This jock banter crap just wasn’t appropriate anymore, Dana thought. Maybe it never had been.

The craft fell into lunar shadow and entered total darkness: no sunlight, no Earthlight touched the hidden landscape rushing below.

The radio remained silent.

We’re alone, the three of us All of humanity, imprisoned on the Earth, is hidden by the bulk of the Moon.

Dana felt a sudden surge of conviction. However it was arrived at, we made the right decision, to continue the space program How could we have turned our backs on adventures like this? We have to keep on going out. Experiences like this will change us We’ll become something more something beyond the human.

The broken, complex lands scrolled beneath his window.

“Okay, you assholes, enough rubbernecking,” Jones said. “Let’s get in shape for this fucking burn.”

Enterprise sailed around the limb of the Moon.

Wednesday, May 25, 1977

NASA HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, DC

Mike Conlig hated Washington. As soon as he got off the plane the steamy, oppressive heat closed in around him, and he felt a kind of psychic pressure from all the people crowded into this shabby corner of the Earth.

Now, along with Hans Udet and Bert Seger, he sat in Tim Josephson’s immense, plush office. Conlig felt awkward, out of place, lost in the huge room, in the great, soft armchair. And he wasn’t so keen on wearing a suit either; the knot of his tie seemed to be compressing his throat.

Tim Josephson came bustling into the room, a file under his arm. He slid behind his modest, polished desk. “I’ll come straight to the point,” Josephson said. “I’ve read your status reports. You know the question you have to answer here today. NERVA is a hell of a long way behind schedule. The Critical Design Review is scheduled in three months. And from what I hear you’re not going to be ready.”

Seger shrugged. “You won’t hear any argument about that, Tim.”

Josephson steepled his fingers. “All right. We’re under a lot of pressure on this; we’re having to defend your work against attack in Congress and elsewhere. People are saying that we’ve put our shirts on the wrong horse here. Nuke rockets are a new development; maybe we should be following an incremental process of change, by enhancing our chemical technology. And on top of that you have the nuclear safety lobby, who say we shouldn’t be throwing up tons of radioactive fuel on top of Saturn rockets.” He looked at them, one by one. “I suppose you have read about the Seabrook protest, up in New Hampshire: two thousand people demonstrating, trying to stop the construction of the fission plant there. By using nuclear technology we’re swimming against the tide, gentlemen.