They chewed it over for hours. Sometimes it bothered Seger that his personal position was so different from that of Michaels and Josephson. He had to take care not to get himself isolated. But, since the first shock of the accident had passed, he felt confident once more, in command; the accident was a finite thing, within the ability of human beings to comprehend and resolve, and they shouldn’t let this tragedy get in the way of their greater ambitions.

He tried to catnap in his office, but he couldn’t sleep.

By seven each morning he would be back in “O,” or on the phone to the people at the Cape and Houston and Marshall who were working around the clock on the various facets of the investigation.

At the end of the first week he flew out to Houston and spent the evening with his family. And then the next day he drove with Fay around Timber Cove and El Lago, visiting the wives and families of Jones, Priest, and Dana.

Then it was back to the Cape on Sunday, where he threw himself into the investigation once more.

He was working with an intensity that eclipsed any effort he had made in his life. It was the only way he knew to deal with the way he felt about the incident: to burn it out of his system with work, to make damn sure nothing like this happened again. And he spent a lot of his spare time in church, alone, praying and contemplating. Coming to terms with it all.

In a way he was enjoying it. As he came to grips with the issues he felt suffused with strength, courage, certainty. He prayed every day, and he felt that God was helping him.

Sometimes he needed a little help to get to sleep. A couple of pills or a drink or two. He allowed himself that. He was on high blower, he told his wife; he was like a T-38 on afterburner. Thursday, January 8, 1981

…On admission, Colonel Priest was nauseated, chilled, and agitated, with glassy eyes. His temperature was 104 degrees. He had been cut from his pressure suit. He suffered repeated vomiting, and swelling of the face, neck, and upper extremities. His arms were so swollen, in fact, that his blood pressure could not be taken with the normal cuff, and the nurses had to enlarge it.

He was periodically conscious, and sometimes coherent and logical, but I judged he was not strong enough to contribute to any debriefпngs concerning the accident.

Priest’s difficulty in speaking and lapses into incoherence made his relatives in attendance, and some of my staff, feel uncomfortable.

Twenty-four hours after admission I ordered four samples of bone marrow to be taken from Priest’s sternum and iliac bones (both front and rear). Priest was very patient during the proceedings. The samples were used to determine the whole body dose.