Dana doubted that anyone missed the subtext of what Seger was saying. Congress was approving the requested funding for NASA’s FY1972, but the big expenditure for whatever program was settled on was going to start in FY1973. And President Nixon still hadn’t made up his mind about the future of the space program. It was said he might even can manned spaceflight altogether, and look for some superscience stunt on Earth that might prove a better fit with the mood of the times.

Meanwhile there was open warfare going on between two of NASA’s centers, Houston and Marshall, over their preferred Mars modes.

It was just what NASA didn’t need, and all the old hands at NASA had been there before, too many times. Dana knew that Seger had already been trying to get around the conflict by encouraging informal contacts and discussions, and by having the Houston people help with the devising of Marshall’s presentation, and so forth. And it was obvious that Seger’s intention today was to lance that boil before sending the recommendations farther up the chain of command.

Seger flashed up a draft agenda. The meeting was going to run for the whole day. The two major modes — chemical and nuclear — would be presented first, followed by the other studies…

Dana found with dismay that his would be the last of the five major presentations. I’m coming at the nutty end, he realized. Even after the guys from General Dynamics with their ludicrous atomic-bomb motor. I’m being wheeled on as light relief. In the midst of the organizational infighting, he was going to be squeezed out; he had probably upset too many people by circumventing the hierarchy. He felt his stomach knot up with frustration and anxiety. Damn it, I know I’m right, that I have the way we should be going to Mars, right here in this folder. He pushed his spectacles up onto his nose, agitated.

First up was the nuclear rocket option.

Dana thought the timing was significant; that option, heavily pushed by Marshall, was, he had heard, the preferred option among the NASA brass.

The presentation was opened by a hairy young man called Mike Conlig. Conlig reported into Marshall, but he had worked for several years at the nuclear rocket development station in Nevada. “We’ve achieved twenty-eight starts of our XE-Prime liquid hydrogen prototype, running up in excess of fifty-five thousand pounds of thrust.” Conlig showed a photograph of an ungainly test rig, framed by dismal mountains. “Next we will proceed to the development of NERVA 1, which will develop seventy-five thousand pounds of thrust. Then the full NERVA 2 module will be developed, to support the Mars mission itself. NERVA 2 will be flight-tested in the mid 1970s, in fact launched into orbit as a new Saturn V third stage…”

Conlig spoke well and enthusiastically; Dana let the data rattle through his head.