"You threw in the whole damn toolbox," snorted Hewitt.

"The truth is," said Patrick, "you guys are a little cocky."

"The word is confident," said Emma.

"Which is good," Hazel admitted. "It's good to be confident. You showed great teamwork at the integrated sim last week. Even Gordon Obie said he was impressed."

"The Sphinx said that?" Kittredge's eyebrow lifted in surprise.

Gordon Obie was the director of Flight Crew Operations, a man so bafflingly silent and aloof that no one at JSC really knew him. He would sit through entire mission management meetings without uttering a single word, yet no one doubted he was mentally recording every detail. Among the astronauts, Obie was viewed with both awe and more than a little fear. With his power over final flight assignments, he could make or break your career. The fact that he had praised Kittredge's team was good news indeed.

In her next breath, though, Hazel kicked the pedestal out from under them. "However," she said, "Obie is also concerned that guys are too lighthearted about this. That it's still a game to you."

"What does Obie expect us to do?" said Hewitt. "Obsess over the ten thousand ways we could crash and burn?"

"Disaster is not theoretical." Hazel's statement, so quietly spoken, made them fall momentarily silent. Since Challenger, every member of the astronaut was fully aware that it was only a matter of time before there was another major mishap. Human beings sitting atop rockets primed to explode with five million pounds of thrust can't afford to be sanguine about the hazards of their profession. Yet they seldom thought about dying in space, to talk about it was to admit its possibility, to acknowledge that the next Challenger might carry one's name on the crew roster.

Hazel realized she'd thrown a damper on their high spirits. It was not a good way to end a training session, and now she backpedaled on her earlier criticism.