Voyage. Stephen Baxter
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STEPHEN BAXTER
VOYAGE
THE NASA TRILOGY
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 1996
Copyright © Stephen Baxter 1996
Cover photo © NASA
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Stephen Baxter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008134518
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN 9780007445400 Version: 2017-04-25
‘Tom Clancy meets Tom Wolfe.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘If you liked The Right Stuff you’ll like this too.’
Interzone
‘Voyage is a splendid nostalgia trip to times when astronauts were still the Right Stuff.’
New Scientist
‘For SF fans it encapsulates not only the traditional “sense of wonder”, but also – because the story it tells was this close to being true – a warm and thrilling sense of “I wonder …” A brilliant book.’
SFX
‘Based on NASA’s actual shelved Mars plans, but throughout, Baxter concentrates on the people involved, not just their hi-tech ventures, and the result is a compulsive and intelligent page-turner.’
Focus
‘Baxter is emerging as the most credible heir to the hard sf tradition previously monopolized by Clarke and Asimov.’
Time Out
For my nephew William Baxter
Contents
This is Ares Launch Control, Jacqueline B. Kennedy Space Center.
We have passed the six-minute mark in our countdown. Now at T minus five minutes, fifty-one seconds and counting.
Ares waits ready for launch on Launch Complex 39A.
We are on schedule at the present time for the planned lift-off at thirty-seven minutes past the hour.
Spacecraft test conductor has now completed the status check of his personnel in the control room. All report that they are go for the mission and this has been reported to the test supervisor.
The test supervisor is now going through some more status checks.
Launch operations manager reports go for launch.
Mission Control at Houston reports that all systems on the Ares orbital booster cluster are also nominal and ready to support the mission. The need to be in plane with the cluster, to enable the docking, is imposing a tight window on today’s launch.
Launch director now gives the go. We are at T minus four minutes, fifty seconds and counting.
At launch time, you may wish to look out for flights of pelicans, egrets and herons, from the marshy land here on Merritt Island. Forty years ago Merritt pretty much belonged to the birds, and they’re still here, although nowadays they’re disturbed every few months by a new launching.