Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire's Club

by Ben Bova

  “Good night, Art.”

  “’Night, Will.”

  The wall screen went back to the displaying the Madonna. Thrasher sighed heavily, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was surprised to see Linda still sitting there, her chin on her fists.

  “I thought you were going home.”

  “I am,” she said, getting to her feet. “Goodness, look at the time.”

  Replacing his glasses, Thrasher said, “Just because I work crazy hours doesn’t mean you have to.”

  She smiled. “Have you made any plans for your own dinner?”

  “I’ll grab something out of the freezer.”

  Linda gave him a critical look. “You ought to take better care of yourself.”

  Getting up from behind the desk, Thrasher said, “Yes, Mommy. Now go home.”

  “Make sure you get some food into you.”

  “And be back here at eight sharp.”

  “Right, boss.” She turned and left the office.

  Admiring her form, Thrasher recognized that Linda was really a very beautiful young woman. What is it the Catholics call it? he mused. Then he remembered, she’s a near occasion of sin. A very tempting morsel indeed. He shook his head and said to himself sternly, you do not come on to employees. It’s very unfair to them. And you could get sued up to your eyeballs.

  The intercom buzzed.

  “What?” he demanded.

  Linda’s voice asked, “Should I tell Carlo to meet you in the lobby?”

  “Naw. Tell him to go home. I’ll stay here tonight.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Stop mothering me, kid. And go home yourself.”

  A hesitation, then she said, “Goodnight, then.”

  “Goodnight, already.”

  Thrasher’s home was far out in the posh suburbs, a mansion he had built for his second wife, the sculptress. But he maintained a modest apartment on the other side of the corridor from his office suite. Nothing very fancy, just a couple of bedrooms, kitchen, sitting room, and a book-lined study. Plus a walk-in shower in the master bathroom. He had spent some very special hours, sharing that shower.

  But tonight he was alone. He pulled a dinner package from the freezer, microwaved it, then sat at the kitchen counter and nibbled at it while he watched television, switching from CNN to Fox News to MSNBC and back again at every commercial break.

  Pouring himself a ginger beer, he briefly thought about adding a dollop of brandy to it. Brandy and dry, the Aussies called it. He decided against the brandy and walked slowly to his study, then out onto the balcony that overlooked the garish lights of downtown Houston.

  Can’t see the stars, they keep it so goddamned bright, he complained silently. Not like Arizona. Not at all.

  His mother had died in childbirth and Thrasher was raised by his embittered father, a dry husk of an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. Dad worked all his life and what did he get for it? Bubkiss. A lousy pension and his name on a couple of boxfuls of research papers.

  His father had accomplished one other thing, though. He had instilled in young Arthur D. Thrasher a love of astronomy, a fascination with the grandeur and mystery of the stars.

  Not that Art followed his father’s footsteps. The chalkdust classrooms and genteel poverty of academic life were not for Art. To his father’s despair, Arthur took the university’s business curriculum, then won a partial scholarship for an MBA at Wharton. He covered his expenses with the money he’d made from his first entrepreneurial venture: a bicycle repair shop on the edge of the UA campus.

  His father died the year Art made his first million. Art married, divorced, married and divorced again. By the time he was worth a hundred million, he had given up on marriage—but not on women.

  Leaning against the balcony railing, Art took off his glasses, folded them carefully into his shirt pocket, then peered at the sky. He was farsighted, he didn’t need the glasses to see the stars. Farsighted. He laughed to himself. At least that’s better than being myopic. His second wife had gotten him to try contact lenses, but Art hated to insert them, felt uncomfortable with them, always feared one of them would pop out at an embarrassing moment.

  There was talk of new surgical techniques to alleviate hypermetropia, the medical term for farsightedness. Art shook his head at the thought of it. Maybe after I’m sixty-five and eligible for Medicare, he decided. Let the goddamned government pay for it.

  Then he reminded himself that it wasn’t the goddamned government’s money, it was the taxpayers’. With a sigh, he realized that sixty-five wasn’t that far away: thirteen years. Lucky thirteen.

  He ducked back into his study for a moment and pulled what looked like binoculars from his desk drawer. Actually, they were nothing more than a pair of toilet-paper rollers, duct taped together. Out on the balcony again, Art put the contraption to his eyes and searched the sky. The tubes blocked some of the glare from the city’s lights.

  He saw a reddish dot through the glow and smog. Mars? Might be Antares. But no, the dot wasn’t twinkling, the way stars do. It was a steady beacon. The planet Mars. He remembered the first time his father had shown him Mars, rising bright and clear over the rugged mountains ringing Tucson. I couldn’t have been more than five years old. And the lurid adventure tales set on Mars that he’d read in his teen years; his father shook his head with disdain at his son’s choice of literature.

  “Mars,” Thrasher breathed, staring at the red dot in the sky. Thirty-five million miles away at its closest. But we’ll get there. We’ll get there.

  Why? he asked himself. Because it’s there? He laughed. Because we can make money from it? I doubt that. Because I want to show my father that I’m not just a money-grubbing Philistine?

  None of the above.

  Or maybe, he thought, it’s all of the above. And more.

  And he remembered his father’s dying words, as he lay in the hospital, withering away before Thrasher’s tear-filled eyes:

  “Make something of yourself, Arthur. There’s more to life than money. Do something you can be proud of, something worth doing.”

  Something, Thrasher thought bitterly. Something you could never do, Dad.

  We’ll get to Mars because it’s worth doing. Something I can be proud of. It’s that simple. It’s something I can be proud of. Something to make my father proud of me.

  4

  JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

  “But I’m a NASA employee, Mr. Thrasher—”

  “Art. Call me Art.”

  Jessie Margulis looked distinctly uncomfortable. Thrasher had driven out to the NASA center specifically to meet the engineer, but Margulis had refused to bring him inside, to where the offices and laboratories were. They sat next to each other in the spacious visitors’ center reception area.

  Margulis hunched close to Thrasher, his eyes worriedly following every salesman and bureaucrat and engineer that paraded past. He even glanced cautiously every few seconds at the four receptionists sitting behind the big curving desk in the center of the room. Christ, Thrasher thought, he acts like we’re planning a bank heist.

  Thrasher’s chief engineer, Vince Egan, had identified Margulis as one of NASA’s top engineers, the man who headed Johnson Space Center’s advanced planning department.

  “I’m a government employee,” Margulis repeated. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  “Why not?” Thrasher countered, “I’m a citizen and a taxpayer; that makes me your boss, kind of.” Then, with a grin, he added, “It’s not like we’re plotting to blow up the place.”

  Margulis winced. He’s sweating, Thrasher noticed. They air-condition this barn cold enough to put icicles on your cojones and he’s sweating.

  Thrasher went on, “We’re just having a friendly little chat about what a manned spacecraft—”

  “Crewed,” Margulis corrected.

  “Crude?”

  “Cre-wed.” The engineer emphasized the second syllable. “We
don’t say ‘manned.’ It’s not politically correct.”

  Thrasher nodded. “I gotcha. And besides, we’ll have women among the crew for the Mars mission.”

  Margulis winced again at the word “Mars.” He was a bland-faced man in his forties: receding hairline, little fuzz of a goatee hiding a weak chin, a pot belly, shirt pocket stuffed with pens. Put him in a party with six hundred guests and ask any one of ‘em to find the engineer, they’d go straight to him, Thrasher thought.

  Still, the headhunters claimed he was a brilliant engineer. And more than that, he was a leader among engineers. The rest of them respected him.

  But Margulis was saying, “NASA has been directed to shelve its plans for a crewed Mars mission. There’s no money in the budget for it.”

  “And all the work you’ve done on the project has been scrapped,” said Thrasher.

  “Mothballed,” Margulis corrected. Thrasher thought he detected some resentment there.

  “So what are you working on now?”

  The engineer tracked with his eyes an older man in his shirtsleeves and a NASA employee’s badge dangling from a chain around his neck. The guy glared disapprovingly at Margulis as he walked past.

  “What are you working on now?” Thrasher repeated. “Is it a secret?”

  “No, we don’t work on classified projects. We’re completely open.”

  “So what’re you doing now?”

  Margulis shrugged. “Robotic planetary probes, mostly. Another mission to Europa. Conceptual studies of a probe to land on Titan.”

  “That’s a moon of Saturn, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And manned . . . I mean, crewed missions?”

  “Nothing.”

  Brightening, Thrasher said, “Well, I’ve got a crewed mission for you to work on. Mars.”

  “I can’t discuss that with you,” Margulis hissed, almost pleading. “I’m a NASA employee.”

  “You’re not allowed to consult with a private citizen?”

  “No. That’d be a conflict of interest, in the government’s eyes.”

  “Then quit the goddamned government and come to work for me. I’ll double whatever you’re making now.”

  Margulis’ mouth popped open, but no words came out.

  “I want you to head my Mars project.”

  “I . . . In another couple of years I’ll have put in my twenty. I’ve got a pension coming, and there’s the health-care insurance . . .”

  “I’ll equal or better it.”

  “Could you wait two years?”

  “No.”

  Margulis was clearly torn. Tempted.

  Thrasher coaxed, “You’ll be head of the project, free to run it any way you like.”

  The engineer blinked twice, then asked, “Suppose I want to use a nuclear propulsion system.”

  “Nuclear?”

  “A nuclear rocket would be a helluva lot better than chemical rockets. More efficient, capable of moving a much bigger payload. But NASA’s stopped all work on nukes. Too much anti-nuke pressure.”

  Thrasher saw an opening. With a shrug, he said, “You’re the tech leader. If you think nuclear is the way to go, we’ll go nuclear.”

  “There’ll be a lot of opposition,” Margulis warned.

  “I’ll take care of the opposition. You do the engineering.”

  For a long moment Margulis said nothing. Then, “The problem is . . . Art, your project might go belly-up. You might not get the funding you need. Or the anti-nuke people will stop you. Or the money might run out. With the government, I’ve got a steady job. I’ve got security. I have a wife and three kids to think about.”

  “Jessie, I will personally fund a pension and health care insurance plan for you. Fully fund them both. Put the money into a separate account, where it’ll be safe.”

  “I . . .”

  “I want you Jessie. You’re the best man to run this project, everyone I’ve talked with agrees on that. I need you.”

  “I’d have to quit NASA. Leave all my benefits.”

  “Can’t you take a leave of absence? For a year, say? Then, if my project doesn’t work out, you can come back to NASA and no harm’s been done.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  “You think about it, pal.” Thrasher popped to his feet. Margulis remained seated, his expression somewhere between thoughtful and frightened.

  At last he got slowly to his feet, too.

  “I will think about it, Mr. Thrasher.”

  “Art.”

  “Art.”

  “Double your salary. Full pension and health insurance.” Thrasher started to turn toward the door, hesitated, and turned back to Margulis.

  “Oh, I almost forgot the most important point of all.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll be working on a mission to Mars, by damn. A nuclear-propelled crewed mission to Mars. You’ll never get to do that as an employee of the goddamned government.”

  5

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  The town so big they named it twice, Thrasher mused as he looked out through the narrow window of his Learjet at the forest of towers blanketing Manhattan.

  David Kahn was ensconced in an office in one of those towers. Throughout the rough-and-tumble world of commercial real estate and investment banking, the man was known as Jenghis Kahn. Nobody said that to his face, though. Very few got to say it more than once, even behind his back.

  His office was high up in the Chrysler Building, which he owned. An icon of art deco architecture, the building’s interior had been completely remodeled, Thrasher saw. High-speed elevators, swift and quiet. Elegant carpeting along the corridors. The walls were hung with photographs of Manhattan scenes: ghetto kids playing in the spray from a fireplug, glittering Broadway openings, the Twin Towers collapsing in smoke and death.

  He’s a Noo Yawkah, Thrasher realized. Born in Oshkosh, but he’s made the Big Apple the center of his soul. Assuming he has one.

  Kahn’s outer office was larger than Thrasher’s entire suite, back in Houston. You could play a hockey game in here, Thrasher told himself as he plodded across the thick carpeting to the desk where a lone executive assistant sat, pointedly ignoring him by keeping her beady eyes focused on her desktop display screen.

  She was middle-aged, lean, lantern-jawed, with her graying hair pulled back in some sort of knot. A dragon, guarding the entrance to her master’s lair.

  As Thrasher stepped up to the desk, the dragon looked up at him.

  “Arthur D. Thrasher, I presume.” Her voice was a surprisingly smooth purr.

  “That’s me!”

  “Mr. Kahn is on an international call at the moment. Please have a seat. He’ll be with you shortly.”

  Thrasher grinned. He’d seen this ploy before. I’m so busy and powerful that you’ll have to wait before I have the time to listen to your pitiful little spiel.

  Chuckling to himself, he went to the nearest couch and sat down. The coffee table in front of the couch held a scattering of business magazines. Thrasher picked up a copy of Forbes. Sure enough, it was the edition that featured the nation’s wealthiest people. David Kahn and his brother Charles were tied for fourth place, just ahead of Will Portal.

  The minutes ticked by. Thrasher put the magazine down, pulled out his handheld, and checked his phone messages. Nothing that can’t wait, he thought. Besides, if I try to make an outgoing call the dragon lady will probably throw a hissy fit.

  He went back to the magazine. One of the articles was about the shaky financial status of the private space-launch business. Four firms, all deeply in debt, competing for the contract to run cargo and people to the International Space Station. Not enough of a market to sustain four companies, the article concluded. Thrasher agreed.

  They’re at the mercy of the goddamned government, he fumed. NASA’s got them by the balls. The tourist market that they all banked on hasn’t materialized. Not yet.

  “Mr. Thrasher.”

  He looked up
.

  “Mr. Kahn will see you now.”

  Thrasher saw that the door to Kahn’s private office had magically opened. He rose to his feet, beamed his brightest smile at the dragon lady, and went through.

  David Kahn sat behind a massive desk almost as big as a helicopter landing pad. He was an old man, so shriveled and wizened that even his completely bald head was creased like a badly rutted road. He had a hooked nose and narrow, cold eyes. His skin was gray and wrinkled like old parchment. That’s what his brother would look like in ten years, Thrasher thought, if it weren’t for the cosmetic surgery industry.

  Then he realized that Kahn was sitting in a powered wheelchair. Attached to the seat’s back was a stack of electronics boxes, beeping softly. For god’s sake, Thrasher thought, the man’s on life-support.

  As brightly as he could, Thrasher said, “Mr. Kahn.” He put out his hand, but the desk was too broad for him to reach the old man.

  “Mr. Thrasher,” said Kahn, his voice a harsh croak. He ignored Thrasher’s extended arm and gestured with one clawlike hand to the plush chair directly in front of his desk.

  “It’s good of you to take the time to see me,” Thrasher said as genially as he could manage, while he sat down.

  Kahn was in his vest and shirtsleeves. Still he looked almost formally dressed, compared to Thrasher’s suede-shouldered western-cut jacket and onyx bolo tie.

  “Cut the crap, Thrasher,” Kahn rasped. “My brother tells me you want us to put up the money for a mission to Mars.”

  “Part of the money,” Thrasher countered. “A billion a year each, for five years.”

  “Why?”

  “To get to Mars! To put human explorers on the red planet. To fulfill the dream of the ages.”

  “I told you to cut the crap. What’s in it for me?”

  Thrasher smiled minimally. “To begin with, you’ll get a sizeable tax break.”

  “We could donate the money to charitable causes here on Earth and get the same tax deduction.”

  “But not the same publicity. Not the same good will.”

  “I don’t want publicity and I don’t need good will.”