The lights dimmed. The air-conditioning fans abruptly fell silent.
The battery was dying.
He turned off the strobe light. Only the faint beam of the port wing light was shining now. In a few minutes he would begin to feel the heat of that one-hundred-eighty-degree magma-charged water.
It would radiate through the hull, would slowly cook him alive in his own sweat. Already he felt a drop trickle from his scalp and slide down his cheek. He kept his gaze focused on that single crab, delicately prancing its way across the stony shelf.
The wing light flickered.
And went out.
July 7.
Two Years Later.
Through the thunder of the solid propellant rocket boosters and the teeth-jarring rattle of the orbiter, the command abort sprang so clearly into Mission Specialist Emma Watson's mind she might have heard it shouted through her comm unit. None of the crew had, in fact, said the word aloud, but in that instant she the choice had to be made, and quickly. She hadn't heard the verdict yet from Commander Bob Kittredge or Pilot Jill Hewitt, in the cockpit in front of her. She didn't need to. They had so long together as a team they could read each other's minds, and the amber warning lights flashing on the shuttle's flight console clearly dictated their next actions.
Seconds before, Endeavour had reached Max Q, the point during launch of greatest aerodynamic stress, when the orbiter, thrusting against the resistance of the atmosphere, begins to violently vibrate. Kittredge had briefly throttled back to seventy percent to ease the vibrations. Now the console warning lights told them they'd lost two of their three main engines.