Well, today Lee was going to ask Cane for a couple of million bucks of company money, to bid for a contract so big it was bound to transform Columbia out of all recognition. So I damn well need to understand how Art ticks.

Lee opened the pitch. He kept his introduction flat, neutral, and brief. Time enough for tub-thumping later.

First up after Lee was Julie Lye, a smart young MIT graduate. Lee had pulled her out of her regular research to give the proposal some academic weight. Lye gave a brief, concise talk on what was known, from the various space probes, of Mars: the structure of the atmosphere, the properties of the surface. It was an introduction to the problems anyone would face in landing humans safely on Mars, keeping them alive, and bringing them home. Lye was trim, precise, reassuring.

Cane watched her with his face blank and his fingers steepled before him.

Next came Chaushui Xu, another smart kid, a Chinese-American who was taking a doctorate in aerodynamics based on his work at Columbia. Xu’s presentation was about the options for getting through the Martian atmosphere, and how Columbia’s expertise could be leveraged to solve the problems.

Cane’s eyes narrowed to slits, as if he was falling asleep.

Xu started to get nervous, and he fumbled a little. But Lee wasn’t perturbed; he knew that Cane valued brains above everything else, and these were some of the brightest kids in the company. Cane was listening.

Xu got to the end of his presentation. He sat down, fumbling again.

Bob Rowen took the floor. A good bit older than the others, Rowen had worked with Lee on the old B-70 project, and with Lee and Storms on the later X-15 development. Rowen outlined how Columbia could handle the challenges of the spacecraft’s avionics. Soon, it was pretty clear that a Columbia MEM would be the smartest spacecraft that ever flew.

Halfway through Rowen’s pitch, Cane very visibly turned off his hearing aid and started going through his paperwork.

Jack Morgan leaned over to Lee. “Christ,” he whispered. “What the hell do we do now?”

Lee grinned. “We keep briefing. He’s hooked, believe me. If he didn’t like us, we’d be out of here by now.”

The last pitch was Jack Morgan’s, and he described how a Columbia MEM would keep four humans alive on Mars for a month. Clearly irritated by Cane’s manner, Morgan rattled through his spiel as quickly as he could, and sat down with a clatter of show-cards.

Lee got to his feet again. He summed up everything that had been said, and made a little speech about the future, and then just waited.

He was aware of his team getting restless behind him, but Lee had been here many times before. He stood before Cane’s desk, unperturbed.

After a full two minutes, Cane put down his stone pen and leaned back in his chair. He turned his hearing aid back on. “JK, you’re a crazy man. I don’t know why I keep you on the payroll.”

Lee leaned forward and rested his clenched knuckles on the table surface. “Goddamn it, Art, we’re in the aerospace business. And this is the finest opportunity to achieve something new in our field since Apollo.”

Cane rubbed his eyes. “We’re an experimental shop. One of life’s subcontractors. Not a big player.”

“But it doesn’t have to stay that way,” Lee insisted. “And maybe it shouldn’t.”

“And we wouldn’t win anyway.” Cane picked up a piece of paper from the seemingly random pile on the desk top before him. “Look at this, now. Look who we’re up against. McDonnell, Martin, Convair, General Electric, Boeing. Not to mention Rockwell, who will win anyhow. Some of these guys have been involved in the MEM base-technology studies since ’72. They’ve got a jump on us of years, damn it. Years. Look at this. Martin has spent three million bucks of its own money, and it already has a detailed analysis that runs to four thousand pages. And we’re starting from scratch.”

Lee waved his hand. “Look, we can’t get into a blueprint duel with these guys. But remember how Bell fumbled on its bid for the X-15. Bell built the X-1 — the ship that Chuck Yaeger took through the sound barrier—”

“I know my aviation history, JK.”

“Sorry. Anyway, Bell should have won the X-15 contract. But what it proposed was an exotic spaceplane that was years ahead of its time. Rockwell won by giving NASA what it wanted, straight down the line, a simple brute force machine. And later, when the bidding for Apollo was going on, there were companies like Martin and Douglas who spent millions on all kinds of Buck Rogers stuff, lenticular shapes and lifting bodies and you name it. Rockwell won out by giving NASA precisely what it wanted and needed, which was a three-man Mercury capsule.”

“Yes, but, JK,” Cane said drily, “we’re bidding against Rockwell this time. And you’re saying you know better than Rockwell, and Martin with its team of three hundred engineers, and—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Because those guys are going to be too busy defending the pet projects they’ve built up over the years to be able to see what the goddamn customer wants, Art.”

Cane thought about that. “You’re a smart guy, JK. Only you could turn the fact that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing into a strength. What’s more, I have the feeling that you actually believe it when you say it.”

“Sure I do. Look, we have a real opportunity here; we could achieve something unique. Columbia could go to Mars. Now: are you going to back me or not?”

Art Cane studied him through small, sharp, watery eyes.

“I guess I’ve got to allow you to bid. But if you spend more than two million bucks, I swear I’ll have your ass in a sling. Now get out of my office.” June 1981 U.S. NAVY ACCELERATION LABORATORY, JOHNSON, PENNSYLVANIA; LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON

With a heavy whir, the Wheel started to rotate. It felt as if her chest was being pressed back to meet her backbone.

York, strapped into her couch, tried to comfort herself with the thought that according to pilots who’d actually made it into space, this fake experience was a lot worse than the real thing.

It was cold comfort.

She reached five Gs; she had to make a conscious effort to open up her ribs to suck in air. The cage rattled her back and forth, and from side to side — she felt like a pea in a cup, being whirled around on a rope — a real flight’s a lot smoother, Natalie…

She had a checklist she was supposed to work through, and she conscientiously pressed her dummy switches with gloved fingers.

A gray curtain started closing in on her vision, as if sweeping in around her head. It was the first symptom of blacking out. There was an array of colored lights on a panel in front of her so she could tell how far gone she was. When she relaxed, the gray curtain was prominent; when she tensed herself up the curtain would disappear. She tried to ignore the pain in her chest; but every time she raised her arms or moved her head she felt giddy. That was the Coriolis force — the sideways force associated with fast rotation.

York was in the middle of a series of simulated reentries from Earth orbit. This particular exercise, the worst of the set, was modeling a high, steep trajectory, as if her Command Module were cutting into the layers of Earth’s atmosphere too rapidly, and so undergoing terrific deceleration.

When she reached eight Gs, she found she couldn’t raise her arms anymore. She could only lie in the cage and endure it.

Then the gray curtain around her eyes was thickening, and it wouldn’t go away.

Of course it’s worse than a real mission. The damn doctors design it that way.

Her vision started to blur. She found it hard to read her instruments. Twelve Gs; far higher than anticipated during a real mission. Enough to flatten her eyeballs. Her head was being battered against the inside of her pressure-suit helmet. The lights of the lab beyond the cage whirled past the mock-up cabin’s small windows.