Donnelly, if he had to lose the crew, would prefer an undershoot, a burn-up. If the Command Module skipped off the atmosphere and was left in orbit, circling for months or years up there with a cargo of three radioactive corpses, the space program would be dead.

He took another poll of his controllers. None of them had any data to feed him on the trajectory. And besides, the telemetry was starting to get uncertain, as ionization built up around the Command Module.

It’s a gamble. I just have to leave it to Retro. Does he change his figures, or not?

Then Retro spoke again. “The rate of shallowing is slowing, Flight.”

“I need that pre-advisory data, Retro.”

“Yeah.” Again Donnelly could hear the tension in Retro’s voice. That controller was a very young man approaching the key moment in his life, a decision which would live with him forever.

Donnelly breathed a silent prayer; the only thing he couldn’t accept at that moment was indecision, freezing. Like that fucking asshole, Conlig.

“We’re still shallowing. I’ll stick with the pre-advisory data figures.”

“Say again, Retro.”

“I’ll stick with the original pre-advisory data. If the shallowing continues, we won’t tip up by more than another tenth of a degree.”

Suddenly Donnelly became aware that he’d been holding his breath; he let it out in one huge explosion of stale air. “Rog, Retro.”

There was a haze beyond his window, a soft, pink glow, like a sunrise. At first he thought it might be something to do with the thrusters. But then he realized the glow was ionized gas, atoms from the top layer of Earth’s atmosphere, broken apart by their impact with Apollo-N’s heat shield.

There was a soft pressure over his lower body — subtle, but enough to make his pain blaze anew. He thought he cried out. The cabin vibrated. Earth’s atmosphere was snatching at the Command Module, and Apollo-N was beginning to decelerate, hard.

Suddenly the pressure mounted, climbing fast, crushing him into the couch. He could feel his skin crumple and break open inside the pressure suit. He felt as if he was deliquescing, as if his body had no more substance than a piece of lousy fruit.

A cold white light flooded his window; misty, it glared into the cabin, drowning out the instrument lights.

The last moments before radio blackout seemed almost routine. As if this had been just another nominal mission, instead of the most dangerous and uncertain reentry since Apollo 13. The silence was broken only by occasional updates on the Command Module’s trajectory and attitude, and the disposition of the emergency recovery forces, and by the steady voice of capcom York as she tried to reach the crew.

You’d never know, Donnelly thought.

Then telemetry from Apollo-N was lost.

The MOCR fell silent. There was nothing to do but wait.