Rescue Mode

by Ben Bova

  Benson thought of his own wife, who had not bothered to move to Houston with him. They had been separated for more than two years now, ever since he’d started training for the mission.

  Pushing such unhappy thoughts from his mind, he told his teammates, “We all know how to behave ourselves. At least, I think we do. And, as Taki said, if you feel the need for it, there are medications that can help.”

  “I guess,” Amanda agreed, weakly.

  McPherson got to his feet. In his plaid work shirt and Levis he looked more like a bearded lumberjack than a scientist.

  Very seriously, he said, “We’ve all been training for this mission for more’n two years. Hell, I’ve been training for it most of my life. I lost two toes to frostbite in Antarctica and damn near broke my neck in that truck wreck in the Atacama desert. I’m not going to do anything that’ll jeopardize this mission. We’re going to explore Mars, for Pete’s sake! That’s not the most important thing, it’s the only thing that matters.”

  Silence settled around the table as McPherson sat down again. Then Amanda Lynn clapped her hands together and in less than a second they all applauded.

  “That’s how I feel, too,” said Virginia Gonzalez.

  “Me too,” Nomura chimed in.

  “I also,” Prokhorov agreed.

  Still on his feet, Benson allowed himself a satisfied smile. “I think we all feel that way. That’s good.”

  “Has anyone ever asked the Toad to run a sex simulation?” The Toad was the director of preflight simulations who came up with all kinds of disaster scenarios for the crew to deal with: nuclear reactor meltdown, rocket engine exploding, he even had the crew try to deal with a stowaway. But there had never been any sort of sex or mating simulations.

  Nods and grins around the table.

  “No, and I’m not going to ask.”

  More grins and a guffaw from Prokhorov.

  “Anything else?” Benson asked, looking squarely at Connover.

  They all glanced at each other, saying nothing.

  “Very well,” Benson said. Taking in a breath, he went on, “I want you to know that, as the commander of this mission, you can bring any problem you have to me at any time. I’m not here to judge you or to lecture you. I’m here to help. Is that clear?”

  More nods of agreement. All except Connover.

  Clermont said, “That is very good of you, Bee.”

  “Hokay,” Prokhorov said. “Are we finished?”

  Connover, his chin on his arms, said, “I want you to know, Bee—I want all of you to know—that I resent being passed over for command of the mission.”

  Before anyone could speak, Connover went on, “But I know it was the politicians who decided that, not you and not any of us, not even the suits upstairs at the Center.”

  “You’re a better pilot than I am, Ted, and that’s why you’re flying the lander to the surface,” Benson admitted. “But I know that’s not the same as being the mission commander. For what’s worth, I’m sorry they didn’t pick you.”

  With a lopsided grin, Connover said, “Hey, so you get to be the first human being to set foot on Mars. What’s the big deal?”

  Benson could hear the pain in his voice, see it on Connover’s face. Pain. But it wasn’t anger. At least, Benson didn’t think it was anger.

  March 12, 2035

  Earth departure Minus 24 days

  09:20 Universal Time

  Spaceport America, New Mexico

  For the first seven minutes it looked like a routine launch. The same type of commercial rocket booster that had carried all the components of the Arrow, its cargo, and the teams of technicians who assembled the spacecraft in orbit. Nine successful launches, without a mishap.

  The booster lifted off the desert launch stand on a cloudless New Mexico winter night. Only a few hundred spectators braved the bone-chilling weather, far fewer than the thousands who had watched the earlier launches of Arrow’s components.

  The blinding orange light of the rocket’s plume lit the landscape around the spaceport with an eerie, otherwordly glow. This was the last launch in the sequence before the highly anticipated launch of Arrow’s crew, in twenty-one days.

  Carrying sixteen thousand pounds of hydrogen propellant for the spacecraft’s nuclear propulsion system, the booster left the launch stand majestically and began its eight-minute flight into orbit.

  It was in the last few seconds of those critical eight minutes that the booster’s engines shut down prematurely, likely placing the rocket, and its cargo, into a useless orbit. The air in the spaceport’s compact control center suddenly turned a breathless blue as the mission controllers desperately sought to find out what had gone wrong.

  March 17, 2035

  Earth Departure Minus 19 Days

  16:35 Universal Time

  Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama

  Rain was spattering against the windows of the ninth-floor conference room where the hastily picked board charged with reviewing the possible solutions to the problem presented by the wayward propellant stage was meeting. If they couldn’t find a way to get that errant stage into its proper orbit, where it could be mated to the waiting Arrow spacecraft, the Mars mission would not be able to start its journey on time.

  And if the ship missed its narrow few-days-long launch window, the planets would not line up favorably for two more years. Arrow wouldn’t remain in its parking orbit for that length of time. Even with remote firings of its engines, the orbit would decay and ultimately the spacecraft would re-enter the atmosphere and plunge to a fiery demise.

  And the entire Mars program would die with it.

  Dr. Conley Fennell, small, dapper in a gray pinstripe suit, with thinning gray hair and a neat pencil-thin moustache, stood at the head of the long conference table, eyeing the men and women who had been named to find an answer to the problem.

  “We can do this,” he said, in a reedy nasal voice. “The stage will remain in orbit for another two weeks—”

  “In the wrong orbit,” said the bald, hard-faced engineer sitting halfway down the conference table. Like most of the men there, he was in rolled-up shirtsleeves.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Fennell snapped. He was wearing a vee-necked sweater beneath his suit jacket. A New Englander, Fennell could never accustom himself to the frigid air conditioning of the Huntsville center.

  “Bickering isn’t going to get us anywhere,” said one of the three women at the table.

  Fennell was the Marshall Center’s chief engineer, and NASA’s lead man in the program to remove debris from orbit. Known in the media as “NASA’s junk man,” Fennell was responsible for clearing orbital space of the dangerous pieces of spent rocket stages, fragments of broken spacecraft, inert equipment and other scraps of metal and plastic that infested orbital space, where they could shred working satellites and even endanger the space stations that housed dozens of men and women.

  Pointing to the three-dimensional slide hovering in midair at the front of the room, Fennell said, “Look, the stage’s orbit isn’t that far from the orbit where the Arrow is parked.”

  “But it’s losing altitude,” said another engineer. “It’ll decay and re-enter the atmosphere in a couple of weeks.”

  “Which means we’ve got to grab it before then,” said Fennell. “That’s what the OTVs are for.”

  “You don’t honestly think one of your OTVs can grapple a stage that size, do you?”

  “I do,” Fennell said firmly. “One of our orbital transfer vehicles can reach the stage, dock with it, and push it to the orbit where the Arrow is waiting. We only need a delta v of a few hundred meters per second.”

  One of the younger engineers, sitting near the end of the table, spoke up. “Okay, your chart shows the delta v budget and where your OTV is located relative to the stage. But what isn’t clear to me is the time factor. The OTV has to rendezvous with the stage, grab it—without damaging it—and move it to the orbit where it’s supposed to b
e. All within the next week to ten days.”

  “We can do that,” Fennell insisted.

  An engineer from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia asked, “We know where your OTV is now, but what’s it doing?”

  “Currently,” Fennell replied, “it’s maneuvering a large debris object—a defunct Air Force satellite, actually—into a trajectory that will spin it down to re-entry. If we reprogram it now, it can release the satellite from its robotic arms into a fairly low-risk orbit and start boosting toward the stage. We’re running various trajectory options now.”

  “You can do that autonomously? No crew involved?”

  “Controllers on the ground operate the OTVs,” Fennell answered, as he clicked the remote in his hand and a new three-dimensional image appeared, showing an animated drawing of the OTV capturing the rogue stage.

  “We can do this,” Fennell repeated. “And I don’t think we have any other choice.”

  Lou Spearing, the Center’s deputy director, hung his head for a moment, as if in silent prayer. Then he looked at Fennell, smiled weakly, and said, “You’re right, Conley. We don’t have any other options. I say we go for it.”

  Spearing looked up and down the table. The men and women seated there looked less than enthusiastic, but no voice was raised in objection. They were a conservative bunch, used to having plans they could review and assess for weeks before passing technical judgment, but in this case there was simply not enough time for that kind of thoughtful deliberation.

  “Okay,” said Spearing. “Let’s get it done.”

  March 28, 2035

  Earth Departure Minus 8 Days

  18:00 Universal Time

  The White House

  “High noon,” muttered Bart Saxby.

  As NASA’s chief administrator, Saxby had his neatly typed resignation in his jacket pocket. If this attempt to grab the wayward rocket stage didn’t work, he was ready to fall on his sword and be the scapegoat for the ruin of the Mars program.

  Saxby was a handsome man, a former astronaut who had worked his way through Washington’s bureaucratic mazes with the skill of a born leader. He had been delighted when President Harper came out for the Mars program, although now he understood that everything—including his career—depended on the performance of Conley Fennell’s robotic OTV orbiting more than four hundred miles overhead.

  And Fennell’s team of technicians sweating at their consoles in Alabama, he added silently to himself.

  The Oval Office was tensely silent. President Harper sat behind his imposing desk, Saxby and red-haired Sarah Fleming, Harper’s chief of staff, were in cushioned chairs before the desk, angled to see the three-dimensional hologram above the fireplace on the far wall.

  It looked as if the wall was actually an opening to another room, another space. In the middle of it, a grainy telescopic view showed the OTV creeping up on the errant rocket stage, its grappling arms extended. The curving blue-and-white panorama of Earth glided past in the background.

  Several other White House aides occupied the pair of ornate little sofas by the darkened fireplace. They craned their necks at the view.

  “Looks like a giant squid stalking its victim,” muttered Ilona Klein, the president’s news media chief. She was a smartly dressed brunette, nervously thin.

  “Did you hear what Donaldson said on the Hill this morning?” the president grumbled to nobody in particular.

  “Senator Donaldson is an ass,” groused Fleming.

  “I hope the recorders are off,” Klein said, looking alarmed.

  Recorders or not, the president continued, “He said I should shut down the whole manned space program, the idiot. Cut it out entirely and use the money on ‘infrastructure improvements.’ He said the little green men on Mars will just have to wait.”

  “Spend the money on the concrete contractors in his state,” said Fleming, clear disgust in her tone.

  “He’s going to call for an early vote on the NASA budget.”

  “He wants the party’s nomination for president next year,” Klein pointed out.

  Fleming said sourly, “Billy Donaldson in the White House? I’ll move to Australia.”

  Pointing to the TV screen, the president said grimly, “This had better work.”

  Or we’ll all be looking for new jobs soon enough, Saxby thought.

  Steven Treadway suddenly appeared, seemingly standing in empty space near the spacecraft, earnestly explaining the intricacies of the linkup between the OTV and the rocket stage containing the hydrogen fuel for Arrow’s nuclear engine.

  “Without those final eight tons of liquified hydrogen,” Treadway said, “the Arrow spacecraft’s nuclear engines won’t have enough propellant to reach Mars.”

  From her seat in front of the president’s desk, Ilona Klein complained, “Every time he says ‘nuclear,’ I wince.”

  “The anti-nuke lobby will be happy if this mission fails.”

  “Not once they realize the nuclear engine is going to re-enter the atmosphere and crash somewhere.”

  “In the ocean, most likely.”

  “You hope.”

  “Quiet!” the president snapped. “I can’t hear what Treadway’s saying.”

  The Oval Office went still, except for the smoothly professional voice from the hologram.

  “This is the moment,” Treadway was saying, dropping to a near-whisper.

  The hologram showed the OTV’s extended arms reaching for the attachment points built into the stage’s magnesium alloy skin. Slowly, with seeming tenderness, the OTV clasped the gleaming cylinder.

  “It looks good.” Treadway’s voice rose a notch. “Yes! We have confirmation from the Marshall Space Flight Center! The Orbital Transfer Vehicle has successfully captured the rocket stage. Now it will carry it—”

  The rest of his words were drowned out in the roar of triumph and relief that shook the Oval Office. The only place where the ecstatic cheers were louder was in the control room at NASA Marshall, where Conley Fennell nearly collapsed under the congratulatory pummeling his staff inflicted on his frail body.

  March 28, 2035

  Earth Departure Minus 8 Days

  12:00 Universal Time

  The Oval Office

  After a long day of working the successful space rendezvous, Steven Treadway was tired, but nothing was going to stop him from accepting the White House’s invitation to interview the President of the United States.

  His employer, The Twitter & New York Times Company, paid for him to fly from New York to Washington, D.C., in one of the new Boeing Airvolt commuter planes. It was his first time flying in one of these hybrid electric and aviation-fueled aircraft since they went into service a few months ago. The propeller-driven airplane was powered by traditional aircraft engines during takeoff but switched to all-electric mode once they were in flight. It was somewhat unnerving to hear the roaring engines suddenly stop midflight as the ultraquiet electric motors kicked in. Treadway admired the smooth and quiet ride while they were at cruising altitude, but in the back of his mind he kept thinking something had gone wrong with the engines. Airplanes aren’t supposed to be this quiet, he thought.

  A White House aide was waiting for him with a limousine at Reagan National Airport. The White House’s own camera crew and director were already setting up in the Oval Office, the aide explained as they were whisked through the traffic.

  Treadway was greeted at the White House door by Ilona Klein, all smiles as she led him along the West Wing corridor.

  “I’ve never seen you in a suit jacket before,” she said.

  “I’ve never interviewed the President of the United States before,” Treadway replied. Still, he felt a little awkward in the suit and tie that his bosses had insisted on. “Show the proper respect,” they had demanded.

  “Our camera crew has already set up,” she said. “You’ll be sitting on one of the sofas by the fireplace. The president will be on the sofa opposite, facing you.”

  “Fine,” said
Treadway. “Fine.” Yet he felt somewhat nettled that the White House had insisted on having its own crew record the interview.

  Still, he felt a thrill of excitement as he stepped into the Oval Office and saw President Harper at his desk. I’m interviewing the president! He said to himself. Science guy hits the big time.

  As the president got to his feet to greet him, Treadway realized that Harper was much shorter than he’d anticipated. Burly, though: he was built like a college wrestler.

  The president came around his desk and extended his hand, all warmth and graciousness. Then Treadway shook hands with the camera crew’s producer, allowed the sound man to clip a microphone to his jacket’s lapel, smoothed his hair and sat down on the sofa opposite the President of the United States.

  “Five seconds,” said the producer. “Four . . . three . . . two . . .” Then he pointed his trigger finger at Treadway.

  He swallowed hard once, then began the interview, going through the first few lines on autopilot. The president smiled and nodded in the right places. Then Treadway asked:

  “Life on Mars. Mr. President, you’ve staked your political career on this Mars mission. Why is it so important that we confirm the existence of life on another planet? More specifically, why is it so important that the United States do this?”

  Harper smiled indulgently. “The discovery of life on another planet. When China announced that their Mars sample return mission had brought back organic chemicals found in the Martian soil, including amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, the world changed. We aren’t alone. We must go and confirm the Chinese discovery. Even more, we humans must go ourselves, with people and not machines, to find more samples, perhaps even living organisms, and then bring them back here for study. Once it is confirmed, it will be the most startling discovery of all time, don’t you think?”

  “But why send people? Why not more robotic probes?”