Agronski handed Michaels a document from his case. “I’m sorry, Colonel Muldoon; I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I brought only two copies.”

Muldoon turned that bald-eagle glare on the science advisor, who seemed oblivious.

The document was a photostat, stapled together, covered in pencil notes, and with the presidential seal on the first page.

“This is the statement President Nixon was drafting, to make in March,” Agronski said. “A formal response to the Space Task Group report. But he withdrew it. I want you to see this draft, Fred, to understand the way the thoughts of the administration are heading.”

Michaels scanned the statement.

…Over the last decade, the principal goal of our nation’s, space program has been the Moon… I believe these accomplishments should help us gain a new perspective on our space program… We must define new goals which make sense for the seventies. We must build on the successes of the past, always reaching out for new achievements. But we must also recognize that many critical problems here on this planet make high-priority demands on our attention and our resources. By no means should we allow our space program to stagnate. But — with the entire future and the entire universe before us — we should not try to do everything at once. Our approach to space must continue to be bold, but it must also be balanced…

Christ, Michaels thought. We’re in trouble.

He read on. Economies everywhere. One rationalization after another. No money for more lunar flights beyond Apollo 20. The space station projects cut back to little more than Skylab. All decisions on later stuff, beyond Apollo and Skylab, deferred: that is, canned.

The feasibility studies on the Space Shuttle seemed spared, but even that was only because Nixon perceived the Shuttle as saving the bottom line: We should work to reduce substantially the cost of space operations… As we build for the longer-range future, we must devise less costly and less complicated ways of transporting payloads into space…

Michaels put the paper down. So Nixon thinks we can cost-cut our way to Mars.

It wouldn’t have been like this with LBJ.

But Johnson was gone. There was a new breed of shifty Republicans in the White House. And suddenly Michaels, at sixty-one, found that the political levers he was used to pulling weren’t connected to anything anymore. Even his links with the Kennedys didn’t seem as useful as they once had.

Sitting here, he felt old, tired, used up.

Maybe I should retire back to Dallas, he thought. Go work on my golf swing.

He noticed Agronski glancing around at the walls, at the moonwalk maps. “Poignant, isn’t it?” Michaels said sharply.

Agronski didn’t react.

“Leon, why did the President withdraw this draft?”