by Ben Bova
Benson’s right eyebrow rose. “They’re both geologists,” Benson said. “They should work closely together. They have a lot in common.”
“It’s more than geology.”
“You think so?”
“I’m a psychologist, Bee, so yes, I think so. Catherine likes Hi, a lot. And I think he likes her, too, but he doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“Maybe I should talk to him about that.”
With a slight shrug, Taki said, “Maybe. But I think Hi would just shut down tighter than a clam. Sometimes men are like little boys.”
“So Hi and Catherine are hooking up? That’s hard to believe. He’s a top-flight geologist, but Catherine’s way out of his league, romantically.”
“Love is blind.”
“Have you asked Mikhail why he cheated at the chess game?” Benson asked, changing the topic.
Forcing herself not to bite her lip, Nomura answered, “Not yet. I wanted to talk to you about it first.”
“Okay. You’ve talked to me. Now talk to Mikhail.”
“I will.”
“Anything else?”
Nomura closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath.
“Well?” Benson prodded.
“Please forgive me for bringing it up, but yesterday you and Mr. Connover had that shouting match. I don’t know what the nature of the disagreement was, but the whole crew knows you and Ted were yelling at each other.”
Benson nodded. “It was over nothing, really. I apologized to Ted and we shook hands. Lots of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Nomura felt far from reassured.
“Frankly, Taki, what you’re talking about sounds suspiciously to me like a small group of people locked in an isolation chamber for two years, separated from instant death in vacuum by a few centimeters of aluminum, all trying to keep their cool and get along together until the isolation is over. We were warned this would happen.”
“Yes, that is true,” Nomura replied, “but I wasn’t expecting it to reach this level until we’d been underway for at least two or three months.”
Benson rubbed his temple with his right hand, a gesture Nomura knew he did when he was trying to solve a problem or was troubled by something.
Finally he asked, “We aren’t heading toward anything like the Mir incident, are we?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I hope not.”
Nomura understood Benson’s concern. She shared it. The effects of being isolated in space for long durations could be devastating. That’s why crews of space stations were rotated regularly: to avoid the mental health issues that inevitably arise when a small group of people are confined together for an extended period of time. It was rumored, but never officially confirmed, that back in the 1980s, personal relations aboard the old Russian space station Mir became so tense that one of the crew members actually stabbed another.
Peering intently at her, Benson asked, “Taki, how are you doing?”
“Me? I’m okay. I don’t really mind the physical closeness of the ship. It kind of reminds me of home. But, well, the smells are starting to bother me.”
“Smells?” Benson broke into a grin. “Are people not bathing or something?”
“It’s not that. It’s just the natural smell of people who are closely confined. Not body odor. Not a bad smell. Just a, well, too-close-together smell.”
“Huh.”
“Please remember that I’m from a culture where people often bathe more than once a day. My father used to come home from his office for lunch and take a quick bath before returning to work for the afternoon. It’s just something I notice.”
Benson couldn’t think of a quip and probably wouldn’t have said it to Taki even if he had. She wasn’t the type to react happily to his humor. That was one of the reasons he had been picked to command this mission—he could read people fairly well.
“Thanks for giving me a heads-up, Taki,” he said. “And please keep me informed. Do you intend to report this all to Mission Control and the crew’s personal physicians?”
Each member of the crew had his or her own personal physician back on Earth who knew their medical history in detail. Each personal physician had overseen the crew member’s training schedule, conducted regular physical exams, and knew the results of every mental health test they’d been given as they trained for the mission. If anyone on board started showing unusual symptoms, mental or physical, their personal physician would be consulted for advice.
“I should,” Nomura answered. “That’s what mission protocol calls for.”
Benson shook his head. “I wish you wouldn’t. What happens among us should stay among us—unless it’s really something big.”
Nomura frowned, conflicted. She’d known this sort of situation might arise. Now it had, and she had a choice to make.
“We’re a family, Taki. We handle our problems among ourselves.”
For now, I agree, she thought.
Nodding, “Yes. Of course.” But she added silently, Until the problems become big enough to explode.
May 17, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 42 Days
20:05 Universal Time
Privacy Quarters, the Arrow
Damn, she’s good looking, Hi McPherson said to himself, not for the first time since he’d met Catherine Clermont more than two years ago.
He had been taking surreptitious glances at the French geologist all that time. Not at all voyeuristic, McPherson told himself. More like a teenager gazing at pictures of a glamorous Hollywood star, distant and unobtainable. Still, here aboard the Arrow, his interest in the petite brunette had grown into a full-fledged infatuation.
In the Arrow’s tight quarters there wasn’t much privacy space. Other than each person’s personal cubby, with its closeable screen and Velcro-lined walls for sticking up photographs and charts, there were few places a crew member could go and not be noticed. Each person’s sense of privacy had to adapt. Each crew member had to get accustomed to the fact that every move they made could be seen by someone else—even changing one’s clothes.
It was at that inopportune time—or very opportune, from McPherson’s point of view—that he happened to encounter the object of his infatuation.
Catherine was in the passageway in front of the open screen to her privacy cubicle, her back toward McPherson as she slipped out of her coveralls to put on more casual shorts and tee shirt. McPherson almost walked into the bulkhead as he stared at her bare shoulders, bra strap and shapely bottom.
At just that moment Amanda Lynn happened to come up behind McPherson, who was oblivious to her presence.
“Excuse me, Hiram,” she said. “May I get by?”
Startled, McPherson stammered, “Uh, oh, yeah, sure. Sorry about that.” He felt like a high schooler who had happened to wander into the girls’ bathroom, not-so-accidentally.
“I, uh, I was just going to my cubicle to get my viewer.” Even as he said it, it sounded lame it him. Worse than lame: stupid. He could feel his face reddening at being caught in the act of staring at Catherine’s nearly bare backside.
“Viewer,” Amanda humphed as she squeezed past.
Without missing a beat, Catherine turned around, clad only in her underwear, and smiled at the two of them.
“Am I in the way?” she asked as she smoothly stepped into her shorts and pulled them up to her waist.
“Uh, no, I was just on my way to get something,” McPherson mumbled as he made his way past her and rushed to his own cubicle.
“Well,” Catherine said as she pulled her shirt over head, “I hope you enjoy the show.”
Tonguetied, McPherson ducked into his cubby, grabbed his entertainment viewer, and rushed back through the passageway past the two women, heading toward the galley.
Amanda shook her head as she watched his retreating back. “You shouldn’t tease the poor man like that,” she said to Clermont. “It’s obvious that he’s crazy about you.”
“Crazy?” Cather
ine scoffed. “Lustful, more likely. Still, I do like him very much. But I do not think it would be a good idea to let him know.”
“Why not?”
Her eyes on the hatch that McPherson had disappeared through, Clermont said, “We are together in this confinement for two years, non? If we begin to pair up it will quickly lead to jealousies and anger. And if a pairing should go bad, it could lead to horrible feelings that could jeopardize everything we want to accomplish.”
Amanda reluctantly agreed. “Yeah, two years is a long time. But he’d be a truly fine-looking man if he’d just shave off that damned beard.”
May 20, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 45 Days
19:30 Universal Time
The White House
Normally, Sarah Fleming seemed as cool as the proverbial cucumber. But at this moment, the red-haired chief of the president’s staff looked concerned, even alarmed.
“Mr. President, there’s been an accident at the International Moon Base. We don’t have many of the details yet, but at least two people have been killed.”
President Harper sagged back in his desk chair. “What happened?”
“We’re not certain. But the news media claim there was a fire in the main habitat, fed by an oxygen leak.”
“My God!”
Harper had just spent a testy half-hour with the Peruvian ambassador, wrangling over that country’s drug problems and its impact on mining rare earth metals in the Cordillera Blanca Mountains there. The ambassador wanted the U.S. to give drone aircraft to the Peruvian national police.
One of the successes of Harper’s first term had been negotiating a favorable agreement with Peru for American companies to mine ores containing erbium, lanthium and cerium. These rare earth elements were vital ingredients for the electronics industry and China had a monopoly on the world’s supply—until Harper’s deal with Peru.
Now a drug cartel was waging an undeclared war on the American mining operations, probably bankrolled by China. Harper was willing to send drones to Peru, but only under operational control by the American military. The ambassador wanted the drones, but not the Americans.
Harper had been elected president on his promise to reverse two decades of American decline in international power and prestige. His re-election in 2032 was based in part on his space program: support for the International Moon Base and—more importantly since the Chinese one-upped the west with their Mars Sample Return Mission—the American-led Mars mission.
And now two killed at the Moon Base. Maybe more.
Sarah Fleming sat tensely in one of the commodious armchairs in front of his desk, unconsciously smoothing her skirt over her knees. He saw that she had a comm bud in her ear.
Glaring at his chief of staff, the president demanded, “How come the goddamned news media knows more about this than we do?”
“The goddamned news media has two reporters at the base, and neither one of them is constrained to know the facts before they shoot their mouths off,” Sarah Fleming retorted.
“Two killed,” the president muttered.
“We’ve got calls in to Saxby, at NASA, and the commander of Moon Base. I think it would be a good move for you to personally call the Russians, Europeans and Japanese.”
“Do we know if Americans were killed?”
“Not yet. This just happened fifteen-twenty minutes ago.” She reached up to touch the comm bud in her right ear. “I’m calling Saxby’s deputy administrator, she’s the one in charge of the Moon Base operation.”
President Harper wanted to jump up and pace the Oval Office. Instead, he sat gripping the armrests of his chair, staring at his chief of staff. Sarah Fleming was exceptionally intelligent and very attractive, a potent combination. Most men found her totally intimidating, but the president had known her for too long to be cowed. They had been colleagues and friends since their first terms in Congress together. She had directed the campaign that got him elected president. When he was re-elected, and most of his cabinet and staff had put in their pro forma resignations, the one Harper did not consider even for a moment was Sarah Fleming’s.
One hand on the comm bud, she raised a finger of her other hand. “One of those killed was an American. The other was Belgian.” She listened some more, then reported, “There was no fire: that’s just a news media fabrication. The two killed were working on excavating ice from a newly discovered vein at the bottom of Shackleton Crater when one of the drills failed.” Uncharacteristically, Fleming winced. “It shattered and the debris shredded their suits. Explosive decompression. They were dead in seconds.”
“Aw, shit,” the president said fervently.
“Three others injured,” Fleming went on, “but none severely.”
She went on with other details, but Harper was already running through the possible scenarios that might play out in Congress and the news media. Donaldson and his ilk will take up their old yell that space is too dangerous to risk human lives, he thought. They’ll say that my programs for mining on the Moon and sending people to Mars are too risky. And too expensive.
How can I counter that? he asked himself. Tell the people that the dangers and the risks are worth the rewards? That no frontier was ever settled without fallen heroes? Yeah, try that line when the media will be parading the weeping widows.
“Sarah,” he commanded, snapping her attention away from the voice buzzing in her ear. “Get me the names of the people killed and injured. And their bios. I’m going to have to make a statement, probably within the hour. Write one up for me. Fallen heroes. You know the line.”
She nodded and rose slowly to her feet.
Harper tapped his intercom key. “What’s next?” he asked his appointments secretary.
“The delegation of Four-H clubs,” came his secretary’s reedy voice. “They’re been waiting for ten minutes.”
“Give ’em my apologies and send them in. And get me the chairs of the space committees, Senate and House. Squeeze them into the schedule for later this afternoon.”
On the screen, it looked as if Treadway were standing in the galley of the Arrow.
“Steven Treadway,” he said into the camera, “reporting virtually from the Arrow spacecraft as it carries its crew toward Mars.”
Arrow was already so far from Earth that it took a noticeable several seconds for communications transmissions to cover the distance between the ship and Earth. So this interview was not quite live. Editors had cut out the lags between questions and responses, so that to the TV audience it all appeared as if Treadway were actually aboard the spacecraft, conversing with Ted Connover.
“Today the Mars crew learned about the tragic accident at the International Moon Base,” Treadway went on, “in which two lunar technicians were killed—including an American. The crew took the news hard; two on the team here had been to the lunar base during their earlier careers and know several of the people currently living on the Moon, although neither of those killed were personal friends of any of the Arrow’s crew. Still, news of the accident struck like a hammer blow here aboard the Arrow.”
Treadway turned to face Connover, who appeared to be standing immediately in front of him in the confines of the ship. In reality, an unbeknownst to the viewers, Treadway was standing in a replica of the Arrow constructed in the basement of the New York City studio. VR mesh on his head, he was busily talking to an empty spot that roughly corresponded to one directly in front of where Connover was looking onboard the real Arrow.
Connover, his face deadly serious, said, “Steve, you trained with us. You know the risks involved in space flight as well as any of us. It’s a dangerous business, but an important one. Those guys knew the risks and I’m sure they wouldn’t want their deaths to jeopardize the work we’re doing, any more than I’d want an accident or tragedy aboard our ship to imperil that next flight, that next mission. What they did is important. We need to figure out what went wrong, fix it, and make certain that that particular event never happens again. We ne
ed to keep going forward.”
Treadway started to ask a question, but Connover wasn’t finished.
“Abraham Lincoln said it in his Gettysburg Address,” the astronaut continued, “‘It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.’ That’s our job. That’s our mission.”
Treadway shook his head slightly. “No one could have said it better,” he said, softly. Turning back to face the camera squarely, he finished, “That was the Arrow’s pilot, Ted Connover. I’m Steven Treadway, wishing the men and women of the Arrow well from somewhere in space between the orbit of Earth and the planet Mars.”
May 24, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 49 Days
13:45 Universal Time
Observation Cupola, the Arrow
Take it slow and stay calm, Taki Nomura told herself as she waited for Prokhorov to show up. Be professional. Listen to what he has to say.
She had chosen the observation cupola, just below the command center, for this one-on-one with the Russian. Just the two of us, nobody else, no recording devices. Try to put him at his ease so he’ll open up to you.
Yes, she thought. Put him at his ease. While you’re wound up tighter than a spring.
She actually flinched when Mikhail Prokhorov yanked the hatch open and ducked through.
“Greetings and salutations,” he said, his voice low and grave, his face almost scowling. Nomura realized that Mikhail always appeared to her to be larger than his actual physical stature. Standing next to Bee or Ted Connover, the Russian looked short, dumpy, almost gnomish. But here in the confines of the cupola he seemed sizeable, bulky. The little compartment felt crowded with just the two of them in it.
Prokhorov looked past Taki, through the thick quartz view port.
“It’s all empty out there,” he murmured. “Empty and far from home.”
Taki nodded agreement. “Does that bother you?”