The Last Dance

by Martin L Shoemaker

  I swallowed, flustered, and wished I had a drink of my own. “Let’s keep this professional, Smith.” But then I paused, and Smith said nothing, as if expecting me to say more. And to my surprise, I did, very softly: “For now.”

  Smith made no response, and I rushed forward to my next point. “But then I find your loyalty puzzling. You’ve served more terms under Captain Aames than anyone. He has written you up for more infractions than I can count.”

  “Yep,” she said, back to her usual jovial tone. “He has also written me a number of commendations; and though his performance reviews are harsh, he has consistently given me more positive reviews than negative.”

  “So you’re loyal to him because he’s fair?”

  She laughed again, and some of the tension drained from the room. She had a nice laugh. “Captain Aames is completely unfair. Just like life. It’s another way he tests you. No, Yerim, I’m loyal to him because I trust him more than anyone else to keep us alive and to fulfill the mission.”

  I nodded. “Yes, he does have an impressive record.”

  “Record? Records are written by bureaucrats who don’t know the half of it. If you knew . . .” Smith trailed off.

  “If I knew what?”

  “It’s nothing, Yerim,” Smith replied. “I like you, but you’re the inspector general. I can’t say anything you might turn against the captain if you took it wrong.”

  I frowned in the semidarkness. I really wanted to hear Smith’s story. There was so much to learn about Aames, and she knew him as well as anyone. So I decided. “Tell me, Smitty. Please. Help me to understand. This will be off the record, just between roomies.”

  “Off the record, huh? Well, I hope it’s not just the meds, but I trust you. Okay, let me tell you what really happened on the second Bradbury expedition.”

  6. NOT FAR ENOUGH

  OFF-THE-RECORD ACCOUNT OF CHIEF BOSUN SHEILA SMITH, SENIOR ENLISTED OF THE IPV ALDRIN

  COVERING EVENTS FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2059 TO 30 MAY 2060

  The first thing you should know about the second Bradbury expedition is I lived to tell you about it. That should be obvious since I’m telling you about it, right? But I had a drinking buddy back at the Old Town Tavern in Tycho Under, and practically every one of his stories ended with, “And then I died in the mess.” We would have to buy him a beer before he would give us the real ending, so I’ve got no patience for that sort of trick. It’s one of the oldest jokes in the history of bar stories, and it’s just not that funny. Call me unimaginative, but I think the person telling the story has gotta be alive.

  So yeah, sorry if it spoils my ending, but I lived through it. And so did Chief Carver, and Chief Gale, and near a dozen others. But we were the lucky ones. A lot of our shipmates died there on Mars or up in orbit.

  Did I say lucky? No, it wasn’t luck, it was Captain Aames. That was our only real luck the whole trip: Nick Aames was in charge, and he kept us alive.

  DESCENT STAGE

  Lander 2 dove through the Martian dust. A rumble like distant thunder sounded from the hull. “Watch your speed, Carver,” the captain’s voice blared across the radio. “You’re dropping fast. Use some juice if you have to! I don’t want to scrape you all off of Mars.”

  But it was Chief Maxwell who answered, safe in control bay 2 up on the Bradbury: “I’m on it, Captain.” And sure enough, I bounced against my seat and then up against my straps as the lander suddenly kicked upward. “Doppler says there’s a clear pocket behind this gust, we just have to slide over to it. Then we’ll have better tracking.”

  The expedition had started fine. The eight-month trip out on the Bradbury was routine for a crew of experienced spacers: maintenance, training, experiments, and briefings. Or let’s call them what they really were: indoctrination sessions. Oh, the brass were subtler than that, but that’s because the System Initiative hired the best headshrinkers in the business to make the indoctrination subtle, make it seem like a good thing. And it was all the fault of Masha Desney and Bennie Cooper.

  I could hear the captain’s sneer in his response. “Good for you, Max. Glad somebody is awake over there. Carver, open your damned eyes! Or are you planning another collision here?”

  That was unfair to Carver—young Anson Carver, his lieutenant junior grade bars still new—but “fair” isn’t a word you use to describe Captain Aames. He wants your best, and he’ll push till he gets it—or till you break. Carver had a collision during pilot training, and now Aames brought it up any time he wanted to push the man. A glance at Carver’s helmet monitor showed a sheen of sweat on his dark-brown forehead, but his eyes were focused and steely, and he didn’t let the captain’s taunt shake his concentration. Carver wasn’t going to break, I was sure of that. In fact he was doing pretty well, considering he had a few more distractions than Max did. Our landers used the system invented by the first Bradbury crew: a pilot in a skinsuit on the lander was paired with a copilot up on the Bradbury so they could share both local and global views of the Martian approach. Carver hung suspended by straps in the pilot pod, while Max did the same up in the ship. Though they used the same piloting gear, there was one key difference. Engineers tell a bacon-and-eggs joke: the chicken is involved in breakfast, but the pig is committed. In this landing, Carver was the pig in the frying pan, and Maxwell was the chicken back on the Bradbury, watching us and wondering if we would fry.

  Commander Cooper’s First team had devised this system, and Cooper had used it to rescue Desney, his second-in-command, after she had violated mission rules and landed on Mars. International mission planners had intended the crew to teleoperate robots on the Martian surface, preparing the way for future landings. No landings were approved for that mission, but the splintered crews on the First had all schemed to land on their own, chasing their own national prestige and influence. Of them all, Desney finally pulled it off, but crashed in the landing. After Cooper had unified his crew to rescue her, the floodgates were opened. The First crew rewrote their mission plan completely, with multiple surface excursions and piles of samples and data returned.

  The distant rumble outside continued. On Earth, wind whistles; but on Mars, the thin air only propagates long sound waves, and even those don’t travel far. The deep sounds of the wind were almost peaceful to terrestrial ears. But the winds were too faint to provide lift. We had to drop on power or on chutes.

  “All right there, Ensign Smith?” Lieutenant Gale called across the cabin at me.

  “All right, Lieutenant.” I appreciated the concern, but not the tone behind it: Poor girl, can you handle this stress? The whole flight, the British officer had been overly concerned with my welfare, and I was sure he was trying to get me into his bunk. Hah! If I were going to turn to men, it wouldn’t be to a snake like Horace Gale. He was a phony, a whole different person with the officers than with the enlisted. The Initiative chose him, and Captain Aames didn’t wash him out, so I would trust him. I even liked him, after a fashion: our crew was chosen for compatibility on a long mission, so even an asshole like Gale had his good points. But I didn’t have to like him too far.

  I smiled back at Shannon Lopez on the seat behind me, and she grinned. She had done her own share of rebuffing Gale, and we had joked about it on many occasions. Of course, she had rebuffed me too. If she was involved with anyone in the crew, it was Ahmad Razdar; but if so, they had been pretty discreet about it, even in the cramped confines of the Bradbury.

  I rubbed my shoulder where the straps had caught me, but carefully so that Gale wouldn’t notice. There was probably a bruise there, but it couldn’t wipe the giant grin from my face. Yeah, we might die at any second, but I simply didn’t believe it. After years of training and travel, I was going to land on Mars, just like the First!

  I had watched the reports from the first mission, wanting to know everything about them, and I hadn’t been alone. The public on Earth couldn’t get enough of the First crew, those brave explorers who conquered another planet. But it had been a lousy
career move no matter what the public thought. Behind the scenes there were massive shakeups across the national agencies.

  The captain came back on the radio. “Max, hold off on that clear pocket if you can. We may need it for lander 1. Weaver says that may be the only solution that works for us, and we don’t want you getting too close.” There were six of us on lander 2, and six more including the captain on lander 1. We were the ground teams who would gather data, run experiments, and build facilities on Mars. (On Mars! I still got a thrill from that.) Max and Weaver and Koertig and Uribe remained behind on the Bradbury, running experiments of their own, tending the hydroponics and other ship’s systems, and maintaining contact with Mission Control. Oh, and serving as our copilots.

  “Captain,” Carver answered, “that clear pocket’s followed by two more. We can go for landing pad A or C, but C’s got more clear air.” There was an implied question there, a lift in Carver’s voice. Bad mistake, Carver, I thought. Never hesitate with him. With Captain Aames, it’s okay to not know, but say so.

  And of course the captain pounced. “Choose one, Carver. I’m busy with my own lander. Max said you were a pilot, was he wrong?”

  “No, sir,” Carver answered. At least Carver was smart enough not to argue, just go back to his piloting.

  So the first Bradbury expedition had been a dead end for its crew. They’re celebrities, and publicly they’re heroes; but unofficially, they’re blackballed. Not a one of them has ever served on another Initiative mission, transport, or post. The only work they can find is with the transport companies and other private ventures. So what the Initiative screened for on the second Bradbury expedition wasn’t Mars experts, but discipline and loyalty to the mission. They wanted us to follow the rules, while they would teach us what we needed to know about Mars. That’s why none of us had any real experience with Mars. Or with Mars landings.

  Chief Maxwell came back on the radio. “Deece advises we go for C, Lieutenant.” Decision Control, or Deece, was the expedition’s AI. She ran simulations and models to advise us on our decisions. “We’ll need to boost to hit it without getting deep into the dust.” I could just barely see Carver nod in the control pod, and then I felt a sudden push from behind as he applied some thrust from the main engine.

  “Keep an eye on that dust storm,” the captain said.

  Gale cut in. “Deece’s model says it’ll miss us.”

  “It’s not the model I’m worried about, Horace,” the captain answered. He used Gale’s first name any time the lieutenant annoyed him—which was often. “I’m looking at the real storm, and it’s not following the model. It’s already in the Coprates quadrangle, and it could turn our way at any time.” Our landing pads were in the heart of Coprates, in a fairly even stretch of Solis Planum. If the storm was in the quadrangle, Captain Aames was smart to be concerned. We needed visibility, both eyes and instruments, for a safe landing.

  The Initiative particularly wanted a commander who wouldn’t embarrass them again, so they had selected Captain Nick Aames. That may surprise you, given his reputation these days. He’s seen as a loose cannon who has contempt for the rules, but that’s not how he is at all. He has contempt for stupid rules, especially if they endanger the mission. But he respects safety rules, established procedures, and the chain of command as long as they serve the mission. When he throws out a rule, he has a damn good reason.

  And he’s all for discipline: it helps a crew to keep focus. He rode us until we knew every detail of our own specialties and had cross-trained in at least two others. He inspected every nut and bolt on the ship, once a month, and he launched surprise inspections any time he thought he might catch us slacking off. His ass-chewing skills were legendary, and we learned to avoid them.

  If he went too far—he is Nick Aames, after all—we turned to Chief Maxwell. Max had served with Nick on three missions before Mars, and they understood each other. If you took a beef to Max, he could make you see it the captain’s way, so the reprimand didn’t sting so much; and if Max decided you were right, he could intercede with the captain. Sometimes. He had for Carver, convincing Captain Aames that the young computer programmer should cross-train as a pilot.

  Suddenly a gust blew up, all visibility was lost, and I hoped Max knew what he was doing. Otherwise Carver, Gale, and I, and our three shipmates were gonna end up spread across the Mars-scape. But before I could even wonder if we would live, the lander dropped rapidly and slid back to a level altitude, and the air was suddenly clear all the way to the surface. “Nicely done, Lieutenant,” Max said.

  “Thanks, Chief. I think we have clear air all the way from here.”

  “This is Mars, lad. Never assume.” But Lieutenant Carver had it right: with Maxwell’s assistance, we rode the jets down to landing altitudes. It was still a pretty wild ride—not my wildest ever; someday I’ll tell you about a bull-riding contest outside São Paulo—and the rumble never stopped, but Carver had it under control. Soon the red hills of Mars were everywhere outside the portholes, and Max came back on the radio. “Beacons show that landing pad C is three degrees starboard. Adjusting course.” The robots from First had constructed landing pods and ground facilities. Those were often obscured by the blowing sands of Mars, but radar and radio beacons guided us down.

  The captain came back on the radio. “Lander 2, we caught an unexpected sand front. If we keep this course, we can’t see strip B, and radar shows soft ground off the edge. I’m boosting out of this approach, and we’ll circle around for another try. Looks like you’ll beat us down. Weather permitting, we’ll rendezvous at your position.”

  Max answered, “You have enough fuel for another pass, Captain?”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be making the pass.” Even Chief Maxwell wasn’t immune to the famous Aames scorn.

  “Chief,” Carver cut in, “I’m taking us down.”

  “All green from here, Lieutenant,” Max added. “Helmets, everyone.” I pulled my helmet down from the ceiling, put it on, and turned the latch that sealed it in place. That was SOP: it would suck to survive a crash but then asphyxiate on Mars, so we landed in our EVA suits.

  The helmet dulled the sound from outside, but only until I tapped on the external helmet microphone. Then I heard a high-pitched white noise outside as the lander tore through the thin atmosphere. Next came clunking beneath us as the landing gear dropped into place. Carver and Max called readings and adjustments back and forth as we swiftly descended to the Red Planet—but not so swiftly as to crash. Looking around Carver’s seat and his big helmet, I could see lander complex A out the front window: a landing pad, an automated propellant factory, a crawler garage, and some smaller structures. The main facilities were all subsurface for radiation shielding and environment control. All these structures had been constructed by the robots of the first expedition, guided by the crew in orbit. Well, until the day Masha Desney broke protocol and landed here, right where we were landing. After that, the First crew did a lot of the work themselves on the ground. Once they had broken protocol, they rewrote all their mission rules.

  We continued our powered descent to the pad. There was a brief moment of panic as the port side dropped, a burst of adrenaline as Max compensated, and then suddenly I felt two swift jolts as the lander touched down, bounced, and settled onto the pad. The lander filled with cheers, and Max came on the radio: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mars!”

  The captain’s voice cut through the cheers. “Good flying, Lieutenant.” I saw a wide grin on Carver’s face, all white teeth, looking as if his dark face might split. I understood his grin: a word of praise from Captain Aames was a rare treasure. But as quick as that, the moment was past, and the captain was pushing again. “Gale, get your people unstrapped and out. I want that lander under cover. I don’t like the long-range Doppler readings.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Gale reached for his strap.

  But then a female voice cut in, steady and warm: “Do not unstrap. Model analysis in progress. Do not
unstrap.”

  “Yes, Deece,” Gale answered, relaxing back into his seat. “Everyone remain seated.” Deece was another consequence of the first expedition. The Initiative wanted to have oversight on every decision, but they couldn’t do that effectively with a twenty-minute light-speed delay, or even longer if the Bradbury was behind Mars. So they installed high-end artificial intelligence to do their overseeing for them. Deece’s job was to monitor every action, feed it into her scenario model, and advise us whether the action complied with the latest revised mission protocols; but she tended to blur the line between “advise” and “command.” We all resented her for that (well, maybe not Gale, he was such a suck-up), but we were stuck with her.

  Not that I have anything against AIs, mind you. I’ve met some great ones back in Tycho, programmed by real pros; but they’re not human, and no amount of programming will change that. They just don’t see things the way a human would. And Deece? Her programmers weren’t real pros, if you ask me, and she was a pain in the ass. Too limited, unable to adapt to changes outside her training.

  The captain was no happier with Deece than I was. “Damn it, Deece, that front could turn this way and bury that lander in dust.” That was another reason for the subsurface facilities: we could lift the hatches, drive the lander into the pit, and close the hatches, shutting out the dust.

  Deece was as unflappable as only an AI can get. “I have updated weather models from DC Command, Captain, and they still show no immediate danger. Under those conditions, Initiative protocols say the lander and crew must remain ready for immediate liftoff in case of an unforeseen threat. Until I assess the situation, I advise the crew to remain strapped in.”

  Deece’s plan made sense, according to her protocols. Taking off from Mars is a lot easier than landing. To take off, you just have to miss the ground, and then keep missing. But to land, you have to miss it, but just barely; and then barely miss it again and again until you can hit it on your terms, not Mars’s. With solid rocket boosters, we could lift clear of the worst dust storms in under a minute.