Basically, Dan knew, he would be little more than a passenger. Learning about the Mars vessel and its capacities was more interesting than Cabinet meetings, and messing around with the NASA computers was a little like those video games he had sometimes played with Tucker and Ben. The crew had to be in good shape, but he had always jogged and played a fair amount of tennis. He often missed Marilyn and the kids, but they had been apart for extended periods during political campaigns in the past, and their weekends together more than made up for it. He didn’t have to talk to reporters, although occasionally he didn’t mind posing for photographers in his NASA garb with a Robert Redford grin on his face. Once a week, some of his staffers and the President’s would fly down to brief him on various matters, but Washington often seemed far away.
He had wondered if his fellow astronauts would take to him, since they would have to spend at least a couple of weeks in isolation with him—longer if NASA decided they should remain in a Martian base camp for a while, which they might have to do if they found anything really interesting. Within three weeks after his arrival in Houston, however, he was golfing twice a week with Kiichi, jogging in the mornings with Prince Ahmed after the Saudi’s morning prayers, and playing tennis with Sergei, who, despite his small size, had one hell of a backhand.
Only Ashana had intimidated him just a little. The tall, good-looking black woman was too damned brainy and formal for him to regard her as a real babe—not that he, as a married man and a future Presidential candidate, was inclined to dwell on her apparent babe qualities anyway. Maybe Ashana thought that she was commanding this expedition for the same reason Clarence Thomas was on the Supreme Court. That was another reason to keep his distance. It wouldn’t help his chances for the White House if Ashana turned into another Anita Hill.
He might have gone on being distantly polite to her if, a month and a half into his training, he hadn’t been drawn into a pick-up basketball game with a few of the NASA staffers. Ashana came by, and before he knew it, she was giving him some good advice on how to improve his jump shots.
Basketball was the glue that sealed their friendship, but Dan had nearly blown it when Ashana had come to his house one weekend to meet his family and watch a game. “I should have known,” he said as he settled into his chair, “that you’d be a hoop fan.”
Ashana’s face suddenly got very stiff. Next to her on the sofa, Marilyn was rolling her eyes and giving him her I-don’t-believe-you-just-said-that look.
“Exactly why should you have known?” Ashana asked in a small but kind of scary voice.
“In your official biography—I mean, you grew up in Indiana, didn’t you? Everybody’s a fan there.”
Ashana relaxed, but he didn’t quite understand why she had laughed so hard afterwards.
He admitted it to himself; if he had to be a hero to win the election, this was the way to do it. His crewmates were the real experts, so he could leave all the major decisions to them. He would, of course, do his best to be helpful. Sergei would use him as a subject in some medical experiments, and he could also help Kiichi sort his soil samples. That would be great, if they actually found life on Mars, even if it was only something like the mildew that sometimes showed up in the Vice-Presidential mansion.
People were really getting psyched about this mission. After all the economic bad news of recent years, putting people to work on the ship, now called the Edgar Rice Burroughs, and its systems, as well as expanding the size of the Russian and American space stations to house those who had to work on the Burroughs in orbit, had given the economy a boost. Part of that was the new jobs, but most of it was simply that the country was regaining its confidence. This Mars thing would propel him into the White House on a wave of good feeling, and he would lead the country into the next century during his second term. By then, the economy would be booming along under the impetus of a revived space program. Dan wasn’t exactly sure how this would happen, but would let his advisors figure that out when it was time for them to write his speeches.
It was, when he thought about it, amazing that the Mars mission had won such widespread support. There were, of course, some people who had to bitch, like those protestors who showed up at the Johnson Space Center or Cape Canaveral to protest the ship’s technology, but they were the kind who panicked whenever they saw the word “fission,” especially if “fusion” was sitting right next to it. A comedian on David Letterman’s show had said something about how a dopehead must have thought of putting the Vice-President aboard, and so maybe they should have called the ship the William S. Burroughs. Dan didn’t see what was so funny about that, but it didn’t really matter. Most of the clippings Marilyn brought to him on her visits had optimistic words about the mission and comments from various people about his bravery and increasing maturity.
Almost before he knew it, he and his fellow astronauts were being flown to Florida, where they would spend their final days before liftoff; a space shuttle would carry them to the Burroughs. The President would be there, along with several ambassadors and any other dignitaries who had managed to wangle an invitation. A whole contingent of family and friends were coming in from Indiana to view the launch, which would be covered by camera teams and reporters from just about everywhere. Everything had gone basically without a hitch so far, although they were going to be late taking off for the Burroughs; the shuttle launch had been postponed until October, what with a few small delays on construction and testing. Still, the Mars ship and its systems had passed every test with flying colors, and this had inspired a number of articles contending, basically, that American workers had finally gotten their shit together again. More kids were deciding to take science and math courses in school. There was a rumor that Time magazine had decided early that Dan would have to be their Man of the Year.
Only one dark spot marred his impending triumph. That creep Garry Trudeau was now depicting him as a feather floating inside a space helmet and referring to him as “the candidate from Mars.”
The Burroughs wasn’t exactly the kind of sleek ship Dan had seen in movies about space. Its frame held two heavily-shielded habitat modules, the lander, and the Mars base assembly. The large metallic bowl that housed the pulse engine was attached to the end of the frame. The whole thing reminded him a little of a giant Tootsie Roll with a big dish at one end, but he felt confident as he floated into the crew’s quarters through an open lock. The President and Barbara had wished him well, and Marilyn and the kids had looked so proud of him. If he had known that being courageous was this simple, maybe he would have tried it sooner.
Inside the large barrel of this habitat, five seats near wall screens had been bolted to what would be the floor during acceleration. He propelled himself toward a seat and strapped himself in without a qualm. The Burroughs circled the Earth, then took off like a dream; Dan, pressed against his seat, watched in awe as the globe on the screen shrank to the size of a marble.
The ship would take a little while to reach one g, at which point the crew could get up and move around. The Burroughs would continue to accelerate until they were halfway to Mars, at which point it would begin to decelerate. The faster the ship boosted, the more gravity it would have; at least that was how Dan understood the matter. Even though it might have been kind of fun to float around the Burroughs, he had been a bit queasy during the shuttle flight, and was just as happy that they wouldn’t have to endure weightlessness during the voyage. He had heard too many stories about space sickness and the effects of weightlessness on gas; he didn’t want to puke and fart all the way to Mars.
Dan had little time to glance at the viewscreens when he finally rose from his seat. The others were already messing around with the computers and setting up experiments and generally doing whatever they were supposed to do; his job now was to monitor any transmissions from Earth.
He sent back greetings, having rehearsed the words during the last few days. He didn’t have anything really eloquent to say about actually being out in space
at last, but a lot of astronauts weren’t great talkers. When he was about to sign off, the NASA CapCom patched him through to Marilyn.
She had cut out James J. Kilpatrick’s latest column to read to him. The columnist had written: “Lloyd Bentsen once said of the Vice-President, ‘You’re no Jack Kennedy.’ This has been verified in a way Senator Bentsen could never have predicted. This man is no Jack Kennedy. Instead, he has donned the mantle of Columbus and the other great explorers of the past.”
That was the kind of thing that could really make a guy feel great.
There was little privacy on the Burroughs. What with the shielding, the engine, the Mars lander they would use when they reached their destination, and the base camp assembly that would be sent to the Martian surface if NASA deemed a longer stay worthwhile, there wasn’t exactly an abundance of space for the crew in the habitat modules. The next ship, which was already being built, would have the additional luxuries of a recreational module, along with separate sleeping compartments, but NASA had cut a few corners on this one.
The bathroom, toilet and shower included, was the size of a small closet; their beds, which had to be pulled out from the walls, were in the adjoining module, with no partitions. The whole place smelled like a locker room, maybe because the modules had been part of the Russian space station before being recycled for use in this mission. The food tasted even worse than some of the stuff Dan had eaten in the Deke house at DePauw.
But their comfort was not entirely overlooked; the Burroughs had a small library of CDs, videodiscs, and books stored on microdot. Within twenty-four hours, Dan and his companions had worked out a schedule so that each of them would have some time alone in the bed compartment to read, listen to music, or take a nap. There was no sense getting on one another’s nerves during the voyage, and some solitude would ease any tensions.
Dan went to the sleeping quarters during his scheduled time on the third day out, meaning to watch one of his favorite movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He could stretch out on one of the beds and still see the screen on the wall in the back. He nodded off just as Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick, was calling up his friend Cameron on the phone; he woke up to the sounds of “Twist and Shout.” Matthew Broderick was gyrating on a float in the middle of a Chicago parade.
Dan had missed most of the movie. He must have been more tired than he realized, even though he didn’t have as much to do as the rest of the crew. Sergei had said something about doing some medical tests on him. He looked at his watch, set on Eastern Standard Time, which they were keeping aboard ship, and noticed that it was past 8:00 P.M. He stared at the screen, not understanding why the movie was still on until he realized that the player had gone back to the beginning of the disc and started running the film again. It was Ahmed’s time to use the compartment now, so why wasn’t the Prince here bugging him about it? On top of that, nobody had come to get him for dinner.
He sat up slowly. A weird feeling came over him, a little like the nervousness he had felt before calling his father about trying to get into the Guard. He got to his feet and climbed the ladder through the passageway that connected this module to the next.
The hatch at the end of the short passage was open as he came up. His shipmates were slumped over the table where they usually ate, their faces in their trays. Dan crept toward them, wondering if this was some kind of joke. “Okay, guys,” he said, “you can cut it out now.” They were awfully still, and Sergei had written something on the table in Cyrillic letters with his fingers and some gravy. “Okay, you faked me out. Come on.” Dan stopped behind Kiichi and nudged him, then saw that the Japanese had stopped breathing. Very slowly, he moved around the table, taking each person’s pulse in turn. The arms were flaccid, the bodies cold.
“Oh, my God,” he said. “Oh, my God.” He sank to the floor, covered his face with his hands, and sat there for a long time until a voice called out to him from the com.
“Houston to Burroughs. Houston to Burroughs.” He got up and stumbled toward the com. “Come in, Burroughs.” He sat down and turned on the com screen.
Sallie Werfel, the CapCom, stared out at him from the screen.
“They’re dead,” he blurted out. “They’re all dead.” Not until after he had said it did he remember that NASA had planned a live broadcast for that evening. “Oh, my God.”
Sallie gazed back at him with a big smile on her face; it would take a while for his words to reach her, since signals had to work harder to get through all that space. Then her smile disappeared, and she was suddenly shouting to somebody else before turning to the screen once more.
“We’re off the air,” she said. “All right, what the hell do you mean about—”
“They’re all dead,” he replied. “At the table. Turn on the cameras and take a look. Sergei wrote something next to his tray, but it’s in Russian.”
Sallie was whispering to a man near her. Some more time passed. “All right, Dan,” she said very quietly. “I want you to stay right where you are for the moment. We’ve got the cameras on the others now. You’re absolutely sure they’re, uh, gone.”
“Yeah.”
A few more minutes passed. “We’re looking at Sergei’s message. A couple of our people here know Russian, so we should have a translation in just a little bit. While we’re waiting, I want to know exactly what you were doing during the last few hours.”
“Not much,” he said. “I mean, it was my turn for some private time—we had, like, a schedule for times to be alone, you know? So I went to the other module thinking I’d catch a movie.” He was about to say he had been watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but thought better of it. “What I remember is that Ashana was on the treadmill working out, and Sergei and Ahmed were checking some numbers or something. Kiichi was in the can—er, bathroom. I fell asleep, and when I woke up and looked at the time, it was past dinner. Then I came out and—” He swallowed hard. “Oh, my God.” He waited.
“Take it easy, Dan,” she said finally. “We’re opening up a line to the White House right now.”
An alien, he thought. Some creepy blob thing, the kind of creature they showed in old sci-fi movies, had somehow found its way aboard the ship. He imagined it oozing out to kill his companions during dinner, then concealing itself somewhere aboard the Burroughs to wait for him. Except that it wouldn’t find too many places it could hide in the crew’s quarters. Maybe the alien was concealed in the Mars lander by now, waiting for him. He shuddered. It couldn’t be an alien. There wasn’t any way for one to get aboard.
“We’ve got a translation,” Sallie was saying. Dan forced his attention back to the screen. “We know what Sergei wrote.” Her eyes glistened; he held his breath. “Not the food. Fever. Feels like flu.”
“What?” He waited.
“Flu. Influenza.” She lifted a hand to her temples. “He’s telling us it wasn’t anything in the food, that it felt as if they were coming down with something.”
Everything had happened awfully fast. The whole business might be some sort of weird assassination attempt; maybe someone had figured out a way to poison the main module’s air system. It was pure chance that he had not been sitting there with the others. But why would anyone want to assassinate him? Only the Democrats had anything to gain from that, and they had so many loose cannons that somebody would have leaked such a plot by now.
He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not when Sallie contacted him an hour later and gave him NASA’s hypothesis. They suspected that his comrades had been the victims of an extremely virulent but short-lived virus—virulent because the others had died so quickly, and short-lived because Dan, in the same module breathing the same air, was still alive. They had come up with this explanation after consulting with the Russians, who had admitted that milder viruses had occasionally afflicted their cosmonauts. The closed ecologies of their modules had never been perfect. What that meant was that things could get kind of scuzzy in there.
The next order of
business was to dispose of the bodies. Dan put on his spacesuit and tried not to look at the food- stained faces of his dead comrades as he dragged them one by one into the airlock.
They deserved a prayer. The only ones he knew were Christian prayers, but maybe Kiichi and Ahmed wouldn’t mind, and he suspected Sergei was more religious than he let on. He whispered the Lord’s Prayer, and then another he had often used at prayer breakfasts. Too late, he realized that a prayer said at meals might not be the most appropriate thing, given that his companions had died over their chow.
He looked up from the bodies as the outside door slid slowly open to reveal the blackness of space. His comrades deserved a few more words before he consigned them to the darkness.
“You guys,” he whispered, “you were some of the best friends I ever had. You were definitely the smartest.”
It took a while to get the bodies outside. As he watched them drift away from the ship, tears rose to his eyes. He was really going to miss them.
Sallie contacted Dan an hour before the President was to address the nation and the world. The most important thing now was for Dan to seem in control of himself when it was time for his own broadcast. The NASA scientists were fairly certain that Dan wouldn’t suffer the fate of the others; there was only a slight chance that the mysterious virus would reappear to infect him. He didn’t find this very consoling, since there had been only a slight chance of such a thing happening in the first place.
“Do me a favor, Sallie,” Dan said. “If I do kick off, don’t let the media have tapes of it or anything. I mean, I don’t want Marilyn and my kids watching that stuff on CNN or something.” He waited. The time for round-trip signals was growing longer.
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