Next, Lee got everyone at the plant involved in the MEM program — there was almost a thousand of them — to come squeezing into the big, roomy old canteen. The room was still used as the main conference room, and its walls were lined with multicolored schedule boards and progress charts. Lee got a photograph of their prime MEM, Spacecraft 009, blown up so it covered the wall behind him — the great complex silver pyramid made a beautiful image — and he stood on a table in front of his people. He put his hands on his hips, and glared out at the sea of pinched-up, worried faces around him.

“Now, I know times have been tough for you guys. I know you’ve got a lot of people crawling all over you saying you don’t know your butts from third base. And we did get some things wrong. But now we’re fixing them, and that’s healthy. And I know, deep down — and you know — that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the way we’re working here. And I know there’s nothing wrong with the spacecraft, either. If NASA wants to fly in April” — the target date for the D-prime mission, the first manned flight — “then we’ll be ready for them.

“I want you to forget about everything else, now, except that first flight. We’re going to focus on this one spacecraft here, and make it work; because if we can complete that flight well, believe me, all the rest of the program is going to slot into place, bang bang bang, just like that.

“And I know one thing more.” He looked around at their faces, all somehow smoothed out by the way they were tilted up at him, made to look younger; he felt a surge of protectiveness. “One thing more. I know I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with. Now, let’s get back to work, and let’s make history.”

Well, this was a standard spiel for Lee, a version of a talk he’d used at tough times on many projects. A standard-issue motivator. On the B-70, it had even gotten him a cheer.

But this time, although there were a lot of nodding heads, nobody cheered; and when he was done, they just turned away, and drifted back to their workstations.

He got down off the rickety table with a hand from Jack Morgan. He had a sick feeling, deep in the pit of his stomach. He felt isolated, somehow vulnerable.

Maybe it was his heart, letting him down again.

The hell with it. Leaning a little on Jack Morgan, he started prowling around the plant, trying to pinpoint problems, bawling out technicians, riding herd on his program managers as hard as he could.

Tuesday, November 8, 1983

LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON

Joe Muldoon wasn’t a happy man.