Mars One

by Jonathan Maberry

  I stared at her. “Are you serious?”

  Her lips curled into a sneer. “I knew you would never understand. This is why we don’t hold press conferences. This is why we don’t issue press releases. All that matters is action. All that has ever accomplished anything is action. We are dedicated to one goal—to keep mankind on Earth in order that we humans may fulfill our sacred trust.”

  “That’s . . . that’s . . . insane . . .”

  For a moment I thought I saw the Sophie I knew look out of those eyes. Her sneering mouth seemed to soften, and her expression seemed to change to something else. Not love. No. Maybe sadness. Or was it pity?

  She whirled around and threw herself through the hatchway. If she got that airlock closed and secured it from the inside we were all dead.

  She was so fast.

  But I . . .

  I was faster. And the suction of air pressure from the open hatch jerked me forward. I reached for her as she tried to pull the massive door shut. I tried to grab her shoulder. Missed. Instead my fingers tangled in her hair. She was moving fast away from me. I was pulling her back with all my strength.

  The sound.

  Oh, God, the sound her neck made.

  Please, God . . . let me forget that sound.

  Chapter 106

  * * *

  I let her go and she drifted away from me. I watched the light go out of her eyes, and she floated there, her head tilted too far over, lips parted as if she wanted to ask me a question. The silence was enormous.

  The rest of the crew heard my screams.

  Everyone heard them. They came flying like ghosts out of the shadows. They found Garcia. Dying, not dead. They found Sophie Enfers. A broken doll floating among the worlds of blood she had spilled. They found me a few yards away from her. Also broken, and in ways that I don’t think can ever be fixed.

  It took a long time for me to tell them what happened.

  Director Colpeys called my mother immediately, to warn her about Marcel.

  But Marcel was already gone. He had died in the night. So had three others, including Inga, who had relapsed and faded. The infection had taken its toll.

  Forty of us had left Earth. If Garcia lived it would mean that thirty-five of us would reach Mars. That was math I could understand. And the sums were horrible.

  Chapter 107

  * * *

  We buried Inga Holstrom, Matthew Peake, and Hiro Tetsudo. “Buried” isn’t the right word, not out here. They were wrapped in sheets and placed in the airlock aboard the Muninn. Everyone on the Huginn stood at the ports and watched as three silent forms floated out into the big black. In time they’d be pulled down into the gravity of Mars and burn out as they fell. Colpeys said a prayer and we all wept.

  I don’t know when Marcel was sent out of the airlock. Not then, and not when anyone was watching. The same with Sophie. It was all taken care of without letting the crew know. She was wrapped in white and fired into the black.

  We mourned our dead as we approached the Red Planet that was going to be our home.

  The next day I got a long message from Izzy. She’d met a boy. She liked him. And . . . he was there. On Earth. With her. She looked so scared as she asked me if it was okay.

  Okay?

  It crushed me.

  God.

  But I hit the record button and sent her a return message.

  “Izzy,” I said, “I couldn’t be happier for you. Don’t worry about how I’m taking this. We both know that this is nothing but crazy. Now it’s up to us to do the sane thing, right? So . . . of course it’s okay. I hope he’s good to you. Tell him I’ll be watching.” I paused and wondered if it was wrong to say it . . . and decided to say it anyway because it was always going to be true. “I love you, Izzy Drake.”

  Two seconds later I was recording another message. This one was for Herc. I told him to check this new kid out. Grill him. Make sure about him. And if he ever hurt Izzy, I wanted to know where the boy’s body was eventually buried. Herc messaged back that he was already on it.

  Chapter 108

  * * *

  We flew on, getting closer and closer to the moment when we would have to decide what to do about the Golden Dragon. We waited for the Mars One command team back home to send us a directive.

  Mindy ran an online poll for a week and the results were pretty hard to ignore. Eighty-six percent of the 7,600,000 people who responded to the poll said that we needed to rescue the Chinese astronauts. People all over the world were wearing T-shirts and buttons with the face of Ting Chin.

  Then we got the official word.

  We were all in the common room when Colpeys played the video from back home. We were to proceed with the mission and not risk the crew or ships in an attempted rescue.

  Dr. Aukes’s face was like stone and I can guess that it hurt her to give that order. Maybe it hurt everyone who was involved in the decision process.

  But it hurt us more.

  When the message was done there was a long, long silence. A crushing silence that made it hard to breathe.

  “We can’t,” said Nirti’s mom.

  “We have to,” said Zoé’s dad.

  “It’s inhuman,” said Zoé’s mom as she turned to stare at her husband as if he were suddenly a stranger. “You’ve seen the news—the whole world wants us to save those poor people.”

  “We can’t.”

  “We can. We have to.”

  “No,” growled Colpeys loud enough to cut through the din. When everyone turned to him he said, “It’s sentimentality. None of those people are here with us. None of them have suffered the losses we have, and none of them have as much to lose. I cannot and will not condone this action.”

  Which was when I stood up. Well . . . floated up. “I want to say something.”

  “I’ve made up my mind,” said Colpeys.

  “I have a right to speak my mind,” I told him. “With Tony hurt and my mom on the Muninn, I’m the chief engineer aboard the Huginn and—”

  “You’re seventeen,” he cut in. “And while I appreciate everything you’ve done, Tristan, this is an adult discussion and an executive decision.”

  My dad, swathed in bandages and looking haunted, said, “Now wait just a damn minute, Jurgen. If it wasn’t for my son we’d all be dead. How about you show a little respect?”

  There was a murmur from the others. A lot of nods. Colpeys sighed. “Very well. Speak your piece, but it’s not going to change anything.”

  I pulled myself up and grabbed a handhold on the west wall so I could face them all.

  “Look,” I said, “I know the dangers. I get it. But we have a chance here. We’re right on a line between the two ways we can go. We can say screw it and let them die. We can do that and no one would blame us. After all, there’s so much risk in going over there. We could die trying to save people who might already be beyond helping. Sure. That could happen. And even the history books will forgive us, I guess. They’ll write it as a tragedy. Unavoidable. Nothing we can do.”

  I looked around. No one said a word. Not even Colpeys, because so far I was backing his argument.

  “Or,” I said, “we could risk it. We could cross the line the other way. We could roll the dice and go over there and see if we can save them. Back on Earth, China and America and Russia and everyone else shake with one hand and hide a gun behind their backs with the other. That’s how it’s always been. That’s the history of the human race. Name one country back home whose map wasn’t drawn with blood. Seriously, tell me.”

  Nothing. Absolute silence.

  “We’re about to colonize a new world. Look at us. Thirty-five people in two ships. We could write a whole new chapter in the history of the human race. And that’s what it’s really all about, isn’t it? We’re about to set foot on Mars. On a new world. On a planet that’s named after the God of War but there’s never been war there. It’s like a blank piece of paper. Do we start our life on Mars with an act of cruelty? Who do you wan
t to be the first people on that planet? Cowards who let suffering people die? Or do we start the next chapter in human history by doing everything we can to save lives?”

  Silence washed around me.

  “Luther and I have been fighting since before we left. If you want to know the truth, I don’t even know why.” I looked at him. “And I’m sorry. Whether it was my bad or yours, it’s over. You’re my brother, man.”

  I held out my hand. After a long moment—so long I thought he was going to leave me hanging—he took it and we shook.

  I turned back to the crowd.

  “So how do we play this? Do we keep doing the same stuff we’ve always done or do we change the game? Isn’t it worth trying to start all this with courage and mercy and do something great?”

  No one moved. No one spoke.

  “Besides, what’s the whole point of us coming to Mars in the first place? Mars One was started as a way to help humanity. Maybe even save it. That speech Dr. Aukes gave when we left—that wasn’t her just blowing smoke. She believed it and we do too. I mean, we’re here; we have to believe in something bigger and better, right? Remember that plaque that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong put on the moon when they got there? ‘We came in peace for all mankind.’ Well, that’s why we’re here too. Colonizing Mars isn’t enough. Don’t we have to represent something more than that?”

  Then Nirti pushed herself up so that she could be seen by everyone. “Earth is a beautiful, violent, spoiled, wonderful, tragic, horrible, confused, messed-up ball of craziness. But it’s where we’re from.”

  “Yeah it is,” murmured Luther. A few other people nodded.

  Nirti turned and looked at me. “But we’re not earthlings anymore,” she said, her eyes searching mine. “Are we?”

  I smiled. It almost hurt to smile, I was that scared. “No,” I said.

  “Then what are we?” she asked.

  I cleared my throat. “We’re Martians.”

  She grabbed my wrist, pulled herself over, and kissed my cheek. “Mars is a peaceful, beautiful, perfect place,” she said as she faced the crowd. “It’s a gift. It’s a promise.”

  Zoé came over and hugged Nirti and then me. After a moment’s hesitation, Luther joined us. They didn’t have to say anything. It was said in ways clear enough for everyone to hear and understand.

  For a few long, dangerous seconds it was just the four of us kids there. The faces of the adults were hard to read. Some people didn’t even want to meet our eyes. But I saw doubt on a few faces, and tears.

  It was my father who spoke first. He’d been sitting on a bulkhead and he straightened, kicked off the wall, glided over, and he kissed me too. On the forehead. Then he turned and faced the others.

  “Give me one good reason why not,” he said.

  The moment stretched.

  And stretched. And then everyone except Colpeys rushed forward, yelling, shouting, screaming. Grabbing, hugging, squeezing. Weeping. Laughing.

  Being human.

  Together.

  Chapter 109

  * * *

  I didn’t envy Director Colpeys. Even though he was the last person to agree with us, once he did, it was up to him to sell it to the people back at Mars One. He broadcast the message back home with all of us in the common room with him. Showing that this was our decision. The message took twenty minutes to travel all that way and the response took an hour to come back, and I can imagine the conversations—and arguments—that our message ignited.

  We sweated it. None of us wanted to hijack the ships and we definitely didn’t want to derail the future of the Mars One project in any way. This was an enormous risk and while we waited that kind of sank in.

  Then Bas Lansdorp came on the screen. He had a bunch of the senior staff behind him, including an unsmiling Dr. Aukes. Them against us?

  He said, “You are all crazy.” Then he wiped at tears in his eyes. “How do you want to proceed?”

  After that we got to work. I spent the whole night in the workshop, coming up with the best plan to reach and enter the Golden Dragon. My mom was with me on the video monitor, but we didn’t work like mother and son. It was different from that. Our relationship had evolved over the months. We were colleagues. Two mechanical engineers working a problem.

  Other people were working out the math, here and on Earth. Lansdorp called NASA and then they conference called the Chinese. I kept expecting someone to push back, to start acting like jerks about this.

  They didn’t.

  However, the top brains did warn us that we had left it almost too late. There would be all kinds of problems to solve. But again . . . top brains. All over the world and on board our ships. The cooperation we saw was amazing. I wonder what things would be like if we could work together like that on everything that was important.

  The controlled burns were being programmed. We would go to the Chinese ship first and bring back anyone who was still alive. If anyone was. Then the Huginn’s lander would be launched. The Muninn’s crew would follow in one sol—one Martian day. We were on that time schedule now and forever.

  There were people alive on the Golden Dragon. At least that’s what I believed. Not everyone agreed with me. Colpeys still thought that whoever put the ALIVE INSIDE sign up had to be dead by now. Even with rationing, he thought the math was against them. And, he said, that last message had said their airlock was damaged, and he felt that should have been that.

  I didn’t accept that. No way. Airlocks were machines, no different from any other. Machines can be fixed. Mom hadn’t trained me to accept a repair job was too hard, and “can’t do it” isn’t an acceptable answer. Not to her.

  And not to me.

  Satellites were looking at every inch of the Golden Dragon, including the airlock. It looked mostly intact, and the seal had to be good or there would have been no one to send that message. So the airlock mechanism was probably damaged from inside. There were plenty of ways to do that, but every single item—down to the last washer on the least important nut—was made to be repaired or replaced. You don’t do it any other way if you plan to fly millions of miles from a hardware shop. Spacecraft were also designed to be repaired from inside or outside. The Neo-Luddites clearly hadn’t damaged the outside, which meant that all of the access panels on the exterior of the ship were intact. I’m not saying it would be easy to access the workings and open the door without making whatever damage was inside worse. Not saying that at all. But I’m also not saying that it was impossible. Not for the son of the best mechanical engineer on two worlds. Not for a Hart. No, sir.

  So, yeah. I got this.

  I went through it all with Mom, and we discussed everything that had to be done. She told me to describe every step, list every tool, describe every procedure. Three times. In great detail. When I was done, she stared at me for so long I began to wonder if she was working out the best way to tell me that I had screwed up, that I’d missed something.

  Instead she said, “I love you, Tristan.”

  That was the conversation we had the day the Huginn settled into orbit alongside the Golden Dragon.

  Chapter 110

  * * *

  The computers did the controlled burn.

  The pilot and copilot glided us up to the sweetest soft dock in the history of space travel. I make that part sound easy. It wasn’t. But our pilots are as good at their jobs as Mom is at hers.

  This time we could slide right up close. The first stage is to initiate a soft dock by making contact with the International Berthing and Docking Mechanism—the IBDM—which is what’s called an “androgynous” low-impact docking mechanism. That means it can dock with all kinds of spacecraft, large and small. The docking connector is extended out to the target vehicle and once the soft connection is secured, both spacecraft are pressurized. We couldn’t do it that way because of the damage to the Golden Dragon. If I managed to bypass the damage and access the internal systems, then the key would be to establish an airtight hard dock seal, pr
essurize the dock, and then open the door.

  It went by the numbers.

  We docked. I was with Director Colpeys and several other crewmembers, including Nirti’s parents. All of us in spacesuits, ready for any emergency. For any horrors.

  The docking collar was pressurized.

  I opened the airlock on the Huginn. The outside airlock of the Golden Dragon was there. Right there. It took me sixteen minutes to free the manual lock and open the hatch, and another two hours to deal with a lot of torn wires, melted circuit boards, and other damage. The Neo-Luddites aboard the Chinese ship had really messed things up. Mom was in my ear, talking me through some of it; but for most of it I had to make decisions based on what I saw, I thought, I believed I could handle.

  A heavy mechanical shudder suddenly went through the skin of the Golden Dragon. I could feel it. It was as if a body that had been in a coma so long everyone thought it was dead suddenly took a breath. Then, I felt a series of impacts from inside. I placed my hands on the broken airlock and tried to “hear” through a sense of touch. There’s no sound in space, but I swear I heard the bang-bang-bang of something happening on the other side of that door. We all froze, looking at the airlock, expecting the absolute worst.

  Suddenly a valve opened. Not on my end, but at the other end. Inside the ship. It was as if someone in there understood what I was doing out here and was trying to help.