The Man Who Sold Mars

by K Anderson Yancy

  # # #

  Nude, breathless, sweating and in bed, I spoke on the phone with Stephen, as nude and sweating Will climbed out of bed and walked to the bathroom.

  # # #

  With unabated sexual energy and out of breath Tot asked. “You alone?”

  “You? It doesn’t sound like it to me.”

  # # #

  I knew Selena, lay there silent, listening, pretending she wasn’t.

  “Doesn’t sound like you’re alone, to me either. Put Selena on the phone.”

  # # #

  “It’s for you?” I handed it to her and left to raid the mini-bar and glance at the room service menu.

  Selena accepted the call, knowing who it was. “Hello?”

  # # #

  “That was HOT wasn’t it?”

  I could hear Selena blushing. “Ummmmmh.”

  I was persistence, “Admit it.”

  “Ummmmmh.”

  I sang, “Admit it.”

  She whispered, “It was.”

  “Selena, I’m not mad at you. But, I haven’t given up either.—Are you in the Waldorf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me too. How about my friend and I come by and we can—“

  Selena very quick said, “Ummmhhh. That’s a very generous offer. But—“

  “But, what Selena. We’re sharing the same man. You know, one day you and I should go get four bottles of wine come back home and—“

  Again quick, Selena said, “That’s a very generous offer. But, let me give you back to Stephen.”

  I laughed, “OK. Put our boyfriend back on the phone. But if you reconsider—“

  # # #

  Selena handed me the phone. “Stephen, it’s for you.”

  I took it. “Hello.”

  “You figured it out.”

  “Yep.”

  Excited Tot said, “Me too. So when do we go—“

  “Back to work?”

  “Yep.”

  I said, “Tomorr—“, but saw the sad look in Selena’s eyes. “In two days, I have a world before me that needs exploring.”

  Selena grinned.

  But, Tot was saddened. I could tell. Her voice didn’t betray her. But . . . her sadness made me sad too.

  With real excitement, Tot said, “Sounds good—Hey have you realized everything we’re doing is applicable to sea mining and colonization.”

  “Great minds think alike.”

  “Kisssssssssss. In two days I’ll have everything laid out. See you then.”

  Tot hung up.

  Selena took the phone and kissed me. “Ready for more exploration?”

  I grinned.

  Selena’s eyes sparkled, “I take that for a yes.”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced at a clock and in feigned surprise said, “Look at the time. It’s April 15th already. Tax time. And I owe a lot.”

  She rolled on her stomach, placed a pillow under her hips, stretched her arms out, and over her shoulder gave me an inviting grin, which I accepted again and again and again.

  20. Seven Of The Richest People In The World . . . Homeless

  In Atlanta, Georgia a CNN anchor spoke into the camera.

  “Young Stellar Resources’ stock dropped drastically and has continued to do so on news that the Federal government took over operations of its Mars flight division. Despite its fall market analyst are high on the stock.”

  An industry analyst appeared, “The government take over of the program is in my opinion a validation of how well it was running. Especially, in light of comments by the Head of NASA, Gerard Hillard, and other ranking government officials. In a few brief years YSR has done what the world’s governments could not. And, given the US government must pay YSR fair market value for the program, the company will be intensely profitable, though they will without doubt not be the first to Mars.”

  Sitting in a silent, somber mood over our drinks within a New York Bistro, while watching the CNN broadcast, I sat with Selena, Tot, Kevin, George and Gardner and our ever watchful, unobtrusive security staff. While unknown to us, Hemmingson sauntered in wearing his signature dark glasses on the bridge of his nose and one of his signature loud Hawaiian print shirts, while sipping on an umbrella drink, and carrying several folded newspapers under his arms. He took one glance at our morose troop, and stopped, struck by a wild thought and he laughed outrageously.

  Puzzled I asked, “What?”

  He laughed even harder, “Here we are seven of the richest people in the world . . . homeless.”

  We exploded with laughter and I said, “God, we needed that so bad.

  He tossed us the newspapers. “I brought you a treat.” He then took a seat while we read and filled us in on his activities.

  “Last night, I found this strip club where all the women dressed like clowns. It’s so bizarre getting a nude lap dance from Raggedy Anne, but in that hot erotic kind of way.”

  Selena read from her paper, “Senator William Symko arrested in Arlington, Virginia love nest with crystal meth and distribution weight cocaine while in the throws of passion with a nude under aged boy serving in his office as a Congressional page. An anonymous tip led to the arrest.”

  Hemmingson pointed at himself, “That would be me.”

  George toasted him. “The CIA trained you well.”

  Hemmingson toasted George back. “I trained me well. I just apprenticed with the CIA. Anyway, I’ve pumped my intelligence sources, have the names of all the players concerned with our little mishap and have started scorching their Earths one by one. This will never happen to us again.”

  Tot kissed him on the cheek. “A+!”

  Hemmingson grinned. “Woooooo Hoooooo! Do I feel a lap dance coming on?”

  “Clown suit and all.”

  We laughed.

  George filled us in on his progress. “We’ve already started compensation discussions.”

  Hemmingson nodded. “Let me know the whos and how muches. We’ll get it.”

  George gave him a single nod. “I will.”

  Hemmingson took a playful loud sip from his drink. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. So are we going to sit around like a bunch of corpses or—“

  He saw a beautiful Asian waitress speaking with an equally gorgeous woman of European descent. “East meets West. Think of the possibilities.”

  In play, I tapped him on the head with a straw. “Earth to Hemmingson. We’re working.”

  “So am I. Multi-tasking. Go ahead.”

  Tot filled us in on the plan. “Since we don’t have a space station of our own to launch our Mars mission from, we’re going to have to launch directly from Earth.”

  Gardner involuntarily went, “Wow!” and nearly gagged on his chardonnay.

  Kevin was also amazed. “Is that even possible?”

  Gardner placed down his drink, “You’ve seen how large Prometheus is.”

  I knew we were attempting a feat on the magnitude of the Great Pyramids, but where there’s a will. There’s a way and I told them. “But we’re in a race and we don’t have time to develop a transit craft launched from the Earth.”

  Matter of fact and confident, George said, “Launching Prometheus from the Earth will be—“

  Tot, excited at the possibilities, “An Engineering marvel. But, attainable given our time constraints. I’ve come up with two plans, which work in theory.”

  On paper, she sketched a wedge with rows of cylinders below it.

  “The first involves launching the Mars vessel horizontally, cocooned in the wedge, with a nest of rockets underneath pushing it into space”.

  “Drag?” was the first issue to occur to me.

  She said, “Lots. And heat too. It’s minimized somewhat, because the vessels in a wedged shaped cocoon or delivery module to absorb it. Once the vessel is high enough above the Earth the cocoon falls away and Prometheus continues on to Mars.”

  Kevin shook his head no. “I don’t like it.”

  Gardner seconded him, “If one of those rocket
s misfires or under fires for that matter the entire structure—“

  George finished the statement. “Can be so stressed it’s worthless.”

  Tatyana answered. “We can compensate by increasing or decreasing thrust as needed by nearby rockets.”

  Kevin asked. “What happens if the cocoon doesn’t open?”

  “I’m still working on that.

  I moved us on, “What’s the second?”

  Tot said, “A vertical launch. It has advantages in far less drag. But its own difficulties.” She grabbed a bunch of pens and held them together with all their tips pointed up. “We launch the vessel in a heat shielded cocoon amidst a nest of rockets. The cluster is launched with an initial outer core propelling them through space, with additional rockets firing in and spent rockets falling off until only the delivery module remains. The cocoon falls off. Thrusters correct the course and the vessels main rockets ignite driving her to Mars.

  Gardner did not look pleased, “That doesn’t sound any better.”

  Kevin was not happy either. “The crew essentially sits in the center of high explosives.”

  Selena saw difficulties too. “If there’s a problem, in the first option, Prometheus can be jettisoned and the crew escapes.”

  “I escape. There will be no crew except me.”

  My friends were silent with disbelief at the news.

  That is all but one, George smiled to himself, and Selena, the most displeased by my decision, refrained from discussing it for a while.

  I went on. “One man instead of 12 means less weight in food, water, life support . . . Most of the projects are automated. I’ll be the non-automated tech. We go with option two. Failure is not an option. The Prometheus will reach altitude and head for Mars. We need to make sure she suffers as little damage from liftoff as possible. Option two, Tot.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Instead, Prometheus is nested outside like the US space shuttle. Granted, she will ride up on a lot more rockets.” Tot puzzled over something. “What are you thinking?

  “The Prometheus is a lot bigger than a shuttle and there’s going to be a tremendous amount of stress where she and the booster assembly are connected to at the cocoon. That’s why I see the cocoon surrounded by rockets.” She made some notes. “Where there’s a will.”

  George asked, “Is it possible to have rockets in a ring type assembly? Like a chamber in a revolver. Not so much that the rockets sit in cylinders, but maybe each is held in place by two or three rings or something.

  Kevin said, “I see. If there’s a problem with a rocket anywhere it can be jettisoned out the nest.”

  Tot started doing mental computations. “That empty ring will cause a lot of drag and heat. But . . . less than the booster it held.”

  Gardner suggested, “Jettison the rings/holders when appropriate to reduce it.”

  Tot still mentally calculating said. “It might work. But all this brings us back to the first option. It’s far easier to jettison spent and inoperative rockets from it.”

  Selena stated a truth and gave us a mandate, “It will work or something better.”

  Tot glanced at her. “So true. We’re just brainstorming at this point. We’ll develop computer simulations and see what approach has the least risk. We may even develop an option we haven’t considered.”

  I took a sip from my drink. “We still have the cocoon jettisoning issue to deal with. I want at least four options. First, that it’s jettisoned automatically once certain parameters are reached. Second, Mission Control can jettison the cocoon or override the jettisoning parameters if need be. Third, the crew of the Prometheus—“

  “How many of them there may be.” Selena added while smiling at me sweetly, but meaning not.

  I squeezed her hand with love and felt Tot’s eyes on us. “The crew of the Prometheus can trigger the separation from within the space craft as well as by the fourth, EVA, Extra Vehicular Activity.”

  “You good people have this all under control.” Hemmingson sipped to death a drink and called over his fantasy Asian. “Yes, we’re back in business.” She arrived and he continued his “work”, moved to another table, and she followed.

  I moved us on, “Have the engineers fortify the design of the Prometheus for the stresses of an Earth based launch.”

  Gardner dipped a chicken wing in ranch dressing. “Launch point?”

  There was only one place for us at this point and George and I said in unison, “The Philippines.”

  I explained, “Our lunar launch was from one of its most Southern Islands.”

  George called over a waitress to wait on us. “From where we launched, the climate is stable, out of the typhoon paths.”

  I watched Hemmingson’s “friend” grinning call over her European “friend” and I kept us at our work. “Because the Philippine Islands are so much closer to the equator, we can use the higher rotational speed of the Earth there to diminish the amount of energy we’ll need to reach escape velocity. And given the amount of power we’ll need, the saving in weight from not having additional rockets is a boon.”

  I could see some of my friends were puzzled and further explained the advantages of an equatorial launch. “OK, let me see if I can explain this better. If you’re in a car traveling at 100 kilometers an hour. Everything in it is traveling at 100 kilometers too. If they weren’t, they would go crashing through the doors and windows because they’re either faster or slower than the car.”

  Tot, eyes ablaze, joined in, “The same thing with the Earth. Wherever you are, you’re moving as fast as the Earth.

  “And, as the Earth rotates around the sun, all the land is not rotating at the same rate. Think about it. A day is 24 hours. No matter where we are, it’s always 24 hours. And a day is defined as the average length of the period during which the earth makes one rotation on its axis.”

  Tot was a born teacher and was on fire as she taught us, so I let her run with the subject. “So, where the Earth is widest, it has to travel faster to make one complete rotation than where it’s thinner.

  “Any point on the Earth’s equator is traveling at about 1670 kilometers per hour. Land halfway between the equator and the poles is only moving at 1180 kilometers per hour, so by launching from the equator a spacecraft starts out with a 490 km speed advantage as compared to halfway between the poles.

  “Our goal with a land based launch is to power our payload up with sufficient force to continue on to where we want it to go. For us, that speed exceeds escape velocity, which is defined as the speed at which an object must travel to break free of a planet or moon's gravitational force and enter orbit.

  “A spacecraft leaving the surface of the Earth needs to be traveling at over 40,000 kilometers per hour to reach escape velocity. Since, we’re heading on to Mars we need to be traveling much faster because we want to push our payload to that place outside the Earth’s atmosphere where the MTV needs to begin its transit.

  “And, the less speed we have to make up the less thrust the rockets have to provide and the less fuel and infrastructure they’re carrying, which requires less fuel and infrastructure to push them up, which requires less fuel and infrastructure to push them up, and on and on and on . . . Hence our location in the Philippines on a very select island.

  We applauded her and in play she bowed.

  Gardner glanced at Hemmingson “working” away and winning and laughed, “Buy that island. The Republic of the Philippines is an archipelago nation with over 7,000 islands.”

  Kevin seconded him, “They will not miss one.”

  Gardner continued, “And we don’t want to develop some other nation’s space program.”

  I sighed, “Again.” And saw that Hemmingson now had the slightly angry manager of the bistro there. Some difficulty was arising with him monopolizing restaurant staff. Hemmingson glanced at us. “Nations’. Hold that thought.” Hemmingson handed the manager a “nice” gratuity and the matter was happily settled as evidenced by the “
Closed Private Party” sign the manager posted on the door before he started pleasantly motivating the restaurants other guests to leave.

  Hemmingson flagged over a waitress to serve the two seated waitresses and temporarily rejoined us to speak. “We don’t want to develop other nations’ space programs. Most of the other nations working on the assembly of the Prometheus in their own condemnation proceedings against us have laid claim to it and YSR assets in their nations.”

  We were saddened by the news.

  George fumed. “When did this happen?”

  “Just a little while ago. But think of it as justice in the universe. They are so busy booby trapping the systems of Prometheus and their part of the YSR rice bowl to prevent the other nations from using it without their consent it may never be space worth.”

  We laughed and Hemmingson returned to his two earlier tasks.

  George ate a loaded nacho and passed the basket to Kevin who was waiting on them. “We need a smoke screen. If we escalate, so will the US and the others.”

  Tot gave us something else to consider, “We’re all pretty much confined to the same launch window. They can’t leave substantially earlier nor can we. If they do, because of the relative orbits and distances of Earth the transit of the stolen Prometheus will be much longer.

  Surprising all of us, Hemmingson’s laugh and voice came from one of the papers. “Stolen Prometheus. I like that.” Tot picked up the paper and looked it over to see where he was coming from.

  He spoke again. “Oh yeah, Tatyana. Hold me there. Mmmmmmmm. Nice cleavage.”

  “She is HOTT!!” Said a woman’s voice from the paper.

  “OH yeah.” Said a second woman’s voice, also coming from the paper and we all looked over to see the Asian and European waitresses both wearing a pair of Hemmingson’s signature dark glasses along with him.

  We laughed and Hemmingson and his friends sitting with him joined us.

  Then Hemmingson said. “Once a spook. Always a spook. I’m working, working, working.”

  We laughed again.

  “Well my other job calls. Bye for now.” Hemmingson said as he returned to his charges. With a micro camera and micro mic and micro speakers he was free to “multi” task.