Fred Michaels had known Nixon all the way back to the Sputnik days, when he’d been Eisenhower’s veep. Michaels believed that Nixon was a man who grasped the symbolism of the space age, right from the beginning. “Politics is frankly more important than science,” Michaels had told Josephson, and Josephson repeated it into his tape recorder. “The real motive for space is prestige. Nixon understands that. He’s the right clay to be shaped. I tell you, Tim; I’m not so surprised at the way all this has turned out. All he needed was the right argument…”

Maybe, Josephson thought. But Nixon was also pragmatic, highly intelligent, a man who saw space as fairly low on his priority list.

He might have chosen to shut down the manned program altogether.

And yet, and yet…

And yet there was dear old Jack Kennedy, speaking like a ghost from his study in New England, quietly telling Americans that they were better than their pessimistic visions of themselves: that they had, after all, succeeded in landing men on the Moon, and in the full view of the world; that they should not pause, but should go on, endlessly reinventing themselves in the light of the fiery dream that was space travel, a dream of which Kennedy had become the living embodiment…

It had come to a head, at last, today. Michaels had been asked to a meeting with Agronski, other Presidential aides, and representatives of the Office of Management and Budget.

Agronski, Michaels told Josephson, had opened the meeting briskly. “You’re going to get your Mars boondoggle, Fred. Against my better judgment.”

“The President’s approving the program.”

“Yes.” Agronski shuffled papers. “There are still some decisions to be made about size and cost…”

Michaels grunted. “What decided him?”

“A number of factors. The point that we can’t afford to forgo manned spaceflight altogether, for our prestige at home and abroad.” He sounded rueful. “We’re stuck with you, Fred. That the Mars mission is the only option we have that is meaningful and could be accomplished on a modest budget. That we were only thinking of cutting NASA anyway because we could. That not starting the program would be damaging to the aerospace industry…”

Michaels had understood, and Josephson wasn’t surprised. Kennedy’s lobbying, and his own machinations, had swung public opinion just enough. And 1972 was going to be an election year; unemployment lines in states heavily dependent on aerospace — California, Texas, Florida — wouldn’t look good for Nixon. But we were damn lucky to find an ally in Cap Weinberger. Without Cap’s lobbying inside the administration, Josephson knew, the manned program could have been lost.

The meeting had started haggling over details, the wording of a Presidential announcement. But the decision was made.

Mars.

Josephson, through his weariness, felt a deep satisfaction growing inside him. It was like the feeling of having enjoyed a fine meal, brandy and cigars.