by Ben Bova
He was standing on the elevated walkway that covered three of the old warehouse’s walls, one arm around Linda’s waist, the other leaning on the steel railing, trying to listen to the music while scanning the noisy, bustling crowd. The whole Mars, Inc. work force was down there. They deserve a party, Thrasher told himself. They’ve earned it.
“Just about everyone we invited has showed up,” Linda said, smiling happily.
“Jenghis Kahn’s not here,” said Thrasher. “Neither is his brother Charlie.” But he spotted Gregory Sampson’s imposing, white-bearded figure in the midst of the swirling, babbling, laughing crowd. And made a mental note to get to him.
The astronauts and mission scientists were in one corner of the area, besieged by reporters and camera people, including Vicki Zane. Funny how she can look sexy in a business suit, Thrasher thought. Jessie Margulis stood between Polk and Judine McQuinn. They all looked happy, relaxed. The champagne helps, Thrasher thought.
He saw Reynold R. Reynolds holding forth in front of one of the bars, looking important as he lectured a pair of congressmen. Patti Fabrizio stood out in the crowd, tall, slim, regal in a sweeping deep blue dress that Linda estimated must have cost “a mint.”
And there was Will Portal, almost ignored off in a corner, nursing what looked like a cola. Will looked up and made eye contact with Thrasher, grinned boyishly and raised his glass.
“Art.”
Thrasher turned and saw Sid Ornsteen walking along the steel gridwork toward him, looking his usual dour self. Letting go of Linda’s waist and straightening up, Thrasher put on a smile.
“Hello, Sid. Join the party.”
Ignoring the invitation, Ornsteen nodded a hello toward Linda, then said, “I just got off the phone with David Kahn’s people. I think we’ve got the licensing agreement with Tridinamics worked out.”
Thrasher said, “Good. Nice work. Now join the party.”
“They told me Mr. Kahn’s very happy with the arrangement.”
“That means we’re getting screwed,” Thrasher said.
Ornsteen’s face fell and Thrasher immediately regretted his wisecrack. “I was only kidding, Sid. I’m sure you did a good job.”
“I think it’s an equitable agreement,” Ornsteen said, a little stiffly.
“Fine. I’ll read it tomorr—no, not tomorrow. Tomorrow’s the launch. I’ll read it the day after tomorrow.”
Ornsteen nodded.
“Now go down and join the party. Enjoy yourself. You’ve earned it.”
The treasurer smiled tentatively. “Thanks. I think I will.”
As Ornsteed headed for the stairs, Linda asked, “And when do we join the party?”
Scanning the crowd for a sight of Sampson’s tall, heavy frame, Thrasher said, “Right now.”
It took a bit of maneuvering to thread his way through the crowd to get to Sampson. Everyone wanted to have a drink with Thrasher, to have his or her picture taken with the man behind the Mars mission.
At last, though, he stood beside the big, bushy-bearded Sampson, who was chatting genially with Elton Schroeder and Bart Rutherford. Thrasher joined the chit-chat for a while, then said, “People, will you pardon us for a couple of minutes? There’s something I have to talk to Greg about, in private.”
Sampson looked surprised, but he shrugged and said, “Let me take another run at the bar, and then I’ll be all yours, Artie.”
Thrasher crooked a finger at one of the waitresses carrying a tray of drinks. “Mohammed doesn’t have to go to the mountain,” he said jovially.
Sampson grabbed a plastic flute of champagne and Thrasher turned to Linda. “Excuse us for a couple of minutes, honey.”
Linda looked uncertain, but she said, “Sure.”
Grasping the bigger man’s elbow, Thrasher led Sampson through the crowd to a door in the side wall. He opened it and gestured Sampson into the small storeroom. Shelving covered the walls, mostly empty. Thrasher closed the door and cut off the laughing, clinking, chattering sounds of the party.
Sampson cocked a brow. “What’s this all about, Artie?”
“How tall are you, Greg?”
“Six-two. Why?”
“And you weigh . . . ?”
“Oh, around two-ten, two fifteen.”
Thrasher nodded, as if satisfied. “I’m five-eight, one hundred and sixty pounds, give or take a couple.”
“So you’re a middleweight and I’m a heavyweight. What’s that got to do with anything?”
Thrasher said, “I hear you’ve sold your shares of Tridinamics.”
Looking puzzled at the sudden change of subject, Sampson replied, “Yeah. I’m not that interested in the entertainment business.”
“To Dave Kahn.”
Sampson’s expression turned wary. “So what?”
“Want to sell your half of the profits from our Mars mission broadcasts?”
Sampson shrugged. “Depends on the price. What’re you offering?”
“This!” And Thrasher slammed a punch into Sampson’s ample midsection with every ounce of power in his body.
The air exploded out of Sampson’s lungs, he dropped the champagne flute as he doubled over and sank gasping to the floor.
“That’s for Vince Egan, you sonofabitch,” Thrasher said, standing over him.
Sampson clutched his middle and groaned. Thrasher left him there and rejoined the party.
13
SPACEPORT AMERICA
Promptly at ten the next morning, Bill Polk led the seven Mars-bound crew in their space suits from the spaceport’s administration building to the two white SUVs waiting to drive them to the launch pad. Thrasher looked through the building’s sweeping window to the launch rocket, standing out on the pad nearly two miles away.
The launch party in Portales had been a huge success. While Polk and the rest of the crew had left promptly at eight p.m. and flown to Las Cruces, most of the guests partied on until well past midnight. The news media people were among the last to leave, although Will Portal surprised Thrasher by dancing with every available woman—including Linda—until the band at last stopped playing.
Thrasher had called an ambulance for Greg Sampson, instructing the EMT leader to come in quietly and take the still-groaning Sampson to the city hospital. Then he phoned the hospital’s chief administrator, a man who had gladly accepted Thrasher’s charitable donations over the past several years, and asked that Sampson be kept sedated and under observation for the night.
Satisfied that Sampson would be out of the picture for the critical pre-launch hours, Thrasher flew to Las Cruces with Linda and caught a couple of hours of sleep before the launch.
Now he stood in the visitors’ auditorium of the spaceport’s stylish main building and looked across the bright New Mexico morning at the launch rocket silhouetted against the cloudless turquoise sky, with the spaceplane and its rakishly swept-back wings perched atop it.
Maybe we shouldn’t have put all seven of the crew on the one flight, he thought. Maybe we should have split it into two flights, for safety’s sake. Twice the expense, but what the hell.
Then he realized that if one of the launches failed, the whole mission would immediately be scrubbed. So send them all together on the one bird, he told himself. Go for broke.
Linda stood beside him, somehow calming his jitters without saying a word. He knew that Jessie Margulis was over in the control center, pacing among the launch team seated at their consoles during the final minutes of countdown.
Will Portal stepped up on Thrasher’s other side. “Good luck, Art,” he breathed.
Thrasher nodded without taking his eyes off the rocket. The umbilicals that delivered electrical power and topped off the liquid oxygen propellant dropped away from its side and the service tower began to roll back.
“Launch vehicle on internal power,” the mission communicator announced. Thrasher knew that more than a hundred people were crowding along the building’s wide windows. He had even spotted Hamilton Reed in
the crowd, with R Cubed at his side: the Wicked Witch of the East and the humbug Wizard of Oz.
“T minus one minute.”
And counting, Thrasher added silently. His mouth was dry. It took an effort to swallow. He could hear his pulse thumping in his ears. Linda squeezed his hand; he turned and smiled at her.
“This is it,” he said.
“T minus thirty seconds.”
Thrasher closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. But in his mind’s eye he saw the Delta IV explosion all over again. Not now, he begged a deity he didn’t really believe in. Not this time. He remembered a line his father had once quoted at him, There are no atheists in foxholes. Yeah. Or at launch countdowns, either.
“ . . . five . . . four . . . three . . .”
A flash of light blossomed at the rocket’s base. Thrasher knew it was the ignition of the main engines, but he flinched at the sight nonetheless.
“ . . . ignition.”
The solid rocket boosters strapped to the launcher lit up with a blast of flame and the ship seemed to leap off the launch pad.
“Lift-off!” said the communicator, excited despite himself. “We have lift-off!”
The bird rose into the sky as if it belonged there, not on Earth. Now the bellow of the rocket engines reached them, rattling the windows, shaking their souls. Thrasher’s eyes blurred with tears.
Wiping his eyes, he followed the ship’s glowing arc across the heavens, gulped when the explosive bolts separated the solid boosters, held his breath until another flare of light indicated the bird’s first stage had separated and the spaceplane was on its own.
The spaceplane was nothing but a pinpoint of light now, racing across the flawless blue morning sky.
“They’re on their way,” Linda said.
Bill Polk’s disembodied voice filled the auditorium. “All systems are green. We’ll rendezvous with Mars One in seventy-eight minutes.”
The crowd began to edge away from the windows. Thrasher knew that there were three technicians aboard Mars One, waiting for the Mars-bound crew to arrive. The technicians would leave on the same spaceplane that carried Polk and his team into orbit.
Professor Winninger came up, smiling broadly. “This is a great day!” he said. “A wonderful day!”
Kristin Anders, at the professor’s side, didn’t look as elated. Her husband’s on his way to Mars, Thrasher knew, and she’s worried for him.
Before he could think of anything to say to Kristin, Linda took both of her hands in her own. “He’s going to be fine,” she said. “He’s going to bring you home some Martian souvenirs.”
Kristin smiled weakly.
Somehow Thrasher felt almost disembodied, as if his real self were on the spaceplane with the astronauts. Almost like an automaton, he walked with Linda and the rest of the crowd to the tiers of chairs overlooking the command center, eying the giant wall screens that showed the spaceplane’s trajectory as it headed toward Mars One. Absently, he took a seat in the front row, his entire attention focused on what was going on inside the spaceplane.
Bill Polk’s calm, confident voice kept up a play-by-play report as the spaceplane achieved its orbit and began its approach to Mars One. Like a mating dance, Thrasher thought. They’re going to link up with the spacecraft, mate with her, place the seven astronauts and scientists inside her, bring her to life.
And he realized that he was glued to Earth, a spectator, nothing more.
But that doesn’t really matter, he told himself. They’re going to Mars, and I’m the guy who’d made it happen.
14
ON TO MARS
July Fourth. Arthur D. Thrasher was giving America a birthday present. The seven astronauts and scientists of the Mars-bound crew had spent the past two days checking out their spacecraft as it swung around the Earth. This evening they would break orbit and start the long voyage to Mars.
Thrasher stood in the VR chamber at the University of Arizona’s campus in Tucson, walking through the Mars One vehicle. Bill Polk was beside him, leading this tour through the spacecraft.
“And this is the command center,” Polk was saying, as they stepped into the compact compartment. It had three high-backed seats, surrounded by a bewildering array of control consoles and display screens. Thrasher heard the soft hum of electrical power and the faint beeps of the sensors, saw the lights on the consoles. A single window looked out on Earth, big and blue, flecked with purest white clouds.
Thrasher nodded approvingly as Polk explained the functions of each console. Tapping the round screen in the center of the panels, he said, “This screen can show us what the telescopes outside are looking at. Right now the main ‘scope is focused on Mars.”
He pecked at the keyboard below the screen and Thrasher saw a red dot appear in the middle of the screen. With a knowing grin, Polk said, “That image is going to get a lot bigger over the next few months.”
Thrasher knew that his company had sold one million, seventeen thousand and forty-two VR sets, mostly to private homes and amusement arcades. Plus another couple of thousand they had given away to news media outlets and schools. Chicken feed, he thought. In another couple of months we’ll be selling millions of sets. Through Tridinamcs.
The money would be welcome, but it was secondary. The main thing is we’re going to Mars. We start tonight.
It had been a publicity coup to time the departure for Mars on the Fourth of July. Strictly a happy coincidence, Thrasher insisted to every interviewer. The mathematics of the launch window simply worked out this way. Inwardly, he grinned. Yeah, the math worked out that way after we spent a few months massaging the numbers.
So now he had an audience of one million, seventeen thousand and forty-two private homes and arcades. Plus every major television network and news cable station and a handful of schools. People were home for the holiday, walking through the Mars One spacecraft with him, courtesy of virtual reality technology. By the time the team gets to Mars, millions of VR users will be right there alongside them.
At last Polk had walked back to the ship’s galley, where the tour had started.
“That’s it,” he said. “This is where we’ll be living and working for the next six months. At the end of that time, we’ll be in orbit around Mars, ready to go down to the surface and start exploring.”
A preselected quartet of news commentators started asking questions picked from viewers who had tweeted them in. Polk patiently answered them, while Thrasher zoned them out of his conscious awareness.
“I’m finished,” he said to the technicians running the VR rig. His vision of the Mars One craft disappeared. The world went blank for a moment, then he lifted the visor of his helmet and saw the bare walls of the virtual reality studio.
And Linda, standing beside him, taking off her VR helmet and shaking her long dark hair free of it.
Kristin Anders came up to them.
“It worked fine, Kris,” Thrasher said. “Just fine.”
Linda said, “You’ll be able to be with Alan every day.”
She made a rueful little smile. “It’s not quite the same.”
“But it’s better than nothing,” said Linda.
Her smile turned a little more cheerful. “Yes, you’re right.”
Thrasher pulled off his nubby sensor gloves as Linda and Kristin talked together. At last he and Linda left the VR studio, heading for the car that would take them to the Tucson airport and the plane that would fly them back to Houston.
“We’ll be home before they leave,” Linda said as they climbed into the black sedan.
“Better be,” said Thrasher. “I don’t want to miss the big moment.”
“Why did you turn down the requests for interviews this evening?”
Pointing skyward, he answered, “It’s their show, not mine. Not now. It’s all theirs.”
Linda gave him a disbelieving stare.
Waggling a hand, “I’m tired. I want to get home. I’ve had enough publicity.”
She nodded. “Sure you have.”
By nine p.m. they were back in their apartment, sitting in the living room, watching the big wall TV screen.
Curled beside him on the big, deep sofa, Linda suggested, “We could go across to the office and get into the VR rigs.”
Thrasher shook his head. “No. Polk and his team have enough on their hands without running another show for tourists.”
“You’re not a tourist.”
“Yes I am,” he said. “Just a tourist now.”
Linda studied his face. “Art, you look like you’re about to cry.”
He tried to smile. “Yeah.”
“You’re sad?”
“I want to be with them.”
“Of course you do.”
“I know it’s silly, but I want to be there, myself, heading for Mars.”
She touched his cheek. “If it weren’t for you, none of them would be going to Mars. Isn’t that enough?”
“No. But I guess it’ll have to do.”
They lapsed into silence and watched the TV commentator nattering away the final few minutes before Mars One headed out.
Thrasher glanced at his wristwatch. “Come on,” he said, getting up from the sofa. “We can see them from the balcony.”
Rising to her feet beside him, Linda asked, “Are you sure . . .”
He nodded sharply. “If we can’t, I’m going to fire half a dozen astronomers.”
They walked through his den and out onto the balcony.
“It’s dark!” Linda exclaimed.
He made a little grin. “I worked with the city fathers. They agreed to turn off the damned lights for an hour.”
“Without telling me? When did you do that?”
“Last week, while you were getting your medical checkup.”
In the shadows he couldn’t make out the expression on her face. But her tone was clear: “And here I thought you couldn’t do anything without me.”
He shrugged. “Just little things.”
Linda looked up into the night sky. Plenty of stars twinkled above them.
