Launch Window

Misty spent six hours waiting in the old airport for one of the buses to take her out to the space elevator. The Stella Nova Bureau had promised her one last chance to see her sister. The bus's grimy windows showed her nothing. At the base of the elevator, she walked past a wall covered in pictures of the ribbon of metal and strange carbon stretching up to the stars. She checked her ticket, keeping the pictures out of her range of vision, and suppressed the atavistic shiver that ran across...