Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral-In a joint statement released late this afternoon through NASA press spokesman Craig Yarborough, agency officials and Roger Gordian, whose firm, UpLink International, is chief contractor of the ISS project, have declared their undivided commitment to resuming assembly of the orbital station as soon as possible. "We will reach beyond loss and grief," Yarborough said in his opening remarks, and then went on to announce the formation of an investigative task force to determine the cause of the blast, which has reawakened grim memories of the 1986 Challenger accident that claimed the lives of seven astronauts and nearly crippled America's space program.

Asked about the composition of this fact-finding team--and apparently mindful of the widespread criticisms leveled upon NASA in the wake of Challenger--Yarborough replied that it would include personnel from both inside and outside the organization, and promised more specific information about its makeup within days.

According to the prepared text of the statement, Mr. Gordian will take a "personal role in the probe," and "see that it includes a top-to-bottom review of safety procedures at his ISS production site in Brazil," where the station's components are being manufactured under UpLink's overall management.

Gordian's assurance is viewed as a sign that he intends to avoid the divisive, public finger-pointing in which NASA and its contractors engaged after Challenger's ill-fated launch fifteen years ago....

When Nimec and Megan spotted the police cruiser, it was parked at the gravel shoulder of the road, about a car length behind a red Toyota pickup, its roof racks throwing off circus strobes of light.

The two officers, who had obviously arrived at the scene in it, were scuffling with a third man outside the pickup.

One of the lawmen was fortyish and burly and wore a Hancock County deputy's uniform and badge. The other was perhaps twenty years younger and forty pounds leaner and wore a State of Maine warden's uniform and badge. The civilian, a tall, dark-haired man in a green chamois shirt, tan goose-down vest, jeans, and hiking boots, was standing out on the road with his back pressed up against the driver's door of his truck. The warden was jammed halfway inside the door, his head under the steering column, his body bent across the front seat, his backside sticking almost comically out of the cab. The deputy had the pickup driver's collar bunched in his fist and was attempting to wrestle him away from the door, but he was putting up a hard fight, shoving the deputy back with one hand, throwing punches at his face and neck with the other. The cop had an open cut below his right eye. A pair of mirrored sunglasses lay on the blacktop near his feet, one lens popped out of the wire frame. He was shouting furiously in the pickup driver's face, but neither Pete nor Megan could make out what he was saying through the windows of their Chevy.

"What in the world's going on up there?" she asked, peering out her side of the windshield.