He looked up at the panel again. Hundreds of little green lights, and just one red. Hundreds of indicators telling him that it was finally his time, and just one laggard.
He ran through the checklist again as ground control named them off.
"Go."
"Go."
"Go."
The silence in the capsule was punctuated only by his voice. The gruff man speaking to him through the bonephone was inaudible.
"Go."
"Go."
"Red."
And there it was. Hundreds of yeas to one nay, and the noes have it. He let out an explosive sigh and began powerdown procedures, the now tired-sounding voice directing him through another equally one-sided checklist.
Lieutenant Juan Emanuel Ortega would not be leaving the gravity well today. According to this panel, an obscure widget in a small sub-compartment of an aft bay was preventing him from realizing his years of wishing and hoping. He took great solace in the fact that his next launch window was only six weeks away.
Once powerdown was complete, strong hands helped him out of the capsule and maintenance crews swarmed over the platform. Ortega sat in the now-empty briefing area, trying to calm himself down. The place had been a bundle of activity only two hours before as he was helped into his suit and given the final toasts to send him off on his first year long stint in orbit.
Ten minutes later, they found him and let him know the problem was solved. The indicator light had just gone bad, and had been replaced. The manufacturer guaranteed them for life, and out of billions, that one alone, a 10 centavo part, had nearly caused an aborted launch.
Ten
years later, Ortega held the position of senior instructor, and was assigned to a permanent orbital station. Things had come a long way, but
some things never change. He had spent three hours diagnosing a supposedly faulty component in the station's inertial dampers, only to find that
the problem was a ten credit
fuse. He grinned the same grin as a rookie capsule pilot who has been given back his dreams, and pocketed the faulty part as he re-bolted the access panel.
His watch beeped to let him know that maintenance was finished with his ship. He whistled on his way down the corridor towards the launch bays. He had four days of vacation coming up, but he wouldn't be visiting Earth. For him, there was nothing better than life up the gravity well.