She looked back down the crawlerway to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The VAB was a black-and-white block, squat on the horizon; it was impossible to judge its size. The crawlerway was a path of big yellow river-gravel blocks running straight as an arrow to the VAB, at infinity; it ran alongside the canal built for the barges which hauled huge Saturn stages up to the VAB. She could see the tracks ground into the road surface where the crawler-transporter had hauled the Saturn to the launch complex; they looked like dinosaur footsteps.

Suddenly it struck her. The event they’d practiced and talked about for months was about to happen. She really would be sealed into the little cabin at the top of this stack and thrown into space. My God, she thought. They’re serious.

In the weeks before launch day, York had been out to the pad many times. She’d come to think of the pad as a noisy, busy place, like an industrial site: machines running, elevators going up and down the gantries, people clanging and banging and talking.

Launch day was different. Save for the crew and their attendants, there was no living soul within three miles.

After the press of people at the MSOB — the glimpses she’d had of the million-strong throng around the Cape — to be at the epicenter of this concrete desolation, with the overwhelming bulk of the Saturn VB before her, was crushing, terrifying. Like a glimpse of death.

Still carrying her air unit, accompanied only by the whisper of oxygen, York followed Stone toward the steel mesh elevator at the base of the launch tower scaffolding.

Perhaps these are my last moments on Earth. Right here and now, on this blasted concrete apron. Maybe this is indeed a kind of death, time-delayed by hardware.

JACQUELINE B. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

The breeze off the Atlantic ruffled the flags behind the wooden bleachers at the viewing site, close to the VAB. The grandstand crowd was more than twenty thousand, Muldoon was told, including five thousand special guests and four thousand press. There were celebrities, politicians, families and friends of the crew.

There were one million people within seventy-five miles of this spot.

JFK was there, in his wheelchair, behind big sunglasses, looking a lot older than his sixty-eight years. The rest of Muldoon’s old Apollo crew showed up, and the NASA PAO people had the three of them line up — Armstrong, Muldoon, Collins — behind the frail old former President, with the Saturn gleaming on the horizon behind them.

The PR done, Muldoon sat down.

He was looking east, into the low morning sun. It was a clear, still morning, with a few scattered clouds; the PAO said the probability of meeting launch weather rules was good, more than 80 percent.