“You know damn well there will be no second landing. We’re putting everything we’ve got into this one shot. Square with me, Joe. I should be on the damn flight. And if I was a man, another Jack Schmitt, I’d be inked in already as a no-brain choice. But I’m a woman, and that’s why I’m not going.”

“Natalie, it’s not like that.”

“Come on, Joe. Don’t bullshit me, for once.”

He folded his fingers together. “No bullshit?”

“No bullshit.”

“I’m not going to pretend that the gender thing doesn’t cause us problems, Natalie.”

The gender thing. “What problems, for Christ’s sake? That I won’t be able to fit my flight helmet over my bouffant hairstyle? Joe, it’s 1981—”

“Give me a break, Natalie. Look, it might have been different if we’d ever built the shuttle, if we had big roomy ships to carry seven or eight to orbit, if access to space had ever become routine. Then we would be flying women every month. But we don’t. So you work it out. If you have a mixed crew, you need extra facilities. Personal hygiene. Privacy. It’s all avoidable payload weight. And that’s not a good thing when you’re planning an eighteen-month deep-space mission.”

“So take an all-female crew. No need for separate showers then; right?…”

Muldoon was starting to look exasperated. “Look, Natalie, you know you’re not going to win this argument. And I’m not even the right guy to be arguing with.”

“Then who is?”

He shrugged. “American culture. The world. Hell, I don’t know; I’m just the poor schmo who recommended you for the D mission.” He studied her with, she thought, a little more sympathy. “Natalie, take my advice. The main thing is to be in the rotation. That’s all that matters; that, and doing your damnedest at the job. And I know you’ll do that. We need you in the program, Natalie. You’re an element we’ve missed before. We think a lot of you. You’d be surprised. And I noticed the work you did at capcom during Apollo-N.”

She shrugged. It wasn’t an assignment from which she wanted to gain any credit. “You need me in the program, but not necessarily on a ship to Mars.”

He shuffled the papers on his desk, the typed-out lists of crew assignments. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe you’d actually be more use to the program, overall — to the science goals — right here, in Houston, than stumbling around on Mars itself. Have you thought about that? Natalie, you’re complaining about flying the space soak mission. Hell, I understand that; in your shoes, I’d be up here beefing, too. But all I get to fly these days is this damn desk.” He looked wistful. Almost desperate. “Two hours on the Moon just wasn’t enough, for one lifetime.”