"Let's keep the throttles on manual."
"I agree," he nodded. "Too much could go wrong."
"If we don't like the looks of anything, we can always abort."
"Petra," Androv commanded, "throttles will be manual."
Affirmative. If she felt slighted, she wasn't saying anything. Four minutes.
"We'd all better strap in," Vance said, "till we see how this goes."
The screens above them were still flashing flight data. The strut temperature in the scramjets, where a supersonic shock wave was providing the compression to combust hydrogen and the rush of thin air, had stabilized at 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Androv stood staring at the screens, and a moistness entered his eyes.
"If my father could have seen this," he finally said in Russian. "Everything he designed has worked perfectly. He dreamed of this vehicle, talked of it for so many years, and now finally . . . to be murdered on his day of triumph."
Eva looked at him. "Maybe his real dream was for you to fly it. To create something for you."
He paused, as though uncertain how to respond. The look in his eyes said he knew it was true. The pain and anger seemed to flow through him like electricity.