Something went wrong at every countdown. It was the air conditioning, or a backup computer reporting a short circuit that wasn’t real, or a short circuit that was real but not reported by the main computer, and on the ninth countdown, when it looked like I’d be on my way at last, the Number 7 LEM balked. There I lay, swaddled and wrapped in tape that held a thousand sensors, like a mummy in a sarcophagus, my helmet shut, the laryngophone at my throat, and the tube of the orange juice container in my mouth. With one hand on the emergency ejector switch and the other on the steering wheel, I was trying to think of things pleasant and far away, so my heart wouldn’t pound, because it was being watched on screens by eight people along with my blood pressure, muscle tension, sweat level, eye movements, and galvanic skin response, all revealing the fear felt by the intrepid astronaut as he waits for the ritual zero and the thunder that will thrust him upward. But each time what I heard was profanity, in chief coordinator Wivitch’s voice, and the words “Stop!
