“I made a list — I copied you on it — of thirty-odd things that got up my ass, in my first hour up there. Lousy materials handling, mixed-up demarcation of workspaces, wasted time…

“Sure, the schedule pressures are working against us, too. With the sloppy practices the manufacturers have, there’s no way they can keep to their development timetables. And then they cut corners on testing, to try to make the end date, which means you end up with a candle that’s late and lousy quality.”

Michaels was nodding, rubbing the thick jowls under his chin. “Yeah. I understand. You’re doing a good job, Joe. You’re doing just the job I hired you for.”

“Fred, we’ve gone wrong, somewhere. We scraped this kind of crap out of Apollo; back then we had an operation, right across the country, that was as slick as snot. But now we’ve slipped back.”

Michaels grunted and sipped his drink. “Maybe. But we had lots of things working for us, back then. A goal you couldn’t have defined more sharply, a lot of goodwill — even though Congress squeezed the budgets — and, hell, I don’t know, a kind of romance about it all. We were still moving outward, Joe; it was still a great adventure, a time of firsts, every year. And we had one hell of a schedule pressure; we still thought the Russians might beat us to it.

“Now,” he ruminated, “it’s different. All the forces working on us have changed. Even though we’ve got the prospect of Mars, somewhere out there in the future, we’ve been mooching about in Earth orbit for a decade, and what the hell do we have to show for it but a couple of tin-can fuel-tank ’Labs, Apollo hardware still in orbit a decade after the Moon landings, a Saturn upgrade booster that hasn’t flown once, and a lethal bucket of bolts called NERVA?”

“Yeah, but you have to take a positive view of it, Fred. Skylab A is still operational, nearly a decade after it was launched. What if we’d abandoned it? — let it fall back to Earth? What a hell of a waste that would have been; we’d have been a laughingstock. And Moonlab is still up there—”

“Okay, okay. But it’s still just Apollo applications. Nothing we didn’t design in the sixties. And meanwhile, the world is moving on, Joe. We don’t have the lead that we had a decade ago. The Russians have kept on flying Soyuz and Salyut—”

“But our stuff is advanced over theirs.”

“Maybe, but their endurance records have been beating the pants off us. And the Soviets aren’t the only ones. Even our buddies are moving into the gaps we’re leaving. The Europeans have been flying their Ariane for a couple of years, so we’re soon going to lose out in terms of commercial launches, too, to our so-called allies.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fleshy fingers and closed his eyes. “Ah, hell. Another eight or nine years on, and here I am again trying to reshape the space program for another new president. And once again I’m trying to figure out the way the future is going to pull at us, and which way the new White House is likely to jump. Maybe it’s not so obvious to you guys; I know what it’s like when you’re buried inside the program. But things are so different now, from 1971, and 1960; so different…”

Muldoon grunted. “Oh, I look around, Fred. I can see the changes. In spite of the Afghanistan thing, the Cold War is done now. Or at least people want to think so. And if space was all about fighting the war symbolically—”

“Then what use is it now?” Michaels smiled over his glass. “You got that right. We were happy enough to play that card when it suited us, Joe; maybe we couldn’t have flown without it. But now people have had enough, and we’re being paid back. But on the other hand…”

Muldoon prompted, “Yeah?”

“On the other hand, maybe there are still some angles we can use. You know Reagan is expanding his military spending.”

Muldoon grunted. “Sure. Just as he’s cutting taxes, and the rest of the budget.”

“And I don’t think that’s going to go away, not during Reagan’s term.” Michaels was thoughtful, calculating. “Haig is saying that all of Carter’s human rights stuff was misguided; that what we’ve got to do now is counter the Soviets, who are still the main threat.”

“So what does that mean for us, Fred?”

Michaels smiled, tiredly. “You need to see the angles. We have to position ourselves so we’re in the part of the budget that gets expanded, not the part that gets cut. If all that money is going to flow into defense, then we’ve got to be in the way of that flow. Divert a little bit.” He sipped his drink. “Then you have Reagan himself. That old ham. You know, I’ve been working with Reagan and his people since he was nominated. And I think it’s possible he might want to emulate Kennedy. Or rather, finally put Kennedy in his box, after all these years. You know that in the Republican platform last year, Reagan attacked Carter/Kennedy for not keeping up NASA’s funding the way they should have. Now, he has to deliver on that.

“And maybe, for Reagan, the state of flux we’re in after the NERVA thing is an opportunity. A chance for him to shape events. The space program is like a litmus test for new administrations when they come in, a way for them to prove themselves. You had Kennedy and the Moon, and Nixon and his long-range Mars program… Joe, I think if we could come up with some program, some clear goal, that promised to restore our image, and put us back in the lead in space in a few years time — say, in five or six years, within his possible term of office — Reagan might buy it.” His rheumy eyes gleamed. “And now’s the time to strike, while his administration is settling in. But—”

“But what?”

“But Reagan’s no Kennedy. And Bush sure as hell is no LBJ. An announcement isn’t enough. I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to assemble, and keep, a coalition of interests behind any such program. And besides, if NERVA’s a busted flush, what the hell do we have to give Reagan anyhow, Joe?” He poured himself another drink. “Ah, God. I tell you, I don’t know if I can do it anymore. I’ve used up a lot of credit on the Hill over the years, in the endless program delays and overspends. And now this NERVA thing. I don’t know if I can go in there and start fighting again. I don’t know if I should even be trying anymore.”

He’s thinking of giving up, Muldoon realized The sudden perception was painful to him, almost a physical shock. Fuck. How come I haven’t seen this before?

Because, he thought, he hadn’t wanted to admit it.

A NASA without Fred Michaels at the top was all but inconceivable to Muldoon, as it no doubt was to most Americans.

Muldoon knew enough about the workings of NASA to know what kind of man it needed as its Administrator. It shouldn’t be a scientist, or an engineer. It had to be someone who understood the great issues of national and public policy. It had to be a manager, someone able to keep the multiple warring centers in effective and efficient operation. It had to be a man who knew his way around Congress, and the Pentagon, and the Bureau of the Budget.

Such a man was Fred Michaels.

Michaels, as had James Webb before him, had shown himself to have the ability to build up a political lobby behind a space program — and then, crucially, to sustain it across the years. Michaels’s continuity, and his endless energy and commitment, had probably meant as much as Kennedy’s advocacy in keeping the NASA show on the road, over all these long and seemingly fruitless years.

With lesser men in the Administrator’s office, Muldoon realized, NASA might have fallen on bad times years before.

And now, at this lowest moment, he wants to give up, to slink back to fucking Dallas.

Muldoon sat there in the gloom of the office, listening to Michaels, watching the flickering of the TV screen.

He was reminded of the day, long ago, when his own father had admitted to him that he was terminally ill; he felt the same loss of foundations, of surety.