It was a clumsy, cluttered design, she’d thought from the beginning. But the NASA PAO people had thought it appropriately patriotic in tone, and Stone and Gershon hadn’t cared enough one way or the other, and that had been that. So the badge sat high over her right breast, glaring out, gaudy and embarrassing.

When she left her room, she found Gershon and Stone waiting in the corridor. They were leaning against the wall, arms folded in almost identical poses, talking quietly. They grinned at her.

She walked up to them. Then, spontaneously, she reached out her hands to the two of them. Stone and Gershon each took a hand, and then, to her surprise, they clasped hands as well. For a few seconds the three of them stood there, joined in a circle, in the middle of the carpeted corridor, grinning at each other.

MERRITT ISLAND

Bert Seger had thought that his two mule-drawn wagons would clog up the traffic. But all four lanes of U.S. 1 had been at a dead standstill anyhow. Even off the freeways the traffic was moving slower than the pace of the mules, and the problem was going to be that the animals might grow impatient at the slow pace of the cars.

Already he had seen people giving up on getting closer to the launch, climbing on top of their cars and setting up tripods.

A row of black faces peered out of each of his wagons, at the staggering stream of traffic. Seger had brought a dozen of the poorest families from Washington to the launch, all members of the congregation of the little church he’d founded in Washington.

Now, though, he wasn’t so sure how effective his gesture was going to be.

Every gas station and coffee shop along the road — all of them open all night — was full of humanity, teenagers and Marines and factory workers and middle-aged couples and kids running around. It was a real cross section of America. The Mars shot, he’d calculated, had cost every man, woman, and child in the country around fifty dollars apiece, and it looked as if a good sample of them had gone out there today to check on that investment, dumping themselves onto this flat, primitive landscape.

In all this flood of people, Seger realized with a sinking heart, his little protesting band wasn’t going to make much of a splash. Anyway, there was maybe enough evidence around here that it was wrong to be sending off three Americans to Mars, while so many of their fellow citizens suffered, without the need for stunts by Seger. He’d learned that there were still cases of malnutrition being discovered among the poorest of the poor: there at the Cape, here at the foot of the Mars ship itself! If such things didn’t turn a few heads, maybe his little gesture really wasn’t going to make much difference.