York was in the middle of a series of simulated reentries from Earth orbit. This particular exercise, the worst of the set, was modeling a high, steep trajectory, as if her Command Module were cutting into the layers of Earth’s atmosphere too rapidly, and so undergoing terrific deceleration.

When she reached eight Gs, she found she couldn’t raise her arms anymore. She could only lie in the cage and endure it.

Then the gray curtain around her eyes was thickening, and it wouldn’t go away.

Of course it’s worse than a real mission. The damn doctors design it that way.

Her vision started to blur. She found it hard to read her instruments. Twelve Gs; far higher than anticipated during a real mission. Enough to flatten her eyeballs. Her head was being battered against the inside of her pressure-suit helmet. The lights of the lab beyond the cage whirled past the mock-up cabin’s small windows.

Fifteen Gs. She couldn’t breathe at all. She became sure she was going to black out. But I’m only halfway through the run. And the doctors were watching her, every twitch of her flattened face, on closed-circuit television.

At last the load began to drop away; the pressure eased from her chest, and she sucked in great gulps of air.

Of course, nobody would complain about being subjected to high-tech torture in instruments like the Wheel, or query the relevance of all these exercises to actual spaceflight, or — still worse — admit that he or she had any problems with the routines. Because if you complain, it’s bound to get back to Muldoon, and a note will go into whatever damn system he uses to select his crews, and you’ll never get off the ground.

And that was the name of the game at the moment. Joe Muldoon, in his new role as head of the Mars program, had also assumed unto himself the old, separate function of director of Flight Crew Operations.

It was Muldoon who assigned crews to missions. And everyone knew that Muldoon was in the middle of drawing up his crew rota for the first flights in the new program, leading up to the Mars mission itself; the only thing that mattered in life right now — the only thing — was getting a berth in that rota.

So York was going to have to put on a front when she came out of the cage.

How’d it go? You didn’t black out, did you?

Me? Come on. I felt like I was riding a little heavy on a T-38 afterburner, that’s all…

Sure.

When the doctors helped her to limp out of the cage, she found her back covered with ruptured capillaries, where the blood had been forced through her flesh, and she had a headache like the worst hangover in the world.

Piece of cake. Problems? Me? Come on.

While she was soaking in a tub, recovering, she got Muldoon’s message.