“Out of detent.”

“Mode control both auto. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm off…”

They got through the T plus one checkpoint, their first stay/no-stay decision.

And then they had the ship buttoned up tight, and it looked like they could stay for a while.

Out of Gershon’s window there was a flat, close horizon. He could see dunes, and dust, and little rocks littering the surface. Nothing was moving, anywhere. Without buildings, or people or trees, it was hard to tell the scale of things. The sky was yellow-brown, the sun small and yellow and low. The light coming in the window was a mix of pink and brown, and he could see how it reflected off his visor, and off the flesh of his own cheeks.

Martian light, on his face.

He saw Stone grin, behind his faceplate. “Houston, this is Mangala Valles. Challenger has landed on Mars.” Gershon could hear the confident elation in his voice.

Gershon and Stone and York shook hands, and slapped each other on the back, and threw mock punches at each other’s helmets.

Gershon said, “Houston, can you pass on my regards to Columbia Aviation. This old Edsel has brought us down. JK, you are one steely-eyed missile man.”

He checked his station. He had fourteen seconds of landing fuel left. Well, the hell with it. Fourteen seconds is a long time. Armstrong himself only had about twenty seconds left, and nobody beefed about that.

Anyhow, it’s going to be a long time before anyone comes back, to better what I did today.

Thursday, March 21, 1985

PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE

Joe Muldoon squinted down as the plane from Houston came in on its approach to Patrick.

Although it was still hours to sunup, there was a steady stream of corporate planes descending on Patrick Air Force Base and Orlando Airport. And every road on the peninsula looked like a ribbon of light, locked up. He felt a knot of anxiety gather in his gut. Maybe he’d left it too late to get to the launch.

But he couldn’t have gotten away any earlier. He hadn’t had any sleep that night, and not much the night before. The logistics of the launch — the press stuff, and ensuring the NASA control centers were talking to each other, and handling a lot of last-minute crap to do with VIP passes and TV sites and such — all of it just went on and on, ballooning in complexity and detail.

Hell, was he going to have to listen to the launch on the radio of some hired car in bumper-to-bumper traffic?

The stewardess offered him a drink before landing. He refused, as he had before. Time enough for that later.

When the plane got into Patrick he hurried off. A young guy in a suit was waiting for him, holding up a hand-lettered card with his name on it.

“Mr. Muldoon?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m from KSC. We have a chopper waiting for you. This way, sir.”

“Thank Christ for that.”

Muldoon had a bag to collect from the plane. He hesitated for less than one second. To hell with it; he’d buy a clean shirt when he needed it.

He walked briskly across the tarmac with the aide. The young guy said, “We’re laying on copters to bring in key people who might get stuck in traffic.” He seemed rushed, almost awe-struck, just about in control. Muldoon guessed the poor guy had been doing this ferrying all night.

“That bad, huh?”

“Hell, yes, sir. All the roads into Merritt Island are jammed. It’s like a parking lot out there. I’ve never seen anything like it, sir.”

Muldoon eyed him in the gathering dawn light. The kid was not more than twenty-two. So, aged about six in 1969. He doesn’t remember. He really hadn’t seen anything like it before.

Muldoon felt old, trapped, gravity-bound. Just as he’d felt after the splashdown in ’69. His work on Ares was nearly done, and the depression he’d been fighting off for all these years, using that huge goal to distract himself, was seeping back.

His one landing was long ago, and he’d never walk across that snowlike surface again.

They walked more quickly, toward the waiting chopper.

MANNED SPACECRAFT OPERATIONS BUILDING, COCOA BEACH

There was a smart military knock on her door.

She rolled on her side and switched on her bedside light — 4:15 A.M.

“Wake-up call. The night’s been clear, and the weather’s expected to be good…”

“Thanks, Fred.”

Fred Haise was right on schedule. The first time recorded on the Ares checklist was 0415.

The clock starts ticking here. And it won’t stop for eighteen months.

She pushed back the covers and climbed out. She rearranged the sheets, smoothing them out. She wasn’t going to be back there for a while, and she didn’t want to leave behind a mess.

She switched on the TV. She found herself staring at a still of her own face, while a commentator talked about the launch-day crowds gathering around the Cape. She clicked the thing off.

She took her time over showering. She relished the sting of water against her skin, the way the lather ran away down her body to the drain. She turned the shower on cold and stood there shivering for long seconds, feeling the blood rise in her capillaries. Showering in microgravity wasn’t going to be so easy; she had the feeling that she wouldn’t feel so clean as this again until she got back to Earth.

She toweled herself dry, quickly. Her hair was cropped short and dried easily. She pulled on a sport shirt, slacks, and sneakers.

The sport shirt was plain blue except for a patch with the Ares mission logo. The logo was a disk circled by the name “Ares” and their three surnames. The circle contained a stylized, pencil-shaped Ares cluster blasting toward a red star; the ship’s exhaust billowed out to become the stars-and-striped wing of an American eagle, peering sternly at the departing spacecraft.

It was a clumsy, cluttered design, she’d thought from the beginning. But the NASA PAO people had thought it appropriately patriotic in tone, and Stone and Gershon hadn’t cared enough one way or the other, and that had been that. So the badge sat high over her right breast, glaring out, gaudy and embarrassing.

When she left her room, she found Gershon and Stone waiting in the corridor. They were leaning against the wall, arms folded in almost identical poses, talking quietly. They grinned at her.

She walked up to them. Then, spontaneously, she reached out her hands to the two of them. Stone and Gershon each took a hand, and then, to her surprise, they clasped hands as well. For a few seconds the three of them stood there, joined in a circle, in the middle of the carpeted corridor, grinning at each other.

MERRITT ISLAND

Bert Seger had thought that his two mule-drawn wagons would clog up the traffic. But all four lanes of U.S. 1 had been at a dead standstill anyhow. Even off the freeways the traffic was moving slower than the pace of the mules, and the problem was going to be that the animals might grow impatient at the slow pace of the cars.

Already he had seen people giving up on getting closer to the launch, climbing on top of their cars and setting up tripods.

A row of black faces peered out of each of his wagons, at the staggering stream of traffic. Seger had brought a dozen of the poorest families from Washington to the launch, all members of the congregation of the little church he’d founded in Washington.

Now, though, he wasn’t so sure how effective his gesture was going to be.

Every gas station and coffee shop along the road — all of them open all night — was full of humanity, teenagers and Marines and factory workers and middle-aged couples and kids running around. It was a real cross section of America. The Mars shot, he’d calculated, had cost every man, woman, and child in the country around fifty dollars apiece, and it looked as if a good sample of them had gone out there today to check on that investment, dumping themselves onto this flat, primitive landscape.