Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1)
Page 48
Jeff looked up from his desk. “Yeah, Gabe, come in.” He got up, walked over to the credenza, picked up a gift-wrapped package, and handed it to her. “Here, this is for you.”
She grinned. “What is this? It’s not my birthday.”
“I know. Just a little something I got for you. Open it.”
Gabe sat on the sofa, set the present on the coffee table, and gingerly opened it. Inside was a bright red dinner plate. Around the rim, in white script were the words, “You Are Special Today.” She started crying.
Jeff sat beside her. “Now, don’t start.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help it. This is so sweet.”
“Gabe, from now on, whenever you’re feeling down or upset about the past or the future, I want to see that plate in front of you at the dinner table as a reminder of two things.”
“What?” she whimpered.
“First, that you are special – today and every day. And second, that I know it.”
She gently set down the plate, then wrapped her arms around Jeff’s neck, sobbing, “Oh god! I love you so much. Please don’t ever leave me. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
Jeff held her tight and kissed her forehead. “I won’t.”
Sunday, October 19, 2014 (T minus 520 days)
PAYLOAD, “FLIGHT! We’ve got a problem!”
Gabe bolted upright in her seat, immediately followed by Jeff.
FLIGHT, “What?”
PAYLOAD, “Pyro 14 failed to initiate. Loads 13 and 14 are still connected.”
Gabe gasped. “Oh god!”
FLIGHT, “Did 13’s chute open?”
PAYLOAD, “Yeah, but it can’t handle that mass.”
FLIGHT, “Is it still connected?”
PAYLOAD, “Yes. Rate of descent is slowing but it’s gonna hit hard.”
Jeff glanced at Gabe. “Will the airbags burst on impact?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Depends on whether or not all the bags that have room to inflate do, and how it lands, and what it lands on. Rock, sand, a slope?” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”
“Splat?”
“At twelve or fifteen meters per second? Possibly.”
Susan glanced past Gabe at him. “I do wish you would reframe from using that word.”
He chuckled. “Sorry. Gabe, 13 and 14 are both food pallets, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so we’re gonna litter a hundred square meters of Mars with freeze dried corned beef?”
“Maybe. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Well, it’s triple packaged. With any luck it’ll still be freeze dried when we get there. We’ll just have to find it all. In any case, we’re taking ten percent more than we should need, so, it’s not the end of the world. Thank god it wasn’t the rover.”
“Yeah.”
Heidi glanced back at Jeff.
He shrugged.
She nodded. “Alright PAYLOAD, nothing to be done about it.”
Jeff turned to Gabe. “Any idea what might have caused it?”
“No. Could be anything. A loose wire, computer glitch… Who knows?”
“But the circuit was tested?”
“Yes, of course. Multiple times.”
“Okay, well you told me they wouldn’t all make it.”
“Yes, I did.” She gasped again. “Oh god!”
Jeff groaned. “What now?”
“Look at the beacon telemetry on load data. We thought a one second delay between pyros would be good to protect the loads from potentially hitting each other, but that their momentum would keep them grouped fairly close. But the lifting body’s velocity is almost 450 meters per second, and the loads are coming down 450 meters apart. Jeff, this stuff is gonna be scattered over more than seven kilometers. We need to do more modeling on this.”
Jeff stared at the telemetry, thought for a moment, then smiled. “Normandy.”
Gabe glanced at him, frowning. “Huh?”
“World War II. D-Day. June 6, 1944. The Normandy landing. The Airborne drops were scattered all to hell and gone. Some missed their landing zones by as much as 20 kilometers. But, we still won.” He looked at her, smiling. “It’s okay. We’ll do better next time. And, in case you missed it, your lifting body worked.”
Gabe grinned. “It did, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
PAYLOAD, “Backshell jett and loss of contact with Amos. 40 seconds to touchdown.”
FLIGHT, “Rog.”
Jeff peered at the rover telemetry screen, eagerly awaiting the first sign of a successful landing – the contact light. “Come on, Amos, talk to us.”
Thirty seconds later a green dot appeared beside Amos’ name on the screen, and a cheer went up around the room.
Abby grinned. “So far, so good.”
Jeff nodded. “Yeah.”
Within Amos’ dialogue box appeared the message, “System checks…”
Gabe put her hand on Jeff’s shoulder and shook him gently. “He’s alive.”
He let out a huge sigh of relief. “Uh huh.”
PAO, “Amos, the first of two rovers being sent to Mars as part of the Grey Aerospace expedition, is now on the planet’s surface and conducting a systems status check. Amos and its twin, Andy, are capable of entirely autonomous operation, possessing a redundant pair of BAE RAD750, radiation hardened computers, similar to those utilized on the MSL. Like Curiosity, Amos’ computer runs the VxWorks real-time operating system. However, Amos’ operating system is augmented with artificial intelligence and visual recognition utilities derived from the EUA Robotics’ explosives ordinance disposal robot, Irving. Additionally, Amos possesses an order of magnitude more memory than Curiosity, in anticipation of its potentially much larger track and visual identification databases. NASA anticipates that during its two-year planned mission, Curiosity will travel at least 25 kilometers. During its three and a half year mission, Amos will likely traverse more than 1,000 kilometers of Martian terrain.”
Amos, “Status checks complete, all systems stable.”
Jeff clapped his hands and grinned. “Halleluiah!”
Amos, “Greetings from Mars, y’all.”
Jeff laughed. “Hmmm, Amos seems to have acquired a sense of humor.” He glanced at Gabe. “I wonder who gave him that?”
Gabe grinned and shrugged.
“Yeah, well, tell him to get his ass in gear and find out what happened to the rest of our stuff.”
She shook her head. “Now, don’t be a nag, he knows what to do.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just hard not to tinker.”
“Yes, but we need to leave him alone. There’s never been this kind of AI on Mars, and we need to know how well it works.”
PAO, “Until the Grey Aerospace Mars crew arrives two years from now, for the most part Amos will be left on his own. He will locate the other cargo loads that arrived with him, survey the area, aiding in the selection of a final site for the Mars base, and transport much of the cargo to that site. Amos possesses substantial artificial intelligence and is capable of learning. By the time Jeffrey Grey and his team arrive, Amos will be an expert on their surroundings.”
Abby grunted. “And if he’s not, he’s gonna get spanked.”
Jeff chuckled. “Well, don’t tell him that. The thought of a spanking from you may distract him.”
Gabe firmly planted her elbow in Jeff’s ribs.
He glanced at her. “Now, come on, let’s not just do this, let’s enjoy it as well. I’ll bet you never had this much fun at JPL?”
She frowned. “No, I didn’t.”
The first image of Mars arrived from Amos. Jeff gasped, “Ah, Jesus, nothing but flat sand and scattered small rocks. How did we get so lucky?”
Gabe leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “It wasn’t luck, it was skill.”
“Yeah, I hope you’re right. God, that looks more like Gusev than Gusev looks like Gusev.”
She laughed. “There’s something ve
ry wrong with that sentence, but I know what you mean.”
Tuesday, October 21, 2015 (T minus 518 days)
Chrissie wandered into the kitchen. “I thought I smelled bacon.”
Jeff didn’t look up from the tomatoes he was slicing. “Hey, it’s my turn for lunch. What did you expect?”
“You and your bacon and tomato sandwiches.”
“I like them.”
“We’ve noticed.”
“Would you prefer tuna?”
“No, I would not, they’re great.”
“Alright then.”
She walked around to the opposite side of the island, leaned her elbows on the counter, rested her chin on her hands and watched him slice. “Well, you were right.”
He glanced up at her. “About what?”
“Since Sunday’s landing, I think everyone in the world has called or emailed wanting in on the action.”
Jeff laughed. “Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
Chrissie frowned. “I’m not kidding, Jeff, there’s over a thousand new emails in the sponsorship folder and more than 500 voice mail messages. I can’t deal with this, it’s too much, I’ve got other things to do. I need some help.”
He stopped slicing. “Yeah, I know. You want to hire some people?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather farm it out, I don’t have the time to train somebody.”
“A marketing firm?”
“Yeah, or PR, or an agent; something like that.”
“Or all of the above. Anyway, works for me.” He went back to slicing tomatoes. “You have somebody in mind?”
“No, but I’ll get on it this afternoon.”
“Good. Let’s strike while the iron’s hot. I guess we should have done this a long time ago.”
“You did.”
“Huh?”
“You hired me. Then you turned me into a rocket scientist.”
Jeff grinned. “Oops,”
“It’s ironic, marketing is what I always wanted to do.”
“Well, when all this is over, you can start your own aerospace marketing firm. You’ll have ‘em lined up at the door.”
Chrissie smiled. “That’s not a bad idea.” She sighed. “But only after I take a very long vacation.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I hear you.”
CHAPTER 14
Wednesday, June 10, 2015 (T minus 286 days)
Jeff glanced at his watch, five o’clock. Cocktail hour. He rolled up the command module flight control schematics he’d been poring over all afternoon, and headed downstairs. He poured a Scotch, took a sip, and glanced around, wondering where Susan was. With Abby and Gabe down at Kennedy for a few days helping Heidi ride herd over the Jupiter integration team, and Chrissie taking the week off to spend some time with her parents, Wrentham House was kind of quiet. He heard pots and pans in the kitchen. Ah ha. He strolled across the dining room, through the pantry, and into the kitchen. “What’s cookin’?”
Susan turned around abruptly, trotted up to him, put her hand on his chest, and pushed him backwards. “Out!”
“Huh?”
“Stay out, it’s a surprise.”
She chased him back through the pantry and into the dining room. “Okay, okay, I’m going. I thought we were going out for dinner tonight.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’m a woman; I’m allowed to do that. Dinner is at eight, and you need to dress.”
Jeff furrowed his brow. “Uh, I am dressed.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I was afraid of that. You mean like, coat and tie?”
“Yes.”
“Really? For dinner for two in my own house?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Oh… alright. I’m guessing this isn’t microwaved TV dinners and a football game?”
Susan glared at him. “Do I look like Gabe?”
He cocked his head to one side, grinning, and squinted. “Um, no, not really.”
“Eight o’clock, sharp.”
Jeff frowned. “Eight?”
“Yes. A fashionable dinner hour.”
He groaned, “I’ll be starving by then.”
“Good.” She smiled, and returned to the kitchen.
Jeff knotted his tie, donned a charcoal grey pinstripe suit coat, took a last glance in the mirror, and went downstairs, arriving in the dining room promptly at five minutes to eight, and just in time to catch Susan rolling the serving cart out of the pantry. She was wearing a short-sleeve silver silk brocade mandala blouse, lavishly decorated with gold and red dragon and phoenix embroidery, with mandarin collar and five frog buttons down the front, over a floor-length black silk crepe skirt. Jeff’s eyes lit up. “That is lovely.”
“Thank you.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You keep coming up with new ones, and they’re all gorgeous.”
“They’re a bit hard to find in my size, so when I run across a collection that fits, I buy one of each, and stock the shelves.”
“Ah. What size are you?”
“Anywhere from a zero to a petite four. Depends on the article and the cut.”
“Huh. I always thought zero meant, you know, nothing.”
She grinned. “You wish. Sorry, no. In women’s clothing, it’s just an extra-small.”
“Hmmm, too bad. Well, in any case, I approve.”
She smiled softly and gave him a subtle nod. “Thank you. Shall we dine?”
“By all means, it smells wonderful.”
Susan dimmed the lights.
As she was about to take the seat Jeff held out for her, he caught a scent. “Wait a second.” He leaned toward her and sniffed. She canted her head and pulled her hair over her shoulder, baring her neck to him. He leaned in close and sniffed again. “Oh, your perfume is intoxicating. What is it?”
“Opium.”
“Wow, that’s nice. Why haven’t I smelled that before?”
“I don’t wear it very often.”
“You should.”
He seated her, then took a seat at the end of the table adjacent to her. The table was laid out with their finest china and silver, and a candelabra. Before them sat covered silver serving dishes. Susan’s dark eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “This is very nice. You’ve been busy this afternoon.”
“Yes.”
“Is this some special occasion that Chrissie forgot to remind me of?”
“No. Since it’s just the two of us, I thought a quiet, elegant dinner at home would be fun.”
He nodded. “A lovely idea. Thank you.”
She removed the silver lids, revealing Blue Point oysters on a half shell chilled on crushed ice.
Jeff’s eyes lit up. “Oh my, oysters. Is there a message here?”
She grinned. “None that I am aware of. I just know you like them.”
“Yes I do.” As they slurped raw oysters and cocktail sauce, Jeff thought of something, and laughed.
Susan looked at him quizzically. “Is something funny?”
“I was just reminded of when Gabe and I were at FSI getting our Citation type ratings, and she, Abby, and I went out for dinner one evening. Abby wanted oysters on a half shell, so we ordered a round. Gabe had never had them.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah. She’s not exactly a gourmand.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Anyway, after watching Abby and I slurp down a couple, she finally built up the nerve to try one. She held the shell to her lips and her hand started shaking. Abby just goaded her on and she finally popped it in.” He paused and laughed. “You should have seen the expression on her face. You could see that she was just holding it in her mouth, undecided on whether to swallow or spit it out. Then she swallowed it and immediately gagged. I thought she was gonna throw up on the table. Abby was laughing so hard I’m surprised she didn’t wet her pants.”
Susan laughed. “That sounds like Gabe. But, she got over it. I know she likes them now.”<
br />
“Yep. Still can’t get her to try escargot.”
“Yes. Good luck with that.”
The oysters were followed by Caesar salad, French onion soup, and then lemon sorbet and champagne.
Jeff smiled broadly. “Wow, how very Continental.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Yes indeed. You know, if Abby hears about this dinner she’s gonna have a fit.”
Susan smiled. “I thought of that. When I shopped, I bought plenty. We’ll do it again after they return.”
“Ah, very thoughtful.”
She got up, cleared the dishes, went to the serving cart and returned with heated plates of breaded sea scallops, sautéed in butter and white wine, over linguine with garlic cream sauce. “Here you are. Bon appétit.”
“Ah, that’s what I’ve been smelling. Oh my, doesn’t this look scrumptious.”
“Enjoy.”
Jeff took a bite. “Oh lord, Sue, that is delicious. Your culinary skills never cease to amaze me.”
She smiled, demurely. “Thank you.”
“I don’t know, maybe we should forget about Mars and just open a restaurant.”
“It would probably be easier.”
“That’s a fact. Maybe we should do that when we get back. I’ve often thought having a restaurant – a really nice one, five-star, absolutely first-class – would be fun.”
She smiled. “That would be fun. Abby might even enjoy that. You know, she is an exceptionally fine cook, better than me. She just doesn’t like to cook.”
“Yeah, I know. Her mother’s even written a cookbook.”
“Yes, we have it. This is her scallop recipe.”
“Really? It’s wonderful. My compliments to her recipe and your execution thereof.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And, what would Gabe do in our little restaurant?”
Jeff shook his head. “I dunno, cocktail waitress? You sure wouldn’t want her in the kitchen.”
Susan chuckled. “A bit overqualified for that, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, probably. Maybe she could run the bar. She does know more about rocket fuel than most people.”
“Ah, now there’s an idea.”