“Not as much as a biconic, but you’d have some. Just like with Apollo. If you offset the center of gravity, you get a certain amount of control, with lift coming from the shape. And here’s the thing. The aerodynamics would be simple enough for you to fly the fucking thing down by hand if you had to, even if the electronics failed. You couldn’t do that with a biconic.”

“What about after the atmosphere entry? Parachutes?”

Lee thought about it. “Nope. Air’s too thin. You’d have to have some system of busting out of the heat shield and landing on a descent engine, like the Lunar Module. Like the Grumman bid, I guess. And then you’d have an ascent stage, the top half of the cone, to get you back to orbit. You’d leave behind the heavy heat shield, and all the surface gear.”

It all made sense to Gershon. It would be low cost, low development risk, low operational risk. It’s all I need, to land on Mars. And you could have the thing flying in a few years.

“JK, you ought to put in a bid. I’m serious.”

Lee just laughed.

He waved ahead, gesturing with his can. “Look out there.”

Gershon saw that the desert there was a flat, pale white crust in the starlight. Salt flats. And, on the horizon, a row of lights appeared out of nowhere, like a city in the desert.

“Edwards,” Lee said. “Where I came with Stormy Storms to watch the X-15 fly. Christ, they were the good days.” He took another pull of his beer, then threw the can out of the car.

Gershon handed him another can, and the T-bird sped on, as the giant hangars of the Air Force base loomed out of the darkness around them.

Monday, August 7, 1978

LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON

She was held up for an hour at Building 110, the security office of the JSC campus.

How are you supposed to present yourself, if you’re a rookie astronaut reporting for your first morning’s work? You have no identification badge on your shirt pocket, because on that first day, you have to enter the space center grounds to have the badge issued…

Strictly speaking, of course, York thought, it was an infinite regress, a paradox. It was logically impossible ever to enter JSC. She tried to explain it to the receptionist.

The receptionist, her broad, fleshy face a puddle of sweat, just looked at her and turned to deal with the press people queuing behind her. After a while York shut up and sat in the poky little building, trying to stop her hands folding over themselves.

Finally a secretary, tottering on heels, came out to collect her.