by Ben Bova
He focused on her. “Is this a psychological exam?”
Suppressing a sudden urge to worm uncomfortably, Taki said, “Sort of.”
“On the record?”
“No. Not at all. This is strictly between the two of us. No notes. No reports.”
Suspiciously, Prokhorov inquired, “Not even to Bee?”
Realizing this interview was quickly slipping beyond her control, Taki said, “Mikhail, I was there when you and Hi were playing chess.”
“That was two weeks ago!”
“Yes, but . . . well, I saw you move your rook.”
“What of it?”
“Then you denied it. You lied to Hi’s face.”
Prokhorov burst into laughter. “Is that what this is all about: that stupid chess game?”
“Why did you do it?” Taki asked.
“To shorten the game, of course. I saw after three moves that Hi is a blundering amateur at chess. I simply wanted to put an end to his misery.”
“You cheated.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Is that so important?”
“It is if you’ve destroyed the trust Hi had in you.”
“Trust? He’s never had any trust in me. He’s always regarded me as a needless add-on to the crew. A political appointee, useless.”
“That’s not so!”
“Isn’t it? Ask him.”
“I will. But . . . Mikhail, you should talk with him, too. Tell him how you feel.”
“How I feel,” Prokhorov repeated. “I leave my wife and children for two years—three, if you count the time I spent in training—and what do I get? I get treated like an outsider, a Russian barbarian brought into the team by political pressure.”
“I don’t feel that way about you,” Taki protested.
“Then you’re the only one. Hi has Catherine at his side every minute of the day. Bee and Ted work together like brothers. Oh, I know they quarrel sometimes, but brothers do that.”
Taki kept silent. Let him vent, she told herself. Let him get it all out.
“Virginia and Amanda are like sorority sisters. I am alone. Despised and alone.”
“I don’t despise you,” she protested. “And neither do the others. They all respect you, your . . . your competence in your field.”
Prokhorov let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. “Competence in my field,” he sneered. “There are only a half-dozen people in the world who are specialists in Martian meteorology. Some field.”
“But you were picked ahead of all the others.”
“Politics. It was all politics.”
“Is that what you feel?”
“It is what I know.”
Taki pulled in a deep, calming breath as she eyed Prokhorov closely. He’s worked himself up over what we all knew would happen during the trip—separation from family and doubts about his own ability to contribute to humanity’s first trip to Mars. If he only knew . . .
“I’m going to make arrangements for you to have extra time on the comm link to talk with your wife and children,” she said.
The Russian shook his head. “That would only make things worse. The others will think I’m getting special privileges.”
“But—”
“Besides, it won’t do any good. She’s left me.”
Taki felt it like a physical blow. “Left you?”
Nodding morosely, Prokhorov said, “I asked her to come with me for the training period. She refused. She told me if I went to Mars she would leave me. Then I found that she was already seeing another man, behind my back.” Sinking his head into his hands, he moaned, “If I were there, I would . . . I don’t know what I would do. But I’m not there. I’m here and seeing you all get along so well just makes me envious.”
Without thinking, Taki almost slid her arm around his shoulders, but stopped herself. Instead, she leaned forward to get his attention. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“And my boys,” Prokhorov almost sobbed.
There’s nothing I can do! Taki realized as she resisted every emotion that would allow her to reach out and put her arm around him. Prokhorov would likely not appreciate the gesture and might even misinterpret it, so she kept her hands at her sides. Even if we were back on Earth, there’d be nothing I could do.
After a few moments Prokhorov straightened up, his eyes red and puffy. “I’ll apologize to Hiram. It was stupid of me to tease him like that.”
Taki nodded understandingly.
“But not a word about my personal problem to anyone,” he said, sudden steel in his voice. “I can carry my burdens.”
“I promise,” Taki said. Then she added, “You can talk to me anytime, Mikhail. You don’t have to be alone”
He flashed a bleak smile. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Then he got up and ducked back through the hatch, leaving Taki Nomura sitting by herself in the observation cupola, staring at the distant stars.
Ted Connover saw Prokhorov shamble past the open hatch of the communications center. He leaned forward in his chair and pulled the sliding screen shut. Privacy was at a minimum aboard Arrow, and he wanted as much of it as he could get.
The comm center was a tiny compartment jam-packed with the communications gear that kept Arrow in constant touch with Mission Control on Earth. Every system aboard the ship was monitored electronically, microsecond by microsecond, and the data radioed to Earth continuously. Located just behind the command center, the “radio shack” was the place Connover went to when he wanted to be alone.
Normally, he would have felt cramped, confined in this narrow compartment. The electronic gear hummed constantly and the booth felt uncomfortably warm. But it was the one place where he could send a message home without any of the others hearing him.
Satisfied that the sliding doors on both ends of the compartment were closed, Connover reached for the headset and slipped it over his ears. Then he tapped the button on the console’s keyboard to start a video message.
Keeping his voice low, he began, “Vicki, we’re so far out now that the time delay makes it impossible to have a normal conversation, so please forgive me for sending this one-way message to you.”
Glancing at the red light that showed the video camera was working, he continued, “First, I want you to know that I love you very much and miss you even more. With each passing day I think about all the time we’re still going to be apart and it fills me with mixed feelings. Yeah, I’m excited about being here and making history, but there’s a part of me that regrets going on this mission and being away from you and Thad for so long.
“By the time I return he’ll be graduating high school and heading off for college. You’ll have been dealing with the house and Thad and the whole college search business all on your own and, not that I don’t think you can handle it, it’s just that I’d like to be there with you and be part of the whole thing and not just a bystander giving armchair quarterback advice from a million miles away.
“Just about the only privacy we get on this tin can is using the toilet or here in the comm shack talking or sending personal messages home. I can deal with the lack of privacy, but I’m seriously wondering how well I’ll hold up without you at my side.
“Remember the trip we took to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland? The wonder we felt when we saw those big rock formations that dropped down into the surf and under the sea? That’s the feeling I get whenever I look out the cupola window into deep space, but without you beside me it feels kind of empty.”
He sighed. “I guess I’m in a melancholy mood. I apologize. I’ll try to be more positive. I don’t want to leave you feeling depressed after my messages!”
Putting on a smile, Connover continued, “Yesterday Hi learned he was a new uncle. Houston sent an alert message to him and then a couple of hours later he got a video from the hospital. He was on Cloud Nine. They way he pranced around, you’d think he was the father instead of the uncle. Sort of reminded me of how I felt when Thad was bo
rn. We don’t get a lot of personal news out here; that was a real high point for the whole crew. We all celebrated.
“I’ve even started feeling some respect for Bee. You know I’ve never really liked the stuffy little prick. But I’ve been a good soldier and supported him one hundred percent. Unless he listens to my messages to you, I don’t think he has the faintest suspicion that I wished he’d broken his leg a few days before launch. Oh, we had our shoot-outs when we first started off, but it’s getting harder and harder to dislike him. He’s not really such a bad guy. Really, I think I enjoy badmouthing him more than I actually dislike him. Makes me feel good, for some reason. Go figure that one out.
“Oh, yeah, you asked me to tell you if any of the crew are getting familiar with each other. I haven’t seen much of that, but it’s obvious that Hi is head over heels about Catherine. All she has to do is ask him for something with that French accent of hers and he practically bounces off the walls to do it. Kind of reminds me of myself when we first met. Funny thing, though; I don’t think Hi really understands it. He’s all fumbles and fidgets around Catherine, like a kid on his first date, but I don’t think he realizes what’s going on.
“Come to think about it, it would have been kind of fun to be trapped with you for two years in a tin can between the planets. Whatever would we do to keep ourselves occupied? Better not let myself get too distracted. Too frustrating!
“Tell Thad I’m thinking about him. And remind him to send me a copy of the story he wrote in his creative writing class, like he promised to. You’d think he’d be a little more conscientious with his dad on his way to Mars. But what the hell, he’s a teenager.”
Connover paused for a heartbeat. Then, “I’d better sign off now. Vicki, just know that I love you and can’t wait to see you again. I never realized how much I’d miss your touch. Just thinking about it makes me smile. I love you.
“Bye.”
May 30, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 55 days
09:30 Universal Time
Galley
The klaxon’s sudden blare jolted Virginia Gonzalez so hard she nearly dropped the cup of coffee in her hand.
It’s just a drill, she told herself. Still, the instant raucous blast was louder than anything she had heard in training. Maybe . . .
“This is a solar storm alert drill,” announced the silky synthesized voice of the ship’s computerized intercom system, flat and unruffled. “Report to the shelter immediately.”
Gonzalez was already through the galley’s hatch, heading for the sleeping quarters, which also served as the ship’s storm shelter.
On Earth, the planet’s enveloping magnetic field and thick atmosphere protected life on the surface from all but the most energetic cosmic radiation. Aboard the Arrow, the ship’s thin skin provided only minimal protection against the constant sleeting of cosmic ray and solar wind particles. But when the Sun burped out a solar flare, interplanetary space was invaded by a wave of deadly high-energy particles. The ship’s lightweight alloy skin and the inflated fabric structure of the galley were transparent to such subatomic bullets.
The high-energy protons and heavier atomic nuclei of a solar flare could kill unprotected humans. As the ions burrow through a human body, they could cause cancers and other somatic damage that could be fatal.
To help protect against this lethal danger, the ship’s sleeping area was surrounded by thicker fabric walls holding bladders filled with water. The water would absorb all but the most energetic of the incoming particles, protecting the fragile crew inside the shelter. Still, the highest energy particles, though relatively rare, zipped through the water-filled walls and irradiated the human crew, raising their risk of developing cancers later in life.
The ship’s electronics and other systems were hardened to survive a solar storm’s worst radiation. The human crew would have to huddle in the protected sleeping area for the hours or even days that the storm’s radiation cloud enveloped the ship.
Gonzalez saw that all seven of her crewmates were already in the sleeping area by the time she got there. The klaxon was still blazing away, but its noise was muted inside the shelter.
Bee Benson clicked the stopwatch function on his wristwatch and smiled at them. “Ninety seconds. Good job, people.”
Amanda Lynn poked a finger in Gonzalez’s direction. “You were last, Jinny. One hour on the treadmill.”
The others all laughed, while Gonzalez managed a weak smile.
In a real solar storm the crew would undoubtedly slip into their individual cubicles to relax until the radiation level outside dropped back to normal. But this was only a drill.
“Bee, how long do you intend to keep us penned up in here?” McPherson asked. “I don’t mind being close to my friends, but I have a video running.”
“A movie?” Connover asked.
“A report from the drill team at Lake Vostok,” Catherine Clermont replied. “Most interesting.”
Amanda said, “Hey, I’d like to see that, too. Have they found any new organisms beneath the ice?”
“We didn’t get that far into the video before the horn sounded,” McPherson replied.
At that moment the klaxon abruptly turned off, signaling that the threat—or, in this case, the drill—was over.
“Okay,” Benson told them. “Back to work.”
June 2, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 58 Days
14:28 Universal Time
Biology Laboratory, the Arrow
“That’s what an extremophile looks like up close and personal,” Amanda Lynn was saying, pointing to the shapeless blobs on the display screen.
Virginia Gonzalez peered at the screen. “Like amoebas,” she murmured.
“Sort of.”
Arrow’s minuscule biology lab was barely large enough for the two of them. Gonzalez, tall and leggy, was wearing gym shorts and an oversized sweatshirt. The shorter, stockier Lynn was in mission-standard sky-blue coveralls. They sat side-by-side on foldable stools that looked flimsy, but were perfectly adequate in the ship’s one-third gravity.
Lynn pointed to the screen, “I picked that one out of a lake in Antarctica that’s been covered with ice for several million years. It’s called a psychrophile.”
“Amazing to think it could survive that long and under such cold conditions. Most of the extremophiles I’ve heard of are near volcanic vents on the ocean floor or someplace really hot.”
“This one thrives in the cold. Little bugger’s filled with natural antifreeze: temperatures below freezing don’t bother it at all.”
Her eyes riveted to the screen, Gonzalez asked, “You expect to find something like that on Mars?”
“Hope so,” Lynn replied. “The amino acids and other biomarkers the Chinese found were in the ice of the permafrost underground.”
Before Gonzalez could ask another question, Lynn pointed to the screen and explained, “This kind of bacterium is a methanogen. It excretes methane as a waste product of its metabolism. The earliest satellites we placed in orbit around Mars detected whiffs of methane, but the latest ones haven’t found any trace of the bug farts—”
“Bug farts?”
Lynn’s normally dour face broke into a bright smile. “Yep. Bug farts.”
She clicked the remote in her hand and the screen went dark.
Gonzalez got to her feet and stretched. “So you’ll be working with Catherine and Hi once we get to Mars.”
Nodding, Amanda said, “They do the digging, I examine what they’ve brought up.”
“Hi will do the digging,” Virginia said, a slight smile on her lips. “He won’t let Catherine get her hands dirty.”
“I don’t care who does the digging as long as they bring me their results.”
“It doesn’t bother you that Hi’s a chauvinist? The way he hovers around Catherine. He thinks she’s a little porcelain doll.”
Amanda shrugged. “Most men are bigger and stronger than most women. I don’t mind letting Hi d
o the muscle work.”
She flashed back to a memory of growing up in Detroit, how her brothers would walk with her, protect her on their way through the bad neighborhoods they had to get through to reach school. That’s what men are built for, Amanda thought. Some of them are born rapists, some are born protectors.
Virginia interrupted her thoughts. “Do you think Catherine and Hi have made it yet?”
Amanda shook her head. “If they have, they’ve been awfully quiet about it.”
Giggling, Virginia said, “Maybe they put gags in their mouths.”
“That’s kinky!”
“What about Mikhail?” Virginia pursued. “I know he’s married, but he looks so lonely.”
“You getting the hots, girl?”
Her smile turning sly, Virginia replied, “Just looking over the field.”
“If I got excited over any of them, it’d be Ted. He’s cute, and I bet he’d be fun.”
“He’s married, too.”
“Yeah. What about Bee?”
“Also married,” Virginia said, with a theatrical sigh.
“Yeah, but I hear his marriage is on the rocks.”
“Maybe. But he’s such an iceberg,” Virginia said.
“You try to melt him down a little?”
“No!” But then Virginia’s expression turned thoughtful and she said softly, “I wonder if you could, though.”
Amanda shook her head. “It wouldn’t work.”
“You mean you wouldn’t try it?”
“Look at me. Short and squat. And black, to boot. Now you, you’re tall and slim and good-looking.”
“And Hispanic.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Suddenly tired of this subject, Virginia said, “Enough fantasizing. I’m not going after any of these guys. We have a job to do, and screwing around will make everything too complicated.”
Amanda nodded agreement. “You’re right. We’re dedicated scientists, not those female acrobats from the latest porno simulations.”
“Acrobats?”
“If you’d seen some of the positions they take, then you’d know why I call them ‘acrobats’.”