Rescue Mode

by Ben Bova

  Clermont looked at him, pursed her lips, then smiled sadly.

  “Hi, you are going to be a great catch for some lucky woman. Old-fashioned morality is very rare.”

  “I’m not—”

  She patted his hand. “I’m not so ruled by my hormones that I can’t control them when I need to. And I do want to, now.”

  McPherson felt his face reddening again. At last he said, “Well, let’s finish eating and help get this ship back together so we have more to look forward to than dying out here in the middle of nowhere. I’ve got some very important business to attend to when we get back to Earth.”

  Catherine smiled. “So do I.”

  July 26, 2035

  Earth Departure Plus 112 Days

  11:30 Universal Time

  Workshop, the Arrow

  Ted Connover stood next to the latest generation 3D printer that sat in the rear of the habitat’s third level, behind the exercise equipment. It was an unassuming-looking device: essentially just a box with a flat panel display that was used to show a Computer-Assisted-Device file of whatever was programmed to be printed.

  Ted was fully trained on the 3D printer and knew that as long as it functioned properly there were only a few things aboard the Arrow that couldn’t be repaired or replaced by it.

  “I saw my first 3D printer at the local community college,” Ted was saying. “The instructor called it a ‘first generation Star Trek replicator.’”

  Virginia Gonzalez was staring at the device. To her, it looked like the one she had at home in her garage, except that perhaps it was a little more sleek and streamlined.

  “To be honest,” Connover went on, “I had no idea what he was talking about. I hadn’t seen any Star Trek shows at the time, but I knew it must be something fantastic because of the excitement in his eyes.”

  “Star Trek was a good show,” said Hi McPherson. “When I was a kid I bought every episode and streamed them wherever I went.”

  Connover ignored Hi’s comment. “Then the instructor showed me how it worked. He poured in some plastic powder, at least I think it was plastic. He uploaded to the printer the specs of the chair we’d designed using some cheap CAD software. And, voila! A few minutes later we smelled that burning plastic smell and before our very eyes a chair was being formed, layer by layer, until we had a piece of furniture that Barbie could have used in her pink doll house.”

  “You printed a Barbie chair in a university mechanical engineering department?” Gonzalez asked, amused incredulity clear in her tone.

  “It was a community college, not a university,” Connover corrected, “and yes, we built a Barbie chair. The instructor wanted to start small, I think, probably because he had a limited budget. But I also think he wanted something practical.”

  “Or he had a daughter who was into Barbie,” said Virginia.

  “Maybe,” Connover conceded. “In any event, I was mesmerized. To me, that 3D printer was like magic. That semester, we printed gears, tools, even a toy car with wheels that actually moved. All that with a hobbyist 3D printer and design software we found on the Internet. That was twenty-some years ago, at the beginning of 3D printing and now I understand why he said it would change everything.”

  “It sure as hell has,” McPherson said. “I don’t know what I’d do without mine. Just before we left I printed a replacement rotor for my 1984 Mazda RX-7. God, I love that car.”

  Virginia agreed. “I have an electro-optical 3D that I use to make replacement boards for my antique radio collection. I’ve got radios that go back to the 1920s and I have to improvise. The newest printers can make circuit boards, old-style transistors, just about any other radio part you can imagine.”

  “Vacuum tubes?” Connover asked.

  Crestfallen, Gonzalez shook her head. “No.”

  “Not yet,” said McPherson.

  “I don’t think I’ve made a trip to a hardware store in the past three years,” Connover said. “Can’t say I cried a river when the printers started driving hardware stores out of business.”

  “And toy stores,” McPherson added. “And box retail stores, even the companies that ran sweatshops in Asia and Africa.”

  More thoughtfully, Gonzalez pointed out, “I guess we ought to remember that 3D printers changed everything about the global economy and supply chain. Printers like this one here,” she pointed, “got cheap enough for the masses, and lots and lots of people were put out of work.”

  Looking annoyed, McPherson asked, “Now that we’ve had our global economics lesson and decided what we all want for Christmas, can somebody please tell me how this 3D toy is going to help us?”

  “We’re going to print replacement spars for the truss,” said Connover.

  “Replacement spars?” McPherson looked skeptical.

  “The engineers back at Mission Control will have a design ready to upload to us later today or early tomorrow,” Connover said. “Once we have the file, we can feed it to the printer, put in the raw materials, and build ourselves the spars we need.”

  Gonzalez asked, “Why don’t we use this gizmo to replace the water and propellant we’ve lost?”

  Connover shook his head. “It can only make things from the raw material we put into it. We don’t have any spare hydrogen. Or oxygen, for that matter.”

  “But we have raw materials for the truss?” McPherson asked.

  Nodding vigorously, Connover said, “Yep. Down in the storage bays. Iron filings, carbon dust—”

  “You mean soot?” Gonzalez interrupted.

  Connover chuckled. “That’s right: soot and lots of other materials.”

  McPherson scratched his beard as he said, “You think we really can repair the truss?”

  “I do,” said Connover. “I really do.”

  And he thought, We’ll get through this. You guys will get back home safe and sound, back to your families. But I don’t have a family to come home to. I don’t have anybody back home.

  July 28, 2035

  Earth Departure Plus 114 Days

  13:15 Universal Time

  ExtraVehicular Activity, the Arrow

  Inside his EVA spacesuit, tethered to the truss near the spot where the rock had done its damage, Ted Connover looked into the darkness of deep space. He stared at the stars, gleaming steadily like unblinking eyes watching him.

  Makes you feel pretty small, he said to himself. Small and lonely.

  His thoughts drifted to Vicki and Thad, as they always did when he had time to think, to remember.

  I wonder if they’re out there, looking back at me. Are they sad? Are they with God, whatever that means? I’m the one who should have died. I’m the one who decided to go to Mars, to leave them millions of miles away. He squeezed his eyes shut. I’m the one who should have died, not them!

  “Ted, are you with me?” Virginia Gonzalez’s voice sounded sharply in his helmet earphones.

  He snapped back to the here and now. Turning to look at Virginia’s spacesuited figure, he replied, “Yeah, Jinny, I’m here. I was just . . . thinking.”

  “I hope you were thinking about the repair. I was starting to wonder.”

  “No, I was just . . . thinking. But now it’s time to get to work. Let’s get this job done so we can go home.”

  “Copy that!”

  With deliberate, careful motion, Connover reached into the toolbag that contained the makeshift spars and clamps that the engineers back on Earth had designed and uploaded to the Arrow’s 3D printer. He’d run through the process for attaching them to the truss at least fifty times in the past day and a half, using the simulated truss that they’d also printed out for the same purpose.

  But those simulation exercises had been performed in the ship’s pressurized habitat, first using his bare hands and then the gloves of his EVA suit. Now he was outside, in the vacuum of space, in the bulky, cumbersome suit. Once the suit was pressurized, the gloves had ballooned as they always did, making it a real effort to flex his fingers or grasp anything.<
br />
  “Steven Treadway, reporting from the damaged Arrow.”

  Treadway appeared to be hovering weightlessly beside Bee Benson just inside the ship’s main airlock, where Prokhorov and Amanda Lynn were helping Ted and Virginia out of their EVA suits, all of them in zero-g.

  Although this news report appeared to be live, from the Arrow, the spacecraft’s distance from Earth made a truly live interview impossibly awkward. So Treadway had asked his questions from the 3D virtual reality studio in New York and Benson had answered them from the ship. The long pauses in-between, while their messages crossed the gulf of space, were edited out at the studio. Then the patched-together interview was aired and gave the impression that it was all happening in real time.

  “Astronauts Ted Connover and Virginia Gonzalez,” Treadway intoned, “have just reentered the ship after three hours outside, working to repair the badly damaged main truss that connects the crew’s living and working habitat to the propulsion system they will need to bring them home.”

  Gonzalez looked drawn, tired. Connover was grinning, though, and made a “thumbs up” signal with his still-gloved hand.

  “It appears their repair effort has been successful,” Treadway said. Turning to Benson, standing beside him, he asked, “Commander Benson, is that right? Was the repair made successfully?”

  “Yes it was, Steve,” Bee replied. “Mission Control has confirmed that the truss is now strong enough for us to enter the Martian atmosphere and use its drag to slow us into an orbit around Mars.”

  “That’s very good news,” said Treadway, smiling.

  Benson’s grin was much wider. “It sure as hell . . . it certainly is.”

  Putting on a more concerned expression, Treadway said, “Many viewers have been asking why you have to continue to Mars and stay there a month before you can begin the trip home. Why can’t you start home sooner?”

  On tens of millions of television screens around the world, the image of the Arrow’s airlock area gave way to a computerized 3D animation showing the orbits of Earth and Mars, with the position of the Arrow marked between the two.

  Benson’s voice explained, “We’ve got to wait until the Earth moves along its orbit to the place where we can reach it. If we leave Mars too soon, Earth won’t be where we need it to be.”

  Treadway’s voice said, “Even with the nuclear rockets that power the Arrow, the ship can’t move wherever it wants to. The ship is still subject to Newton’s laws of motion and orbital mechanics.”

  “Right,” said Benson.

  “Unless the ship arrives at Mars and departs on schedule, it won’t have enough fuel to return to Earth.”

  The animation gave way to the “live” scene at the Arrow’s airlock. Connover and Gonzalez were almost completely out of their EVA suits, only their leggings and boots still had to be removed. Their undergarments, lined with water tubes for cooling, made them look a bit like thinned-down versions of the Michelin Tire man.

  Still standing beside Treadway’s virtual image, Benson said, “We have to follow the path we started out on. No detours allowed. Even if we decide not to go down to Mars’ surface, we’ll have to stay in Mars orbit for thirty days before we can start for home.”

  Treadway nodded understandingly. “But the good news is that the truss has been repaired.”

  Benson smiled again. “Yes, that is good news. Very good news.”

  Standing in the airlock area, looking at a monitor screen that showed Treadway, millions of miles away, Benson resisted the urge to cross his fingers.

  The truss is repaired, he said to himself. But will the patch hold up when we enter Mars’ atmosphere?

  IV

  Mars

  Approach

  August 1, 2035

  Mars Arrival Minus 86 Days

  14:12 universal Time

  NASA Headquarters, Washington D.C.

  Bart Saxby, Robin Harkness and Nathan Brice, flight director for the Mars mission, sat behind a table on the stage in the NASA press center, facing a room full of reporters, photographers and camera crews. Seated along the table with them were representatives of the Japanese, French, Russian and Canadian space agencies, plus a pert-looking brunette NASA public affairs officer.

  Saxby wondered if he looked as tired as he felt. That sullen pain in his chest had returned. Nerves, he told himself. He always gotten chest pains when he was anxious or edgy.

  He hadn’t been sleeping well since the accident, and had been awake this day since four a.m. He’d been in his office by five-thirty and had his daily teleconference with the mission team in Houston at six, where he was updated on what had happened in the Arrow while he’d been trying to sleep. At eight-thirty he had a ten-minute discussion with Sarah Fleming, the president’s chief of staff, and now here he was—baggy-eyed and strung tight—ready to answer questions from an aggressive gang of news hounds.

  Be positive, he told himself. Be upbeat. If they get the impression that the crew’s in trouble it’ll be like sharks sensing blood in the water: feeding frenzy.

  Saxby wished he could be on the Arrow, with the crew, on his way to Mars. As a former astronaut, he preferred the problems and perils of space flight to the daggers and land mines of a hostile news conference.

  The order of the questions had been determined by lottery, with the first going to a reporter from one of the twenty-four-hour news channels and the remaining bouncing between online outlets, television and web broadcasting stations, newspapers, blogs, and just about anyone with a presence on the net lucky or tenacious enough to get into the pool.

  The first half-dozen questions were about the health of the crew, their families’ reactions, and the overall condition of the spacecraft. Saxby was content to let Harkness, the agency’s director of human spaceflight, handle most of the answers.

  The questions were coming faster now, and they were getting tougher.

  “You mentioned that the damaged solar arrays have been partially repaired,” asked the science reporter from the Washington Post. “Why bother with solar panels when the spacecraft’s nuclear reactor is undamaged? It is undamaged, isn’t it?”

  Saxby glanced at Brice, who grasped the microphone in front of him with both hands, like a stranglehold.

  “The reactor is in perfect condition,” Brice said, forcing a smile, “but it isn’t bimodal. It’s designed for propulsion, not generating electrical power.”

  “Wasn’t that a mistake?”

  “No. Our design team considered making it bimodal, but it quickly became obvious that it would be too complicated. It would add a lot of weight to the spacecraft and drive up the cost. We just didn’t have the budget—”

  “So cost factors prevented you from making the reactor deliver electrical power,” the reporter said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Cost was part of the equation,” Brice said, his smile gone. “But only part. The deciding factor was complexity. That’s why we decided to use solar panels for the ship’s electrical power.”

  The next questioner was one participating virtually, a woman who ran a spaceflight blog in Quebec, with her youngish face peering intensely and in 3D from the one of the monitors set up for that purpose.

  “So what about the solar arrays?” she asked. “Can you tell us about the fix?”

  Glad to be in positive territory, Brice replied, “The solar arrays were damaged by the meteoroid strike and we initially thought the crew would have to make do with less than half-power for the rest of the mission. Fortunately, the damage was limited to only one section of the panels.”

  “So—”

  Brice refused to be interrupted. “When the onboard computer detected the initial damage it shut down two entire sections of the solar array as a precaution. Once we isolated the problem and restarted the system, the spacecraft regained most of that lost power. They’re now operating at about eighty-five percent of normal power.”

  “Will that hold up all the way to Mars?”

  “Yes,” Brice sai
d firmly.

  Saxby leaned into his microphone and amended, “We see no reason why it shouldn’t. We know the solar flux all the way to Mars, the amount of sunlight that will hit the panels. We see no problems with electrical power aboard the Arrow.”

  The lean and lanky chief of the PhiladelphiaInquirer.com’s Washington bureau, got to his feet like a carpenter’s ruler unfolding.

  “We’ve seen reports that the water recycling system isn’t working at full capacity and the crew doesn’t have enough water, even with whatever they might be able to bring back to the ship from the habitat on Mars’ surface. I’ve consulted with some medical professionals and they tell me that the crew simply can’t survive with less than half water rations for the return trip. Do you have some sort of contingency plan or are those eight men and women going to die of thirst on their way home?”

  There it is, thought Saxby. The land mine. The pain in his chest flared.

  The nine men and two women sitting along the table looked back and forth at each other. Saxby realized it was his responsibility to handle this hot potato.

  “We’re still working on the water problem,” he began. “The crew immediately reduced water consumption by twenty-five percent, which we know is enough to allow them to survive for a long time. But it just isn’t good enough to get them home.”

  “Then what can we expect?”

  “We currently estimate that they will run out of water within just a few months of their departure from Mars.”

  The reaction from the audience was palpable. The reporters stirred, muttered, began to shout questions.