Indeed, the preparations for Orion's launch had gone without a hitch from the beginning. There had been no false starts, none of the frustrating last-minute technical snags that often caused countdowns to slip, and sometimes even forced missions to be scrubbed entirely.

Everything, everything, had seemed just right.

At T minus two hours, thirty minutes, Annie had joined members of the Mission Management Team and other NASA officials in accompanying the flight crew--her crew, as she'd called it, as she referred to all of the teams under her supervision--to the transport vehicle that would ferry them to the pad. While this was typically staged as a photo op by NASA's Public Affairs people, she was still a little surprised by the number of newsies waiting outside headquarters, their microphones covered with those furry wind baffles that looked like oversized caterpillars. There had even been a host from one of the network morning shows, Gary Somebody-or-other, who'd dragged her before the cameras for a comment.

In hindsight, Annie supposed she should have been prepared for the attention. NASA was intent on working the media, and she was aware that her strongly requested presence at the Center on the launch date, and to some extent even her appointment as Chief of Astronauts--a position very much at the upper level of the agency's organizational hierarchy--were calculated to draw a larger-than-normal press contingent. But she accepted her value as a PR tool, and sincerely believed the mission warranted its hype.

Long delayed due to funding problems, and of major importance to the International Space Station, the facility's first laboratory module was at last being sent into orbit, where it would be connected to the building-block segments already in place just two weeks before another research module was to launch from a Russian cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Far beyond their political merits as concrete examples of East-West cooperation, the two missions were at the very heart of ISS's future scientific endeavors, opening up a new era in space exploration, and Annie was sure this was why she'd been so focused on their nuts and bolts and uncharacteristically oblivious to the surrounding hoopla. Together, they represented the largest step ever toward realizing a dream that had held her in its grip since childhood, and cost her dearly as an adult. With success for the ISS program within reach, Annie was hoping the pride she felt over her contribution might finally eradicate the guilt and pain that had been its lasting by-product.

But such thoughts had their proper time and place, and Annie's personal trials had been the furthest thing from her mind as she stood there outside the restricted-access buildings of Launch Complex 39, watching Colonel Jim Rowland lead Orion's crew into the buslike silver transport with the circular blue-and-white NASA insignia on its side. Those five men and women had been scheduled to make history, and while her job required that she remain physically earthbound, Annie had felt as if a part of her would be going with them nonetheless.