“So where is this place, that you want to send seven cons to, to build you a prison and then stay there for the rest of their lives?”
“Mars.”
Frank turned to the window again, and stared at the blurred parallel lines of the bars that divided the outside from the inside. There were seven of them, maybe six inches apart. They’d be iron, swollen with rust, peeling and flaking paint pushing off their surfaces like sloughing skin. “You did say Mars, right? As in the planet?”
“Yes. The planet Mars.”
Frank thought about it a little longer. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I assure you the offer is most genuine.”
“You want a bunch of cons to go to Mars? And build a prison? And then stay there?”
Mark wiped his hands on his suit trousers, a luxury that Frank didn’t have. “It’s not designated as a prison, but as a federal scientific facility. Let me explain, in order. A convict crew will be sent to Mars. Once there, they will construct a base from prefabricated parts and make it habitable. When the facility is finished, the crew will continue to live on Mars and serve out the rest of their sentences, helping to maintain the facility, expanding it as and when required, and assisting visiting civilian scientists in their work. That the facility will also be your prison is, I suppose, a somewhat technical detail. But as I’ve already explained, there’ll be nowhere to escape to.”
Frank nodded slowly to himself as he digested the information.
“You haven’t rejected the idea out of hand,” said Mark.
“Just give me a minute. I’m thinking.”
Once the insanity had been stripped away, it was actually a straightforward offer: die in prison or live on Mars. He was never getting out of this penitentiary alive: he’d been sentenced to a hundred and twenty years for shooting a man in the face, in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of witnesses. Only the fact that he could prove that the dead man was his son’s dealer saved him from going down for murder in the first, and onto death row.
He hadn’t contested the charges. He hadn’t spoken in his own defense. He’d taken what was coming, and he was still taking it. By mutual consent, his wife and his son had disappeared after the trial and they’d both moved a very long way away. Bad people, like the associates of the man he’d killed, had long memories, and longer reaches. No one had ever contacted him subsequently, and he’d never tried to contact anyone either. No, tell a lie: he’d had one message, maybe a year into his sentence. Divorce papers, served out of a New Hampshire attorney’s office. He’d signed them without hesitation and handed them back to the notary.
There was literally nothing for him here on Earth but to die, unremembered and unremarked on.
But Mars?
He’d heard the news about the plans for a permanent Mars base, back when he was a free man, but he couldn’t honestly say he’d paid much attention to it: he’d been in the middle of hell by then, trying to do the best thing for his family, and failing. And afterwards? Well, it hadn’t really mattered, had it? Someone was putting a base on Mars. Good for them.
He hadn’t thought for the smallest fraction of a moment of a second that it might include him.
Now, that would be a legacy worth leaving. Somewhere, his son was grown up, hopefully living his life, hopefully doing whatever he was doing well. He’d been given a second chance by Frank, who had loved him more than life itself, even if he’d had a strange way of showing it.
Did the boy think about his father? At all? What would it be like for him to suddenly discover that his old man was an astronaut, and not a jailbird? “This is the big Mars base, right?” Frank asked. “The one they announced a few years back?”
“Mars Base One. Yes.”
“That’s… interesting. But why would you pick cons? Why wouldn’t you pick the brightest and the best and let them be the goddamn heroes? Or did you already throw this open to the outside world, and there weren’t enough young, fit, intelligent people with college educations and no rap sheet beating down your doors for an opportunity like this. Is that it? You’re desperate?”
Mark stroked his top lip. “It’s because, while the company wants to minimize the risks involved, it can’t completely eliminate them. And when a young, fit, intelligent person with a college degree dies, the publicity is terrible. Which is why they’ve offered you this opportunity instead. There’s also the need to prove that this isn’t just for the very brightest. Antarctic bases need plumbers and electricians and cooks. Mars bases will too. The company wants to show the world that, with the right training, anyone can go.”
Frank hunched forward. “But couldn’t you just hire the right people?”
“Frank, I’m going to level with you. Arranging a big spaceship, that costs a lot of money and time to build, which will take people out there, and will also bring them home? That isn’t a priority right now. As it stands, the company get something out of this, and you get something out of this. They get their base built, quickly and yes, cheaply. You get to spend the rest of your life doing something worthwhile that’ll benefit the whole human race, rather than rotting to death in here. Quid pro quo. A fair exchange.”
Frank nodded again. It made some sort of sense. “OK, I get that you don’t want the pretty people dying up there, but just how dangerous is this going to be?”
“Space is a dangerous place,” said Mark. “People have died in the past. People will die in the future. Accidents happen. Space can, so I’m told, kill you in a very great number of different ways. We don’t know what your life expectancy on Mars will be. We’ve no data. It may well be attenuated by a combination of environmental factors, which you’ll learn about in your training. But you’ll be able to minimize the risks and increase your chances of survival greatly by following some fairly straightforward rules. Whereas the average life expectancy behind bars is fifty-eight. You’re currently fifty-one. You can do the math.”
“Mars.”
“Yes, Mars.”
Frank poised the tip of his tongue between his teeth, and bit lightly. He could feel himself on the threshold of pain, and that was the closest he ever got these days to feeling anything. But to feel pride again? Achievement? To think that his son would be able to look up into the night sky and say, “There he is. That’s where my father is.”
Were those good enough reasons? He wouldn’t be coming back: then again, he wasn’t really here either. It’d be a second chance for him, too.
“Where do I sign?”
By David Wellington
Monster Island
Monster Nation
Monster Planet
13 Bullets
99 Coffins
Vampire Zero
23 Hours
32 Fangs
Frostbite
Overwinter
Den of Thieves (as David Chandler)
A Thief in the Night (as David Chandler)
Honor Among Thieves (as David Chandler)
Chimera
The Hydra Protocol
The Cyclops Initiative
Positive
Forsaken Skies (as D. Nolan Clark)
Forgotten Worlds (as D. Nolan Clark)
Forbidden Suns (as D. Nolan Clark)
The Last Astronaut
* AUTHOR’S NOTE: Due to the historic nature of the Orion 7 mission, NASA requested that the four astronauts take time out of their busy schedules to record intermittent “confessionals” concerning their emotional state and their reflections on the mission. Whenever they had a moment to themselves they were supposed to contribute to this oral history. Some of them contributed more than others. I’ve placed them in the narrative as close as possible to the moment in the mission’s time line when, I believe, they were recorded.
The Last Astronaut Page 41