Sitting at Main Control, the central desk facing the large display
screen, Cally Andros had just reached a conclusion. She was getting
old. Two more weeks to her thirty-fifth birthday, then a measly five
years till the big four-oh. After that she could only look forward to a
holding action, fighting sags and crow's-feet. Building dikes to hold
back the deluge of time.
It was depressing.
She sipped at a cup of black coffee emblazoned with the SatCom logo,
the laser eye of the Cyclops, and impatiently drummed her fingers on
the workstation keyboard, trying not to be distracted by meditations on
mortality. Tonight for the first time they would nin up the
superconducting coil all the way, in their most important test yet. The
tech crews at the other end of the island predicted it would reach peak
power in--she glanced at the huge digital clock on the blue wall next to
the screen--twenty-seven minutes. . . .