“We can’t tell. Both, possibly.”

She’d been following the controllers’ terse dialogue. The controllers were still working to the assumption that there was some kind of instrumentation or telemetry problem to explain the multiple anomalies.

But if the ship was venting gas, that couldn’t be it. The problem couldn’t be just instrumentation or an electrical screwup. And besides, she could see that Surgeon, next to her, had switched onto a closed loop.

Something, some violent and destructive event, had happened to Apollo-N, up there in low Earth orbit, to a spacecraft with a nuclear pile attached to its tail.

She glanced across at Mike. He was still hunched over his console and whispering into his headset. Why doesn’t he say something to Flight?

She became aware that her right hand was clutching the thin metal maintenance handle of her console; her hand was closed into a fist, painfully.

Her throat was dry, and she had to force herself to swallow before she could speak again.

Ben’s up there. What in hell is going on?

Gregory Dana, in the Viewing Room, could see the spacecraft icon drifting from its programmed trajectory on the big plot board, and he could follow enough of the controllers’ terse exchanges to figure out that something catastrophic had happened to Jim’s ship.

The Viewing Room was steadily filling up — as was the MOCR amphitheater itself — as off-duty personnel came hurrying in, responding to the deepening atmosphere of crisis.

Dana was joined at the window by one of the astronaut corps, Ralph Gershon, whom Dana had met a couple of times through Jim.

Gershon stared out at the frantic huddles in the MOCR and snorted contempt. “Jesus. Look at them huddling up. They always go through the same thing. What happened? Where are we? What are we going to do about it? They’re so damned slow, and restricted in the way they think. And meanwhile the bird drifts around the sky, broken-winged.”

Broken-winged.

The problems must be with the nuclear engine. Everything, every anomaly, had flowed from that moment.

They have to get the crew away from that damn booster. Dana couldn’t understand why that hadn’t been done already.

He glanced around. He couldn’t tell if any of this was being broadcast on the public networks. What if Mary, and Jake and Maria, were seeing this on TV? What about Sylvia?

Silently, his lips moving, Gregory Dana began to pray.

The NERVA has blown. That’s got to be it.

Jim Dana, lying in his couch, thought he could feel the tingle of radioactive particles within his body. It was a thin wind, working its way into his bones. His face and chest felt as if they were on fire. He felt a burning sensation and a tightness about his temples, and his eyelids were smarting, as if they had been doused with acid.

With every breath, he must be filling his lungs with radionuclides.

His throat hurt, and he began to cough.

The Executives Group were about to take dinner at the International Club on Nineteenth Street. Vice President-elect Bush attended, along with members of the Senate and House who held key positions on the Space and Appropriations Committees; they were standing around with drinks in their hands.

Under the surface of talk and networking, Fred Michaels was running over the events of the day.

Michaels had inherited the idea of the Executives Group from his predecessors at NASA. The Group consisted of the space program’s top people: Michaels and his NASA senior managers, and the prime contractors’ senior executives, from Rockwell, Grumman, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, IBM. It was an elite club that Michaels liked to bring together four or five times a year.

Today had been a good day, he decided. The Executives Group session had gone well, and Bush’s closing address had been encouraging. Michaels had worried about losing outgoing veep Ted Kennedy, who, with his brother, continued to support the space program. Today, though, Bush seemed to be positioning himself as — if not an advocate — then at least as an ally.

Yes, a good day. But Michaels was tensed up, his big stomach growling. He always found it impossible to relax in the middle of a mission. Any one of a hundred thousand malfunctions could, he knew, spell the end of the flight, and maybe cost the crew members their lives, and conceivably put a bullet to the head of the whole Mars initiative — and, incidentally, Michaels’s own career. How the hell could anyone relax through that? And tonight there were not one but two American crews beyond the atmosphere, one floating around the Earth with a nuke on its tail, and the other bouncing off the Moon with those Russians. What a situation.

Still, the S-NB seemed to be functioning well, so much so that Hans Udet — the most senior of Marshall’s Germans on the project — had felt able to take time out to be there with the Executives tonight. Michaels could see him, glad-handing a brace of congressmen with all the Prussian charisma and charm at his disposal. Udet looks confident enough. Why the hell shouldn’t I be?

That was when the phone calls started coming in.

Afterward, Michaels would never be sure who had gotten the first call.

He saw the president of Rockwell in excited conversation with another man. Then all the Rockwell executives left the club’s main room and returned a few minutes later, visibly distressed. They began to go through the room, seeking out others; Michaels could see the news — whatever it was — spreading through the Executives Group like a contagion of dismay.

Then Michaels himself was paged to take a call from Tim Josephson, who was still at NASA Headquarters a few blocks away.

“Fred, the crew has lost the NERVA. The technical parameters got out of their nominal boundaries. Ah — in fact, the thing might have exploded.”

“Jesus Christ. And the crew?” Michaels snapped. “What about the damn crew, Josephson?”

Josephson’s voice was even, analytical. “It’s hard to say from here, Fred. The updates are patchy. I’d say we’re looking at a potential crew loss situation.”

A waiter paged Michaels with another urgent call. This time it was Bert Seger from Houston. Seger, his voice high and clipped, gave him more details: some kind of runaway in the NERVA reactor, extensive damage to the Service Module, damage unknown to the Command Module -

Michaels cut him short. No American astronauts had been killed in space before. No previous Administrator had lost a crew. “Bring them home, Bert.”

Michaels felt someone grabbing at his arm. It was Udet; the tall German was smiling, a little flushed with the drink. Udet wanted to introduce Michaels to a portly senator.

Michaels drew Udet to one side, and told him the news.

Udet’s smile evaporated. He seemed to withdraw into himself; he held himself straight and erect, his face a mask. With precision, he put his glass down on a waiter’s tray.

“What must we do?”

“Hans, I want you to call the White House and tell them what’s happened. Tell them I’ll be in contact as soon as I can. And then I want you to get the hell out of here and back to Marshall.”

The German nodded his head and walked stiffly from the room. Michaels watched him go.

He thought back. Seger’s telephoned voice had been distant, light, oddly false; Michaels felt a stab of worry. But the guy is under incredible pressure. Of course he’s going to sound strange. As long as he stays in one piece long enough to get the bird down. Seger’s mental state was something Michaels could deal with later. Christ, I’m going to have a few crazies on my hands before we’re done with this damn business.

Michaels walked back to his guests in the reception room. Obviously word was continuing to spread among them. Hell, they only need to look at my face to see that. He even saw one man crying.