The next day Fred Michaels phoned. Michaels began to describe a new job to him, a more senior position in the Office of Manned Spaceflight.

“You’ve spent long enough at the detail level, Bert, and you’ve done a damned fine job. But now we’re going to need help steering NASA through the next few years, which will be as hard as any we’ve faced before. I want you to move up to the policy level. I want you to get to know the Cabinet people; I can arrange the introductions for you. It’s a job on the mountaintop, Bert.”

Yeah. The mountaintop, in Washington.

Seger hesitated. “You’re making it sound good, Fred.” But I know what this is all about. “Fred, I’ll say what I believe, one more time: whether you push me out of your way or not, it’s going to be a mistake to go back into our systems now and make sweeping changes. We have to make fixes, obviously, but they should be straightforward and limited; if we go beyond that, we risk coming out with a less mature system, with new problems hiding from us…”

“Look, Seger, I’m tired of hearing that. I can’t agree with you. I just don’t see it that way, and I don’t think that’s the prevailing view inside NASA. And I know for sure that’s not how they see it up on the Hill.”

“What are you saying, Fred? I’ve seen your tame shrinks, and—”

“I know.”

“I’m no psychotic, Fred.”

“I know that,” Michaels said gruffly. “And I’m glad for you. But that isn’t really the question.”

“Then what is?”

“Whether you’re the right man to continue leading the program, right now.”

Seger picked up a paper clip from his desk and began to fold and unfold it with his free hand.

Friday, January 30, 1981

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

Michaels found himself shivering, despite his topcoat. The sky was overcast, the clouds impossibly low. Thank Christ this is the last.

The mourners stood in rows: there was Jim Dana’s grieving family, with poor, beat-up old Gregory Dana, the dreamer from Langley, standing in the front row with his arms around his wife and his widowed daughter-in-law; there were the usual ranks of NASA managers and engineers, of congressmen and senators; and there was the Vice President of the United States himself. And right at the front there was a row of astronauts, standing straight and tall, saluting their fallen comrade: Muldoon, York, Gershon, Stone, Bleeker, others — men who had flown the first Mercurys, men who had once walked on the Moon, men — and women — who might walk on Mars. And there was Vladimir Viktorenko, who had flown with Joe Muldoon to lunar orbit, and who Muldoon had insisted should be there — the Afghanistan situation or not — to represent that other astronaut corps, from the other side of the world.