by Rob Dircks
I run up to him, practically tackling him, and smush my face so hard against his I think we both chip a tooth. I whisper scream, “Angel! You’re my guardian ange- oh- that’s weird.”
“Yeah. The name’s a little on the nose, isn’t it? Funny, I grew up afraid it would become an ironic name, like Angel, the Gitano who killed the most people ever. You know, like Tiny is the biggest guy you’ve ever seen.”
I pull back, for the first time realizing I may be in the arms of a murderer. “Have you ever…?”
“Killed anyone?” He laughs. “No. They have to keep me around, I’m a full-blooded Gitano after all, but I’m not cut out for any of it. I had to rough up a guy once and I threw up. It was a mess. The guy actually felt bad for me. He handed me a towel. That’s when I knew.” He takes my hand and we walk. “I knew that couldn’t be my life. Leo, Tiny, John, Marie, Gene, Pops, all of them, all the same. Life is cheap to them. I knew I was different. Life means… something to me. I won’t live that life anymore.”
Images flash into my mind, Angel tapping on the privacy screen in the limousine, stepping awkwardly in front of Gene Gitano. “You interrupted Leo in the car for me. And you took that slap for my mother on purpose. Didn’t you?”
He smiles sheepishly. “I was going for subtle.”
I squeeze his hand. “It was brave. Very brave. Thank you.”
He stops and turns to face me. “I’m the one that should be thanking you. You guys gave me the reason to finally do it. Now I’m free.”
I shake my head. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. The lifestyle of my mother, which it looks like you’ve adopted, is not free.”
He thinks for a minute. Kneels in the brush, then pulls me down to lay at his side. We look up at the stars together. “It feels free to me.”
I probably have a thousand deer ticks on me now, hungry for blood, but I don’t care. I’m lying here in the weeds with the man I… whatever… with an angel, sent not by God, but by of all people the Gitanos, to watch over my mother and my family. The leaves and grass tickle and embrace me, and I do feel safe again, and not alone anymore, and yes, free. I look over at him, and I can feel a stupid grin growing on my face, the uncontrollable perma-grin of a girl falling in love. Maybe it’s just the wedding, I don’t know, and right now I don’t care. And either I’m imagining it, making this vision a little too perfect, or I’m actually smelling it.
“Can you smell that?”
“Yes. Lavender. The exact opposite of Leo’s farts.”
We both giggle, uncontrollably, up at the stars. He turns his head to me. “Tell me about Mars. All I know for sure is it doesn’t have animatronic alligators.”
“It does. That part is true. They’re nasty.”
He nudges my elbow. Reaches down to hold my hand. “Come on. Really. I want to know where you’re headed.”
“Well, I’m not headed there unless I win. For the next three weeks we’ll still be competing, in orbit, and only one of us wins the actual voyage to Mars. But if I do win, I’ll be traveling the following three months aboard this ship” – I point up to the top of the massive rocket rising above us – “the High Heaven. Not the bottom part, the booster, that’ll come back down and land here. Then, a week before we get to Mars, we’ll position a magnetic dipole shield at the Lagrange Point, to create an artificial magnetosphere and protect the planet from solar wind and radiation – which will give us a big head start on future missions, and terraforming. Then we’ll land near Columbia Hills, a range of low hills inside the Gusev crater, there’s an escarpment there with plenty of ice just below the surface. Lots of data from previous rover missions, so it’s well-mapped and safe. It’ll take a week to print the main dome, then we’ll spend three weeks setting up the fuel and oxygen production, the farm, and the mining, and the terraforming tests. Then we’ll travel for another three months home.”
He’s counting on his fingers. “Seven months. That’s a long time.”
“You don’t want to spend that much time alone with my mother. I understand. Believe me. Has she offered you one of her meal bag things yet?”
“No, that’s not it. Although she is a handful.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be the fastest months of our lives. Promise. I can’t wait. Imagine it, Angel. We’re finally going to reach another planet. Take the first baby steps to being a multi-planet species. I can’t think of a better hope for the future.”
I realize he’s gently kissing my hand, and inch by inch up my arm. I laugh. “I wouldn’t think talking about magnetospheres and terraforming is exactly what you’d consider romantic.”
“It’s your voice, Paper. You could be listing parts from a transport manual, it doesn’t matter. I love listening to your voice. Hearing you talk about the future. And watching your mouth move while you tell me your dreams. You have a beautiful mouth.” He reaches over and touches his lips to mine. “Listen, I know Mars is a big deal. But this? For me? It’s bigger.” And he pulls me into his arms, dramatically, and I laugh, and I think of Marina Delacosta and Mike Horner, and it makes me smile, and I surrender.
55
Launch
It’s just like you would imagine, and nothing like you could ever imagine.
The large elevator – a pond full of animatronic alligators could fit in here – glides up effortlessly, approaching the tippy top of the High Heaven, above us nearly three hundred and fifty feet from the ground. I look down at Benji’s hand as he absently rubs the beads on his bracelet.
Ted lifts his tablet. “Everyone here? Robin Smi- ah, Paper Farris.”
“Here.”
“Aurora.”
I whisper, “You mean Miss Schneider?”
“Shhh. Shut up. Here.”
“Mike Horner- whoops.”
“Yup. Gone. Fell in love. Love kills your common sense.”
“Okay, yes, that’s right. Good for them.” Ted continues his checklist, with Claire and Benji the other remaining Red Team members, and Albert the surviving Green Team member.
Just five contestants have made it to Stage Four.
The crew, the ones with the actual jobs and necessary skills, repeat “Here” as their names are called: Captain Daniels, looking as sternly as ever out the windows, watching Mission Control get smaller beneath us. Then Reagan Malone, Dylan Garcia, Drew Innes, and Skylar Gaines, all with the best posture I’ve ever seen, gleaming in their shiny new spacesuits, helmets at their hips, ready for action.
Five contestants. Five crew.
And Zach Larson.
I nudge his arm. “Not for nothing Zach, but walking the launch pad last night, your security around the perimeter is pretty lax.”
“Oh, is it really?” And he grins and winks at me.
Shit.
I should’ve known.
“Don’t worry, Paper. We blurred out the appropriate bits before we posted it to Groupie.”
“You didn’t.”
Larson shrugs, but before he can answer, Aurora crosses to the space between us. “Hey Larson. I thought you were staying home. You know, the big guy behind the scenes. You never even came up in Martha with us.”
“I apologize. I thought it went without saying that I was coming. You think I’d spend ten billion dollars on this and not go myself?” He points down. “Take a look at these feet, Aurora.”
“So? They’re feet.”
“These feet are going to be the first feet to step on another planet.” He looks up, squints into the distance. “Uh oh. Uninvited guests.”
Off to the south, barely visible, a caravan of black trucks, like ants, is throwing up little clouds of dust as it snakes its way down Route 88 to the launch site’s entrance.
“Ted?”
The headset squawks into Ted’s ear. “Yes sir. The vote went through. Seven hours early. Mission Control is being instructed to shut down the launch.”
“Damn, they voted early, sneaky bastards. Tell them we will do no such thing. Countdown?”
“One hour
thirteen minutes.”
“Let’s make it thirteen minutes.”
“Sir!”
I don’t know why Ted even said that, he’s never won a single argument with Larson and he certainly isn’t going to start now. Instead, he whisper-shouts into his headset, and all our stomachs tighten into knots.
“No one throw up. I forbid you.”
The elevator reaches the gangplank and halts with a little clunk, and Zach practically pushes us all, running, towards the doorway to the main cabin of High Heaven. “Come, come, children, don’t want to be late for school!”
Three of the crew stop short in the middle. Daniels, Reagan, and Dylan. Reagan pleads, “Sir. If they’ve voted, this is illegal. We can’t…”
Zach turns back but doesn’t stop. “We can. We will. Come.”
Reagan and Dylan hang their heads, and retreat to the elevator. They’re not coming. They’re staying here on Earth. Damn. Daniels growls, “You’re going, Zach? No matter what?”
“I’m going, Dan, no matter what. This is it.”
Daniels shakes his head, looking angry that he has to decide between the country and service he’s known all his life, the U. S. of A., or his friend and employer for the last five years. He looks between Larson and the two crew apparently staying behind. I can’t imagine the thoughts screaming in his head.
He steels his jaw. “Hurry. In.”
Larson gives the hint of a smile and pats him on the back as he enters the hatch. Ted, standing just outside, addresses us just like a mother might do with her kids on the first day of kindergarten. “I’m leaving. But I’ll be watching you! There are seventy-three cameras on board. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” And he turns and dashes back to the elevator to catch up with Reagan and Dylan.
The team is moving fast, obviously faster than they had planned, and we don’t have time to admire the incredible interior of this ship. Daniels barks, “Secure the hatch! Start the systems checks! Contestants buckle in!”
The engines have been idling for hours, just in case, so we’re ready. The five of us contestants, and three remaining crew, and Larson, climb into our chairs, awkward, now lying on our backs, looking up out the front window at the cloudless blue above us. The rumble beneath us is unnerving.
I have the sudden, panicked feeling that I want to go home.
To get the hell out of here, and feel the ground under my feet, and appreciate the knowns, even if they’re bad knowns, the solid dirt, Nana’s terrible dinners, the bad TV, playing with my little rockets… wait.
Rockets.
I have to laugh. I’ve imagined myself, more times than I can remember, a little miniature me, being inside those tiny homemade rockets as they shot up into the sky, whooping with excitement, and flying free. For years I have imagined that.
And look at me now.
Here I am.
The thing I had imagined is real. I am going to shoot up into the sky. I am going home.
My cheeks tighten into an involuntary smile, and my fear dissolves, its void filled instead with anticipation and adrenalin. I look over at Aurora, sitting in the seat beside me. She looks like she might be having the same thrill-slash-terror moment. I reach out my hand, and she takes it without looking, still staring wide-eyed out the window, afraid, and I whisper to her, “Hey. Look who’s the Rocket Girl.” And her hand shakes a little less, and her lip curls up just a bit at the edge.
All systems check out, and shouting echoes through the cabin and over the speakers.
Ted’s voice sounds nervous. He’s finally lost his cool. “Sir. They’re at the gate. They have papers.”
“I don’t care if they have bazookas. Don’t let them in.”
We watch on monitors throughout the cockpit, and see that the team of federal agents is now past the verbal arguing phase and is forcing their way into the main compound.
“Sir?”
“I have eyes, Ted. Bolt the doors. Start the countdown.”
“T-minus one minute thirty-seven seconds.”
The thunderous growling three hundred fifty feet down reminds us: we’re sitting on enough explosive fuel to literally shoot us past the Moon. Aurora and I are practically strangling each other’s hands. Albert is silently making the sign of the cross. Benji is furiously fumbling with his beads and whisper-shouting “Gaba gaba ganeshi” over and over. Claire grips her armrests madly and says to no one in particular, “Oh, Lord. I think I just peed.”
“T-minus one minute.”
Now the federal agents are inside the control room, and there’s a scuffle. The agents in suits step back, replaced with agents in black tactical gear, pointing guns at the poor computer nerds who never in their lives asked for anything like this. The monitor shows them scrambling like mad to disable their controls, but the gun-toting agents pull them from their posts and sit down in their seats, banging away, trying to stop us. The lead agent – I presume because he’s got the suit and a gun, and he’s the only one with a red tie – sticks his face into one of the cameras.
“Larson! If you don’t shut this thing down in the next thirty seconds, you’re breaking federal law. You’ll be fugitives!”
Larson snickers. “Space Fugitives. I like that. Sounds like another show. Ted, will you jot that down for later?” He turns his head and says, as calmly as possible with fifty-six engines preparing to erupt like fifty-six volcanoes, “Crew and contestants. My friends. I did not think it would come to this. But it has. I have forced you into this situation, and as long as my hand is on this master control, I am essentially kidnapping you. So I’d like each of you, I insist, actually, in order to avoid arrest or worse, to speak clearly into one of the cameras, the following: ‘I, state your name, am the unwilling victim of Zach Larson’s illegal voyage to Mars. Once I reach Earth orbit, instead of competing for the following three weeks, I will end my participation immediately and take one of the lifeboats back home.”
Silence.
It takes an eternity, but one by one, we shake our heads, and grin at each other, and truly understand how far we’ve come: this is no longer a silly competition. Each of us has gone through nine weeks of hell, learning that this isn’t a trillionaire’s folly, or a little girl’s dream, or a path to fame and fortune, although it is all those things, too. No, this is big. Really big. The word “big” can’t even do it justice. It’s probably the biggest thing we’ve ever tried to do as a species, right up there with the wheel or plumbing. And we are, each of us, part of it. So we are not going home, not a single one of us, not before we get a chance to shoot out of orbit, to Mars, and see how far we can take the human race. Alas, four of us will go home before the actual voyage to Mars, but not for giving up. Screw that.
“Ten seconds.”
Larson grins too. “Well then. Let’s see what all the fuss is about, shall we?”
“Eight seconds.”
Aurora’s grip threatens to break my fingers. “Is this happening?”
I nod. “Yes. But don’t worry. You’ll get to go home before the Mars part.”
She laughs. “We’ll see.”
“Four seconds.”
There’s a flash in the control room and the monitors go blank.
“Mister Larson! Sir!”
“Can’t stop it now, Dan! Three! Two! One! Lift off!”
The cabin begins to shake like a house being torn off its foundations by a tornado. Then a force, like none I’ve ever felt, like an immense ocean wave, pushes us up into the blue, and I’m pinned to the back of my seat. I gasp at the great weight on my chest, the oppressive force of gravity trying desperately to keep me here on Earth, and I begin to cry, but not from the pain or the fear – from joy, the joy of fulfilling that little girl’s wish, of becoming the thing I had dreamed of.
I did it, little Paper! I did it! I made it!
Tears stream down my face as blue turns to black in mere seconds, and we pass the point that Martha had taken us, low Earth orbit, hurtling towards our high-elliptical orbit thous
ands of miles farther. Where Martha felt like a modest jump, this feels like a giant leap, a real space flight, where the curve of the horizon is sharper, you can even begin to see Earth as a sphere floating in space, and there’s a sense that the slightest little push will break us free from its pull and send us on to Mars. As the thrust abates, my body floats against the harness, and the sun shines through the front window into my eyes, warming my face. I exhale. Ahhh.
Little Paper can stop dreaming. She’s arrived.
Zach turns to us. “Not many men and women have been this far from Earth. You should be proud.”
And I am proud. Beaming with pride actually, and grateful to every single person who helped me get this far: my whole family, my mother included, and Benji, and DanDan, and Zach Larson, and Angel, and yes, even Aurora. I look over at her.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Farris? Are you going to puke on me again?”
“No. Look at us. We did it.”
56
Agent Burke
Daniels scowls at us and turns to Larson. “Sir. We’re receiving a transmission. They’ve opened the com-link. It’s on channel five.”
“Push it to all the monitors. Every channel. I want everyone to see and hear it.”
The monitors spring back to life. There are bodies on the floor of the control room.
Larson lunges toward one of the cameras in the cockpit. “Oh, my God, what have you-”
The agent with the red tie speaks. “Relax, Larson. They’re just stunned.”
“They better be all right! Or else!”
“Or else what?”
Larson looks over at a status screen. Calms himself. “You know, groups of people can be a very powerful thing. And there are over a billion people watching this, Agent…”
