CHAPTER 1

Thirteen Seats

Somewhere in Texas, 1981

The afternoon had no business being frightening.

Texas lay broad beneath a clean blue sky. The fields beyond the launch complex stretched flat toward a horizon softened by heat. A few white clouds had formed far to the east, too lazy to become weather. The wind was light enough that smoke from a distant barbecue would have risen almost straight before drifting away.

It was porch weather.

Rocking-chair weather.

The kind of afternoon made for cold bottles sweating on wooden tables, steaks over charcoal, a radio playing somewhere inside the house and somebody saying there was no reason to hurry because daylight would last for hours.

From far enough away, the launch vehicle was merely another vertical line against the sky.

Inside it, Mike was strapped to enough explosive fuel to make the peaceful afternoon seem like a practical joke.

The passenger cabin smelled of warm metal, rubber, disinfectant, electronics and people pretending not to be afraid.

Thirteen acceleration couches filled the compartment. They were half seats, half beds, and looked uncomfortably like metal coffins. Once strapped in, a passenger was not really sitting or lying down but held somewhere between the two.

The passengers had spent the final three months of a longer preparation programme training together, but launch morning had scattered them through individual final procedures. Medical. Mission briefing. Personal communications. Documentation. Last-minute equipment checks. Each person had been collected separately afterward and escorted to the spacecraft by launch personnel.

They had been arriving one by one for nearly an hour.

Mike had learned more about the others during those three months than he had expected and much less than he would have liked.

He knew Céleste Varenne was a pilot because she had a habit of inspecting every vehicle she entered before trusting it. Even now, strapped into a couch across the cabin, her eyes moved over the restraint anchors and hatch mechanism with professional concentration.

He knew Daniel Justice liked procedure. It kept him calm and composed. Daniel had checked his own harness after two technicians had already checked it.

He knew Serena Thunder found Daniel’s seriousness amusing. She had watched him check the harness and smiled despite being visibly nervous herself. Daniel had recited the relevant instructions from memory as he worked.

He knew Burton Trouble had driven trucks. Burton’s extraordinary confidence in his ability to survive circumstances that worried more sensible people kept him calm. He appeared to regard interplanetary launch as another transportation problem somebody else had been paid to solve.

Burton lay back with his hands resting loosely over the harness.

“You comfortable?” Mike had asked when Burton boarded.

“No.”

“You look comfortable.”

“I look good uncomfortable.”

That had been the end of it.

Layla occupied the couch beside Mike.

She had been composed throughout training—observant, carrying herself with a quiet assurance that made crowded rooms seem less crowded around her. Today one hand kept finding the small pendant at her throat.

Mike had never asked about it.

He almost did now.

Instead he said, “You all right?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She turned her head toward him.

He shrugged as far as the harness allowed. “Would have worried me if I was the only one.”

That earned half a smile.

Tobias Nightglass was two rows forward.

He had been watching the hatch impatiently since he arrived.

“Has Anja come through?” he asked a technician.

“Not yet, sir. Still loading passengers.”

Tobias nodded.

At that point there had been six empty couches.

Another passenger arrived.

Then another.

Kumiko Takahashi paused inside the hatch while a technician found the communications lead for her couch. She moved aside to let another man pass, then asked him to repeat the connection check; his first answer had been lost beneath the ventilation. Mike remembered her doing the same thing in training. If she had not heard an instruction, she made the instructor say it again.

Rafael Costa came through carrying a soft bag close against his leg. It caught the edge of the hatch. He stopped, freed the strap and continued without handing the problem to the technician behind him. Meera Rao followed. Before surrendering her own bag for stowage, she checked the label against the number on her couch. The technician held out his hand and waited. She finished checking, then gave it to him.

Ama Mensah and Patryk Kowalski had the forward couches beside the flight controls. From Mike’s seat, the backs of their supports partly hid the instrument panels. He could see enough to notice that neither of them was watching the hatch. A technician stood between their stations with a checklist, waiting for their answers.

Ama lowered herself into her couch and lifted her arms clear while the restraints were drawn across her. When the technician asked whether anything pinched, she indicated a fold beneath her shoulder. He smoothed it out. She settled back, checked that she could still reach the controls and turned her attention to the course display. During training, Mike had watched her follow a doubtful figure back through the calculations until she found the reason for it. Now she read the figures aloud while the technician checked them against his sheet.

Beside her, Patryk was finding room for his elbows between the restraint and the console. After two adjustments he looked back toward Mike and raised one eyebrow. Then the technician called the next check, and Patryk turned forward. His eyes moved from one indicator to the next before he answered. Mike had heard him identify a change in a training rig by its sound before the instructor pointed it out. Here, with the machinery below them beginning to wake, he listened between the technician’s questions. Ama had returned to her display. Their places at the front of the cabin looked considerably less restful than Burton’s.

Mike knew the others better than those small movements suggested. Three months of training had given him their names, professions and habits, but not their histories. He knew who hated the centrifuge, who snored during the isolation exercise, who drank coffee after midnight and who always volunteered first when instructors asked for somebody to demonstrate an unpleasant procedure.

That was enough for training.

It was not enough to understand why any of them had agreed to leave Earth.

The technicians worked around them with practiced indifference to history. Harnesses tightened. Communications leads connected. Personal bags disappeared into lockers. Checklists were signed and passed back through the hatch.

Tobias asked again.

“Anja Keller?”

The technician beside Céleste shook his head. “I don’t have the boarding order, sir.”

Tobias looked toward the empty couches.

There were two now.

Then one.

The last arriving passenger was strapped in.

The thirteenth couch remained empty.

Anja Keller’s name was still on the passenger list. Mike looked from the vacant couch to Tobias, then back toward the hatch.

Mike noticed Tobias watching the hatch again.

A speaker crackled overhead.

“T minus thirty minutes.”

The cabin changed.

Until then, boarding had felt like work. People moving. Technicians talking. Buckles clicking. Paperwork changing hands.

Now there was a number.

Thirty minutes.

Outside, somewhere beyond the fences, somebody was probably turning meat over a grill.

Inside, the launch crew began removing the last equipment from the cabin.

Tobias raised his head.

“Excuse me. Anja still isn’t here.”

One technician glanced toward the hatch. “There’s still ground crew aboard, sir.”

It was not an answer, but it was enough to postpone panic.

“T minus twenty minutes.”

Something heavy moved below them.

The sound came through the spacecraft structure: a mechanical thump, then a low vibration that climbed through Mike’s couch and settled somewhere behind his ribs.

Layla’s fingers closed around the pendant.

Céleste tilted her head, listening.

Daniel looked at the countdown display.

Serena looked at Daniel.

Burton Trouble closed his eyes.

Mike stared at him.

“You sleeping?”

“No.”

“You planning to?”

“Wake me when we get there.”

Mike almost laughed.

Across the cabin Tobias did not hear them.

“Where is she?” he asked.

No one answered immediately.

The final cabin technician was checking restraint indicators row by row.

“T minus ten minutes.”

White vapour began to move past the small window.

The peaceful Texas afternoon disappeared behind it.

Tobias turned toward the technician.

“Anja Keller. Architecture. She should be in that seat.”

“I know who she is, sir.”

“Then where is she?”

The technician hesitated.

Mike saw it.

So did Tobias.

“What?” Tobias said.

“I don’t have authority to discuss changes to the load order.”

Tobias’s face tightened. “What changes to the load order?”

The technician moved to the next restraint.

“What changes to the load order?” Tobias repeated.

“Tobias,” Daniel said quietly.

“No. She was cleared. She was with us yesterday.”

The technician kept working.

The cabin speaker interrupted them.

“T minus five minutes. Prepare for final hatch secure.”

Mike watched the last technician cross the cabin. The man checked the vacant couch and moved on.

Tobias lifted his head.

“Anja Keller. She hasn’t boarded.”

The technician stopped with his hand against the hatch frame.

“Sir. The orders changed.”

“What orders?”

“She’s not going.”

Mike had been listening to the ventilation. Now he could hear nothing else.

Tobias caught the harness release.

“I’m getting out.”

Daniel turned toward him. “Tobias.”

“Stop the count. Open the hatch.”

The technician shook his head. He backed through the opening before Tobias could ask again.

“ANJA IS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.”

The door swung shut.

Mike felt the locking mechanism through the frame of his couch. Each engagement was a small blow against his spine. He had expected the rocket to frighten him. He had not expected a door.

“T minus four minutes.”

Tobias was still pulling at the restraint.

Mike tried to think of something useful to say. Nothing came. Across the compartment, the vacant couch had its own belt, its own headset, its own little reading lamp. Everything a passenger needed except the passenger.

Outside the narrow window, Texas remained blue.

“T minus three minutes.”

The ventilation changed note. Mike swallowed and discovered that his mouth was dry.

He had signed the forms. He had passed the exercises. None of that had required him to believe that the ground would actually leave him.

“T minus two minutes.”

A tremor travelled up through the couch. He pressed his heels against the foot supports, testing something that had already been tested for him.

Burton opened his eyes.

“T minus one minute.”

Céleste drew a slow breath. Daniel held himself motionless while Serena reached for his hand. Beside Mike, Layla pressed her pendant into her palm.

He looked at the window once more.

A field. A service road. A sky that ought to have belonged to an ordinary afternoon.

The final count came through the speaker.

“Ten.”

The couch began to shake.

“Nine.”

Mike kept his head against the support.

“Eight.”

Someone behind him began to pray.

“Seven.”

He could no longer hear the words.

“Six.”

Tobias pulled once more at the harness.

“Five.”

There would be no walking back across the gantry now.

“Four.”

Céleste closed her eyes.

“Three.”

Burton said, very quietly, “Well. Here we go.”

“Two.”

The engines came alive beneath them.

“One.”

Mike drew breath to say something to Layla.

“Zero. Liftoff.”

The words vanished inside the roar.

His couch drove against him. The window slid beyond his line of sight. For a moment he could not tell whether they were rising or whether the whole of Texas had dropped away.

Then the cabin disappeared into black.