“Räumen,” cries Captain Blicero. Peroxide and permanganate tanks have been serviced. The gyros are run up. Observers crouch down in the slit trenches. Tools and fittings are stashed rattling in the back of an idling lorry. The battery-loading crew and the sergeant who screwed in the percussion pin climb in after, and the truck hauls away down the fresh brown ruts of earth, into the trees. Blicero remains for a few seconds at launch position, looking around to see that all is in order. Then he turns away and walks, with deliberate speed, to the fire-control car.

“Steuerung klar?” he asks the boy at the steering panel.

“Ist klar.” In the lights from the panel, Max’s face is hard, stubborn gold.

“Treibwerk klar?”

“Ist klar,” from Moritz at the rocket motor panel. Into the phone dangling at his neck, he tells the Operations Room, “Luftlage klar.”

“Schlüssel auf SCHIESSEN,” orders Blicero.

Moritz turns the main key to FIRE. “Schlüssel steht auf SCHIESSEN.”

Klar.

There ought to be big dramatic pauses here. Weissmann’s head ought to be teeming with last images of creamy buttocks knotted together in fear (not one trickle of shit, Liebchen?) the last curtain of gold lashes over young eyes pleading, gagged throat trying to say too late what he should have said in the tent last night… deep in the throat, the gullet, where Blicero’s own cock’s head has burst for the last time (but what’s this just past the spasming cervix, past the Curve Into The Darkness The Stink The… The White… The Corner… Waiting… Waiting For—). But no, the ritual has its velvet grip on them all. So strong, so warm….

“Durchschalten.” Blicero’s voice is calm and steady.

“Luftlage klar,” Max calls from the steering panel.

Moritz presses the button marked VORSTUFE. “Ist durchgeschaltet.”

A pause of 15 seconds while the oxygen tank comes up to pressure.

A light blazes up on Moritz’s panel.

Entlüftung. “Beluftung klar.”

The ignition lamp lights: Zundung. “Zundung klar.”

Then, “Vorstufe klar.” Vorstufe is the last position from which Moritz can still switch backward. The flame grows at the base of the Rocket. Colors develop. There is a period of four seconds here, four seconds of indeterminacy. The ritual even has a place for that. The difference between a top-grade launch officer and one doomed to mediocrity is in knowing exactly when, inside this chiming and fable-crowded passage, to order Hauptstufe.

Blicero is a master. He learned quite early to fall into a trance, to wait for the illumination, which always comes. It is nothing he’s ever spoken of aloud.

“Hauptstufe.”

“Hauptstufe ist gegeben.”

The panel is latched forever.