by John Olson
“Easy? You made her look as guilty as sin. How? Why?”
“She suspected me, so I let her eavesdrop on me. She thought I was two‑timing with Jake, so I pretended to be talking to him on my cell phone, telling him my passwords. Except one of them was yours. Then when you met her at the restaurant, I just slipped into her office and left the jewel case. I hate that she’s in jail, but at least you’re free. Don’t you see? I had to do it. I did it for us.” Her voice trembled and broke. She stumbled toward him and threw her arms around him. “We’re finally free to be together. There’s no way they can trace this back to us. I used the superuser password I got watching Bruce Dickey type.”
And you created a user account in my name on EECOM’s machine. You set me up. Again. Josh felt dirty. Repulsed. He pushed her away. “It’s not us. Not anymore. You’ve used me for the last time.”
Footsteps scraped at the door. Yamaguchi and two agents entered the room.
Cathe whirled around. “Josh?” She looked back at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me, Miss Willison.” Yamaguchi pulled a pair of handcuffs out of her purse.
“Josh, please. Look at me. I love you.”
Josh nodded to Yamaguchi and turned away.
“Come along, ma’am.” A stranger’s voice. “I’m gonna need to explain something to you.”
“I love you, Josh! You have to believe me ...” Cathe’s voice receded down the hallway.
* * *
Saturday, May 9, 7:50 p.m. CST
Nate
Nate watched Yamaguchi lead Cathe away, sandwiched between two Fibbies. He grabbed his phone and called his secretary. “Carol? Nate here. Josh and I are gonna be a little late. Something’s come up, but we’ll be there shortly. Stall for time.” He hung up and turned to Josh. “You okay?”
Josh shook his head. “I’m dead.” His voice sounded thick with grief, anger, exhaustion.
“I’m not doing so good myself,” Nate said. This was beyond horrible. This was a catastrophe.
Josh staggered to a chair and slumped into it. “I can’t ... go to that wedding.”
“You can and you will,” Nate growled at him. “I bought us a few minutes.”
Josh put his face in his hands. “She’s ... right, you know.”
“Right?” Nate’s heart did one of those pop‑pop things that his doctor said were no big deal, but they were still scary. “What do you mean she’s right?”
“About the lying. The crew lied to us. Bob. Lex. Valkerie. And we lied to them. I lied to you.”
Nate walked over to the desk and sat on the edge, pondering that. Because the truth was, he had lied. All of them had. They’d meant well, but ... it had gone wrong somehow. Had led to more trouble. Had enabled that little ... weasel to do what she did. Gave her the excuse she needed. She knew she was killing people, but she bent things around so she was saving billions of lives. Little Miss Morality.
“Nate?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. About everything. I fouled up bad.”
“Me too, Josh.”
“But you don’t deserve to go to jail. I do.”
Nate nodded. Josh would probably do time. Not a lot, maybe. He would plead guilty. Would show remorse. Had already demonstrated it by his actions. That was big with juries—remorse.
And maybe that was the difference between Cathe and Josh. The remorse thing. A willingness to stop, to backtrack. To admit that you’d made a muck of things. To choose to do better. Like those AA people.
My name is Nate, and I’m a creep. Just for today, I won’t be a creep.
They sat in silence for a long time. Josh pulled a tissue out of the box on EECOM’s desk and blew his nose.
Nate knelt down and put an arm around Josh’s shoulders. “You gonna be all right?”
Josh sniffed and looked at him through bleary eyes. “Yeah.” His voice came out in a croak.
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
Josh shrugged. “I guess I was in love with ... the person I thought she was.”
“Maybe that person is out there somewhere. Somebody who’s the same on the inside as on the outside.” And I wish to God I was like that.
Hope lit up Josh’s face. “You think so?”
“Yeah, sure.” Maybe. Nate stood up. Maybe it was time for a clean start. Just for today I won’t lie. Yeah, that was the ticket. Starting right now. “Ready to get on over to that wedding, Josh?”
Josh wiped his eyes and stood up. He straightened his collar. Finger-combed his hair. Brushed something off his left shoulder. “How do I look?”
Nate studied him carefully. Josh’s eyes were red and puffy. A little line of grime ran down one cheek. He looked like he’d just ruined a perfectly good air bag and walked away.
Nate grabbed the door and held it open for Josh. “You look fabulous.”
* * *
Saturday, May 9, 9:30 p.m., CST
Valkerie
Valkerie clung to a ceiling strap, nervous and tense in the fresh white jumper she’d found in the supply bin.
Bob hovered above the radio transmitter, gripping the mounting bracket with bone‑white knuckles. His face was tense. Large beads of sweat dotted his skin. “It’s broken. It’s got to be. We’ve already waited twice the time delay.”
“Take a deep breath. Relax.” Lex floated nearby. “We’ve still got five minutes.”
“Something’s wrong.” Bob started to move toward Valkerie.
“I’m warning you. Stay away from me.” Valkerie pushed Bob back with her free hand.
Bob sighed and looked down at the transmitter. “Are you sure it was the rover? I know what reason is telling me, but what good is reason if you’re dealing with something outside your experience?”
“Of course it was the rover. What else could it have been?” Valkerie’s voice trembled. If radio waves traveled as fast as her heart was beating, they would have been finished hours ago.
Bob shook his head. “All I know is that if I hadn’t been distracted by that ... whatever it was back behind the MAV, I would have cut the cable before Kennedy restored power. Whatever it was saved our lives. And it was definitely too small to be the rover—or the MuleBot.”
Valkerie shook her head. “I don’t know. We may never know. All the answers are still back on Mars.”
“With our halobacterium fossil and bacteria cultures.” Lex sighed.
A long, uneasy silence filled the commons.
“Come on!” Bob slapped the CommConsole. “Something’s gotta be wrong. We’re being jammed!”
Valkerie looked at her watch. Maybe Bob was right. They’d been waiting forever. She reached up for a handhold. Something moved at the corner of her vision. She turned to look. Lex was reaching for the videocam she had laid aside.
Bob swallowed hard. He looked ready to faint.
The radio crackled to life. The hiss of ambient noise. “Ares 5, this is Houston.” The voice of Valkerie’s pastor, two hundred million miles away.
Valkerie’s breath caught in her throat. She leaned in to hear the next words.
“Bob, you may now ... kiss the bride.”
Want To Go On Another Adventure?
Bob Kaganovski’s best friend back home is Dillon Richard.
Dillon’s working on a badass quantum computer that’s going to change the world.
Everybody wants a piece of Dillon. The mafia. The NSA. And Dillon’s two beautiful co-workers—Rachel and Keryn.
Who’ll get him first?
Click here to check out Double Vision.
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About John and Randy
John Olson got his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Randy Ingermanson got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley.
For no good reason, John and Randy would rather make up stories about imaginary people than do honest work. This is a serious character defect, but they’re not a bit sorry.
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Authors’ Note: The Road Not Taken
In the spring of 1999, when we began planning our first novel Oxygen, hopes were running high within the Mars Society.
Might Mars enthusiasts persuade the next US president to launch a Kennedy-style space race to put humanity on Mars? If so, then the earliest realistic year for a mission would be 2014.
We ran some calculations and found that it would be possible for the first human to step onto Martian regolith on July 4, 2014.
On the strength of that giddy hope, we wrote and published Oxygen in May of 2001. The book sold well and won several awards. We published The Fifth Man the following year.
As it turned out, the Mars initiative never happened. Instead, 9/11 happened—only a few months after Oxygen released. The US soon found itself mired on the road to Baghdad.
The road to Mars remains the road not taken. 2014 has come and gone. In this third edition of Oxygen and The Fifth Man, we have changed all datelines to be generic. So “2012” has become “Year One,” and so on. Many of these datelines had been carefully calculated to fit a mission in the year 2014, using the exact orbits of earth and Mars. The date for the deep-space rendezvous on May 16 was chosen after running calculations much like Cathe Willison’s. Our inner geeks are sorry to lose all these calculated datelines, but we had to let them go, because they have now slipped from a possible future into an unfulfilled past.
And yet …
And yet Mars is still a possible future for mankind.
Humans could walk on Mars within a dozen years if we chose to.
Technology is not an issue. Most of what we need exists right now, and the rest is well within our grasp.
Money is not an issue either. We believe that if twenty percent of NASA’s current spartan budget were put into a Mars mission, we could go.
We based this novel mostly on the “Mars Semi-direct” mission architecture popularized by Mars Society president Robert Zubrin, with some ideas taken from NASA’s Mars Reference Mission Document and the Caltech Mars Society proposed mission.
Humans could walk on Mars within a dozen years. Will we ever take that first step?
And might the “first man on Mars” … be a woman?
Copyright for Oxygen
Copyright © 2001
John B. Olson and Randall Ingermanson
All rights reserved.
First edition, Bethany House Publishers, 2001
Second edition (e-book), DitDat, Inc., 2011
Second edition (paperback), Marcher Lord Press, 2011
Third edition (e-book), DitDat, Inc., 2015, www.DitDat.com
Third edition (paperback), Enclave Publishing, 2015, www.EnclavePublishing.com
Cover illustration and design by Kirk DouPonce.
Copyright for The Fifth Man
Copyright © 2002
John B. Olson and Randall Ingermanson
All rights reserved.
First edition, Bethany House Publishers, 2002
Second edition (e-book), DitDat, Inc., 2012
Second edition (paperback), Marcher Lord Press, 2012
Third edition (e-book), DitDat, Inc., 2015, www.DitDat.com
Third edition (paperback), Enclave Publishing, 2015, www.EnclavePublishing.com
Cover illustration and design by Kirk DouPonce.
Standard Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, and government entities are either entirely imaginary or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, corporations, or government entities is just a coincidence and doesn't mean a blessed thing.
Acknowledgments
We thank Holly Briscoe for taking an extraordinary interest in this project and introducing us to several engineers and astronauts at NASA who gave us the insider view we so desperately needed. Holly, without your help, we wouldn’t have been able to write this book. We award you the Silver Snoopy Award for your efforts.
Glossary
Archaebacteria: A kingdom of primitive bacteria, many of which live in harsh environments
ASCAN: Astronaut Candidate
AU: Astronomical Unit—the distance from the sun to earth
Back‑contamination: Contamination of Earth by Martian organisms
CamBot: Robot with an attached video camera for remote viewing
Capcom: Capsule Communicator—the one person in Mission Control (other than the Flight Surgeon) allowed to talk to the astronauts
CATO: Communications and Tracking Officer
CDR: Commander
Comm: Communications
CommSat: Communications satellite
Cron job: A Unix term for a task that can be set up to execute at some specified time
DCM unit: Display and Control Module—the unit on the chest of an astronaut’s suit containing all controls, displays, and interfaces to external gas, liquid, and electrical systems
DEADHEAD: Name of a fictitious encryption system
Delta‑V: Change in velocity created by firing the rocket engines
Doppler effect: A change in frequency of light or sound due to the relative motion of the source and detector. Used by police to catch speeders and by astronomers to measure the speed of distant stars
DSN: Deep Space Network—an international network of antenna that support interplanetary missions and radio astronomy observations. The DSN has three very large radio antennae—at Goldstone (in California), Madrid (in Spain), and Canberra (in Australia). At any given time, at least one of these antenna can link with the communications satellites orbiting Mars
EECOM: Electrical and Environmental Command officer
ELC: Earth Landing Capsule—the capsule to be used by the astronauts for landing on Earth in the final leg of the journey home
Energia: A class of Russian rockets used for launch of heavy payloads
ERV: Earth Return Vehicle—a ship placed into an orbit around Mars in advance of the mission, used by the astronauts to return from Mars to Earth
ESL: Environment Simulation Lab
ESTL: Energy Systems Test Lab
EVA suit: Extra‑Vehicular Activity suit—NASA’s term for a space suit
Extremophile: A general term for an organism able to live and thrive under extreme conditions, such as high or low temperatures
FCR: Flight Control Room (pronounced “ficker”)
FDO: Flight Dynamics Officer (pronounced “Fido”)
GNC: Guidance, Navigation, and Control officer
Hab: Habitation Module
Halobacteria: Salt‑loving archaebacteria
IMU: Inertial Measurement Unit—a critically important navigation device
ISRU: In‑situ Resource Utilization—a scheme for creating rocket fuel on the surface of Mars using hydrogen and native Martian carbon dioxide to synthesize methane and oxygen. Lots of electrical energy is required, which will be provided by an on‑site nuclear reactor
ISS: International Space Station
JSC: Johnson Space Center
KC-135: The Vomit Comet
Klick: Slang: a kilometer—sometimes used for kilometers per hour
KSC: Kennedy Space Center
Ku-band: The high-frequency radio band normally used for high-speed data transmissions
Lagrange point:
One of the positions near Mars where the gravitational forces of the sun and Mars cancel out. A satellite placed at one of the Lagrange points will not orbit either the sun or Mars, but will appear to stay fixed relative to the two bodies. Communications satellites, placed at two of the Lagrange points, can provide nearly complete coverage of the entire planet
LC: Launch Center
LCG: Liquid Cooled Garment—the spandex water‑cooled undergarment worn inside an EVA suit to regulate the astronaut’s temperature
LD: Launch Director
LOX: Liquid Oxygen
MAG: Maximum Absorbing Garment—a diaper for astronauts
Mars Orbital Insertion: An operation in which an interplanetary vehicle captures into a Martian orbit
MATLAB: A mathematics computer program
MAV: Mars Ascent Vehicle—a small rocket, placed on Mars before the astronauts arrive and fueled by the ISRU. The rocket is designed to lift the astronauts into Martian orbit when they are ready to leave the planet. The MAV will rendezvous with the much larger ERV, which carries enough supplies to take the astronauts to Earth
Max Q: The time of maximum dynamic pressure during launch
MCC: Mission Control Center, located in Building 30 of the Johnson Space Center
MECO: Main Engine Cutoff
MER: Mission Evaluation Room, which houses a support team for the Flight Control Room
MMACS: Mechanical, Maintenance, Arm and Crew Systems officer
MMD: Mars Mission Director