Take it easy. You’re not in any danger. You can always back out into the tank. The divers are still there.

Yeah, he thought sourly. But if I do that, I’ll have fucked up. The Grand Old Man of the Astronaut Office. Put him in a swimming bath for two minutes, and he screws the pooch.

In fact, he thought, I’m already screwing up by taking so long. How many seconds? Half a minute? There must be something obvious I’m meant to do; something I’m missing. Think, damn it. If the docking port is blocked, then how -

Then it came to him. The docking adapter had two docking ports. Bleeker had gotten out through the axial port; but there was also a radial port, stuck to the side of the adapter for just the sort of problem he had.

He reached down and found the port on his first try; it was jammed, but it gave after a couple of tugs.

Bleeker clapped Jones on the shoulder; the impact was deadened by layers of suit fabric. “What were you doing in there, pops, having a shave? Next time, make sure you’ve studied the manual.”

“Asshole,” Jones growled. “You were in on that, weren’t you?”

“Just another Monday, Chuck. Don’t take it personal.”

Fucking engineers. Fucking smart-ass rookies.

With the help of the divers, they swam clumsily to the side of the facility.

According to Fred Michaels’s antique vest-pocket watch, it was a little after a quarter to two. He’d been watching the time compulsively, he realized.

Tim Josephson oiled up to him. “Mr. Agronski is here to see you, sir. He’s waiting in your office.”

“That’s Doctor Agronski, damn it.”

“Sorry. Shall I tell him you’ll meet him over there?”

Michaels, resenting the intrusion, turned away rather than answer. He looked through the glass, at the three rows of flight controllers.

Seen from the Viewing Room at the back of the MOCR — Mission Operations Control Room, pronounced to rhyme with “poker,” and known as “Mission Control” to the world — there was no obvious drama. But the controllers looked pretty crumpled, with ties loosened or discarded, shirts creased, and the operations desks were strewn with coffee cups, manuals, and scribbled notes.

He could see Joe Muldoon wandering about at the back of the MOCR. Nine months after his own lunar flight, Muldoon had just finished a six-hour stint as capcom to Jim Lovell and his Apollo 13 crew, but he showed no desire to leave; in fact, he knew that Muldoon was intending to head on over to Building 5, where other off-duty astronauts were running continual simulations of the improvised procedures the Apollo 13 crew would have to adopt to get home.

Already seventeen hours had passed since 13 had started to fall apart; Michaels wondered how many of the controllers had gotten a minute’s sleep since.

Josephson coughed. The aide was a slim, prematurely balding young man, with a Ph.D. in some discipline or other. You needed a Ph.D. to make the coffee, here at MSC. “Sir, Dr. Agronski—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Leon Agronski worked on President Nixon’s Science Advisory Committee, with special responsibility for the space program, and all its expensive evils. Michaels knew why Agronski was there: to thrash out “options” for NASA’s budget for FY1971 and beyond, before any formal submission by the White House.

More cuts.

Michaels was an associate administrator with responsibility for manned spaceflight, reporting directly to Thomas Paine, NASA Administrator. It had broken Michaels’s heart when Paine had gone public back in February to announce the cuts to Skylab, even some terminations at NASA.

“You know,” he mused, “maybe, if we can pull this off, this Apollo 13 thing, it will bring us back together, just a little. If we can remember how it feels to have worked like this, today, then maybe we’ll be able to achieve great things again…”

Josephson had been avoiding his eyes; then he confronted Michaels a little more boldly. “Fred, I know you’re upset. But the wheels don’t stop turning. And Dr. Agronski has flown out from Washington to catch you.”

Michaels grunted. Josephson was right, of course. The wheels never stopped turning.

And maybe, just maybe, he could use the mess to his advantage. He felt his mood lighten a little.

“All right, let’s go see him,” he said. “But not in some goddamn bureaucratic office block. Call him over here — ask him to come to the lunar surface back room.” Another thought struck him. “Oh — and, Tim—”

“Sir?”

“Ask Joe Muldoon to join us, would you?”

The back room would have been used as the center of operations for the moonwalks. Its walls were covered with crew checklists, and with Orbiter and Apollo photographs of the landing area — called Fra Mauro, a place in the lunar uplands: the first ambitious, scientifically interesting site they’d planned to land. Just now, however, it was deserted.

When Michaels arrived, Muldoon and Agronski were sitting at a large walnut desk in the center of the room. Agronski, thin to the point of sharpness, was leafing through some notes from his briefcase; Muldoon was hollow-eyed with fatigue, and he had folded his big, powerful hands on the desk top. He glared impatiently at Michaels. Josephson fussed around, pouring coffees.

Michaels pulled out a chair and accepted a coffee. Then Josephson withdrew, leaving the three of them alone.

Michaels introduced Muldoon to Agronski. “Leon, Joe here is on the backup crew for Apollo 14, and then should command his own mission, on 17. Joe, you’re here at my invitation. To help remind us what this damn thing is all about.”

Here is the second American on the Moon, Agronski, you thin-lipped asshole, Michaels thought. Here he is! Large as life, and twice as brave! A living symbol! Show a little respect!

In the dazzle of the room’s strip lights, Michaels couldn’t see Agronski’s eyes behind his narrow-rimmed glasses.

Joe Muldoon was glaring back at Michaels. Muldoon’s look, those blue eyes hard under that balding prow of a skull, said it all; he was thinking that Michaels was a paper-pushing prick who shouldn’t be wasting Muldoon’s time on a day like this. Not when he — Muldoon — could be in Building 5 or the MOCR with the other guys; not when he might be able to come up with something to save the crew out there -

Christ, Michaels thought suddenly. Maybe I’ve miscalculated. If Muldoon blows his stack here, this could turn into a hundred-kilowatt disaster. He shot an imploring look at Muldoon.

Agronski handed Michaels a document from his case. “I’m sorry, Colonel Muldoon; I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I brought only two copies.”

Muldoon turned that bald-eagle glare on the science advisor, who seemed oblivious.

The document was a photostat, stapled together, covered in pencil notes, and with the presidential seal on the first page.

“This is the statement President Nixon was drafting, to make in March,” Agronski said. “A formal response to the Space Task Group report. But he withdrew it. I want you to see this draft, Fred, to understand the way the thoughts of the administration are heading.”

Michaels scanned the statement.

…Over the last decade, the principal goal of our nation’s, space program has been the Moon… I believe these accomplishments should help us gain a new perspective on our space program… We must define new goals which make sense for the seventies. We must build on the successes of the past, always reaching out for new achievements. But we must also recognize that many critical problems here on this planet make high-priority demands on our attention and our resources. By no means should we allow our space program to stagnate. But — with the entire future and the entire universe before us — we should not try to do everything at once. Our approach to space must continue to be bold, but it must also be balanced…