Voyage. Stephen Baxter
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Another thought struck him. ‘Oh – and, Tim –’
‘Sir?’
‘Ask Joe Muldoon to join us, would you?’
The back room would have been used as the center of operations for the moonwalks. Its walls were covered with crew checklists, and with Orbiter and Apollo photographs of the landing area – called Fra Mauro, a place in the lunar uplands: the first ambitious, scientifically interesting site they’d planned to land. Now, it was deserted.
When Michaels arrived, Muldoon and Agronski were sitting at a large walnut desk in the center of the room. Agronski, thin to the point of sharpness, was leafing through some notes from his briefcase; Muldoon was hollow-eyed with fatigue, and he had folded his big, powerful hands on the desk top. He glared impatiently at Michaels. Josephson fussed around, pouring coffees.
Michaels pulled out a chair, and accepted a coffee. Then Josephson withdrew, leaving the three of them alone.
Michaels introduced Muldoon to Agronski. ‘Leon, Joe here is on the backup crew for Apollo 14, and then should command his own mission, on 17. Joe, you’re here at my invitation. To help remind us what this damn thing is all about.’
Here is the second American on the Moon, Agronski, you thin-lipped asshole, Michaels thought. Here he is! Large as life, and twice as brave! A living symbol! Show a little respect!
In the dazzle of the room’s strip lights, Michaels couldn’t see Agronski’s eyes behind his thin-rimmed glasses.
Joe Muldoon was glaring back at Michaels. Muldoon’s look, those blue eyes hard under that balding prow of a skull, said it all; he was thinking that Michaels was a paper-pushing prick who shouldn’t be wasting Muldoon’s time on a day like this. Not when he – Muldoon – could be in Building 5 or the MOCR with the other guys; not when he might be able to come up with something to save the crew out there –
Christ, Michaels thought suddenly. Maybe I’ve miscalculated. If Muldoon blows his stack here, this could turn into a hundred-kilowatt disaster. He shot an imploring look at Muldoon.
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 adviser, 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 of 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. Now there was this new breed of shifty Republicans in the White House. And suddenly Michaels, at sixty-one, found the political levers he was used to pulling weren’t connected to anything any more. 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?’
‘Because, frankly, nobody in the White House is sure about the impact Kennedy’s remarks about the Mars option are having on public opinion. And now –’ Agronski waved a hand at the curling photographs of Fra Mauro ‘– now you people have served us up with all this. The public mood is a fragile thing, Fred; after Apollo 13 America may want to go to Mars as fast as it can – or it may want to close down the space program altogether.’
Muldoon’s nostrils went white. ‘You’re talking about the lives of three men, damn it.’
Agronski studied him, analytically. ‘You know, you people at NASA have been the same whenever I’ve dealt with you. So emotive, so unrealistic. Even you, Fred. Every time we ask for proposals, back you come wanting everything: look at this Space Task Group report with its “balanced programs,” its “wide range of technologies.” You ask for Mars, but that brings everything else in its wake, it seems: nuclear boosters, a Space Shuttle, huge space stations. The same old vision von Braun has peddled since the 1950s – even though you didn’t need a space station to get to the Moon. Your hidden agendas are not, frankly, very well hidden. Why can’t you learn to prioritize?’
Muldoon said angrily, ‘The Task Group is asking for a mandate to begin the colonization of the Solar System. And to secure the future of the human race, just as Kennedy is saying. What could be higher priority than that?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Agronski snapped. ‘We’re a country at war, Colonel Muldoon. And the war is a hemorrhage of money, resources, national morale.’
‘Sure,’ Muldoon said. ‘And Apollo is going to end up having cost as much as it takes to keep the war going for another twelve months. What a price to pay.’
Agronski ignored that. ‘The budget just isn’t big enough to do everything you want. You don’t have to be a White House insider to see that. And the public mood is against you too. I don’t suppose you fly boys have heard of a thing called Earth Day, planned by the environmentalists in a couple of weeks’ time –’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it, damn it.’
‘Clean-ups. Marches. Teach-ins. That’s where the public is going to focus in the coming decade, Colonel Muldoon: on our problems here on Earth, not more of your stunts in space.’
‘Maybe so. But Agnew chaired the Space Task Group, not NASA,’ Michaels growled.
Agronski ploughed on. ‘it’s time you people dropped the idea that you’re some kind of heroic super-agency. During Apollo you thought you were the Manhattan Project. Well, now you’re a service agency with a limited budget. And that’s what you have to learn to live with …’
Michaels knew Agronski had a point.
In Michaels’s humble opinion, the current NASA Administrator, Thomas O. Paine,