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culmination of various missteps that had been going on for decades. Even the successful first manned flight to Mars couldn’t change the fact that NASA had become a symbol of the past, of the weaknesses and lack of vision that so entrenched this country for years, and that the terrorists took advantage of. All those things happened before the reforms that ended bureaucratic practices. And those reforms made it possible for decisive men to take charge and save this great democracy from its enemies, foreign and domestic.” This was the official version of history these days, and something Ramon had heard before. He’d never quite become comfortable with those views, even if his own success had been built upon that of the reformed American government. And whatever he felt, he still couldn’t see the relevance to the momentous efforts ahead. NASA was long dead, and to gather the expertise necessary for this, they would have to look elsewhere.
    “ The truth about Devastator is only known to a few people in this country, and for the time being, let’s keep it that way. However, there are others who are already moving on this. As mentioned already, the Chinese and Russians are cooperating on a scheme to divert the course of the planet. And to no avail. They will fail miserably, have no doubt about it, and when they realize that, they will see that they have spent all their resources and gained nothing. The other great powers are somewhat of a mystery to us; we know that things are stirring in India, and they have extracted most of their best scientists that were working abroad, in the U.S., Europe, and South Africa. Clearly they intend to mount some kind of effort, we just don’t know what. With their security policies, the Indian flow of information is close to zero. As for Brazil, we think they might do something similar to us, but they are being unusually tight lipped about it. The only ones we currently have an open channel to are the Europeans. ESA already have a team working on planetary habitability, trying to find a viable target planet, and we expect that they will soon be a full partner in our venture.” The science advisor nodded, as did several others. They all knew that when NASA was disbanded and the study of space generally fell into disgrace, astronomy was one field of research that had lost influence and support in the United States. ESA had gone the other way, increasing their funding of astronomy programs, and were years ahead. Without their cooperation, any American mission would for all practical purposes be blind.
    “ The one thing I am skeptical about when it comes to the Europeans is the fact that they have very differing views on what to do with dissidents. There are elements in ESA that have been vocal enemies of our reforms, as if they had any right to concern themselves with our business. Clearly, they will have to be excluded from any joint projects. We don’t want their destructive views to spread.” The president let the sentence hang in the air, while silently challenging anyone to disagree. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken up about the kind of institutionalized paranoia the president seemed to display, so no one said anything. President Andrews, satisfied with the silence, continued.
    “ All right, so we need to maintain a level of security here. We will not share everything with the Europeans, but to obtain their cooperation, we need to reserve some seats on the spaceship for them. And we will make sure that their candidates go through the same selection process as our people, so that dissidents and leftists are properly weeded out. There have to be some of their candidates we can approve of; they’re not all bad, thank God. As for our American candidates, we’ll perform thorough background checks to make sure we only send loyal people of like mind to build a new world. That same standard also has to apply to everyone working on the project, and especially the ones in