by Ben Bova
He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Fair and impartial, he told himself. He remembered that old-time newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer once famously said that the three most important things in reporting the news were accuracy, accuracy and accuracy.
Okay, Treadway sighed inwardly. I’ll be accurate.
October 26, 2035
Mars Orbital Insertion
14:12 Universal Time
New York City
Although he was actually located in front of a wall-sized green screen in the TV studio, on millions of TV and 3D sets around the world, a smiling Steven Treadway appeared to be standing in profile in the observation cupola of the Arrow, looking out on the ruddy, pockmarked planet Mars.
“There’s nothing this reporter can say to add to the historic events that played out today onboard the Arrow here in orbit around Mars. The crew of eight, in a crippled ship and facing an uncertain future, successfully navigated to Mars and established themselves in orbit around the red planet right on schedule. The makeshift repairs required to keep the ship in one piece held, despite some worrisome moments in the last part of the maneuver that allowed them to capture into orbit.”
Turning full-face to the camera, with the image of Mars behind him, Treadway continued, “I spoke with the ship’s commander, Bee Benson, about their immediate plans and whether or not they would carry through with their scheduled landing and exploration of the Martian surface.”
The image of Treadway was replaced by a close-up of Benson.
Treadway’s voice asked, “Bee, do you intend to carry out the landing and exploration portion of the mission now that you’re here at Mars?”
His face the picture of earnestness, Benson replied, “Steve, we don’t know yet. We plan to send someone down to get water. As for the exploration program, that decision will have to be made in consultation with the people in Mission Control, back home. My personal feeling is that it would be a colossal waste to come all this way, to have gone through all we’ve gone through, without doing some exploration.”
“Now that you’ve had such a successful milestone, how’s the mood of the crew?”
“Well, we’re certainly very glad that we made it. As you know, it was an open question until just a few hours ago. There’s nothing like success to breed optimism about the future. So despite the challenges we still face, I’d say the crew is pretty upbeat. Once we get the water up here, I’m sure the mood will improve even more.”
“Thank you, Commander Benson.”
Benson’s image winked out, replaced once again with Treadway’s face and the brilliant red sphere of Mars hanging over his shoulder.
“Despite Bee’s can-do attitude,” Treadway said, his face and tone suddenly full of grave concern, “I would be remiss if I didn’t remind our viewers that the prospects for the Arrow’s crew still look grim. Without a solution to their water problem it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever make it home alive.
“I’ve been allowed unprecedented access not only to the crew, but to the dedicated team of engineers and scientists supporting them here at home. NASA’s best and brightest are working hard to find a solution, but so far without success. This reporter would like to be optimistic, but my obligation to objective reporting demands that I be realistic, as well.
“Will they make it home? We just don’t know.”
Treadway turned away from the camera to look out at Mars again and the camera focused on the red planet, close enough to touch. Almost.
V
At Mars
October 26, 2035
Mars Arrival
14:28 Universal Time
The White House
President Harper and Susan Fleming sat alone in the Oval Office, watching the events at Mars and in Houston on the 3D viewer above the fireplace. Harper wasn’t scheduled to speak directly with the Mars crew until sometime the next day, well after they’d done all the work associated with settling into Mars orbit.
Time enough for me to get some spotlight, Harper thought.
He knew, though, that he’d have more to talk about than the usual congratulations and praise for their courage and ingenuity. He was planning to break the news to them that theirs might be the last mission to Mars for some time to come.
On the very day they nurse that damaged ship into Mars orbit, Harper thought, seething, Donaldson gets the damned committee to ax the next mission. He’s out to kill manned spaceflight altogether, even if he has to do it by inches.
Drumming his fingers impatiently on his desktop as Steven Treadway droned on from the 3D screen, Harper blurted, “Susan, I’m not going to let this budget cut go unchallenged.”
Fleming turned toward him. “They still have to get the House of Representatives to agree to the cut.”
“The House will go along with it. Especially if the Arrow’s crew doesn’t come home alive.”
Fleming was wearing a forest-green skirted suit that complemented her brick red hair very nicely. Where’s your passion, Susie? Harper asked silently. Redheads are supposed to be fiery.
“Mr. President,” she said slowly, carefully, “I know you’re committed to space exploration, but the feeling on the Hill is that it’s not only very expensive, but dangerous as well. With the accident at the Moon base and now the Arrow nearly crippled, it’s no wonder that the committee voted to cut the next Mars flight. It was nearly a unanimous vote.”
Harper stared at her. “Are you saying that I should go along with them? Undo everything we’ve accomplished in space?”
She held up a hand, palm outward, like a stop signal. “Let the private companies operate the space station and the Moon base. We can keep on exploring Mars and the rest of the solar system with unmanned missions.”
“No!” Harper exploded. “The American public will not stand by and watch us dismantle human space exploration—especially not now, with so much at stake.”
“You’ll have to explain that one to me. What’s changed that makes human spaceflight more important now than it has, or hasn’t, been over the last thirty years?”
“Life! Life on Mars. That’s what’s changed. Set aside the philosophical and theological considerations that everyone seems so preoccupied with and think about the financial implications.”
“Now you’ll really have to explain,” she said.
“Shortly after the Chinese published the chemical signatures of the prebiotic samples they brought back from Mars, I got a call from Evgenia Gunnarsson from NexGenPro Pharmaceuticals. She said that their researchers think the chemistry is too similar to Earth life to have evolved totally independently. In other words, Earth life and Mars life appear to share a common origin. What’s more, they think the Martian chemicals might actually hold promise for a whole host of new drugs to treat everything from heart disease and diabetes to cancer. I asked Petra to pull together an independent science peer review panel on their findings, all totally in the black, and report back to me. They did. And they confirmed what NexGenPro claimed. Not only are we about to rewrite the biology textbooks, we may be on the edge of a revolution in medical treatments.”
“Why in God’s name have you and Petra kept this bottled up? It seems like this would have pushed support for the mission over the top.”
“And make the whole Mars mission effort look like one big subsidy for big pharma? No, we had to keep the mission about science and exploration. You know as well as I do that pharmaceutical companies are barely above pond scum in popularity, especially after that genetic profiling scandal back in 2026. Having the mission tied to them would have been the kiss of death.”
“Bob, unless you do something, we just don’t have the votes.”
“I’ll make an issue of it, but without mentioning NexGenPro. I’m not going to let this go down without a fight.”
Fleming made a face like a schoolteacher trying to pound some sense into a stubborn little boy. “You’re a lame duck. You don’t have the clout anymore. And there are other issues where
you should be putting your energy and your interest. Panama, the Middle East—”
“God himself can’t bring peace to the Middle East,” Harper grumbled.
“Going to the mat over human spaceflight is the wrong move. You don’t want your presidency to end with a black eye. Maybe you should go public with the genetic angle.”
Harper was fuming. “This is personal, too. You didn’t see what happened when the space shuttle program got killed and we didn’t have another vehicle to replace it. The layoffs, the demoralized workforce, the whole damned country wondering why we had to buy tickets into space from Russia.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“A lot of those laid-off workers came from my congressional district. I swore then and there that I would never let that happen again. If Congress kills the Mars follow-ons, then the money will just vanish from the NASA budget and into some entitlement programs or the defense department black hole and we miss a chance at having U.S. companies lead the world in new drugs and medical treatments derived from good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity and rockets.”
“Robert,” Fleming said sternly, “it’s a different world today—in large part because of you and your administration. We have a real chance for world peace, even in the Middle East. We’re making progress on new energy technologies and climate change. Unless you do something, like go public with the new drug treatment stuff, Congress will win the argument to spend our limited resources on programs with more clearly defined near-term payoffs.”
“Susan, you sound like you agree with them.”
“Just because I understand their argument doesn’t mean that I agree with them. But you’ve got to know when to stand firm, when to bend with the wind, and when to change the rules of the game. That’s politics. We don’t have the votes to force Congress to continue the Mars program. We can grandstand, but we’ll lose and you’ll leave the White House as a loser. I don’t want to see that. So you need to change the game.”
“I can’t. At least not yet,” Harper admitted.
“Then the best thing you can hope for now,” Fleming said, “is to get those eight people back home alive. This is going to be our last human mission to Mars for some time to come.”
Still unconvinced, President Harper said, “Didn’t Saxby tell us that the lander for the next launch is just about complete?”
“Yes. And the next habitat launch is set for a little over a year from now. Right in the middle of next year’s presidential campaign.”
Shaking his head, Harper said, “In the short term it’ll be more expensive to cancel the contracts for the next mission than it will be to finish the hardware.”
“That’s for the short term,” Fleming replied. “The long-term reality is that Mars is going to be explored by robotic vehicles, not human beings.”
October 28, 2035
Mars Arrival Plus 2 Days
12:00 Universal Time
Command Center, the Arrow
Ted Connover couldn’t believe it. “Cancelled the follow-on mission?”
Virginia Gonzalez stood between Connover’s chair and Benson’s, her sculpted model’s face tight, grim.
“I just picked it up on the Worldnet feed,” she said. “I thought you’d want to know right away.”
“Cancelled it?” Connover repeated.
“Cut the funding for it,” said Gonzalez.
Benson was frowning, too. “No funding means no mission.”
“They can’t do that,” Connover insisted.
“It’s done,” Gonzalez said. “At least, the Senate’s voted that way. The House of Representatives hasn’t voted on it yet.”
“They’ll go the same way,” Benson reasoned. “The House is more likely to make a rash decision than the Senate.”
Connover felt it like a blow to the heart, almost as painful as the death of his wife and son.
Benson was saying, “Virginia, you’d better get everybody together in the galley. They’ll all want to know about this.”
“We’re supposed to get a message from the president in half an hour,” Gonzalez said.
“Right. But get them together now. I’ll break the news to them and then we can listen to the president.”
The whole crew gathered in the galley, all except Prokhorov. They all looked glum, subdued.
“Where’s Mikhail?” Benson asked Nomura as he floated through the galley hatch and saw them strapped down on their chairs. All except McPherson, who had perched himself halfway up the bulkhead—directly over Catherine Clermont.
Taki replied, “He’s sleeping in his bunk.”
He must be pretty sick, Benson realized. With a resigned sigh, he thought it was just as well. He wished he were asleep in his bunk, too, instead of facing this spirit-crushing news.
The rest of the crew was quiet, hushed, all eyes on the wall screen that showed nothing but the emblem of the President of the United States.
Benson’s eye was caught by the expression on Connover’s face. Ted looks lost in thought, like he’s trying to find a way to undo what those yo-yos in the Senate have done. Good luck, Ted. All the luck in the world. In two worlds, come to think of it.
President Harper’s message came exactly on time, a canned bundle of congratulations and platitudes about their success in achieving orbit around Mars. The whole thing was probably prerecorded. Thanks to the communications lag, there was no way the crew could respond to the president’s little speech, not with almost a quarter of an hour separating them.
But then Harper shot a look to somebody off-camera, and his pasted-on smile vanished.
“Alright,” said the president, “the official part of this message is over. Now I’m talking to you off the record.”
He looks like he’s ready to shoot somebody, Benson thought.
The president said, “You’ve heard about the vote in the Senate to defund the follow-on mission. I want you to know that I’m against it, and I’m going to fight it with everything I’ve got. My staff tells me I’m making a mistake, that Congress is determined to end the human exploration of Mars. But I’m going to fight this stupid decision anyway, even though it may cost me.”
Benson saw that the president was dead serious.
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, President Harper said, “You may think you’re all alone out there, but you’ve got at least one friend in a high place.” And the President of the United States smiled, like a man facing a Bengal tiger with nothing but his bare hands.
The wall screen went blank.
The crew stirred.
Amanda Lynn wisecracked, “We’ve got one friend, and a hundred enemies.”
“Five hundred and some, if you add the House of Representatives,” McPherson chimed in.
“So what does this mean?” Amanda asked, totally serious now. “Is there going to be a follow-on mission or not?”
“Probably not,” said Benson. “Even with the president supporting us, Congress holds the purse strings.”
“So we limp home and then watch everything we’ve worked for over the year get put into mothballs?” Gonzalez asked.
“Put into the garbage can,” McPherson grumbled.
“If we can get home,” Amanda reminded them.
“There must be something we can do,” said Clermont. “After all, we, our accident—it appears to be one of the reasons the vote went the way it did.”
“Yeah, but what can we do about it?” McPherson asked.
Benson unclicked his seatbelt and floated up out of his chair. “What we can do,” he said, as firmly as he could manage, “is the job we came out here to do. We have no control over how the politicians vote, but we can at least do our jobs as best as we can.”
Ted Connover nodded slowly. And smiled. Benson thought that Ted looked . . . happy.
November 1, 2035
Mars Arrival Plus 6 Days
11:14 Universal Time
Galley, the Arrow
For the first time since Vicki and Thad’s death
s, Ted Connover felt vibrantly alive. Human exploration of Mars was important, it was being threatened, and he was in a position where he could do something about it. He was more than thirty million miles from the dorks running Washington and he had come up with a plan that would force them to continue exploring Mars. They would never see it coming until it was too late. Or so he hoped.
He was strapped into his chair in the galley, sitting alone, nursing a not-too-bland nutri-shake drink, running the numbers through his head again while he still had the solitude he needed for thinking. The rest of the crew would be filtering in for lunch pretty soon, he knew.
Sure enough, Bee Benson glided through the hatch and hovered in front of the refrigerator.
Over his shoulder, Benson asked, “Mind if I join you?”
Connover looked over at him. “Groucho Marx would answer, ‘Why? Am I falling apart?’”
Benson frowned in puzzlement as he pulled out a prepackaged meal and slid it into the microwave oven.
“Groucho Marx?”
“Old-time funnyman. The Marx Brothers. You must have seen some of their movies.”
Shaking his head slowly, Benson said, “I don’t think so.”
Connover shrugged. He noticed that Bee looked serious, concerned. For all his stiff-upper-lip pose, Connover thought, our noble commander is just as worried about things as the rest of us.
Bringing his meal tray to the table and strapping himself into the chair next to Connover, Benson said, “Ted, you know we’ve got to go down to the surface and get the supplies from the habitat. We especially need the water.”
Connover nodded.
“I’ve gone over the numbers again and again,” Benson went on. “Even with the water from the habitat, we’ll run out long before we get home. The ECLSS was designed to recycle ninety percent of what we use, but with it running at reduced capacity there’s simply no way for our water to last long enough.”