It was what intrigued her about Mars, she’d decided, the mix of exposed, lunar terrain and Earthlike weathering, a combination that made up an extraordinary world: neither Earthlike nor lunar, but uniquely Martian.

But it had nothing to do with her.

The work she was doing, she’d long realized, was building up into a solid, if unspectacular career. She was becoming just another rock hound: her future was probably in commercial geology, and would be spent in messy oil fields, or mines. She could expect a life of heat, cold, rattlesnakes, cow pies, poison oak…

The prospect left her poleaxed with boredom.

She never got to see Mike. She wasn’t interested in her work. And, meanwhile, she spent her spare time imagining geologic traverses across the ancient, battered surface of Mars.

What it amounted to, she told herself with brutal frankness, was that her personal life had been on hold for, hell, years. Just like her professional life.

She felt a germ of a new resolution somewhere inside her, like a dust mote around which a new future might crystallize.

I have to get closer to this Mars stuff. And not for Mike, not even for Ben Priest. For me.

There might be a way. Maybe she could transfer into the Space Sciences Laboratory, right there at Berkeley, that big white building on top of Grizzly Peak.

She got out of bed, dug out her loose-leaf folder of Mars photos, and began to study the eroded craters again.

Thursday, June 7, 1973

LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON (FORMERLY MANNED SPACECRAFT CENTER)

Phil Stone was the first to understand Seger’s suggestion.

“My God,” he said. “You’re going to send us to the Moon. Aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s right. That’s what I’m considering. I want to reassign your mission a Saturn V and send you to lunar orbit.”

Chuck Jones stared at Seger, astonishment crinkling up his squat face. “Like hell you will.”

For long seconds, the three of them sat in silence.

Stone felt stunned; there in that sterile, mundane office, on an ordinary Thursday morning, it was impossible to absorb such news.

Skylab B, the second Earth-orbital Saturn Wet Workshop, was to have been Stone’s first flight into space. He’d already been training on the science and operational aspects of the mission for months. And Seger was thinking of changing it all around and sending him to the Moon? Jesus.

Seger played with the carnation in his lapel. “You got to look at the bigger picture. The NERVA is slipping again, so its program of test flights is being cut. And that’s freed up a Saturn V. And we need to use it, or we’ll lose it. And I want to use it to send you boys to lunar orbit.”

Stone frowned. “It’s a man-rated Saturn V, for God’s sake. It’s already built. How can we lose it?”