The comforting myth of American can-do, Henry thought: the idea that we can do something, President and military and nuclear fleets and spaceships, act to save ourselves just like in the past. Maybe it was all a delusion, wish fulfilment. But when it was harnessed behind a coherent project, the can-do myth was powerful indeed.

And the approval ratings it was giving the President didn’t hurt either.

So NASA had been given the funds and go-ahead to assemble the mission. But the decision was being made in stages; the approval to launch was still being withheld. It seemed to Henry that there was still a component of the public’s thinking — and hence of the Administration’s — that wished for this problem to go away. More rationally, the President was being urged to wait until the results of attempts to disrupt the Moonseed — with conventional bombs, nukes and other methods — were known. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to risk the lives of astronauts in this jaunt to the Moon.

So the Prez was hanging fire, waiting for the news to get worse, as it surely would.

…Here was Henry, delivered to the heart of the Astronaut Office. It was just a plain-looking briefing room filled with hard-backed chairs. It could have been a briefing hall in any large corporate or government building, he thought, anywhere in the country. All there was to betray its true nature were the rows of Shuttle mission plaques on the walls, nearly a hundred of them dating back to 1981, the bold, patriotic designs and rings of crew names commemorating forgotten missions, strangely old-fashioned.

Henry had never been here before, inside the lair of the hero jock pilots; his interest had always been solely in unmanned space exploration, and he would never have come to Houston, centre of the manned effort, at all, if not for the location of the extraterrestrial samples facility here.

And here, waiting for him in a grubby blue Shuttle astronaut’s coverall, was Geena, his ex-wife, with others he didn’t know. Geena had a look he’d come to recognize. I really, really don’t want to be here, with you, Henry…

“Henry,” she said, “we’re going on a little trip together.”

He frowned. “The Cape?”

“Further than that,” she said sourly.

And then he saw it, and his heart sank. “The Moon. You’re going to the Moon, with me.”

“No,” she snapped. “You’re going with me. I’m the fucking mission commander.” She eyed him. “It isn’t my fault. Thanks to you I’ve been involved in this from the start. Championing it. Who else would they pick?”

“Not the kind of scenario you generally have to think about in marriage guidance counselling sessions, huh.”

“Just as well we didn’t have any,” she said heavily. “As long as we’re both professional about this we’ll get through it.”

“Maybe.” He grinned. “It sure does appeal to my sense of irony.”

“Henry—”