First Landing

by Robert Zubrin

  Standing on a makeshift platform at the eye of the storm, the charismatic Reverend Bobby Joe Stone and Gary Stetson harangued the demonstrators, increasing their zeal. A church choir stood behind these two men while TV camera crews filmed it all from the front.

  Across the street in Lafayette Park a small pro-astronaut counterdemonstration proceeded more or less unnoticed. The group of space society types waved American flags and carried signs saying SAVE AMERICA’S HEROES and SAVE OUR CREW. TV evangelist Stone scoffed at their attempt at rebuttal.

  “Brothers and sisters, those who mask their pride behind the imperatives of false science have led our people to the brink of destruction. Pride caused them to send a group of astronauts uninvited to Mars to find this deadly plague. They now say it would be immoral to abandon the astronauts to their fate on Mars. Immoral! Yet did not the Lord God himself sacrifice his only son Jesus Christ for all of us? Is it then too much for us to demand that five sinners pay the price for their own transgression to save all the creatures that God has placed upon this Earth? The astronauts cannot be saved. They have already been contaminated by the disease. Yet their souls can still be saved! Let us pray for their souls.”

  Stone stepped back from the microphone and the choir began to sing: “Shall we gather by the river . . .”

  From the window in the John Quincy Adams meeting room, the President watched the stir outside and then turned to face his circle of advisors. Gathered in the oak-paneled room were the First Lady, chief White House political strategist Bill Wilson, Media Chief Sam Wexler, NASA Administrator Tom Ryan, White House Science and Security Advisor Dr. George Kowalski, Surgeon General Dr. Amber Wong, and General Bernard Winters, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  Wilson cleared his throat. “As you can see, Mr. President, we have a real problem on our hands. Virtually overnight, this Stetson character has created a nationwide radical organization—Redpeace—and they’ve joined forces with a big piece of the religious right. They’re pulling together legions of fanatics who are going to campaign to help Fairchild beat you this fall. Every TV network in the country has been rerunning that old movie The Andromeda Strain. Demonstrations like this one are going on all over the country. . . .”

  The President listened carefully to his political strategist. Bill Wilson was always politically tuned in. If he was worried, the situation had to be serious, not just a temporary squall of public opinion.

  NASA chief Tom Ryan interrupted. “What do you want the President to do, Bill? Abandon the crew because a bunch of crackpots are causing a panic?”

  That did not satisfy the President. Crackpots and the people they panic can still vote.

  Now it was Science and Security Advisor Kowalski’s turn. “That’s oversimplifying the situation a bit, isn’t it, Tom? Sure Stetson is a faker, and I for one have no use for TV evangelists, but there are plenty of well-credentialed scientists who believe that there is real danger here.”

  Real danger? The President remained silent, listening and considering. He hadn’t paid much attention to the full seriousness of the situation.

  Press Secretary Wexler cut in. “We’ve got some static now with crazy demonstrators on the streets and Bible thumpers screaming at us from their pulpits. But if anyone thinks this is bad, wait till you see what the press does to this Administration if we chicken out and stab the crew in the back.”

  That’s true! They’ll have my head!

  Wilson raised his finger. “Wex, you’re not being objective.”

  The press secretary slapped the table. “I deal with the media for this Administration, and I know what I’m talking about here.”

  “You’re been a friend of Kevin McGee since you were boys.” Wilson smiled genially. “You got him his slot on the mission. We all understand how you feel, but you can’t let your personal emotions enter into a decision like this.”

  So Wexler has a personal stake in the matter, the President thought. Gotta watch out for that.

  Dr. Amber Wong cleared her throat and waited until she had the room’s attention. Then she intoned in her upper-class Hong Kong British accent, “And I, for one, will insist that the crew be ordered to stay put until I have proof positive that there is no danger to the health of the public.”

  Wilson nodded in vigorous agreement. “That’s the only logical position.”

  Certainly.

  “Don’t give us your logic crap,” the press secretary replied heatedly, “you’re just capitulating to the pressure from our gutless friends on the Hill.”

  Wex’s emotions are getting the better of his judgment.

  “This is strictly a matter of public health,” the Surgeon General pronounced with calm authority. “Pending certain proof that the Martian biota is completely harmless to all terrestrial life forms, Colonel Townsend and his crew must be ordered to remain on Mars.”

  The President felt both annoyed and relieved. Amber Wong could be a pain in the ass, but if he could pass the buck to her on this one . . . “Makes sense to me,” he said.

  General Winters looked upset. “I could give such an order, but I’m not sure that Townsend would follow it.”

  The President felt the beginning of alarm rise up inside. He turned to the blue-uniformed four-star officer. “What are you talking about, General?”

  “Well, Mr. President, Andrew Townsend is a very individualistic officer.” The usually confident Chairman of the Joint Chiefs now seemed timid. “I know this for certain. He served as a member of my squadron in the Gulf War of ’91. He was a great pilot, but he used to like to write his own rules. Once, while we were returning from a raid, the Iraqis hit one of our planes. The pilot managed to bail. Instead of continuing home, Townsend turned back and flew through all kinds of flak for half an hour, engaging enemy ground forces long enough for our Kurdish friends to rescue the man. It was a complete violation of Pentagon policy. He risked himself and a fifty-million-dollar aircraft to save one guy.”

  Now both alarm and anger surged within the President. He looked the general squarely in the eye. “And yet you selected him to command our mission to Mars.”

  Winters tried to maintain eye contact, but failed, directing his gaze to the table instead. “Yes, sir. The situation being so novel, the Joint Chiefs felt that we needed an officer who possessed the maximum amount of creativity and initiative.”

  The President slapped his forehead. “This is great, just great. My military has decided to entrust the fate of this Administration to an anarchist.”

  Silence. Now everyone was looking at the table. Then a cheerful voice spoke up. “Now, let’s not get overexcited. I’m sure this situation has a very simple solution.”

  The President turned to the First Lady with a trace of hope. Margaret, you’ve saved my skin before, but what can you do now? As far as he could see, the situation was no-win and out of control.

  “General,” she asked, “if the astronauts refuse direct orders and come back without our permission, can’t the Air Force shoot them down before they can land?”

  “Certainly, but . . .” Winters appeared shocked.

  “There you have it.” She smiled brightly. “No problem at all. We’ll leave it at that.”

  Wexler shot out of his chair like a rocket. “If we shoot down our own crew coming home from Mars, there’ll be hell to pay with the press. Not to mention our own consciences.”

  “I’m sure you can handle it, Wex.” Bill Wilson seemed confident.

  “It certainly would be preferable to letting the astronauts spread an alien epidemic through our cities,” added Science and Security Advisor Kowalski.

  “Wait just one second!” NASA Administrator Ryan was more than a bit irritated. “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? There’s absolutely no proof that the Martian organisms are dangerous.”

  Dr. Wong’s response was firm. “But as Surgeon General, I require proof that they are not dangerous.”

  “But if we give you that proof?” Ryan asked desper
ately.

  “If you can provide me with convincing scientific evidence that there is no epidemiological threat from the newly discovered microbes, then I’d certainly have no objection to the retrieval of the crew.”

  Ryan turned to the Science and Security Advisor. “And you, Dr. Kowalski?”

  “I would also need proof that there is no threat to other terrestrial plants and animals. But, of course, if you could give me that,” Kowalski smiled, “then I would be the first to insist that everything possible be done to assure the safe return of our astronaut team.”

  Ryan looked around the room like a tiger at bay. “All right, then, if that’s how it is, we’ll give you proof. Dr. Sherman has been conducting a comprehensive set of tests using cultures of a wide variety of terrestrial life forms to see if any of them are vulnerable to infection from the Martian microbes. She says she’ll have a complete data dump on her research ready to be downlinked to Earth in about eight days.”

  Doctor Wong seemed pleased. “Excellent. I will convene an examining board of the nation’s foremost medical experts to review her work.”

  “We’ll need nonmedical biologists as well,” the Science and Security Advisor interjected. “Geneticists, ecologists, environmental scientists. I’ll supply the names.”

  Ryan looked ready to raise another argument, but then apparently thought better of it. With Kowalski choosing the experts, he doesn’t have a prayer, the President thought. But in the end all the NASA chief said was, “Fine.”

  Kowalski looked triumphant. “And it shall be we, and no one else—certainly not Dr. Sherman or any other NASA scientist—who will pass judgment on whether her tests have been sufficiently rigorous to demonstrate safety.”

  “Now hold on!” The press secretary was on fire. “I may not have a Ph.D., but I know a swindle when I see one. This setup isn’t fair. There should be some NASA representation on the board of examiners, and in particular, Dr. Sherman needs to be given a chance to defend her own research, personally and face to face, against any criticism.”

  “You’re trying to turn this into a circus, Wex,” Kowalski said with professorial condescension. “This is a scientific review, not a campaign debate. We don’t do things that way.”

  Dr. Wong arched her eyebrows. “I see no objection to a personal defense, Dr. Kowalski. In fact, under the circumstances, I think we owe it to Dr. Sherman to provide her with such an opportunity.”

  “See! It’s the American way!” exclaimed Wexler, obviously delighted by Wong’s unexpected support.

  “It’s not the sci—”

  Kowalski’s rebuttal was cut short by Dr. Wong. “I insist,” she said decisively.

  The Science and Security Advisor waved his hands to make light of his setback. “Oh, very well. Because of the signal time lag, we’ll conduct our own debate here and uplink the video. She can review it and downlink a rebuttal the next day.”

  Ryan suddenly appeared upbeat. “I’ll have the DSN make preparations.”

  Wilson turned to his boss. “Mr. President, are you really going to leave a decision of this importance up to a bunch of scientists?”

  Ordinarily no, the President thought, but under these conditions—“Well actually, Bill, I kind of like the idea.”

  The political strategist was confused. “But . . .”

  “That’ll be all. The decision has been made,” the First Lady scolded. “Let’s not waste any more time on this.”

  The President assumed his command mode. “Right. The decision has been made. The examining board will judge. People, we all have a lot of work to do. I suggest we get moving.”

  CHAPTER 11

  OPHIR PLANUM

  JAN. 28, 2012 06:45 MLT

  REBECCA TOSSED IN her bunk, immersed in her worst nightmare.

  Young, frail, inexperienced, she stood in that old lecture hall at Cornell, nervously rattling out her Ph.D. presentation. It had been going well enough, until Professor Waldron raised his hand.

  She could see him now, with that supercilious smirk on his face, asking her if she had read the JGR preprint by Osterman and Whitten. She hadn’t. “If you had, then you would know that your assumed equality 3.1 is untrue. And without that equation, it appears evident that your entire thesis has no foundation.”

  She turned to the blackboard and watched as the terms in equation 3.1 seemed to lose their solidity and turn into meaningless spaghetti. Panicked, she looked to Carl Schaeffer for support, but he just sat there impassively with a look that said, “You’re on your own, kid.”

  My thesis has no foundation. Five years of work down the drain . . .

  It had been the worst moment of her life. She remembered the sadistic grin on Waldron’s face as another old fart patted him on the back, the knowing smiles and snickers of the jealous post-docs in the rows behind them. Then a voice spoke inside her, I can’t let them do this to me. I won’t let them do this to me.

  She started to walk back and forth in front of the blackboard, ignoring the vultures, forcing herself to focus. Equation 3.1 had made so much sense when she’d first written it into her thesis outline years ago. It had still seemed solid that morning when she’d reviewed her presentation for the final time. How could it suddenly be so weak?

  Maybe it wasn’t. She picked up the chalk and started to scribble. Now let’s see—regroup terms, integrate both sides by parts, apply the chain rule . . . these terms cancel . . . regroup again, apply Leibniz’s rule. . . Fourier transform. Maybe I’m getting somewhere—No, I’m stuck. Hold on, the right-hand side can be represented as a Maclaurin series . . . these terms can be integrated after a Riemann transformation in the complex plane. This other series reduces to a superposition of hyperbolic trigonometric functions, which can be shown through a set of standard identities to equal these other terms, and the rest of it is just a restatement of conservation of momentum and energy. Proof!

  She drew a box around her final result and turned to face the crowd. She stared at Waldron like he was her dinner while she tossed the chalk carelessly over her shoulder. Then some of her fellow grad students in the back of the room started to clap their hands, and an instant later applause resounded throughout the hall. As Carl stepped up to shake her hand, she noticed out of the corner of her eye a red-faced Professor Waldron slipping out the door.

  In her bunk on Mars, the sleeping scientist smiled. There was a knock on the door and she awoke.

  “Rebecca?” Townsend’s voice could be heard through the wall. “The DSN is waiting to receive your rebuttal to the examining board now.”

  She sat up in her cot, taking only a few seconds to smooth her hair. It was a foolish, nonsensical argument, panic-driven, with no basis in science. . .but Rebecca knew that the fate of the entire crew rested on how convincing she could be now.

  I beat Waldron, I can beat Kowalski. “Okay, I’m ready.” She stepped outside of her cabin, entered the galley, and seated herself in front of the video screen.

  McGee gave her a grin and an encouraging thumbs up. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  Rebecca gave him a wink. “I’ll do my best. Let’s have that disk of their summation one more time.”

  McGee slipped the disk into the player, and the examining board appeared on the screen: Drs. Wong and Kowalski, Administrator Ryan, and eight other doctors and scientists. Kowalski’s image began to speak.

  “In summation, Dr. Sherman, the board commends you on your flawless and thorough laboratory technique. The set of tests you performed was quite comprehensive, I would hasten to add almost astonishing, involving as it did cultures of various organ tissues of literally hundreds of species of animals and plants, under both normal and a host of abnormal physical and chemical conditions. All of your infection findings were negative, and no member of the board disputes them.

  “Nevertheless, it is my feeling that you have not adequately addressed the issue of delayed incubation. As we know full well from terrestrial diseases such as AIDS, an incubation period of as long as a dec
ade is sometimes required before symptoms of infection appear. Until and unless your cultures are allowed to incubate for at least such a period, and still test negative, you have not demonstrated complete epidemiological safety. While the probability of such a danger is admittedly remote, the consequences of making this mistake would be so grave that, under such circumstances, I cannot recommend that we permit the return of the crew.”

  “That fork-tongued faker!” Luke grumbled. “He knows you can never perform such a survey.”

  “Bastard.” Gwen made as if to spit at the video screen.

  Drawing a deep breath, Rebecca motioned for silence and signaled McGee to turn on the Beagle’s transmission camera, which was mounted on top of the TV screen. Looking intently at the camera and speaking in a deliberate, authoritative manner, she began the most important presentation of her career. This one is for keeps, Becky.

  “This is Rebecca Sherman, chief scientist and ship’s doctor for the U.S.S. Beagle, presently located on the surface of Mars. Dr. Kowalski has alluded to a hypothetical, although in his words ‘remote,’ possibility that Martian autotrophic organisms with completely incompatible cellular chemistry could present a delayed incubation threat to some species of terrestrial life. He has recommended that a multiple tissue culture study be conducted for an indefinite duration to prove that such a threat does not exist. Obviously, his suggestion is not useful or feasible, as it is clear that such an experimental program could never be carried out, nor, if it were attempted even to his specifications, could it ever provide convincing proof to any mind that thought it necessary in the first place. Indeed, an empirical proof of the nonpathogenic nature of the Martian microorganisms does not and can never exist.”