The upper sections of the Saturn didn’t explode. They had fallen out of the disintegrating stack and hit air, which, at such velocities, was like a wall. The Saturn was simply smashed to pieces by the air.

The screen showed the image which had filled TV screens for days: a huge orange-and-gray fireball of the explosion, hovering in the Florida air; the four Solid Rocket Boosters emerging from the explosion, still burning, veering crazily across the sky and trailing their frozen lightning, plumes of white smoke.

Dana was still talking. “At 110 seconds after launch, the Range Safety Officer caused the destruction of the Solid Rocket Boosters. Had this been a manned flight the emergency escape tower should have hauled the Apollo Command Module free on the loss of the main engines. Had the launch escape system failed, however, and arguing from the evidence of some system components later recovered from the Atlantic, it is possible that the crew capsule might have been thrown clear of the fireball intact. There is no reason to suppose that such a module might suffer an internal explosion, or significant heat or fire damage. The most severe damage would probably have come from the high forces generated by impact with the water, rather than by the explosion itself…”

Then, for the first time, there were rumblings of complaint from the audience.

Udet found himself on his feet.

“I must protest at the tone of this last section. This is entirely speculative. AS-5B04 was not manned, thank God, and if it had been we have no reason to believe the launch escape system might have failed, and I see no purpose in hypothesizing in such detail, and in public, about the fate of the crew of a manned flight.” He was aware of the orange light of the fireball — still frame-frozen on the big screen — gleaming on his glasses, his cheekbones.

Joe Muldoon, at his moderator’s desk, said, “Will you let me take that, Gregory?”

Dana shrugged his compliance.

Muldoon turned to the audience, his lean face underlit by the lamp on his desk. “Now, Hans, I don’t think we’re in a position where we’re going to be able to hide on this. We have to discuss the implications for the manned program. And we have to face the fact that there was evidence of potential problems on earlier VB tests, with solid fuel burns inducing destabilizing oscillations…”

Udet found himself shouting. “But the AS-5B04 loss was not caused by a Solid Rocket Booster failure!”

“But Solid Rocket Booster problems contributed,” Muldoon said. “We’ve seen that. And it seems to me that the whole design is inherently more risky than the old liquid-fuel configurations. Remember we survived Saturn V launches in which we lost whole engines. But if you’re sitting on top of those damn unstoppable Solid Rocket Boosters, it’s not a question of if you go, just which direction. None of us is arguing that we should stop flying the upgraded Saturns; it’s just that we have to be honest about the consequences of the compromises we’ve made in its design. Because if we don’t come clean now, the folks on the Hill are going to hang our hides out to dry.”

Muldoon looked around the room, taking in all of the delegates. “You know the situation we’re in, folks; the budget deficit is running so high this year that every discretionary program — including Ares — is under pressure, all the time, every budget round. Now, you may say that isn’t fair — that our mistakes get magnified out of proportion, while the much bigger foul-ups of other agencies are hidden — but we’re a high-profile agency; you have to accept it as a fact of our lives. So, we have to be squeaky clean. We’ll take questions at the close, folks; I want to move this along now…”

Udet, still standing, did not trust himself to speak. Compromises. You talk of compromises. We were compromised from the beginning. Our Saturn VB fuding from the start has been half the projections we requested. Half! Without compromises you would not be flying into space now. And yet you bleat about the consequences, about the loss of a single launcher!

He felt he could bear no more of this. He clambered past the people beside him, apologizing, and reached the aisle. He stalked toward the back of the room.

Dear God. Are we really reduced to such finger-pointing inanity? All I ask — all I have ever asked — is that you give me adequate tools, and I will finish the job. Achieve the dream. Even with half the resources, I will find you solutions! But what I will not — cannot — achieve is a miracle, I cannot guarantee you perfect safety and reliability. When will you people understand that?

It seemed a long way to the door Nobody was prepared to meet his eyes.

Dana’s patient presence at the podium, unseen, was like a wound in Udet’s side.

It all came to a head.

It was their wedding anniversary, for God’s sake. And although JK had flowers for her, and a card, and a kiss on the cheek in the morning, Jennine knew from long experience that it was his secretary, Bella, who scheduled such events in his diary and would buy the card and whatever. There was no thought from JK at all.

This evening they were supposed to be going out for dinner. They did that together maybe twice a year. But JK didn’t come home. That wasn’t so unusual. When Jennine phoned his office, she got Bella, who politely told her he wasn’t at the Columbia site. That was code for: he’s out with the guys.

And so it proved. JK came rolling in, after eleven, as oiled as you like, parking his T-bird at a crazy angle in the driveway.

“You shouldn’t drive like that,” Jennine said. She hated the querulous tone that came into her voice at such moments.

“Oh, God, the dinner. Honey, I’m sorry,” JK said. “I clean forgot. We’ll do it tomorrow. Okay?”

No, you idiot. It’s not okay. And right now, I have the feeling that it never was.

She went to bed.

After an hour or so he joined her. He touched her face, tenderly, and ran his hand down her nightgown, until he had cupped her breast.

She turned away. She was much too tense, too upset. And anyhow she could smell the stale rum on his breath, oozing out of his pores.

But at least he was home. At that thought she softened, as she drifted toward sleep. At least he’s come home. Maybe in the morning, I might be able to persuade him not to go in quite so early for once.

Before she fell asleep, the phone rang. JK picked it up immediately. “Lee.”

She had followed the development of Columbia’s MEM program. Actually, since JK brought work home most nights, and since he routinely held business meetings at their home — and always without any warning — she could hardly help but follow the program.

Once, JK took her out to Boston, where the Avco company were manufacturing the MEM’s ablative heat shield. It was a fascinating place. The ablative stuff was an epoxy resin, something the Avco engineers called “Avcoat 5026-39.” To hold this in place, the engineers constructed a titanium honeycomb, which would be bonded to the capsule’s lower surface, and they pumped the epoxy into each individual cell with a caulking gun. It had to be done by hand; the engineers worked their way across the surface until they had filled in all two hundred thousand cavities. If an X-ray inspection revealed a bubble, that cell would be cleaned out with a dentist’s drill and refilled.

Jennine watched this through a glass picture window. It was a startlingly medieval scene, this slow and painstaking handcrafting. And she wondered how it must feel to work on something — to touch and shape it with your fingertips — knowing that it might, one day, enter the air of Mars.

Avco’s testing process would start with handheld blowtorches, and finish up with rocket-propelled power dives into the Earth’s atmosphere…