Hearts and Minds

by Dayton Ward

  “Indeed it did.” Interstellar spaceflight had long been commonplace centuries before his birth, though Picard remained fascinated with that period of human history when such an ability had not yet been achieved. Some of his favorite stories from childhood involved those initial, tentative voyages from Earth, first to its own Moon and then, eventually, to the other planets of the Sol system and beyond, until that momentous day when humanity, embodied for a brief moment by one man, Zefram Cochrane, achieved the fanciful goal of propelling a spacecraft faster than light itself.

  With a bit of help, of course.

  “We began with automated probes,” said Hilonu, “dispatching them toward distant stars that deep-space telescopes indicated might have planets capable of sustaining us. Probes that returned with promising data collected during their journey were then followed up with larger, crewed vessels sent to investigate further. Most of those vessels returned, but we did lose contact with a few. In those cases, we sent other ships to determine what might have happened. Contact with one of those rescue missions was also lost, but then the ship was returned home.” She stopped, turning so that she could level an accusatory glare at Picard.

  “The planet that vessel was sent to study was yours, Captain.”

  AFTEREFFECTS

  11

  The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  November 5, 2032

  “Is the rescue mission still on schedule? Do you anticipate any problems with the ship making it there on time?”

  Sitting behind the desk in his office, fourteen stories below the Pentagon’s ground level, Gerald Markham watched the press conference unfolding on the high-definition flat-screen monitor mounted on the far wall. On the screen, Amy Sisson, Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, stared intently at the reporter who had just posed the question. Tall and trim of build with a runner’s physique, she stood with confidence behind a podium in the media room of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. As befitting a senior official for a government organization, she wore her brown hair in a shoulder-length style while dressed in what Markham thought of as a traditional ensemble of gray pants and matching jacket over a white silk blouse. In another nod to convention, pins representing the American flag and the NASA emblem decorated her left lapel, while a third pin denoted a gold shooting star. It was this third device, Markham knew, that carried the most weight with the people in this room, as it symbolized the fact that prior to her ascension to the agency’s leadership ranks, she had been an astronaut; someone uniquely qualified to discuss matters pertaining to astronauts.

  Including, unfortunately, dead ones, and those marooned on other planets.

  His feet resting on the corner of his desk, Markham watched as Sisson, with the same aplomb with which she had begun the press conference, now fielded its eighth question. It was really the tenth or eleventh, but as some variation of it had already been asked twice, Markham wasn’t counting it as such.

  “As I already said, Ethan,” replied Sisson to the reporter who had offered this latest twist on the well-tread query, “the Theseus is still on course back from the asteroid belt and has commenced its deceleration in preparation for insertion into Mars orbit, which is scheduled to take place at four seventeen a.m. Central Standard Time on Sunday, November seventh. Once orbit is established, the ship’s landing vehicle will make its descent to the Ares IV mission site, where the Theseus landing crew will retrieve astronauts Kumagawa and Novakovich. It’s probably a good time to remind everybody that the astronauts are not in any immediate danger. The habitation module at the Ares mission site has more than enough supplies to sustain them until the arrival of the rescue ship. Once everyone’s safely back aboard, the Theseus will leave Mars orbit and commence its acceleration on a course back to Earth.”

  “How long will the trip home take?” asked another male reporter.

  Sisson’s response was immediate. “Approximately two hundred fourteen days. We anticipate no delays or alterations to this schedule, barring any other unforeseen circumstances.”

  The reporter offered a follow-up question. “What sort of circumstances might those be?”

  “I don’t know, Stan. That’s why I called them ‘unforeseen.’ This is space travel we’re talking about. Talk to me in two hundred fifteen days, and we’ll see how things went.”

  “Ouch,” said Heather Burden, Markham’s assistant director and one of his closest friends and confidants. “They’re going to roast her for that one.” Dressed in dark slacks and a light-blue collared blouse, Burden sat in one of the two padded chairs positioned before Markham’s desk. She had shrugged off the jacket that went with her pants, tossing it and her briefcase onto the sofa that sat along the office’s far wall, and had been waiting for him, with the television already tuned to the press conference being carried on the NASA channel as well as most of the major news networks. From that and the way she wore her brown hair loosely about her shoulders, Burden gave the appearance of being done with her work and ready to go home, but Markham knew that such escape was still hours away.

  Shifting in his chair to make himself more comfortable, he replied, “But it’s the truth. Leave it to someone who’s been up there to cut through the crap. You’d think journalists of all people would get that. Some things never change.”

  Dealing with a routine mission mishap or even the loss of an unmanned probe was one thing, as evidenced by how short the public memory was with respect to such expensive failures as the Voyager 6 and Nomad probes, both lost in attempts to push exploration efforts beyond the solar system. Standing tall in the face of actual tragedy was something else altogether.

  This was not the first time Markham had watched a NASA official handling an event of this sort. He was too young to remember the press conferences and memorial services that had come following the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986, but he had been a teenager when a similar tragedy befell the Challenger’s sister ship, Columbia, in 2003. Since that time, there had been training accidents, and deaths of astronauts from other causes unrelated to their chosen profession, but there had been only one mission-related incident in nearly two decades that had resulted in lives lost.

  Until last month.

  “Has there been any new information about Lieutenant Kelly?” asked another reporter in the front row as Sisson pointed to him.

  “We still don’t know anything about the anomaly that came into contact with the Ares IV command module. Our satellite tracking was unable to confirm whether the ship was destroyed or somehow caught up in the anomaly as it continued on its straight-line course past Mars. There’s no evidence of an explosion, and none of the Mars satellites have detected or encountered any debris, so right now we’re leaning toward the latter theory.”

  Hands shot up in response to Sisson’s answer and she called on another reporter, who was dividing her attention between her tablet and the director.

  “Do you think Lieutenant Kelly might still be alive?”

  Markham saw Sisson’s jaw clench, and knew that she realized almost any answer to this question was only going to spawn a host of new queries. He also could tell that despite any feelings she might harbor, she had prepared for this moment.

  “We’re still conducting our investigation, and we’ll continue to do everything we can until we have all the answers as to what happened to Lieutenant Kelly. However, it’s important to remember that the scene of the accident is fifty million miles away. This is going to take some time, and we’ll want to be as thorough as possible, for the sake of Lieutenant Kelly’s family as well as how we plan for future Mars missions and the safety of the men and women who will be making those journeys.”

  “So the Ares missions aren’t on hold?” asked a third journalist, a woman Markham recognized as being a science reporter for the Washington Post.

  “The Ares V mission is still in the planning stages and not scheduled to launch for two years. And don’t forget that we have other projects and mission
s in various stages of planning that will take our people to the other planets and even beyond the solar system. All of those objectives are still being pursued. We’ve got time to carry out a thorough investigation without placing these programs in limbo. As we gather more information, the decision to delay or cancel future Ares missions is still on the table, but right now I see no reason to make such a decision. At the moment, our priorities are the rescue of astronauts Rose Kumagawa and Andrei Novakovich, and finding out what happened to Lieutenant John Kelly.”

  “I like her,” said Burden, her attention still on the screen as Sisson fielded another question. “Why haven’t you recruited her yet?” Taking a dark band she had been wearing around her wrist, she pulled back her brown hair and secured it in a ponytail.

  Lifting his feet from his desk, Markham chuckled as he rose from his seat. “I’ve considered it, the same way we’ve considered recruiting every NASA director since 1958.” He moved to the counter set into the wall to his right, which contained a wet bar and small refrigerator. After pulling two glasses and a bottle of Scotch from one of the overhead cabinets, he returned to his desk. With the Scotch bottle still in his hand, he gestured to the monitor, where Sisson was answering another question. “Not all of them are suited for what we do, but she’s one of the best candidates to come along in a while.”

  He knew everything about Amy Sisson, thanks to the extensive dossier that had been prepared for him by the Majestic 12 information analysts and which contained data from numerous sources both public and clandestine. She was, according to her file, the youngest person ever to hold the position of NASA director, and she had wasted no time putting her fingerprints on the organization. Under her leadership, the first Ares missions to Mars had been accomplished ahead of schedule and well within budget projections, delivering far more than even the most generous estimates in terms of return on the project’s staggering financial investment.

  “She looks tired,” observed Burden, her gaze still fixed on the screen. “Can’t say I blame her, though. Not after the month she’s had.”

  Pouring a portion of the Scotch into a glass for Burden before preparing one for himself, Markham retook his seat. “No kidding. She’s been carrying this on her shoulders from the moment it happened. If I was her, I’d be in a coma, and happy about it.” He gestured with his glass toward the screen. “She’s taking it personally. According to her file, she and Kelly were friends, though they never had any missions together. Not that it matters. Astronauts are a tight bunch.”

  From watching the interviews Sisson had given to dozens of news organizations around the world in the wake of the Ares IV incident, Markham knew that everything surrounding the accident—if indeed it was an accident—was weighing on her, and that even as she spoke to this gaggle of reporters she was riding herd on every person at NASA who might be able to contribute anything toward finding out what had happened at Mars. It was the first loss of an astronaut since her appointment as director, and by all accounts she was sparing no expense or effort when it came to learning the truth. No fool, Sisson obviously was aware that she and the entire agency would be subjected to unrelenting public and political scrutiny as people sought explanations for the apparent tragedy before looking to assign blame. Markham also could tell from her demeanor that the director did not care about any of that, but instead was focused on the issue at hand. This was more to her than one of her employees or subordinates dying on the job; John Kelly was a brother-in-arms, after a fashion, and Markham knew that Sisson and everyone who worked for her would not rest until they knew why Kelly had been taken from them. Sisson likely felt she owed an explanation not just to the man’s family and every astronaut under her leadership, but to everyone, period.

  “Did you ever want to be an astronaut?” he asked, before sipping from his drink.

  Burden shook her head. “No. I wanted to be a game designer.”

  That surprised Markham, as it was not a fact included in her personnel file. “Really? How the hell did you end up here?”

  He was familiar with most of her story. Younger than him by more than a decade, Heather Burden had in short order become an invaluable member of his team and his own inner circle. Previously, she had been assigned to the Raven Rock facility as part of just one of the organizations overseen by Majestic 12. That was before the subordinate group’s renaming and relocation to the Pentagon for reasons of security as well as in response to the latest evolution of its ongoing mandate of investigating and protecting the United States and perhaps the entire world against extraterrestrial threats. At Raven Rock, Burden had overseen an investigative team of military and civilian personnel. She had been charged with verifying or debunking reports of alien activity around the country, all while avoiding the attention of rival nations fielding agents with similar missions, along with the media and the public at large. Her record of achievement was exemplary, and she even was part of the team that had located the Eizand spacecraft last year. It was that action in particular that had brought her to Markham’s attention, and he had personally seen to it that Burden was brought in as a member of his revamped group, which did not possess a formal name, but instead was attached to the top-secret project to which he had been assigned as leader.

  “Recruited by the NSA out of college. They liked my language and software scores. You know the rest.” She shrugged. “If I had it to do over again, I think I’d have gone with the game thing. What about you?”

  Markham chuckled. “I absolutely wanted to be an astronaut.” Long before fate and circumstances had seen to it that his view of space and the wonder it held was quashed by the harsh reality of this job, Markham had been a space enthusiast. Born well after the earliest efforts to place manned spacecraft on the Moon and send the first automated or remote-guided probes to the solar system’s other planets and beyond, he had still reveled in the history of those achievements. Names like Yeager, Shepard, Glenn, and Armstrong had fueled his dreams even as he grew up watching space shuttle launches along with science fiction films and television programs, and reading the works of authors like Heinlein, Clarke, Butler, and Cherryh. He knew it was unlikely that he would ever climb aboard a shuttle or whatever type of spacecraft might succeed those vessels. Still, he dreamed of such things well into adulthood and even after seeking an officer’s commission in the United States Air Force. As a captain, he worked his way to a duty assignment with the Space Command headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, where fate and circumstance saw to it that he was recruited by Majestic 12.

  Once Markham was brought into a realm so secret that it had operated almost without notice since its inception in 1947, his eyes were forever opened to things he had only envisioned thanks to a favorite novel or film. When he joined the group, MJ-12 was but the top of a pyramid that extended through numerous departments and agencies throughout the government of the United States, while enjoying partnerships with similar organizations embedded within the leadership bodies of several major nations. Despite once being adversaries, during the Cold War and the period of global instability that had defined the 1990s and the opening decades of the twenty-first century, these covert agencies had learned over time that they all faced a common foe; not one that originated anywhere on Earth, but instead lurked among the stars.

  “Somebody like Sisson would be perfect for us,” said Burden. She had finished her Scotch and was helping herself to the bottle on Markham’s desk.

  Markham nodded. “Under most circumstances, she would.” He gestured toward the screen. “On the other hand, she’s the person NASA needs right now. They’re going to be under scrutiny for months, and she’s perfect for handling that the way it needs to be handled.” He grimaced. “Not from the public, of course. They’ll forget about this sooner or later. Sure, they’ll remember the anniversary of Kelly’s death, and there’ll be mention of him the next time an Ares mission goes up, but otherwise? Some idiot celebrity or another Washington scandal will grab their attention, or maybe
we’ll just go and throw ourselves into another war that doesn’t need fighting.”

  As much as he loathed the fickle, wandering attention spans that seemed to typify the average citizen, Markham also knew that it was this apparent indifference that gave people like him and Burden and organizations like MJ-12 the perfect cover. Unless or until they did something that unavoidably attracted notice, they were able to operate almost with impunity as they went about their work. Still, it was often frustrating to think that he, and Burden along with everyone who toiled in secret, likely would never be recognized for their sacrifices and the very real contributions they made toward the security of every man, woman, and child on this planet.

  Quit whining, he reminded himself. You knew what the job was when you took it.

  “Besides, she’s too high-profile at the moment. It’s precisely because she’ll be heading up the Ares IV investigation that we can’t bring her into the fold. There’s too much risk that any connection to us might get picked up by a reporter who decides one day that it might be fun to do some actual journalism.” Markham shook his head. “No. For now, NASA and the rest of us need Sisson right where she is.”

  Sipping from her drink, Burden seemed to contemplate this for a moment before saying, “You know NASA’s own investigation isn’t going to turn up anything. How can it? They don’t have the resources to really figure out what happened out there. Hell, even we don’t have that. Not really.”

  “No, but we’ve got enough to put forth some theories that NASA won’t, at least not publicly.”