Mars One

by Jonathan Maberry

  I made it to Mom’s workshop a heartbeat faster than Tony Chu.

  “What is it, Jean?” he yelled past me.

  She turned toward us, her face tight with tension and anxiety.

  “It’s the Muninn,” she cried. “Their life-support computers just went down.”

  “What about Inga?” barked Tony. “Tell her to—”

  Mom didn’t answer immediately. I looked past her and did not see Inga’s face on the screen. Instead there was a guy who had been trying to help ever since the Muninn’s number two engineer got sick. And this guy’s face looked gray and greasy. His eyes had that bright polished-glass look people get when they have a fever.

  “Inga’s down,” said Mom. “She has a fever of one hundred and four. The medical team is treating her, but they are running short on antibiotics. And two of the crew, the astrobiologist Norquist and your friend Sophie’s chum Marcel are in comas. This is bad. This is really bad.”

  “Oh no!” cried Nirti, who’d followed me into the workshop. I looked to see Zoé and Luther in the doorway too.

  “How much of the repairs did she get done?” I asked. “Will it be enough to last them until—?”

  The expression on Mom’s face cut me off. “That doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “What? Why? What else happened?”

  “The Muninn’s life-support system has gone down,” she said in a hollow voice. “And there’s no one left to fix it.”

  Chapter 82

  * * *

  Director Colpeys called a meeting and all twenty of us gathered in the common room. Mom was next to Colpeys, her face as hard and cold as stone. Colpeys looked like he wanted to throw up. Several of the crew were crying as Colpeys and Mom explained the situation aboard the Muninn.

  “Can they fix the life support?” asked Mrs. Mbede.

  “If Inga was well enough,” said Mom, “then yes. But she is critical. So are eleven of the crew. The rest are all busy working on the stills.”

  “How long do they have?” asked Sophie.

  “Best guess is three days,” said Colpeys. “They can cluster around the stills for warmth, but they are on batteries and those won’t last more than seventy-two hours. They have enough oxygen for maybe two more days, but by then the temperature inside the craft will be minus two hundred, and it will continue to fall.”

  The gasps I heard made me flinch. Nirti took my hand and squeezed it.

  “So what do we do, then?” demanded Mr. Mbede. “Let them all die?”

  “No,” said Mom. “That is not an option.”

  “Jean—” began Colpeys, but Mom cut him off.

  “There is only one way to save the crew and that ship. We need to adjust the orbit of both ships using controlled burns, and then someone needs to go over with equipment, replacement parts, antibiotics, and as much fresh water as the Huginn can spare.”

  That statement was met with a profound silence.

  “I thought we couldn’t do that,” said Nirti. “I thought it would burn too much fuel.”

  Colpeys said, “It would burn through most of our reserve.”

  “Not all of it,” Mom corrected.

  “Enough of it. It would take us to a dangerous level.”

  “We have enough to slow both ships into Mars orbit. Actually, we have three times as much fuel as we need for that. We made allowances for the overages because these are colony ships. Nothing was left to chance, Jurgen, you know that. Will a controlled burn slow us? Yes. It will slow both ships and allow us to get closer to each other.”

  “The ships weren’t designed to dock with each other, Jean, and the EVA tethers won’t reach nearly that far.”

  Mom said, “They don’t have to. Once the trajectories are synced we can use a tether to get about half the distance to the Muninn and then we can use an EMU to free fly the rest of the way.”

  “Will that even work?” asked Nirti, her eyes wide with apprehension.

  “We ran the numbers when the Muninn first started having troubles,” Mom said. “And we got confirmation of the best set of procedures from Mars One.” She nodded to the De Jaegers. “The numbers are good and we can make it work.”

  Only Mrs. De Jaeger nodded back. Her husband and daughter did not.

  “It’s too dangerous to even try,” Colpeys said heavily.

  Mom shook her head. “It’s the only choice we have. It’s that or we let everyone on board the Muninn freeze to death. Take your pick.”

  There was a horrified gasp at her words.

  Tony Chu pushed off and floated over to Mom and Colpeys. “Then I guess I’d better suit up.”

  Mom shook her head again. “Sorry, Tony, but you’re staying here.”

  “The hell I am.”

  “You are, and that’s an order.”

  “Then who is going over to the . . .” His words trailed off and he gaped at her. “You’re out of your mind, Jean. You can’t risk it.”

  There was a flicker of something in Mom’s eyes. Almost humor. Maybe reckless humor. “Tony, I love you like a brother, but are you going to stand there and tell me that you’re a better mechanical engineer than me? Really?”

  “I’m better in an EMU,” he protested, but that was a weak punch-back because he knew as well as I did that Mom was better than all of us.

  “I’ll go with you!” I blurted.

  A hard hand clamped around my shoulder and I turned to see my dad right behind me. “No.”

  It was the only word he could choke out of his throat.

  Chapter 83

  * * *

  “There’s no way in hell you’re doing this, Jean,” said Dad when we were all back in Mom’s workshop. He didn’t yell it, but his voice filled the still air. He gripped the edge of the worktable and glared at Mom in mingled shock, horror, and anger.

  “This isn’t a discussion, Cornelius,” she said quietly.

  “Then let’s make it one,” he countered.

  “No, let’s not.”

  “Hey,” I said, “don’t I get a vote here?”

  “No,” they both told me.

  “Why not? I’m part of this family and I’m part of this mission. I’m not a kid anymore and I should have a say.”

  Mom continued to stuff equipment into a canvas bag. “There’s nothing you can say, Tristan, that’s going to change my mind. I have to go.”

  “I know,” I said.

  They both stopped and stared at me.

  “Wait . . . what?” demanded Dad, clearly feeling betrayed.

  “Mom has to go, Dad. Tony can’t fix those systems half as fast as Mom. I mean, I’m faster than Tony most of the time, and Mom’s ten times faster than me.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Mom said under her breath.

  “Look, Dad,” I continued, “don’t get me wrong . . . I don’t want her to go. No way. But we’re talking about twenty people dying over there.”

  “Maybe twenty-one,” Dad countered.

  “Or maybe none,” I said. “Don’t you know how good she is?”

  Okay, that was maybe unfair. It was kind of a cheap shot, and I saw how it hurt him. But as terrifying as it was to think about Mom going out, untethered, in an EMU to a ship filled with mechanical faults and disease . . . there was no other option. None.

  “It’s that,” I said, “or we go the rest of the way to Mars side by side with a coffin.”

  That’s when Dad started to cry.

  I’m not sure I ever saw him cry before. I never thought his emotions ran deep enough. He pulled Mom to him and she pulled me in, and the three of us floated there, crying, heads together, minds filling with blackness and thorns.

  Chapter 84

  * * *

  I won’t go into the math of how they calculated the timing and rate of burn on the engines to slow the Muninn by a fraction so that the Huginn could inch up. They fired fore and aft rockets in computer-controlled microbursts to align the ships. The computations were excruciating and when Zoé tried to explain it to L
uther, Nirti, and me, we begged her to stop. All that mattered was that someone on both ships could understand it. And Mars One had to agree, verify the math, and then send commands to each ship to make sure the timing was absolutely precise. It was maybe the only bit of good luck we’d had so far in that the pilot of the Muninn was not too sick to work the controls. Our own pilot oversaw it all.

  We all clustered along the wall of the common room, squeezing together to watch through the ports as our sister ship came closer and closer.

  At first it all looked like it was happening in super slow motion.

  And then it seemed as if we were converging way too fast.

  Sophie was right next to me, and I could feel her body trembling with excitement and fear. I’d told her about the conversation I’d had with my folks, about how I backed Mom’s decision to go. And about how scared I was to even open my mouth to say those things.

  “Sometimes, cher,” Sophie told me, “courage means breaking your own heart.”

  Mine. Sure. And Dad’s.

  That was fourteen hours ago. Now the ships were lining up. Both craft had lost some speed during the adjustments, and unless they could do another controlled burn to accelerate after all of this was over, it was going to tack another fourteen days onto our journey.

  That was tomorrow’s problem, though.

  We watched in ghastly silence. We waited for what seemed like years.

  And then the pilot, his voice as dry and casual as ever, spoke to us from the loudspeakers. “Parallel trajectory achieved. Everything is green across the board.”

  No one cheered.

  We weren’t there yet.

  I spun around and began making my way to the main airlock. By the time I got there Mom was already in her white suit. Dad was there too, hanging back, pale and weary from stress. He did not say a word the entire time. Not one. No smiles, no jokes, no nothing. Maybe he’d said his good-byes to Mom before I got there, or maybe his fear was too big and held him too tightly.

  Mom and Tony and the command crew checked all the fittings on her suit. Mom caught sight of me there and reached out a hand. I flew to her, took her hand, pulled myself close, kissed her cheek.

  Neither of us mentioned the fact that this was probably going to be a one-way trip. Or at least it could be. If the ships drifted apart even a little it would be too dangerous for the EMU to fly her back. She saw in my eyes that I understood this.

  “Trust yourself,” she said to me.

  Just that.

  And then she pushed me back so Tony could place the helmet on her and connect it to the shoulder unit.

  She touched fingers with my dad, and then stepped into the airlock.

  Tony closed the inner door and I listened without hearing anything as they talked their way through the steps of depressurization, locking and unlocking, hooking onto the tether. All of it. I knew the steps, so I didn’t need to hear the words.

  I went to the portal and watched her step out of the Huginn.

  My heart was filled with black ice.

  Chapter 85

  * * *

  Mom made it look easy.

  She unspooled the tether all the way, speaking calmly, describing everything she was doing. From the way she sounded she might just as easily have been describing shopping for Frosted Flakes and bagels. It sounded so ordinary.

  And I had a thought.

  Of course that was how she’d do it. Ordinary. That was Mom fixing a problem before it blew up. She made it sound like nothing, like it was no big thing at all to spacewalk on a small gas-powered rig between two spaceships hurtling through the black at insane speeds, all the while towing a tripled-up tether that would be used to haul over the supplies.

  Thinking that . . . knowing that this was what Mom was deliberately doing, changed me. It made me smile, but it also melted the ice that clung to my heart and filled my chest. When Nirti and Sophie came to stand with me by the port, I began describing the steps to them in a voice that was every bit as calm as Mom’s. And for exactly the same reason.

  I could feel them begin to relax, to step back from their own fear, to accept that we had this.

  And then it was over.

  I know. Over.

  Just like that.

  Mom was at the airlock on the Muninn. She hooked the longer tether to the outside of the ship, clicked an autopulley into place, triggered it, but didn’t even bother to look as the water, parts, tools, and medical supplies clipped to her line began to follow her. By the time the supplies caught up with her, she had the airlock open. Then she was inside, reeling her gear in as fast as she could.

  Everyone in the common room began cheering. Pounding the walls.

  We heard Mom’s voice through the speakers, heard shouts and weeping from inside the Muninn.

  Chapter 86

  * * *

  Tony and I began going over everything aboard the Huginn. Not because anything was broken but because after what happened aboard the Muninn we needed to be totally sure. It was now our job to keep this ship in perfect shape. And everything was. This was Mom’s ship and she’d been over everything a zillion times since we left the Lucky Eight.

  Also, working was a great way for me to keep from going totally bug-eyed crazy. I know I could have used some of that time to record a message for Izzy. Most of the crew were recording segments for one or another of the reality shows. Killing time. Each of us did it in our own way. My dad was in with his plants and hadn’t said a word or showed his face. Somehow when Mom left for the other ship she seemed to have taken his sense of humor with him. Dad looked sad and had turned inward, closing me out. I had no idea how to help him. I tried, but all I got from him was one-word answers. He didn’t even seem able to meet my eyes. It was a side of Dad I’d never known existed. A depression hidden beneath all the jokes and goofy humor.

  It was nearly nine hours before Colpeys put Mom on the speakers so she could give her report.

  “We have life support back on line,” she said. That was her entire message. It was enough.

  We all went a little bit nuts.

  Chapter 87

  * * *

  I guess we all thought it was over, the crisis, the danger, the drama.

  I know I did. I crawled into my bunk, snugged the straps around me, and fell asleep. Maybe the first good night’s sleep I’d had in weeks.

  Everything was going to be fine now.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  Chapter 88

  * * *

  I was dead asleep when the alarms went off.

  We had four kinds. A signal beep for meals. A gong for special meetings or interfaith church. An action buzzer when something malfunctioned. And a loud, continuous shrieking buzz if there was a fire.

  It was that last one that slapped me awake, knocking me out of a dream of flying through clouds, my arms out like wings, my hair whipping, birds flying in a flock around me. One second I was there and the next I was awake. Stupid, bleary, but awake.

  And then I smelled the smoke and the fog in my brain instantly burned away. I was alert, listening to the buzzer, stretching out with my senses the way Mom taught me to, allowing the moment to tell me what was happening.

  A fire.

  Fire!

  There is nothing more terrifying in space travel than fire. We lived in a small metal barrel filled with flammable gasses. A fire could sweep through the ship, burn up the oxygen, choke us and kill us even before it burned us.

  Smoke boiled from my left, from forward, rolling and twisting in the air like something alive. The galley was behind me, and this didn’t smell like someone burned their powdered eggs. The engines were far behind my bunk, but there was no fuel stink. This was a smaller smell, if that makes sense. Something burning, but not the whole ship. And it smelled like plastic and copper.

  Circuits.

  I grabbed the tab and unzipped the canvas door of my bunk as fast as I could and rolled out. I caught a handhold and pulled hard and fast, propelling m
y body forward toward the hatch that connected the main habitat with the first of the systems compartments. Around me other people were opening their zippered doors and struggling out, some fast, some slow, all like bees emerging from a hive.

  “Tristan!” called Nirti, her voice filled with panic. “What is it?”

  I didn’t answer, but instead grabbed another handhold, and another. A brown leg swung out of a bunk and I grabbed an ankle and used it to propel myself forward even faster.

  “Hey!” yelped Luther. “What the hell are you—?”

  I ignored him. I saw Sophie appear out of the smoke, her hands and face smudged, eyes filled with fear.

  “Where is it?” I demanded.

  “There,” she yelled, pointing the way she’d come. “It’s inside the wall. Oh God!”

  Her English words disintegrated into hysterical French, which I couldn’t understand. I pushed past her and dove into the smoke, chin tucked to keep it all out of my eyes, nose, and mouth.

  Then I saw it. One of the panels was bent outward, the heavy-grade plastic warped by the heat. Dense black smoke poured from it, twisting in the air, pushed by heat and the energy released by burning oxygen. I slammed into the wall beside the buckled plate, felt the intense heat, recoiled, but kept moving.

  The automatic fire control systems should have kicked in long before now. This fire should have been out before it even got started. It should never have gotten this bad. I fumbled through the smoke for the extinguishers that were clipped to the wall, but all I found were empty clips.