Kinsman gave up counting and turned his head to look out the small circular window set into the hatch. All he could see was the steel spiderwork of the launch tower, frightening- ly close. Could the ship clear those steel beams when it took off? Kinsman knew that it had, hundreds of times. Yet the tower still looked close enough to touch.

He focused his vision on the distant shoreline, where the Pacific curled in to meet the brown California hills. But the nearness of the launch tower still pressed against his aware- ness.

Hell of a way to go, he said to himself. Lying on your back with your legs sticking up in the air like a woman in heat. 37

"Five seconds!" a voice rang out from the flight deck.

The time stretched to infinity. Then, a vibration, a gushing roar, a banging shock—Christ! Something's gone wrong! Abruptly the whole world seemed to shake as the roar of six million naming demons burned into every bone of his body. Kinsman caught a brief glimpse of the tower sliding past the corner of his vision, then the brown hills slipped by as he was pressed down into the seat. The force pushing against him was not as bad as the g's he had pulled in fighter planes, but the vibration was worse, an eyeball-rattling shaking that felt as if all the teeth in his head would be wrenched loose.

With an effort he turned to look at Colt and saw that his partner's eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth gaping wide. Kinsman tried to see the other four trainees, but their seats were in front of his and he could not see their faces.

The pressure got worse and there was a jolt when the two strap-on solid rockets were jettisoned.

Going through fifty klicks, Kinsman knew. Maximum pressure ought to be behind us now.

The weight on his chest began to lessen. The bone- conducted rumble of the engines suddenly disappeared.

And he was falling.

Zero gravity, he told himself. We're in orbit. His arms had floated loosely off the seat rests. With a blink of his eyes, Kinsman rearranged his perspective. He was no longer lying on his back; he was sitting upright. They all were.

His stomach was fluttering. He made himself relax the tensed muscles. You're floating, he told himself. Just like at the seashore, when you were a kid. Beyond the breakers. Floating on the swells.

He turned and grinned at Colt. "How do you like it?"

Colt's answering grin was a bit queasy. "I'll get used to it in a couple minutes."

Major Pierce came floating down the ladder from the flight deck. He landed lightly on his booted feet, bobbed up off the metal deck plates. Back on Earth he had been a nondescript little man in his forties, patrician high-bridged nose, darting snake's eyes. Up here he could damned well be a ballet dancer, Kinsman thought.

"Very well, my little chickadees," the Major said, in a sneering nasal tenor. "Anybody feel like upchucking?" 38

The four other trainees had to turn in their seats to see Pierce, who was at the bottom of the ladder. Kinsman stared at the Major's boots, fascinated to see that they were not touching the deck.

"Very well," Major Pierce said when no one replied to his question, "Unstrap and try to stand up. By the numbers. And move slowly. Be particularly careful of sudden head movements. That way lies nausea." He pointed at Jill Meyers. "Meyers, you have the honor of being first."

Jill got up from her seat, her face going from brow- knitted concentration to wide-eyed surprise as she just kept rising, completely off her feet, until her mousy-brown hair bumped gently against the metal overhead. While the others laughed, Jill thrashed about and found an anchoring point by grabbing the handle of one of the electronics racks that covered the forward bulkhead.

"No matter how much training we give you Earthside, you still don't understand Newton's First Law of Motion," Pierce said, in a tone of bored disgust. "A body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. In this case," he hiked a thumb upward, "the over- head."

Nobody laughed.

JilFs partner, the lanky, whipcord-lean Lieutenant Smith, got up from his seat next. Smitty was tall enough to raise a long slender arm to the overhead and prevent himself from soaring off his feet.

"That's cheating, Mr. Smith," said the Major.

"Yessir, But it works."

Kinsman smiled at the Mutt and Jeff look of the Meyers- Smith team. Jill was the shortest member of the trainee group; Smitty barely squeezed in under the Air Force's height limit for pilots.