WE have ten minutes to burn, and counting." This time Linc was hearing bench seat in the words from a bench seat in the Aft Personnel Lounge on C Deck, inside the Neil A. Armstrong. He reaches out to Julie sitting next to him, and gave her arm a quick squeeze. Opposite them, Arvin and Flash made okay signs at each other. Patch, from Coulie days, was with them again, having reappeared just in time to catch the ship. He had been in Alaska, going through an intensive course in mountaineering and survival as a preparation for surface training on the Jovian moons. The Intention was that he would go on to specialize in survey and prospecting work. So perhaps he and Linc wouldn't have to wait until they were back on Earth to go climbing together again after all—if tackling ice slopes against a quarter of Earth's gravity could be called climbing.
The views alternating on the screen were similar to before: the ship hanging in space, now bereft of its gaggle of service vessels; Grayling, turning amid its scattered formation of out-stations; Sysiphus on its way around the Moon, trailing down its line. Linc remembered how, as he watched these images before, he had thought about the people out there inside the ship, trying to imagine how they must be feeling as they waited through the final moments. Now he was one of them.
"Eight minutes. The hook is on target."
"If you've got any second thoughts now, you might as well forget 'em." Johnny "Piano Man" flashed one of his smiles. He had reappeared too, after being spirited away to meet people he hadn't cared to name and taking a course in political science. Apparently a lot of things that were "subversive" on Earth were considered worth listening to in the Outzone.
"Any second thoughts?" Linc asked Julie.
She smiled and shook her head.
And Big Mac was back from a college stint also, his sights set on the design side of construction engineering. He had been in touch with Mace, who was already at Coombe and said life there was hectic but great. The sight of Jupiter in the night sky was "awesome," Mace had told him. "Like all the sunsets you ever saw, rolled together into one big ball."
"Seven minutes."
The view switched to a shot of the Armstrong's drive nozzles. Willie, a short distance away with Mackerel, Arch, Gus, and several of the others, pointed at the screen while he said something—probably giving one of his technical commentaries. Linc was happy not to have to listen. From Coombe, Willie would almost certainly be routed on to Ganymede, which was where military pilots went through training. Ganymede seemed to be the center of the Outzone's military activities. If Linc elected to remain with the service, it was likely he would be sent there for a stretch too.
"Okay, guys, what are you gonna miss the most?" Arvin asked the others.
Big Mac answered first. "Sunshine and beaches. Real sun—you know, near enough to make rocks fry eggs."
"I thought you said that Mace told you they're making one at Coombe," Flash said.
"Yeah, sure. Inside a dome with artificial sand, with a plasma ball and a machine that has to make the waves. Sorry, but for me that's not a mark on the plus side."
"It might be, six months from now," Flash suggested.
"For me, oh, I dunno . . . . Just knowing the rest of the world's out there, I guess," Johnny told them. "You know—that more planets exist between the bus stops."
"What I'm gonna miss is real mountains," Patch said. "Boy, you should have seen some of these places in Alaska, Linc! We have to go back there sometime."
They all looked at Linc questioningly. He thought for a few seconds, asking himself what he would miss the most. Finally, he shrugged. "Nothing much."
"Five minutes and counting. Plasma and fields all in spec, and hook in the window. Five-zero proceed order confirmed."
A local announcement followed from inside the ship. "It looks like we're on our way, folks. Stewards check that everyone is seated and secured. The g force will be less than you're used to on a regular airplane, but it's not a time for people to be milling around. The good ship Neil A. Armstrong, about to depart for Callisto. If you don't want to go to Callisto, don't waste your time telling us now. Well, we're going to be busy up front for some time. Talk to you again later when we're under way."
Once again, Linc found himself watching a numeric superposition at the top of the screen. 04:15 . . . 04:14 . . .
"For me, what I'll miss is being able to play a decent ball game," Arvin said. "I mean, how could you make it work? The gravity and everything would make it all different. Did Mace say anything about that?"
Big Mac shook his head. "I never thought to ask him."
"Willie'll know," Flash said. He called along to the next bay of seats, "Hey, Willie, how do you play baseball on Callisto?"
"What's baseball?" Willie threw back.
Arvin groaned, shook his head and covered his eyes.
"Three minutes . . . "
Like a replay of before, the screen showed the inside of the Grayling Bridge with the crew stations manned, Kelsoe at the main panel, flanked by his EO and the CEO. Then came the shot from Sisyphus showing the tether line curving upward—from the perspective of its surface station—and away into space.
"I feel like a trout waiting to be jerked out of the water," Big Mac said. He was new in space compared with most of them, and so found it all doubly traumatic. Not only was this the first orbital liftout he'd seen; he would be going with it.
"You won't even feel it," Linc told him. "Like it just said, the g's less than when you take off in a plane."
"And we power up to match it," Flash added—needlessly, really, since they had all been briefed on the drill. As happened to almost everyone, he was seizing on anything to talk about as the zero hour approached.
"Two minutes to burn, and counting . . . "
Linc found that he didn't feel like saying anything. His mind went back to streets and the life he had grown up in, all those years knowing of nothing else, and then the strange combinations of circumstances that had resulted in bringing him to where he was now. He thought of the billions of people scattered across the world, and what the total of what they were capable of doing and knowing could add up to. The ability was there to turn any dream that they wanted into reality. They could create what he had seen out here, and the things he would be going to; or they could be devoured by the things he was leaving behind—all of it creations of none but themselves. But even if all of them had the chance to choose as he had, how many would have? . . .
"Hey, Linc, anyone there?" Johnny's voice brought him back. "You look like you're halfway to Jupiter already." Linc grinned tiredly.
"Oh, no, he's right here," Julie said, clutching his arm.
"One minute. Deployment good. Sequence to auto."
"All crew to station."
Linc felt his pulse rate rising and strange tingles racing down his spine as the same words he had heard before replayed themselves:
"Plasma primaries are at heat, and go."
"Injection fields are go."
"Attitude and profile check positive function."
A cut to Grayling's Bridge again, Kelsoe and the CEO.
"We have go at zero minus thirty-eight seconds. Drive initialization syncing now."
Movement and the pretenses of normality all around had ceased. Everyone stared at the screen showing the view of the ship from one of the service craft. Linc felt Julie's fingers tightening around his arm.
00:05 . . .00:04 . . .00:03 . . . 00:02 . . . 00:01 . . . .
On the screen a torch of light leaped out from the Armstrong and seared across space.
"Injection . . . . Plasma ignition . . . . Acceleration registering . . . We have liftout!"
They watched the ship beginning to move against the stars and at the same time felt it as a mild urging transmitted through the floor and the seats. The image on the screen gained speed and foreshortened, but the sensation inside was unchanged. Only when the view switched to a rear view from the Armstrong showing Grayling Station and its satellites already as points vanishing into the distance was there a real indication of how fast they were already moving.
"Sisyphus is coming overhead . . . . Lineup is good . . . . Connecting now." The view changed to the grab line from the ship extending upward, and another line from off the screen in the final stages of close. "Tension . . . . We are under boost."
The sensation of weight increased noticeably but not violently. Nevertheless, Linc knew that their acceleration was almost doubled, slinging the ship into a course that would take it on its way out from Earth and across the solar system.
The Moon slid in toward the center of the screen, already smaller than seen from Grayling. Then, as the Armstrong swung outward and upward under the combined impulse of its engines and the momentum being returned through the tether, Earth began showing on one side of it. Linc remembered how he had looked down across California's great Central Valley from a peak in the Sierra and pictured the invisible people scurrying below, lost in their tiny worlds of imaginary worries and self-inflicted problems, unaware of the different reality that was within their grasp and so close, if they would only lift their heads to see it. Now he thought it about the whole world.
And yet, somewhere down there beneath those clouds another group, even now as he watched, would be going through Coulie, who would follow. And one day in the city, somebody would seek out Joe, and there would be other Joes from other cities, and they would follow too. Linc wondered how many others had watched such a view of Earth from an outgoing ship and thought similar things, long before Linc had even known Coulie existed. Before much longer now, he would meet them.
"At the high point and on target. Letting go the line. We are now on course for Jupiter. Launch crew can stand down."
The ship had become a free creature, soaring outward toward the distant point of light that would grow and take on color and form as the days passed by. Shouts of jubilation, laughs, smiles, back slappings and a few tears broke out around the deck as all the pent-up tensions dissipated. Linc and Julie found each other's hands and clutched tightly. They would doubtless return to Earth in the years to come and probably find themselves leaving it again, maybe many times. But never again could it quite be like this. They both tried to find words to say what they felt just at that moment, but there were none. Everyone else seemed to be having the same problem.
On the screen a last view being transmitted from somewhere near the Moon showed the ship as a haze of white, already diminishing among the stars.