“Christ. What a mess.”

York studied his profile; picked out by the powerful floods, Bleeker’s skin looked thin, almost translucent. She found it hard to read Bleeker’s own reaction to all this. Was he impatient at the restrictive rules, the need for safety? Did he have any qualms about handling lethal substances in such an unstable, unproven rig? She couldn’t tell. Just as when she’d first met him, Bleeker struck her as utterly calm, cool. Or, perhaps, completely without a soul.

“You’re all under a lot of pressure,” she said. “I know a lot of questions are being asked about the ability of NASA to deliver NERVA 2.”

“By who?”

She shrugged. “The press. Congress.”

“Yeah,” he said evenly, showing no resentment. “Well, hell, maybe there are questions to ask. You know, the program’s led by the Germans, from Huntsville. And they didn’t pick the design goal — which is two hundred thousand pounds of thrust for thirty minutes — because they knew they could build it; they chose the goal because that’s what we need for the Mars mission profile. They didn’t go through a lot of analysis to try to figure it out; they just started building toward it. It’s the way they’ve always worked. And it’s kind of hard to argue against their kind of record. But…”

“But you’re not so sure.”

He hesitated. “The truth is, the development schedule we’re working to was modeled on experience of chemical technology. Nuke stuff is different. I think they’re only just figuring out how different. And that’s even after we’ve eliminated a lot of nice-to-haves, like a deep throttling capability… I think maybe we’ve underestimated the schedule, here. We’re pushing too hard.”

Now a crew, in white protective gear, was moving into the cordoned-off zone, converging on the NERVA. York wondered vaguely if one of them was Mike. There was no way of knowing.

She stared at the inert NERVA 2, resentful. Thanks to that broken-down thing, I’m not going to see a trace of Mike for weeks now.

Bleeker had to leave her, to get on with his own work.

She watched the slow, painstaking demolition job for a few minutes, then she went back to the car and managed to fall asleep in the passenger seat.

When she awoke, the sun was well above the horizon, and the car was stuffy and hot. There was no sign of Mike. She found a bathroom, and left a note for Mike.

She drove herself back to L.A. Mission Elapsed Time [Day/Hr:Min:Sec] Plus 004/21:38:11

Daily execute packages were uploaded from Mission Control overnight as twenty feet of teleprinter output. The packages contained suggested time lines, and a few personal messages. York split up her portion of the list and put it into her ring binder, throwing away yesterday’s draft, and began to figure out how to follow the day through.

She looked down the list, searching first for time-critical items. Then she looked for stuff that would need advance setup and preparation, and items that weren’t solo, where she’d have to work with the others.