“What are you saying, Fred? I’ve seen your tame shrinks, and—”

“I know.”

“I’m no psychotic, Fred.”

“I know that,” Michaels said gruffly. “And I’m glad for you. But that isn’t really the question.”

“Then what is?”

“Whether you’re the right man to continue leading the program, right now.”

Seger picked up a paper clip from his desk and began to fold and unfold it with his free hand.

Michaels found himself shivering, despite his topcoat. The sky was overcast, the clouds impossibly low. Thank Christ this is the last.

The mourners stood in rows: there was Jim Dana’s grieving family, with poor, beat-up old Gregory Dana, the dreamer from Langley, standing in the front row with his arms around his wife and his widowed daughter-in-law; there were the usual ranks of NASA managers and engineers, of congressmen and senators; and there was the Vice President of the United States himself. And right at the front there was a row of astronauts, standing straight and tall, saluting their fallen comrade: Muldoon, York, Gershon, Stone, Bleeker, others — men who had flown the first Mercurys, men who had once walked on the Moon, men — and women — who might walk on Mars. And there was Vladimir Viktorenko, who had flown with Joe Muldoon to lunar orbit, and who Muldoon had insisted should be there — the Afghanistan situation or not — to represent that other astronaut corps, from the other side of the world.

There was a volley of rifle shots, a slow litany from a bugler. The ceremony dragged on, poignant and exquisitely painful.

There was a roar that seemed to shake the ground. Michaels looked up into the sky, startled.

Four Air Force T-38s were coming in from the southwest, in a close diamond formation, no more than five hundred feet from the ground. The planes gleamed white against the lead gray sky. As the formation roared overhead, their jets screaming, the wingman veered out of the diamond and climbed vertically, disappearing into the clouds in a couple of seconds.

The other three T-38s carried on toward the north, their afterburners glowing.

Michaels recognized the formation. The missing man. He could see the astronauts at the graveside, the row of them, rookies and veterans alike, all with their heads turned up to the jets.

As the ceremony broke up, Michaels worked his way through the milling, black-coated throng, toward Joe Muldoon.

“Joe, I need to speak to you. I have an assignment for you.”

Muldoon just glared back at him. He towered over Michaels, rigid, intimidating. His muscles were visible under his uniform, his face a scowling mask. Michaels could see a righteous, terrible anger burning in there.

Michaels drew a deep breath. It was that anger he wanted to tap into. “I want you to keep this to yourself for now. I’m transferring Bert Seger. I’m bumping him further up in the Program Office. I’ve found him a job here in Washington.”

“He won’t accept it.”

“Well, he’s going to have to accept it. Hell, man, you saw how he was, in that meeting with Udet. I’ve had to take him out of the line.”

Muldoon shook his head. “Bert worked damned hard. And none of it was his fault—”

“I’m not interested in allocating blame,” Michaels said firmly. “Let them do that up on the Hill. All I’m concerned about is taking the program forward, from here on in to the end zone. And I don’t think Bert Seger is the right man to do that anymore.”

“So who is?”

“You.”

Muldoon looked at him with his mouth open and his eyes round blue disks, a caricature of amazement. “Me? You’re kidding. I’m no manager. I’m the asshole with the big mouth you nearly grounded, remember.”

“Yes, you are an asshole sometimes,” Michaels said testily. “But I trust your judgment, over the things that matter. You’re a moonwalker, for God’s sake. And you handled the Moonlab mission well. That broadcast—”

“That was a stunt.”

“Don’t decry yourself. Down here, that broadcast was like a catharsis. I think it helped a lot of people, in NASA and beyond, come to terms with what happened. And you’ve done a good job with the post-accident review.” He sighed. “Look, Joe, I need you because we’re in a damned hole. I still don’t know which way Reagan is going to swing. But I know the accident looks bad, very bad, up on the Hill. I think it’s highly likely we won’t be allowed to proceed with the nuclear rocket program. And the MEM isn’t even a bucket of bolts yet; it was months behind schedule even before this mess… What I need is someone impatient, tough, charismatic — you, Joe — to get hold of the program and pull the damned thing out of Marshall, and the contractors, and all the rest, and make it happen.”

Muldoon looked across the cemetery. “Let me get something clear,” he said quietly. “If I take this job, I won’t be able to remain on the active roster.”

Michaels took a breath. “No. There’s no way you could maintain both schedules.”

“So if I take this job, to get your ass out of a sling, I pass up on my chance of going to Mars.”

“I’m not going to pretend that’s not true, Joe. But if you don’t take the job, I think the chances are nobody will be going to Mars, not in my lifetime or yours.”

Muldoon’s mouth worked. “It’s one hell of a price you’re asking me to pay.”

“I know it.”

“And it’s not exactly orderly, Fred,” Muldoon said. “How are all those engineers and managers and space cadets going to feel when you put a dumb jock like me at the top of the structure chart?”

Michaels smiled. “Well, back in the Apollo days managers used to bounce around the organigram without paying too much attention to that kind of thing. Maybe we need that spirit back again. I don’t think you ought to worry about the color of the carpet on the floor, Joe. And if anyone does start bothering you about ranks and status — well, you just come to me.”

“Hell, no,” Muldoon said. “If any paper-pusher with his thumbs up his ass tries to fuck me over—”

“Does that mean you’re taking the job?”

“It means I’ll think about it. You’re a bastard, Michaels.”

They began to walk toward their waiting cars.

The wind across the steppe pierced the layers of York’s pressure suit. She tried walking around, to keep warm. But the Soviet-design suit, wired for internal strength, resisted her motion, and she soon felt herself tiring; and the “appendix,” the bunched-up opening at the front of the suit, irritated her chest.

Beside her Ralph Gershon was huddled over on himself. His head was tucked into the collar of his suit, his helmet was under his arm. Gershon’s eyes were glazed. He had a knack, York had observed, of retreating into some private cosmos when the outside world got sufficiently shitty. Well, just now that was a knack she envied.

The mock-up of the Soyuz Command Module sat squat on the Kazakh plain. A handful of trucks — battered, unpainted — stood around the capsule. Beside the Soyuz was the flatbed truck which had carried the capsule dummy out there. Fifty yards beyond that stood a Soviet Army helicopter, its rotors turning slowly. Cables trailed from the Command Module, coiling across the dust of the steppe, leading to winches attached to the chopper.

There was a smell of wormwood grass: thin, almost lost on the cold air. The ground was baked to a yellowish, brick-hard glaze, with just a few tufts of grass. In some places patches of snow lingered. Vladimir Viktorenko had told her that in the early spring, the steppe would be covered in flowers. York found it hard to believe.

She didn’t know what had caused the latest delay. Technicians stood around, showing no apparent concern for timetables or schedules. That seemed to be the way in the Soviet Union, even around the space program.