midnight
Wyatt let him take the ship up alone . There was no reason to argue about it . Coop was drunk ; his mind was unreachable . At midnight , the ship bucked and heaved and leaped up into the sky . Wyatt hung tenuously to a stanchion by a port , watched the night lights recede and the stars begin blooming . In a few moments the last clouds were past , and they were out in the long night , and the million million speckled points of glittering blue and red and silver burned once more with the mighty light which was , to Wyatt , all that was real or had ever meant living . In the great glare and the black he stood , as always , waiting for something to happen , for the huge lonely beauty to resolve itself to a pattern and descend and be understood .