“My God,” said Fahy. “Such as?”

“Such as the Han Chinese. Miss Fahy, with such a weapon — delivered by some small-scale missile launcher, which is where we need NASA technicians — we could lop off the head of the Red Chinese flower. Or threaten to, which is equivalent.”

“You’re crazy,” Fahy breathed.

Hadamard said, “Now, Barbara—” He steepled his hands. “Al, I think we’ve gone far enough. NASA is still a civilian agency. Dedicated to the exploration of space and the dissemination of information to the public, and the world. And so forth. You cannot expect us to contribute to any such program as this…”

Hadamard, even to Fahy, sounded weak, unconvinced by his own words.

“He’s right. You can’t tell us what to do,” she said to Hartle. “No matter what Maclachlan says. Your authority has limits.”

Hartle seemed unfazed. “Jake, excuse me. Have you told her?”

Fahy frowned. “Told me what?”

Hartle said, “As of seventeen days hence, I will be Administrator of NASA. Changing times, Miss Fahy.”

Hadamard looked across at Fahy and shrugged. “It took fifty years, but in the end the Air Force won. I’m sorry, Barbara.”

Hartle grinned at Fahy, and she could see antique fillings in his teeth. “Let me tell you what my first orders are going to be, just so you can start to prepare, Miss Fahy. NASA has been a sink of national resources for decades; now we’re approaching a time of unparalleled crisis, and that is going to stop.”

Hadamard said, “Meaning?”

“Meaning, no more of this science crap. Item. The Deep Space Network can go. Item. All those science satellites, the observatories—”

“Some of them have been up there for decades,” Fahy said. The Hubble space telescope is the most successful—”

“If there are decades’ worth of data in the can,” Hartle said, “there shouldn’t be too much objection when I turn off the tap, should there?”

“It doesn’t work like that, Al,” Hadamard said mildly.

“What doesn’t? Science? Fuck the science, Jake. I guess you hadn’t noticed, here in this ivory tower of yours, but science isn’t exactly the top priority of this Administration. Six months from now, the only U.S. satellites I want operating up there are those with military or commercial potential — comsats, Earth resources, reconnaissance. Item. The Delta IV boosters currently assigned to these asshole deep space resupply missions will be switched to military missions, which was the primary function of the Delta IV program in the first goddamn place. Miss Fahy. You got a problem with any of that?”

“Yes,” she said, flaring. “Yes, I have a problem. Damn it, General—”

“Nobody forced that fucking crew of yours, that bunch of dykes and ecologists and has-been pilots up into space,” Hartle said. “Did they? They knew the risks when they accepted the assignment.”

“They didn’t accept the risk of being shot down.”

Hadamard said wearily, “Barbara…”

Hartle studied her, as if pitying her. “You know, I truly believe you haven’t taken in a word that’s been said this morning, Miss Fahy. Let me spell it out again. The time for your Buck Rogers space cadet stunts is over. The loss of your crew — if that happens — is regrettable. But it was their choice. We’ve been pouring billions every year into this fucking circus stunt. Well, Miss Fahy, I now have a clear mandate from the President to put a stop to that. And it’s the first thing I intend to do.”

“Let us keep a dish,” Hadamard said suddenly.

Hartle looked at him. “Huh?”

“A deep space dish. Let us keep Goldstone open, at least. That way, at least maybe we’ll be able to listen to Discovery. Better PR, Al.”

Hartle’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell,” he said. “Keep the fucking dish; what can that cost?”

Hadamard nodded, avoiding Fahy’s eyes.

He’d won a small victory, Fahy saw, extracting such a relatively inexpensive concession in this, Hartle’s moment of triumph. Maybe this was his main objective for the meeting, in fact. Maybe he brought me in here as a kind of diversion, to soak up Hartle’s fire.

I should be so political, she thought.

But I’m not.

She asked, “Who is going to tell the astronauts? You, General? The President? Who will tell their families?”

Hartle grinned easily and stood up. “I’ll leave that to old Jake here; he’s still the man holding the ball until next month. And you, Miss Fahy, will start working on delivery systems for those biobomb options we outlined.”

“I quit,” she said impulsively. “You’ll have my resignation on your desk the day you walk in here.”

He walked over to her; he stood before her threateningly, a squat pillar of silver hair and grizzled skin and tough, aged muscle. “And you’ll have it back up your ass, corners first, a day after that. This is a time of national crisis, Miss Fahy; quitting is not an option. For any of us.”

He turned and left. Deeke rolled up his softscreen, nodded to Hadamard, and followed.

Hadamard, staring at the floor, seemed to have nothing to say. Framed in the window behind him, a slab of orange Washington sky was brightening to a washed-out glare.

Day 680

On Discovery’s flight deck, Benacerraf sat strapped into the left-hand commander’s seat. She was wearing her usual grubby Beta-cloth T-shirt and shorts. The flight deck was homely, like a little den, glowing with the fluorescent glareshield lights, and the multicolored light of the instruments panels. Benacerraf always felt comfortable in here: at home, in the environment in which she’d spent so many hours training and flying. Anyhow, the flight deck, with its big windows, made a pleasing change from the shut-in squalor that the hab module had become, and the stinking cabin of the centrifuge.

Especially today, she thought. Because today, for the first time in nearly two years, Earthlight was streaming into Discovery.

Thirty minutes from closest approach, Earth was a fat ball that looked the size of a dinner-plate held at arm’s length.

From Benacerraf’s point of view, behind the big picture windows on Discovery’s flight deck, the planet was a gibbous disc, close to full, suspended over the roof of the cabin. The orbiter would fly past Earth with her belly away from the planet, and her pay-load bay turned to Earth, to give the instruments there a good vantage.

Discovery was barrelling in at around twelve miles per second — fast enough to cross the continental United States in five minutes, fast enough to traverse the diameter of Earth itself in eleven minutes.

The hemisphere turned to the sun was coated with land: it was noon somewhere over central Asia, and much of the Pacific must be in darkness. She could see the mountain-fringed plateaux broadening out from Turkey, through Iran and Afghanistan, to the great Tibetan plateau. The plateau was cut off from the rest of India by the still higher Himalayas. To the south and east of this plateau were the great river valleys of Asia, crammed with humanity. Masses of stratus clouds were piled up behind the mountains; she could see how the mountains, protruding through the vapor layer, were causing disturbances in the clouds, like waves, along a front a thousand miles long.

Benacerraf — parochial to the last — felt a stab of regret she wasn’t going to get to see more of the continental U.S.

There were few signs of human life, even from here.

She knew that the old Apollo astronauts had been struck by the beauty and fragility of Earth from space. It hadn’t hit Benacerraf like that at all. At first glance Earth was a world of ocean, desert and a little ice, half-covered by cloud. The areas colonized by humans seemed tiny, dwarfed, little rectangles of cultivated ground clinging to the coasts, or the banks of rivers, or timidly at the feet of mountains. Almost all of the Earth was empty, too hostile for man; humans clung in little clusters to the fringes of continents, like some feeble lichen.