The scale — the audacity of it all — stunned him, when he let himself think about it. And Muldoon, he reminded himself, had walked on the Moon.

Maybe, as many people argued, they were going too far, too fast…

He shrugged that off. Be that as it may, they were going.

As far as Muldoon was concerned it was better to get somebody down to that surface to do at least some science, no matter how dumb. And, the way he saw it, the way to maximize the chances of achieving that was to send up his three best aviators: people who had cut their teeth in the most extraordinary physical situations the home planet had to offer. And hope that was enough for Mars…

Also, while he was impressed by York, there was something about her which unsettled him a little. All that intensity. She’d come into NASA with a great big grudge against the world, and it was still there, and getting bigger all the time, as far as he could see. Those goddamn twitching eyebrows of hers. She would drive her crewmates crazy in a month.

York wasn’t ready. It was a shame.

He crossed out the draft list.

Anyhow, it wasn’t the MSP but the MMP seat that was giving him the most grief at the moment.

He was hearing a lot of bad things from the mission controllers, and others, about Ted Curval’s performance.

Curval was one of the best test pilots Muldoon had worked with. And Phil Stone, his commander, was intensely loyal to him. But Curval’s attitude looked to be a little bit off beam.

Curval was fucking arrogant. He was taking his seat for granted. He seemed to feel it was sufficient to just turn up, and laugh his way through the training, and expect just to be able to crawl into the MEM when the time came, and everything would be fine. His performance in the sims, for instance, was well below the target the SimSups expected.

Muldoon had been on Stone’s back about this; as Stone was commander of the crew, in Muldoon’s mind it was up to Stone to get Curval in gear. And he knew, for instance, that Stone had been instructing the SimSups to give Curval all the help he needed.

Everybody understood how tough it was, to learn to handle a system orders of magnitude more complex than any spacecraft which had yet flown. But it was up to Curval to apply himself. And Curval didn’t show any sign of improving. Or even of understanding the importance of improving.

In his own mind, Muldoon kept comparing Curval with another good pilot: Ralph Gershon.