The Genius who examined my Mac confirmed what I feared: The drive exhibited permanent physical damage. Apple had no replacements in stock; he could order a new one for $180 installed.

I took the MacBook Pro home, along with my not-so-cheap FireWire cable, and connected it to the Mac mini, which was running DiskWarrior. DiskWarrior saw the damaged drive, but reported that it couldn't do anything with it either.

If I didn't have my old backups, this is when I would have wept. But even though they were stale, I knew I had easy-to-turn-to options available to me, so I elected not to panic. I updated my Twitter friends with the sad news. I checked my available backups to verify what they had and what I'd be losing--chiefly, a couple day's worth of work, including a nearly-finished video for that I'd been editing on the plane.

That period of reflection proved extremely useful: While I waited, the Mac mini eventually mounted the MacBook Pro's drive, and DiskWarrior said it could build a new directory for the drive to reapir it. I whooped in delight and instructed it to do so.