by Ben Bova
The parking lot was so poorly lit that the sky was clearly visible. Thrasher saw thousands of stars glittering in the dry desert air.
“Look.” Kristin pointed.
A bright red star hung low over the hills, unwavering, steady.
“Mars?” he asked, in a whisper.
“Mars,” Kristin said.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “And so are you.”
She turned and melted into his arms. He kissed her tenderly, then more eagerly.
But Kristin disengaged. “I . . . I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not? I enjoyed it. Didn’t you?”
“I’ve got to get home, Art. My babysitter expects me before ten.”
“But . . .”
In the dim light of the stars, Kristin seemed genuinely upset. “Art, please . . . forgive me. I can’t. Not tonight.”
He could see concern and conflict on her lovely face, tears in her eyes.
“I understand,” he said, with a wistful sigh. Then he went on, “But the next time you come out to dinner with me, tell your sitter that you won’t be home until morning.”
She broke into a smile. “It won’t be easy to find a sitter that’d be willing.”
Thrasher grinned back at her. “Money is no object. Within reason.”
3
ARIZONA INN
Reprobate. Thrasher heard Linda’s disapproving voice in his mind as he waited in the sitting room of his suite for Victoria to show up. It was early evening, but his stomach was starting to growl hungrily.
He was watching a financial news station on television. The stock market was down again, unemployment was up, the price of petroleum had jumped sixty cents per barrel in the past week. Strangely, though, Thrasher Digital’s stock price was holding up, despite the new downturn. Be grateful for small miracles, Thrasher told himself.
Shaking his head at the screen, he wondered why the dummies in Washington couldn’t understand that investing in space technology has been the biggest government stimulus to the economy since World War II.
It isn’t that they don’t understand it, he thought. It’s the fossil fuel lobbies. Big oil and big coal has the entire goddamned government bound hand and foot.
I should talk. I’m investing in space technology and it’s driving me broke. We’ll go to Mars and I’ll go to the poorhouse, the way things are running. Our stock price can’t hold up forever; sooner or later it’s going to go down the toilet.
The phone rang. Thrasher leaned over and picked up the handset.
“I’m here!” said Vicki brightly.
“Meet you in the bar,” he said, clicking off the TV and getting to his feet.
Victoria was sitting at one of the tiny round tables near the bar, dressed in a v-necked black blouse and knee-length skirt, also black. Pearl necklace and earrings. Her curly auburn hair was set in a new style he hadn’t noticed before. Very sophisticated, he thought.
The piano player broke into “Fly Me to the Moon” as soon as Thrasher entered the room. Got to find him a song about Mars, he thought.
He saw that Vicki had already ordered a tall drink garnished with fruit slices and cherries and a long, flexible blood-red straw. One of the cocktail waitresses placed a mug of ginger beer on the table as Thrasher sat down.
The benefits of generous tipping, he thought as he leaned over and pecked at Vicki’s proffered cheek. They remember what you want and bring it right away.
“I have news,” Vicki said, her eyes gleaming.
“Well, you’re a newswoman, aren’t you?” he joked.
“I’m going to Chicago!”
He sipped at the ginger beer. “For how long?”
“I’ve got a new job! With the Chicago bureau of Global News! Isn’t that wonderful?”
He saw that she was excited, elated. But he knew that Chicago was a thousand miles from Tucson, or Portales, or Houston.
“Congratulations,” he said weakly.
“You don’t seem all that happy for me,” Victoria said, pouting. “This is a big step up for me.”
“Chicago’s pretty far away.”
“You’ve got your executive jet,” she said.
“For now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m getting strapped for cash. I might have to sell it . . . or at least trade it in for a plane that’s less expensive to operate.”
“Really?”
He sighed. “Well, anyway, congratulations on the new job.”
“I don’t suppose we’ll see each other as often,” Vicki said. Flatly. No sentiment.
Thrasher sipped at his ginger beer. “Maybe—”
“But you won’t be all that lonely, will you?” she said, her voice suddenly cold, accusative.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’ll still have your blonde girlfriend here in Tucson, won’t you?”
Thrasher sputtered ginger beer. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he protested. “She’s a scientist at the university.”
“And you’ve been dating her. You had dinner with her last night, didn’t you?”
“You’ve been spying on me!”
“I’m a newswoman, Art,” she said—smugly, Thrasher thought. “And you’re an important man.”
“But—”
“We’ll still see each other,” Victoria went on. “Just not as often.” Then she added, “After all, I want to keep in touch with the Mars project. It was my ticket to the Chicago job, you know.”
He just sat there, dumbfounded.
Dinner was awkward. Thrasher realized he was being dumped, and it shook him. Victoria seemed oblivious to his discomfort: she chattered away about finding an apartment in Chicago and keeping her contacts with her old compatriots in Albuquerque.
“I’ll pop down to Las Cruces to cover your rocket launches, of course. Global’s already got a guy at the Cape; he’ll cover your launches from there.”
Thrasher nodded and mumbled.
Almost automatically, he took Victoria back to the bar for an after-dinner drink. The piano player went through old-time romantic tunes; Gershwin, Porter, the Beatles. Thrasher sipped morosely at his ginger beer.
At last Victoria finished her cognac and smiled at him. “Well, aren’t you going to invite me to your room?”
Thrasher nodded.
Dimpling into an impish smile, she said, “After all, I don’t have anyplace else to stay tonight.”
He got his feet and numbly led her back to his suite. Once he had closed the door behind them, Victoria flung her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately.
“Let’s have one for old times’ sake,” she whispered.
He made a sardonic little smile. “Let’s win one for the Gipper.”
The sex was very good, very dexterous. Once they started removing each other’s clothes, Thrasher forgot about everything except the here and now.
But in the morning, when he woke up, Victoria was gone. She had left a note on the coffeetable in the sitting room:
Thanks for the memories, Art. Have fun with the blonde.
Thrasher felt totally stunned. So this is what it’s like to be dumped, he thought. Hell, not even my second wife pushed me out the window like this.
4
HOUSTON
“Are you all right?” Linda asked.
Thrasher was sitting glumly at his desk, staring blankly at the Houston skyline.
“I’m fine,” he said automatically.
“You’ve been in a funk since you got back from Tucson,” said Linda. She looked concerned. “What’s bothering you?”
“Nothing,” he said, with a shake of his head. He sat up straighter in his desk chair. Lord, if it’s this obvious to Linda, I must be moping around like a lovesick teenager. And he realized that he had been doing just that.
“I’m okay,” he said. “What’s on the agenda for this morning?”
“Conference call at ten with Mr. Margulis and the astr
onauts—”
“Sounds like a pop musical group,” Thrasher quipped. “Margulis and the Astronauts.”
Linda broke into a grin. But she said, “This is about the launch schedule.”
“Right.”
“Lunch with Mr. Ornsteen.”
“Break out the antacids,” Thrasher grumbled.
“And Mr. Reynolds wants to talk with you as soon as possible.”
“Get him on the line, will you?”
“Right.” Linda started to leave the office, but turned back to him. “Don’t forget the board of directors meeting next week.”
He nodded. Sampson’s going to attend, he knew. Should be interesting. Maybe I ought to wear some body armor.
Jessie Margulis was clearly upset. Thrasher had plugged the phone call into the big flat display screen on his office wall, and now it showed the engineer and the three astronauts in split-screen views. Polk looked nettled, Velazquez worried, McQuinn puzzled. But Jessie—bland, steady Jessie—looked as if he was ready to tear his hair out.
He was actually twisting his goatee in his fingers. “It’s going to mess up our schedule, Art! It’s going to set everything back by six months, maybe more.”
“Just because of a postponement—”
Bill Polk broke in, “This isn’t just a postponement, Art. It’s a roadblock.”
“Reed,” Thrasher muttered.
“Reed,” Polk agreed.
“It’s not Reed,” Margulis countered. “The safety office has nothing to do with this.”
Polk smiled tolerantly. “The hell it isn’t Reed. This has Reed’s fingerprints all over it.”
Thrasher made a placating gesture with his hands. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. ILS has bumped our launch of the first segment of Mars One because they got a priority demand to use the launch pad.”
“From the Air Force, not NASA,” Margulis pointed out.
Polk said, “There’s three working pads at the Cape, plus two more at Patrick Air Force Base, next door.”
“So you think that Reed’s put up the Air Force to push us off the launch pad.”
“Off the launch schedule!” Margulis yelped. “We’ve lost our slot in the schedule and we’re supposed to go to the end of the line.”
“And that’ll set us back how long?”
“Six months, maybe more.”
Thrasher drummed his fingers on his desktop.
Polk said, “This is the way Reed operates. I’ve seen him stick knives in people’s backs for as long as I can remember.”
“Who’s in charge of scheduling the launches?” Thrasher asked.
“Mr. Yamagata, the ILS chief,” said Velazquez.
“But he can’t turn down a priority request from the Air Force,” Margulis pointed out. “This is supposed to be some top-security national defense launch.”
“And it pops up all of a sudden and pushes us off the launch schedule,” Thrasher muttered.
“Something to do with the mess in Iran, I think,” Velazquez said.
Thrasher realized he was drumming his fingers again. He balled his hands into fists and put them on his lap.
Polk said, “We can’t argue against it. National defense and all that.”
“When do they want to launch?”
“Six weeks from now,” Margulis answered.
“We were scheduled for five weeks from now, weren’t we?”
“Yeah, but they’ll need a couple of weeks to put their bird on the pad and check it out. Same as we do, Art. You set up the bird and check everything out on the pad: payload, propulsion, guidance . . . takes a couple of weeks.”
Thrasher asked, “Could we move up our launch date? Get our bird off before the Air Force moves in?”
Margulis gaped at him. “Move our launch date up? We’d have to push everything ahead by at least three weeks.”
“So we launch in two weeks instead of five. Can’t we do that?”
For several heartbeats none of them said a word. Then they all tried to talk at once.
Margulis outshouted the three astronauts. “You can’t push a rocket launch like that! This isn’t like playing with Tinkertoys, Art. There’s a whole list of things that have got to be done, in their proper sequence, and—”
“From what you told me, Jessie, you need to have the bird on the pad for two weeks. Right?”
“Right.”
“So we put the bird on the pad two weeks from now, spend the next two weeks doing whatever you guys have to do, and then fire her off. What’s wrong with that?”
“We’re not ready—”
“Get ready. Work overtime. Night shifts, if you have to.”
Polk made a tight little grin. “After all, it’s not a manned launch.”
“Crewed,” McQuinn murmured.
“I mean,” Polk said, “even if the sucker blows up on the pad, nobody’s going to get hurt.”
Except Sid Ornsteen, Thrasher said to himself. He’ll see fifty million bucks go up in smoke and have a stroke.
“The launch is insured, isn’t it?” Velazquez asked.
Thrasher nodded. By Dave Kahn’s outfit, he recalled silently.
Aloud, he told them, “I don’t want to blow up the bird. It’ll be carrying the first piece of Mars One into orbit.”
“But pushing the schedule ahead like this,” Margulis muttered. “I don’t know . . .”
Thrasher grinned at him. “I know we’ll be taking a risk, Jess. But what the hell choice do we have?”
Silently, he added, So I’m doing a high-wire act without a net. No risk, no gain. It’s like meeting a good-looking woman and maneuvering her into bed. If you don’t take the chance, you’ll never get to where you want to go.
Polk had an expectant smile on his face. Velazquez and McQuinn looked like spectators at a prizefight, wondering who was going to win. Margulis was frowning and mumbling to himself.
“Tell you what, Jess,” said Thrasher. “You think it over for twenty-four hours. If you tell me it’s impossible, I’ll drop the idea. But it’s got to be really impossible. Not just difficult. Not just troublesome. I don’t care if you and your whole team lose sleep or have to spend the next few weekends away from their families. Unless it’s utterly, totally, irreversibly impossible, I want that bird launched!”
Margulis nodded, a little sullenly, Thrasher thought. But he nodded. The three astronauts looked relieved.
“Somebody’s going to have to get ILS to agree to the hurry-up,” said Polk.
“I’ll talk to Yamagata,” Thrasher said.
Polk’s grin grew into a crooked smile. “Reed’ll shit a brick when he finds out about this.”
“Good,” said Thrasher. “Let him split his guts.”
5
KENNEDY SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
“Do you have any idea of how many pieces of heaven and earth I had to move to accommodate you?” asked Saito Yamagata.
Thrasher grinned at him. “I appreciate it. And I’m sure that Santa Claus has marked you down on his good list.”
The two men were in the visitor’s stands, watching the big Delta IV rocket standing tall and gleaming bright against the cloudy Florida sky. It was early morning, and a cool breeze was blowing in off the ocean. Still Thrasher felt as if he were standing fully dressed in a steam bath.
A small cluster of other onlookers were there, most of them corporate employees or invited VIPs. Each of them had been carefully vetted both by the NASA visitor screening team and Mars, Inc.’s own security group. Sid Ornsteen stood at Thrasher’s other side, looking more nervous than usual.
Thrasher half expected Hamilton Reed to show up, maybe with a monkey wrench in the form of some new piece of red tape to hinder the launch. I’ve got to find a way around that sneaking sonofabitch, he thought.
Reed had refused to okay launching components of the Mars spacecraft’s nuclear propulsion system. Not in so many words. Not in writing. But he was holding up approval for launching the nuclear system, claiming that t
he Nuclear Regulatory Commission was reviewing the application.
There’s got to be some other place where we can launch the nuke, Thrasher said to himself, instead of here at the Cape. Someplace where Reed can’t strangle us. Maybe the European launch center down in South America.
Jessie Margulis was in the control center with the rest of the launch crew.
“One minute and counting,” came the announcement over the loudspeakers.
Standing in the row in front of Thrasher, Bill Polk turned to face him and gave a thumbs-up signal. “Lookin’ good,” he said.
Thrasher nodded. It had been a hectic few weeks, moving the launch date up, rushing to get everything done in half the usual time.
But there she was, ready to go. The Delta IV’s upper stage bulged noticeably where the first segment of the Mars One spacecraft was stowed. The launch crew had joked about the baby bump. Some called it a pregnant bird.
“Thirty seconds and counting.”
Leaning toward Yamagata, Thrasher said in a lowered voice, “Seriously, we all appreciate everything you’ve done to help us. I want to thank you.”
His face impassive, Yamagata said, “Hold the congratulations until the bird leaves its nest.”
“Fifteen seconds and counting.”
Thrasher realized his tongue was clamped between his teeth. He consciously pulled it away. No sense biting it off, he told himself. Still, every nerve in his body tensed as the countdown proceeded.
“Five . . . four . . . three . . .”
The Delta IV’s main engines roared to life. Smoke and steam billowed from the launch pad. The noise rattled Thrasher down to his soul.
Then the strap-on solid rocket boosters ignited and the huge vehicle lumbered off the launch stand and began to climb, stately as a skyscraper lifting to the heavens, then faster, faster, torrents of sound washing over the visitors, bathing them in the power and beauty of the accelerating rocket.
The little crowd roared as the Delta IV dwindled to a bright star flashing against the cloudy sky.
“Go, baby, go!” someone yelled.
It exploded. Thrasher flinched as the fast-rising star blossomed into a flash of flame. The crowd gasped.
