The Far Shore

by Glenn Damato

  “Can I ask something?” I cut in. “Four days after landing? These Discovery Team surveys use the trucks, right? So we need to make methanol fuel plus the oxygen to burn it. Did we factor in the time to get the reactors installed and build up a reserve of water and oxygen?”

  Senuri starts to respond but Jürgen pushes his own vid over hers. “Cristina is correct to ask about this. Yes, we’ve factored in the necessary time. Under no circumstances will methanol production begin until life support reserves are maxed. After landing, the helium tank that pressurizes the tetroxide system will be vented so it can serve as an oxygen container. Sixty-kilogram capacity, twelve days’ reserve. Once that’s full and we have five hundred liters of water in each spacecraft, it’ll take less than a day for the Sabatier to synthesize enough fuel for the first Discovery Team expedition.”

  All right. He’s got it planned out.

  Senuri pushes a detailed terrain map, in grayscale except for a bright green oval. “This is our landing ellipse. The immediate area is rugged but likely to contain a variety of valuable resources, especially ice. See these clusters of pits? Probably created when ground ice sublimated to gas. There may also be cavities of undetermined depth just below the surface, so we’ll avoid that area until we know more.”

  She’d learned a lot of geological terms from Jürgen. A soft touch on the shoulder—Shuko, at it again, pretending to need something solid to pull himself closer to the panel. Will he stop if utterly ignored? After all, we got three other girls here.

  Senuri continues. “These are the best pics we have, but unfortunately they’re also the oldest. They were taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. We don’t know how far the glacier edges have moved since then.” A wavy blue line appears from the center of the oval and loops back. “This is the route for our first expedition. We’ll keep to the smoothest terrain and investigate what we think is a hot spring four kilometers northeast of our landing site. This could turn out to be the most interesting nearby feature, a possible outlet for liquid water during the summer.”

  Ryder says, “And you’re asking me to come along? Thank you! I accept.” Mikki tosses an empty drink pouch at his head.

  Another casual brush from Shuko’s hand, this time across my left hip. Again, copied from Ryder and Alison. I remove the hand. Paige watches from the corner of her eye and giggles a bit.

  The excursion talk is interesting, but this can’t wait. I poke Shuko’s arm and point toward the equipment bay hatch. The machinery hum will mask my words. His eyes dart around, then he follows me through the hatch.

  “I want to talk to you about the touching.”

  He drops his eyes and shifts away. Too tough? Maybe, but this has to be over and done. Keep the words precise so there’s no misunderstanding.

  “I respect you very much but the touching must stop.” I almost say for now. Dios mio! “In three days we’ll all be with a new set of people. We’ll have plenty of time to get to know everyone and form relationships.” What else? Mention that with twenty females and ten males, the odds are in his favor?

  He nods and makes a fleeting attempt at eye contact. I squeeze his shoulder and guide him back to the control center.

  “What were you two doing?” Paige demands. “There’s less than a minute!”

  Ryder grumbles, “No beer, no vodka, no tequila. Anybody know how to print some shots of Jäger?”

  The GNP changes from 23:59:59 PCT 56 Taurus to 00:00:00 PCT 1 Gemini 54.

  A new year, and we scream and shout! Do you think being tens of millions of kilometers away from everything and everyone we’ve ever known will stop us? Ryder plants a wet kiss on everyone’s cheek, and I mean everyone. Shuko almost cracks a smile.

  Maybe Jürgen’s uncomfortable not being the center of attention, so he makes a speech after all, his shortest ever, just a promise to meet with everyone privately after landing. Privately. Is Jürgen un mujeriego like Ryder? He’ll keep busy.

  I push off toward the hygiene pit, but Shuko’s just closing the hatch. Ten seconds later a new text pops up—private. I hold my breath and duck into my sleeper.

  Híjole!

  Cristina, I think about you every day. Can we share love together? There is no reason not to do this because we are both healthy and I believe reasonably compatible. The worst may happen to us very soon. I don’t want to chance it. May I join you? If yes, no answer is needed. I love you.

  I slap the sleeper padding. Que desastre!

  The stupid shoulder squeeze. But at least I know for sure: He doesn’t want to die before romping at least once in his life. Sad . . . or estúpido? And what about the other three girls?

  I text: You don’t really want me . . . and stop. Too much like a lover’s fight. Tried words once. Success will require action.

  Mikki and Paige huddle in the control center whispering. I throw my best pleading look at Mikki and gesture toward the sleeper. She follows me in but I have to wait for her to stop laughing. She utters three badly pronounced words. “Cosechar las cerezas?” Another bout of childlike giggles.

  “Funny, very funny. But I don’t think it would be right, my being flight director.”

  That draws extra vigorous laughter. She’s in a happy mood. Is there a chance? She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Oh, please! Can’t you come up with a better excuse?”

  “As a special favor.”

  “For him or for you?”

  “I just feel . . . now is not the time.”

  She snickers. “Have you noticed there’s a lot more of us than them?” One last giggle-fest, then, “I’m breathing your oxygen. That might be worth some kind of favor.”

  ◆◆◆

  The late night means no one bothers with breakfast. The control center is clean, quiet, and empty. The TMI points sunward so everything’s dark and chilly—perfect opportunity to wrap myself in a sleeper blanket and sip hot tea while gazing out the window into empty blackness.

  Less than forty-eight hours before landing, yet Mars remains tiny to unaided eyes. It’s barely possible to make out a whitish dot near the edge—the polar ice cap—plus one little gray smudge. The orange disk appears oval-shaped because a slice of the night side blends into space.

  Shuko’s not curled up in the equipment bay. And Alison spent the night in our sleeper—without a single customary snore. Two amazing things, and the day hasn’t even started.

  The com shows Eric debating his engineering associates, a discussion no one bothered to push to Liberty. “We won’t be overriding anything,” Eric says. “Just like launch, strap in, hold tight, let it work as designed. We hit the atmosphere at twenty kilometers per second. What do you think you could do if something goes wrong?”

  Andre agrees. “No one’s going to hand-fly these things to the surface.”

  I don’t know much about Andre, another physicist who likes to agree with Eric. He’s smug and sure but how much does he really know about the systems?

  “The final landing approach will be slow,” I butt in. “The last three minutes have a series of events that occur at specific altitudes, speeds, and distances from touchdown. The flight directors should have some idea when and how to take action if the GNC screws up.”

  “Not like that would ever happen.”

  Shuko! He’s perched a meter behind me, left arm around Mikki. He adds, “We got a long list of faults and breakdowns since launch. Expect another surprise or two before we’re on the ground.”

  Darien says, “I’m not clear on what you’re suggesting.”

  “I’m suggesting we be ready!”

  Eric snickers. “You’ll be dead before you know it.”

  “I want you on my side,” I tell Eric. “I’m talking about the last three minutes, not the entire capture and entry. Yes, most of it will happen too fast to react. But at eleven thousand meters the GNC is supposed to deploy a parachute.”

  The hygiene pit hatch opens and Ryder says, “That’s called high gate!”

  “You�
�ve been reviewing the manual. Good! Now what happens when the chute cuts away?”

  “Begin powered descent,” he answers, quoting the manual. “At thirty-two hundred meters, a hundred and eighty knots.”

  “Low gate?”

  Ryder doesn’t hesitate. “Throttle up to reduce ground speed to zero. Altitude one hundred meters, four hundred downrange from touchdown.”

  Eric grumbles, “Cristina, you’re not the only person to ever consider this. It’s more likely you’ll panic or misjudge. What if someone manually starts the descent engines too high? They’ll run out of fuel before they reach the ground.” He moves his mouth closer to the vid. “Splat!”

  Shuko turns toward Ryder, “Would you switch with me and sit at the master panel during landing? If Cristina agrees, of course. You’ll have a better view, and you can be her backup.”

  I nod and Ryder grins like a niño pequeño opening a birthday present.

  “Word of advice,” says Eric. “Don’t override the engines. Just don’t. They spent a lot of effort getting that part right by leveraging decades of experience guiding automatic landers down on other worlds. The system manages the throttles and there’s no margin for error. If I had half a brain, I’d edit everyone’s kernel right now so you couldn’t do it even if you were stupid enough to try.”

  ◆◆◆

  Brains have gone mushy after six weeks of confinement and monotony. There’s no other explanation. We land tomorrow morning, and Walt Sullivan doesn’t respond to a request to organize a landing procedure drill for all flight directors and physicians. I ask again and he replies, “Me and Jessica drilled everybody on suits and airlock ops a week ago. Jürgen didn’t tell us to do anything else.”

  He doesn’t know what to do, so he does nothing, or defers to El Capitán. Was that the reason he was appointed an official Jürgen assistant?

  Act as if.

  There’s still time to prepare, if we start now. I assign Mikki the responsibility for the reactor installation. Paige will be our resource extraction specialist. Both stare at me as if I’m crazy.

  “This is an important job, Mick. Each spacecraft has just one power generator and it’s nuclear, so it has to be shielded in a hole fifteen meters from the spacecraft. Paige, as our extraction specialist, you need to be proficient on the Sabatier reaction tank and the electrolysis separator, plus the associated compressors, valves, and control systems. We don’t want to be figuring this stuff out at the last minute.”

  Mikki talks around a mouthful of food. “I’m a nanoprocessor engineer. I wouldn’t know a nuclear generator if it bit me on the ass.”

  “No one’s asking you to design it. You’re going to take charge of the installation. It needs to be done right because our batteries would run out in a few days.”

  Alison says, “I don’t understand why they didn’t give us solar panels.”

  “Power and weight!” Ryder answers. “We need a lot of power to manufacture plastics and ceramics and bake bricks. We’ll need thirty or forty kilowatts day and night. The solar panels to produce that much power would be bigger than a whole fútbol field and weigh a shitload of tons.”

  Ryder has done his homework. He’ll be my backup in case Mikki can’t handle it.

  I get on the com. “We’re twenty-one hours from the ground. Flight directors should know who’s going to be seated at the panels during capture, entry, and landing. Whoever’s up front should be willing to monitor the landing phase for problems and take appropriate action.”

  Vijay tells us, “I’ll be at the window seat with Naldo. We need some idea how to safe the system in event of failure.”

  I correct him, “Not only safe the system, but get to the ground.”

  Eric tells us, “Oh, I guarantee you’ll get to the ground. The question is at what velocity.”

  Fine. I lower my voice. “We’re going to increase our chances by reviewing the event sequence together.”

  Ryder makes himself designated expert. Eric listens—hopefully to correct any errors.

  All five spacecraft will arrive at Mars moving faster than anything has ever arrived anywhere. Most of that velocity needs to be lost during the first pass, a five-minute rush through the atmosphere to slow down using nothing but aerodynamic friction.

  The capture pass requires total trust in the GNC to keep the spacecraft together in formation while losing enough velocity—but not too much velocity. After we skip off the atmosphere we’ll emerge with a sub-orbital trajectory, loop around Mars in an elliptical path and then re-enter the atmosphere for the entry and landing phases.

  “If your aerobrake doesn’t deploy on its own, do it manually,” Ryder cautions. “Look for a GNC icon marked ‘deploy aerobrake.’ Don’t hesitate! It needs time to inflate. There’s less than a minute from deployment to atmosphere contact, in case the thing’s got a leak.”

  Ryder displays a graphic of the landing phase. “There are five events that may require override. At eighteen thousand meters your nose fairing ejects and a drogue chute deploys. Main chute at eleven thousand meters.”

  “Let me get this straight,” says Senuri. “I’m going to watch the altitude. If we pass eleven thousand and nothing happens . . .”

  “Override!” I tell her. “Hit the main chute icon.”

  Ryder continues, “Two preset waypoints, high gate and low gate. High gate is when the main chute goes out. When your speed drops below three hundred knots, the GNC should blow your aerobrake off and extend the four engine nacelles and landing struts. As Eric told us, there’s a limited amount of fuel for the powered descent phase, so the engines won’t start until we’re below thirty-two hundred meters. When the engines are at sixty percent thrust, your main chute releases.”

  The graphic zooms to the final landing approach. “Powered decent lasts only eighty seconds. We’ll be moving fast right up to low gate. At one hundred meters we should hear the engines throttle up to max. The GNC will try to tighten the formation so we land around five hundred meters apart. We hover at thirty meters, then descend straight down.”

  Eric says, “It is my firm recommendation that no one overrides their GNC during landing.”

  Challenge his authority? He’s only recommending.

  Tess does her thing. “Jürgen will speak to us tomorrow about post-landing activity.”

  Jürgen is captain, his word law. Tess knows it and she’s joyful for it. They’re lovers, for sure.

  “Course correction coming up in a few minutes,” Eric announces. “A short one, and that’s lucky because we only got forty seconds of thruster propellant remaining.”

  The correction lasts twenty-five seconds, barely enough time for Ryder and Alison to get in some swing-dancing.

  The hours sweep by in a rush. This last day in flight feels different. A last day of life? There are clues everyone is asking themselves that question. Mikki and Shuko vanish inside her sleeper. Alison and Paige study the various inscriptions written on the walls inside the airlock.

  Ryder and I watch old vids from decades ago. We hop around a lot, never watching a single story more than ten minutes, because there’s just too many and they’re all different in unexplainable ways. The catalog identifies vids popular in their own times: The Wizard of Oz, The Apartment, Breaking Bad, Saving Private Ryan, The Sound of Music, Jaws, It Happened One Night, Mad Men, High Noon. Maybe Harmony wasn’t lying too much about the wars and violence and crime of the past, but no one seemed to mind very much. All those people living their whole lives without Harmony, without the Autoridad, without the Stream. They never knew how good they had it.

  Mikki emerges from her sleeper and brings back reality. “What are we going to do with the Oxirotor?”

  “Leave it until tomorrow morning,” Ryder answers. “I can take it apart and cram the pieces in with the rest of the feedstock.”

  With two reserve oxygen cylinders filled to capacity, Paige and Shuko watch cabin O2 partial pressure and run the Oxirotor after it drops to twenty kp, about one h
our out of every five. I tell them, “We can run it one last time after midnight and then put the automatic bleed back in service.”

  Eleven hours before capture pass we eat cherry cheesecake cubes while gazing out at Mars. It’s the same visual size as the moon seen from Earth. Dark gray splotches cover the orange surface, and the polar ice cap has grown from a spec to a silvery-white oval.

  Muffled pops from the attitude jets ring out, and Mars drifts out of view. “Hope everybody got a good look,” Darien reports on the com. “We just crossed the seven hundred and fifty thousand kilometer mark. The GNC is setting up to start laser ranging.”

  The TMI points its back-end toward Mars, blocking the view but enabling the optical rangefinder to bounce laser pulses off the surface of the planet and determine distance and velocity with high precision.

  The panel flashes a yellow message.

  RANGING INITIATED

  WAITING RETURN

  Nothing happens. What’s wrong? Can we land without this thing?

  Another flash, this one green.

  RANGING OPERATIONAL

  DETERMINING POS-VEL

  Paige lets her breath out. “Speed of light delay.”

  We get an altitude, the last four digits dropping too fast to read. Velocity 15,328 meters per second, which becomes 15,327 as I watch. Is that good?

  “I’m happy!” roars Eric. “Real happy. Setting all GNC’s back to stand-alone. We’re done navigating by Liberty’s tracker.”

  Why the surprise? Was he expecting it to fail? Are there other systems he’s wondering about but not mentioning?

  Our orientation changes and sunlight floods the control center. The morning-like glow crushes all desire to sleep. Moira Kellion and Naldo Zamora aboard Resolute show us their drawings of living and working quarters. They want to build chambers with vaulted arches buried just beneath the surface. Beautiful designs! Mikki bends closer to the panel. “Sunken baths? Do you really think we’re going to have sunken baths?”

  Alison closes her eyes. “Going crazy just thinking about it.”

  I squeeze her hand. “If we can imagine it, we can build it.”