She half expected to see spare sport shirts hanging behind the veneered doors.

Everywhere they walked, people deferred to Jones, as if he was some kind of king. He didn’t seem to notice. My God, York thought. There are going to be some monumental egos around here.

Jones led the nine of them into his big office in Building 30 and gave them coffee. He walked them through their induction program. For her first year York would be an “ascan” — an astronaut candidate. She’d go through six months of classroom lectures on astronomy, aerodynamics, physiology, spacecraft systems, interplanetary navigation, upper atmosphere physics… Back to school. There would be visits to Kennedy, Marshall, Langley, and other NASA centers.

They’d be “smoothed,” as Jones put it; the instructors would try to ensure that they all emerged with a certain base level of skills in every discipline, regardless of their background. That was partly for PR purposes, York gathered, so they could talk intelligently on every aspect of their future missions.

There would be some physical training, in simulators and centrifuges and the like. There would be some compulsory flight experience, in the back of a T-38, but, unlike previous cadres of scientist-astronauts, this group would not have to attend flight school.

It was a break from tradition. They’re letting in astronauts who aren’t pilots! Chuck Jones looked as if he were chewing nails as he forced the news out, and some of the more bushy-tailed guys looked disappointed; one even asked if he could volunteer for flight school.

After their ascan year, the candidates would be put on the active roster and would be considered for assignment to flights. Then, maybe two years before a flight, mission-specific training would begin…

“In theory,” Jones said.

Someone spoke up. “In theory, sir?”

Jones said bluntly, “I might as well just tell you guys straight out. You’re not going to be seeing any action for a while. None of you is dumb, so you know what the funding situation is like up on the Hill.

“Even if we get to Mars, and even if — if — a scientist is selected,” and Jones’s tone of voice made his feelings about that clear enough, “there are too many people in line ahead of you new guys. Including previous batches of scientists, some of whom have been here for years and haven’t gotten to fly yet. It’s even worse than with Apollo. At least with Apollo several Moon flights were planned. For Mars only a single flight has been inked in, and competition for places on that flight is going to be ferocious.”

Jones swiveled his cold black eyes, and York found it difficult to withstand the pressure of that gaze, as if his vision had contained some sizzling, hostile radar energy. “You’re looking at long delays, and maybe no flights, ever. We don’t need you around here. I’m saying this just so you’ll understand.”

Ben Priest took her out to lunch at the Nassau Bay Hilton.

She surveyed the menu. “Steak. Seafood. Salad. Potato. More steak. Jesus, Ben.”

He grinned as he sipped at a Coke. “Welcome to Houston.”

“How does a civilized man like you stand it here, Ben?”

“Now, don’t be a snob, Natalie.”

York ordered chicken-fried steak. When it arrived, it was a great plate-sized slab of meat, heavily fried and coated in batter. The first few mouthfuls tasted good, but the meat was tough, and her jaws soon started to ache.

Oh, how I am going to love Houston. A home away from home.

“So tell me,” Priest said. “What do you think of the astronauts, now that you’ve seen them en masse?”

“Oh, God. Football captains and class presidents. Straight out of Smallville.”

He laughed. “Maybe. Well, that describes me, too. Round here I’m just a ‘bug-eye’ from Ohio.”

“Look, I’m serious, Ben. Maybe this is what’s wrong with NASA. These guys have had it easy.”

“Easy?”

“Sure. For all their great achievements. Every day of their lives the astronauts are handed single, easily visualized objectives; all they have to do is go ahead and achieve. Unlike the rest of mankind.”

He grunted and cut into his steak, a big T-bone. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” he said.

“What?”

“Whether you’re right about this colony of Eagle Scouts, or whether it’s just your perception we’re talking about here, you’re going to have one hell of a job trying to find a niche.”

He was right, she felt. Flying to Mars could turn out to be the easy part.

After lunch, Priest took her sight-seeing and apartment hunting.

Sitting in the familiar comfort of Ben’s Corvette, she felt a great relief when they got away from the JSC area. And it was a relief to be with Ben.

She turned to him. He drove steadily, not speaking. If he reached out to her -

But he didn’t. He sat stiffly, as if unaware of her. Hell, he probably doesn’t know how to handle this any better than I do.

Her relationship with Ben was an odd thing, she thought. Almost as odd as her long-running relationship with Mike Conlig. Sure. So what’s the common factor, York?

When she and Ben came closer, physically, they talked a lot less. And when they did it was about superficials. Ben didn’t seem able even to contemplate leaving Karen, and as for York, her on-off relationship with Mike Conlig continued its stuttering course, accreting a kind of emotional mass the longer it lasted. Are Ben and I having an affair, then? Just the occasional jump in the sack?

It was as if their two bipolar relationships drew the two of them, Ben and York, apart every time they got close.

She was sure of one thing, though. If her first morning at JSC was anything to go by, she was going to need Ben’s patient company just to keep her sane.

Houston dismayed her. The place sweltered under a layer of air that was hot, laden with humidity, and thick with smog. The land was flat and at sea level, without a hill for a hundred miles, and crisscrossed by muddy rivers and swamps. Out of town, the soil was a gluey mixture the locals called “gumbo,” a mess of mud, clay, and oyster shells; pines and snarled oaks thrust reluctantly out of fields of stiff, bristly grass.

Ben drove her out to the San Jacinto monument, a grandiose 1930s obelisk topped by a Texas star, celebrating the victory of General Sam Houston over the Mexicans. They rode to the observation deck at the top. Around the monument’s landscaped park, square miles of oil refineries stretched away. From here, JSC might not have existed; the oil-price fluctuations of the 1970s had been good to Houston, and to York, looking down at the great spaghetti bowl of pipelines below, it was obvious that Houston was built on oil money, and the space program was no more than just another local employer.

Around the base of the monument, there was a faint reek of petrochemicals.

To find an apartment, Ben drove her back to the NASA-Clear Lake area, southeast of downtown. Clear Lake, as Ben pointed out in what was evidently a standard JSC joke, was neither clear nor a lake, but actually a sluggish inlet of Galveston Bay. NASA Road One, the road from JSC, ran parallel to the coast of the lake, and there were big communities of modern housing developments — Nassau Bay, El Lago — set between aging coastal resorts. The resort areas were old-fashioned, strange to find so close to the space center: faded, shabby, a little sinister, eroded by the sea and sun. York thought it must have been a hell of a shock to the locals when NASA had landed here, by Presidential decree, twenty years earlier.

The developments were all ranch houses, cute little bungalows with tiny private docks. Everything was green, prosperous, well maintained.

York grunted. “My God. The American dream, vintage 1962. The little home, the mom and two kids, the barbecues and the sailing. We’re in The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

“No.” Priest smiled behind his sunglasses. “This is astronaut country, remember. You’re thinking of I Dream of Jeannie. Anyhow, you’re not giving the place much of a chance, Natalie.”