“So you see,” Udet finished up, “the NERVA is indeed not worth a snap, today. But” — and he leaned forward, fixing Josephson with a glare — “neither was the F-1, the Saturn’s great first-stage engine, at a similar stage in its development, back in ’62 or ’63. If anything, the prospects were worse. There we had combustion instability problems; there the damn things kept exploding on us. But we were allowed to stay on the case, Tim. We got on with our work. And we solved the problems, so much so that the Saturn V has never suffered a single significant engine failure.

“It is the same now. We do not need an alternative program. With NERVA we face problems: yes, of course we do. But they are only engineering issues. We have never let such issues intimidate us before, and we will not now.” As he spoke, Conlig thought, a kind of subliminal message was radiating out of him at Josephson. When you look at me you are looking at von Braun himself. My engines are heroes. We got you to the Moon, we can get you to Mars. Trust my judgment, and allow me to proceed with my work….

Conlig longed to be in Santa Susana — or better still, back in Nevada, at Jackass Flats, in the still emptiness of the desert. He longed to get away from all the politicking, and back to the engineering.

He thought of Natalie.

His relationship with Natalie was a kind of nagging ache on the fringe of his awareness. He knew she wasn’t happy. Damn it, neither was he. But just then there just wasn’t room in his head to think about it. Maybe in a couple of years, when NERVA had dug itself out of the hole, he -

Josephson was looking at him. His cue to perform.

Slowly, haltingly, with none of Udet’s Prussian-aristocrat fluency, Conlig began to speak.

He described the steps being taken to reduce the latest cavitation and hydrogen-graphite corrosion problems, and the difficulties they were having with the way the intense radiation was making capacitance gauges produce erroneous hydrogen tank measurements. And so forth. But, he told Josephson, the team was hopeful nevertheless of getting to the first extended burn and full system test soon, and the rigs were demonstrating that the design would hold up under the vibration and shock to be expected during a flight…

As he spoke, he couldn’t tell how well he was doing.

Josephson listened without comment. Then he turned to Bert Seger.

The program director had been sitting in with the NERVA people over the last week, poking around Santa Susana and the other sites, evidently figuring out for himself what the prospects were. He sat facing Josephson, whiplash-thin, with his trademark carnation glowing on his buttonhole, just above the crucifix pin there.

Briskly, Seger summarized his own view of the various problems. “Tim, I don’t know what the hell shape our schedule for NERVA is going to be in when we get through the current replan. What’s hamstringing us is the safety precautions; we have to drown and dismantle each damn rig after every bitty problem. I’m not saying we should skip the safety stuff; of course not. But we’re going to have to plan realistically for every milestone in the program from now on. More realistically than we have up to now. But—” A pause.

“Yes, Bert?”

“You’ve got some good people out there, Tim. Both ours and the contractor’s; some of our best. And they’re doing their damnedest to make this thing fly. I recommend we stay with this horse, Tim; don’t think about backing another.”

Josephson listened in glassy silence. “All right. Thank you, Bert, gentlemen. You’ve said pretty much what I expected you to say. I think I have to back your judgment, your faith in this balky machine of yours, this NERVA. I’ll keep on going in to bat for you. But I hope you’ve heard what I’ve told you today. Bert, I want you to pull together a coherent status summary I can pass up the line. And I want to see a new schedule out of your people, Hans: a credible schedule. And I want to see you adhering to it, from now on.”

Those tough words, delivered in a flat monotone, seemed at odds with Josephson’s dry, file-clerk appearance. Conlig felt restless, eager to get out of here.

As they were walking out of the door, Josephson called Bert Seger back. Conlig could hear Josephson distinctly. “I want you to ride herd on these assholes, Bert. Don’t take any more bullshit. Ride herd, and make them fix this nuclear skyrocket of theirs…”

We don’t need to be told, Conlig thought, as he followed the others through the carpeted corridors.

When he got out of the building, despite the humid heat outside, Conlig felt a surge of relief; prickles of sweat broke out over his forehead. It was like being let out of school. Fucking bureaucrats.

Now, at any rate, he could get back to work: start expending energy once more, and relieve the huge anxiety that was knotted up inside him. January 1977-January 1978

Her application to NASA took a full year to resolve itself. And yet, once started, the process had a kind of inevitability about it, a grinding logic.

A couple of weeks after her first application, she got a telegram from the National Academy of Sciences. They wanted more information: a fuller rйsumй, reprints of published papers, a five-hundred-word essay on experiments she would like to conduct on the surface of Mars.

She complied. She wrote about her ideas on outflow channels, and on searching for water under the Martian regolith, and what that would mean for the future colonization of the planet.

She shaved her essay to exactly five hundred words; she’d had previous dealings with government agencies, and she knew that breaking the smallest rule might cost her her chance.

She wasn’t taking the application too seriously, in the privacy of her own mind. But she wanted to get as far as she could: maybe put herself in a position where she could give herself a choice of pursuing that crazy option — a career in the space program — or not.

York read in Science that fewer than a thousand scientists sent their names in response to the National Academy of Sciences flyer: far fewer — according to the press — than NASA had been hoping for.

York could understand that. A scientist’s career was brief, in terms of productive years: the peak time was late twenties to early thirties. Right where York was. Losing that time could be very damaging, in terms of a long-term career.

And scientist recruits had been given a rough enough ride by NASA in the past. Not one of the first batch of scientist-astronauts, who’d signed up in 1965, had made it to the Moon with Apollo.

You’d have to be crazy to risk your career, your reputation, on the slim chance of a flight into space someday, with an organization of engineers and pilot jocks like NASA.

Of course you would.

A few weeks after submitting her essay she received a letter from the Academy.

She wasn’t rejected yet.

She had passed their preliminary screening, as regards age, height, and health, and she was scientifically qualified for the program, with proven expertise in a relevant field. She was sent more forms to complete: an application for federal employment, an aeromedical survey form designed for Air Force pilots, several others.

And she was invited to go for medical examinations at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas.

To the lair of the hero test pilots! Jesus. I’m getting close.

Texas, as she descended toward it, struck her as a pancake-flat plain. It was a hot June day; stepping out of the plane to walk the few yards to the terminal building was like walking through a furnace.

She met the other candidates at the Best Western where they’d been lodged. They intimidated the hell out of her. There was a chemistry department chair from Caltech; a Princeton M.D. who was also a Ph.D. candidate in physiology; a physics professor from Cornell; a Ph.D. physiologist who was also a jet pilot; an M.D. who was also a jet pilot. And so on. It was obvious that the “scientists” whom NASA was considering largely had “operational” bents, too; they were mostly pilot-scientist hybrids.