In preparation for this day, she had worked and trained as hard as she ever had in her life. School, soloing, getting her commercial license, flying Otters full of tourists to go look at grizzly bears, these were as nothing by comparison. She'd flown formation in the T-38s in everything up to and including IFR approaches into the middle of storms that made her understand why the Greeks had made their head god one of thunder. She had rappelled down the side of the orbiter mock-up practicing emergency egress. She'd killed and eaten a rattlesnake during survival training. She practiced on the robot arm simulator until her own arms burned from sheer tension, and in the pool at Houston she'd practiced EVA maneuvers in the three-hundred-pound spacesuit until she thought she would grow gills. She had learned the function of every single one of the switches and knobs and levers and gauges and digital readouts in the cockpit. In a pinch, if Rick and Mike were both somehow incapacitated, she could land the orbiter at KSC or at Dakar International Airport or in Cold Bay, Alaska, or at any one of the designated shuttle emergency landing sites worldwide.
She was ready. She was ready for launch. She was ready for orbit. She was ready to carry out her mission. But she was also very aware of something the men who had flown the planes into the towers and the Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania had intuited early on.
Aircraft were nothing more and nothing less than a thin, fragile skin barely containing thousands of pounds of extremely combustible fuel. She was on the inside with the fuel. If there was any kind of a problem, she was going to burn up with it.
And she would kill anyone, including Cal, her friends, her parents, and Joel Almighty God Minster, if they tried to take her off this flying bomb.
"T minus eighty-nine." Mission Control's voice was calm, almost laconic. The beat of her heart, loud and rapid in her ears, almost drowned it out.
No. She wasn't going to blow up. She wasn't going to screw up. At fifty miles high her silver astronaut pin would turn to gold and every dream she had ever had about space flight since she was nine years old and had read Michael Collins's Carrying the Fire for the first time would come true.
But she still had to pee.
"T minus eighty-eight."
A MILE OFFSHORE OF CAPE CANAVERAL,
ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO
The shuttle stood on its tail, mated to the solid rocket boosters and the massive external fuel tank, a valiant white spear against the night sky. A brilliant cacophony of stars glittered behind it, shouting the man-made lights onshore into a pale echo. A murmur of appreciation rolled down the deck of Munro and up over the bridge.
"My, isn't she pretty," Senator Schuyler said.
Cal agreed with him, but he agreed with him silently. It was a matter of personal policy never to agree out loud with anything his father said.
He was well aware of how childish that was. He didn't care. Agreeing with his father was always a slippery slope, at the bottom of which the senator lurked, waiting.
They were running darkened ship, so no one's night vision would be obstructed for the launch. The Munros were seated on canvas folding chairs on the port bridge wing, with the senator leaning against the railing, Admiral Matson at his side as if he'd been superglued in place, but nevertheless casting longing glances at the CNN crew on the foredeck.
"Great view," Admiral Barkley said from Cal 's other side. "Ever seen one of these before?"
"No, sir, I haven't."
"Me, either." Barkley's teeth showed in a smile. "I was in Admiral Mat-son's office when he invited himself along, and I figured it'd be my only chance, so I invited myself along with him."
The CNN reporter, her impeccably coiffed hair beginning to frizz under the influence of so much salt air, was on the main deck below, working her way toward the bow, doing man-on-the-deck interviews, all of it framed by the digital video camera perched on the shoulder of her cameraman. Cal had gone below to introduce himself and welcome them to the ship, introduced them to the XO, suffered through his own interview, and handed them off gladly to Ensign Schrader, the lowest-ranking officer on board and therefore the de facto last stop for all the jobs no one else on Munro wanted.
"It's great being the captain," the XO had said in a low voice as they watched Schrader herd his charges safely past the Darwin sorter. "Although you might have missed an opportunity there with Ms. Teeth."
Cal controlled a quivering lip. "Ms. Trenwith, I believe she said her name was, XO."
"Well, sir, I just wanted you to know you had an in there." The XO's teeth flashed in the dark. "You know, when the astronaut begins to pall."
"Stuff it, XO."
"Certainly, sir," Taffy said, and snapped off a salute.
Munro was idling directly abeam of the shuttle. In spite of it being July and no winds, it was night and cool on the water, and the crew was bundled into fleece jackets. He looked at them crowded up against the railing and the safety lines along the 378 feet of the ship and wondered who was driving.
"Captain?"
It was BMC Gilmartin, who had relieved Lieutenant Barbieri for the watch at 2000 hours. "The Falcon is reporting a freighter in the closed area."
"What?" Cal followed Gilmartin into the bridge. "Have we got it on the radar?"
They went to look at the surface radar, a monitor mounted in a freestanding console with a constant sweep revealing surface contacts in their area, radiating from Munro's position in the center. "What's the range?"
"Three miles, sir."
"So five miles from shore."
"Yes, sir."
"That's three miles inside the security zone."
"Yes, sir."
"Why the hell'd it take so long for the Falcon to notice them?"
"They didn't say, sir."
They both watched the tiny blip move slowly and unmistakably inshore.
Tramp freighters were as common as seagulls in this area, some full of legitimate cargo like bananas or coffee or molasses headed north to waiting wholesalers, some full of stolen bicycles or cars, headed south to a less legitimate market in the Caribbean or South America. Some, as he well knew, were full of migrants looking for a quick and dirty way into America.
This ship could be any one of those and probably was.
Still, they were in the middle of a countdown for the launch of a U.S. space shuttle. A shuttle, moreover, that Kenai was on. Something that might later be termed overreaction did not necessarily seem uncalled for at this moment. "BMC, what's her speed?" Cal said.
"About ten knots, Captain. I'm thinking two or three of that is the Gulf Stream."
"And our nearest assets?"
Gilmartin raised Combat, and OS2 Riley's thin voice blared out of the speaker. "We're spread out pretty thin on the coast, Captain. Because of the threatened protest, the four small boats are all working close in, making sure nobody gets ashore. One of the MLBs is responding to a SAR south of here-nothing to worry about, they lost their engine and they need someone to make sure they don't run aground while they're waiting for the tow boat to show-and the other MLB is too far north. It's us, I guess, Captain."
Cal nodded. "Here's hoping the crew doesn't mutiny when I tell them they have to interrupt their launch viewing opportunity to do some actual work. Set starboard side boat launch detail, BMC."
"Aye aye, Captain. Set starboard side boat launch detail, BM2."
"Combat, captain."
Riley's voice came back at him, the speaker distorting it to make it sound tinny and almost afraid. "Captain?"
"Why'd it take so long for the Falcon to spot the freighter?"
"Uh, I don't know, Captain. I passed on the message as soon as I got it."