He waxed lyrical about the F100 for a while: the “Super Saber,” the world’s first fighter capable of sustained supersonic speed.

York tuned out.

The F100 had been produced by Rockwell: the company which had built Apollo, and was bidding to go to Mars. Given where the bulk of the money went, it was as if the space work of companies like Rockwell was a thin, glamorous patina on the surface of their real mother lode, military development.

“The part I didn’t enjoy so much was ejecting.”

“Ejecting?”

“It was a one-shot mission. The planes didn’t carry enough fuel to make it to their targets and back. We had to eject hundreds of miles short of home, let the planes crash, and then survive as best we could.”

“Christ,” York said. “Walking home, through a nuclear battlefield?”

“I was trained for it,” he said. “I was part of a global strategy. The weapons are new, so you need new strategies to use them. It’s all about mutual deterrence. ‘Safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation…’ ”

She was startled by the quote. “That’s well expressed.”

“Winston Churchill.” His eyes were like blue windows.

He wasn’t unintelligent, she realized. Just — different, from her and the people she mixed with. A Cold Warrior. She shivered.

He glanced at his checklist. “Hey, look; we’ve missed our last stop.”

They turned and retraced their footsteps, reaching for fresh sample bags.

At the end of the afternoon, they met up back at the truck. Romero was still grinning, even joking with Jones, but York thought she could see a strain around Romero’s eyes, under the dust and sunblock.

On the truck radio, a commentator was quoting a speech by Walter Mondale in Congress, where NASA’s budget submission was being debated…. I believe it would be unconscionable to embark on a project of such staggering cost as this Mars proposal when many of our citizens are malnourished, when our rivers and lakes are polluted, and when our cities and rural areas are dying. What are our values? What do we think is more important?…

York and Ben Priest got cups of coffee from a communal flask and walked off a little way. The sun was low and blasted directly into their eyes; it had lost little of its heat.

“I guess Romero is soaking up a lot of Chuck’s frustration at losing his flight,” York said.

“Naw. Chuck is always like this, when it comes to the ‘science,’ ” Priest said. He took a pull of his coffee. “It’s damaging.”

“Damaging is right. Can’t you exert some influence on him?”

He grinned at her. “I’m afraid you don’t know astronaut psychology, Natalie. Where these guys are concerned, the commander’s word is everything. He sets the tone for the crew, the whole mission. If the commander is somber and quiet, like Armstrong, then that’s the way the crew must be; if he wants to wear a beanie hat with a Teflon propeller on it and sing all the way to the Moon, like Pete Conrad, then we all have to wear our beanie hats and like it. That’s the way it is. Thank God Dave Scott is taking the science seriously. I think if Chuck was the prime commander, 14 might be the nadir of Apollo’s science program, not the zenith.”

Now she heard raised voices again. Romero was telling Jones how important it was to take samples from large boulders, if they could, because large rocks wouldn’t have moved far from where they were formed. And the context of a sample was just as important, to the good geologist, as the content of the rock -

Jones was telling Romero where he could stick his geological hammer.

This isn’t good enough, York fumed. We can’t keep sending these clowns to the Moon. Beanie hats, and kids’ jokes -

We can’t go on like this. If we’re really going to Mars, we need a new class of astronaut. A better breed.

Ben had continued to encourage her to apply, to join the program. Maybe I should. I know I could do a better job than a moron like Chuck Jones.

She went back to the truck and got more coffee. Mission Elapsed Time [Day/Hr:Min:Sec] Plus 001/13:45:57

“You are go for TOI,” Capcom Bob Crippen said. “One minute thirty.”

“Thank you,” Gershon replied.

York pulled on her helmet and locked it to the neck of her pressure suit. She fumbled slightly, her fingers clumsy inside her stiff gloves. She buckled her canvas restraints around her.

Once more she felt cool, stale air wash over her face.

Ares, assembled, was a slim, fragile pencil of metal. It was a big, bright object, and it would be easily visible from Earth, as a naked-eye star passing over Cape Canaveral.

Stone said, “Go for ET hydrogen pressurization.”

“Confirm.”

York began closing switches that would raise the temperature inside the booster’s two great External Tanks. Liquid hydrogen would boil and evaporate, and the resulting gas would force liquid propellant through the feed pipes and into the combustion chambers of the MS-II.

York was a geologist, and that was why she was going to Mars. But a crew was only three people. So, if you expected to fly in space, you had to expect to study up on a lot of mundane crap that was necessary just to keep the spacecraft and booster working.

And Natalie York’s specialty was the External Tanks.

She knew enough to give expert papers on External Tanks to the industry. In fact, she had given a paper on them, God help her.

“One minute,” Gershon said.

York glanced at the window to her right. She was over the west Atlantic, and it was early morning down there; she could see boats on the Gulf, ribbons of land laid out like a cartoon map.

TOI was Transfer Orbit Injection: it meant departure from Earth orbit, the start of the long transit to Mars. That was a key moment in the mission — in her life, in fact.

But a day and a half here, orbiting Earth, wasn’t enough.

She had tried to fix some of the more memorable scenes of Earth in her head. Night over Africa: the fires of nomad encampments, spread across the desert. Thunderstorms over New Zealand: lightning like flashbulbs, exploding under cottony layers of cloud, discharges sparking each other in great chain reactions covering the country.

November 6, 1986. That was the day when Ares was due to return to Earth orbit. Mission day 539. Then I’ll be back; I’ll be seeing you again. A bright Sunday morning, with my sample crates full of bits of Mars.

“Ares, you are go for the burn,” Crippen said.

Stone set the “master arm” switch to ON, and York could see him checking over the rest of the instrument panel. Guidance control was set to primary; thrust control was on automatic; the craft was in the correct attitude; the engine gimbals were enabled, so that the nozzles could swivel like eyeballs in their sockets to direct the craft.

Eight seconds before ignition, York felt a push at her back. Ullage: small rockets firing around the base of the stack, settling the propellants before the main burn.

The commit code, “99:40,” started flashing up on the small computer screen before Stone. Are you sure you want to do this?

There was a small button marked PROCEED under the screen. Stone reached out a gloved finger, and pressed the button.

Gershon counted down: “Five. Four…”

York braced herself.

There was a distant rumble, carried through the stack, as the MS-II’s four huge engines ignited, three hundred feet away from her. The acceleration was low, almost gentle, pushing her into her couch with a soft pressure across her chest and limbs.

After thirty-seven hours of microgravity, she felt enormously heavy. But at least it was smooth: this time, the ride really did feel like the simulator. Later in the mission — when Ares had burned off its fuel, reducing its mass — the acceleration of the MS-II would be a lot tougher.

Gershon read out velocity increments. York could hear how his voice was masked, slightly, by the gum he chewed. Juicy Fruit. How can you chew gum in a space suit? Gershon wasn’t above sticking a wad to the inside of his faceplate, with his tongue, for retrieval later. The guy was gross.