Fifteen Gs. She couldn’t breathe at all. She became sure she was going to black out. But I’m only halfway through the run. And the doctors were watching her, every twitch of her flattened face, on closed-circuit television.

At last the load began to drop away; the pressure eased from her chest, and she sucked in great gulps of air.

Of course, nobody would complain about being subjected to high-tech torture in instruments like the Wheel, or query the relevance of all these exercises to actual spaceflight, or — still worse — admit that he or she had any problems with the routines. Because if you complain, it’s bound to get back to Muldoon, and a note will go into whatever damn system he uses to select his crews, and you’ll never get off the ground.

And that was the name of the game at the moment. Joe Muldoon, in his new role as head of the Mars program, had also assumed unto himself the old, separate function of director of Flight Crew Operations.

It was Muldoon who assigned crews to missions. And everyone knew that Muldoon was in the middle of drawing up his crew rota for the first flights in the new program, leading up to the Mars mission itself; the only thing that mattered in life right now — the only thing — was getting a berth in that rota.

So York was going to have to put on a front when she came out of the cage.

How’d it go? You didn’t black out, did you?

Me? Come on. I felt like I was riding a little heavy on a T-38 afterburner, that’s all…

Sure.

When the doctors helped her to limp out of the cage, she found her back covered with ruptured capillaries, where the blood had been forced through her flesh, and she had a headache like the worst hangover in the world.

Piece of cake. Problems? Me? Come on.

While she was soaking in a tub, recovering, she got Muldoon’s message.

She — along with the rest of the astronaut pool — had to return to Houston by the next flight, for a meeting with Muldoon.

It was an unusual request, even unprecedented. But she knew what it had to signify.

She got out of her tub and began toweling herself off. She could feel her heart thumping a little faster, and it had nothing to do with acceleration.

Ares. It’s beginning.

By the time York arrived, the small conference room on the third floor of Building 4 was crowded. Joe Muldoon sat isolated at a small desk on a stage at the front of the room; he was riffling through Vu-graph foils.

York pushed through a forest of sports-shirted male astronauts and found a seat near the back of the room. A man who had flown around the Moon sat down next to her.

Muldoon must know, York thought, that he had every person in the room by the metaphorical balls.

One of the many things she speculated about regarding the mysterious crew selection process was whether men like Muldoon actually enjoyed wielding their power. Looking at Muldoon, his foot tapping nervously on the stage, his shoulders knots of tensed-up muscles, she somehow doubted it.

Which, as far as she was concerned, was all to his credit.

All around her there was a babble of conversation, lively, deep-throated, maybe a little nervous. There was a kind of competitive cheerfulness in the air. Like none of this really mattered. Oh, it’s only the crew rota for the most significant new program of flights in years. Hey, you catch the ball game Monday?

Then Muldoon got to his feet and stood with his hands on his hips, facing the astronaut corps. Blue-eyed, his sharp crew cut graying blond, he looked like a caricature of a drill sergeant, York thought.

The remnants of conversation died off immediately, leaving Muldoon facing rows of silent faces.

Muldoon spoke without a mike, without preamble, and his words carried to every person in the room. “The guys who are going to be the first to fly to Mars are right here, in this room.”

“You’ve heard by now we have a first cut of Ares mission profiles.”

He snapped on the Vu-graph projector, and an image was thrown up on a screen behind him; it was a simple list, typed and copied onto the foil. “We’ve got eight flights here, both manned and unmanned. We’ve defined six preliminary classes of mission, designated here A to F. They are mostly Earth-orbit tests of the system components. But they lead up to the final flight — mission class F — which will be the full Mars landing attempt.

“You can see from the foil that the two A-class missions will be unmanned shakedown tests of the new Saturn VB booster system, carrying boilerplate Apollos and MEMs. The B mission will be the first manned flight to Earth orbit — or maybe lunar orbit — to man-rate the Saturn VB. A live Apollo, obviously, but a boilerplate MEM again. The C mission is another unmanned shakedown, this time of a MEM test article in near-operational condition. The D mission will be the first manned MEM flight, to Earth orbit; this will be a long-duration mission to test for space soak.

“The two E-class missions will be further manned MEM tests; we’re intending to trial the new descent systems with lunar and/or Earth landings. Also in this period we expect to confirm orbital assembly procedures. Finally, the F mission will be the Mars flight itself, and it’s got to be ready to depart on March 21, 1985. Otherwise we wait two more years for the next opposition. The precise sequencing of the other missions, and their dates, is to be determined; we’re intending to take advantage of success…”

York was hardly listening. Nor was anyone else, she suspected. You’ve got just five manned flights up there.

Just five flights.

Muldoon whipped away the foil; it showed for a moment as a gray curl in the light of the Vu-graph lamp. Then, without ceremony, he put up the next slide.

It was a list of names.

Muldoon said, “There’s a mix of three-man and four-man missions here. I’m assigning you to four-man teams. If you have a three-man flight, the fourth will be assigned to support. I want to maintain a team structure; there will be no transfers between teams, if I can help it. It’s not appropriate, at this stage, to assign crews all the way through to the F mission. I’m sure all of you understand that. You have here, instead, the assignments for classes B, D, and the first E mission — that’s the first three manned flights — plus backups…”

Like everyone else York was craning forward, squinting to make out the poorly typed, badly projected list, her lips working as she read the names.

Three of Phil Stone’s crew — Adam Bleeker and a senior astronaut called Ted Curval — would take up the B mission, she saw, the first, risky, shakedown of the enhanced booster, the Saturn VB. An all-USAF crew. York could see the logic behind sending up test pilots for what was basically a flight test, but it set a tone for the whole program, right from the start: the wrong tone, a military, test-pilot tone. More dumb-fighter-jock bullshit, just as it’s always been.

But then the D mission, the long space soak flight, would have a full crew of four, including two mission specialists: Ralph Gershon, she read. And -

Natalie York.

She tried to read on. Phil Stone’s B-mission four-man crew made up the backup crew…

Natalie York.

She read her name over and over, unable to be sure if she was seeing it correctly, as if her eyeballs were still compressed by some invisible centrifuge, Jesus. That really is me, up there, in a prime crew. I’m going into orbit.

I’ll be the first American woman in space.

She was one of just three female astronauts in the corps, and the only one who’d been named on Muldoon’s chart.

All around the room there was an explosion of tension; there were whoops, a lot of handshakes, good-old-boy back pats. York was even the recipient of a few of those herself.

There were a lot of forced grins around her. She knew what lay behind the grins; she’d be thinking the same. I’ve got to smile, make like I’m really pleased for you. But it should have been me, you bastard, not you. Maybe it will be, if, pray God, you break your leg or otherwise fuck up somewhere down the line.