“I know.” She spoke very quietly. “Is that what you want?”
“I don't know. What I do know is that we are heading for trouble if we take off now, possibly big trouble. But if we abort…”
“The entire Prometheus Project might be scratched. Is that what you are thinking?”
“Something like that. It cost a bundle and people are beginning to complain, and more and more pressure groups are jumping on the bandwagon. But that's not a problem you have in your country.”
“We have it, but not in the same way. The Politbureau is the Politbureau. One night there will be a meeting — next morning Polyarni will be Minister for State Pig Farming, and Prometheus will be dead at the same moment. So what do we do?”
''We're risking our lives if we go on now.”
“We risked our lives when we joined this project. I think — what do you say it in English? — the game is worthy of the candle.”
Patrick looked at her in silence for a long moment, nodding his head grimly. “I've always thought the game was worth the candle. But this is different. If we take off now we risk destroying everything.”
“If we stay we have the equal risk.”
“Come in Prometheus.” Kletenik's voice sounded in their ears. “At zero minus nine minutes how are the levels on your ADP?”
Patrick was searching Nadya's eyes for an answer to his question. But she had answered it already. She wanted to go ahead. And who was he to disagree? His superiors, the heads of the government wanted to proceed. He could go against their judgment and stop the whole thing now. Ruin his career, perhaps kill the entire Prometheus Project. It was a lot of responsibility to bear. He turned on his microphone.
“APO in the green. What are your readings on fueling?”
Flax was running with sweat, slumped in his chair like a sack of potatoes. He could not slide down any further but he felt the tension drain from his limbs when he heard Patrick's words. The mission was on. There was danger still, but nothing that the programs and he and the computers could not handle. He was going to ride it all the way. The program would come up with the answers and the pilots would throw the switches — but it was his mission the instant they took off. Let them space walk and get dosed with radiation and have their parades. They were welcome to it. But none of them could take his place here in Mission Control, the spider in the middle of all the webs, the interface between man and machine that kept them all working. One piece had weakened and caused the hold, a bit of machinery, and he had put it right. Another piece, a human one, had acted up, but that had been put right too. Five minutes more and…
“Hold at zero minus five,” a voice at Launch Control said, almost shattering him like a sudden blow with an ax. “I have a red light on sustainer propulsion. It's the lox pogo damper pressurization.”
“And it seems we have another hold, ladies and gentlemen, at exactly five minutes before blast-off, and I assure you that no one is happy about this one at all. The tension is so great here at Ground Control that you can almost feel it in the air. I'm turning you over now to Bill White in the crowd in the viewing stand for a report on the reactions there. Bill.”
On millions of TV sets all around the world the scene changed suddenly, from the hectic order of Ground Control to the viewing stand five miles from the takeoff site. From here Prometheus looked like a child's toy on the horizon with nothing to give an indication of its true size. Yet there had been much discussion over siting the stands as close as this, since they would still be in danger if there were an explosion at takeoff. But any further away and there would be no point in having viewing stands at all. In the end the decision had been one more compromise; limited-size stands for what might be called the second-rate notables. Expendable notables. If a few journalists and ageing generals and politicians went up in flames they would not be missed in the general horror and destruction. Of course the reality of this decision had only been discussed at the very high levels and a number of elderly gentlemen were pleasantly surprised to find their names on an invitation list. In the foreground between the spectators and the distant spaceship was the familiar lined face of Bill White. As he spoke the image of the distant Prometheus was covered by a superimposed telescopic version.
“The tension here in the viewing stand is exactly like that at Ground Control and Mission Control as you can well imagine. It must be the same all round the world wherever people are watching this incredible event taking place. Here in Baikonur it is already late afternoon, over two hours past the scheduled time for takeoff. And now, only seconds away, we have another hold. We can only imagine how the men and women, the astronauts in their giant craft, must feel. They are professionals and trained for their work but it still must be unbearable. I don't think anyone would want to take their places. They are doing magnificently and the entire world appreciates their courage. Now, Harry Saunders at Ground Control. Any changes yet, Harry?”
“We're exactly the same here, and in Prometheus which you can see on your screens there.” The image changed, filling the screen with Prometheus, zooming to her flight cabin, then panning down the length of her great boosters, steaming vents. Harry Saunders grabbed up his notes as soon as the camera was off him. The holds had been so long that he was running out of things to say, people to interview. He wished the damn thing would take off or blow up. His voice was beginning to go. He frantically searched his scribbled notes while his voice calmly described the Leviathan of space. Detailed description, he hadn't done that one lately. He found the right figures.
“We still have difficulty in realizing how big Prometheus is. When you say as high as a forty-storey building or as heavy as a battleship, some feeling is conveyed. But not the combined complexity of its construction, for this spaceship is really seven separate machines in one. This program is being transmitted on radio as well as television, and you lucky TV viewers must realize how impossible to visualize it must be for someone, say, in a small Asian village who has only seen a few simple machines in his lifetime. Perhaps the easiest way to understand its construction is to hold out your hand with fingers straight, then bring all the fingers together until they touch and make a circle. These fingers are the boosters, each one a completely separate rocket with its own fuel, pumps, motors, everything. Now if you take a pen with its cap on and, cap in your other hand, push it down between your fingers you will have some idea of the construction of Prometheus. The fingers and the pen, called the core body, are all the same. Complete rocket ships in their own rights. The cap is he payload, Prometheus, the part of the ship that will go into orbit high above Earth. And stay there forever.
“At takeoff all the boosters fire, as does the core body. Their fuel is the most powerful in the universe, hydrogen and oxygen, and it will be gulped and burned at the rate of fourteen thousand gallons a second. Yet this complex machine will not only burn fuel at that tremendous rate, but will transfer fuel from the outer boosters into the core body. This will be pumped in as fast as the core body burns its own fuel so that finally, when the boosters are empty and fall away, the core body will have a complete load of fuel. With the boosters gone the core body will burn to insert Prometheus into low orbit, then it will drop away as well, its job well done. At that point Prometheus will fire its own nuclear engine to push itself higher and higher into the correct orbit. Complex, yes, but still practical, for these Lenin-5 boosters have had a number of successful missions lifting larger and larger payloads into space. Also. . wait, a minute, yes, my countdown clock's moving again! The hold's over. Let's hope it's the final hold so I return you to Ground Control…”