at least we’ll go outta business in style.”

“Yeah. We always had an excess of style.” They grinned.

Casper rose to leave. “Get better, Sully,” he said. “We’ll need you for Apogee III.”

He found Bridget still sitting in the visitors’ waiting room. “So what happens now?” she said.

“We launch on schedule.”

“Unmanned?”

He nodded. “We fly her from the control room.”

To his surprise, she huffed out a sigh of relief. “Hallelujah!”

“What’re you so happy about? Our man’s laid up in a hospital bed.”

“Exactly.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and turned to leave.

“It means he won’t be up there to fuck things up.”