‘Somehow I’d managed to wipe that detail from my mind,’ Saul grumbled. ‘What about, uh, everything else?’
‘There’s a hose attachment for that,’ said Lester, helpfully.
‘Just remind me,’ said Saul, now flexing his arms and knees. ‘There are people who actually pay for this experience?’
Lester started to reply just as a mild tremor rolled through the ground under their feet, lasting several seconds in all.
‘I’d better go check on things,’ Amy said quickly.
Saul watched her hurry away. ‘How much trouble could a tremor like that cause?’ he asked Lester.
‘Hard to say.’ Lester shrugged, as he finished climbing into his own suit. ‘Doesn’t take much more than a cracked exhaust pipe or fuel line to cause more trouble than you’d believe. We’ve been very lucky we weren’t forced to postpone the launch a few days more, but the faster we can get up now, safety permitting, the better chance we have of avoiding any trouble.’ He waved a beckoning hand to the both of them. ‘All right, we’re about done here. Keep your suits on and come with me.’
Saul picked up his helmet and trailed after Mitchell and Lester, down a narrow passageway decorated with images of vintage spacecraft from centuries past. Every step he took in the heavy boots felt as exaggerated and forced as if he were fleeing some nameless dread in a nightmare.
The flight control room adjoined to the rear of the hangar, and consisted of little more than a low-lit booth with several wall-mounted screens, each showing a different view of the Saturn, either from close up or some considerable distance. Several personnel were crammed into this small space, all of whom greeted Lester by his first name before returning to their tasks. Saul listened to them quietly mutter to each other about liquid fuel ratios and payloads, their eyes fixed on one display or another.
‘This is it?’ Saul asked Lester. ‘I thought there’d be more to it.’
‘Technically speaking, we don’t even need this room,’ replied Lester. ‘We could run the whole thing through our contacts, if we wanted.’
‘Except you need at least a dozen people working together on something this complex,’ said one of the technicians, a narrow-faced woman with blonde hair. ‘And they need to talk to each other constantly. There’s too much that could go wrong, and just slip right by you, if you’re not careful. So run it from your contacts, my ass, Lester.’
‘Ginny,’ Lester retorted, in a tone of mocking disapproval.
She turned round in her seat to face Saul and Mitchell. ‘We’ll be here for the first part of your launch,’ she explained. ‘There are too many variables and things that need to be monitored for us not all to be keeping an eye on things. But as soon as you’re out of orbit and well on your way, we’re heading up ourselves.’
Saul stared up at the image of the Saturn. ‘And there’s really no room for us on one of the VASIMRs?’
Ginny just looked at him like he was crazy.
It took another hour for the launch technicians to run the final safety checks, before it was safe for them to board. Amy returned from her other duties looking hot and tired. She appeared to be even older than Lester, but it was clear they enjoyed tremendous loyalty from their staff. Saul thought he understood why, for there was something about them that seemed as permanent and unchanging as the desert outside. He watched as the Roses took turns in hugging each of their staff in turn, talking over their plans to reunite once they had all reached Copernicus.
He leaned in towards Mitchell, who sat next to him on a bench at the rear of the booth. ‘They know not to stop once they get to the Lunar Array, right?’ he asked, under his breath. ‘They can’t risk stopping until they reach one of the colonies.’
Mitchell shook his head. ‘Jeff told them not to stick around Copernicus, put it that way. Listen, while we’re on the subject, I’ve been thinking about your plan to shut down the Array. I’m not sure you’ve thought it through as thoroughly as you could have.’
‘How so?’
‘How many EDP codes did you get hold of?’
‘Just the one,’ Saul admitted.
‘Maybe you don’t know this, but you’ll need at least two people before you can trigger a wormhole collapse. It’s not something you can do without help.’
‘That depends. Why, are you going to help me?’
‘Of course I am,’ Mitchell replied. ‘but how the hell do you propose to do it with only one EDP code?’
‘I don’t
A look of anger flickered across Mitchell’s face, just for a second, before he repressed it. ‘Are you sure of that?’ he asked.
‘t’s the one scrap of hope I have left to hang on to,’ Saul replied, remembering the things Olivia had said about Mitchell and knowing, in that moment, exactly what she had meant.
A little while later, Saul and Mitchell, accompanied by Lester, Amy and a couple of their technicians, boarded a small bus that carried them towards the Saturn rocket, standing tall and glorious in its gantry. The sky above was a perfect vivid blue, and Saul had the sudden terrible realization that this was the last time he would ever see it. He felt like a man on the way to his own execution.
The Saturn grew larger, the closer they approached, until Saul realized how immense the thing really was. He vaguely recalled archival footage of the earliest days of the space race: images of eerily similar gantries populated by hard-hatted technicians, and rooms filled with scientists and engineers working with impossibly primitive technology.
