by Ben Bova
“You will?” Ornsteen blurted.
“Yes, I will. Save you a bundle of cash.”
“That’s very generous of you, Mr. Kahn,” said Ornsteen.
Thrasher said, “I didn’t realize your interests included insurance, David.”
With an irritated shake of his head, Kahn replied, “They haven’t, until now. This Mars project of yours is making me move into new territory.”
“I see.”
“So I’ll handle your launch insurance. And I’ll give you a better deal than you could get anywhere else. Just make damned certain you don’t blow up any of your rockets.”
Ornsteen laughed shakily. Thrasher found himself thinking about Greeks bearing gifts.
YEAR
THREE
1
PORTALES
Thrasher was leading a trio of astronauts—two men and a woman—through the cavernous hangar-like shed where the Mars spacecraft was taking shape.
Jessie Margulis had chosen the three, after more than a year of talking with various candidates and consultants. Thrasher had let Jessie take his pick, although he mentally kept a veto power for himself. He didn’t want anyone he couldn’t get along with to fly out to Mars.
Bill Polk had been Jessie’s first choice, seconded by everyone who knew anything about astronauts. Thrasher had heard of Polk, distantly, as a man who had done several tours of duty aboard the International Space Station.
Polk had been an Air Force fighter jock, originally, before he transferred to NASA. He wasn’t much taller than Thrasher himself, but solidly built, with sky blue eyes, thinning light brown hair, and an easy smile. Even in a windbreaker and jeans, he radiated competence. Thrasher liked him the first time he saw him.
“So this is the bird,” he said once Thrasher stopped them in front of the completed Mars craft.
“This is it,” Thrasher said. “Mars One. May it be the first of many.”
The spacecraft loomed over them, aluminum skin gleaming in the overhead lights. Across the big, echoing room the backup hardware was being assembled, an exact duplicate of the Mars One spacecraft, ready to be used if any segment of the original article was lost or damaged. Thrasher had already started negotiations with the Smithsonian Institution and several other museums around the world for selling the backup once Mars One had safely made it to the red planet and back.
Thrasher had ordered all the workmen out of the area while he showed off the massive spacecraft to the astronauts. At one end of the bulbous structure was an empty shell, where the nuclear reactor and rocket nozzles would eventually be fitted. Up front was the big circular assembly where the Mars team would live and work on their way to the red planet. It reminded Thrasher of an enclosed Ferris wheel.
“Home sweet home,” said Ignacio Velazquez, his soft tenor voice somewhere between admiration and awe.
Velazquez was a string bean, just over six feet tall but skinny as a scarecrow. His skin was the color of adobe brick, his eyes darkly brown; he had a warm, boyish smile on his lean, hollow-cheeked face. He had never been in space; he had joined NASA’s last class of astronauts straight out of CalTech, but never got a chance to fly before the space agency cut back its human spaceflight program almost to zero. Despite Velazquez’s inexperience, Polk had strongly recommended “Nacho,” and Margulis had quickly agreed after one interview.
“It’s big,” said Judine McQuinn, the third member of the trio. She was tiny, almost elfin, with plain straight brown hair and a waif’s wide, curious eyes. A doctor of space medicine, she had done two stints aboard the ISS, then retired from NASA when the human space program was gutted.
“It’s got to be big,” Polk said. “Got to house seven people for two years.”
Pointing to the spindly ladder leading up to the hatch in the spacecraft’s side, Thrasher asked, “Want to see her insides?”
He almost had to run to stay ahead of them.
Once they had all ducked through the hatch, Thrasher told them, “This is the cargo bay, where we’ll store your food and other consumables.” It was a big empty area, like a warehouse that hadn’t opened for business yet. A series of green arrows along the deck marked what would one day be a passageway through the bins and shelves that would fill the space.
“Where’s the air recycler?” Velazquez asked.
“Up forward.” Thrasher pointed. “All the life-support equipment is grouped together.”
Polk nodded. “Propulsion system in the rear, right?”
With a nod, Thrasher said, “Behind the shielding.”
“Safety guys going to give you trouble about launching a nuclear reactor?” asked Polk.
“I hope not.”
The expression on the astronaut’s face seemed to say, keep your fingers crossed, buddy.
“From what I’ve seen of the schematics,” McQuinn said, “the infirmary’s in the wheel.”
“Along with all the other living and working quarters.”
She headed forward, along the green arrows. Thrasher and the other two astronauts followed her through a hatch, and down a man-wide metal tube with ladder rungs built into its side.
One by one, they squeezed through a hatch at the bottom of the tube and stood in a passageway that clearly curved up and out of sight in both directions.
“This is the wheel,” said Thrasher. “The area where you’ll spend most of the flight.”
“Rotates to give us a feeling of gravity,” Velazquez said.
“Yeah.”
Judine McQuinn opened the nearest hatch in the passageway’s bulkhead. They saw a compact cabin, with a built-in bunk, desk, and drawers.
“Neat,” she said, appreciatively.
“Individual lavatories,” Thrasher said, with some pride. “The engineers wanted a communal lav, but I figured you guys would appreciate some privacy.”
“Six months,” murmured Velazquez. “One way.”
Polk grinned. “Better accommodations than the ISS.”
They walked along the curving passageway, opening hatches and peering into the compartments where they would live and work on their way to Mars. McQuinn found the tiny infirmary and nodded appreciatively at its two beds and row of diagnostic machines.
At last they reached the point where they could no longer stand up straight: the wheel curved too steeply.
“Where’s the command center?” Polk asked.
“Up that way,” Thrasher replied, pointing.
“Let’s see it.”
“We’ll have to go back outside and get the techies to rotate the wheel.”
Polk eyed the other two astronauts, then said, “Can’t they rotate the wheel while we’re still in it?”
“Sure, but how’re you going to stay on your feet with the deck rotating under you?”
“We can do it,” McQuinn said, grinning. Velazquez smiled as he nodded agreement.
“Well, I don’t know . . .”
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Polk urged.
With some reluctance, Thrasher pulled out his phone and called the controllers.
“Rotate the wheel?” the answering voice sounded uncertain. “With you guys inside?”
With a bravado he didn’t really feel, Thrasher said, “That’s right. Rotate it until the command center’s at the bottom. Slowly.”
“Mr. Thrasher, are you sure?”
Feeling irritated, Thrasher insisted, “Yes, I’m sure. We’ll be okay.”
He heard the controllers muttering among themselves. Then a man’s deep, stern voice said, “This is Bellows.” The chief of the control team. “Are you sure you want us to rotate the wheel, Mr. Thrasher?”
“It won’t cause any damage, will it?”
“No, sir, it shouldn’t damage any of the equipment. But you might fall down and hurt yourself.”
His cheeks flushing slightly, Thrasher said, “I can take care of myself. Spin ‘er up. Slowly.”
“Right.” Another gabble of muttering voices, then Bellows announced, “Starting spin in ten seconds. Nin
e . . . eight . . .”
Thrasher tensed. He saw that Polk was grinning. Velazquez looked very serious, determined. McQuinn seemed totally relaxed, on the balls of her feet, knees bent slightly, arms outspread. This is like a game for them, they want to see who’s going to fall on his face.
Thrasher gripped the frame of the nearest open hatch as Bellows intoned, “ . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . initiating spin.”
With a groan and a growl of diesel motors outside the spacecraft, the deck began to slide out from beneath Thrasher’s feet. He held onto the hatch frame grimly. The three astronauts were nimbly stepping along, calmly keeping their feet like a trio of kids skipping through a barrel roll at an amusement park.
Thrasher did his best to stay upright, but the world was tilting absurdly and he realized that hanging onto the hatch frame was a mistake. The damned hatch was moving upward! He had to let go. The deck was sliding along. He tried to step with it, slipped, staggered, flailed his arms to no avail and finally did a pratfall, landing on his rump with a painful thump, arms and legs flapping wildly.
Polk grabbed one of his arms, McQuinn the other. Velazquez tried to keep a straight face but finally broke into a loud guffaw as they hauled Thrasher to his feet and held him up upright.
“Just get the feeling of it,” Polk told him.
“Like dancing,” said McQuinn.
Thrasher grinned shakily, feeling totally foolish in their grasp. With their help, though, he managed to step along as the floor rotated beneath them.
At last the spinning stopped. They were in an open area now, consoles on both sides of them and a wide window that looked out on the bare walls and metal bracing of the shed’s roof.
Still grasping his arm, Polk led Thrasher to one of the chairs. He sank into it gratefully.
Velazquez could barely contain his merriment. “It’s a shame I didn’t use my phone to take a picture of you, Mr. Thrasher. I could’ve used it to jack you up for a big raise.”
Thrasher grinned weakly.
More solicitously, Judine McQuinn bent over him and asked, “Are you all right?”
He nodded. “Nothing’s hurt except my dignity.”
“That’s okay,” said Polk. “You accepted the challenge without complaining.” And he patted Thrasher on the shoulder.
Thrasher felt a warm wave of gratitude flood through him. This was a test, he realized. They wanted to see if I’d go through with it. It was a test, and I passed it! Sort of.
2
TUCSON
I’m becoming a juggler, Thrasher realized.
He was driving through the blazing desert sun from the Arizona Inn to the University of Arizona campus, ostensibly to check on Professor Winninger’s progress with the virtual reality system. Actually, he was looking forward to seeing Kristin Anders again.
It was still only May, but the dashboard display showing the temperature outside his rental car was already nearing ninety. Everything’s air-conditioned, Thrasher reminded himself. Just don’t park in the sun; the car becomes an oven in just a few minutes.
He had dated Kristin several times, just dinner and maybe a film on campus and then a brief goodnight kiss. Nothing more. He found he enjoyed her company, and as she began to tell him more about her life he started to understand and even sympathize with her.
So we don’t go to bed, he thought as he entered the cool shadows of the parking building. She’s good company and she seems to enjoy being with me. Up to a point.
For sex, there’s Victoria. Thrasher grinned happily at the memories of their antics together. She was coming down to the Inn tomorrow night. Plenty of sex then.
He spent most of the morning on Mars. Standing in a bare workroom, wearing the VR helmet and a full-body sensor suit, he walked across the surface of Mars, picked up rocks, listened to the thin, keening wind, watched a dust storm approaching over the hilly horizon.
Kristin’s voice said in his earphones, “You’re experiencing what our grad student, Tony, is doing over in the next building. He’s transmitting what he’s doing to you.”
“It’s really good,” Thrasher said.
He felt his right hand fumbling around for something.
“What’s happening?”
“Open your right hand.”
Thrasher opened his hand and there, in the palm of his spacesuit’s glove, was a tiny bar of metal.
“What’s this?”
The grad student’s voice came through. “It’s a bar magnet, Mr. Thrasher. We’re going to write your initials in the Martian sand.”
Before he could reply, Kristin explained, “The sand is mostly iron ores. A magnet can move them around.”
Thrasher felt himself bending down and sweeping the magnet across the sand. “A D T” appeared in the sand.
He laughed, delighted. “I’ve put my initials on Mars!”
Thrasher had lunch with Kristin, Tony, and Professor Winninger in the campus student lounge. The place was crowded and noisy with students and faculty lined up at the counters, carrying trays to tables, talking, gesturing, calling to people at nearby tables.
“We’ve worked out the problems with the transmitting equipment,” the professor was saying, “thanks to Kristin.”
“Tony’s been very helpful,” she quickly added.
The grad student actually blushed.
Thrasher said, “So we can have one of our team go out on the surface of Mars with the VR rig, and whatever he or she does, our VR users here on Earth will see and feel?”
“That’s right,” said Winninger.
“There will be a time lag,” Kristin said. “The distance to Mars means it’ll take anywhere from eight to forty minutes to transmit the signal to Earth, depending on where the two planets are in their orbits.”
“But the user on Earth won’t notice any lag,” said Tony.
“So he’ll feel like he’s actually on Mars,” Thrasher said happily. He thought, Sampson’s getting half the profits from the mission, but we’ll clean up on sales of the equipment and virtual reality games. And school courses. And erotic simulations. Then he corrected himself: porn.
Professor Winninger’s heart-shaped face grew more serious. “Of course, when Mars is in opposition the transmission’s going to suffer.”
“Opposition?” Thrasher asked.
“When the Sun gets between Earth and Mars,” Kristin explained.
“Will that affect our regular communications?”
“Not so much,” said the professor. “But the VR transmission is a much higher-capacity signal. It will be seriously degraded, I’m afraid.”
Tony offered, “Unless there’s a relay station parked along Mars’ orbit. Then you could bounce the signals from Mars to the relay and from the relay to Earth.”
“A relay station,” Thrasher mused.
“Makes sense,” said Winninger.
“If we can afford it,” said Thrasher.
Thrasher and Kristin had dinner in a little Mexican cantina, on the other side of town from the campus and the Inn. Lots of spicy food, big families crowding around the tables, noise and Latin music blaring from the ceiling loudspeakers. Afterward, as he walked her across the dusty parking lot to her worn old Toyota RAV4, she abruptly stopped and looked up.
The parking lot was so poorly lit that the sky was clearly visible. Thrasher saw thousands of stars glittering in the dry desert air.
“Look.” Kristin pointed.
A bright red star hung low over the hills, unwavering, steady.
“Mars?” he asked, in a whisper.
“Mars,” Kristin said.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “And so are you.”
She turned and melted into his arms. He kissed her tenderly, then more eagerly.
But Kristin disengaged. “I . . . I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not? I enjoyed it. Didn’t you?”
“I’ve got to get home, Art. My babysitter expects me before ten.”
“But .
. .”
In the dim light of the stars, Kristin seemed genuinely upset. “Art, please . . . forgive me. I can’t. Not tonight.”
He could see concern and conflict on her lovely face, tears in her eyes.
“I understand,” he said, with a wistful sigh. Then he went on, “But the next time you come out to dinner with me, tell your sitter that you won’t be home until morning.”
She broke into a smile. “It won’t be easy to find a sitter that’d be willing.”
Thrasher grinned back at her. “Money is no object. Within reason.”
3
ARIZONA INN
Reprobate. Thrasher heard Linda’s disapproving voice in his mind as he waited in the sitting room of his suite for Victoria to show up. It was early evening, but his stomach was starting to growl hungrily.
He was watching a financial news station on television. The stock market was down again, unemployment was up, the price of petroleum had jumped sixty cents per barrel in the past week. Strangely, though, Thrasher Digital’s stock price was holding up, despite the new downturn. Be grateful for small miracles, Thrasher told himself.
Shaking his head at the screen, he wondered why the dummies in Washington couldn’t understand that investing in space technology has been the biggest government stimulus to the economy since World War II.
It isn’t that they don’t understand it, he thought. It’s the fossil fuel lobbies. Big oil and big coal has the entire goddamned government bound hand and foot.
I should talk. I’m investing in space technology and it’s driving me broke. We’ll go to Mars and I’ll go to the poorhouse, the way things are running. Our stock price can’t hold up forever; sooner or later it’s going to go down the toilet.
The phone rang. Thrasher leaned over and picked up the handset.
“I’m here!” said Vicki brightly.
“Meet you in the bar,” he said, clicking off the TV and getting to his feet.
Victoria was sitting at one of the tiny round tables near the bar, dressed in a v-necked black blouse and knee-length skirt, also black. Pearl necklace and earrings. Her curly auburn hair was set in a new style he hadn’t noticed before. Very sophisticated, he thought.