In the end, those hardheaded engineers who had stubbornly insisted that the Moon would be just like Arizona — and had designed the LM’s landing gear that way — had turned out to be right. That’s what I’ve gotta bear in mind, he thought. Mars will be just like Arizona, too.

To Seger, that was a magical thought, as if Earth and Moon and Mars were somehow unified, physically bridged, as they were bridged by the exploits of Americans.

He walked carefully down the steps, away from the Flight Director’s console, and latched the door behind him.

Gregory Dana arrived late, his Vu-graph foils and reports bundled under his arm; by the time he reached the conference room — right next to the office of von Braun himself — it was already full, and he had to creep to the back to find a space.

The room was on the tenth floor of Marshall’s headquarters building, colloquially known as the von Braun Hilton. Just about everybody who counted seemed to be here: senior staff from Marshall and Houston, a few managers from NASA Headquarters in Washington, and a lot of people from the contractors whose studies were being presented today.

At the front of the room, so remote from Dana that it was difficult to see his face, Bert Seger, head of the nascent Mars Program Office, was making his opening remarks.

They were all here to listen to the Mars mission mode Phase A studies final presentations. Their purpose today, Seger said, was to settle on a recommended mode for the development program. The group had to regard itself as in competition for resources and endorsement with the parallel studies going on into the reusable Space Shuttle; a similar heavyweight meeting had recently been held in Williamsburg to thrash out some of the conceptual issues involved in that program.

In his rapid Bronx delivery Seger gave them a little pep talk: about the need for open discussion, for receptivity, and for a willingness for all there to walk out of the room with a consensus behind whatever mode was favored. Dana could see a little crucifix glinting on Seger’s lapel, under a wilting pink carnation.

Dana doubted that anyone missed the subtext of what Seger was saying. Congress was approving the requested funding for NASA’s FY1972, but the big expenditure for whatever program was settled on was going to start in FY1973. And President Nixon still hadn’t made up his mind about the future of the space program. It was said he might even can manned spaceflight altogether, and look for some superscience stunt on Earth that might prove a better fit with the mood of the times.

Meanwhile there was open warfare going on between two of NASA’s centers, Houston and Marshall, over their preferred Mars modes.

It was just what NASA didn’t need, and all the old hands at NASA had been there before, too many times. Dana knew that Seger had already been trying to get around the conflict by encouraging informal contacts and discussions, and by having the Houston people help with the devising of Marshall’s presentation, and so forth. And it was obvious that Seger’s intention today was to lance that boil before sending the recommendations farther up the chain of command.

Seger flashed up a draft agenda. The meeting was going to run for the whole day. The two major modes — chemical and nuclear — would be presented first, followed by the other studies…

Dana found with dismay that his would be the last of the five major presentations. I’m coming at the nutty end, he realized. Even after the guys from General Dynamics with their ludicrous atomic-bomb motor. I’m being wheeled on as light relief. In the midst of the organizational infighting, he was going to be squeezed out; he had probably upset too many people by circumventing the hierarchy. He felt his stomach knot up with frustration and anxiety. Damn it, I know I’m right, that I have the way we should be going to Mars, right here in this folder. He pushed his spectacles up onto his nose, agitated.

First up was the nuclear rocket option.

Dana thought the timing was significant; that option, heavily pushed by Marshall, was, he had heard, the preferred option among the NASA brass.

The presentation was opened by a hairy young man called Mike Conlig. Conlig reported into Marshall, but he had worked for several years at the nuclear rocket development station in Nevada. “We’ve achieved twenty-eight starts of our XE-Prime liquid hydrogen prototype, running up in excess of fifty-five thousand pounds of thrust.” Conlig showed a photograph of an ungainly test rig, framed by dismal mountains. “Next we will proceed to the development of NERVA 1, which will develop seventy-five thousand pounds of thrust. Then the full NERVA 2 module will be developed, to support the Mars mission itself. NERVA 2 will be flight-tested in the mid 1970s, in fact launched into orbit as a new Saturn V third stage…”

Conlig spoke well and enthusiastically; Dana let the data rattle through his head.

Next a slim, cold-looking man, his blond hair speckled with gray, walked to the stage. “To achieve the necessary performance for interplanetary travel, we have evolved a ‘building block’ technology, in which separate NERVA propulsion modules will be launched into Earth orbit, and clustered to achieve different requirements…” The voice was shallow, a little clipped — overlaid by a disconcerting Alabama drawl, after all the years at Huntsville — but still underpinned by sharp Teutonic consonants.

This was Hans Udet: Udet, who had worked at Peenemьnde with von Braun and was one of von Braun’s senior people at Marshall.

Dana showed no reaction.

Dana had dealt with the Huntsville Germans many times, during his years at NASA. And he recognized, in the halls and offices of NASA, many faces from those ancient days in the Harz Mountains.

But he had never been recognized, in his turn — why should he be? — and he had never volunteered his identity. He had mentioned this antique link to no one. The Mittelwerk was buried deep in the past, and they had all moved on to new concerns.

He’d never even discussed that part of his past with Jim.

But he had never lost his sense of inferiority before the confident, clever Germans.

Udet put up foils showing two identical ships, to be assembled in Earth orbit. There would be four or six crew in each ship. The ships would be boosted out of orbit by disposable NERVA modules, and then docked nose to nose for the flight to Mars. Udet flashed up summaries of mission weights, flight durations, development costs, and other key parameters. “Our baseline study,” Udet said, “will allow us to launch to Mars in November 1981…”

It was a huge, grandiose scenario. Typical von Braun, Dana thought: unimaginative, brute force, overengineered.

Bert Seger opened the presentation up for questions. The hostile Houston contingent put in a lot of detailed probing about the untried nuclear technology: the difficulties of clustering the nuclear modules, progress on the advanced cooling techniques needed. There were also questions about the significance of the treaties banning atmospheric testing of nuclear technology; it seemed to Dana that those issues were still unresolved.

Seger let the questions run on for some time — well over the option’s allotted slot — and then orchestrated a round of applause. All of it reinforced Dana’s view that this was the mode preferred within NASA, unofficially, and Seger had a brief to make sure that it was fully understood and accepted.

The second major presentation was of an all-chemical-engine mode. It was prepared by Rockwell, and championed by Houston staff. Rockwell was, incidentally, the favorite to be selected as lead contractor for the Space Shuttle.