Hell, it was hardly our fault. Nixon called us, not the other way around. And what can you do with all that science stuff? It was hardly idiotproof: too damn easy to make mistakes, when you only have a couple of hours, out of your entire life, to walk on the Moon…
He was already drinking too much, fighting off the depression, the deflation, with alcohol. He’d been just the same after his Gemini flight. A few years of this and he’d turn into some sad, paunchy slob telling war stories to anyone who’d listen, to increasingly blank faces.
He remembered, that day in Nepal, that he’d taken a nap. When he woke up, he needed the bathroom. He tried to float out of bed, and his torso went crashing to the floor, his legs wrapped up in a sheet. And then, when he’d shaved, he tried to leave the after-shave bottle floating in the air. It fell into the sink, smashing into big sharp chunks.
That evening in Nepal, he was to be guest of honor at a dinner at a swank, Western-standard restaurant a mile off. He had elected to walk, to clear his head of beer fumes. The road was rocky, badly made, and steep; he was, after all, in the foothills of the Himalayas there. He soon tired.
All along the side of the road as he walked, there were children, kneeling down. They all held candles and looked up at him, their round faces shining in the dusk light like images of the Moon.
It was an act of veneration.
They think I’m a god. A god, come to visit them.
They shouldn’t do this to people, damn it. They’d made him into a stranded moonwalker. He just wanted to walk on another glowing beach.
He tried to focus on what Michaels and Agronski were saying.
Michaels hauled his bulk out of his chair, and let his impressive, waistcoated gut hang over the polished table for a minute. “Gentlemen, let’s see if we can’t cut to the chase.”
He pulled a flip chart away from the wall. The first few sheets were covered with barely comprehensible notes relating to the Apollo 13 astronauts’ abandoned moonwalk checklists: “DOCUMENTED SAMPLE: select sample / place gnomon upsun of sample / sample gnomon [8,5,2] x sun / retrieve sample…” There was a peculiar poetry in the way technical people communicated with each other, he reflected.
On a clean page, he began to scribble. “Let’s see what we have here. How would we do this? What’s the minimum we have to do to get to Mars? I can see three strands of work for the short term. First, we’ll need flight tests of the nuclear rocketry. Second, we’ll have to man-rate the modules of the Mars ship itself, such as a lander. Finally, we’re going to have to get some experience of long-duration missions in space.” He listed the items quickly. “But, whether we go for the Space Shuttle, or for an uprated Saturn program, or both, you’re looking at maybe five years before a new launch system comes on stream. So for the time being we’re going to need to use the Saturn V to get by.” He eyed Agronski. “You know we’ve already announced the suspension of the Saturn V production line.”
“Of course.”
“Now, in addition to the moonshots, we have our Skylab program, which might have needed a couple of Vs. But a couple of months back we redirected the program; we’re going to revert to the wet workshop concept, which can be launched by a Saturn IB. So as of now our remaining Saturn Vs — seven of them built or in production, SA-509 through SA-515 — are dedicated to Apollo Moon missions.”
“How many launches will you need for a Mars program?” Agronski asked.
Michaels blew out his cheeks. “Let’s say, in the next half decade, six Saturn V flights, and perhaps ten Saturn IBs. That should get Skylab well under way, and perhaps take us as far as the first Earth-orbit manned flights of the NERVA, before we get the new launcher. Joe, does that sound reasonable?”
Muldoon grunted. “Yeah. I guess. If you want to cut it to the bone; if you want to run the risk of another Apollo 1 fire.”
“Now, Joe…”
“Six Saturn Vs,” Agronski said. “And there are seven Moon flights left, Apollos 14 through 20.” His lips pulled tight into a thin grin.
So that’s it. Now I know the price, for Mars, for Paine’s job. It was as if Agronski was taking a much-delayed revenge. Agronski had always despised the manned Moon program, opposed it whenever he could. Agronski knows that this is the end of Apollo. Right here and now; right in this room.
Agronski said smugly, “Well. Of course I’m aware that there’s a lot of opposition to further Moon flights, even within NASA. The whole system’s too complex. ‘One of these days Apollo will kill somebody, if it hasn’t already killed Lovell and his crew’ — that’s what is being said, isn’t it? I imagine a curtailment wouldn’t be impossibly difficult to sell, even within NASA, now that the first landings have been achieved. And—”
Muldoon kicked back his chair and stood up. “So we’re cutting the Moon flights,” he said. He was tall, intimidating, his disgust majestic. “Just when we’ve gotten there. Jesus Christ, Fred. The later flights would have been the crown of the program. J-class missions, with advanced LMs, three-day stays on the surface, long-duration backpacks that would extend each moonwalk to up to seven hours, and electric cars. We’d have gone to sites of terrific wonder, and beauty, and scientific interest. We’ve even got a tentative plan to go to the far side of the Moon.”
Michaels stared at Muldoon. He prided himself on being a great off-the-ballot politician, but he found words deserting him, at that moment of all moments.
“I know, Joe. I know.”
Michaels could imagine the attacks he’d suffer from the scientists. It was even possible he wouldn’t be able to sell a deal like this to Paine, and to others in the Agency, such as George Mueller, the great space station proponent. And, looking farther ahead, he supposed there was a danger that a Mars program would keep NASA a single-issue Agency, everything subordinated to one goal, just as in the days of Apollo.
He tried to focus on Muldoon, to handle the situation in front of him.
“It may not be a case of canceling the flights, Joe. Maybe we could stretch out the schedule. Defer some of the flights until later—”
Muldoon faced Michaels; the knotty muscles bunched around his shoulders, under his shirt. “Don’t do this, Fred. Don’t kill the missions.”
From the corner of his eye Michaels could see Agronski’s face, his revulsion at that outburst of monomania.
He knows he’s won. He knows I’m going to have to do more than just defer; that I’m going to agree to make these sacrifices, to sell them within the Agency, then manage them through as Administrator, in order to give us all a future. And there is more pain, much more, to come.
Michaels felt as if all of history, past and present, were flowing through him, in this room, just now; and that whatever he decided might shape the destiny of worlds.
Sunday, June 21, 1970
When Jim Dana passed Richmond he turned the Corvette off Route 1 and onto the narrower State Highway 60, heading southeast. The towns were fewer, and smaller. And, at last, after Williamsburg, there seemed to be nothing but forests and marshland, and the occasional farmhouse.
It was a fresh June day, and soon Dana could taste salt and ozone from the coast; the sunlight was sharp on the bare arm he propped in the window frame. The landscape around him seemed to expand, to assume the huge, hollow dimensions of his childhood, echoing with seagull cries.