T-Minus Two

by K. G. MacGregor

“Poi is nutrient-dense, Todorov. Very high in fluorine, which strengthens bones. You are aware that weightlessness causes bones to deteriorate?” From the major’s tone, she might as well have added you stupid idiot at the end of her question.

  With three quick bites and a focused effort not to gag, Mila polished off the pasty glob.

  Beaumont nodded approvingly. “Good girl. Now have a nice day.”

  It was too late for that. The major had just ruined her day…her week…possibly her life.

  * * *

  Jancey had fond memories of her first day as an astronaut. Twenty-one years old, a prodigy already out of Princeton with a master’s degree and—thanks to her ROTC scholarship— newly commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Air Force. With the eleven others in her astronaut group, she walked the hallowed halls of Johnson Space Center, home to America’s space program. First they toured Mission Control, the heartbeat of every NASA space mission, but she had little interest in watching operations from the sidelines. For her, the most fascinating stops on the tour were the training simulators and buoyancy lab, a deep pool that allowed astronauts to practice extra-vehicular activities—EVAs—in weightlessness.

  According to Sir Charles, they had only makeshift facilities here in Hawaii, sufficient for testing but not for training. The selection committee was looking for candidates with potential to handle the real challenges. The next two weeks should give her a chance to shine.

  The materials they’d been given offered no clue as to who comprised the mysterious selection committee. She suspected Sir Charles sat at the top guiding a handful of department heads, the experts who’d gathered in Hawaii to help conduct the trials. On the other hand, they might simply be the conduits, reporting back to the board of directors who would make an objective evaluation based on test results. That’s how she’d have handled it—by insulating the committee from lobbying by candidates.

  They’d returned after lunch to the lecture hall for overviews of various aspects of the Tenacity Project. The presentations lacked the awe of the ones that had inspired her twenty-some years ago at the Space Center, but her feelings of uncertainty were the same. She’d been so eager to impress back then because the competition for flights was fierce. She had to be smarter, faster. More fit, more prepared. The pressure consumed her for two years of training before her efforts paid off with the assignment to Guardian.

  Tenacity also had that element of a high-stakes competition. The difference was there were fewer missions, fewer slots. No telling how many molecular biologists and biochemists had made the cut so far, and every one of them was probably capable of farming on Mars. And how many were wunderkinds, poised to take their field to the next level?

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention?” Moriya Ito, the Japanese director of instrumentation and communication, according to the program agenda.

  The most obvious slide choice would have been a panoramic display of Tenacity’s proposed instrument panel, its colorful buttons and indicators a complex map of the vessel’s inner workings. Ito’s slide went one better, the cover removed to reveal a gnarly mass of wires, fuses and circuit boards. The Mars astronauts had four years to learn all there was to know about the ship’s circuitry.

  Jancey could have disassembled and rebuilt Guardian in her sleep. With training, she could do the same with the Tenacity vessel, even with the technological advancements of the last fifteen years.

  As Ito presented his overview, she wondered how many of her fellow candidates were intimidated by the expectation of having to develop expertise in such complex disciplines as electrical engineering, medicine and biochemistry. Certainly those few whose backgrounds were outside the STEM fields were quaking in their boots.

  What was Mila Todorov thinking right now? As an astronautical engineer, she likely was confident she could master instrumentation. Also propulsion, which was next on the agenda. Her freak-out might come in the third session—medical training. But even that could be learned by someone with a scientific foundation. Given her background, she had a decent chance of making the next cut.

  No, Todorov’s flameout would come when the practicum phase began. There was no room in space for a picky eater. For that matter, there was no room for preferences of any kind on a mission with limited resources. That was the whole point of her “energy tablet” exercise, and the fact Todorov had failed to grasp it made her candidacy tenuous.

  Todorov probably had other “gifts” to share, however. Jancey had picked up a distinct vibe in the short conversation they’d shared over lunch, a vibe that said she’d be available should they find themselves with nothing to do for an afternoon. Quite young, but old enough to scratch that particular itch. And smart enough to make it this far, even if she went no further.

  Ito wrapped up his presentation and yielded the floor to Svein Helland, a Norwegian physicist formerly with the European Space Agency.

  Apparently Sir Charles had filled nearly all of the director jobs with men, an observation to be filed under Things That Never Change. If Jancey failed to make the final cut, she’d be offered a job working under Oliver Thomas, an Australian biochemist whose theories of sustainability rarely left the lab.

  “Tenacity will employ a cutting edge design for propulsion, an engine that recycles the hydrogen byproduct into fuel cells for an efficiency increase of eleven percent. More important, the technology has been adapted also for the landing module. This represents a significant breakthrough, as once the vessel reaches Mars, it can then be modified…”

  Jancey was particularly interested in this development, a critical advance in propulsion technology. It was genius to repurpose the equipment they’d no longer need once they reached Mars.

  “For an overview on those modifications, I’ll turn the presentation over to one of the engineers on the development team at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands, who also happens to be a candidate for the Tenacity Project. Dr. Mila Todorov.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Jancey muttered, loud enough to draw questioning looks from those sitting nearby.

  So Todorov wasn’t an idiot after all. She was clearly intelligent and entitled to feel proud of her work at Delft. Considering the importance of her work, the selection committee might already have her on the short list.

  And Jancey would move her to that other list. Potential Distractions.

  * * *

  Jancey eased into the garage, careful not to bump her front grille against the block wall. She wasn’t accustomed to driving such a luxurious car, especially one as long and sleek as the Jaguar coupe. The Range Rover would have been more to her liking but Grace was insistent she kick up her heels during her stay on the island.

  The sprawling house was built in the long, low plantation style typical of Old Hawaii—white horizontal plank siding and a wide green roof, with several large porticos to cool the air before it blew inside. It was much larger than it appeared from the front, since its lower level opened onto a large patio and pool in the back. Beyond was a rugged cliff with the ocean below.

  The front door opened to allow two Brittany spaniels to sprint across the courtyard. Duke and Sasha were the official welcoming committee, but Jancey didn’t need them to feel at home. Their mistress did that, and she appeared right behind. A small woman of seventy-one years and dressed in a colorful wraparound dress and espadrilles, Grace Faraday clutched her hands with obvious delight. “I want to hear all about it, darling.”

  Darling was the friendly endearment Grace sprinkled throughout their conversations. Jancey could feel her delight at having her here in Hawaii, and shared it. True friends were the rarest of gems.

  “Gracie, you make me feel like a first-grader stepping off the bus after my first day of school.”

  Besides being her longtime friend, Grace also was a big-spending political donor, always backing candidates who supported NASA’s space program. An heiress to a telecom fortune, she had no heirs of her own and had jumped at the chance to join
Sir Charles in his quest to colonize Mars. It was her generous gift to the University of Hawaii that opened the doors for their competition on the Big Island.

  Shortly after returning from space, Jancey had found herself seated next to Grace at a black-tie banquet in Washington DC. Just when she thought she couldn’t take another minute of self-serving platitudes from politicians, Grace whispered that she had a driver waiting at the curb. The two of them bolted and spent the evening on a tour of the monuments talking about the mysteries of the universe.

  “Konani made us chi-chis. Yours without the vodka, of course, and mine with a little extra.” Her smile made her blue eyes sparkle.

  With Duke and Sasha on their heels, they walked inside and down the wide teak staircase to the lower level. Their drinks were on a cocktail table poolside.

  “Give me a minute to change. Something tells me I’m going to be sick of these clothes after the next ten weeks.”

  A mulch-covered walkway shrouded in native palms led past the pool to a guest house built in the same Hawaiian style, but obscured from view by the soaring vegetation. It was small but private—a living room-kitchenette combo and a bedroom with bath attached. Much better than a college dormitory with potluck for a roommate.

  In under a minute, she traded her T-shirt and bra for a tropical shirt, and her khakis for a very old pair of cutoff jeans. If she made it to Mars, these two items would go with her.

  She returned to the pool with her grip exerciser and collapsed next to Grace in a chaise. Three hundred squeezes a day kept her hands and forearms strong for twisting, turning and pulling, the tasks most often performed by astronauts. The rest of her body was toned by a thirty-minute uphill jog on the treadmill every morning.

  “How bad was it?” Grace asked.

  “What makes you think it was bad?”

  “Because that little girl getting off the bus should have been excited. She should have smiled and started jabbering about all the things she learned and the interesting people she met. She most certainly shouldn’t have scowled as though she dreaded going back tomorrow.”

  Since Grace knew her better than anyone, it was no use trying to hide her feelings. “If you must know, I’m a little worried about the competition. There were twelve of us in my astronaut class and enough missions on the board to feel good about our chances to fly. We helped each other…shared what we knew so the others would be better prepared.”

  “I’m sure there were hundreds of others trying to get into the astronaut program when you did. The only difference is now you know what some of them look like because they brought in two-hundred-fifty-six of them instead of just the final twelve.”

  “Why did they do that? They could have cut this list down a couple more rounds.” She was asking the right person, since Grace was on Tenacity’s board of directors and privy to inside information on their decisions.

  “You know how Charles is.” Grace sipped her drink, closed her eyes and licked her lips. “Konani makes the perfect chi-chi.”

  Not all of Sir Charles’s decisions made sense. This one struck her as a waste of precious dollars that could be spent on equipment, testing or training. “Is it PR?”

  “No, I think his primary reason is recruitment. He argued for doing this so it would bring the top talent in space science here to our headquarters. The board wants to get them excited about it. They get a chance to meet some of the other people behind the project and see for themselves what we’ve done. And yes, it’s good PR. Having so many people here from all over the world expands our footprint. Their hometowns, their home countries…they all get a piece of the dream too because they have someone to root for.”

  Prying scientists away from their labs and classrooms for a practical mission ought to be easier now that Tenacity I had lifted off with the rover. This project was happening, and a real scientist should be eager to join up and make history.

  “What worries me is how smart they are,” Jancey said. “How young and strong. How up-to-date on new technology. I thought walking in there this morning I was the odds-on favorite, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

  Grace didn’t comment, but Jancey recognized her contorted face as a sign her brain was spinning.

  “I know what you’re thinking and the answer is no. Don’t go pulling any strings or putting any bugs in Sir Charles’s ear. I need to do this on my own.” Rather, she wanted to do it on her own. Should she feel the opportunity slipping away, she might not be able to resist asking Grace to pull out a trump card and buy her one more round to prove herself.

  “Lana used to say youth was overrated.” Grace spoke wistfully of her late partner, a common effect of the alcohol warming her within. Soon she would also drop the formal cadence characteristic of her billionaire station.

  “She was younger than you by what? Eighteen years?”

  “I used to worry out loud about being too old for her, but she wouldn’t have it. She never minded our age difference, but if one of us could have changed, she would have wanted to be older like me.”

  “She would have aged gracefully,” Jancey said. “Forty-six was way too young for someone so full of life.”

  Lana was the reason Grace had settled in Hawaii, and also the impetus for her involvement in funding for space missions. An astronomer, she worked at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea. After her death from breast cancer seven years ago, Jancey had gone to the summit with Grace to scatter her ashes.

  “Too bad sh-she didn’t live to see the Tenacity Project,” Grace went on, stumbling over her words as she often did after a double vodka. “Then again, she’d have wanted to apply and we’d have fought the war to end all wars. It’s all I can do to let go of you.”

  “Space is bigger than any of us, Gracie. It’s a fight you can’t win. The pull is so strong it sometimes makes me ache. I never told anyone this, but I used to wonder if I’d gotten the chance to fly again at NASA…I might have been tempted not to come back. That’s what makes Tenacity so enticing. It’s designed that way. A whole new life on another planet, and I get to leave the mess on this one behind.”

  “Is this life really so bad that you feel you have to run away?”

  Jancey groaned. “It’s not bad. It’s that it’s…let’s just say if I run away to Mars, it solves the number one reason I can’t keep a girlfriend.” She ticked them off mentally—Monica, Lindsay, Jill. All three had broken up with her because she was obsessed with her space career at the expense of everything else. Each time she’d mourned the loss of intimacy, tenderness and companionship, all the while relishing her newfound freedom from the guilt over always choosing her own goals. “Nobody wants to invest in a long-term relationship with someone who wants more than anything to leave.”

  “It wasn’t only that,” Grace murmured, firmly in the throes of melancholy. She always seemed to mourn Jancey’s broken romances more than Jancey. “Jill called me after you two broke up. She told me she’d have been willing to take a chance on you anyway. She’d have followed you from one university or space agency to another, wherever you felt you needed to be for your best shot at getting back to space. And she’d have stayed with you right up until the moment you blasted off. The problem back then was there weren’t any opportunities. So you were unhappy all the time and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. It’s hard to watch the person you love suffer like that.”

  “But I wasn’t unhappy with her. If I couldn’t fly again, a life with Jill would have been a decent alternative.” Even as the words left her lips, she knew it was a feeble and selfish way to express her feelings. “At least with Tenacity, I’m guaranteed to get a partner for life, whoever it is. Neither of us can leave. Isn’t that what you always wanted for me?”

  “Not if it’s a man, you doofus!”

  Jancey smiled. Still, it was sobering to note Grace Faraday was possibly the only person on Earth who would miss her if she went away forever. But no matter how much she missed having someone special in her life,
she’d never put anyone in front of the chance to fly again.

  Chapter Three

  The campus library opened each day at seven a.m. Only a handful of summer students milled about, probably desperate to complete last-minute reading assignments. Mila took advantage of the quiet time—her only free window for the next six days now that the testing phase was officially underway—to video chat with Vio Vanderwulp, her best friend from university. Vio lived in Rotterdam, where it was early evening.

  “You aren’t going to believe who I had lunch with yesterday,” Mila said, ducking low into the computer carrel for privacy. “Jancey Beaumont, my all-time hero. Remember me telling you about her?”

  “Yeah, the one who saved the world with one hand tied behind her back.”

  “Close enough.” Apparently, she’d raved a little too much about the major. “Anyway, she’s trying out for Tenacity too, which probably means the rest of us don’t have a chance. Except I made a complete idiot of myself.”

  “That’s good. Now you won’t get picked, and I won’t have to go looking for someone else to play BattleStorm.”

  It wasn’t worth scolding Vio over her wrongheaded wishes. Even if she kept them to herself, they’d both know they were there.

  It was a battle Mila fought on other fronts too. Her mother, her grandmother. They were proud of her achievements but had no desire to see her leave this world. Their idea of a suitable career was teaching at a top university in Europe. Specifically, Humboldt in Berlin or Sofia in Bulgaria. No matter how many times she tried to explain her lifelong dream, they just couldn’t understand the allure of going into space.

  “I figured out why so many Americans have guns,” Mila said. “Because it’s full of people like my roommate. You wouldn’t believe what she did this morning. She used my hairbrush!”

  “Does she have lice?”

  “How should I know? I asked her very nicely not to do that anymore, and you know what she said? That I should get used to sharing things with someone else if I wanted to go to Mars because there wouldn’t be room for two of everything.” Just thinking about it made her shudder with disgust. “I’d shave my head before I’d share a hairbrush with her.”