Muldoon held up his hands for silence. “I told you that beyond the first E mission I don’t think it’s appropriate yet to allocate crews. But I expect the selection to be made by the normal rotation system. Thanks for your attention; if you’ve no questions right now, you can come see me in my office…”

He’d said, The normal rotation system.

That hit York like an electric shock, burning away her brief euphoria.

She knew what that meant, and so did everybody else. She stared at the chart again, doing fast calculations. It means I will make it to Earth orbit. But that’s as far as I’ll get. Phil Stone is going to Mars. I’m not.

Nobody was going to get any more work out of the Astronaut Office that day; York guessed Joe Muldoon had planned the announcement around that.

She drove out to the Singing Wheel. The parking lot was packed with Corvettes, and inside she found Phil Stone, Ted Curval, and a few of their ex-military cronies, already working methodically through pitchers of Bud. Stone pulled up a stool for York beside him and gave her a dew-coated glass of beer.

“Congratulations,” he said warmly. “So you’re finally making it into space. America’s first spacewoman. Here’s to yah, Natalie. Come on, fellas—” He led a couple of toasts, in cold beer, which she endured. “So,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Mixed,” she said bluntly. “I’m flying, at last—”

“Hey, you done well. What is it, three years since you joined the Agency? Hell, we have guys who’ve waited three, four times as long as that to get a seat. I’m looking forward to working with you on the D mission. I mean that, Natalie.”

“Yeah.” She tried to smile.

Stone was watching her carefully. “Yeah, but—” he prompted.

“But, Phil, what I’m really thinking is that you’re the asshole who’s going to Mars, and I’m not.”

He laughed, mildly, and took another pull of his beer. “Come on, Natalie. Nobody knows who’s going to Mars. Not at this stage. If the preliminary flights don’t work out, maybe nobody will be going.”

“Give me a break. You heard what Muldoon said. ‘The normal rotation system.’ ”

The “rotation system” dated back to the earliest Mercury days, and it had been applied all the way through Apollo. Crews were assigned to missions in a leapfrog fashion. The rule was “back one, skip two, fly one,” and then start over. Thus, Phil Stone and the other members of his crew were backups for the D mission, York’s space soak flight. If the rotation worked out, they would skip two missions — the E missions — and fly the next, the F mission.

Which just happened to be the full Mars landing attempt.

Stone spread his hands on the table. “Rotation’s not a bad system, Natalie. At least it’s orderly. I mean, Muldoon has a pig of a job. Everyone wants to be on every crew—”

“Oh, bullshit, Phil. The rotation stuff isn’t a goddamn machine. It’s not hard to work it so you get the crew patterns you want.”

“Look, Natalie, anything but a rotation system is an insult to the astronauts and destructive to morale. That’s what I think, and I reckon it’s what old Joe thinks, too. Every crew should be able to fly every flight. It’s like handling a squadron of fighter pilots. You’ve got a mission to do and so many flights to fly and so many pilots to fly them…”

“But this isn’t a goddamn fighter squadron. We ought to be handpicking crews for the needs of the mission.”

“And you think you should be handpicked for the F mission?”

She sipped her beer, her irritation increasing. “It’s foolish not to pick the very best for your key missions.”

He eyed her, amused. “So now you’re saying I’m not the best?”

“That is not the point, damn it, Phil, and stop patronizing me…”

But then Adam Bleeker came in — one of Phil’s crew, another probable Mars-walker — and there was another round of general backslapping and joshing.

For a while York joined in the wider conversation.

Her thoughts drifted back, ignobly, to her selection gripes.

She drank a little more beer; it was warming up, and tasted sour. She put the glass down and wiped her damp palm on a napkin.

She left the bar. She suspected half the guys were so far gone already they didn’t even notice her leaving.

She was going to have to get this out of her system.

Without stopping to think about how smart it was, she drove straight back to JSC and stormed into Muldoon’s office.

Muldoon was working through a pile of paper. “Natalie. You want a coffee? I can send Mabel to—”

“No.” She realized, suddenly, she was trembling; it seemed to be coming from somewhere deep down inside her. From three years of frustration inside NASA. From Ben’s wasteful, needless death. From the fact that I’m thirty-three years old, and I’ve thrown away my academic career just so I can get to spend months in low Earth orbit, watching MEM components slowly degrade.

Or, she thought, maybe they’re all correct. Maybe I’m just a goddamn hysterical woman after all.

Muldoon was watching her sharply. “I thought you’d be pleased at getting a seat in one of the prime crews.”

“I am.”

He sat back and sighed. “But you want to go to Mars. And you can figure out the implications of the crew rotations as well as anyone else.”

“Damn it, Joe, I’m far and away the best mission specialist for Mars surface operations. You know that; I should be in line for the F mission, so I can get out there and do what I’m having to teach everyone else!”

He steepled his fingers. “All I can tell you is, we’re going to follow the rotation system. If it works out that Phil Stone takes his crew to Mars, then so be it; and if things get messed up or delayed for some reason, and your crew gets back in line — through the normal rotation system — then you’ll have your chance. And maybe, if there’s a second or third landing—”

“You know damn well there will be no second landing. We’re putting everything we’ve got into this one shot. Square with me, Joe. I should be on the damn flight. And if I was a man, another Jack Schmitt, I’d be inked in already as a no-brain choice. But I’m a woman, and that’s why I’m not going.”

“Natalie, it’s not like that.”

“Come on, Joe. Don’t bullshit me, for once.”

He folded his fingers together. “No bullshit?”

“No bullshit.”

“I’m not going to pretend that the gender thing doesn’t cause us problems, Natalie.”

The gender thing. “What problems, for Christ’s sake? That I won’t be able to fit my flight helmet over my bouffant hairstyle? Joe, it’s 1981—”

“Give me a break, Natalie. Look, it might have been different if we’d ever built the shuttle, if we had big roomy ships to carry seven or eight to orbit, if access to space had ever become routine. Then we would be flying women every month. But we don’t. So you work it out. If you have a mixed crew, you need extra facilities. Personal hygiene. Privacy. It’s all avoidable payload weight. And that’s not a good thing when you’re planning an eighteen-month deep-space mission.”

“So take an all-female crew. No need for separate showers then; right?…”

Muldoon was starting to look exasperated. “Look, Natalie, you know you’re not going to win this argument. And I’m not even the right guy to be arguing with.”

“Then who is?”

He shrugged. “American culture. The world. Hell, I don’t know; I’m just the poor schmo who recommended you for the D mission.” He studied her with, she thought, a little more sympathy. “Natalie, take my advice. The main thing is to be in the rotation. That’s all that matters; that, and doing your damnedest at the job. And I know you’ll do that. We need you in the program, Natalie. You’re an element we’ve missed before. We think a lot of you. You’d be surprised. And I noticed the work you did at capcom during Apollo-N.”

She shrugged. It wasn’t an assignment from which she wanted to gain any credit. “You need me in the program, but not necessarily on a ship to Mars.”