“Cut it, JK.”

“Who’s going to replace me? Bob Rowen? Jack Morgan, maybe? Or -

“No. Nobody internal. JK, I’ve decided we need a heavyweight program manager to follow you. A top guy, to step into your shoes—”

“Who? Who are you giving my job to?”

Cane looked away. “Gene Tyson.”

Lee stared at him, then laughed out loud. Tyson: the slick, fat veep from Hughes who had laughed Lee out of his office during the MEM bid. “Gene Tyson. Are you kidding me?”

“Gene’s a fine engineer, and a good man.”

“Sure, Art. But he’s no -

Cane looked at him. “No what? No JK Lee?”

“That’s right, damn you. Anyhow, it wouldn’t work. My people wouldn’t work with him. They wouldn’t—” Betray me.

Cane coughed and avoided his eyes again. “Tyson has already agreed to take the job. And I’ve spoken to your people.”

“I… you’re kidding me.”

“Morgan and Xu and Lye and Rowen and -

“And they agreed to go along with this?”

Cane shrugged. “I wouldn’t say they were happy about it. But—”

But they accepted it. And the sons of bitches never said a word to me.

“Listen to me, Art. Don’t do this. We’ve got a fine ship there. And a fine manufacturing process. All we have to do is fine-tune a few items, and we can keep right on course, keep on doing what we’re doing, all the way to Mars. Nothing needs fixing, Art. I really believe that.”

“I know you do,” Cane said. His voice was harder, colder. “The trouble is, JK, there aren’t many people left who agree with you.”

Lee flew home, and told Jennine what had happened. He felt a stab of anger, of resentment. “I suppose you’re glad. I suppose you think this is good news.”

Her tired, slack face showed no irritation. “Oh, JK.” She came across to him and held him.

After a while, he felt some of the tension leaking out of him, and he lifted his arms to encircle her.

The next day he went in to the plant. He drove his black T-bird into its usual parking slot, as if nothing had happened.

At her desk, Bella was in tears. He just squeezed her shoulder; he didn’t trust himself to say anything.

Inside the office they were waiting for him, lined up in front of his old gunmetal desk: Morgan, Xu, Lye, Rowen. Their faces were long, and not a damn one of them could meet his eye.

A smell of sweet-sickly cologne, of stale tobacco, wafted around Lee’s office.

There — standing behind Lee’s gunmetal desk — was Gene Tyson.

Lee went straight to Tyson and shook his hand. “Congratulations, Gene. Art is showing a lot of faith in you. You’ve got a hell of a job, but you’ve got the best people in the industry here, and I know you’re going to pull it off.”

Tyson gripped his hand. “I’ve got one big act to follow.” He sounded sincere, his big fleshy face solemn. “I’m going to need your support during the handover, obviously. JK—” He glanced around the office. “You don’t need to move out of here. It’s not necessary. I mean—”

“No.” Lee released Tyson’s hand; his own fingers felt moist from the perspiration of Tyson’s soft flesh. “No, that’s okay, Gene. Just give me a day to get out.”

“Of course.”

Then, graciously enough, Tyson left the office.

When Tyson had gone the room felt empty, purposeless.

“Damn it, JK,” Bob Rowen said suddenly, and his big round moon of a face, under its grizzle gray crew cut, looked alarmingly as if it might crumple up into tears. “I didn’t want it this way. You know that. The MEM is your ship.”

Lee took his shoulders and shook him gently. “Well, now you’ve got the ball coming out of the sky at you, boy,” he said softly. “And there isn’t a pair of hands anywhere in the industry I’d rather see under it.”

“We go back a long way, JK. All the way back to the old B-70.”

“Christ, it’s not as if I’m going to Mars myself. I’ll even be on-site here, most days.” It was true; Cane had offered him a staff job, a way to keep his rank of vice president. “Anytime you need me, you know you’ve only got to pick up the phone.”

At that, Rowen’s face did crumple. “I know, JK. Oh, Jesus.”

Lee felt as if he might fold up, too. Destructive testing, again.

He stepped back and clapped his hands. The sound was loud, startling, and they all looked at him.

“Come on, guys. You’ve all got work to do. Let’s get on with it.”

His people made attempts at good-byes, at more eulogies.

He chased them out of his office.

When they’d gone he stood there for a while, looking at his big metal desk. It looked like a piece of a wrecked battleship, stranded in the middle of a sea of blue-gray corporate-colors carpet.

Suddenly he couldn’t stand it anymore.

He went out, closing the door behind him. He asked Bella, who was sobbing openly, to pack up his effects and send them on.

Outside, Jack Morgan was waiting. “Come on,” Morgan said. “I could use a day off. Let’s get down to the Balboa Bay and drown in Lemon Hart.”

It sounded like a hell of a good idea to Lee. But, there in the middle of the parking lot, something slowed him, snagging at him like a trapped thread.

“No,” he said. “Thanks, Jack, but no.”

“Huh?” There was the concern of a doctor mixed in with Morgan’s surprise.

Lee grinned. “I’m fine. It’s just that—”

Morgan clapped his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Next time, huh.”

“Sure.”

Lee walked to his T-bird. He guessed Morgan understood.

It’s just that today, I think I should go on home to Jennine.

Bleeker, in blue coveralls, sat in a small padded chair, opposite Muldoon’s desk. Bleeker’s eyes were large and pale, and had always seemed somehow calm to Muldoon. Like windows to a church. But then little creases bunched up around those eyes, and the color drained out of Bleeker’s face.

When Bleeker spoke his voice had tightened up, but it was under control. “So tell me, Joe. I did something wrong?”

“No. No, of course not. You know that.” Muldoon tapped the fat brown card folder on his desk. “It’s just surgeon shit… Listen. You want a drink?” He opened the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. “I have a bottle of sour mash down here, and—”

“No, thanks, Joe. Just tell me, will you?”

Muldoon opened the folder on his desk. It was the preliminary surgeon’s report from Bleeker’s D-prime mission postflight checkup. He started leafing through it, through the metabolism graphs and radiation dosimetry charts and countersigned forms and all the rest, wondering where to begin. “Hell, Adam. You know how it is with surgeons. You only walk out of their office two ways: fine, or—”

“Or grounded. And I’m grounded. Is that what you’re going to tell me, Joe?”

Impatient, Muldoon banged the folder closed with the palm of his hand. “Adam, you’ve spent a hell of a lot of man-hours in space, in Skylab, Moonlab, and now D-prime—”

Bleeker ducked his head.

“In fact, that’s one of your main qualifications to be on Ares. Right? We know you can cope with long-duration missions, because you’ve done it already. And now you’ve got experience with the MEM, the new technology… But you know that space exposure gets to you in the end.”

“So what’s the problem? Muscle wastage?” For the first time Bleeker looked vaguely alarmed. “Is it my heart?”

“No,” said Muldoon quickly. “As far as I can tell from this crap, your heart is fine. Adam, you’ve always been outstanding in adhering to your exercise regimes. Your muscle decline has been small, every trip, and you’ve recovered quickly.”

“What then? Calcium loss?”

“Not that. Adam — it’s radiation exposure.”

“I’m within the limits,” Bleeker said quickly.

Muldoon tried to suppress a sigh. “Yes, but they changed the rules on you, pal. To be fair to the surgeons, they keep on learning; they still don’t know much about the effects of long-term low-level radiation exposure, and they keep on coming up with new ways for you to get hurt… Listen: what do you know about free radicals?”