The Firing Room was full of the same computer consoles and wall-sized tracking screens; but there were also sixty TV screens showing the Saturn stack from different angles. And in the viewing room behind the Trench, there was a huge picture window with a panoramic view of Merritt Island, with its launch gantries poking up out of the sand, three miles away. Unlike the MOCR, the Firing Room wasn’t closed to the outside world.

And at the moment of launch, the Firing Room flooded with real, honest-to-God rocket light.

The atmosphere was different here, too. The controllers here were independent of the Mission Control guys, by job description and inclination. They were more like blue-collar technicians. The LCC controllers were in charge for the first few seconds of the flight; they were the guys who had to get the mission off the ground by doing the dirty work of the launch.

It was an atmosphere Donnelly liked. He’d come to Florida, bringing his family, soon after the Apollo-N fiasco, hoping to rebuild his career.

As he’d feared, some of the shit flying around then had stuck to him. Well, he wasn’t a flight director anymore; Indigo Team was just embarrassing history, and Donnelly’s brilliant career probably wouldn’t look so brilliant ever again. But he was still here, still involved, still with NASA.

They reached T minus five minutes, and the controllers moved into the final pre-automatic check.

“Guido?”

“Go.”

“EECOM?”

“Go.”

“Booster?”

“Go.”

“Retro?”

That was Donnelly.

He glanced at his console. His vision was misty. “Go,” he said.

Go, by God. Go!

JACQUELINE B. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

Helicopters flapped over the pads: that was Bob Crippen and Fred Haise, Muldoon knew, checking out the launch weather conditions.

At T minus ten minutes, the countdown went through the last of its planned holds. After that, there were no more holds; and for Muldoon, events unfolded with the inevitability of falling off a cliff.

At thirty seconds, Muldoon stood with the rest, and faced the Saturn. Save for occasional flags of vapor from the cryogenic tanks, the pad was still static, like a piece of a factory.

There was a moment of stillness.

Plumes of steam — from the sound-suppression water system — squirted out to either side of the slim booster. Muldoon could see the last umbilical arms swinging aside. Main engine start.

Then a bright white light erupted from the base of the Saturn.