 What is White Sands?
One thousand seventy-five miles above the wrinkled surface of Earth, a woman was in pain. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away. The terrible pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within her. And then, only half an hour ago, a meteor had hit the radar room.
 A rocket base in New Mexico.
 A city in New Mexico.  A rocket base in New Mexico.  An obstetrics facility in New Mexico.  A mission control base in New Mexico.