To the Reader:
In 1986, our editor in chief, then working as a magazine journalist, was assigned to cover NASA and the Johnson Space Center in Houston following the Challenger explosion. He set out to do a straight magazine piece. After two days on-site, he came back with this, which originally appeared in the March, 1986, issue of Houston City Magazine. 51-L was the NASA flight number for the Challenger mission.

Beware the smiles of January: spring-like days without the green promise of new growth.

Gulf Freeway: headlights at noon. Where is the night?

There. A black-bordered billboard: "January 28, 1986," with seven names.

Another. A bank billboard: picture of the shuttle blasting off, the caption's great hope now diced to diamond shards of irony. "Never underestimate the power of momentum."

Flags hung low: the orange "W" of Whataburger beneath the other, red-striped banner.

NASA Press Office: a morbid monitor runs, still: Orbiter TV Time--2:2:16:46. Two days, two hours, sixteen minutes... As if nothing had happened.

Visitors' Center: Another monitor, labeled "Space Shuttle Live Video" is off, blank, blind as Tiresias.

2. Interlude

I stand at the counter, getting a press badge since the service tomorrow is closed to the public. Everyone is, in the manner of shared sorrow, graceful and polite. As I wait, a figure comes into the building. A man in his fifties, dressed in his best Levi's, black cowboy hat, denim jacket starched and pressed. He's carrying a small paper sack. He walks hesitantly, far from his home turf. He catches me staring, comes up, says, "Is anybody working here?" I smile. "I think any of these people can help you." He is from deep East Texas and has brought seven sympathy cards from his town for the families of the astronauts. My writer's instinct says: Ask him for details. My human instinct will not let me intrude.

3. January 31

NASA ground: network feeds, satellite dishes, media faces from everywhere. How easily, comfortably Clear Lake becomes, for a time, the center of the world.

Presidential security is tight.

John and Caroline Kennedy arrive: Resonances multiply--November 22, a Texan takes the oath beside the bloodied widow, 23 years later the children come back to honor the newly dead in a venture their slain father inspird. The dead who left from a spaceport named for the father, and whose last moments were controlled from a spaceport named for the Texan at his side. then.

HPD helicopters clear the skies. We wait. The families enter. Then the president.

It's over quickly, beyond tears. We wait again.

Four white angels in the guise of jet fighters come fast and low. One, directly over us, pulls away, then impossibly flies up, straight up, and disappears into January's silverest clouds.