He walked briskly across the tarmac with the aide. The young guy said, “We’re laying on copters to bring in key people who might get stuck in traffic.” He seemed rushed, almost awe-struck, just about in control. Muldoon guessed the poor guy had been doing this ferrying all night.

“That bad, huh?”

“Hell, yes, sir. All the roads into Merritt Island are jammed. It’s like a parking lot out there. I’ve never seen anything like it, sir.”

Muldoon eyed him in the gathering dawn light. The kid was not more than twenty-two. So, aged about six in 1969. He doesn’t remember. He really hadn’t seen anything like it before.

Muldoon felt old, trapped, gravity-bound. Just as he’d felt after the splashdown in ’69. His work on Ares was nearly done, and the depression he’d been fighting off for all these years, using that huge goal to distract himself, was seeping back.

His one landing was long ago, and he’d never walk across that snowlike surface again.

They walked more quickly, toward the waiting chopper.

MANNED SPACECRAFT OPERATIONS BUILDING, COCOA BEACH

There was a smart military knock on her door.

She rolled on her side and switched on her bedside light — 4:15 A.M.

“Wake-up call. The night’s been clear, and the weather’s expected to be good…”

“Thanks, Fred.”

Fred Haise was right on schedule. The first time recorded on the Ares checklist was 0415.

The clock starts ticking here. And it won’t stop for eighteen months.

She pushed back the covers and climbed out. She rearranged the sheets, smoothing them out. She wasn’t going to be back there for a while, and she didn’t want to leave behind a mess.

She switched on the TV. She found herself staring at a still of her own face, while a commentator talked about the launch-day crowds gathering around the Cape. She clicked the thing off.

She took her time over showering. She relished the sting of water against her skin, the way the lather ran away down her body to the drain. She turned the shower on cold and stood there shivering for long seconds, feeling the blood rise in her capillaries. Showering in microgravity wasn’t going to be so easy; she had the feeling that she wouldn’t feel so clean as this again until she got back to Earth.

She toweled herself dry, quickly. Her hair was cropped short and dried easily. She pulled on a sport shirt, slacks, and sneakers.

The sport shirt was plain blue except for a patch with the Ares mission logo. The logo was a disk circled by the name “Ares” and their three surnames. The circle contained a stylized, pencil-shaped Ares cluster blasting toward a red star; the ship’s exhaust billowed out to become the stars-and-striped wing of an American eagle, peering sternly at the departing spacecraft.