Now, as the S-NB rolled, Priest could see through the base of the ripped-open tank, all the way through to the NERVA reactor itself. And in there, he saw a point of light, white-hot. That’s the goddamn core. The reactor’s blown itself apart, and exposed the core. There was no sign of the biological shield, which must have been blown away. Perhaps that was what they had seen, in red-hot fragments, fountaining past the Command Module’s windows.

As he stared into the wreckage he thought he could actually feel heat on his face: heat radiating from the core itself, as if it were a tiny, captive sun.

He glanced at the radiation dosimeter number on his DSKY. Thirty thousand roentgens an hour were spewing out of the core, and through the spacecraft, in an invisible hail of gamma and neutron radiation.

Thirty thousand. It was a hard number to believe. The safe limit, according to the mission rules, was one-thousandth of a roentgen per day.

“I guess we’re kind of privileged,” Priest said. “Nobody in the history of mankind has ever gotten up so close to an exposed nuclear reaction before. The victims of the Jap bombings were killed by heat and the shock wave rather than by radiation…”

Jones cackled, and he closed his eyes. “Another first for the space program. Oh, thank you, Lord.”

Wednesday, December 3, 1980

TIMBER COVE, EL LAGO, HOUSTON

Gregory Dana found it a scramble to get out of JSC. Dozens of TV, radio, and print reporters were turning up at the security blockhouse, requesting clearance and asking for access to whatever briefings NASA was planning. The parking lot opposite Building 2, the Public Affairs Office, was one of the busiest on the campus.

It was pitch-dark by the time Dana arrived at the ranch house in Lazywood Lane.

Jim and Mary lived in a pretty place. Timber Cove was a development that had sprung up in the 1960s, a couple of miles from JSC. Around the tidy, manicured streets the ranch houses were sprinkled in the greenery like huge wooden toys, individually styled, encrusted with stone cladding. The grass was rich and cool-damp, and the cultivated pine trees on the lawns were a dark green, almost black in the low lamplight.

The area was soaked with NASA connections. Once, Jim liked to boast, no less than Jim Lovell had lived next door, with his family. On happier days, Dana had come to throw baseballs with Jake, and to make paper airplanes for little Mary, and to argue the politics and engineering of spaceflight with his son…

For a few minutes Dana sat in the car. He felt as if the strength had been drawn out of him. He rolled down the window and let the cooler air waft over his face.

He could hear water lapping at the back of the house, the clink of the chain that tied up Jim’s little dinghy.