Girl on Mars

by Jack McDonald Burnett

  Once the waiter had their breakfast orders, Stoll looked up and down the aisle to make sure no one was within earshot. At his insistence, they'd placed their Wear and fones into a small bag that interrupted their signal, to foil wireless surveillance. He leaned forward to speak. “As I told you, I’m an entrepreneur. How I make my money isn’t important. You can Google me—you probably already have.” Conn shrugged, and sipped her coffee. She hadn’t. “I’ve been saving up for something for twenty years, and now I can make it work—if I have the right people.”

  “Well, like I said, I’m starting a new job this week, but I can recommend some names, if you let me know what you’re looking for.”

  “I’m looking for you, Conn. You’re the one who can make this all work. At first, I thought I needed an astronaut.”

  For what marketing campaign? Conn thought.

  “I can hire an astronaut, and I will if need be, but what I really need is a pioneer. I don’t want somebody who’s floated around the space station a few times. I want someone with real experience. My list starts and ends with you.”

  “You’re talking about sending someone to space.”

  “I am.”

  “You know, I’m not an astronaut anymore.” It had once been her title at Dyna-Tech. “That’s a lot of training, a lot of long, tough days getting ready, and honestly? I’ve done just about everything there is to do in space.”

  “You haven’t walked on Mars.”

  “I—no, you’re right, I haven’t. I have been to Saturn, though.”

  “But I’m talking about Mars, the place we were supposed to go after the moon. The place people have always talked about colonizing. The place that’s just sitting there since Cole Heist died.”

  Heist hadn’t survived his landing, in 2023. An Indian expedition had to abort and return home in 2026. Half the uncrewed missions to the red planet had failed. To many, Mars seemed cursed.

  “This is what people used to look up in the sky and imagine—going to Mars. Edgar Rice Burroughs didn’t write John Carter of the Moon.

  “It’s the last great frontier. You’ve recently opened the door to other stars and planets. But there’s only one Mars, and nobody can say they were the first to land and walk on it. Yet.”

  Something in what Stoll said tugged at Conn. It was a historic opportunity, if it was genuine. But she declined. “I’m close to starting a new job,” she said, again. “I’m sorry—I really can make some recommendations, even let you know who you should avoid . . .”

  Stoll held up his hands. “Just think about it. You say you’re close to starting something new. Please think of me if anything goes awry.” Conn said that she would.

  Over breakfast Stoll told her about his planned mission to Mars. Three astronauts, two landing, just like Apollo. One of the landers was to be Stoll’s son, Ryan.

  “NASA turned him down—anxiety, of all things,” Stoll said. “But he’s incredibly bright, incredibly hard-working, and in great shape.”

  Conn warned him that of all Ryan’s wonderful qualities, the “hard-working” part was going to be the most important.

  “It’s daunting, just to think about,” she said. “You work so hard, for so long, and it’s worth it, but it doesn’t always seem that way at the time.”

  Stoll did ask Conn to recommend an astronaut to be his command module pilot—the one who would stay in orbit around the red planet while the other two walked on the surface. Conn promised to get him some names by close of business the next day. She wondered if Yongpo would be interested.

  They parted with a handshake.

  # # #

  When Conn returned to her motel room, something was wrong.

  Housekeeping had yet to clean, so everything should have been where and how she left it. And most everything was. But a drawer in the dresser Conn wasn’t using was open a crack. It could have been open all along, but Conn felt sure she would have noticed. She could have bumped it open herself, but she struggled to imagine how she would have done that.

  She inspected the rest of the room thoroughly. The small safe in the closet, which she also wasn’t using, had its door shut almost all the way. She would have sworn it was wide open last time she saw it. Even creepier: she had a pile of laundry she would have to think about tackling today or tomorrow. A pair of her panties were on top of the pile. She was sure the t-shirt she’d slept in, below it, had been on top when she’d left.

  She called the front desk and asked if there was a log of when her door had been unlocked. She was told no, there wasn’t.

  “I get that you want people to think they have privacy here,” Conn said, “but this is kind of important. I need to know if my door was unlocked in the last hour.”

  By pressing, and not taking no for an answer, Conn got the manager on duty to check the logs and to admit her door had been unlocked while she’d been away. She had them erase all keys and program a new one for her. Whoever had broken into her room almost certainly had inside help, but erasing and reprogramming the keys was only prudent.

  That night, as usual, Yongpo’s portal documents were under her pillow. She carried them on her person during the day. Asleep, she thought she heard a click, but it wasn’t enough to rouse her.

  But she sensed movement. In her dream it was Grant. They were in college, and he was out of bed and tiptoeing around his room trying not to wake her. It seemed real enough that she floated to the surface of her sleep, opening her eyes only to see a strange man.

  That woke her, and she managed a strangled “hey!” The man didn’t hesitate, bolting for the door. She tried to extricate herself from her sheets but by the time she did, the man was out the door. Instead of following in a t-shirt and panties, she looked out her window, which had a view of the parking lot from the second floor. She got her fone off her nightstand. Back at the window, a car started and pulled out of its space. Conn zoomed in and took the best pictures she could of it. Soon a man ran up to the passenger side and got in, and the car sped away, Conn photographing all the while. She hoped she got the license plate.

  No one had been at the front desk when the man came in or went out, but between Conn’s eyewitness account, her photos, and the motel’s security camera, the police seemed satisfied that Conn was telling the truth. Someone had broken into her room.

  # # #

  Conn made arrangements to go home to Chicago and stay with her dad for a few days. Yongpo insisted she go to a more expensive hotel with more people and more activity, where she would be safer. She booked one for Wednesday night, but she found a cheap flight to Midway out of San Jose Thursday and asked Yongpo to pay for that instead of more hotel bills. She hated every minute of having to live off him.

  It would be nice to be home. She could live with needing to crash at her dad’s if she was to become a millionaire during her stay.

  She knew it hadn’t taken this long for Skylar Reece and Laura Haskell-Lefebvre to make a decision on the offer. They were just letting her stew. Twice she started to call Skylar, to ask her where they were in their thinking, but both times she thought better of it. Once she started to call her contact at EMSpace to ask them to throw in a job in exchange for less cash, but she thought better of that as well. She was just antsy, when what she needed to be was patient. Something that had always been difficult for her.

  At noon on Wednesday, Skylar Reece’s assistant called and asked if she could schedule a meeting for four thirty that day. Conn said she was free. She discovered that her attorney wasn’t, but his value would be negotiating and drafting the contract, after she nailed down business terms. She decided to go to the meeting alone.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon watching the feeds and dozing. They had let her check in early to her new hotel room. At four PM she made her way to Dyna-Tech. She didn’t expect good news—they could have given her that over the fone. Conn figured they would counteroffer, and she would compromise.

  They made Conn wait in a conference room for ten minutes. Then
Skylar walked in, followed by the same three suits from Monday. No Laura this time.

  Skylar asked whether it was appropriate to proceed without Conn’s attorney, and Conn assured her he wasn’t needed yet.

  “Well, thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” Skylar said. “We’ve considered your offer, and have a counteroffer for you.” No surprise. Conn made sure that was the vibe she gave off.

  “Go ahead.”

  “We accept your terms, other than bringing you on. That’s a deal breaker.”

  SEVEN

  Chicago

  September - October, 2037

  “We’ll pay an extra $1.75 million over the cash you asked for. That’s about five years’ salary plus benefits for someone at our C-level,” Skylar said. She had an energy that betrayed how much fun she was having. “We’ll sign the release you want, and Yongpo can have his job back.” She emphasized his ever-so-slightly.

  Conn knew at least roughly how much each officer at Dyna-Tech made, and to add injury to insult, Skylar’s accounting was very, very conservative. “You realize this makes me want to do business with EMSpace, right?” Conn said.

  “It doesn’t have to. I think we valued your prospective C-level position fairly. We’ve essentially agreed to your terms.”

  “Essentially,” Conn said back.

  “Otherwise, we wish you the best of luck with EMSpace, and regrettably, we’ll see you in court. As soon as tomorrow morning, so we can get an injunction against you.”

  Conn knew her ears were reddening. The idea that Skylar would see it made them even redder. “Give me until morning,” Conn said. “I won’t sell to EMSpace until I get back to you, if it comes to that.”

  “We appreciate the consideration,” Skylar said, and she rose and left.

  Conn sat in the conference room a little while longer. Her stratagem had worked—they’d turned her down for a job but given her everything else she wanted. She should be happy.

  But they wanted to pay her to not work at Dyna-Tech. The company she used to own. That Peo had left her when she died. The thought of Peo brought a mist to her eyes, but she recovered quickly.

  # # #

  Yongpo, at least, understood how she felt.

  “I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be part of that company again,” she told him over the fone. “I didn’t even plan to make that part of the offer. I snuck it in there to give them something I didn’t care about to turn me down on. So why did it turn out to be important to me?” Her breath caught in her throat. She was trying not to cry.

  They spoke the Aphelial language. It was the most secure fone call ever made.

  “I know,” Yongpo said. It was the best thing he could say. “Why don’t you see if EMSpace will bring you on?”

  “They’d have to take both of us,” Conn said. “And I will get an injunction shoved up my rear end come morning. I could get in a lot of trouble for selling to anybody but Dyna-Tech.”

  “But you knew that, and were prepared for it.”

  “I thought I was,” Conn said.

  “I can’t thank you enough for fighting so hard to get me my job back,” Yongpo said. “It makes a big difference, to me, to be able to continue my work on portals.”

  “At least I did something right,” Conn grumbled.

  “You have to do what you think is best, Conn. I’m not worried about your decision—I know it will be the right one.”

  “That makes one of us,” she said, and then sighed. “I'll try. To do the right thing. I promise.”

  In the end, there was no decision she could make but to sell to Dyna-Tech. It got Yongpo his job back, and kept him safe from litigation. And with her half of the cash, she could start her own aerospace company, if she wanted to. Unless the police arrested someone working for Dyna-Tech for the break-in to her room, she would take Laura’s money.

  # # #

  Conn went to Chicago and stayed with her dad while her lawyer worked out the contracts and releases with Dyna-Tech’s lawyers. She found she didn’t feel any better about herself, living off her father, than she had living off Yongpo. At least she had a huge payday coming soon.

  There was a sense of permanence that soaked into Conn as she regarded downtown from the roof of her father’s four-story apartment building. Since she’d left, her life bobbed and jerked like a boat on roiling seas. But it was anchored to her first twenty years, living with her dad in the old apartment. The skyline, the rumble of the subway, the smell of Italian beef and hot dogs from Diggety Dogs across the street, all made the last six and a half years seem ephemeral. Landing on the moon, traveling to Tethys and Mizar and Alcor, all had a dreamlike, unreal quality in her memory. There was a weight to the city, not oppressive, but secure. It felt good to have a home to come back to, someplace to anchor again, even if only for a few days.

  Conn walked through her old neighborhood and high school. She wandered around the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she had obtained her degree in aerospace engineering and where she had met Peo Haskell, the woman who sent her to the moon. It had been three years since Peo died, ravaged by a cancer she had fought off for a decade. It still hurt to think about her being gone.

  She caught up with friends and acquaintances. In some ways, they treated her like the girl or young woman she had been growing up there. In many ways, they didn’t. She was a celebrity, with a world full of admirers. There were hints of jealousy and resentment. Some were overly familiar with her. With as often as strangers treated her the same way, she could call on years of experience and smile pleasantly through it all. In the end, she was home, and the people there were part of that. An indispensable part.

  Back at Dad’s, Conn took the opportunity to research Marcus Stoll. He was a billionaire who had been merely a multimillionaire until the Pelorians showed up. People were not shy about speculating that Stoll had some kind of back-door access to Pelorian tech. The above-board reason for his success was that his companies had won several contracts to build the machinery of interstellar war. It had been a real growth industry until Lanihan took office. Even now, the tech his people pioneered (conspiracy theorists said the tech Stoll bought) had a number of in-demand real-world applications, in space and on Earth. The NSA had been so interested in her—she could only imagine how closely the agency watched Stoll.

  By the weekend, the language of the releases and the purchase agreement were acceptable to both Conn’s attorney and Dyna-Tech’s, except for non-compete clauses Dyna-Tech wanted Conn and Yongpo to agree to. “If they didn’t want me competing with them, they should have hired me,” Conn said. “Get it out. Don’t let them try and rope Yongpo into something like that, either.” Skylar and Laura dug in and insisted they wouldn’t pay that kind of money just to have it used against them.

  It was difficult for Conn to call it a deal breaker—she needed the money. She instructed her lawyer to meet with the Dyna-Tech lawyers as planned Monday afternoon, do his best, but accept whatever was on the table at the end of the meeting. In the end, Skylar and Laura blinked, and removed the clauses. Conn was free to start that aerospace company, if she wanted to.

  Tuesday, both parties signed the documents electronically, and Yongpo started back at Dyna-Tech on Wednesday. That evening he told Conn that Dyna-Tech planned to send the Pelorian fifth-dimensional spacecraft to Sirius A, the brightest star in the sky, some 8.6 light-years distant. They were using the computer to calculate a route that would take two months or less. The point was just to get there and back. The crew would do some rudimentary observation and science, but would start calculating a route home almost as soon as they arrived. Conn was jealous. She wanted to be part of things like that again.

  By Thursday Conn’s payment for the portal technology had been wired to her bank account. She wired half, plus enough to pay for the last few weeks, to Yongpo. Then she booked a flight to Houston to visit Grant.

  # # #

  Grant was a little more alert and engaged. He was going home soon. He wo
uld continue his chemotherapy as an outpatient. Otherwise, he hadn’t improved.

  He was sorry to hear that Dyna-Tech wanted to pay Conn to not work for them, but he seemed excited that she and Yongpo had been so successful. “They could just go to court and say it was theirs. They have a strong argument.”

  “Believe me, they let me know that,” Conn said.

  Grant had stopped accepting visitors, other than his mom and Conn. “I’m trying to fight through chemotherapy for the second time in a year and there’s this parade of people who only come here to say goodbye to me,” he said. “It was depressing.” Conn tried not to think about how much longer Grant might have to live. He was still fighting, and he was still the Grant who had survived on Tethys for much longer than anybody could have expected.

  “You’ll show them,” Conn said, with less conviction than she’d intended. Grant just gave her a weak smile.

  From Houston, she decided to go back to Palo Alto, California, where she had lived before getting arrested for pro-Pelorian activities. She found something near her old place, walking distance from the Stanford University campus. It was on the second floor of a cute building that smelled new inside and was landscaped beautifully. She worried about having college students as neighbors, but not enough to keep looking for a place. By mid-October, she’d settled in.

  Ryan Stoll, Marcus Stoll’s astronaut son, was her first visitor.

  EIGHT

  The Case for Mars

  October, 2037

  Ryan Stoll was twenty-eight, but looked younger. He wasn’t a big man like his father, but he had some dimples that suggested he might be someday. He wore a maroon Stanford hoodie that seemed roomy, as though he had recently shed some bulk. Training for space travel could do that, Conn knew. He had almost golden blond hair, longer than Conn was used to seeing on astronauts. His eyes were either brown or green, she couldn’t tell.