Damn that hook, anyhow! At last it clicked into place, and Pirx sank back into the soft contour couch, as bushed as if he’d just returned from a deep-space probe.

“Minus twenty-three, twenty-two, twen…” The count rambled on in his earphones with a steady patter.

It happened once that at the count of zero two cadets were launched simultaneously—the one scheduled to go first, and the one next in line. Both rockets shot up like a couple of Roman candles, less than 200 meters apart, escaping a midair collision by a mere fraction of an arc second. Or so the story went. Ever since then—again, if the rumors were to be believed—the ignition cable was activated at the very last moment, by a radio command signal issued by the launch-site commander stationed inside his glass-paneled booth—which, if true, would have made a mockery of the whole countdown.

“Zero!” a voice blared in his earphones. All at once Pirx heard a muffled but prolonged rumble, his contour couch shook, and flickers of light snaked across the glass canopy, under which he lay staring up at the ceiling panel, taking readings: astrograph, air-cooling gauges, main-stage thrusters, sustaining and vernier jets, neutron flux density, isotopic contamination gauge, not to speak of the eighteen other instruments designed almost exclusively to monitor the booster’s performance. The vibrations then began to slacken, the sheet of racket tapered off overhead, and the thunderous roar grew fainter, more like a distant thunderstorm, before giving way to a dead silence.

Then—a hissing and a humming, but so sudden he had hardly any time to panic. The automatic sequencer had activated the previously dormant screens, which were always disconnected by remote control to protect the camera lenses from being damaged by the blinding atomic blast of a nearby launch.

These automatic controls are pretty nifty, thought Pirx. He was still miles away in his thoughts when his hair suddenly stood on end underneath his dome-shaped helmet.