Good. The sense that he was alone in all this began to ebb. Charlie looked at the blinking lights on the display and asked which one.

Rachel tapped the screen with an index finger. "The Mabry," she said. "And it looks like time to tie down our own bronco." She withdrew the Lowell to about a kilometer and then took it around to the Back Country, gliding low over the melted terrain until her sensors told her she'd arrived. They settled toward a plateau. Ferry Antonia Mabry. 2:27 A.M.

Sitting in the passenger cabin, which was serving as Mission Control, Feinberg seemed to have forgotten his queasiness. He stared out at the rock. "It would be a much easier problem were it not tumbling," he said. "Our first objective will be to impose a degree of stability."

Carpenter knew the plan, but he understood that Feinberg was speaking for his own benefit, reviewing the operation to reassure himself he'd overlooked nothing.

The procedure would be too complicated to handle by voice command and manual control on the individual flight decks. Instead, the Mabry would serve as a command center, accepting readout data from the seven onboard navigational computers and returning firing instructions directly to the engines.

Because of the need to align the Possum's flight path with its long axis, the ships had to be placed to allow lateral thrust well beyond that provided by attitude clusters. This meant that, while all seven vehicles would face more or less in the same direction, which is to say pointed forward, they would be sited not quite in parallel.

Feinberg talked at length with Rachel Quinn in Lowell, to ensure the systems were in sync. Then he repeated the process with George Culver in Arlington. He'd already gone through the setup routine in detail at Skyport with the other pilots.

"The one thing that worries me," he said at last, looking across at Carpenter, "is fuel expenditure. We have none whatever to spare." He shook his head. "If we get through this, the president might be advised to think seriously about assembling a fleet of nuclear-powered vessels. The research is done. We know how to do it. Now it would be just a matter of building the ships."

"The president's out here," said Carpenter. "You can tell him yourself."

"I already have," he said. "I hope he's getting the message."

The pilot's voice came over the PA: "Mr. Carpenter?"

"Go ahead, Rita." To Feinberg, Rita seemed too young and too relaxed to be piloting a spacecraft.

"The other spacecraft have all checked in. The Russian plane is last in line. They're giving us an ETA of four A.M."

Carpenter acknowledged.

Feinberg looked out at the Possum. His expression seemed to reflect a degree of melancholy. But he said nothing.

• • • Percival Lowell Flight Deck. 2:29 A.M.

"For you, Mr. President. From the Mabry." Rachel relayed the call and Charlie felt the tingle of his handset.

"This is Orly Carpenter, sir." Charlie knew Carpenter, had spoken with him before on occasion.

"Hello, Orly," he said. "Nice to have you and Wesley with us." The problem throughout had been that this situation was essentially nonpolitical, Charlie had been in charge, and Charlie had no idea what he was doing. He hoped that Carpenter did.

"Good to be here, Mr. President. We're going to be running things from the Mabry. I thought you might want to join us. You'll have a better view of the overall operation from here."

The Lowell had just arrived at its own assigned site, and Jonathan Porter and the rest of the anchor team were preparing to go outside. Charlie glanced through the window at the softened mounds rising around the ship. The Sun was on the horizon, and they cast long shadows.

"Okay," he said. "How do you pick me up?"

"We can take you right out through the airlock."

"When?"

"Twenty minutes. We're on our way."

Charlie noted a strange expression, a flicker of contempt, on Rachel's features. And then it was gone.

"Orly?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"I assume I'll be safer with you too, won't I?"

Carpenter hesitated. "Yes," he said. "You will."

He nodded. "I'll stay where I am," he said.

"Not a good idea, sir."

"Thanks anyhow. I'll stay put."

Carpenter's tone changed, acquired a hint of irritation.

"Mr. President, I really wish you'd reconsider. I have my orders…"

"Forget them," said Charlie.

Rachel glanced at him quizzically.

"Anything I can do from up there," he said, "I can do from here."

2.

On the Possum. 2:34 A.M.

George Culver's instincts had been right about Jonathan Porter: He had always been the last kid picked, he had been put in right field, and he did bat ninth. Everything in his life had been like that. There was something in his manner that inevitably induced low expectations, that generated surprise when he performed well. Whatever it was, it had followed him into adulthood.

Jonathan was single, but not by choice. He seemed to be invisible to women. His acute intelligence did not lend itself to a sharp wit, and he had almost no sense of humor. He bored people, knew it, and so had never overcome his childhood shyness. But he had the respect of those in his immediate chain of command, and that was the reason they'd kept him at Skyport when they sent everyone else home. If something happened, he was the best they had, and they knew it.

Now he was being called on to use his skills to do far more than seal off puncture wounds around the station. He had suddenly become an integral part of the most significant engineering operation of all time. It was heady stuff. Jonathan was delighted to have the opportunity, and it was all he could do to keep himself from leaping off the melted surface of the Possum.

He'd inspected the images of the terrain before they came out, looked at the results of the sampling studies, and concluded the task would not be unreasonably difficult. He'd been satisfied with the composition of the rock into which he'd anchored Arlington. But here, standing at the site chosen for Lowell, he was not so sure. The texture was almost spongy. It had melted during the impact, had turned to lava and possibly plasma, and then cooled. A bare hand would still have found it warm.

But this was where they wanted the ship. Another engineer might have protested, but Jonathan accepted the challenge, looked around, chose where to sink his spikes, and decided what sections of the hull would best accept the cables.

Unlike the planes, the Percival Lowell had never been intended to enter an atmosphere. But the designers had expected there would be EVA activity, and they had consequently equipped her with guard rails, ladders, and a multitude of extrusions to expedite getting around on the ship's outer skin. She'd be much easier to secure than the space plane had been. His only reservation was whether the rock itself would hold.

He used chalk to mark the places where they'd sink the spikes. There would be eleven in all. He knew everyone was worried about the jury-rigged anchors, fearful that either Lowell or the Arlington would break loose from its moorings and hurl itself across the ground, killing its occupants and crippling the mission. And they were right to worry: Jonathan's portion of the operation was critical, though by necessity it had been put together almost haphazardly at the last minute with spare parts and rubber bands.

He'd been irritated by George Culver's reaction. The pilot, in private conversation with him, made no secret of his conviction that his plane would tear loose from Jonathan's restraints when he went to full thrust, would erupt into a fireball and spiral across the rockscape. But Jonathan knew that the cables could withstand a dozen times as much power as the plane's twin engines could generate, and they were securely locked to the spacecraft. What he knew for damned sure was that his cables and anchors would hold together. If the ground stayed firm, neither the Arlington nor the Lowell would be going anywhere.