Oxygen Series Box Set: A Science Fiction Suspense Box Set

by John Olson

  “You what? Where do you come off giving orders?” Kennedy snapped on the torch. “Get this straight. We’ve got one goal and one goal only: to get this ship to Mars and back. Am I making myself clear?” Kennedy dipped the torch so that it pointed toward Valkerie. She could feel the heat of the flame on her face.

  “My first duty ...” Valkerie fought to control her voice. “... is to the safety of the crew.” She turned and pushed off for the stairwell.

  “And repairing the ship quickly is the best way to ensure our safety.” Kennedy’s voice rang out behind her.

  Valkerie jumped up the stairwell and swung through the door. Ignoring Lex’s questioning look, she headed for her cabin and closed the door behind her.

  She floated in the darkness, waiting for the fit of trembling to subside. He threatened me. He actually threatened me. She still couldn’t believe it. What had happened to the easygoing guy she had trained with? Something was wrong. Bad wrong.

  She pulled her headset off the Velcro strip on the wall. Josh was going to hear about this. No way was she flying to Mars until Kennedy had a complete checkup—medical and psychological.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Saturday, January 25, Year Three, 11:30 P.M.

  Bob

  BOB WAS DREAMING ABOUT A little house with a white picket fence when Lex woke him up. “Hey, Kaggo? Josh wants to talk to you.”

  Bob rubbed his eyes. “Can’t it wait? Valkerie told me to get a little shut-eye.”

  Lex shook her head. “Josh says it’s important. He wants you to take it on the encrypted comm link here in your quarters.” She disappeared without waiting for a reply.

  What was this all about? It had to be bad news. Bob closed the door and put on his comm headset. “Josh, this is Bob.”

  “Kaggo, this is Josh. How you doing up there? Keeping busy?”

  Bob relaxed a little. Just hearing Josh’s voice made him feel that somewhere down there was a human being who actually cared about him more than the mission. “It’s been a little busy, but we’re getting things under control. Wish you were up here, buddy.”

  “Me too, Kaggo, but somebody has to look after you guys down here, right?”

  Bob began fidgeting. “So ... um, what’s up? Why the private comm link?”

  “First off, this is just between me and you, all right?” Josh’s voice sounded tight. “Completely off the record, and nobody else will ever know anything about this. Okay?”

  Bob felt his pulse speed up a notch. Why the cloak-and-dagger? “Sure, Josh.”

  “I need you to do something tough, Kaggo, so if this gets a little uncomfortable, I’m sorry, but I really need to know.”

  “This is a little late for me to get counseling for my unhappy childhood.”

  Josh didn’t laugh. “What’s your read on Kennedy? Is he ... doing okay? What’s his mental state?”

  What the devil? Bob tried to think. Did somebody seriously think Kennedy might be off-balance? “The Hampster’s doing pretty good, actually. He had a little space-sickness early on, but not as bad as Lex and me. And he’s way less uptight than I am about the ship. Not that there’s any serious problems with the ship, but you know, I’m always way cautious.” Good grief, I’m babbling.

  Silence.

  “I’m listening,” Josh said.

  Bob’s heart was pounding now. What did Josh want to hear? “You know, we’re all pretty tired up here. Stressed. That was a horrible launch, you want my opinion. Next time, I say we scuttle the launch if it’s that windy, okay?”

  “Sure, Bob.” A slight pause. “How’s Valkerie doing?”

  “She’s ... okay. She kind of freaked during the launch—and I don’t blame her.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Did Lex tell you that?”

  “Sorry, I can’t say.”

  “But she’s calmed way down since then. Even Kennedy’s been kind of jumpy, and he’s done a bazillion shuttle missions. Josh, what’s the big deal here? You worried about Kennedy? Or Valkerie?”

  “I’m just concerned. About all of you.”

  Bob closed his eyes. Josh had to be fibbing. Obviously, he was more than a little concerned. Otherwise, why the encrypted comm link?

  “So ... how is Kennedy holding up?”

  “Listen, I think the Hampster’s doing as good as any of us, maybe better. We’re all a little tired and cranky, that’s all. Valkerie even ordered me to take twenty winks.”

  “That’s it? You kids just need naps and you’ll be fine?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Gotcha. Okay, that’s all I wanted to know.” Short pause. Then, in a casual voice, “How’s Valkerie doing?”

  You asked that already. Bob cleared his throat. “She looks pretty frazzled, if you ask me.”

  “Frazzled? Give me some examples.” Josh sounded worried again.

  “Well, you know, she’s tired. And she’s been after Kennedy. Keeps checking on him, and he’s busy, and—”

  “What kind of checking? Does she seem suspicious? Paranoid?”

  What in blazes was this all about? Had Kennedy told them Valkerie was weirding out? Or vice versa? Bob cleared his throat. “No, I wouldn’t call her paranoid. Tired, yes, like the rest of us. We got up at 5:00 A.M. Houston time, and it’s almost midnight now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Listen, Josh, I need to know what’s going on here. Isn’t this a little late to be doing the flight-surgeon head games? We’re already launched, for crying out loud. We’re all okay. Tired, yeah. A little queasy... But we’ll be fine once we get a little rest.”

  Silence.

  “Okay, Josh? Are you listening?”

  “Let me make sure of two things,” Josh said. “And I’m going to be very blunt here, so I want you to forget I asked, five seconds after you answer. First, are you certain Kennedy is fit for command?”

  Bob swallowed. So that was the crux of all this. “Sure, Josh. Kennedy is good to go.” I hope. Because whether we dock with the ISS or do that burn for Mars, Kennedy’s going to be driving the bus.

  “Second, is Valkerie showing any signs of paranoia?”

  “Valkerie is fine,” Bob said.

  “Great.” Josh sounded relieved. “How’s the ship? Any problems besides that solar panel and telemetry?”

  “Nothing important. A few glitches. I’ve got ‘em mostly resolved.” Bob closed his eyes. There he went with the can-do NASA-speak again. Any more of that and Nate might send them all to Mars despite the condition of the ship.

  Bob smiled. Not likely. Not with Kennedy and Valkerie already under the scrutiny of Flight Med. He might as well give the flight docs his name and Lex’s too. At this point none of them were feeling too chipper.

  * * *

  Saturday, January 25, Year Three, 11:45 A.M.

  Nate

  Nate took off his headset and nodded to Josh. “Good job. What’s your assessment?”

  “I trust Bob’s judgment,” Josh said. “Kennedy and Valkerie just had a little tiff. That’s all.”

  “And her concerns about Kennedy? What do we do with that?”

  Josh shook his head. “She’s tired. Listen, Nate, we’ve driven these people for eighteen months, and this was supposed to be their big day in the sun, and then we went and gave them a lousy launch. Frankly, I’m not surprised they’re having a little friction.”

  Nate’s gut was burning from twenty hours of coffee and donuts. “We’ve got the go/no-go meeting in eight hours. You know the team better than anyone else. Is there any psychological reason we might want to bail out of the mission?”

  Josh thought for a minute. “None. As long as the ship’s fine, the crew is good to go.”

  “You’d better be right,” Nate said. “Because once we do that burn, we’re committed. There’s no off-ramp for the next three hundred million miles.”

  * * *

  Sunday, January 26, Year Three, 1:30 A.M.

  Bob

  Bob’s brain was buzzing fro
m fatigue, and he could not run another data-bus diagnostic, even if they held a gun to his head. He floated up to the NavConsole and hooked his legs on the bar to anchor himself.

  It was now 1:30 A.M., and Valkerie and Kennedy had been assigned to catch a few Zs. Bob checked that the doors to their sleeping quarters were shut. “Lex, what’s up with those two?”

  Lex gave him a knowing look. “I had an ... interesting conversation with Josh.”

  “So did I.” Bob studied her closely. “Any idea what started that?”

  Lex shrugged. “Who knows? The flight doc probably had too much time on his hands and started reading things in that weren’t there. I think Kennedy’s fighting a migraine or something. Maybe that launch shook a few screws loose. He’s tired, I can see that.”

  “What about you?” Bob asked. “You tired?”

  “Let me tell you about tired,” Lex said. “Tired is when you’re nine hours into the Ironman, you’ve still got twelve miles of a marathon left to run, you’ve got a blister the size of a quarter on your right heel, and your calves are cramping. No, I’m not tired.”

  “I’m tired,” Bob said.

  Lex nodded pensively. “How’s the ship doing? Any show-stoppers?”

  “Yeah, our telemetry is gonna be out for who knows how long. Nate won’t let us fly like that.”

  “We could go a few days without telemetry,” Lex said. “After all, we’re designed to be autonomous. By the time we hit Mars, the round-trip radio time will be about twenty minutes, so telemetry isn’t exactly mission critical. I want the bottom line. Ignoring telemetry, are we good to go? You’re the only one who really knows this ship, Kaggo.”

  “If you’d asked me five hours ago, I’d have said no way. Now?” Bob shrugged. “What if I were to tell you I just plain don’t know? What if—”

  “Don’t give me what-ifs,” Lex said. “Just tell me your opinion. Because whatever you say, I’m with you.” She closed her eyes, then brushed at them with the palms of her hands. “But I’ll tell you something. There are only two things I’ve ever really wanted to do in my life. Go to the Olympics. And go to Mars.”

  “The Olympics?”

  She nodded, swallowed hard. “Volleyball. I don’t usually tell people this, but I could have been on the team the summer after my sophomore year. Broke an ankle three weeks before tryouts and had to miss out. I was going to try again four years later.”

  “And ... ?”

  “And when the next games came around, I was two years into my Ph.D. at Stanford and racing the clock to finish so I could apply for ASCAN training. There was no way I was going to miss Mars, not even for the Olympics.”

  “You knew you wanted to go to Mars way back then?”

  “Ever since I was eight years old.” Lex opened her eyes. They were wet and bright and full of fire. “Take me to Mars, Bob.”

  * * *

  Sunday, January 26, Year Three, 8:00 A.M.

  Nate

  It was 8:00 A.M., and the mood in the conference room was tense. “Okay, Gold Team, I need your verdicts.” Nate rapped on the conference room table. “EECOM?”

  “EECOM is go.”

  GNC nodded. “No problems on Guidance and Nav.”

  “Flight Dynamics works,” said FDO.

  Perez stepped forward “What’s our basis for all this? We don’t have telemetry, right? So how do we know what’s good and what’s not?”

  “Our basis is the say-so of Kennedy Hampton and Bob Kaganovski,” Nate said. “TELMU, when is telemetry coming back online?”

  “Good news on that,” TELMU said. “It’s mostly fixed. They are not gonna be done before the TMI burn, but they’re talking just a few more hours of work. Based on that, I’m go.”

  “Fine,” said Perez. “Is everyone comfortable with this flight?”

  Heads nodded around the table.

  “Okay, here’s what we’ll do, then,” Perez said. “We’ll talk to the crew and get their opinions. But it has to be unanimous to go. The world does not end if we scrub the mission.”

  “Of course.” Nate kept his face perfectly straight, but his heart was hammering out a different message in Morse code on his rib cage.

  Dead wrong, Dr. Perez. Dead wrong.

  * * *

  Sunday, January 26, Year Three, 10:00 A.M.

  Bob

  Bob was sweating. The four of them huddled around the radio mike, about to decide the fate of the mission.

  “Ares 10, this is Houston.” Josh’s voice crackled with tension. “I have Dr. Perez and Mr. Harrington here with me. Do you copy?”

  “Copy, Houston, this is CDR,” said Kennedy. “What’s your verdict?”

  “Our understanding is that you’ve got failures on two systems—the solar panels and the telemetry. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct,” Kennedy said. “The solar panels are operating at approximately 80 percent.”

  Bob leaned closer to the mike. “That’s 74 percent.”

  “Bob’s right,” Kennedy said. “But EECOM tells me we had a lot of margin because of the mission geometry, so that’s not an issue. As noted, we have a problem with the telemetry system, but we believe it can be fixed with a spacewalk.”

  “Dr. Kaganovski, we need your assessment.” Perez’s voice.

  “Actually we have two problems with the telemetry system. The data bus is—”

  “I’ve got it mostly fixed already,” Kennedy interjected.

  Bob raised his eyebrows and stared at Kennedy.

  “While you were sleeping.” Kennedy grinned. “The problem wasn’t as bad as it looked at first. I’ll need your help to wrap it up, but it’s a couple hours’ more work.”

  “Anything else, Kaggo?” Josh sounded tense.

  Bob hesitated. He’d really have liked to have looked at the data bus himself. “Okay, other than the solar panels and the telemetry, I don’t see that there are any significant issues with critical systems that can’t be worked around.”

  “Bob, what about noncritical systems?” Josh asked. “Do you have anything else to report?”

  A tremor ran around the four astronauts. Kennedy handed the mike to Bob, his face tight. Lex’s bright eyes stayed glued on Bob. Fear flickered across Valkerie’s face. And something else. Bob tried to place it.

  Trust. That was it. Valkerie trusted him. The thought terrified him. All of them were looking to him for reassurance.

  And he didn’t know. He had the diagnostics on every system on the ship. They all looked good, but ... how could he be sure?

  Bob scratched his nose. “Houston, the ship is clearly not at a hundred percent. We have two known problems, and it’s possible that there are others.”

  “Ares 10, we need to make a go/no-go decision soon,” Josh said. “We can’t afford to let you take days in orbit to check everything out. The longer we wait, the faster you’ll have to go to make Mars on our target date. FDO says the orbital mechanics are getting worse by the hour. Are there any known issues at all in life-critical systems?”

  Bob didn’t need to think to answer that. “Negative.”

  “Are there any other known problems in mission-critical systems?”

  “Negative.”

  “Ares 10, we are giving a provisional go to the mission. But we need a go/no-go decision from each of you. It must be unanimous to go. If not, we can dock you with the space station and bring you back on the next bus home. We do not have to run this mission. Is that clear?”

  The four astronauts looked at one another. “Clear.” “Affirmative.” “Yes.” “Very clear.”

  “Dr. Ohta, go or no-go?”

  “Go!”

  “Dr. Kaganovski, go or no-go?”

  Kennedy reached for the mike, muttering, “Go, go, go!”

  Bob yanked it away. As CDR, Kennedy would give his vote last.

  Kennedy grumbled something and let go of the mike.

  Bob wiped the sweat from his forehead. Why was he so afraid? Other than the close call at the laun
ch, there was no rational reason for it. With telemetry all but fixed, the only real problem was one bad solar panel. They could live with that—even if the whole panel died, they could make Mars by cutting back to emergency power levels. There was some risk. But he had accepted a certain amount of risk when he signed up for ASCAN training, hadn’t he? This wasn’t exactly a job in accounting. He couldn’t very well back out now just because there was a risk of something unknown going wrong. It wouldn’t be right. Could he really waste billions of taxpayer dollars just because he was afraid? What would people think?

  Bob glanced at Valkerie. She frowned down at the table, avoiding everyone else’s eyes. He realized she wasn’t going to vote go. She had radioed Houston with some kind of concern about Kennedy. It had to be her. So it didn’t matter what he voted. They weren’t going to Mars. It was as simple as that.

  “Go,” Bob said.

  “Dr. Jansen, go or no-go?”

  Valkerie looked paralyzed with fright.

  Lex put a hand on Valkerie’s shoulder. Kennedy gave her an encouraging smile. Bob kept his face expressionless, calm. But inside, his guts were churning.

  “Dr. Jansen, go or no-go?”

  Valkerie was trembling all over.

  “Dr. Jansen, go or no-go?”

  Valkerie cleared her throat again. “Before I decide, could I ask a few questions?”

  Lex’s face tightened. She wasn’t known for being a good loser. Bob wondered what she’d do when Valkerie voted no-go.

  “Go ahead, Valkerie,” Kennedy said. “Take your time. Ask as many questions as you like.”

  Valkerie stared at him. She looked surprised. Confused.

  “My first question is for Josh. Josh, what do you think about the concerns I expressed earlier? What’s your honest opinion—as a friend?”

  “Valkerie, I want you to know that I took your concerns very seriously,” Josh said. “I investigated them myself, and although I can’t be certain, I’m convinced that what you observed was due to the extreme stress of the moment. I don’t think the problem will be repeated.”