Voyage

Then it came to him. The Docking Adapter had two docking ports. Bleeker had got out through the axial port; but there was also a radial port, stuck to the side of the Adapter for just such a purpose as this.

He reached down, and found the port on his first try; it was jammed, but it gave after a couple of tugs.

Bleeker clapped Jones on the shoulder; the impact was deadened by layers of suit fabric. ‘What were you doing in there, pops, having a shave? Next time, make sure you’ve studied the manual.’

‘Asshole,’ Jones growled. ‘You were in on that, weren’t you?’

‘Just another Monday, Chuck. Don’t take it personal.’

Fucking engineers. Fucking smart-ass rookies.

With the help of the divers, they swam clumsily to the side of the facility.

Tuesday, April 14, 1970 Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston

According to Fred Michaels’s antique vest-pocket watch, it was a little after a quarter to two. He’d been watching the time compulsively, he realized.

Tim Josephson oiled up to him. ‘Mr Agronski is here to see you, sir. He’s waiting in your office.’

‘That’s Doctor Agronski, damn it.’

‘Sorry. Shall I tell him you’ll meet him over there?’

Michaels, resenting the intrusion, turned away rather than answer. He looked through the glass, at the three rows of flight controllers.

Seen from the Viewing Room here at the back of the MOCR – Mission Operations Control Room, pronounced to rhyme with ‘poker,’ and known as ‘Mission Control’ to the world – there was no obvious drama. But the controllers looked pretty crumpled, with ties loosened or discarded, shirts creased, and the operations desks were strewn with coffee cups, manuals and scribbled notes.

He could see Joe Muldoon wandering about at the back of the MOCR. Nine months after his own lunar flight, Muldoon had just finished a six-hour stint as capcom to Jim Lovell and his Apollo 13 crew, but he showed no desire to leave; in fact, he knew that Muldoon was intending to head on over now to Building 5, where other off-duty astronauts were running continual simulations of the improvised procedures the Apollo 13 crew would have to adopt to get home.

Already seventeen hours had passed since 13 had started to fall apart; Michaels wondered how many of the controllers had got a minute’s sleep since.

Josephson coughed. The aide was a slim, prematurely balding young man, with a PhD in some discipline or other. You needed a PhD to make the coffee, here at MSC. ‘Sir, Dr Agronski –’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

Leon Agronski worked on President Nixon’s Science Advisory Committee, with special responsibility for the space program, and all its expensive evils. Michaels knew why Agronski was here: to thrash out ‘options’ for NASA’s budget for FY1971 and beyond, before any formal submission by the White House.

More cuts.

Michaels was an Associate Administrator with responsibility for Manned Spaceflight, a direct report of Thomas Paine, NASA’s Administrator. It had broken Michaels’s heart when Paine had gone public back in February to announce the cuts to Skylab, even some terminations at NASA.

‘You know,’ he mused, ‘maybe, if we can pull this off, this Apollo 13 thing, it will bring us back together, just a little. If we can remember how it feels to have worked like this, today, then maybe we’ll be able to achieve great things again …’

Josephson had been avoiding his eyes; now he confronted Michaels, a little more boldly. ‘Fred, I know you’re upset. But the wheels don’t stop turning. And Dr Agronski has flown out from Washington to catch you.’

Michaels grunted. Josephson was right, of course. The wheels never stopped turning.

And maybe, just maybe, he could use this mess to his advantage. He felt his mood lighten a little.

‘All right, let’s go see him,’ he said. ‘But not in some goddamn bureaucratic office block. Call him over here – ask him to come to the lunar surface back room.’ Another thought struck him. ‘Oh – and, Tim –’

‘Sir?’

‘Ask Joe Muldoon to join us, would you?’

The back room would have been used as the center of operations for the moonwalks. Its walls were covered with crew checklists, and with Orbiter and Apollo photographs of the landing area – called Fra Mauro, a place in the lunar uplands: the first ambitious, scientifically interesting site they’d planned to land. Now, it was deserted.

When Michaels arrived, Muldoon and Agronski were sitting at a large walnut desk in the center of the room. Agronski, thin to the point of sharpness, was leafing through some notes from his briefcase; Muldoon was hollow-eyed with fatigue, and he had folded his big, powerful hands on the desk top. He glared impatiently at Michaels. Josephson fussed around, pouring coffees.

Michaels pulled out a chair, and accepted a coffee. Then Josephson withdrew, leaving the three of them alone.

Michaels introduced Muldoon to Agronski. ‘Leon, Joe here is on the backup crew for Apollo 14, and then should command his own mission, on 17. Joe, you’re here at my invitation. To help remind us what this damn thing is all about.’

Here is the second American on the Moon, Agronski, you thin-lipped asshole, Michaels thought. Here he is! Large as life, and twice as brave! A living symbol! Show a little respect!

In the dazzle of the room’s strip lights, Michaels couldn’t see Agronski’s eyes behind his thin-rimmed glasses.

Joe Muldoon was glaring back at Michaels. Muldoon’s look, those blue eyes hard under that balding prow of a skull, said it all; he was thinking that Michaels was a paper-pushing prick who shouldn’t be wasting Muldoon’s time on a day like this. Not when he – Muldoon – could be in Building 5 or the MOCR with the other guys; not when he might be able to come up with something to save the crew out there –

Christ, Michaels thought suddenly. Maybe I’ve miscalculated. If Muldoon blows his stack here, this could turn into a hundred-kilowatt disaster. He shot an imploring look at Muldoon.

Agronski handed Michaels a document from his case. ‘I’m sorry, Colonel Muldoon; I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I brought only two copies.’

Muldoon turned that bald-eagle glare on the science adviser, who seemed oblivious.

The document was a photostat, stapled together, covered in pencil notes, and with the Presidential seal on the first page.

‘This is the statement President Nixon was drafting, to make in March,’ Agronski said. ‘A formal response to the Space Task Group report. But he withdrew it. I want you to see this draft, Fred, to understand the way the thoughts of the Administration are heading.’

Michaels scanned the statement.

… Over the last decade, the principal goal of our nation’s space program has been the Moon … I believe these accomplishments should help us gain a new perspective of our space program … We must define new goals which make sense for the seventies. We must build on the successes of the past, always reaching out for new achievements. But we must also recognize that many critical problems here on this planet make high priority demands on our attention and our resources. By no means should we allow our space program to stagnate. But – with the entire future and the entire universe before us – we should not try to do everything at once. Our approach to space must continue to be bold, but it must also be balanced …

Christ, Michaels thought. We’re in trouble.

He read on. Economies everywhere. One rationalization after another. No money for more lunar flights beyond Apollo 20. The space station projects cut back to little more than Skylab. All decisions on later stuff, beyond Apollo and Skylab, deferred: that is, canned.

The feasibility studies on the Space Shuttle seemed spared, but even that was only because Nixon perceived the Shuttle as saving the bottom line: We should work to reduce substantially the cost of space operations … As we build for the longer range future, we must devise less costly and less complicated ways of transporting payloads into space …

Michaels put the paper down. So Nixon thinks we can cost-cut our way to Mars.

It wouldn’t have been like this with LBJ.

But Johnson was gone. Now there was this new breed of shifty Republicans in the White House. And suddenly Michaels, at sixty-one, found the political levers he was used to pulling weren’t connected to anything any more. Even his links with the Kennedys didn’t seem as useful as they once had.

Sitting here, he felt old, tired, used up.

Maybe I should retire back to Dallas, he thought. Go work on my golf swing.

He noticed Agronski glancing around at the walls at the moonwalk maps. ‘Poignant, isn’t it?’ Michaels said sharply.

Agronski didn’t react.

‘Leon, why did the President withdraw this draft?’

‘Because, frankly, nobody in the White House is sure about the impact Kennedy’s remarks about the Mars option are having on public opinion. And now –’ Agronski waved a hand at the curling photographs of Fra Mauro ‘– now you people have served us up with all this. The public mood is a fragile thing, Fred; after Apollo 13 America may want to go to Mars as fast as it can – or it may want to close down the space program altogether.’

Muldoon’s nostrils went white. ‘You’re talking about the lives of three men, damn it.’

Agronski studied him, analytically. ‘You know, you people at NASA have been the same whenever I’ve dealt with you. So emotive, so unrealistic. Even you, Fred. Every time we ask for proposals, back you come wanting everything: look at this Space Task Group report with its “balanced programs,” its “wide range of technologies.” You ask for Mars, but that brings everything else in its wake, it seems: nuclear boosters, a Space Shuttle, huge space stations. The same old vision von Braun has peddled since the 1950s – even though you didn’t need a space station to get to the Moon. Your hidden agendas are not, frankly, very well hidden. Why can’t you learn to prioritize?’

Muldoon said angrily, ‘The Task Group is asking for a mandate to begin the colonization of the Solar System. And to secure the future of the human race, just as Kennedy is saying. What could be higher priority than that?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Agronski snapped. ‘We’re a country at war, Colonel Muldoon. And the war is a hemorrhage of money, resources, national morale.’

‘Sure,’ Muldoon said. ‘And Apollo is going to end up having cost as much as it takes to keep the war going for another twelve months. What a price to pay.’

Agronski ignored that. ‘The budget just isn’t big enough to do everything you want. You don’t have to be a White House insider to see that. And the public mood is against you too. I don’t suppose you fly boys have heard of a thing called Earth Day, planned by the environmentalists in a couple of weeks’ time –’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of it, damn it.’

‘Clean-ups. Marches. Teach-ins. That’s where the public is going to focus in the coming decade, Colonel Muldoon: on our problems here on Earth, not more of your stunts in space.’

‘Maybe so. But Agnew chaired the Space Task Group, not NASA,’ Michaels growled.

Agronski ploughed on. ‘it’s time you people dropped the idea that you’re some kind of heroic super-agency. During Apollo you thought you were the Manhattan Project. Well, now you’re a service agency with a limited budget. And that’s what you have to learn to live with …’

Michaels knew Agronski had a point.

In Michaels’s humble opinion, the current NASA Administrator, Thomas O. Paine, was an idiot: a naive dreamer who was pumping Agnew full of grandiose visions, without a thought about how acceptable they would be to the decision makers inside the White House. Paine was a real contrast to his predecessor, Jim Webb, whom Michaels had greatly admired. Webb was a real political operator – he had known where the bodies were buried, up on the Hill – and he had actively avoided long-term planning. NASA was bad at it anyhow – long-range plans always got bogged down in infighting between the centers – and Webb believed that long-term plans were just hostages to fortune, a distraction for budget authorizers and NASA managers.

Paine couldn’t seem to see that the real problem right now lay in holding NASA together, in the tough times to come, not starting up new programs.

It just wasn’t the way Michaels would run things.

Agronski said, ‘Fred, forget your huge space stations, your fifty men on the Moon in 1980. The President wants what he’s calling, in private, a “Kennedy option.”’ He tapped the document again.

‘In this statement he was going to pick out one element from the Task Group’s report, the Space Shuttle, on which to focus. But what if he were to choose something else – a more visible, major goal – to achieve as quickly and as cheaply as possible?’

Muldoon was staring at Agronski, evidently baffled.

But Michaels understood. He’s speaking obliquely. In code. He has to. But Kennedy is evidently making his point. Nixon wants to save money. But he doesn’t want to be the President who killed the space program, not with Kennedy bleating in the background.

‘You’re thinking about Mars,’ he said to Agronski. ‘After all that bullshit about the Manhattan Project and Earth Day, you’re here to talk about going to Mars. Aren’t you?’

Muldoon looked startled.

‘What does Paine say about this?’

Agronski looked at him carefully. ‘Let’s think about Doctor Paine later,’ he said.

I knew it. They’re forcing Paine out. He’d heard the rumors from within the White House. Not only was Paine not cooperating, he was being seen as undermining the President. We need an new Administrator who will work with us and not against us, and will reflect credit on the President, not embarrass him … Paine was a dead duck. And now – from the way Agronski was studying him – Michaels understood that he, Fred Michaels, was being offered the chance to succeed, in preference to George Low, Jim Fletcher.

Mars, and the post of Administrator, all in one day. Games within games. But I’ll have to give Agronski something to take home with him, the bones of a cheap Mars option. And there is sure as hell going to be a price to pay, and I need to find out what it is.

The talk was affecting the astronaut differently. There was a look of hope on Muldoon’s face, Michaels recognized; a delicate, fragile hope, as if Muldoon thought this magical possibility – we might go to Mars – might melt away if he longed for it too warmly.

He wondered how much, if anything, Muldoon was aware of what was really going on here, under the surface. Looking at Muldoon’s angry, open face, Michaels felt vaguely ashamed of his calculation. In fact, Muldoon’s presence seemed to be working on him the way he’d hoped it would work on Agronski.

Joe Muldoon felt scared to say anything, to disturb this difficult, mysterious process of negotiation. In case he made it all somehow go away.

Mars. They’re still talking about Mars. If Fred Michaels says and does the right things now, the road to Mars might actually be opening up, for us.

For me.

And Joe Muldoon would have something to do with his life again.

The months since his return from the Moon had been as bad as Muldoon had expected.

His most recent PR jaunt had been to some place called Morang, in Nepal. He’d given his standard-issue schoolkids’ talk. When I was on the Moon …

‘When I was on the Moon, I couldn’t see Earth so well. Tranquillity Base was close to the Moon’s equator, and right at the center of the face of the Moon as you look at it. So Earth was directly above my head, and it was difficult to tip back in my spacesuit to see it.

‘The sunlight was very bright, and, under a black sky, the ground was a kind of gentle brown. It looked like a beach, actually. I remember looking at Neil bounding around up there, and I thought he looked like a beach ball, human-shaped, bouncing across the sand. But the colors of the Moon aren’t strong, and the most colorful thing there was the Eagle, which looked like a small, fragile house, done out in brilliant black, silver, orange and yellow …’

His attention had kept drifting from his words, to the hiss of warm rain on the school’s wooden roof, the coin-like faces of the children sitting cross-legged on the floor before him, the teacher’s odd, suspicious frown.

Once, his brief couple of hours’ walking on the Moon were the most vivid thing in his mind, colorful as an Eagle on the flat, tan expanse of his memory. But in the endless goodwill tours which had followed the splashdown, he’d given all his little speeches so often, already, that he felt the phrases, the underlying memories, had gotten polished smooth, like pebbles. Eventually the tale would be rendered trivial by the retelling.

Hell, but I’m a long way from the Moon now. And with all these damn cuts I’m never going back. All I can do is talk about it. Damn, damn.

When he’d done, the Nepalese schoolkids had started to ask questions. The questions seemed strange to Muldoon.

‘Who did you see?’

‘Where?’

‘On the Moon. Who did you see?’

‘Nobody. There’s no one there.’

‘But what did you see?’

Muldoon started to understand, he thought. Maybe his American-flavored images of beach balls and sand were too foreign for these kids, their level of education not what he’d been prepared for. He needed to be more basic. ‘There’s nothing there. No people, no plants or trees, no animals. Not even air, no wind. Nothing.’

The children looked at each other, apparently confused.

The rest of the talk, the questions, rambled into nothing.

At the prompting of the teacher – a slim girl – there was some polite applause for him, and he gave out little American flags and copies of the mission patch.

As he left the little school house, he heard the teacher say, ‘Now, you mustn’t listen to him. He’s wrong …’

Back in his hotel room, he’d started working his way through the mini bar.

It turned out that the Nepalese believed that when you died, you went to the Moon. Those kids had thought the spirits of their ancestors, their grandparents, lived up on the Moon, and Muldoon should have seen them when he was there. He’d been telling them there was no heaven. No wonder they had been confused.