by Ben Bova
A wasted life. That’s what I’ll have accomplished. Wasted my own life and the lives of all the others. Wasted.
Houston
Debbie was sorting through all the paperwork from her years with the agency. Letters, reports, memos, the works. Funny how we still call it paperwork, Debbie thought as she toiled through her computer files.
Her heart clutched inside her when the official notification came up on her screen. The final selection of the six astronauts who would be the American part of the Mars team. Her name was conspicuously absent.
“You know why,” she remembered her boss telling her, as gently as he could. “You’re not only married, Deb, you’re a mother. We can’t send a mother on the mission; it’s too long and too dangerous.”
“That’s prejudice!” Debbie had shrilled. “Prejudice against motherhood.”
“Buffalo chips. The mission is dangerous. We’re not talking about a weekend camping trip. They’re going to Mars, for chrissake! I’m not going to be the one who killed some kid’s mother. Not me!”
She had railed and fumed at him for nearly half an hour.
Finally, her boss stopped her with, “Seems to me you ought to be caring more about your kid. Two and a half years is a long time for him to be without his mother—even if nothing goes wrong with the mission.”
Suddenly she had nothing left to say. She stomped out of his office before she broke into tears. She didn’t want him or anybody else see her cry.
Pecking at her keyboard, Debbie pulled up the stinging memoranda she had fired off to Washington. She still felt some of the molten white heat that had boiled within her. Then she went through the lawyers’ briefs and the official disclaimer from the agency’s legal department: They denied prejudice against women who had children. The agency’s choice had been based on “prudent, well-established assessments of risks, performances, and capabilities.”
“Jeez, Deb, are you going to take this to the Supreme Court?” Doug had asked in the middle of the legal battle.
“If I have to,” she had snapped at him.
Doug merely shook his head. “I wonder how the rest of the crew would feel if the Supreme Court ruled you have to go with them on the mission.”
“I don’t care!”
“And little Douggie. He’d sure miss his mother. Two and a half years is a long time. He won’t even be five yet when the mission takes off.”
She had no reply for that. Nothing except blind fury that masked a deeply hidden sense of guilt.
The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, although the news media splashed the story in lurid colors. Astronaut mother denied chance to be part of Mars crew. Space agency accused of anti-mother bias. Women’s groups came to Debbie’s aid. Other groups attacked her as an unfit mother who put her personal glory ahead of her son’s needs.
Her work deteriorated. Sitting in front of her computer screen, scanning through her performance appraisals over the three years since the Mars crew selection, Debbie saw that the agency wasn’t going to suffer grievously from her loss. She had gone into a tailspin, she had to admit.
They’ll be happy to see me go, she thought. No wonder they don’t even want me at mission control during the landing. They’re afraid I’ll screw up.
“Mommy?”
Douggie’s voice startled her. She spun on her little typist’s chair and saw her five-year-old standing uncertainly at the bedroom doorway.
“You know you’re not allowed to bother me while I’m working, Douggie,” she said coldly.
He’s the reason I’m stuck here, she raged to herself. If it weren’t for him I’d be on Mars right now, this instant, instead of looking at the wreckage of my career.
“I’m sorry, Mommy. Daddy said I should tell you.”
“Tell me what?” she said impatiently. The boy was a miniature of his father: same eyes, same sandy hair. He even had that same slow, engaging grin. But now he looked frightened, almost ready to break into tears.
“Daddy says they’re just about to land.”
“I’m busy,” she said. “You watch the landing with Daddy.”
The boy seemed to draw up all his courage. “But you said you would watch it with me and ’splain what they’re doing for me so I could tell all the kids in school all about it.”
A little more gently, Debbie said, “But I’m busy here, honey.”
“You promised.”
“But . . .”
“You promised, Mommy.”
Debbie didn’t remember making any promises. She looked into her son’s trusting eyes, though, and realized that he wasn’t the reason she wasn’t picked to go to Mars. It’s not his fault, she realized. How could it be? Whatever’s happened is my responsibility and nobody else’s.
Her anger dissolved. She was almost sorry to see it go; it had been a bulwark that had propped her up for the past three years.
With a reluctant sigh she shut down her computer and headed off to the living room, her son’s hand clasped in hers.
Los Angeles
“Luis!” Mr. Ricardo called as the teenagers scrambled for the classroom door the instant the bell sounded.
Luis scooped up his books and made his way through the small stampede up to the front of the classroom. He walked slowly, reluctantly. Nobody wanted his friends to think that he liked talking to the teacher.
Mr. Ricardo watched Luis approaching him like a prizefighter watches the guy coming out from the other corner. He looked tight around the mouth, like he was expecting trouble. Ricardo was only forty or so, but years of teaching high school had made an old man out of him. His wiry hair was all gray; there were wrinkles around his dark brown eyes.
But when Luis came up to him, the teacher broke into a friendly smile. “Have you made up your mind?” he asked.
Luis had been afraid that Ricardo would put him on the spot. He didn’t know what to say.
“I don’ know, Mr. R.”
“Don’t you want to do it?” Ricardo asked, sounding kind of disappointed; hurt, almost. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Yeah, I know. It’d be cool, but . . .” Luis couldn’t tell him the rest, of course.
Ricardo’s demanding eyes shifted from Luis to Jorge, loitering at the classroom door, watching them intently.
“He’s going to get into a lot of trouble, you know,” the teacher said. He kept his voice low but there was steel in it.
Luis shifted his books, shuffled his feet.
“There are only ten rigs available at the planetarium. I’ve reserved one. If you don’t use it I’ll have to let some other student have it.”
“Why’s it gotta be now?” Luis complained.
“Because they’re landing now, muchacho! They’re landing on Mars today! This afternoon!”
“Yeah . . .”
“Don’t you want to participate in it?”
“Yeah, sure. I’d like to.”
“Then let’s go. We’re wasting time.”
Luis shook his head. “I got other things to do, man.”
“Like running off with Jorge, eh?”
“Obligations,” Luis muttered.
Instead of getting angry, as Luis expected, Ricardo sat on the edge of his desk and spoke earnestly to him.
“Luis, you’re a very bright student. You have the brains to make something of yourself. But only if you use the brains God gave you in the right way. Going with Jorge is only going to get you into trouble. You know that, don’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Then why don’t you come with me to the planetarium? It could be the turning point of your whole life.”
“Maybe,” Luis conceded reluctantly. He knew for certain that if he went to the planetarium, Jorge would be furious. Sooner or later there would be a beating. Jorge had sent more than one kid to the hospital. Everybody knew that sooner or later Jorge was going to kill somebody; it was just a matter of time. He had no self-control once he started beating up on somebody.
&nbs
p; “Are you afraid of Jorge?” Ricardo asked.
“No!” Luis said it automatically. It was a lie and they both knew it.
Ricardo smiled benignly. “Then there’s no reason for you not to come to the planetarium with me. Is there?”
Luis’s shoulders sagged. If I don’t go with him he’ll know I’m chicken. If I do go with him, Jorge’s gonna pound the shit outta me.
Ricardo got to his feet and put one hand on Luis’s shoulder. “Come on with me, Luis,” he commanded. “There’s a much bigger world out there and it’s time you started seeing it.”
They walked past Jorge, hanging in the hallway just outside the classroom door. Mr. Ricardo went past him as if he wasn’t even there. Luis saw the expression on Jorge’s face, though, and his knees could barely hold him up long enough to get to Ricardo’s ancient Camaro.
Washington
The outer office of Senator O’Hara’s walnut-panelled suite had been turned into something of a theater. All the desks had been pushed to one side of the generous room and the central section filled with folding chairs. Almost his entire staff was seated there, facing the big hologram plate that had been set up on the wall across from the windows. On a table to one side of the screen rested a single VR helmet, a set of data gloves, and the gray box of a computer.
The staff had been buzzing with anticipation when the senator pushed in through the hallway door. Instantly, though, all their talk stopped. They went silent, as if somebody had snapped off the audio.
All excited like a bunch of pissant children, the senator grumbled to himself. Half of ’em would vote in favor of another Mars mission, the young fools.
O’Hara snorted disdainfully as he wheeled up the central aisle among the chairs. Turning his powerchair smartly to face his staffers, he saw that they were trying to look as blank and uninvolved as possible. Like kids eager to see a forbidden video trying to mask their enthusiasm as long as he was watching them.
“I know what you all think,” he said, his voice a grating bullfrog’s croak. “Well, I’m going to surprise you.”
And with that, he guided his chair to the VR rig and the two technicians, both women, standing by it.
“I’m going to use the rig myself,” he announced to his staff. Their shock was visible. Even Kaiser looked surprised, the fat sycophant.
Chuckling, he went on, “This Mars hoopla is the biggest damned boondoggle pulled over on the American taxpayer since the days of the Apollo project. But if anybody in this room plugs himself into the landing, it’s going to be me.”
Kaiser looked especially crestfallen. He’s the one who won the lottery, Senator O’Hara figured. Thought you’d be the one to plug in, did you? O’Hara chuckled inwardly at the disappointment on his aide’s face.
“You all can see what I’m experiencing on the hologram screen,” the senator said as the technicians began to help him worm his bony, emaciated hands into the data gloves.
An unhappy murmuring filled the room.
“I’ve always said that this Mars business is hooey. I want to experience it for myself—see what these fancy astronauts and scientists are actually going to do up there—so’s nobody can say that I haven’t given the opposition every possible opportunity to show me their point of view.”
One of the technicians slipped the helmet over the senator’s head. He stopped her from sliding down the visor long enough to say, “I always give the other side a fair break. Then I wallop ’em!”
The visor came down and for a brief, terrifying moment he was in utter darkness.
Phoenix
For nearly half an hour the oversized TV screen had been split between a newscaster chattering away and an unmoving scene of a rusty-red, rock-strewn landscape of Sinai Planum on Mars. Zacharias kept pacing back and forth in the back of the big room, while his guests seemed to edge closer and closer to the giant screen.
“We are seeing Mars as it was some eleven minutes ago,” the newscaster intoned solemnly, “since the red planet is so distant from Earth that it takes that long for television signals to reach us.”
“He’s only told us that twenty-six times in the past five minutes,” somebody in the crowd muttered.
“Hush! They should be coming down any moment now.”
“According to the mission schedule,” the newscaster went on, “and taking into account the lag in signal transmission time, we should be seeing the parachute of the landing craft within seconds.”
The unmanned landers had been on the ground for days, Zacharias knew, automatically preparing the base camp for the ten astronauts and scientists of the landing team. Over the past half hour the news broadcast had shown the big plastic bubble of the main tent, the four unmanned landers scattered around it, and the relatively clear, level section of the Sinai plain where the crewed landing craft would put down.
If all went well.
No sonic boom, Zack knew. The Martian air’s too thin and the lander slows down too high up, anyway. The aerobrake should have deployed by now; the glow from the heat shield should be visible, if only they had programmed the cameras to look for it.
What am I saying? he asked himself, annoyed, nervous. It all happened eleven minutes ago. They’re on the ground by now. Or dead.
“There it is!” the announcer yelped.
The crowd of guests surged forward toward the TV screen. Zacharias was drawn, too, despite himself. He remembered the two launch failures that he had witnessed. Put the project back years; almost killed it. After the second he vowed never to watch a rocket launch again.
Yet now he stared like any gaping tourist at the TV image of a beautiful white parachute against the butterscotch Martian sky. He was glad that the meteorologists had been able to learn how to predict the planet-wide dust storms that turned the sky pink for months afterward. They had timed the landing for the calmest possible weather.
The chute grew until he could see the lander beneath it, swaying slightly, like a big ungainly cylinder of polished aluminum.
They all knew that the landing craft would jettison the chute at a preset altitude but they all gasped nonetheless. The lander plummeted downward and Zack’s heart constricted beneath his ribs.
Then the landing rockets fired, barely visible in the TV cameras, and the craft slowed. It came down gracefully, with dignity, kicking up a miniature sandstorm of its own as its spraddling legs extended and their circular footpads touched gently the iron rust sands of Mars.
Everyone in the big rec room cheered. All except Zack, who pushed his way to the bar. He felt badly in need of fortification.
Houston
“Nuthin’s happ’nin,” Douggie complained. “Can’t I watch Surfer Morphs?”
“Wait a minute,” his father said easily. “They’re just waiting for the dust to settle and the rocket nozzles to cool down.”
Debbie saw the two virtual reality helmets on the coffee table in front of them. Two pairs of gloves, also. Doug and Douggie can use them, she thought. Not me.
“Look!” the child cried. “The door’s open!”
That should be me, Debbie thought as she watched the twelve-person team file down the lander’s impossibly slim ladder to set their booted feet on the surface of Mars. I should be with them.
Douggie was quickly bored with their pretentious speeches: Men and women from nine different nations, each of them pronouncing a statement written by teams of public relations experts and government bureaucrats. Debbie felt bored, too.
But then, “Two of us have virtual reality sensors built into our helmets and gloves,” said Philip Daguerre, the astronaut who commanded the ground team.
Debbie had almost had an affair with the handsome French Canadian. Would things have worked out differently if I’d had a fling with him? Probably not. She knew of three other women who had, and all three of them were still as Earthbound as she.
“Once we activate the VR system, those of you on Earth who have the proper equipment will be able to see what we see, feel what w
e feel, experience what we experience as we make our first excursion onto the surface of Mars.”
Doug picked up one of the VR helmets.
“Can’t I watch Surfer Morphs?” their son whined.
Los Angeles
It wasn’t until Mr. Ricardo handed him the VR helmet that Luis realized his teacher had sacrificed his own chance to experience the Mars team’s first excursion.
There were only ten VR rigs in the whole planetarium theater. The nine others were already taken by adults. Maybe they were college students, Luis thought; they looked young enough to be, even though almost everybody else in the big circular room was his teacher’s age or older.
“Don’t you want it?” Luis asked Ricardo.
His teacher made a strange smile. “It’s for you, Luis. Put it on.”
He thinks he’s doin’ me a big favor, Luis thought. He don’ know that Jorge’s gonna beat the crap outta me for this. Or maybe he knows an’ don’ care.
With trembling hands, Luis slipped the helmet over his head, then worked the bristly gloves onto his hands. Ricardo still had that strange, almost sickly smile as he slid the helmet’s visor down, shutting out Luis’s view.
As he sat there in utter darkness he heard Ricardo’s voice, muffled by the helmet, say, “Enjoy yourself, Luis.”
Yeah, Luis thought. Might as well enjoy myself. I’m sure gonna pay for this later on.
Washington
Senator O’Hara held his breath. All he could hear from inside the darkness of the helmet was the faint chugging of his heart pump. It was beating fast, for some reason.
He didn’t want to seem cowardly in front of his entire staff, but the dark and the closeness of the visor over his face was stifling him, choking him. He wanted to cry out, to yank the damned helmet off and be done with it.
With the abruptness of an eyeblink he was suddenly looking out at a flat plain of rust red. Rocks and boulders were littered everywhere like toys scattered by an army of thoughtless children. The sky was a strange butterscotch color, not quite pink, not quite tan. A soft hushing sound filled his ears, like a distant whisper.
“That’s the wind,” said a disembodied voice. “It’s blowing a stiff ninety knots, according to our instruments, but the air here is so thin that I can’t feel it at all.”