The suborbitals, though—they were a different story. As I hiked my way beside the access road—cursing silently at the two shuttle-buses that blazed on by me without even slowing—I could see three of the things out on the apron beyond the terminal building. Gleaming white under the carbon arcs, they were beautiful—geometrically precise, like the crystalline purity of mathematics itself somehow made tangible. Okay, I admit it, I copped that last line from a trideo talking head. But he was right. The suborbitals were unbelievably striking, unbelievably beautiful in a kind of heart-stirring way. They don't belong here, on the ground —that's the thought that struck me. Any time they spend down here in the dirt is just waiting, just marking time before they can re-enter the element for which they were born . ..