The integrated Sanger was sitting at the end of the runway, white vapour steaming gently out of vent points on both orbiter and booster, glowing pink in the fast-fading light. Greg’s intuition made itself felt as he walked down the gantry arm towards the orbiter’s hatch. It wasn’t much, a ghost’s beckoning finger, distracting rather than alarming. For a moment he was worried that it might be the orbiter. That’d happened before, a Mi-24 Hind G in Turkey which was going to take him and his squad on a snatch mission behind the legion lines, he’d balked as he was climbing in. It was a mindscent, the chopper smelt wrong. The Russian pilot had bitched like hell until a maintenance sergeant had noticed the gearbox temperature sensor was out. When they broke the unit open, it turned out the main transmission bearings were running so hot they’d melted the sensor. But this touch of uncertainty was different, there was no intimation of physical danger. He knew that feeling, clear and strong, experiencing it time and again in Turkey. He hesitated, getting an enquiring glance from Sean Francis. ‘We’ve only had eight fatalities in twelve years of operations,’ the Oscot’s captain said helpfully. ‘It’s not the spaceplane,’ Greg answered. Precisely how much his intuition was gland-derived was debatable, but when he did get a hunch this strong it usually squared out in the end. Even before he’d received the gland, Greg had believed MINDSTAR RISING in intuition. Every squaddie did to some degree, right back to Caesar’s footsoldiers. And now he had the stubborn rationale of neurohormones to back the belief, giving it near total credibility. The rest of the security team were watching him. He gave them a weak grin and began walking again. The orbiter’s circular hatch was a metre wide, with a complicated-looking locking system around the rim. Bright orange rescue instructions were painted on to the fuselage all around it. Greg shrugged out of his coverall and put his helmet on before he was helped through by the launch crew. It was cramped inside, but he was expecting that, low ceiling, slightly curving walls, two biolum strips turned down to a glimmer. Another circular hatch in the centre of the rear bulkhead opened into the docking airlock. ‘You the first-timer?’ asked the pilot. He was twisted round in his seat, a retinal interface disk stuck over one eye, like a silver monocle. The name patch on his ffightsuit said Jeff Graham. ‘Yes,’ Greg said as he sat in the seat directly behind the pilot. Puffy cushioning slithered under his buttocks like thick jelly. ‘OK, only one thing to remember. That’s your vomit lolly.’ Jeff Graham pointed to a flexible ribbed tube clipped to the forward bulkhead in front of Greg. Its nozzle was a couple of centimetres wide, a detachable plastic cylinder with REPLACE AFTER USE embossed in black. ‘You even feel a wet burp coming on, then you suck on that. Got it? The pump comes on automatically.’ ‘Thank you.’ The rest of the security team were strapping themselves in; they were the only ones in the cabin. Greg fastened his own straps. Jeff Graham returned his attention to the horseshoe-shaped flight console. The hatch swung shut, making insect-clicking noises as the seal engaged. ‘Is there a countdown?’ Greg asked Isabel Curtis who was sitting across the aisle. PETER F. HAMILTON 84 She gave him a brief acknowledging smile. A wiry, attractive thirty-year-old woman with bobbed blonde hair. He could make out the mottled pink flesh of an old scar, beginning below her right ear and disappearing under the collar of her blue flightsuit. ‘No. You want to hear flight control, it’s channel four. Give you some idea.’ Greg peered down at his communicator set, fathoming its unfamiliar controls, and switched itto channel four. The voices murmuring in the headset were professionally bland, reassuringly so. He followed the procedure: gantry-arm retracting, the switch to internal power, uinbilicals disconnecting, fuel-pressure building, APU ignition. Half-remembered phrases from current-affairs programmes. The take-off run was a steady climb of acceleration, turbo-expander ramjets felt rather than heard, an uncomfortable juddering in his sternum. The build through the Mach numbers, night sky devoid of reference points, floor tilted up at an easy angle. ‘Go for staging,’ flight control said. The orbiter rockets lit with a low roar, vibration blurred Greg’s vision. There was a hint of white light around the edges of the windscreen. Acceleration jumped up, pushing him further down into the cushioning. The stars grew brighter, sharper.