Donnelly had a pang of doubt, suddenly. Am I handling this the wrong way? The controllers were getting isolated from each other and from the real spacecraft up there; some of them were probably still convincing themselves that there was nothing worse going on than a booster shutdown and some funny instrumentation glitches.

But we already know that isn’t true. The crew heard a bang. And they can see gas venting.

He needed to start talking to his controllers again, to try to keep them thinking as a team.

“Okay,” he said, “I want to get everybody on the loop. Retro, Guidance, Control, Booster, GNC, EECOM, INCO, FAO. Give me an amber, please.”

An amber light on the Flight’s console indicated talk-and-listen; it meant that controller wanted attention. One by one, the lights turned from listen-only green to amber.

Except Booster.

“Goddamn it,” Donnelly snapped. “Booster, Flight. Give me an amber, please.”

“Acknowledge,” Mike Conlig said quickly. The last amber lit.

“All right, people, tell me where we stand. What’s your most urgent item? Who wants to start?”

“Flight, Guidance. That attitude drift—”

“Rog. Capcom, please inform the crew that it needs to maneuver out of a threat of gimbal lock.”

“Acknowledge,” said York.

Bert Seger came stalking down from Management Row, gaunt, intense, every gesture stiff with nervous energy. He stopped at Donnelly’s elbow. He plugged into a console and listened in to the controllers’ loops.

“Flight.” It was EECOM. “I think the best thing we can do right now is start a power-down. Maybe we can look at the telemetry and then come back up.”

That sounded damned optimistic to Donnelly. “Hold on that, EECOM.” He wanted to keep the Command Module’s systems powered up, so he had available the option of bringing the crew down quickly. “Okay, who’s next?”

That asshole at Booster, Mike Conlig, still wasn’t speaking to him.

“It’s the NERVA,” Seger said in his ear.

“Yes. I—”

“The fucking nuke has blown on us. And it looks like it’s disrupted the Service Module as well. That’s obvious even to me. Rolf, you’re moving too slowly. You have to get them away from that thing, and get them home.”

“But—”

“Do it, Rolf, or I’m going to override you.”

Donnelly closed his eyes, for one second. Jesus. There goes my career.

“Capcom, please relay new instructions to the crew.”

Apollo-N continued to pitch and yaw. Metal groaned, and Priest could feel the motion as a wrench at his stomach.

“We’ve got to ditch the NERVA,” Chuck Jones said. His voice was a rasp. “These rates are killing us. Do it, Jim.”

Dana didn’t respond.

Priest looked to his left.