Bleeker passed on, into the hydrogen tank itself.

The metal walls of the tank opened out around him. It was pitch-dark, and Jones had the feeling that he was following Bleeker into a huge, forbidding metal cave. “Hold up, Adam; let’s throw a little light on the situation here.” Jones unclipped a portable light from his belt and fixed it to the fireman’s pole that passed along the axis of the tank.

The lamp sent glimmering light through the water along the length of the tank, to a wall at the far end that bulged inward toward him. That was the bulkhead between the hydrogen tank and the booster’s lox tank beyond. Helium pressurization spheres clung to the walls like big silver warts. Handrails and poles looped across the metal cave, and folded-up partitions and other bits of kit were stowed neatly against the walls of the tank. Too neatly. I wonder what those poor schmuckos will find when they meet this bird in real life, in orbit.

The Skylabs were just lash-ups, really, improvisation. But they would give NASA experience it needed of orbital operations and long-duration flights, before the real space station cans started flying later.

“Okay, guys,” the SimSup said. “As you know, in orbit the first job would be to check that the propellant lines are properly blocked. Today, we want you to skip over that and proceed straight to the assembly of the floor.”

“We’ve read the checklist,” Jones growled. “Come on, pal.” He shinned along the fireman’s pole, deeper into the tank.

Bleeker and Jones manhandled packs of floor panels away from their stowage against the tank walls. Their job was to fit a floor of aluminum grid across the width of the tank, maybe two-thirds of the way along its length. Putting the panels together would be like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, working toward the tank’s axis.

The two men worked their way around the perimeter of the tank. It was simple work, but slow, clumsy, and tiring; Jones found it hard to grip tools with his suited hands, and the water resisted every motion.

Divers had followed them into the tank. One of them had brought in an underwater TV camera, and was filming them.

The SimSup tried to cheer them up. “We appreciate your help here, guys. We’re well aware that you two are slated for other missions, and probably won’t even be the ones to carry this out for real anyway…”

I sure as hell hope not, Jones thought.

Chuck Jones was supposed to be going to the Moon. He was backup commander on Apollo 15, which, according to the basic framework of crew rotation, would give him his own mission three shots later, on Apollo 18.

But Congress had cut NASA’s budget for fiscal 1971, making it the leanest budget for nine years. And Nixon still hadn’t responded to the Space Task Group’s proposals for the future shape of the space program, although the word was he was leaning toward a Mars program of some kind, under Kennedy’s relentless public pressure.

Anyhow, NASA was going to need Saturn Vs to launch its Skylabs and space station modules and NERVA test flights. So, NASA was going to have to conserve Saturn V launches. The remaining lunar expeditions, Apollos 14 to 20, were going to be stretched out to six-month intervals…

There were rumors in the Office that the later flights might be cut altogether.

Jones had flown in space. Once.

He’d finished three orbits of Earth on the second orbital Mercury flight, following John Glenn. It had been a picnic. He’d enjoyed the feeling of microgravity, being able to yaw the little capsule about so that the glowing Earth sailed every which way past his tiny window.

But he used up too much of his hydrogen peroxide maneuvering fuel, playing around in orbit.

By the time he got to the retrosequence, nobody was sure if he had enough fuel to set the capsule at the right angle to reenter. He might have burned up, having wasted all his fuel playing around in orbit. Well, he hadn’t; he’d overshot his splashdown point by 250 miles, but he was picked up within a couple of hours by choppers from the carrier.

Jones had been content with his adventure. But the NASA hierarchy were less than pleased with him. He might have augered in: killed himself by playing around.

Officially Jones stayed on the roster, for assignment to a later flight. But a certain distance had developed between Jones and the rest of the Astronaut Office. Deke Slayton, the chief astronaut, had dropped heavy hints that he might want to drop out of the program altogether.

But Jones, mad as hell, had flatly refused. He’d wanted to prove the astronauts really were aviators. He knew he’d done well; he knew he’d done better than Glenn, even, as far as he was concerned.

So he was going to stay on as an astronaut, and he was going to go to the goddamn Moon. In the meantime, to keep in the program, he accepted a job with Slayton and Alan Shepard — another of the original astronauts, also grounded, in his case for an ear condition — in the Astronaut Office.

Jones had served in there for eight whole years: scheduling and training, working on sims and mission profiles. Eight years.

Enough bigwigs had finally moved out of NASA, it seemed, for his indiscretion to be forgotten, and he was back on flight status.

But if the Moon flights got cut, so did he. He’d probably be too damn old for Mars.

Jones didn’t want to go to the Moon for the thrill of exploration. For him it wasn’t the destination that counted but the journey: a mission that offered the most challenging flying test anyone could devise.

The Skylabs just weren’t going to offer that. He had no wish for his career to climax in a low-Earth-orbiting trash can, where the job would be to endure, just logging days, boring a hole in the sky.

He really would hate to miss out on the Moon.

Jones hauled at floor bolts with a vigor that alarmed the surgeons who were monitoring his vital signs.

When the floor was completed, the SimSup congratulated them. “Okay, boys; we’ll take a break and refurbish before the next session. Come out through the docking adapter.”

Preceded by the divers, Bleeker made his way through the cramped adapter and toward the brightly lit water beyond.

“Now you, Chuck,” the SimSup said.

Jones made his way into the shadowy adapter; the lockers clustered about, restricting his movement. He was illuminated by the tank lights behind him, and the free blue water of the facility ahead of him.

When he was well inside the adapter, the exit to the Apollo mock-up slammed shut.

Jones pulled up short. He wrapped his gloved palms around the hatch lever. It wouldn’t give.

“What’s going on?”

“Jones.” The SimSup voice was terse. “You’ve suffered a multiple failure. Your Command Module is disabled; you can’t return to it; you can’t get it loose of the docking port. The power in the workshop cluster is about to fail. What do you do? Go.”

Then the lights failed. He was left floating in pitch-darkness. Even the tank lights had gone out.

“What kind of asshole game is this?…”

He took a breath and calmed himself down. SimSups were famous for throwing crap like that at you. He had to find an answer to it, and fast; he could yell at them later.

He knew the theory. If Skylab astronauts couldn’t get home, a new Apollo would be sent up from the Cape. But if the disabled Apollo was jammed to the docking port, what use would that be?

In the pitch-darkness, he was starting to forget which way up he was.

These fucking sims.

He tried to concentrate; he pictured the adapter as he’d seen it just before the “failure”: the useless docking port before him; the access tunnel back to the workshop behind him.

He suffered a surge of panic. He reached out at random; his gloved hands clattered against lockers and handholds. The space was too big, he realized suddenly; that was what was disorienting him. If he were safely tucked up in Mercury -