But, even as he framed that thought, he tripped over a wire, stretched across the floor. And when he looked down he saw more wires and loose components and discarded equipment: bits of spacecraft, scattered over the floor like detritus, washed up by the overwhelming tide of specification changes

Monday, February 21, 1983

ELLINGTON AIR FORCE BASE, HOUSTON

Gershon, flight helmet under his arm, walked around the training vehicle. Natalie York walked with him, her hair lifted by the breeze, her sunglasses hiding her eyes.

Ralph Gershon couldn’t help himself. “That’s the MLTV? Holy shit,” he said.

Ted Curval, from Phil Stone’s prime crew, was the senior astronaut assigned to oversee them for the day. He just grinned. “Your regulation Mars Landing Training Vehicle, Number Three. Brutal, ain’t she?”

The Mars Landing Training Vehicle was an open framework, set on six landing legs. Gershon could see a down-pointing jet at the center, surrounded by a cluster of fuel tanks. Reaction control nozzles were clustered at the four corners of the frame, like bunches of metallic berries, and there were two big auxiliary rockets, also downward-pointing. The pilot’s cockpit was an ejector seat partially enclosed by aluminum walls, with a big, bold NASA logo painted on the side, under a black-stenciled “three.” The whole thing stood maybe ten feet high, with the legs around twelve feet apart. There was no skin, so you could see into the guts of the thing, jet and rockets and fuel tanks and plumbing and cabling and all; it was somehow obscene, as if splayed.

In the low morning sunlight the bird’s complicated shadow stretched off across the tarmac of the wide runway.

“Shit,” Gershon said again, coming back to Curval. “It’s like something out of a fucking circus.”

“Tell me about it,” said Curval. “But it’s the nearest thing we have to a MEM trainer. You want to fly a MEM, you have to learn to handle one of these things, guy.” Curval was grinning, laughing at him.

Ted Curval was one of the Old Heads. A classic astronaut profile: a Navy test pilot, he’d even been an instructor at Pax River, and he’d logged a lot of time in space already. In the endless battle to climb up the Ares selection ladder, Curval had the great advantage of being from an earlier recruitment class than Gershon, and had already accrued plenty of live, free-flying MLTV experience. While the best Gershon had managed, for all his angling and hours spent at Columbia, had been some time on the tethered facility at Langley, where a MEM-type mock-up dangled from cables.

So Curval was in Phil Stone’s crew and was on his way to Mars. And Ralph Gershon was still on the outside looking in.

But what the hell. As of today, Ralph Gershon would be able to add MLTV experience to his list of accomplishments. So screw Ted Curval, and all the other complacent assholes.