Skyfall

Irene Lewis was worried. She peered hesitantly through the shop window at the display under the golden letters COTTENHAM NEW TOWN BUTCHERS — KEENEST PRICES. Oh no they weren't. The prices were just terrible. Steak was unbelievable, stewing meat no better, mince was cheaper but it was all fat. But she had to get something. After a long day in the plant Henry expected a good tea — and he deserved it. He turned his entire pay packet over to her every week, holding back just a little for beer and cigarettes and maybe a few pence more for the pools. It was because he was such a fair man and never questioned her that she was worried now. Not that she had lied to him, rather it was what she hadn't told him. To keep eating, even in the modest manner they were used to, was costing more and more every day. Judy and May were always growing out of their clothes and eating more all the time. Prices went higher and higher, yet everyone expected her to make do and keep things going as she always had, with a joint on Sunday and all the rest.

Well she did keep things going — and that was what worried her. Years ago they had agreed to put by a bit every week in the Post Office Savings, for the rainy day that was always coming, as well as the summer holidays. But the prices kept rising and in order to cope she had put in less and less until one day she had stopped saving altogether. And now she was beginning to withdraw. Not much, but the girls needed shoes for school, and once it started flowing out it didn't seem to stop. She was afraid to look at the balance, but she did know one thing; that Blackpool holiday that Henry was already beginning to talk about, it was out of the question. He wasn't going to like that.

“Look what they're asking for sausages!” It was Mrs. Ryan from down the street.

“Shocking,” Irene agreed, happy to share her misery.

They nodded their heads and made clucking noises, searching the window once more in the vain hope that they had missed some unusual bargain.

“Did you see the interruption on the telly?” Mrs. Ryan asked. “Right in the middle of Coronation Street. Trouble with that big rocket.”

“Did it explode?” Irene was concerned, knowing that death and destruction were always waiting in the wings of life, ready to step forward.

“Not yet, though you never know, do you?”

Once more they nodded agreement then, steeling themselves as for battle, they entered the butcher's. Whatever happened, families would still have to be fed.

12

“I think it is time we got back into the bunks and strapped in,” Patrick said. “I know it's a drag, but in ten minutes the hold may end.”

“And how many times have you said that before?” Ely asked.

“Too many. Buckles and straps, Ely.”

The four acceleration couches were arranged two by two on the deck of the crew compartment. Each was designed and custom built to fit one of the astronauts, to give the maximum support and protection during the acceleration. Ely sat on the edge of his, a thin book clasped in his fingers. Patrick stood over him and waited in silence. Finally the physicist sighed dramatically and swung his legs up; Patrick helped him with the holddown straps.

Coretta's couch was next to his and faced a bank of instrumentation. She was already strapped in and studying the dials. These displayed duplicates of the biosensor information being fed continuously to Mission Control. Each of the astronauts was wired with pickups that passed on vital readings such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, body temperature, all of the human biological measurements that had to be monitored, watched closely to ensure that the astronauts could stay alive in space.

With the four in the inner compartment secured, Patrick went through the hatch in the wall. Of course wall, ceiling and deck only had meaning when they were on Earth. Once in orbit and weightless the terms would become meaningless. The walls and ceiling of this compartment were covered with instruments and lockers for food and equipment, some of it impossible to reach now, all of it accessible soon when they could simply float in any direction.

Prometheus itself, the only part of this immense spacecraft that would go into orbit, was divided into four sections. In the nose was the payload, thirteen hundred tons of generator, reflector and transmitter, the reason for everything else. At the other end of Prometheus, over two hundred feet away, was the nuclear engine with its fuel supply of U-235, the engine that would lift them up into their final orbit. Above the engine was the biological shield, twenty-five tons of barrier to keep the radiation from the crew when the engine went into operation. Above the biological shield, also acting as a barrier to radiation, was the immense bulk of the liquid hydrogen for the engine, a tank over a hundred feet long.