Bachelor on Mars

by Leigh Wyndfield

  He grinned, happy and easygoing now that he’d gotten his way. “You do. So, I’ll see you tonight, sis.” He leaned over and planted a big, loud kiss on her cheek. “You won’t regret this,” he said, as he jaunted to the door.

  “Wait! What do you get out of all this?” she called, suddenly suspicious. Because she’d just received her biggest dream.

  “An Emmy,” he said and disappeared.

  Watching him go, excitement warred with nerves, making her stomach ache.

  But her heart wasn’t going to let her pass on the opportunity to go to Mars.

  “Taylor,” she called to her assistant.

  “Yes?” Taylor came out of a nearby office as if she’d been waiting to catch another look at Hank. Which she probably had been.

  “How would you like to run this lab while I take care of a family emergency?” Margaret asked, knowing she was giving Taylor a huge increase in stature by putting her in charge of the lab.

  Taylor’s eyes grew huge. “You, you want me to run the lab?”

  Margaret nodded, pleased she’d followed her instincts. Taylor would work her ass off to make sure everything went smoothly. “I’ve been watching you and you’re ready.”

  “I am?” the young woman asked. “I mean, I am.” She nodded, obviously trying to cover her shock.

  Margaret wasn’t into the women solidarity thing that some of her colleagues were, but the fact was, women did have a harder time getting ahead in mechanical engineering, a field dominated by men. “Go get a notebook and take down a list of what you need to do.”

  Margaret looked at her rover. Maybe this would turn out to be a horrible idea, but she was going to Mars, dammit. “I’m going to get everything I’ve ever wanted,” she whispered, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she smiled.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A few hours later, Margaret ignored the instructions to wait in the green room and instead wandered around the loading zone until she’d located her rover. She felt almost compelled to be there when it was loaded, feeling like a mother about to see her child off to school for the first time. Working with the foreman, she personally wielded the drill to box the vehicle, making sure it was protected from any jostling during their launch.

  “Here you are,” Hank said behind her, making her jump and the last screw go sideways. “Margo, we don’t have time for this. Everyone is on the rocket but you.”

  “I’m not going all the way to Mars to find my rover in pieces when we arrive.” She hurriedly screwed the last board in place, not wanting to be left behind, although they hadn’t even started the precheck yet.

  Hank let out a huff of exasperation. “You know, there are other people on Earth who can do just as good a job as you at something like this.”

  She doubted it, but allowed him to pull the drill from her hand and haul her back into the building. This trip to Mars meant everything to her, but she would only be on the planet for a very short time. She needed to be ready to spring into action and start testing. The last thing she needed was to arrive on Mars and find her rover needed major repairs.

  “Here she is,” he said, handing her off to a woman with a clipboard.

  “Let’s get you onboard,” the woman said, already walking away with brisk efficiency.

  “Hank,” Margaret said, stopping her brother when he turned to go back down the ramp. “Thank you. Really. This means the world to me.” While her brother drove her crazy, she knew she owed him for getting her and her rover to Mars.

  “I know,” Hank said, and grinned at her. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “To fit your rover, we needed to cut some weight. I’ll be there three days after you.”

  “Wait, what?” she asked, but the efficient woman had come back and herded her along with a shooing motion, a little more enthusiastically than necessary in Margaret’s opinion.

  Hank waved, an annoying grin on his face, as if he’d played a great joke on her.

  Margaret hoped she was imagining things. Before she could decide, they were on the rocket, the woman stuffing Margaret into a seat and handing her a helmet, then disappearing as quickly as she’d come.

  Eleven women surrounded her, everyone already strapped in, so Margaret strapped in too. She was surrounded by the most gorgeous group of people she’d ever seen in one room before. It was hard not to stare.

  Luckily, she was distracted by an official voice over the intercom. “Please prepare for takeoff.”

  And then it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was going to Mars. It was her dream come true. She was doing it. She’d worry about her brother and the TV show when she arrived. For now, she would hold this moment close and cherish it.

  The room they’d been assigned on the rocket was round, of course. She’d watched a PBS special on the building of it, so she knew the architect had decided to put in a round sofa circling the space, with navy blue cushions. Each section folded out as a bed for a contestant, then converted to a daytime sofa, then converted into a jump seat for takeoff and landing.

  “Helmets on please ladies,” came a bouncy voice over a loud speaker.

  A groan filled the cabin. “My hair,” someone near her whined.

  “Helmet hair,” another agreed. “I hope they let us wash it when we get there.”

  “Won’t happen,” a third woman said in a know-it-all tone. “No water, remember? They had a whole section on that in the manual.”

  Margaret put hers on without a thought. Her hair was always a mess. Besides, if she had to dress in a clown suit to get to Mars, she would. In fact, if she thought about it, she had basically joined a circus to get on the red planet.

  And suddenly the whole rocket began to shake. Vaguely she could hear a countdown, but then the rumble built to a rage and the whole ship shook with the force building under it as the blasters fired.

  Then something released them and they were flung into the air, pinning her into her seat, gravity bearing down on her at an incredible force. Around her, women screamed and moaned, but Margaret couldn’t stop grinning. This. Was. Awesome.

  It took hours, but they were finally released from their seats and the heat shielding was retracted to reveal a large viewport to the stars. Everyone gathered around, fighting their way to the window and for a moment, every contestant was as awed as Margaret. But within a few minutes, they grew bored of the never-ending stars and the women drifted away, the excitement fading. Soon everyone returned to lounge on their sofas, leaving Margaret alone.

  I’m going to Mars. It’s going to be amazing.

  She planned to suck the marrow out of every second of every minute of every one of the hours she’d be on this journey, as well as the time she’d spend on the planet. This trip was going to change her life. She was sure of it. Once she stood on Mars, a seed inside her was going to germinate and grow, and from that new born plant, her career would blossom to the next level, allowing her to become the scientist she’d always known she could be. The grant money would come to her. No more begging for funds and selling her concepts to NASA.

  She wished she had someone who understood to share this moment with, but no one, not even her brother, could understand.

  Although without her brother, she would have never had this chance. Hank might be a pain in the ass at times, but he’d gotten her on this rocket, so she owed him big.

  “I don’t think my hair will ever be the same after wearing that helmet,” one of the women said behind her.

  Then again, her brother had come up with an idea of sending a bunch of women to Mars who were more concerned with their hair than going to another planet.

  Tuning them all out, Margaret promised not to let anything kill her buzz. The excitement and euphoria swirled around her, so effervescent, it raised gooseflesh on her arms.

  Staring at an ocean of stars before her, Margaret realized she’d been waiting for this moment since she was ten years old. And it was finally here.

&n
bsp; Jack Boyle drove his rover to the small valley he’d been exploring, taking a quick trip before he was locked in Station 7’s biodome for the next month. He’d discovered some unusual basalt samples and wanted to grab more before the TV people descended upon him like locusts. Parking close to the site, he sealed his suit, eager to enjoy the few hours he’d have to work before his “guests” arrived and filming began.

  As he ran through his safety checklist, he tried to stop dwelling on the coming weeks of utter and complete hell he’d have to endure, all because he and Station 7 needed the money. Desperately.

  Everything cost so much, no matter how he’d tried to cut corners and he’d been on the verge of doing something drastic, maybe even shutting down the station. When he’d been contacted by Hank Carson about hosting the show at Station 7, he’d known that no matter how unpleasant it might be, he would tolerate twelve reality TV show contestants and two producers moving in with him for the duration just so he could keep the station running for another year.

  “Oh, and don’t forget the bachelor,” he growled out loud, so disgusted he couldn’t keep quiet.

  A reality TV show where women vied to be chosen by a bachelor. Jack admitted it appealed to him on a primal level. His twenty-year-old self might have wanted to be the bachelor. Now his thirty-five-year-old self thought the whole thing was an annoying waste of his time.

  But he had no choice.

  When Jack first opened Research Station 7, he’d been euphoric. There was something to be said about accomplishing his life’s work before most were hitting the prime of their careers. But then reality had come crashing in on him. Running a station had turned out to be paperwork and pain. He’d built this station to run experiments, but he barely had time to run them. The fact was, he’d never been good at money. He was best in the field, doing what God had intended him to do, which was look at rocks.

  This morning he’d gather as many samples as he could to study while he was locked in the station riding herd on the TV people. A small little bone he’d decided to throw himself.

  As he walked to the top of a volcanic rift that spread across the surface, he said the mantra he’d developed to help him through the next four weeks, “I will be nice to the TV people. I will not yell at them or toss them out of the biodome. They are keeping Station 7 alive and therefore I must be nice.” Even if he didn’t want to be nice. Even if he wanted to send old Hank a message and tell him to go find another location for his show.

  “I will be nice,” he said again, for good measure. Because the fact was, he wasn’t nice. The best anyone could say was that he was direct in his communication style. It really hadn’t mattered that much. After all, rocks didn’t complain.

  He forgot about the incoming rabble as he took in the view.

  Mars was desolate and windswept, but utterly beautiful. Below him, a craggy valley of basalt, shale, and sandstone stretched out for miles in either direction, the valley floor a set of plates that had shifted and broken into what he thought of as massive tiles of the gods. The far valley wall rose up in a mound of sand, a massive dune several football fields long looking like a perfectly smooth surface from here, but he knew under it all would most likely be another set of rocks, trapping the sand there.

  He opened his kit and began collecting samples.

  When the alarm buzzer sounded that the TV people would be landing in two hours, it startled him. He was always surprised by how quickly time flew when he was working. With a sad heart, he put away all his supplies in a duffle and picked it up.

  He’d drifted further away from the rover than he’d realized. Picking up speed, he bounded west. Since Mars had less mass than Earth, he weighed less and therefore had to walk or run in an odd, convoluted gate. It was more of a push off and glide motion.

  He’d only taken four leaps when a tremendous crack rang out, the soil beneath his feet shifting and churning as if a small earthquake had shivered past him.

  He stopped his forward momentum by jumping up instead of out, skidding to a stop.

  At first, he thought a fault had shifted but then he realized the sound had come from the direction of his rover.

  Instinctively, Jack hunkered down behind a large bolder. Nothing was alive bigger than a bacterium on Mars. There were no giant sandworms or human-sized, flesh-eating bats. But he’d sensed the tremor. Something was out there.

  He waited ten minutes, but it remained quiet.

  Time passed and he felt foolish. He should go over and see if the rover was still in one piece. There was nothing to worry about, since there was no one on this entire planet but the people at Station 5 and him. At least not for the next couple hours.

  Placing his hand on a rock to stand, a motion caught his eye. A matte black craft rose up from where his rover had been parked. Small and egg shaped, it slowly made its way to the north, flying only a few feet above the surface.

  Jack ducked down again out of sight.

  The ship was like nothing he’d ever seen and at first his mind screamed aliens, but then his common sense took over and he realized it must have been from Russia or maybe even China. Both countries had been threatening to come to Mars for years, ever since he and Walter Haxley had opened their stations. They didn’t want to get too far behind in the space race.

  After studying the sky and finding it clear, Jack carefully worked his way to his rover.

  For a moment, his brain struggled to take in the smoking pile of rubble that had been his only remaining conveyance.

  He was well and truly screwed. His pack list had included two rovers when he moved here, but he’d run out of money long before the first vehicle needed expensive repairs.

  Looked like he’d be walking back. He was in deep shit, and he knew it. He blew out a breath to calm his thumping heart and bottle up the fear.

  Glancing at the small screen on his wrist, he checked his oxygen level. Only six hours left. Could he make it back to the station on that? He glanced at the sun and realized he barely had enough time to return before dark. He would never survive out here at night with the temperatures plummeting sometimes below -70 degrees Celsius.

  The TV people would be landing soon, but luckily he’d programmed a robot to haul their ship into the biodome without him being there. Trying to figure out where fifteen extra people would sleep had been the hardest part of the negotiations, but it had been simple enough to bring the rocket into the courtyard and use it as a temporary hotel.

  The biodome had revolutionized living on Mars, making it habitable for people to spend long periods of time here. It was a transparent shield that allowed sunlight in, while keeping out storms and the most extreme temperatures changes. It maintained an atmosphere close to Earth’s, which reduced the wear and tear space living did to the human body. The rocket couldn’t use the small door Jack had for the rover to move in and out, so he’d had to program the biodome to temporarily peel back for the time it took to enter. Carson’s people would have to use a canvas walkway between their ship and his lab to protect the contestants until the atmosphere returned to normal. Jack would just have to hope everything went smoothly until he returned.

  If he returned.

  He calmed his breathing. Every sip of air was one closer to the end of his reserve. It would be a balancing act to make it back without suffocating. If he went too fast, he’d use his oxygen up quickly. If he went too slow, he’d simply run out of air before he reached his destination.

  The important thing now was not to panic. It was imperative he get home alive so he could send the TV people right back to Earth before the Chinese or the Russians attacked Station 7.

  They landed five hours early, well before dark. As the robot pulled them into the biodome, Margaret watched from a window, taking in every sight she could. Craggy mountains loomed in the far distance, a purplish red in the haze. The ground was red and dusty and barren. She shivered with anticipation. This was it. This was the moment she’d waited for her whole life.

  Behind h
er, the women got to know each other, chatting about their lives and making guesses about who the bachelor would be. She let their words wash over her, realizing they were as excited about the bachelor as she was about getting to Mars.

  It wouldn’t have mattered to them if they were going to Aruba or Cancun or Pluto. The destination didn’t matter. To them, Mars was just a means to an end.

  To want a man—a man they hadn’t even met—as badly as she wanted to go into space blew her mind. No man should be a woman’s dream. That was incredibly stupid. If love worked out within the carefully crafted framework of her career, then she was fine with it. Otherwise, no thank you.

  The biodome had been retracted, leaving the small research station temporarily exposed while the rocket was tucked into the small courtyard between all the buildings. Margaret’s whole body was jittery with excitement. She wanted to get off the rocket and explore everything. Maybe Jack Boyle would give them a tour. Against her most basic personality, she allowed herself to daydream about Jack showing them his biodome. He would be pointing out the advances in his lab (Margaret had already taken a virtual tour online months ago), then, mid-sentence, he’d see her through the crowd and pause to ask if he knew her from somewhere. Because even though she’d be in disguise, he’d know who she was right off the bat.

  Margaret shook her head at her silliness. First, they’d only met for about two minutes in a hallway at a convention. And second, she couldn’t believe she’d have a schoolgirl crush like this. She hadn’t even behaved like this when she was a schoolgirl. Well, back then, all the guys were immature morons who didn’t know an atom from a proton. But even the few men she’d dated in her life hadn’t left her feeling jittery like this.

  But instead of her imagined welcome tour of Research Station 7, they spent hours unloading boxes and setting up equipment. Margaret was only saved from this backbreaking duty when Lynette, who she’d heard ominously called either “The Handler” or “The Enforcer,” summoned her into a small room one floor down. Two chairs faced each other, a camera and a large light on a stand crammed into one corner.