Voyage

by Stephen Baxter

  After a full two minutes, Cane put down his stone pen and leaned back in his chair. He turned his hearing aid back on. ‘JK, you’re a crazy man. I don’t know why I keep you on the payroll.’

  Lee leaned forward and rested his clenched knuckles on the table surface. ‘Goddamn it, Art, we’re in the aerospace business. And this is the finest opportunity to achieve something new in our field since Apollo.’

  Cane rubbed his eyes. ‘We’re an experimental shop. One of life’s subcontractors. Not a big player.’

  ‘But it doesn’t have to stay that way,’ Lee insisted. ‘And maybe it shouldn’t.’

  ‘And we wouldn’t win anyway.’ Cane picked up a piece of paper from the seemingly random pile on the desk top before him. ‘Look at this, now. Look who we’re up against. McDonnell, Martin, Convair, General Electric, Boeing. Not to mention Rockwell, who are going to win anyhow. Some of these guys have been involved in the MEM base-technology studies since ’72. They’ve got a jump on us of years, damn it. Years. Look at this. Martin have spent three million bucks of their own money, and they’ve already got a detailed analysis that runs to four thousand pages. And we’re starting from scratch.’

  Lee waved his hand. ‘Look, we can’t get into a blueprint duel with these guys. But remember how Bell fumbled on its bid for the X-15. Bell built the X-1 – the ship that Chuck Yaeger took through the sound barrier –’

  ‘I know my aviation history, JK.’

  ‘Sorry. Anyway, Bell should have won the X-15 contract. But what they proposed was an exotic spaceplane that was years ahead of its time. Rockwell won by giving NASA what it wanted, straight down the line, a simple brute force machine. And later, when the bidding for Apollo was going on, there were companies like Martin and Douglas who spent millions on all kinds of Buck Rogers stuff, lenticular shapes and lifting bodies and you name it. Rockwell won out by giving NASA precisely what it wanted and needed, which was a three-man Mercury capsule.’

  ‘Yes, but, JK,’ Cane said dryly, ‘we’re bidding against Rockwell this time. And you’re saying you know better than Rockwell, and Martin with their team of three hundred engineers, and –’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I do. Because those guys are going to be too busy defending the pet projects they’ve built up over the years to be able to see what the goddamn customer wants, Art.’

  Cane thought about that. ‘You’re a smart guy, JK. Only you could turn the fact that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing into a strength. What’s more, I have the feeling that you actually believe it when you say it.’

  ‘Sure I do. Look, we have a real opportunity here; we could achieve something unique. Columbia could go to Mars. Now: are you going to back me or not?’

  Art Cane studied him through small, sharp, watery eyes.

  ‘I guess I got to allow you to bid. But if you spend more than two million bucks, I swear I’ll have your ass in a sling. Now get out of my office.’

  June, 1981 US Navy Acceleration Laboratory, Johnson, Pennsylvania Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston

  With a heavy whir, the Wheel started to rotate. It felt as if her chest was being pressed back to meet her backbone.

  York, strapped into her couch, tried to comfort herself with the thought that according to pilots who’d actually made it into space, this fake experience was a lot worse than the real thing.

  It was cold comfort.

  She reached five Gs; she had to make a conscious effort to open up her ribs to suck in air. The cage rattled her back and forth, and from side to side – she felt like a pea in a cup, being whirled around on a rope – a real flight’s a lot smoother, Natalie …

  She had a checklist she was supposed to work through, and she conscientiously pressed her dummy switches with gloved fingers.

  A gray curtain started closing in on her vision, as if sweeping in around her head. It was the first symptom of blacking out. There was an array of colored lights on a panel in front of her so she could tell how far gone she was. When she relaxed, the gray curtain was prominent; when she tensed herself up the curtain would disappear. She tried to ignore the pain in her chest; but every time she raised her arms or moved her head she felt giddy. That was the Coriolis force – the sideways force associated with fast rotation.

  York was in the middle of a series of simulated reentries from Earth orbit. This particular exercise, the worst of the set, was modeling a high, steep trajectory, as if her Command Module were cutting into the layers of Earth’s atmosphere too rapidly, and so undergoing terrific deceleration.

  When she reached eight Gs, she found she couldn’t raise her arms any more. She could only lie in the cage, and endure it.

  Now the gray curtain around her eyes was thickening, and it wouldn’t go away.

  Of course it’s worse than a real mission. The damn doctors design it that way.

  Her vision started to blur. She found it hard to read her instruments. Twelve Gs; far higher than anticipated during a real mission. Enough to flatten her eyeballs. Her head was being battered against the inside of her pressure suit helmet. The lights of the lab beyond the cage whirled past the mockup cabin’s small windows.

  Fifteen Gs. Now she couldn’t breathe at all. She became sure she was going to black out. But I’m only half-way through the run. And the doctors were watching her, every twitch of her flattened face, on closed-circuit television.

  At last the load began to drop away; the pressure eased from her chest, and she sucked in great gulps of air.

  Of course, nobody would complain about being subjected to high-tech torture in instruments like the Wheel, or query the relevance of all these exercises to actual spaceflight, or – still worse – admit that he or she had any problems with the routines. Because if you complain, it’s bound to get back to Muldoon, and a note will go into whatever damn system he uses to select his crews, and you’ll never get off the ground. And that was the name of the game at the moment. Joe Muldoon, in his new role as head of the Mars program, had also assumed unto himself the old, separate function of director of Flight Crew Operations.

  It was Muldoon who assigned crews to missions. And everyone knew that Muldoon was in the middle of drawing up his crew rota for the first flights in the new program, leading up to the Mars mission itself; the only thing that mattered in life right now – the only thing – was getting a berth in that rota.

  So York was going to have to put on a front when she came out of the cage.

  How’d it go? You didn’t black out, did you?

  Me? Come on. I felt like I was riding a little heavy on a T-38 afterburner, that’s all …

  Sure.

  When the doctors helped her to limp out of the cage, she found her back covered with ruptured capillaries, where the blood had been forced through her flesh, and she had a headache like the worst hangover in the world.

  Piece of cake. Problems? Me? Come on.

  While she was soaking in a tub, recovering, she got Muldoon’s message.

  She – along with the rest of the astronaut pool – had to return to Houston by the next flight, for a meeting with Muldoon.

  It was an unusual request, even unprecedented. But she knew what it had to signify.

  She got out of her tub and began toweling herself off. She could feel her heart thumping a little faster, and it had nothing to do with acceleration.

  Ares. It’s beginning.

  By the time York arrived, the small conference room on the third floor of Building 4 was crowded. Joe Muldoon sat isolated at a small desk on a stage at the front of the room; he was riffling through Vu-graph foils.

  York pushed through a forest of sports-shirted male astronauts and found a seat near the back of the room. A man who had flown around the Moon sat down next to her.

  Muldoon must know, York thought, that he had every person in the room by the metaphorical balls.

  One of the many things she speculated about regarding the mysterious crew selection process was whether men like Muldoon actually enjoyed wiel
ding their power. Looking at Muldoon now, his foot tapping nervously on the stage, his shoulders knots of tensed-up muscles, she somehow doubted it.

  Which, as far as she was concerned, was all to his credit.

  All around her there was a babble of conversation, lively, deep-throated, maybe a little nervous. There was a kind of competitive cheerfulness in the air. Like none of this really mattered. Oh, it’s only the crew rota for the most significant new program of flights in years. Hey, you catch the ball game Monday?

  Now Muldoon got to his feet, and stood with his hands on his hips, facing the astronaut corps. Blue-eyed, his sharp crew cut graying blond, he looked like a caricature of a drill sergeant, York thought.

  The remnants of conversation died off immediately, leaving Muldoon facing rows of silent faces.

  Muldoon spoke without a mike, without preamble, and his words carried to every person in the room. He said: ‘The guys who are going to be the first to fly to Mars are right here, in this room.’

  ‘You’ve heard by now we’ve got a first cut of Ares mission profiles.’

  He snapped on the Vu-graph projector, and an image was thrown up on a screen behind him; it was a simple list, typed and copied onto the foil. ‘We’ve got eight flights here, both manned and unmanned. We’ve defined six preliminary classes of mission, designated here A to F. They are mostly Earth orbit tests of the system components. But they lead up to the final flight – mission class F – which will be the full Mars landing attempt.

  ‘You can see from the foil that the two A-class missions will be unmanned shakedown tests of the new Saturn VB booster system, carrying boilerplate Apollos and MEMs. The B mission will be the first manned flight to Earth orbit – or maybe lunar orbit – to man-rate the Saturn VB. A live Apollo, obviously, but a boilerplate MEM again. The C mission is another unmanned shakedown, this time of a MEM test article in near-operational condition. The D mission will be the first manned MEM flight, to Earth orbit; this will be a long-duration mission to test for space soak.

  ‘The two E-class missions will be further manned MEM tests; we’re intending to trial the new descent systems with lunar and/or Earth landings. Also in this period we expect to confirm orbital assembly procedures. Finally, the F mission will be the Mars flight itself, and it’s got to be ready to depart on March 21, 1985. Otherwise we wait two more years for the next opposition. The precise sequencing of the other missions, and their dates, is to be determined; we’re intending to take advantage of success …’

  York was hardly listening. Nor was anyone else, she suspected. You’ve got just five manned flights up there.

  Just five flights.

  Muldoon whipped away the foil; it showed for a moment as a gray curl in the light of the Vu-graph lamp. Then, without ceremony, he put up the next slide.

  It was a list of names.

  Muldoon said, ‘It’s not appropriate, at this stage, to assign crews all the way through to the F mission. I’m sure all of you understand that. You have here, instead, the assignments for classes B, D and the first E mission – that’s the first three manned flights – plus backups …’

  Like everyone else York was craning forward, squinting to make out the poorly-typed, badly-projected list, her lips working as she read the names.

  It was a mix of three-and four-man flights. Phil Stone’s crew – including Adam Bleeker and a senior astronaut called Ted Curval – would take up the B mission, she saw, the first, risky, shakedown of the enhanced booster, the Saturn VB. An all-USAF crew. York could see the logic behind sending up test pilots for what was basically a flight test, but it set a tone for the whole program, right from the start: the wrong tone, a military, test pilot tone. More dumb fighter jock bullshit, just like it’s always been.

  But then the D mission, the long space soak flight, would have a crew of four, including two mission specialists: Ralph Gershon, she read. And –

  Natalie York.

  She tried to read on. Phil Stone’s B-mission crew made up the backup crew …

  Natalie York.

  She read her name over and over, unable to be sure if she was seeing it correctly, as if her eyeballs were still compressed by some invisible centrifuge. Jesus. That really is me, up there, in a prime crew. I’m going into orbit.

  I’ll be the first American woman in space.

  She was one of just three female astronauts in the corps, and the only one who’d been named on Muldoon’s chart.

  All around the room there was an explosion of tension; there were whoops, a lot of handshakes, good-old-boy back-pats. York was even the recipient of a few of those herself.

  There were a lot of forced grins around her. She knew what lay behind the grins; she’d be thinking the same. I’ve got to smile, make like I’m really pleased for you. But it should have been me, you bastard, not you. Maybe it will be, if, pray God, you break your leg or otherwise fuck up somewhere down the line.

  Now Muldoon held up his hands for silence. ‘I told you that beyond the first E mission I don’t think it’s appropriate yet to allocate crews. But I expect the selection to be made by the normal rotation system. Thanks for your attention; if you’ve no questions right now, you can come see me in my office …”

  He’d said, The normal rotation system.

  That hit York like an electric shock, burning away her brief euphoria.

  She knew what that meant, and so did everybody else. She stared at the chart again, doing fast calculations. It means I will make it to Earth orbit. But that’s as far as I’ll get. Phil Stone is going to Mars. I’m not.

  Nobody was going to get any more work out of the Astronaut Office that day; York guessed Joe Muldoon had planned the announcement around that.

  She drove out to the Singing Wheel. The car park was packed with Corvettes, and inside she found Phil Stone, Adam Bleeker and a few of their ex-military cronies, already working methodically through pitchers of Bud. Stone pulled up a stool beside him, and gave her a dew-coated glass of beer.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said warmly. ‘So you’re finally making it into space. America’s first space woman. Here’s to yah, Natalie. Come on, fellas –’ He led a couple of toasts, in cold beer, which she endured. ‘So,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Mixed,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m flying, at last –’

  ‘Hey, you done well. What is it, three years since you joined the Agency? Hell, we got guys who’ve waited three, four times as long as that to get a seat. I’m looking forward to working with you on the D mission. I mean that, Natalie.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She tried to smile.

  Stone was watching her carefully. ‘Yeah, but –’ he prompted.

  ‘But, Phil, what I’m really thinking is that you’re the asshole who’s going to Mars, and I’m not.’

  He laughed, mildly, and took another pull of his beer. ‘Come on, Natalie. Nobody knows who’s going to Mars. Not at this stage. If the preliminary flights don’t work out, maybe nobody will be going.’

  ‘Give me a break. You heard what Muldoon said. “The normal rotation system.”’

  The ‘rotation system’ dated back to the earliest Mercury days, and it had been applied all the way through Apollo. Crews were assigned to missions in a leapfrog fashion. The rule was ‘back one, skip two, fly one,’ and then start over. Thus, Phil Stone and his crew were backups for the D mission, York’s space soak flight. If the rotation worked out, they would skip two missions – the E missions – and fly the next, the F mission.

  Which just happened to be the full Mars landing attempt.

  Stone spread his hands on the table. ‘Rotation’s not a bad system, Natalie. At least it’s orderly. I mean, Muldoon has got a pig of a job. Everyone wants to be on every crew –’

  ‘Oh, bullshit, Phil. The rotation stuff isn’t a goddamn machine. It’s not hard to work it out so you get the crew patterns you want.’

  ‘Look, Natalie, anything but a rotation system is an insult to the astronauts and destructive to m
orale. That’s what I think, and I reckon it’s what old Joe thinks too. Every crew should be able to fly every flight. It’s like handling a squadron of fighter pilots. You’ve got a mission to do and so many flights to fly and so many pilots to fly them …’

  ‘But this isn’t a goddamn fighter squadron. We ought to be hand-picking crews for the needs of the mission.’

  ‘And you think you should be handpicked for the F mission?’

  She sipped her beer, her irritation increasing, ‘It’s foolish not to pick the very best for your key missions.’

  He eyed her, amused. ‘So now you’re saying I’m not the best?’

  ‘That is not the point, damn it, Phil, and stop patronizing me …’

  But now Adam Bleeker came in – one of Phil’s crew, another probable Mars-walker – and there was another round of general back-slapping and joshing.

  For a while York joined in the wider conversation.

  Her thoughts drifted back, ignobly, to her selection gripes.

  She drank a little more beer; it was warming up, and tasted sour. She put the glass down and wiped her damp palm on a napkin.

  She got out of the bar. She suspected half the guys were so far gone already they didn’t even notice her leaving.

  She was going to have to get this out of her system.

  Without stopping to think about how smart it was, she drove straight back to JSC and stormed into Muldoon’s office.

  Muldoon was working through a pile of paper. ‘Natalie. You want a coffee? I can send Mabel to –’

  ‘No.’ She realized, suddenly, she was trembling; it seemed to be coming from somewhere deep down inside her. From three years of frustration inside NASA. From Ben’s wasteful, needless death. From the fact that I’m thirty-three years old, and I’ve thrown away my academic career just so I can get to spend months in low Earth orbit, watching MEM components slowly degrade.

  Or, she thought, maybe they’re all correct. Maybe I’m just a goddamn hysterical woman after all.

  Muldoon was watching her sharply. ‘I thought you’d be pleased at getting a seat in one of the prime crews.’