by Ben Bova
Ted Connover called from inside the ship. “Bee, we’re ready to come out.”
“Hang loose,” Benson said. “We’ll call if we run into trouble.”
“Why don’t you wait and let Hi and me come out and help you?”
Shaking his head, Benson replied, “Don’t want to risk both our astronauts if we don’t have to. Besides, every minute we wait is another couple hundred pounds of hydrogen squirting out into space.”
“But—”
“Sorry, Ted. You and McPherson stand by. Amanda’s going to try to reach the leak.”
“Amanda?” Connover practically squeaked with surprise.
“Yes, Amanda. We’re ready to go now.”
Amanda nodded inside her helmet. But she had a sudden flash of memory of her miserable attempts at ballet lessons in school. The teacher was as kind as she could be, but she made it clear that a chunky, heavy-legged ballerina just wasn’t going to make the grade.
I can do this, she told herself as she stared at the leaking TEI tank. I’ve got to do it!
“You ready?” Benson’s voice in her helmet earphones sounded tense.
“Yeah,” she responded. “Ready.”
“Go.”
Amanda bent her knees as best as her suit would allow, and launched herself toward the damaged area of the tank. I’m flying! she marveled. Being weightless helps.
She hit the tank with a thud that only she could hear, the sound carrying from the tank through her suit by conduction. But she had landed too far from the broken truss spar to reach it. She bounced off the tank and started drifting away from the ship. Before she could panic she felt the tug of her tether. Bee was pulling her back to safety. For the first time since she’d been a child, Amanda offered up a swift prayer of thanks.
“Not so bad,” Benson was telling her. “You almost made it.”
She grabbed the truss beside him, saying, “Let me try again.”
“Right.”
This time her leap was right on the mark. She thumped against the tank and wrapped both her gloved hands around the undamaged truss segment before the momentum of her impact pushed her away again.
“Gotcha!” she exclaimed.
“Good girl!” Benson called.
A moment’s exultation was all she got. Benson quickly demanded, “What do you see, Amanda? Remember, your video isn’t working, so all we’ve got is your voice report.”
“I see the damage,” she answered. “It’s a pretty big tear.” She put her gloved hand over the leak. “I can feel the gas escaping. Pushes against my fingertips.”
“You’ll have to pull the spar out of the hole,” Benson said.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. To herself, she added, Without jerking myself off the tank altogether.
Slowly, deliberately, she wormed the broken piece of truss out of the hole it had dug into the tank’s skin.
Blinking sweat out of her eyes she cried, “Got it!” and held the twisted length of metal up in one hand like a victorious warrior.
“Roll over on your back before you throw it away,” Benson told her. “That way the recoil from your throw won’t push you off the tank.”
“Good thinking, Bee.”
Amanda tried to lie flat, but her bulky backpack made her feel as if she were laying on a pile of rocks. Gripping the truss segment with both hands, she tried to recall how she made two-handed free throws when she played basketball in school.
She lifted the segment over her head and heaved. It disappeared into the blackness of space. Bet that’s a record for free throws, she thought. A zillion miles.
“Great toss!” Benson called.
Rolling slowly, cautiously onto her belly, she pulled out the patch kit and got to work. Be extra careful, she told herself. Hydrogen is sneaky stuff.
Standing at the base of the big, curving tank, Benson was thinking the same thing. Hydrogen leaked through almost everything. The lightest element, its atoms were the smallest of them all. Even in its diatomic form, H2, the stuff leaked through seals that held everything else.
Amanda took no chances. She covered the leak with a patch and smeared it with gobs of epoxy. Then she slapped more patches around the edges of the first one and sealed them firmly, too.
At last she got up on her knees and said to Benson, “It’s covered.”
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“This sucker’s covered,” Amanda insisted. “Nothing’s going to get out now.”
Benson felt a wave of relief wash over him. Amanda sounded totally sure that the leak was fixed. But just to make certain, he called to Gonzalez, “Virginia, ask Catherine or Mikhail to check the LAD reading.”
“Copy LAD reading,” Gonzalez replied.
“Bee, this is Ted,” Connover’s voice came through his helmet earphones. “Hi and I are ready to come out.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to. Amanda’s got the leak covered.”
“You’re sure?”
Looking up towards Amanda, Benson saw her give a thumbs-up.
“I’m sure,” he said.
Gonzalez put the icing on the cake. “Bee, Mikhail says the LAD shows the leak has stopped. Propellant level in the tank has stabilized.”
“Best news I’ve had all day,” Benson said.
“Two days,” came Connover’s voice. He sounded happy, relieved.
“Two days. Right.” As he started pulling Amanda’s tether in, he thought, I’m going to sleep for at least a week. The thought pleased him.
July 23, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 100 Days
12:17 Universal Time
Privacy Quarters
Strangely, Benson slept less than six hours, but he awoke in his privacy cubicle feeling refreshed but grungy, after his sweaty EVA work.
Nobody else seemed to be in their quarters. They must all be working. Even Amanda. Good, he thought. Time on the job is time not spent moping or worrying about our situation.
Briefly he considered skipping the shower he so dearly wanted. Don’t know how much water we’ve lost. It gets recycled from the shower, he knew, but he worried about being profligate.
His nostrils decided the matter. If I show myself to the others smelling like this, they’ll throw me in the shower whether I like it or not.
Fifteen minutes later, showered, shaved, and wearing a fresh set of coveralls, Benson headed toward the galley.
The entire crew was there, most of them strapped into chairs. Hi McPherson and Catherine Clermont were hovering by the refrigerator/freezer, choosing selections.
It’s lunchtime, Benson realized. He saw Amanda sitting beside Virginia Gonzalez, both of them wolfing down slices of soymeat. Prokhorov, sitting across the table from them, picked listlessly at his lunch.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Taki Nomura called to him.
“You mean good afternoon,” Ted Connover corrected.
“What’s the matter, Mikhail? You don’t like frozen fruit tarts?”
“My stomach is protesting,” the Russian said bleakly. “If only we had some borscht.”
Looking around the table, Benson asked, “Who’s watching the store?”
“I’ll get back to the bridge in a couple of minutes,” Connover said. “We’ve been jabbering with mission control all morning. They’ve been analyzing our telemetry.”
“And?”
Hiking his eyebrows, Connover said, “We’re going to have to do something about the truss. The structural guys say it’ll never take the gee forces we’ll face during Mars orbit insertion.”
Benson nodded. “We’ll have to patch it somehow.”
“Yeah, but the bright boys back home haven’t come up with a ‘somehow.’”
“They will,” McPherson said, as he let his lunch tray hover in midair while he helped Clermont slide into her chair.
“We’ve got more than two months before we reach Mars,” Amanda said. Benson thought she might have crossed her fingers under the table.
“All system
s in the green?” Benson asked Connover as he glided away from the microwave.
Ted nodded. “We lost a lot of water, though. Mission control thinks we’ll have to start rationing.”
“Propellant?”
“They’re still working on that. But from the looks on their faces, it’s going to be bad news.”
Benson took in a breath and forced himself onto the only unoccupied chair. His tray floated a few inches above the table while he strapped himself down.
“Well,” he said, “we’re all alive and healthy. The ship is functioning. Things could be worse.”
Mikhail Prokhorov made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a dismissive snort. “Bee, you remind me of the man who fell out of the window on the fortieth floor of the building. As he passed the twentieth floor he said, ‘So far, so good.’”
Everyone chuckled. Except Benson. He thought that the Russian was right. So far, so good. But they were going to hit the sidewalk soon enough, he knew.
* * *
Television screens and 3D sets around the world showed Steven Treadway standing in the Arrow’s passageway, between the command center and the galley. Beside him stood Taki Nomura, no taller than his shoulder. What yhe audience did not see was the subtitle editing done to cut out the time delay.
“This is Steven Treadway reporting from the damaged Mars spacecraft, Arrow.”
Treadway wore his crisp white shirt, but his usual smile was gone. He looked deadly serious, concerned, almost mournful.
Turning to Taki, he said, “This is Dr. Nomura, the crew’s physician and psychological counselor.” Nomura nodded and tried to smile.
“Taki,” Treadway asked, “How is the crew handling this grave emergency?”
Nomura’s face revealed nothing as she said, “We’re all concerned, of course. But we’ve trained for years to face emergency situations. Each of our team members is in good spirits, psychologically. No one was really injured and all the ship’s systems are functioning.”
“But the damage to the ship—”
“It’s being analyzed and steps to correct the damage are being assessed.”
Treadway nodded minimally. “I’ve got to say that watching the video feed from the ship was emotionally shocking. I can only imagine how you all felt.”
“It was a jolt to us all, no doubt about that.”
“But you’ve recovered magnificently.”
With the ghost of a smile, Taki replied, “That’s what we’re trained to do.”
“And the damage has been repaired?” Treadway asked.
“Most of it. Commander Benson and Amanda Lynn, our biologist, went EVA and plugged the leaks in the water bladder and TEI tank.”
“That’s the tank that holds the fuel needed to return to Earth.”
“The propellant, yes.”
“What about the damage to the central truss?”
“Mission control is working out a repair plan.”
Treadway nodded, more deeply. “I’ve got to say, this accident really stunned me. And as I watched the video feed, I realized that I was seeing what had happened several minutes ago. It was so frustrating!”
“We’re so far from Earth,” Nomura said calmly, “that it takes a few minutes for our video feed to reach you.”
“I wanted to do something to help,” Treadway went on, “but all I could so was watch the video, knowing that I was looking into the past and there was nothing I could do about it.”
“You’re very considerate, Mr. Treadway,” Taki said, soothingly. “We all appreciate that.”
Looking somber, Treadway turned to face the hovering camera and concluded, “This is Steven Treadway, reporting virtually from the damaged Arrow, as it limps toward Mars.”
July 24, 2035
14:00 Universal Time
Earth Departure Plus 101 Days
NASA Headquarters, Washington D.C.
“What the hell?” Bart Saxby snapped.
He was sitting in his office on the ninth floor of NASA headquarters, staring at the headline in the SpaceBlog news feed on the TV screen built into the wall opposite his desk. Saxby could feel his blood pressure rising as he read the article beneath the headline.
“‘Confidential NASA briefs give the crew of the Arrow less than a fifty percent chance of returning home alive,’” he read aloud.
Turning to Robin Harkness, NASA’s director of human spaceflight, Saxby’s voice rose. “Dammit, they’re quoting verbatim from the text of the report you handed me less than two hours ago! How in God’s name did they get that information out of here and onto the net so fast? Worst of all, who the hell’s leaking it to them?”
Harkness, a career bureaucrat, was trim and taut from years of playing tennis and squash at every opportunity. He frowned as he replied to Saxby, “There aren’t too many people who’ve seen that report, and I know all of them personally. I can’t believe that any of them would sneak something this explosive to the news media.”
Saxby was red-faced with anger. He and Harkness were both political appointees. He knew that both their heads would roll if it turned out that someone highly placed in NASA was leaking sensitive information to the media even before they’d had a chance to brief the president.
“Damn, damn, damn!” Saxby grumbled, running a hand through his thinning gray hair. “I’m supposed to brief the president this afternoon and it’s already out on the news. How do we do damage control? Never mind the leak, for now anyway. I’ve got to get a story together.”
Harkness pressed his hands together as if praying. After a moment, he said, “Bart, the best damage control might be to go public. If we try to cover up their chances and they don’t make it back safely, then you, me, and the president will look bad. The public hates coverups and that’s what we’d be doing.”
Saxby glared at him, but said nothing.
“If we get lucky and the crew makes it home,” Harkness went on, “then it’d still look like we tried to cover something up. I think we—you—should go public with the assessment and all the details right after you meet with the president. Today, if possible. The more times goes by, the more likely it’ll blow up in our faces.”
Grudgingly, Saxby said, “I’ll need the story that goes with this. It’s got to honestly describe the situation, yet hold out the possibility of salvation. The crew will see all the crap the media puts out and we can’t afford to have them lose whatever hope they have.”
Harkness was about to reply when the intercom on Saxby’s desk said, “Sir, Senator Donaldson is on line one.”
“Oh shit,” said Saxby, sinking his face into his hands.
July 24, 2035
18:20 Universal Time
Earth Departure Plus 101 Days
The White House
“The president will see you now.”
Bart Saxby thought that, under normal circumstances –if you can ever call having an audience with the President of the United States normal—those words would have been just about what any aspiring bureaucrat or politician would be eager to hear. But these were not normal circumstances, and the NASA Administrator was not particularly eager to have this conversation.
President Harper was seated at the middle of the conference room table flanked by Sarah Fleming, his chief of staff, the National Security Advisor, and several aides. One of the White House official photographers was tiptoeing around the table, taking pictures, while a videographer captured the entire meeting.
No one rose when Saxby entered the conference room, nor did he expect any of them to. He was accompanied by Robin Harkness and the agency’s chief scientist, Marion Dupree. No one was smiling.
Harper was busy scribbling a note on the bottom of an official-looking sheet of paper. All the paper in the White House looked official to Saxby. President Harper glanced up and motioned for Saxby and the others to take seats on the other side of the table, facing the president and his staff.
The President finished his writing, looked up and scanned the room
with troubled eyes, then settled his gaze on Saxby.
“Bart, what’s the status of the Arrow? Sarah told me you had important news and it couldn’t wait.”
“Mr. President, I’m afraid the news isn’t good.”
Fleming’s green eyes narrowed. “Then the news media reports are true?”
“Pretty much, I’m afraid.”
The security advisor shook his heavy-jowled head. “How in hell did the media get this information before the president?”
With a glance at Harkness, Saxby replied, “We’re looking into that.”
“This is a serious leak,” the NSA man said.
Raising one meaty hand, President Harper said, “Let’s not get fixated on that. Not yet. What’s the status of the Arrow? That’s what I want to know.”
“We’ve looked at how much propellant they’ve lost, how much water leaked away, and the structural condition of the spacecraft. At best, it’s a fifty-fifty chance that the ship will break apart when they try to enter Mars orbit.”
“Then don’t go into Mars orbit,” said one of the president’s aides, a youngish man with thick blond hair and owlish eyeglasses.
“They’ve got to go into orbit around Mars. Otherwise they can’t get back to Earth.”
“They can’t turn around?”
“Not without help from Mars’ gravity field.”
“My God in heaven,” Harper muttered.
With a sigh, Saxby added, “And they’ll have to stay at Mars for thirty days, whether they go down to the surface or not. That’s how long it will take for Earth and Mars to line up properly so that the ship can make the journey back home.”
Before anyone could reply to that, Saxby went on, “That’s what is needed for an undamaged ship to return. But the Arrow is damaged, heavily damaged. And we don’t know if they have enough propellant left to make it back home.”
“You don’t know!” the National Security Advisor snapped, like a prosecuting attorney confronting a defendant.
“We’re grinding through the numbers. Comments about so-called exact rocket science aside, we always carry some reserve propellant and we often have to use it, for one emergency or another. But here we’re talking about a trip of more than thirty million miles. There’s a lot of uncertainties involved.”