He reached down and found the port on his first try; it was jammed, but it gave after a couple of tugs.

Bleeker clapped Jones on the shoulder; the impact was deadened by layers of suit fabric. “What were you doing in there, pops, having a shave? Next time, make sure you’ve studied the manual.”

“Asshole,” Jones growled. “You were in on that, weren’t you?”

“Just another Monday, Chuck. Don’t take it personal.”

Fucking engineers. Fucking smart-ass rookies.

With the help of the divers, they swam clumsily to the side of the facility.

Tuesday, April 14, 1970

MANNED SPACECRAFT CENTER, HOUSTON

According to Fred Michaels’s antique vest-pocket watch, it was a little after a quarter to two. He’d been watching the time compulsively, he realized.

Tim Josephson oiled up to him. “Mr. Agronski is here to see you, sir. He’s waiting in your office.”

“That’s Doctor Agronski, damn it.”

“Sorry. Shall I tell him you’ll meet him over there?”

Michaels, resenting the intrusion, turned away rather than answer. He looked through the glass, at the three rows of flight controllers.

Seen from the Viewing Room at the back of the MOCR — Mission Operations Control Room, pronounced to rhyme with “poker,” and known as “Mission Control” to the world — there was no obvious drama. But the controllers looked pretty crumpled, with ties loosened or discarded, shirts creased, and the operations desks were strewn with coffee cups, manuals, and scribbled notes.

He could see Joe Muldoon wandering about at the back of the MOCR. Nine months after his own lunar flight, Muldoon had just finished a six-hour stint as capcom to Jim Lovell and his Apollo 13 crew, but he showed no desire to leave; in fact, he knew that Muldoon was intending to head on over to Building 5, where other off-duty astronauts were running continual simulations of the improvised procedures the Apollo 13 crew would have to adopt to get home.

Already seventeen hours had passed since 13 had started to fall apart; Michaels wondered how many of the controllers had gotten a minute’s sleep since.

Josephson coughed. The aide was a slim, prematurely balding young man, with a Ph.D. in some discipline or other. You needed a Ph.D. to make the coffee, here at MSC. “Sir, Dr. Agronski—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Leon Agronski worked on President Nixon’s Science Advisory Committee, with special responsibility for the space program, and all its expensive evils. Michaels knew why Agronski was there: to thrash out “options” for NASA’s budget for FY1971 and beyond, before any formal submission by the White House.

More cuts.

Michaels was an associate administrator with responsibility for manned spaceflight, reporting directly to Thomas Paine, NASA Administrator. It had broken Michaels’s heart when Paine had gone public back in February to announce the cuts to Skylab, even some terminations at NASA.