TCR

The White House Plumbers bugged  the wrong  phone  during   the break-in. It was  just  a staffer's  phone  mostly  used   to order  Chinese  food, not  the one  used by  the Democratic Par- ty chairman. That one was clear on the other side of the office in a locked room.

The  resulting  transcripts  were  useless  and  the   Attorney General, loath to piss away  $89,000 in diverted  and laundered campaign funds, ordered a second break-in to square things away because the President  himself  insisted  they keep  collecting whatever information they could on his political enemies, around the clock.

Daddy got his Washington team back together. Spook told the same group of burglars he used  the first time  to fly back  up from Miami. It took two  days to  get everyone  into place  with the right equipment, mostly  off-the-shelf stuff  that couldn't  be traced, but there was no written plan and no rehearsal.

This astonished Shutterbug, a semi-retired CIA operative who had captained a boat for over  three hundred missions  to communist Cuba (some of which  were extraordinary  renditions of  men who might have been  his friends had he dared to  lift their hoods). But his friend  the  Realtor,  a fellow  Bay  of Pigs  veteran, practically worshiped the ground Spook walked on.

The Quiet Man walked nonchalantly through the front door of the Watergate office complex, signed in,  took the elevator  to the top floor, entered  the stairwell,  then used  masking tape  to cheat the  locks on every door  all the way down  to the parking garage levels.

A private security  guard  named Frank  Wills  found the  tape, because his first task was  always to check the  basement doors for tampering when  he came  on to  his shift  at midnight. He pulled the tape off and called his supervisor, who  told him to check the other doors and call back in fifteen minutes.

But what Frank did instead was go get some fast food across the street with a young lady intern who was pulling a late-nighter.

When the actual burglary commenced,  it lasted for  about seven minutes before they came  back to their  base of  operations in Room 419 of the Watergate Hotel  and told Daddy the masking tape on the  B-2  garage level  door was missing and  the  door  was locked tight.

The Locksmith  and The Goon offered  to look for another   lock to pick but  the Realtor and the Spook got cold feet  and  told Daddy they wanted to abort the mission.

The Photographer said he was ready  to do whatever Daddy decid- ed to do. Daddy decided to cancel the evolution and try  again two weeks later.

So the Quiet  Man  made  his rounds  again,  but  this time  he removed the  tape from all the  doors. By the time Frank  Wills finished his hamburger and actually did what his supervisor told him to do (check the other doors), there was no tape. He figured it had just been some lazy workman who taped the B-2 level door open that one time to save a few seconds of hassle fumbling for keys while carrying something big. Wills forgot about the entire episode.

On July 1 the team  returned one more  time to the  sixth floor offices of the DNC at the Watergate complex, bugged the correct phone, photographed ten rolls  of film  of the  Realtor holding documents in his blue-gloved hands, and even made off with some blank stationary with  Democratic Party  letterhead.

What they didn't find was  evidence that Cuban President  Fidel Castro was giving money to the Democratic Party, which is  what they hoped to find from the git-go. But that was okay,  because President Nixon's master of dirty tricks, Donald Segretti, sim- ply used the letterhead they stole and  the photographs of var- ious signatures to manufacture the "evidence" they needed.

Tactically, there was  little  profit in  any  of this  illegal activity. All it really  did do was  turn a historic  49-state victory in November 1972  into an  even more historic  50-state victory. But having avoided a  messy second term scandal, Nix- on  was free to bring about what  he called the  New   American Revolution,  making  the  executive branch   nearly  omnipotent with  a cabinet whose  heads were supremely  loyal to him. But his notion of an imperial presidency bit America in the ass  in October 1973 when the Yom  Kippur War spiraled out of   anyone's control, even the control of an Imperial President.

Rewind to early Saturday  morning, June 17,  1972.

A  half  hour  after midnight  Dory, Jana  and  Lilith   walked across the street from the  Howard  Johnsons hotel and  entered the  parking  garage  of  the Watergate  hotel/office  complex. Dory led  Jana and Lilith one level  down, then  walked  toward the door leading into the  building. It was  locked,   because Frank Wills  had removed the tape when he came on his shift.

DORY: [President Nixon sent some burglars here  tonight. Well, not the  President exactly, but men working  for him  did. If the  burglars  get caught, there will be no  nuclear  war  next year. He will be too preoccupied by the  scandal  to  escalate things]

LILITH: [Why would this burglary become a Presidential scandal?]

DORY: [Nixon will abuse his power  and try to cover it up,  and that by itself will become an even bigger scandal]

LILITH: [So why don't we just call the police?]

JANA: [If we do that, they'll get away. They've got a  lookout posted in our hotel. In the room right next to ours, in  fact]

DORY: [I've got another plan. Here's what we're going to do in- stead]

That was Jana's signal to function in her role as the Ghost.

Jana phased  through the door to the other side and  pushed  it open. Then she tore two or three inches of masking tape off a roll she carried in her purse and retaped the lock.

After that Dory, Jana and Lilith went back across the street to their room and waited.

At about one  thirty the Watergate security  guard Frank  Wills made his rounds again. He pushed the door open a second time and saw another strip of tape along the edge in the same place after he had removed the  first. He realized burglars were  actively working the building.

He pulled  the tape again, but he didn't go through  the  hotel searching for them like Dory wanted him to do. Instead, he went to the  nearest phone to call the police, which  was  precisely what Dory told Lilith she did not want to do, precisely because they had posted a watch.

At 1:52 AM Lilith saw a crappy car pull up across  the  street. Two informally dressed long-haired men got  out of the  vehicle and entered the  hotel. At the time Lilith did not realize they were plainclothes  cops   using an unmarked car. More to  the point, Alfred Baldwin suspected nothing while he  watched  from the balcony right next door.

Baldwin was more than a little nervous and he  felt like he had to  say something  to explain  to Lilith  why he  was  out   on his balcony watching the Watergate.

ALFRED: [Beautiful night, isn't it?]

LILITH: [You have no idea]

It was  getting late, but after a few more minutes there was  a growing  police presence at  the Watergate complex. Mr. Baldwin had a walkie talkie in his room. It was turned down, but Lilith heard static and "They got us". Her funny neighbor had to check out quite suddenly. Dory and Jana came outside to join her.

LILITH: [Did we do well, after all?]

Dory looked dreamy for a few seconds.

DORY: [Oh yes. This bust right here isn't  enough to   do  in the   President,  at least until after  the election,  but  he's going to  try to cover it up, and he's going to  botch the  cov- er-up, and that will nail him in the end. In about two years he  will have no choice but to quit his job or be impeached.

LILITH: [What about the war in the Middle-East next year?]

DORY: [We still  get that,  and Israel  wins, barely,  and only after  you  give Sharon  your  intel  again. But it   doesn't  go  nuclear. No one goes nuclear, in fact, until well into  the next century]

JANA: [Not far enough out for our purposes, I suppose]

DORY: [We get more breathing room, but  the space program  just sort of peters out into the odd science mission here and there. The good part is the Cold War suddenly fades away, say in about another twenty years. America wins.]

JANA: [With  all that  going  for them, why do  they  kill  the space program?]

DORY: [It   costs  too  much  and  there's  no   more   rivalry with  the  communist world to  conquer space. Oh, they  don't  kill it dead, they  just switch  to  sending  robots to  do   it instead,  take pictures of  all the planets,  so people  can see them  on  their little TV telephones. That doesn't do us  much good, does it?]

LILITH: [Perhaps we should use reverse psychology. If they run into us up there and  we  tell them they might as well wrap  up  their space program, they will most likely do precisely the  op- posite]

At 5:26  PM EST on December 13, 1972, six  days  after  leaving Earth and during their third  day on  the surface of  the Moon, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt  made the final  moonwalk of Apollo  17.

Gene Cernan  had flown to the Moon once before, on  Apollo  10. That flight was  with  his commander  from  the Gemini  9  mis- sion, Tom Stafford. On Apollo 10 Gene flew a lunar  module  to within  a  tantalyzing nine miles  of the Moon's  surface,  then returned to altitude, leaving the glory of the first landing to Neil and Buzz flying Apollo 11.

He wasn't   exactly  tight buds  with   his  partner,  Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who had  bumped Gene's pal Joe Engle  from the flight so NASA could say the program was  shifting from hot dog military test pilots trained to do  science to professional scientists trained to fly.

Like the two preceding moonwalks of the Apollo 17 mission,  the third one  was to last about seven hours. But it would  differ from the  first two  EVAs  in  a  very important  respect,  not counting the trivial fact that it was about an hour late getting started.

Dory had been following live television broadcasts of the mis- sion  from only  a few  miles away  at Taurus  Base. Now  she followed the mission with  the television in  her truck  as she drove down the flanks of North Massif to reach the floor of the Taurus-Littrow valley.

So many television stations on Earth were airing  the  moonwalk the only trick was to pick out one station with a selective re- ceiver.

The landing site of Apollo 17  was on the southeastern  edge of Mare  Serenitatis where  an asteroid  hit the  Moon nearly  four billion years ago.

The unimaginable violence of the collision created a basin four hundred miles   across. The rim of Serenitatis is  a  ring  of mountains which have collapsed in some places. This results in a corona of  long valleys  like Taurus-Littrow,  aligned   toward the center of the Mare.

The pyroclastic flows that filled the "Sea of Serenity" had been accompanied by lava fountains which covered  the area with tiny glass beads bearing  bright  colors  such as  orange  and  yel- low.

The outer, southeastern end  of the valley  butts up  against a large mountain.

In the run-up  to Apollo  17 NASA  took  to calling  this moun- tain  the  East  Massif, and  the name  stuck. In  the  south, there is a narrow canyon that leads to yet  another valley. The west side of this canyon is the sheer wall of South Massif.

Crossing north to the other side of East Massif is another can- yon leading  to still another  valley. Beyond this  canyon  is the so-called Sculptured  Hills, and to the west  of those hills is North Massif. Between North and South Massif is  a narrower exit valley.

This valley is about four miles wide, partially blocked by Fam- ily Mountain and a sharp fault ridge three hundred  feet  high. The eastern foot of that sharp ridge forms a gentle ramp leading up and around the western slope of North Massif  to some rugged back country.

In that   area, where it would be too   difficult  for  landing craft to safely touch down, the B'nei Hannebim built Taurus Base from a deep "cut-and-cover" tunnel, with copies of the Staff of Melchizedek doing the cutting. A layer of lunar  soil was care- fully groomed to disguise the ceiling.

Dory drove her  truck  to the  current  position of  the astro- nauts. There was a large, dark, shattered boulder wedged in the foot  of  North Massif  where geologist Harrison   Schmitt  was gathering samples. She was careful not to run over their fragile electric Rover parked nearby.

That  Boeing-made  Lunar   Rover  contained   a  built-in navi- gation system that kept track  of every turn of  the wheels and calculated the  distance back to the Lunar Module. This was  a safety feature. If the Rover became inoperative, the astronauts would have to walk to the LM.

This  system  used Intel's new   four-bit  microprocessor,  the 4004, which was essentially a computer on a single silicon chip. As the 1970s progressed, this innovation  would undergo further advances and  become  the  heart of  the  Micro,  sparking  the Information Revolution.

The  boulder  being examined  by Schmitt, which  was   in  five separate pieces, lay  beneath a  long furrow  of dents  showing it's recent  plunge down the  face of the mountain. Apollo 15 Command Module pilot Alfred Worden had photographed the area in 1971 from orbit. Using a   large   panoramic   camera,  Worden captured photographic evidence of what looked suspiciously like tracks of wheeled vehicles  and  bright  debris  that  did  not resemble stones at all. But analysts, making inquiries of  the Russians, concluded the anomalies were from natural  processes. They  said  the tracks  and other debris  were   probably  from boulders that had rolled  down the  face of  North Massif  in a "recent" (less than 20 million  years) moonquake.

The truth was, Worden had found  evidence of Taurus Base   con- struction, but the floor of the valley was pristine.

Not  even  Dory,  with  her gift (or  curse  as  she  sometimes thought  it was) could sense  a significant divergence  of   the present  timeline. She pulled her truck to a stop, pumped  the atmosphere down  to a near  vacuum, then  popped the door  open to wait for the boys.

Cernan and Schmitt hadn't heard Dory roll in, of  course. And they were so busy it was sixteen minutes before they looked  up from   their  tasks  and noticed Dory's  truck parked   next  to them. Both of the astronauts  uttered sharp expletives  and the live feed was hurriedly cut.

CBS  cut  to  Walter Cronkite  for  commentary. The blackout would last  for  nearly  an  hour  as  NASA  claimed  technical difficulties. Dory probed her own  future. Time was "lazy"  as she   well knew. You had to kick it in the pants to change  it. Without this  inertia,  this reluctance  built into  time  Dory would be a boiling nexus of change. Everything she did, no mat- ter how small,  would make all of reality  bifurcate,  even  as her  own  personal  consciousness,  her single  point  of  view, persisted in just one track.

The Academy discovered this was true because the number of pos- sible things  that  could happen was limited the  area  of  the sphere enclosing  them, rather than the volume. This trimmed things drastically.

But Dory noted,  to her dismay, that even  her interference  in this  final  Apollo mission  didn't change things   sufficiently to prevent it from being the final mission. She saw that  NASA would simply swear the astronauts and  flight control  crew  to silence,  and  cover it all up. It was as though the  timeline itself conspired to maintain itself.

Dory  waved for the men to  come inside. There was  plenty  of room for at  least one astronaut to be seated  next to her, even fully garbed as they were. The sun illuminated her face and they could see they were dealing with a young woman. Cernan described the situation to Houston.

A phone call  was made  to a contact  in the  Soviet Union ask- ing  if  they  were operating  in the  same  area   and  didn't bother to  tell anybody. The Russian thought the  American joke was in particularly  bad taste. "Is not enough  you win  Luna race?" he said. "Now you rub it on?"

Cernan and Schmitt watched their oxygen steadily spend down and gently  prodded Houston they were  still waiting  for  instruc- tions. At length C. Gordon Fullerton, the CAPCOM for that phase of the mission, said Cernan could approach the truck, and  per- haps even enter it. But he ordered Schmitt to wait outside and be prepared to hustle back in the Rover  to the  Lunar  Module, which  was then about four  miles away.

So Cernan  walked over to the  truck and performed  a  complete circuit around it. There was only the one woman seated  inside. This woman was wearing a vacuum suit, and she was waving at him, motioning  for  him  to come  inside. So Gene,  now   free  to oblige, did so. She gestured for him to close the door and when he did, she began to  re-pressurize the  cab of the  truck with pure oxygen, to just 3 psi.

When the  dial read the appropriate  pressure Dory removed  her helmet  and   invited  Cernan  to do  the   same. The  sharp spent-gunpowder smell of the lunar regolith assaulted her nose. She wrinkled it

DORY: [Do  people ever imagine what the moon smells  like? Oh, no]

But Dory was used to it, and after two  lunar EVAs so was  Cer- nan. When he removed his own  helmet his first words   to  her were that she sounded like an  American.

Dory looked  him   over and saw Gene  was  rather   gaunt,  and thought it was a  shame a man in his thirties was  going  gray.

DORY: [I was born on the high plains, Commander Cernan. Smack dab in the middle of the country, or close enough as never mind. My name is Doriel Shybear, but you can call me Dory. My friends call me Dory]

Cernan's ice seemed  to melt  a little.

GENE: [Then forget 'Commander'. I'm Gene]

DORY: [It's an honor to meet you, Gene. I represent the  B'nei Hannebim Historical Institute. Sometimes we call  it B-Han  HI, but mostly it's just the Academy. Nothing mega. We're based out of Seattle  but we  have  a  few satellite  campuses  scattered around the world, in Israel and whatnot. And believe it or not, we even have a campus up here. We've been watching you fellows drop by over the last few years, but  this is  the  first  time you've come within driving distance. I couldn't resist   dash- ing over for a  chit-chat, as brief as it must be]

GENE: [So tell me Dory, what is your Academy doing on the moon?]

DORY: [We see human history  as  a work  of  art, and  we   are making  an endeavor to perfect it. Now humanity  leaving  the Earth and  spreading  out into the universe is much  closer  to perfection  than staying home with all our eggs in  one  basket, to use the cliche, especially when you consider  the   powerful weapons  we have now,  and  the  sheer insanity  behind  making them]

Dory  showed  him   a binder  containing  many   documents  and photographs.

DORY: [The names and faces  in this dossier will probably  mean nothing to you, but they will mean a great deal to certain peo- ple in the government. Please accept this package and run it up your  chain  of command]

Cernan took   the  documents,  and  as he   did,  he   searched Dory's face. He really wanted  to  like her.

GENE: [Why are you giving this to me?]

DORY: [Think   of it as a list of  serious grievances  we  have with the United  States  going  back for  more  than a  hundred years]

GENE: [I feel like  I've  stepped into  the  middle  of an  old argument]

Cernan flipped  through  the binder  to briefly sample the  in- formation. Old argument indeed. Some of the documents, going by the age-yellowed paper and the dates given on them, went back to the Reconstruction period.

DORY: [If  you have  the time during your  flight  home,  Gene, please take a deeper look at that material. I think you'll see why we  didn't find it a good idea to get permission  from  the government of the United States before coming up here and doing what we have done]

GENE: [Setting aside whatever you've done up  here, Dory,  what have you done back home?]

DORY: [We call 'em pranks. You know that  Watergate   thicket the President has gotten himself in? That was us. Unlucky for him, lucky   for  everyone else. It  prevents  something  much worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis]

Within the  binder were  five sets of  color  photographs  that drew  Commander   Cernan's   interest,   with   the   negatives clipped to them. He pulled them out and asked what they  were.

DORY: [Images of each one of the previous Apollo landing sites, taken very  soon after departure. Note  the  missing   ascent stage in each photo. We thought NASA might want a photographic record]

Cernan became quiet and put the photos back  inside the binder. He seemed to grow a little melancholy. Competing with the Soviet Union now seemed like a farting in a hurricane. Dory  sensed this  and tried to  brighten him  up.

DORY: [It's twelve days before Christmas. I've got  a  hundred and fifty of your Earth  pounds of presents  for  Mr.  Harrison Schmitt. Rocks from right here at the North Massif,  taken  at  depths up to six hundred feet below the surface. There's  also sulfur from   a channel we call  Yellow  Rille. Documentation provided  with the samples have  original location and   depth. We  don't boast  any trained  geologists but  the  Academy  has extensive experience doing archaeology in the Middle-East. Some of the same principles apply. Hopefully all this will compensate for the precious minutes you're losing talking to me]

GENE: [And why are you  talking to  me, Dory? Is this  another prank?]

She smiled and shook her head.

DORY: [Basically, it all boils down to this, Gene. You may  be impressed that we got to the moon long before Apollo 11, but the way we get here takes a strange shortcut. We specialize in some things but not in others. Your lunar lander out  there,  even your  mothership  orbiting  overhead, we  don't  have  anything like those. So  we were willing  to forget   all  the  dirty laundry when America was on the fast  track to  coming up  here and possibly teaming up with us. We could have built  something together. But in the end the whole Apollo program was just  so you  could stick it in the eye of the USSR. The interest   of the American people started  to wane right after Apollo  11. You know I'm not lying, Gene. There's your prank. The space  race was just a big  Cold War stunt and after  you 'won' it  started to look like spending a lot of money  for  nothing. Now to  be  fair,  the Soviet  Union  lost interest as well, right after you 'won']

Dory noticed a feeling  of well-being  that bordered  on giddi- ness and looked at the cabin pressure. It had crept past 4 psi of  pure  oxygen. Cernan's spacesuit was still   running,  and pushing fresh air through his collar ring into  the interior of the  truck. She bled it down.

DORY: [Then Nixon   canceled   Apollo  20   and  ordered    the reconfiguration  of  the third  stage  as  Skylab. After that Nixon even canceled Apollo 19 to shift funding to the  Shuttle. It seemed to us that America wasn't looking outward anymore. So we visited the Soviets and told them there was a hard  currency waiting for what they  had to offer, or potentially had to  of- fer. So the moon race is  a variation of the  story of the tor- toise and  the hare, with the  hare putting one toe   over  the finish line and turning back. But the tortoise is  closing  in  now,  and he's  bringing a nuclear  third stage. What did  you do with your  third stage, Gene?]

GENE: [We let it crash onto the moon]

DORY: [That's right, and one more reason we're glad things  are winding up with NASA. We live and work here, you know]

GENE: [We didn't know  that,  Dory. And it was  for   seismic research]

DORY: [Okay, Gene, but dig this: The Soviet third stage is fired three times, once for Earth orbit,  once for translunar  injec- tion, and once more for the return. Their vehicle is that third stage and a lander. They're coming down with a crew of four and the whole  crew gets to land. So they're doing it after  you, but they're doing it better. Now if the only reason you're going to the moon these days is for  rocks, I'm sure the Soviets  can sell them to you for much cheaper]

At that Dory  drew a  sudden breath  of  air and  paused brief- ly. What  she had just said  to Gene Cernan  were   the  magic words. It took another Sputnik moment to get  America to react, but react America did, or rather, she shortly would. The purpose of Dory's visit to the floor of the Taurus Valley was fulfilled. Nothing, absolutely   nothing  drove  technological  innovation faster than war, even  the faux war-by-proxy  of the  Cold One. Dory had rekindled it. Reality had diverged and the Moon  Race was  back on.

DORY: [I can imagine all of this must come as a terrible  shock to you,  Gene,  because  your  entire remarkable   career   has been building up to this mission, but that's the raw  truth  so there  you  go. The bottom line is that NASA does not  need  to follow up your flight with Apollo 18]

GENE: [Then,   Dory, I would say  you are very  much  in  luck. Apollo 18 has indeed been canceled. Dr. Schmitt out there was supposed to be on that flight, but he bumped one of my  buddies to be the Lunar Module pilot on this one, to my great displeas- ure. This mission truly is the last one]

DORY: [I'm   sorry about  your friend, Gene. I didn't   know that. We've been disconnected from things Earthside,  just  a bit]

GENE: [How did you get up here anyway?]

DORY: [It's a way nobody else has thought of doing yet, but even so, as I said, it's a shortcut. Easy ways always make you weak]

GENE: [I'm not sure I follow]

DORY: [Okay, suppose you're Captain Kirk at Starfleet Command, and you need to go to the moon. Do you ride the starship Enterprise to get out here?]

GENE: [No, you just beam up]

DORY: [Bingo, Gene. That's about as close as I can get to tell- ing you what's going on]

GENE: [Okay, but what I don't understand is how  you are  will- ing to work with the Soviets. You told me you were born in Amer- ica]

DORY: [Why would that be a problem, Gene?]

GENE: [Because they're...communists!]

DORY: [Actually,Gene,  they're  just    socialists. Communism is  the theoretical end state. People can espouse  utopianism, and claim to be utopians, all while still living in  a crapsack country. We're negotiating with the  Union of  Soviet   Social- ist  Republics. And frankly, competing theories  of  economics bores  the hell out of  me. Yet wars are fought over them. Be- sides, who owns your moon buggy?]

G

GENE: [The American people do]

DORY: [You see? Socialism. That dog-eat-dog every-man-for-him- self and the devil-take-the-hindmost stuff doesn't really  work all that well up here, any more than  it works on the  aircraft carriers you  served on. The American  model  even  makes   it  worse,   because  the taxpayer's money gets shoveled out to  the lowest bidder, or even to an  incompetent contractor  who  hap- pens to be in  a district where  somebody needs  votes. That's how  the   Space Shuttle  is going to bite NASA's  ass  someday. But, time marches on,  Gene, and your backpack,  which you have kept running by the  way, won't  run forever. That was pretty much all  I wanted to say. Thanks for taking this time out  of your   tait schedule  to meet  with me. I think we   will  meet again on  Earth in the near future]

GENE: [I would like that  very much, Dory. In the meantime,  I would   ask  a favor from you]

DORY: [Anything, Gene. Just name it]

GENE: [My beautiful ten year old  little girl's  name is Tracy. I wrote her initials with my finger in the ground near the Chal- lenger. I did it  far enough  away that the  blast of  our  as- cent won't erase it, but now that  I know you're here  I'm wor- ried that new footprints might erase her initials]

DORY: [I can tell you  love your  daughter very  much. I prom- ise no one, not even the Soviets, will ever come near the Chal- lenger. Your Tracy's   initials   won't  last   forever,    of  course, due  to micrometeorites,  but close  enough. A  million years? That's much better than anything you could do for   her Earthside. Take care, Gene, and have a safe journey home]

They  put  their helmets on  once more and made   sure  of  the seals before Dory pumped the air out and motioned  for Gene  to go  ahead and leave. When the men returned to the  LM  Harrison Schmitt snapped  a photo  of Cernan. He looked  haggard,  ex- hausted,  and perhaps just a little bit haunted. To his mind the young lady  he met out there with her sheaf of  papers  and bundle  of rocks  and all  the  things she  said  spelled  slow but  certain doom for NASA's  entire manned space program,  not just the moon shots.

But true to her words it was not the last time they would meet.