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meditating beside him, and Budarin, at the far right, staring at his bee, tried not to lose their cool by thinking about that. But if only for an instant, all of them had needed to swallow their doubts, the bilious flutter of overwhelmed senses. How could they not?
    On the one occasion when a shuttle crew had tried to subsume their nerves with idle chatter—the launch of STS-44—only one manhad refused to take part in the charade. Story Musgrave, a four-time veteran of liftoff, had been tight-lipped in the middle of the dull roar. “Story, how come you’re so quiet over there?” Tom Henricks, the pilot, had asked.
    “Because I’m scared to death,” Musgrave had replied.
    The cabin had been nearly silent after that, like
Endeavour
’s was now, come the start of the aptly named terminal count, nine minutes from ignition. The main countdown had stopped cold there, the way it always does. The pause gives the test director time to call out a long list of acronyms, each representing one of the technicians sitting at a console dedicated to some small component of the shuttle and its launch. Each of them must respond to the roll call, but they have a limited selection of answers: one word (GO!) is good; two words (NO GO!) is bad. This time around, every one of them said a single word. Now only two of them could change their minds and stop the count. The supervisor of range operations continued monitoring whether any planes or ships had strayed into range of the splashdown. And the weatherman, fed data from around the world—the weatherman who had relayed the gloomy reports from Spain the night before—could still put the quit on things. But tonight he was as quiet as the crew, and the countdown was begun again, left to continue apace.
    Seven minutes distant, hydraulic systems activated, and the White Room began to swing away from the shuttle, pulling back like a bomber creeping away from the charge he’s just set.
    Two minutes later, Wetherbee was given the order: “Go to start the APUs.” The auxiliary power units provide the shuttle’s hydraulic juice, and when they fired up, the crew knew that they were likely leaving. They were finally burning fuel, and burning fuel meant that only some very bad luck could stop them now.
    After what felt like forever, counted down second by second—until they were just three minutes from launch—the shuttle’s three main engines began gimbeling, testing their directional thrust. As they shifted up and down, left and right, throwing off a little push with each pull of the trigger, the astronauts could feel the shuttleswinging, like a skyscraper in a strong wind. It might have been unnerving were it not expected. They had waited so long for this moment, had imagined it so many times, now there were no surprises.
    Thirty seconds later, they shut their helmet visors, and their oxygen came on. Each of them was now in his own universe. Each of them was under glass.
    The flight data recorders switched on.
    A little more than thirty seconds from liftoff, the shuttle’s computers took over from the ground’s. With each passing moment, another knot was untied, another set of handcuffs slipped. Bit by bit, they were being cut loose. Countdown, they had come to understand, is one long letting go. It’s a goodbye filled with lingering until finally it’s too late to turn back.
    Ten seconds before launch, they heard the rumble of the water deluge system pouring out below them. The wall of water splashed into trenches carved out of the swamps, ready to catch their fire and dampen their acoustic shock. They blamed whatever trembling they felt in their hearts on the sudden burst. Everything around them had caught a bad case of the shakes.
    Nine.
    Eight.
    Seven.
    Six seconds from launch, the three main engines ignited. The cabin really began vibrating, the straps on the storage lockers swinging wildly. The shuttle’s computers ran through a series of final checks, and every last one of them