The race is up. She flicks the cigarette toward an ashtray. It misses and skips along the ground, embers scattering every way. She waits a moment, looks back at the screen. They flash Ashby's face at the bottom right hand and the image shifts, looks at the rocket from a rooftop at Cape Canaveral.
People crowd the place in lawn chairs that squat like insects on hot Florida tar.
The rocket is just a distant needle here, a pin. She recognizes the place, sees Ashby's wife and kid. Then it rises again, falls, rises. She saunters out of the bar, toward the tunnel leading to the stands, glances back. The view is back to the pad, the rocket waiting for the final command.