Gershon thought of Apollo technology the way, he supposed, other guys might think of classic cars. Like a Corvette, maybe. Apollo was a beautiful machine, and it worked, and it had achieved great things. And even after all those years it was still better than anything the Russians could put up…

And it seemed entirely appropriate to him that the first mission to Mars — for real — should be conducted not in some lost von Braun-type dream of the 1950s, but in a handful of strung-together Apollo-application cans.

Still, he knew that this voyage was a fulfillment of more dreams than just his own. As Ares followed its long, spiraling trajectory to Mars, he felt that it wasn’t alone: it was accompanied by a fleet of ghostly ships, huge silver forms, from the pages of Clarke and Heinlein and Asimov and Bradbury and Burroughs…

The Mozart floated around the cabin, and Gershon worked patiently through his checklist.

Book Three
APOLLO-N

Friday, November 28, 1980

APOLLO-N; LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON

Rolf Donnelly swung his car into his space outside Building 30, the Mission Control Center. He got out, whistling.

There was a new sign up, in a parking space close to the building: MCC M O EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH. Donnelly laughed. Welcome to government work! You’re in Mission Control, and your prize for a good job well-done is the loan of a parking space!

He took a breath of the muggy autumn air. It would be his last fresh air for a while; one of the few things he didn’t like about working in Building 30 was that it was completely enclosed. He walked slowly by the big air-conditioning grilles on the outside of the building; in the spring, birds nested in there, but he couldn’t see any activity.

Donnelly was still whistling as he turned into the building. He was a flight director, and he was going to be lead flight for the Apollo-N mission. And he loved his job.

The big display screens at the front of the room bore spectacular images from Kennedy, of climbing metal, billowing smoke, flames as bright as the sun.

The Saturn VN lifted smoothly off the pad.

A few seconds into the Apollo-N flight, the Mission Operations Control Room was an amphitheater of calm, of control, of patient work. From his position in the command and control row of the MOCR, third from the front, Donnelly could see everything: the rows of blocky benches, the workstations with their clumsy old CRTs and keyboards bolted into place, manned by the controllers that made up his flight team. Indigo Team. The workstations were littered with ring binders of mission rules, polystyrene coffee cups, yellow notepads.