Page 54 of Stars

“GNC?” Guidance, navigation, and controls.

“Go, Flight.”

Eleven more stations checked in, until she finished with “Surgeon?”

“Go, Flight.”

“CAPCOM?”

“Go, Flight,” Dan said with a smile.

Marcia Lee spoke over the radio loop from Kennedy. “Houston, are you go?”

“Kennedy, Houston is go,” Roxanne replied.

“Roger, Houston,” Marcia said. There was a smile in her voice, an edge to her words. Adrenaline pumped all members of Mission Control to the max, sharpened everything to laser precision. “Freedom, you are a go for final countdown.” She added NASA’s farewell message to all departing crews, a tradition almost one hundred years old. “From all of us at the Cape, good luck and Godspeed.”

* * *

“Go for APU start,”Kennedy’s Launch Control Center called.

“Roger, Kennedy.” Mark nodded to Sasha. Sasha flipped the auxiliary power unit start switch. It was actuallyFreedom’s main power system. “Auxiliary” was a holdover from the early days of aviation, when anything other than wings and the wind was considered auxiliary power.

Freedom’s power unit kicked on, severing her connection to the launch tower. She vibrated, trembling against the hold-down bolts tethering her to Earth.

“T minus two minutes.”

“Close visors,” Mark said. Their helmets were on, but the thick plastic and sun shades were left up for their final checks. Once they closed and locked their visors, their private oxygen supplies would kick in.

Mark twisted and reached for Sarah’s hand. It was awkward, behind him and to his right, but they made it work. He took Sasha’s next.

“Everyone ready?”

Mute, Sasha jerked his head in his best imitation of a nod. Sarah called out a “Hell yes,” the most excited Sasha had ever heard her.

Mark’s dark visor stared at Sasha. “You are ready for this. Let’s take her up just like we trained.”

“Go for autosequence start.”

Freedom’s cockpit hummed, taking control of the countdown. Giant numbers flashed on every display panel, counting down from thirty seconds.

T minus ten seconds. “Go for main engine start.”

Trembles turned to shakes, shudders that jerked the cockpit left and right and back again as the fuel pumps opened, millions of pounds of liquid oxygen and hydrogen pouring into the main engine. There was a roar beneath them, the explosion of a volcano or the atmospheric shred of flying supersonic. Sasha’s eyes went wide, nearly exploded out of his head. He flinched, expecting an explosion, flames, the end.

“Kennedy, confirm main engine start!” Mark hollered. The cockpit rocked in every direction, as if she were a toy caught in a pit bull’s steel-tight jaws. Shadows from the control tower streaked and waved across the cockpit asFreedomrocked on her hold-down bolts. She leaped against them, straining, creaking, vibrating, desperate to be free of gravity.

Not even Sasha’s ejection over Siberia had been this violent, this intense. He tried to make his hands into fists. His bones quaked, trying to shake free of his muscles and organs. His heart wasn’t even beating anymore. It was a hummingbird in his chest.

Three… two… one—

The hold-down bolts blew apart asFreedom’s main engines roared to life, igniting in one split second.

Upthrust flung him back, smeared him against his seat. His harness dug into his chest, his organs into his spine, his skin into his bones. Gravity tried to rip his soul from his flesh, tear his mind from his body. For a moment, a single, halting gasp, he was outside himself watchingFreedompunch skyward.

“Houston,Freedomhas cleared the tower,” Kennedy called. Their radios were tinny, scratchy with static from the bellow of the engines. “They’re all yours.”

“Houston, roll program!” Mark shouted.