At fifteen, Gregory Dana had been able to understand how those young men from Peenemьnde were blinded by the dazzling beauty of their V-2 and what it represented. It was not simple callousness: yes, he could understand the duality of it, and he would comfort himself with plans for after the war. Perhaps, he would dream, he himself would pursue a career in building still greater rocket machines, and even father a son who would be the first to travel beyond the air to Mars or Venus.

How he envied the young engineers from Peenemьnde, who walked about the Mittelwerk in their smart uniforms; they seemed to find it an easy thing to brush past the stacks of corpses piled up for daily collection, the people gaunt as skeletons toiling around the great metal spaceships! The duality of it crushed Dana. Was such squalor and agony the inevitable price to be paid for the dream of spaceflight?

He tried to imagine how it would have been had he been born to become one of those smart young Germans in their SS uniforms.

When he immersed himself in such dreams, something of his own daily pain would fall from him.

But then the morning would come again.

In his workshop, in the sunny June of 1970, Gregory Dana labored at his blackboard, immersed in memories, and the resolving dream of spaceflight.

As Dana’s car was pulling away, his father came running from the house. He rested his hands on the Corvette’s window frame. There was chalk smeared across his forehead.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to get away, Dad,” Dana said apologetically. “I have to be at—”

“I think it works,” Gregory said breathlessly. “Of course it’s too early to be sure yet, but—”

“What works?”

“Venus. Not Jupiter — Venus. Kiss good-bye to Verne — we don’t need those immense nuclear rockets after all!”

“Dad, I—”

Sylvia linked Gregory’s arm. “Good-bye, dear. Drive safely.”

“I’ll call when I’m home, Mom.”

Dana looked back once, at the end of the block. Sylvia was waving, but his father had already gone back to his shop.

Thursday, July 9, 1970

SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS, CALIFORNIA

It was nearly noon; from a burned blue sky the sunlight bore down on York’s bare head and shoulders.

Jorge Romero had led them all into a little valley that afforded a good view of the hills. He went bounding up to a twisted old ironwood tree. “This tree is your LM. You’ve just landed on the Moon. Now I want each of you to come stand over here and describe what you see.”

The three astronauts — Jones, Priest, Bleeker — stared back, all but anonymous in their baseball caps, T-shirts, and chromed sunglasses.