Lou, a cowboy-hatted engineer in his fifties, sheepishly came to the fore. The PA system had been dialed in and so he was able to speak into a microphone, which was fortunate since he lacked the stentorian YouTube-trained diction of T.R. "First, Jo Anne will launch an Estes Alpha," he announced. His complete lack of awareness that no one in the crowd knew what that meant, and that some further explanation might be in order, confirmed his status in Saskia’s mind as some kind of inveterate geek—probably one of those people T.R. had poached from the Johnson Space Center. There was some mumbling and fumbling at the table as a girl of perhaps nine executed a procedure with some switches and wires. Lou held the mike in front of Jo Anne as she counted down in a thready but spirited voice from ten. Then the smallest of the rockets gave out a little hiss and leapt from its launch rod on a spurt of smoke. The engine burned for less than a second. The rocket, barely visible, coasted for a few seconds more, then separated into two pieces and deployed an orange parachute. "Congratulations, Jo Anne, on her first launch!" Lou intoned as applause died away and the Estes Alpha began drifting toward the ground. "We’ll retrieve that later. For now, the range remains closed!"