Martian Valkyrie

by G. David Nordley

  I needed to break the news gently.

  At least, if their landing was successful, it would minimize the perturbations of our extremely complex and interrelated mission plan.

  But on the other hand, our expedition would not be first, and I would not be the first man to set foot on Mars. Once more, I reviewed our mission plans, the Martian weather, where our landers were and so on. There was still a chance, if the lead Norwegian ship didn’t touch down on the first pass. That, I thought, would depend on Per Nordli’s skill and nerve.

  Not exactly, as things turned out.

  The simultaneous deep space restart of our nuclear rockets was ten times as complicated as the chemical midcourse maneuvers. But we did it without incident, silencing many critics. One after another, our ships turned their damping drums and their reactors went critical. A trickle of hydrogen flowed into the particle beds to cool them and run the turbines. The computers did a million cross checks. Deviations were within nominal limits.

  We passed the orbit of Deimos— twenty thousand kilometers out—in good form. We would meet the moon itself, with our supply depot, after our main engine burn at periapsis put us in an elliptical transfer orbit. At Deimos, we’d do a short circularization burn with our chemical auxiliary propulsion and “land” on the tiny moon to take on propellant before sending landers to Mars. That was the plan.

  Our Phobos camera sent a picture of our four ships with the volcanoes of Tharsis in the background; it was a spectacular picture. I felt a moment of triumph. Our majestic convoy, the symbol of Earth’s pioneering spirit, was headed in to mankind’s new planet!

  This impressive close formation approach, however, had been another “discretionary” part of the mission plan. Originally, the ships were going to come in at one day intervals. But that would have meant another day before I reached the surface.

  My moment of triumph was shortlived. Hours before, the Amundsen had made a final course correction— an expected maneuver given the chancy aerobraking ahead of it. But the trajectory report indicated that the Amundsen had actually done a major burn toward the planet! The burn had cut hours off its trajectory, but it would hit the Martian atmosphere at a slightly higher velocity, just an hour before our burn. So the Norwegians weren’t racing? I thought about negative lift and velocity-squared aerodynamic effects and could guess that something besides the race might have led them to this suicidal dive into the Martian atmosphere, but it wasn’t very convincing. No, I decided, Per Nordli was taking this risk so Halvorsen wouldn’t lose his diabolical little race.

  ¡Madre diablo! Given the way he managed all the other news about the expedition, couldn’t Dr. Worthing have held that announcement back from us until we were safely in orbit?

  But no. As we approached our eight-hundred kilometer periapsis, the Amundsen went past us, rounding the rim of the planet. We watched its entry on images from the robot telescopes on Deimos—a long trail of fire covering almost a quarter the circumference of the planet, which then winked out.

  Had the Amundsen crashed? Had it burned up before reaching the surface? I both feared, and—forgive me— hoped that might be the case.

  But no. We saw the landing pictures taken by an automated camera on the Norwegian supply ships and relayed from Earth just as we prepared for our insertion burn. Then there was that historic video from the cabin of the Amundsen.

  When Halvorsen has a point to make, he doesn’t go half way. Despite his talk of Per being better with piloting and trajectories, the first person to land on Mars with the Norwegian and United Nations flags on the side of her ship was Dr. Ingrid Bodil Karinsdatter.

  “May their malfunctioning toilets line their vacuum tents with their own dung,” Mustaffa muttered. But other than that, there were just stony looks all through operations.

  We were demoralized. We’d lost a race we hadn’t known we were in until it was too late, and we’d lost it to someone we regarded as a bimbo. If you are European, perhaps you say, “So what? That’s a juvenile attitude. Professional astronauts shouldn’t be fazed by that.” But most of my men were not from your culture; their pride had been wounded and their values insulted—and we still had a great many very complex things to do.

  Spacecraft had to be prepared for thrust after four months of no gravity. Countless things were stowed. Chairs were moved to the aft bulkhead. A myriad of checklists were executed. Finally, the count reached zero.

  On the Zhang-Diaz a gentle thrumming vibration took hold, and a sense of down returned. There were disturbing clatters and crashes as things forgotten fell aft, but the thrust ramped up smoothly. The other ships kept pace and formation. I crossed my fingers and hoped the blow to our morale would have no effect, at least not now.

  Perhaps it would have made no difference, but perhaps if the crew of the Leonov had been mentally and emotionally sharp, they would not have missed some things and a water bulb would not have fallen from the sill of a viewport and broken on a relay box that should have been closed, soaking its contents as thrust increased.

  And the pilot would not have switched circuits to their backups in exactly the wrong order, causing the Leonov’s lander to separate when deceleration built up to half a gee.

  And the lander would not have continued forward to strike the decelerating Calypso.

  And the suddenly lighter Leonov would not have moved backward relative to the Clarke and into the exhaust of the latter’s nuclear rocket.

  And the radiation level monitors aboard the Leonov would not have shut down their reactor before they had braked into the proper orbit, forcing them to complete the burn with what remained of their maneuvering fuel.

  And the Clarke’s computer would not have shut down its engine to avoid endangering the Leonov when it found the latter spacecraft in its exhaust cone.

  Caramba! Perhaps something like that would have all happened anyway, as Halvorsen anticipated, because of the complexity. But I think it was because we were on edge, unhappy at losing the “race,” and already dreaming about getting home.

  The Calypso’s chemical propellant tanks ruptured, but they somehow retained attitude control by gimbaling the main engine, avoided hitting the Martian atmosphere, and limped into a high equatorial orbit. Mustaffa cut our burn short manually to follow them and, using prodigious quantities of our maneuvering fuel, we managed a rendezvous.

  Pierre Ramon and Mustaffa went out in vacuum suits, and managed to bring the six survivors over before their leaking hull finally gave way.

  So the rescue was an epic of astronautics, but it left the Calypso ruined and the Zhang-Diaz in a too-large eccentric orbit with almost no chemical propellant left. Rendezvous with the supply depot was now impossible.

  The Clarke’s maneuver had been stopped short of capture and they now had to take the emergency return trajectory back to Earth. The name of the ship’s commander was Roger Moses—another irony.

  But the Leonov did manage its rendezvous with Deimos and the supply depot-one out of four. By the time Mission Control and my staff had straightened everything out, we had lost two days of schedule time, two spacecraft, and three landers, including both wheeled surface vehicles.

  And where was Per Nordli? He was ten hours behind in the other Norwegian ship, the Fram. Halvorsen had told me they had their own redundancies and were not relying on us. I had not thought that through, but now it made sense that the better pilot come in second, in case a rescue was needed. He demonstrated his mastery by declining a one-shot landing; he skipped out into a long elliptical orbit that matched ours, and offered assistance. But Mission Control determined that there was nothing his little ship could do.

  Meanwhile, some of the Leonov’s crew reported exceeding their radiation limits and the doctors recommended that they go to the surface or return now They voted to stay.

  Perhaps we should have aborted the mission entirely, but I railed against this. To come so far…

  No! I was a whirlwind of orders. We would fight back from disaster. We launch
ed all our automated probes, balloons, and teleoperated rovers at once. They sped toward Mars well ahead of us, and data started streaming in as we passed the atmosphere-grazing periapsis of our orbit. Good news started to displace bad news.

  Dr. Worthing sent out press releases that emphasized the redundancy built into the mission and the superior technical equipment in the United Nations landers versus those of the Norwegians. We expressed great sadness for our casualties, but dedicated the remaining mission to them.

  I took risks. The Zhang-Diaz was trapped in an unusable orbit, but had a usable lander. My staff came up with a brilliant improvisation: The Zhang-Diaz lander could do an atmosphere-assisted orbit change to rendezvous with Deimos and the Leonov.

  Once at Deimos, the lander could take on fuel and that would at least give us the option of a landing. Since there was no point any longer in pretending that such maneuvers were too uncertain for manned spacecraft, Mission Control quietly acceded—just in time for us to follow our fleet of drones into the atmosphere on that first periapsis.

  Within twenty-four hours, we had a fueled lander ready to go. But Mission Control still objected to a one-lander surface mission in such circumstances.

  So I went up to the political level to postpone a negative decision—no need to admit failure yet. A good face was put on everything as I worked furiously to get myself and some volunteers down to the planet. Of course, there were some minor drawbacks that never made the press releases. All that superior equipment was not on that one lander. The one that survived had an aircraft instead of a rover; so once we got there, we would have to walk where we couldn’t fly.

  Thirty hours after her landing, we watched Dr. Karinsdatter step off an Amundsen landing pad to gather samples. This told us that the Norwegian expedition had succeeded to that point, and put the final nail in the coffin of any remaining hopes for us—no one from our expedition would be the first person to set foot on Mars. A woman, instead, would join Gagarin and Armstrong in the history of space. My country once had such a woman as its presidente. It was not a successful experiment.

  Boris Yakov, the Leonov’s commander salvaged some glory for us. He went outside and left a footprint on Deimos.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Karinsdatter roamed around her camp on the Martian surface in a pedal-powered, wirewheeled tricycle, collected multitudinous samples, released some mini-balloons and transmitted a fair amount of surface data to that radio telescope north of Oslo herself.

  Never mind the dollars per bit; our army of robot floaters and crawlers got far more data in absolute terms, and that is still coming in. We won in what counted.

  We learned that one of the Norwegian supply landers had fallen into a sinkhole, and we made much of this with offers of assistance to Halvorsen. The answer came back that he thought no assistance was needed, but that we should talk directly to the people on the scene.

  Finally, two days after we braked into orbit I declared the remaining lander ready for the descent. We were determined to make one quick strike for the goal. The public, the politicians, and ourselves would feel like failures if we didn’t.

  Five of us went down instead of the seven the mission plan called for. We said we had to do this to leave room for the Norwegians whom we might have to rescue—but in reality, four of the seven Leonov personnel with ground training asked to not be included in a one-lander mission. Despite their radiation exposure levels, they felt the protection of the Martian atmosphere was not worth the additional risk. Mission control did not dispute this.

  At last I called Dr. Karinsdatter on the surface. Her base computer answered and the view from its comm camera filled my screen. It was a late Martian summer evening and I could see rolling hills and the dusty red horizon through their transparent inflated dome. For a moment, all the problems went away. This was why I had come.

  “Commander Lopez?” Her voice came from off camera.

  “Sí. I was admiring the view. We are going to descend in six hours, at local dawn. Is there anything you need?”

  She walked up to the comset with a Martian rock in her hands. She had apparently just come in from sample gathering. Her hair, matted and disheveled, was still tied behind her head in a pony tail that fell to her shoulder blades and she was wearing only the thin body stocking the Norwegians used under their tight vacuum suits. It both covered her completely and revealed everything—and she seemed utterly oblivious to what effect this might have on us.

  Mixed feelings ran through me, and eventually resolved themselves into anger. I saw a brief frown of puzzlement go across her face as she reacted to my expression.

  “Cover yourself,” I demanded. “This circuit is open to my crew, who have not seen a woman in over six months.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “That is not my fault.” There was little soundproofing in our ships and I heard the men’s reaction. “Perhaps they would enjoy seeing me then, Commander. But very well.” The picture disappeared and I lost both Venus and Mars in one instant of self-inflicted pain.

  “At any rate, Commander,” she continued, voice only, “this is an independent and self-sufficient expedition and we will get along better if you do not try to give me orders.”

  I ignored this challenge and went to business. “We will come in from the west, from over Kasei Vallis.”

  “Ja,” she answered, seriously. “Beware—the ground here is crusty with cavities beneath. We had one supply lander tilt because of that. You may wish to land south of our position— we have traversed the area several times and the ground … it is mostly solid there.”

  I was irritated and unthinking. “We will make our own evaluation. If you continue to insist that you are in no need of our assistance, then I see little point in continuing contacts which would only be uncomfortable for both of us, I assure you.”

  She ignored the taunt. “Per and the Fram will be arriving in four hours— you have the vector?”

  “Yes.” Halvorsen and Worthing had buried some hatchets, and information was flowing now. “Give Per Nordli my regards … and my sympathies.”

  “Commander, I regret any affront I’ve given you. Please, when you land, we will welcome you. I take no offense. Is this understood?”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, warning bells began to ring. Best not burn bridges. Christ allowed such a woman to wash His feet, I remembered belatedly. But that woman was repentant.

  “Very well.” In the end, Thy will, not mine, be done. “I shall do what I need to do to bring back as many of us and as much data as I can. Rest assured of that… Dr. Karinsdatter. Lopez out.”

  “Lykke til, commander. Luck to you.”

  We would have to do all our ground exploring by foot, I thought. I did not want to take Norwegian leftovers, so we would have to traverse new ground. That way we would gain unique data and perhaps, hope against hope, find something which they had not found.

  I put it that way to Mission Control. They told me no, land where the people on the ground say.

  Did they take me for a child? I appealed to the political level again and got my way. I had not yet learned humility. That came five hours later.

  We came in north of the Norwegians, in an uncratered area that was free of their tracks. Our computer gave us a textbook, fuzzy-logic-smooth landing, and I congratulated myself for not having to touch anything. It was not so bad, I told myself. Eriksson had been five hundred years ahead of Columbus, Amundsen a month ahead of Scott, but we had closed the gap to a couple of days.

  Then a patch of thin crust gave in under the weight of our plus-zed land-ing leg and our fuel-laden lander tilted, stopping sharply when the unsupported leg hit the permafrost under the dust crust. A strut bent upward under redline stress, snapped, and impaled an oxidizer tank with its upper ten centimeters. Red fuming nitric acid flowed onto the already well-oxidized Martian soil and reacted in a way that produced more smoke than heat. But it looked spectacular.

  Without pressure in the tank to hold it against the lander cabin’s Ear
th-normal atmosphere, the lander floor bent down, and cracked. Our escaping air vibrated the sides of the crack like a monster oboe reed as it escaped, to be replaced by nitric acid fumes. It sounded, felt, and smelled like hell.

  With the fortune of prudent and well-rehearsed planning, we were wearing our spacesuits so we were not immediately harmed. I blew the lock doors and led the crew out onto the red soil away from the lander, in case there was an explosion. But no, the oxidizer just ran out and fizzled as we watched.

  “Enrico,” Mustaffa said later, in an unfortunate attempt to lighten my mood, “at least this makes you the first man to set foot on Mars.”

  The spacecraft shuddered and settled again. We watched helplessly as our two-man aircraft pulled free of its upper latch and pivoted down, breaking its back when its nose slammed into the ocher soil.

  My look must have been as cold as the permafrost outside.

  “My apologies, commander,” he said quickly, after he saw my face.

  Unfortunately, since the lander used the oxidizer to fuel its generator and the battery leads were cut when the floor buckled, our power was gone. Our communications plan did not call for spacesuit-to-orbit communications. The plan was to relay communications through the lander, which had triply redundant transmitters. In the impossible event of a triple failure on one lander, the backup was to relay through another lander—the one that was now on its way back to Earth in the Clarke.

  Per Nordli’s Fram came in overhead as we milled around our stricken lander. We could actually hear the ticks of his sonic boom—reminding us that we were on a planet with some atmosphere. We waved up at him like mad monkeys, but he was gone in a moment, over our horizon, far ahead of his shock wave. So now there were three manned spacecraft on Mars. Even in those circumstances, I took time to wonder at what we had been allowed to accomplish, and give thanks.

  It was into the early afternoon before we gave up on trying to revive any of the lander’s systems. We had suit battery power for about three more hours. We could walk in the suits without power for a little longer than that, straining against the air pressure in a kind of penguin shuffle. Our air could last a little longer than the batteries but not much.