by Ben Bova
8
TUCSON
For a university town, Thrasher thought, Tucson isn’t so bad. He had spent the night at the elegant Arizona Inn, an oasis of comfort and desert beauty in the midst of the city. After a substantial breakfast of huevos rancheros and fresh grapefruit juice, he’d picked up his rental car—a Mustang slingback—at the Inn’s front driveway.
It was barely nine a.m. and already the blazing Sun was brutal. Summer in the Sonora Desert, Thatcher said to himself as he gunned the engine, grateful that the bellman who had brought the car to him had started the air conditioning on full blast. He wormed out of his summerweight jacket at the first stoplight and tossed it onto the right-hand seat.
The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was scattered over several locations on campus. Thrasher used the car’s GPS to find the Kuiper Space Sciences Building, on Cherry Street. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but Thrasher didn’t let that bother him.
Vince Egan was waiting for him in the lobby. He jumped to his feet, all nervous energy, as Thrasher pushed through the front door.
“Right on time,” Egan said, sticking out his hand. He was wearing a patterned open-necked sports shirt and comfortable slacks. Dressed for the weather, Thrasher thought, although the building was chilly enough that he regretted leaving his jacket in the car.
“How’re you doing, Vince? Everything ready?”
Egan nodded, then pointed Thrasher to the receptionist’s desk. He had to show his driver’s license and sign a form, and then the cute little straw-haired student behind the desk dimpled into a bright smile and issued him a plastic badge that proclaimed visitor. Egan already had his badge clipped to his belt.
Another student, male, crew-cut, athletic-looking, came through the far door and escorted them along the corridors toward the back of the building. Thrasher felt like a lab rat negotiating a maze. But he knew that the cheese at the end of the labyrinth was a replica of the surface of Mars.
They stepped through a door into a bare, low-ceilinged chamber that looked to Thrasher like a storeroom that had been emptied out. A man and a woman were standing at a bank of electronics consoles set up against one wall. Otherwise the room was blank, empty.
“Professor Winninger,” their student guide called. His voice echoed off the blank walls.
The man turned and blinked at Thrasher and Egan. He was in his sixties, Thrasher guessed, sort of bland looking, with a high forehead and a heart-shaped face. But his dark brown eyes had laugh crinkles in their corners, and he smiled warmly as he approached Thrasher.
“Art,” said Egan, “this is Professor Peter Winninger, head of the Mars simulation program.”
“Peter Winninger,” said the professor in a soft voice as he shook hands with Thrasher. Turning, he said, “And this is Dr. Kristin Anders, the one who really makes this lab work.”
She was stunning. Tall and blonde, with a swimmer’s broad shoulders and taut body, sculpted cheekbones and eyes like sapphires. She wore a sleeveless, pale yellow blouse and tan shorts that showed her long legs to good advantage.
Thrasher gulped as he took her proffered hand. “You must be Swedish,” he heard himself say.
She smiled tolerantly. “Danish descent, actually,” she said in a low, throaty voice. “We tell jokes about the Swedes.”
“My mistake.”
Winninger said, “I suppose you want to see what you’ve spent your money on.”
It took an effort to move his eyes away from Kristin, but Thrasher managed to do it. “Yes,” he said. “I want to see Mars.”
Winninger grinned boyishly. “Right this way.”
He walked Thrasher to the middle of the bare room, where a single wooden chair stood, laden with what looked like a biker’s helmet and a pair of nubby-looking gloves. To his disappointment, Dr. Anders returned to the consoles and began tweaking the controls.
“This is our beta version,” Professor Winninger said, almost apologetically. “You’ll have visual and auditory inputs, but the tactile inputs will be for your hands only, not full-body.”
Thrasher nodded. At the professor’s direction, he wormed on the gloves. They felt fuzzy, almost like Brillo pads.
“No wires?” he asked.
Winninger smiled. “We’re completely wireless . . . when it works right.”
“Still got problems?”
“As I said, this is our beta version. We’ve based the simulation on photographs taken from landers on the surface of Mars, but it’s not perfect . . . not yet.”
Thrasher picked up the helmet. It felt heavy. Must be a lot of electronics built into it, he thought.
The professor instructed, “Leave the visor up until I tell you it’s okay to slide it down over your eyes. You’ll be in pretty complete darkness for a moment. Don’t panic. The simulation will kick in almost immediately.”
Nodding, Thrasher settled the helmet on his head. It covered his ears, muffling them. Winninger picked up the chair and carried it away from him, back to the consoles, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the stark chamber.
Then he heard Dr. Anders’ smoky voice in the helmet’s earphones: “Can you hear me, Mr. Thrasher?”
“Yes.” Somehow he felt nervous. He licked his lips.
“Please pull your visor down.”
Thrasher did it. The visor was heavily tinted; he could see nothing.
“Starting the sim.”
For a few heartbeats Thrasher simply stood there, blind and deaf.
Then the world suddenly appeared around him. Rust-red sand stretching out toward the horizon, strewn with pebbles and rocks, some of them bigger than watermelons. Hills rose off to his right, and what looked like a shallow crater was no more than a dozen yards in front of him, its rim a circle of striated rock. The sky was a sort of butterscotch color, and he heard a soft sighing sound, like distant humming.
“Is that the wind?” he asked.
“Yes,” came Anders’ disembodied voice.
Winninger broke in. “Walk around a little. Explore the area.”
Carefully, almost as if he were on a tightrope, Thrasher stepped across the reddish sand. Raising his hands in front of his face, he saw that he was wearing a pure white spacesuit, his hands in thick white gloves. Looking down, his legs were also encased in white leggings and heavy boots. Turning to look back, he saw his own bootprints in the sand. No one else’s. He was alone on Mars.
Laughing shakily, Thrasher crowed, “I’m on Mars!”
“Virtually,” came Anders’ low voice.
“This is only a simulation,” the professor warned, “not the real thing.”
“Looks real to me!”
Virtual reality, Thrasher knew. This is the kind of equipment we’re going to sell by the millions. People will be able to get into these rigs and be on Mars. What the astronauts see and do, ordinary folks in the safety of their homes will be able to see and do.
Eager as a little boy, Thrasher walked around the rim of the ancient crater. Over the sandy ridge he saw a metal object. One of the rovers NASA landed on Mars years ago! He could see the meandering track of its wheels stretching out to the horizon.
“Is that Sojurner?” he asked.
“No,” Winninger’s voice replied. “That’s Spirit. Sojurner is more than a thousand klicks away from the spot you’re at.”
For more than fifteen minutes Thrasher walked across the frozen desert of Mars, marveling at how real the experience seemed. He bent down and touched the rusty sand; it felt gritty, even through the gloves. Looking up, he saw that the butterscotch sky was bright and clear, except for the thinnest wisps of a few cirrus clouds. A meteor flashed through the sky, making him twitch with surprise.
At last Winninger said, “That’s about it, I’m afraid. You’ve covered the entire area that we’ve laid out for the simulation.”
Before Thrasher could say anything, Kristin Anders said, “Ending sim. When your vision goes dark you can lift up your visor.”
Feelin
g terribly disappointed, Thrasher stood mutely as the world around him disappeared into darkness. He raised the helmet’s visor and he was back in the empty, seedy-looking chamber.
Winninger hurried to him. “How did you like it?”
“Awesome,” said Thrasher. Back at the consoles, Anders smiled at him.
“Why don’t the four of us have dinner this evening?” Thrasher asked.
Vince Egan nodded quickly. Winninger asked, “Er . . . may I bring my wife?”
“Sure,” said Thrasher. Turning to Anders, “Will you come, too?”
“I’d love to,” she said, “but I don’t think I could get a sitter on such short notice.”
“Please try,” he said, noticing that there was no ring on her left hand. I’ve been to Mars today, he told himself. It’d be fun to fly to the Moon tonight. With her.
9
ARIZONA INN
Vince Egan drove back to the Arizona Inn in his own rental car and met Thrasher by the big swimming pool. Thrasher’s suite was on the other side of the hedge that surrounded the pool. It was a very pretty location, although Thrasher had found early that morning that young children yelling and shrieking around the pool were a very effective alarm clock.
He was able to stifle most of their high-pitched screeching by holding a pillow over his ears, but still the deeper thronngg of the diving board kept him awake.
The pool was much quieter now, in the late afternoon, as Egan pulled up a lawn chair to sit beside Thrasher, who had pulled off his clothes and gotten into a swimsuit and a hotel-provided robe as soon as he’d returned to his suite.
A college-age waiter took their drink orders, and assured Thrasher that the main bar, inside the hotel, was stocked with ginger beer. Egan ordered a margarita.
“So what’d you think of the simulation?” the engineer asked.
“Impressive,” said Thrasher. “It’s going to make a mint for us.” But he winced inwardly when he remembered that he’d promised Rutherford half of the VR profits.
“Manufacturing costs are higher than we estimated,” Egan said. “I’ve tried to keep ‘em down but they just keep going up.”
“Who’s handling the financial end for you?” Thrasher asked.
“I’ve got a CPA keeping tabs—”
“No, no,” Thrasher asked. “Who’s your financial chief, your CFO?”
“Don’t have one,” said the engineer. “I’ve never needed one before.”
“That’s because you’ve never headed up a manufacturing project before. You’ve always handed off the manufacturing tasks to guys like Strabowski or Malatesta.”
“Yeah, but you said you wanted me to stay with the VR project all the way.”
“And I do. But for God’s sake get yourself somebody who can handle the finances. You’re not a money guy.”
Egan looked hurt. “Guess not.”
“I’ll get Sid Ornsteen to send a couple of his bright people to interview with you.”
“Whatever.”
Thrasher leaned over and grasped Egan’s arm. “Vince, this is important. You wouldn’t hire a guy who doesn’t have any engineering experience to head up one of your tech teams, would you?”
“’Course not.”
“Well, you need somebody who knows what he’s doing to handle your financial end. And it’s got to be somebody you like and can get along with.”
Egan nodded, reluctantly, almost sullenly.
The waiter returned with their drinks, and he actually presented Thrasher with a chilled mug of ginger beer. After scribbling a generous tip on the bill, Thrasher asked him to make a reservation in the dining room for six people.
As the waiter left, Egan said, “You, me, Winninger and his wife . . . that only makes four.”
“Kristin Anders might make it,” Thrasher said.
“That’s five, not six.”
“You say five and they’ll try to squeeze you into a table for four. You say six and everybody’s comfortable, even if it turns out that only four get there.”
Egan nodded, then said, “Besides, if she comes she might bring a date. Or a husband, more likely.”
Thrasher felt distinctly unhappy at that thought.
Returning to his room, Thrasher phoned Ornsteen. The treasurer’s lean, hollow-cheeked face looked more cadaverous than ever in the phone’s tiny screen.
“Sure, I can get a couple of my bright young men to talk with Egan,” said Ornsteen, grudgingly. “But I’ll need a replacement for whoever he picks.”
“No bright young women?” Thrasher asked. He was sitting in a comfortable armchair, the room’s TV tuned to a financial channel, muted.
“Vince is a married man, Art.”
“I’m not trying to play cupid,” he told Ornsteen. “I just want to make sure nobody can complain about equal opportunity.”
The treasurer almost smiled. “I’ll see if I can find a dark-skinned Latina. A three-fer. Will that be okay?”
“As long as she can do the job.”
While he was shaving, the hotel phone rang.
They always call when I’ve got a face full of lather, Thrasher groused to himself. They must have hidden cameras in the rooms.
Grumbling, he stalked into the sitting room and punched the phone’s speaker button. “Mr. Thrasher?” a woman’s voice asked. “We have a call for you from a Dr. Anders.”
Thrasher’s grumbles ended immediately. “Put her on!”
Kristin’s throaty voice asked, “Mr. Thrasher?”
“Art,” he replied. “My friends call me Art. Not that I’m a work of art, like a Rembrandt or something.”
She laughed softly. “All right. And my friends call me Kristin. Not Kris. Not Krissy. Kristin.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I found a sitter. Will it be all right if we make it an early evening?”
“Dinner at six-thirty?” he replied. “That’s what I told the professor.”
“Perfect.”
“Okay, six-thirty, here at the Inn.”
“I’ll be there.”
Thrasher smiled as he said, “See you then.”
***
The Arizona Inn’s dining room was decorated in Southwestern style, like a large, luxurious adobe home. French doors led out to a lovingly tended garden, and the bar was only a few steps away.
Thrasher got a nice round table in the middle of the room, beneath an ornate chandelier. Vince Egan came in as he was sitting down, and Professor Winninger and his wife followed almost immediately behind him.
Mrs. Winninger was an Hispanic, short and plump and altogether pleasant. She was a professor, too, of languages.
Once they had ordered drinks, Mrs. Winninger said, “I understand Dr. Anders will be joining us.”
Thrasher nodded, wondering how she knew. Jungle telegraph? Women’s ESP?
“Our son is babysitting for her,” Mrs. Winninger added.
The mystery is solved, Thrasher thought. As innocently as he could manage, he asked, “Is Dr. Anders divorced?”
“Widowed,” Mrs. Winninger said. “Her husband was killed in Afghanistan.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” It wasn’t actually true, but it was what they expected to hear.
“It only happened three months ago,” the woman went on. “I think this is the first time she’s gone out since she got the news.”
Thrasher leaned back in his chair. I’m being warned, he realized. Keep my hands off her.
At that moment, Kristin Anders appeared at the restaurant’s entrance, wearing a sleeveless black sheath decorated with a slim rope of pearls. Her blonde hair fell softly to her shoulders. Thrasher popped to his feet as the hostess showed her to their table and seated her next to him.
“Are we expecting one more?” the hostess asked.
Thrasher shook his head. “No, there’ll only be five of us, I’m afraid.” He tried to keep from grinning as he sat down.
Dinner conversation was strictly business.
“The simula
tion you walked through is based on existing imagery from several Mars landers,” Winninger repeated. “Transmitting live from Mars will be a different order of difficulty.”
“You can do it, can’t you?” Thrasher asked.
The professor hesitated just the slightest bit before he replied, “Maybe you’d better ask Kristin about that. She’s handling the transmitting system.”
Thrasher looked into those sapphire eyes.
“We’ll get the job done for you, Mr. Thra—um, Art.”
He smiled happily. “I’m sure you will,” he said, suppressing the urge to pat her hand. “I’m sure you will.”
He scolded himself, Don’t come on to her. She’s practically an employee, for god’s sake. And recently widowed. You’ll have Mrs. Winninger and probably all the female members of the faculty coming down on you. You can’t take a chance on lousing up the VR program. Damn!
But then he realized that he had a perfectly legitimate reason to return to Tucson, to see how the VR system was developing. I’ll be seeing a lot of her, he thought happily.
In the meantime, he told himself, go take a cold shower.
But he was thinking how great it would be to share a hot tub with Kristin Anders.
10
MONEY TALKS
While summer faded into autumn, the Mars project moved ahead steadily. Jessie Margulis spent more time in Portales than at home in Houston with his family, but the spacecraft his team had designed was taking shape, blueprints were turning into hardware. Thrasher still worried about the battle looming over launching the components of the Mars ship’s nuclear propulsion system.
Despite his anxieties, though, the former tire warehouse in Portales rang and banged with the sounds of construction; a new annex was being built to house the spacecraft’s growing bulbous shape.
But Sid Ornsteen was looking grimmer every time Thrasher saw him.
“This is costing a lot more than we budgeted for,” the corporate treasurer complained.
