“And if you do that,” Seger said hotly, “you risk throwing away everything. You’ll come out of that process with an immature system, overdesigned and carrying too many changes, which will hit us with a host of problems we’ve not even thought of yet.” He turned his glassy stare on Michaels again. “Look, Fred, this is a lousy business, and I wish it hadn’t happened, and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to come to terms with this: what I did wrong, what I could have done differently to avoid this, and all the rest of it. And I’ll do all in my power to avert such an accident in future. But at the end of the day, we’re flying experimental craft here. Pilots die flying experimental craft; they always have. You lose crew. And that’s a truth we’ve got to learn to live with.”

Michaels grunted. The trouble is, I don’t think we’re going to be allowed to live with it.

When Udet, Seger, and Muldoon had gone, he stood by his window for a long time.

He couldn’t imagine that the manned program would be shut down altogether. That would have such a devastating impact on the American aerospace industry that it was surely politically unthinkable.

But it seemed highly likely to him, almost certain in fact, that the NERVA was going to be grounded.

And without NERVA, how the hell were they going to get to Mars, in the eighties or any other decade? Were they going to be reduced to pottering around in low Earth orbit?

…Maybe he had more immediate problems.

Seger had sounded like he was fraying at the edges. That disturbed Michaels. Both houses of Congress were going to convene their own hearings on the accident, just as soon as the Presidential Commission reported. Michaels had already had a few clues as to the tone of those hearings; they would be intent on charging NASA’s engineers — meaning Seger, primarily — with criminal negligence.

But Michaels had heard, from Tim Josephson and others, that Seger was working a sixteen-hour day, sleeping for three or four hours, and spending his spare time on his knees in some church. It was as if Seger was using physical exhaustion, and an immersion in his religion, like a drug. But even that wasn’t always enough, and — so Michaels had heard — Seger was using Seconals and scotches to knock himself out.

Michaels was worried that Seger might be under too much stress to testify. And besides, if Seger started to come out with his line about limited damage and everything’s under control, they’d all sound like such complacent bastards that the congressmen would cut out their livers.

He poured himself a drink. Hell. Were we, after all, going too far, too fast?

He couldn’t get the glassy, feverish look in Bert Seger’s eyes out of his mind.