Fred Michaels had become the new Administrator, after Tom Paine’s resignation, and he seemed determined to pull the Agency out of the mess his predecessor had left behind. And he had appointed Bert Seger himself.

“Bert, the damn Mars thing is already coming apart at the seams, and we haven’t even gotten back the final Phase A definition reports yet. Look — I need someone to do for Mars what Joe Shea did for the Moon program, back in the early days. To pull the thing together. Or we’re never going to get it past Nixon.”

Seger understood. “You need a foreman,” he’d said. “And an enforcer.”

“Damn right I do. Will you do it?”

“Damn right I will.”

“Then here’s your first job,” Michaels had said. “Sort out the goddamn mission mode…”

The competing industry contractors, preparing their Phase A preliminary studies, were all working on different ways of getting to Mars, but the routes they were planning were all direct: Earth to Mars, and back to Earth. And there was some guy in Langley who was kicking up a fuss about another mode. Something to do with flying by Venus on the way.

“Some little jerk called Dana,” Michaels said. “Gregory Dana. He wrote direct to me. Can you believe it?” Dana had bypassed all the bureaucratic channels, and had gotten right up a lot of asses.

“Is he right? About Venus?”

“How in hell do I know? Could I care less, at this point? This Dana has them all — the Marshall guys, the rest of Langley, the contractors, the budget office, the damn Science Advisory Committee — buzzing like wasps in a jar. The Requests For Proposal for Phase B detailed definition studies are about to go out. This Dana is putting all of that under threat. Bert, I want you to sort it out for me…”

Seger didn’t doubt his own ability to resolve the mode issue. Nor did he doubt that he’d be able to fulfill his greater commission: to pull together the Mars program. If that was what the country decided it wanted to do.

Seger always prayed, intensely, for a few minutes at the start of the working day, or before tackling a major task. He felt that showed that his character had deep roots, strength, conviction. Standing there in the MOCR, he offered up a brief prayer.

He thought of that fragile little world 240,000 miles away, where three LM descent stages still sat, surrounded by footprints and scuffed-up lunar soil. But the footprints, and the flags, even the science — none of that was really the point, as far as Seger was concerned. Not even getting there ahead of the Russians. To his mind, what Apollo had proved was that men could indeed travel to places beyond the Earth, and live and work there.