He looked up as the control room hatch opened. Jones came in from the astronomy section.
"Morning, commander," he said. "You guys had breakfast yet? Mess closes in 30 minutes." Kevin shook his head.
"We're not hungry," Bert filled in.
"You think you've got nerves?" Jones chuckled. "I just looked in on Mark. He's sleeping like a baby. You wouldn't think the biggest day of his life is three hours away."
"McKelvie's coming up to kibitz," Morrow said.
"McKelvie!"
"The one and only," Bert said. "Here, read all about it."
He handed over the morning facsimile torn off the machine when the station hurtled over New England at 18,000 miles an hour. The upper half of the sheet bore a picture of the white-maned senator. Clearly etched on his face were the lines of too many half-rigged elections, too many compromises.
Beneath the picture were quotes from his speech the night before.
"As chairman of your congressional watchdog committee," the senator had said, "I'll see that there's no more waste and corruption on this space project. For three years they've been building a rocket—the moon rocket, they call it—out there at the space station.