“You’ve read all of his notes,” Noelle said. “Do you think he truly grasped the significance of this place?”
Jack stared past her at the old ship and the curious world beyond. “Do we?”
The flight from Brussels into Moscow on an Aeroflot 777 had been considerably less comfortable than the first leg of Anatoly Rhyzov’s return from Houston on a United jet of the same type. Perhaps it was the Americans just hoping to give him a good send-off, but there was no denying the business class seat Owen had secured for him was far superior to the cramped coach seating he’d just left. Barely three hours stuffed into a middle seat between two other travelers, one a foreign service functionary and the other most likely FSB, and it had left him drained.
Rhyzov showed his passport to the customs officer at entry control, who stamped it with an uninterested grunt and waved him on. His two traveling companions remained on either arm.
The drive from Sheremetyevo Airport to his old apartment block passed silently. Neither of his escorts seemed particularly open to conversation, even when he asked about the inevitable debriefings. “Later.”
They’d at least had the decency to help bring his bags upstairs, he liked to think out of a lingering cultural respect for their elders. Rhyzov opened his door to find his apartment much as he’d left it. Perhaps even cleaner, an unambiguous message that they were paying close attention to him. His study was especially noteworthy: It was organized as if someone had gone through his shelves and drawers and left them better than they’d found them. Still not as bad as it had been with KGB and GRU where they’d have just as likely taken him straight to an interrogation room.
It all seemed cold to him. He had no delusions about being welcomed as some kind of state hero, but perhaps if the Americans had been able to somehow reactivate Arkangel and send it Earthward . . .
Bah. Just as well. If the Kremlin wanted to hold him responsible for NASA’s fickle priorities, then they couldn’t have been that interested in getting the vessel back in the first place. It was clear now that they would have preferred he’d kept the oath of secrecy taken on his first day with the project. Technically it was still in effect.
After a lifetime of living in a paranoid culture, he still didn’t understand it any better. He knew how to navigate it, but that was different. The need to control hadn’t abated so much since the Communists fell, it had only become better focused. The nomenklatura had realized it was better to let the people find ways to make money; the better they could exploit it. Get in the way of that and you’d quickly find yourself under someone’s gaze.
Rhyzov suspected it after he drank his first cup of tea the next morning, when his bowels began to stir. A younger, fitter man might have held out longer. The nausea came in waves until it soon overwhelmed him and he crumpled onto the floor.
He didn’t question—couldn’t, really—when the men came into his apartment soon after. It was interesting that they put on gloves and respirators before lifting him into his bed.
This was how they’d planned it, then. Had they put it in the tea itself, or in the sugar? As he struggled to recall the effects of alpha radiation and the half-life of polonium, he began to drift in and out of consciousness. His eyes settled on a collection of family pictures by his bedside: his grandson, Mikhail Ivanovich, lost years ago to an auto accident with his parents.
“Come, Misha, before we are caught in the rain.” Anatoly Rhyzov held out his hand, impatiently waving his rambunctious grandson along. The tyke loved the outdoors; could barely contain himself once free of the confines of his parents’ apartment.
“Two more minutes, Grandfather,” the child bargained. Rhyzov looked into his pleading eyes and wondered how his poor mother could ever prevail over their syrupy brown.
Rhyzov sighed and pulled his collar close against the wind. “Very well. Two minutes,” he said, tapping his wristwatch. “And you know what a stickler I am for time.”
“Yes, Grandfather. But first you must catch me!” he laughed, and took off running into the birch forest. Rhyzov was about to give chase when the woods disappeared, replaced with a blinding shaft of light that emerged from nowhere and everywhere at once. “Misha?”
“Yes, Grandfather. Come.”
Penny Stratton knew what the call was for even as she tapped the notification on her desk phone. “Yes?”
“Dr. Cheever is here for your ten o’clock.”
She held her breath and counted. Five, four, three . . . “Send her in, please.”
The Planetary Protection Officer strode in as if she’d already been measuring the drapes in Penny’s office when no one was looking. “Ms. Stratton,” she said coolly.
“Jackie.” Penny waved her to a seat, noticing her hair bun was pulled especially tight today. Serious talk, then. “How was Houston?”
“I met that Harriman fellow.”
This promised to be even more unpleasant than she’d expected. “You mean Owen,” Penny said, annoyed at her obvious downplaying. “The Magellan program manager.”
“Yes. And for being in charge of a crewed exploration mission, he seems woefully ignorant of the PPO’s mandate.”
“I think ‘ignorant’ is a little unfair.”
“Then his recklessness is intentional?”
“It’s not reckless. Dealing with the unexpected and improvising solutions are just part of the job.”
“The crew came into contact with complex organic materials during the surface EVA,” Cheever reminded her. “These aren’t simple hydrocarbons. They’re nucleotides. We could be interfering with fundamental, evolutionary processes on a world we know very little about.”
“Noelle Hoover bringing a few kilos’ worth of ice balls back from Pluto isn’t going to stunt the growth of a new species. Now I understand your concern—”
“Do you?”
Penny crossed her arms and shot a glare hard enough to cut steel. “Even us knuckle-dragging pilots can comprehend a little bit of science if you talk slowly enough. It kind of went with the territory when I was an astronaut.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Cheever backtracked. “But this is a very serious matter that I don’t think you fully appreciate.”
“Try me.”
“Magellan is a Category Five, restricted return mission. We have strict protocols for limiting exposure, both for protecting the local environment and our own people.”
“Yes, and you’re aware that there’s no possible way to get a do-over of your office’s approval process for a mission that’s underway. We can’t let our astronauts just sit there an extra six months while we manage the paperwork down here. Owen and Roy Hoover made a command decision.”
“Like when Hoover ignored the return order? It was the wrong call. We may have hopelessly contaminated a developing world and exposed a crew to unknown contaminants.”
“Or we may be bringing back hard evidence of the origin of life on Earth. You’re taking an overly generous view of PPO’s mandate. This isn’t Starfleet, and there is no Prime Directive.”
“So the danger of back contamination doesn’t bother you?”
“I’m confident they’ll be able to keep the samples secure. We’re considering keeping them aboard Magellan in Earth orbit for further study.”
“And the crew? They’ve been exposed to the same materials on that Russian spacecraft. We have to consider them contaminated. We can’t allow them to come back to Earth without understanding the dangers.”
“What are you proposing, then?” Penny challenged her. “We’re not going to just strand four astronauts in orbit based on your worst-case assumption.”
Dr. Cheever paused a beat and smoothed her blouse. “No, but we will need to institute a strict quarantine protocol. We can have them sterilize the Dragon capsule and remain quarantined in it for the return leg. It’s possible to control Magellan from there, correct?”
Penny couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “Technically yes, but it’s almost a year back to
Earth. Ever been inside one of those things?”
“There must be some room for compromise,” she said through a tight smile. It must have killed her to appear so accommodating.
“I’m not sure what that would be,” Penny said. “With the delta-v they have left in the tanks, the ship can only go so fast. There’s also the issue of logistics: They’ve got to get food from somewhere. They simply can’t button themselves up in Puffy and ride out the rest of the trip. For that matter, they’ll have to bring Dr. Hoover’s surface samples aboard at some point before reentry.”
What Penny had imagined should be a fait accompli left Dr. Cheever oddly unmoved. She was silent, considering Penny’s position with a curiously arched eyebrow.
It didn’t take Penny long to understand. “You’ve got to be kidding. You’d have them leave all that behind?”
“Given how many precursors we’ve discovered throughout the solar system, there are many in the agency who believe it is well past time to reconsider the scope of Planetary Protection,” Cheever said. “That perhaps we need to put more of an emphasis on limiting any potential contamination of existing biospheres.”
She should have known. The “no footprints” crowd had been getting more vocal, and felt that now was their time to move. “It’s not a biosphere,” Penny countered. “It’s a meat locker. A freezer. It might even be God’s own seed vault.”
“In which case we have an even greater responsibility to protect and preserve it,” Cheever said magnanimously. “If you believe in that sort of thing,” she added, rather less so.
“You’d be surprised,” Penny said in a tone as icy as Pluto itself. “I’ll remind you that PPO controls are for mission planning. Mission execution is still up the boys and girls in Houston. That brings us back to where we started.”
“For now. I’m sure we’ll be discussing this further, after the elections.”
Penny eyed her suspiciously. “You know something I don’t?”
Keeping that tight smile that didn’t come near her eyes, Cheever only answered with a curt dip of her head before excusing herself. “Good day, Ms. Stratton.”
Penny dug her nails into her palm and wished she had a punching bag in her office.
33
Mission Day 340
As with too many things in Washington culture, Penny Stratton learned of her pending dismissal from a Capitol Hill gossip site.
A national election defined by economic turmoil almost guaranteed the incumbents would be tossed out and this year proved no different. Normally a change of the guard at NASA wouldn’t draw much attention, but everything that had recently come out about Pluto and the Russians and maybe even solving the riddle of life’s origins had cranked up the public’s interest to overwhelm the usual political noise.
The incoming administration’s transition team was already burrowing into the space agency, loudly making it known that they were arriving with a vastly different set of priorities. They were remarkably effective at sidelining anyone who saw things differently, aided by career cronies already in place and eagerly awaiting their preferred leader: Dr. Jacqueline Cheever, Planetary Protection Officer and soon-to-be NASA Administrator.
So there it was. Penny could just about feel the blade turn between her shoulders, except she’d seen this coming. The outgoing President had been accommodating to the point of becoming obsequious. She discreetly began to bring home the more cherished of any personal items still in her office the day after the election, not waiting for the executive service’s moving crews to come in January. They’d just screw it up anyway.
Jackie Cheever was certain to pull the plug on Magellan and the whole Human Outer Planet Exploration project, no doubt making it as personally uncomfortable for everybody involved as she could get away with. “Because science,” Penny fumed to herself.
It had been weeks since she’d been forced to send Rhyzov home and had no illusions as to how that had gone for him after seeing the obituary. There weren’t many “unknown ailments” a man in his eighties could suffer.
Cheever’s designs for Roy Hoover and his crew wouldn’t be as dark, but Penny was done letting good people get screwed over just for doing their jobs. Heaven forbid anybody in this town should work hard when there were sides to be taken.
Penny looked at her desk calendar and made note of the date. It was still November, and there was plenty of time to ram one more lame-duck bill through Congress. The Vice President was still the unofficial head of the space program and could persuade the boss into signing off on her plan, especially if it was the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Aboard Magellan, the same news had not escaped the crew’s notice even if it came hours later. Despite the overload of work they had, keeping up with current events took on more importance with each passing day now that the time to come home approached.
“Penny’s out at HQ,” Roy announced flatly as they gathered for the traditional shift-turnover meal. “At least she will be soon. Jackie Cheever is the next administrator, pending approval by the Senate.”
“The PPO?” Traci rolled her eyes. “Good thing we’re done here. Hopefully she doesn’t yank funding for our ride home.”
“Amen to that,” Roy said. “I want us to get a jump on our departure checklists. Let’s get together everything we don’t need and start shedding mass. I’ve been running numbers and think there’s a good chance we can at least match the Russian’s speed record if we can get that dead engine back up.”
“In a hurry to get home?” Jack prodded.
“Since you mentioned it, yeah, I am. Our work here is done.” He reached for Noelle’s hand, who took it with a demure smile. “It’s been a long trip, and we’re ready to get on with life.”
“What does that mean?” Traci asked expectantly.
Roy stretched and groaned for effect. “I’ve spent a lot of time zipping around in overpowered tin cans. We’ve gone as far as anyone can go and I’m ready to be Earthbound again. Whatever the eggheads learn from Noelle’s snowball collection, in my mind it’s all just leftovers from finished work. We already know how to spread life,” he joked to blank stares from Jack and Traci.
“If you must know, he means we’re not too old for children yet,” Noelle explained. “Roy maybe, but not me.”
“Go forth and multiply,” Traci said with a glance in Jack’s direction. “Works in all kinds of different ways, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” Jack said, swirling his coffee as his mind turned over a thought she’d expressed before: What if we’re the first?
Owen figured his latest visit to HQ would be his last. To have his guess confirmed didn’t make it sting any less, particularly sitting in an administrator’s office now shockingly bare. Gone were the paintings, photographs, plaques, and models that had offered a window into Penny Stratton’s life plying the skies in airplanes and rockets.
Its emptiness was reflected in her face when she broke the news. “Project HOPE is being shut down,” she said. “Congress still has to approve the budget items, but this is definitely happening. They want Magellan cleared of all contaminants and placed in a heliocentric disposal orbit.”
Owen began pacing angrily. “What good does that do?” They still had to bring the crew home, which they weren’t doing without Magellan. “It makes no sense. We get them back and then spend actual money to throw away a billion-dollar vehicle?”
“Not quite,” Penny frowned. She waved him to a chair. “Sit. It gets worse.”
“Worse?” He kept moving. “I don’t see how that’s possible. Anatoly’s dead, the ‘don’t touch that’ crowd is taking over, and we’re abandoning the most capable spacecraft anyone’s ever built. We could be using it twenty years from now.”
“Sit, Owen. Please don’t make me order you around like my dog.” She drew a long breath. “They want you to draft a mission plan based on a modified Phase One emergency return option.”
“Bring them back on Dragon?” He fought the urge to laugh at t
he absurdity. She was still his boss, after all. “They do know how far away Pluto is, right?”
“They’re not that foolish,” Penny said. “But if we use Magellan as a booster stage, they can cast off with the capsule and a supply module in range of home.”
Normally not one to interrupt, Owen’s irritation got the better of him when he deduced the mission profile. “They burn for home, pile into the capsule about sixty days from entry interphase and finish the return from there.”
“Think they can use the VASIMR thrusters from Cygnus for a long retro burn?”
“Perhaps,” Owen said. “They’ll be going awfully fast.”
“They will be,” she agreed, and leveled her eyes at him. “It’ll be one hellaciously complicated retro sequence but it’s still quicker than slowing down Magellan’s entire stack. The mass penalties are going to be severe.”
Owen needed a second to follow her. As he worked out the rough-order estimates in his head, his heart sank. “The surface samples?”
“No unnecessary payload,” Penny said. “I’m sorry, Owen. Jackie’s planet-huggers finally outmaneuvered us.”
It was an odd position to be in, consoling his boss. “That’s why I stay in Mission Ops, ma’am. Managing astronaut personalities is enough politics for me.”
“Just get our crew home safe. As long as that ship is still flying, we’ve got options.”
“That would be nice. I wish I had your optimism.”
“I’m too old for optimism,” Penny said. “But I do have connections.”
Jack set his rook down with a metallic snap against the board. “Check.”
Traci buried her face in her hands. “Lucena position. How did I miss that?”
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