Mission: Tomorrow

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  I actually blushed with shame. “I . . . I can’t, Sam. My spacecraft isn’t big enough to carry two people.”

  He broke into a lopsided pout. “Really?”

  “Really. I can call the IAA, once I get out of range of your jamming—”

  “It’s not intentional!”

  “I know. But once I’m away from this asteroid I can call the IAA. They’ll send a rescue mission.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Of course they will! They’d have to!”

  Sam didn’t look convinced of that. But then he said, “You know, you’ve got to be on the body you’re claiming when you send your claim in to the IAA.”

  “Oh!” I hadn’t thought of that. I couldn’t claim the asteroid unless I was physically on it when I made the claim. And as long as Sam’s fusion reactor was blocking all the comm frequencies, I couldn’t get a message back to Earth while I was still on the asteroid.

  He saw the crestfallen expression on my face. Getting up from the table—slowly, carefully, in the light gravity—Sam said, “I’ll try to fix the damned reactor.”

  I expected him to act like a male chauvinist and leave me to clear the table. Instead, he picked up everything and tossed them all—dishes, glasses, dinnerware—into what looked like a dishwasher.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s have another whack at that goddamned fusion reactor.”

  As we shuffled along the passageway, Sam asked, “So China wants to start mining asteroids for rare-Earth metals.”

  “Oh no,” I corrected. “China is already the world’s leading producer of rare-Earth metals. We have no intention of mining more of them from asteroids. Why should we go to such expense? An increase in their supply would only bring down their prices.”

  He shot me a perplexed look. “You don’t intend to mine this asteroid? Then why claim it?”

  “To prevent others from mining it. We have a near monopoly of rare-Earth metals on Earth. Why should we allow others to compete against us by mining asteroids?”

  Understanding dawned in Sam’s hazel eyes. “Cutting the competition’s throat,” he muttered.

  “It is a legitimate business tactic,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” We had reached the compartment where the fusion reactor’s controls were housed. Sam turned to me and said, “But there are zillions of asteroids. You can’t claim them all. Others will get to at least some of them.”

  I smiled with the knowledge of superior wisdom, “Sam, you’re thinking of the Asteroid Belt, which is four times father from the Sun than the Earth is.”

  “Out beyond the orbit of Mars,” he said.

  “That’s much too far for commercial operations. The cost of transportation would be too much to make mining asteroids in the Belt profitable.”

  “I guess.”

  “But the near-Earth asteroids are reasonably accessible. Our astronomers have studied the NEAs very carefully. Although there are hundreds of them sizeable enough to be considered for mining, only a handful have amounts of rare-Earth metals that might be possible competition for the People’s Republic of China.”

  “And you’re sending people out to claim each and every one of them.”

  “Of course. I am only the first. There will be others. Our only fear is that private companies such as yours will claim a few of them.”

  “That could cause you trouble, eh?”

  “Competition,” I said.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m ’way ahead of those other companies. I’m the first guy out here among the NEAs; my competition is still making paper studies and trying to raise capital.”

  “We are well aware of that. In fact, Sam, our planners in Beijing didn’t even consider you as a possible threat. You were too small to alarm them.”

  Sam grunted. “But I got here first.”

  “True.”

  “Lot of good it’s going to do me,” he muttered, “unless I can get this tin can working again.”

  He went to the chair in the middle of all the reactor controls. I stood behind him, resting my arms on the chair’s high back. Sam looked like a little boy sitting in an adult’s chair; his feet barely reached the deck. He began poking and tapping the keypads and switches set into the armrests, grumbling so low I could not understand his words.

  I realized I had a moral dilemma on my hands. I could leave Sam here and return to China, of course. Once I was beyond the inadvertent jamming, if I called the IAA and told them of Sam’s plight, they would send a mission to rescue him, I felt certain. But if I did that, Sam would claim the asteroid and my own mission would be a failure. I would return home in disgrace. The great ones in Beijing would not be pleased with me. Not at all.

  On the other hand, I could leave the asteroid and not say a word about Sam being there. I could bring a few pebbles and samples of dust to prove that I had been on the asteroid, and perhaps the IAA would accept that as proof and award China the rights to utilize its resources. Then my mission would be a success.

  But Sam would die. And I would have killed him.

  Sam seemed to sense my feelings.

  “Listen, Song, you do what you have to do. Get off this rock, take some samples with you, and don’t tell the IAA or anybody else about me. You make your claim, don’t worry about me.”

  All the while he was fingering the controls on his seat’s armrests like a pianist playing a Bach fugue. But I didn’t see any of the graphs or gauges on the status screens change by a millimeter.

  “But, Sam,” I said, “you’ll die on this rock.”

  He looked up at me with that lopsided grin of his. “‘Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie.’ This isn’t such a bad place to go.” His grin turned wistful. “I’ve seen worse.”

  Well, his self-sacrifice literally overwhelmed me. That, and the fact that he kept telling me he thought I was beautiful. We ended up in his bed—a real bed, in a handsomely-fitted bedroom that was twice the size of my entire spacecraft. Somewhat to my surprise, Sam was a gentle lover, tender and very affectionate.

  But when I woke up—after a long, luxurious sleep—I saw that I was alone. Sam was nowhere in sight.

  I showered (hot water!) and dressed quickly, then went past the galley and down to the control center. No sign of him. And no sound of him, either.

  A terrible flash of realization hit me. The scoundrel has left me here and gone to my spacecraft! He’s taken some samples from the asteroid and he’s going to fly back to Earth in my spacecraft and make his claim, leaving me here to starve to death!

  The scoundrel! The seductive, scheming, selfish scoundrel!

  “Good morning.”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. Sam had come up behind me while I was fuming silently. I whirled to face him, and in the low gravity swung myself completely off my feet and into his arms.

  “Hey, whoa, take it easy,” he said, laughing as he held me safely in his arms. I grabbed both his ears and kissed him soundly.

  “Wow,” he said. “You’re really glad to see me, huh?”

  “I thought . . .” My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t tell Sam that I thought he’d left and marooned me.

  “Let’s have some breakfast,” Sam said. And he started down the passageway toward the galley, whistling horribly off-tune.

  I followed him to the galley. Sam seemed happily upbeat, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Was it our love-making that made him so cheerful? After all, one of us was going to leave for Earth while the other waited for a rescue that might never come.

  He busied himself frying eggs while I put a pot of water in the microwave to boil for tea.

  “You’re very cheery,” I said, as I impatiently waited for the microwave to chime.

  He gave me a delighted smile. “Why not? I got the reactor working.”

  Again I felt my heart leap. “You did?”

  Nodding vigorously, he said, “Got it all cleared up. You can call in your claim.”

  “But, Sam, you wer
e here first.”

  He flipped the eggs in his frying pan like an expert chef. “Yeah, but you’ve got your higher-ups to answer to. I’m my own boss.”

  “But you’re entitled to claim this asteroid.”

  “And what happens to you if I do?”

  “But you’ll have come all this way for nothing. You’ll be broke.”

  He shrugged as he slid the eggs onto two dishes. “I’ve been broke before. Besides, I’ve got this ship. The first fusion-powered spacecraft to go beyond the Earth-Moon system. That’s something.”

  I stared at him. He seemed honestly pleased at the situation we were in.

  “Sam, China will claim all the rare-Earth asteroids among the near-Earth objects. The PRC intends to keep as tight a monopoly on rare-Earth metals as it possibly can.”

  “So I’ll look for a metallic asteroid that contains a few thousand tons of gold.”

  “I can’t let you do it,” I said.

  He countered, “I can’t let you do it.”

  We argued all through breakfast, then settled our differences in bed.

  So I went back to my spacecraft and called the International Astronautical Authority to claim asteroid 94-12 for the People’s Republic of China.Then I returned to Sam and we spent our last hours together. I had to start back for Earth; my supplies would barely see me through the return mission.

  “What’s going to happen to you, Sam?” I asked him, with tears in my eyes.

  He grinned that lopsided, gap-toothed grin of his at me. “Don’t worry about me, Song. I’ll make out all right. Maybe I’ll find an asteroid made of pure gold.”

  “Be serious.”

  He kissed me, gently, sweetly, and said, “You’d better get back to your own ship, kid, before I lose all my good intentions.”

  We were never destined to be together for long, I know. Sam was not the kind of man a woman could expect to hold onto for more than a fleeting encounter.

  I returned to China with a heavy heart, although I was feted and honored and even invited to a special reception in the Forbidden City. Sam disappeared. No trace of him was found among the near-Earth asteroids. I feared he had died out there, alone, unloved, his dreams of wealth vanished forever. Because of me.

  It was almost a year later that Sam electrified the world by claiming an asteroid in the Asteroid Belt, far beyond the orbit of Mars. He had flown his fusion-powered spacecraft farther than any human had gone before. Over the next ten months he claimed ten asteroids, including two that were rich in rare-Earth elements.

  Fusion propulsion had changed the economics of space flight, as Sam knew—or rather, as Sam hoped—it would. Singlehandedly, he broke China’s near-monopoly on rare-Earth metals, and made himself a sizeable fortune in the process.

  I hated him for that. Yet I still loved him. And I still do, even though I never saw Sam Gunn again.

  But I heard about him, from time to time. About the transportation company he founded for hauling ores from the Asteroid Belt to the Earth-Moon system. And the entertainment city he eventually built on the Moon. And his lawsuit against the Pope. And . . .

  But those are other stories.

  For more than fifty years, Dr. Ben Bova has been writing about humankind’s future in space. His first novel, The Star Conquerors, was published in 1959. Since then he has written more than 130 futuristic novels and nonfiction books about science and high technology. His 2006 novel, Titan, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel of the year. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, “for fueling mankind’s imagination regarding the wonders of outer space.”

  He was editor of Analog Science Fiction and Omni magazines and won six Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor. Ben is also a past president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and president emeritus of the National Space Society (NSS). His latest novel is New Earth.

  In the final leg of our journey together, the sister of a dead astronaut determines to honor his legacy and settle on Mars as a . . .

  Tribute

  by Jack Skillingstead

  NASA died two hundred and three nautical miles above the planet Mars. It died when Daniel Chen, the last surviving crew member of Pilgrim 2, ran out of breathable atmosphere. At that point, Chen pulled himself close to the nearest camera lens. Even though NASA was not sharing the feed, hackers inevitably populated it across the internet. Millions witnessed Chen’s death. He was a beloved figure, a brilliant scientist as well as a twenty-first century Will Rogers dispensing wisdom and humor on the talk show and lecture circuit, in books and web TV specials.

  Chen’s face contorted in gasping agony, veins standing out on his forehead, eyes popping, red with burst blood vessels. He spoke three words on his dying breath: A stupid waste, after which he rolled away from the lens. Five dead astronauts drifted in fisheye perspective. It was the latest in a string of catastrophic failures.

  A stupid waste.

  Millions heard Chen, but his words were aimed at one person: his sister. Nevertheless, a stupid waste became a popular catchphrase, often heard in Congress and the Senate chamber. Most notably it was invoked by the senior senator from Ohio when he exhorted his colleagues to defund the ninety-year-old space agency, declaring it nothing more than a fiscal black hole into which a substantial portion of the nation’s treasure (at that point less than one quarter of one percent of the budget) was annually dumped without any reasonable expectation of a return on the investment. In short, NASA itself had become a stupid waste.

  The Agency continued to operate, if only on the margins of relevancy: paid consultants to private industry, managing historical archives. Even data retrieval for existing satellites and robotic missions was contracted out. For America, except in the private sector, manned space flight was as dead as the crew of Pilgrim 2.

  Karie.

  Getting there was the best part of the Nova Branson Orbital Resort. That’s what Karie Chen thought. The orbital provided one-percenters with breathtaking views and nude zero-G “tumble bays,” among other attractions. Everyone loved it, even the ninety-nine percent of the population who would never visit the thing. Maybe they enjoyed the idea of movie stars nude free-falling against the real stars.

  Karie rode a Nova Branson shuttle launched from a facility in the middle of Ohio farm country. The senior Senator deemed the commercial space port a great boon to the state economy and an invaluable asset to the ever expanding space tourism industry: in short, the exact dead opposite of a stupid waste. It was all of that, Karie supposed, but for her it was mostly a great ride. From inside the launch facility she couldn’t see the giant advertising displays that placarded the perimeter fence. Nike, Wal-Mart, Time Warner Direct Holo Vision, Amazon’s Everything Experience—whoever had the money. Rocket launches still drew the Earth-bound. They paid for bleacher seats and bought cheap souvenir trinkets mass-produced in China—the last country on Earth with an active manned space program not driven by commercial interests.

  Three million pounds of thrust lifted Karie and half a dozen millionaires into a cornflower blue sky. The roar scattered grazing cows in surrounding fields. Three minutes in, the boosters kicked them past seventeen thousand miles per hour, crushing Karie into her seat, flattening her eyeballs—the price of paradise, according to Nova Branson’s literature. Karie’s once-shattered and badly healed knee throbbed in perfect agony. It didn’t matter. Lips skinned back in a fierce grin, she inhabited the pure joy of vertical acceleration. It had been too long.

  * * *

  After hard dock everyone unstrapped. Released from gravity, movers and shakers became floaters and drifters. Karie was a stranger among them. Aside from cordial greetings back at the launch facility and a couple of don’t-you-look-familiar glances, the other passengers had mostly ignored her—the expected tribalism of the rich. The chip on Karie’s shoulder turned it into classism—that’s what Danny would have said. But then, Danny had gotten along with
everyone.

  Last to leave the shuttle, she pulled herself through the tunnel into Nova Branson’s visitor processing bay. A resort agent in a pale green jumpsuit greeted her with a winning smile. “Welcome to Nova Branson Orbital.”

  “Thanks.”

  The agent accepted Karie’s pass card and performed the required retinal identity verification. She’d already gotten the hell verified out of her before lift-off.

  “You’re all checked in,” the agent said.

  “What a relief.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Never mind. Look, I thought somebody was going to meet me.”

  “Would you like to talk to customer service?”

  “Naw. I think I’ll have a look around.”

  Karie pushed off—and almost butted heads with a man gliding recklessly in by the same passage. “Hey—” The man caught her, which changed both of their trajectories. Karie banged her knee on the bulkhead, yelped, bit her lip hard enough to break the skin. A tiny crimson drop drifted by her face.

  “Sorry about that,” the man said. “I’m Jonah Brennerman. Alistair’s my father. Are you all right?”

  Jonah offered his hand and Karie shook it. He was about forty years old, ten years her junior. He had one of those man-boy faces.

  “I’m fine. Can I have my hand back?”

  “Of course. Father’s waiting. I’ll take you there. Afterwards, meet me in the rotation lounge. The spin maintains a one-third Earth gravity simulation. Called Forward View. Ask anybody how to find it. You’ll love Nova Branson, at least that’s what Dad is hoping.”

  Jonah pushed into the passage. She followed him to what he called the conference room.

  “Word of advice? Let Dad do the talking.”

  “Sure.”

  “He likes to be in charge, is all I’m saying. If you want this to happen as much as I do, you need to be ready to compromise.”