“You must be kidding,” York snapped. “We have to go through all this again?”

Viktorenko, pulling on his own gear, continued to lecture them. “Listen to me. Our Soviet training is tougher than yours, and some within NASA have come to understand this. In some of our exercises, there is no chance of seeking help. There is no rescue team! For there will be none on Mars! It is all purposeful. For, when a man realizes a mistake might cost him his health or even his life, the situation is transformed. Suddenly there is an incentive to concentrate.

“In space, one needs the courage and resourcefulness to continue to work on a problem long after an average person, with hope of rescue, might have given in. And this is what I begin to instill in you now.”

York was tired, in pain, hugely irritated. The trouble was, there was a strand of thinking inside NASA that approved of the Soviets’ tough approach: mostly the old military flyboys, who seemed to think NASA astronauts were getting pampered. Joe Muldoon, for instance, Viktorenko’s great Moon-orbiting buddy. Yeah, pampered. Especially all these goddamn newfangled hyphenated-astronauts who want to go to Mars…

She said, “All this macho training didn’t help Ben Priest and the others, did it?”

Viktorenko studied her. More gently he said, “No. It did not help Ben Priest.” He plucked at the cuffs of his thick sweater. “Listen, Natalie. There is an old Russian folktale. A young woman named Marushka was famous for being able to embroider fantastical designs. Her fame reached the attention of Kaschei the Immortal, an evil sorcerer, who fell in love with her and wished her to go away with him. She turned him down, despite his magic powers, for she was modest, and wished only to stay in the village where she was born.

“Enraged, Kaschei turned her into a firebird with brilliant plumage, and himself into a huge black bird of prey.

“The bird of prey seized the firebird in its talons and flew away with it.

“Marushka, realizing she was dying, willed that she should shed her plumage. Her feathers fell to the ground on the land she loved.

“Marushka died, but her feathers were magical; for they remained alive, but only to those who appreciated beauty and chose to share it with others…

“So it is with death, among us. No kosmonaut dies in vain, Natalie York.”

The Command Module rocked harder, swinging back and forth through thirty, forty degrees. Water lapped, gurgling, against the hull. York had a nightmare vision of the capsule sinking, dragging them, padded trousers and all, down to the bottom of the lousy little salt lake.

It’s so hot in here. Her head seemed full of blood; she could feel her pulse at her neck, and there was a yellow haze at the edge of her vision.

Christ. I’m going to faint.