 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. Why, I wouldn't let you get into an airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! 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 at a maximum of half of Earth gravity, you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. And then, only half an hour ago, a meteor had hit the radar room. The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of space. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands, I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. It will be at least three hours before they can get a ship up here. Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of the globe beneath them.
 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.