At five Pacific, Conn woke Ginny and Ryan. She and Ryan hustled to get everything they needed into the lander, while Ginny hurried to eat breakfast. By five twenty Conn and Ryan were in the lander, ready to begin the separation sequence as soon as the window opened. Conn pecked at an MRE. Ryan wasn’t hungry. Conn didn’t push him to eat, given his previous vomiting episodes.
A window for separation and descent would be open in fifteen minutes. Logistics had run the numbers and it would be possible for Conn and Ryan to separate then, but Conn nixed it. She was in as much of a hurry as anyone else, but she was also responsible for Ryan’s safety. They had sped up some steps, there was no profit in hurrying even more. They went over their separation and descent checklists while waiting for the six o’clock window.
The feeds reported that at five forty Scott Daniels and Izzy De Maria had moved into their lander. Conn felt a pang of icy fear: if Daniels and De Maria separated at six, same as Conn and Ryan, Daniels and De Maria would reach the surface first. Given the Dyna-Tech culture of “safety first, science second, there is no third,” Conn had a hard time believing they would rush to the surface. But she couldn’t tell until it did or didn’t happen.
Six o’clock approached and the astronauts had dry run through their checklists. It was about time for the real thing.
Ginny reoriented the Adventure so that the lander—Yars’ Revenge—was between it and the planet. She cheated and started a little early.
The lander was tethered to the Adventure by a series of latches and an airtight passageway between the two spacecraft. Ryan vented the passageway of its air and detached it from the lander’s hatch.
Next he opened the latches and goosed the attitude jets just enough to separate from the Adventure. Inertia carried it alongside the larger spacecraft.
Ginny fired the Adventure’s engines and accelerated, which lifted her into a higher orbit and away from Yars’ Revenge.
When she had cleared a minimum safe distance, Ryan reoriented the lander so its descent engines pointed “up,” toward the Adventure. He fired them, causing the two spacecraft to separate even further.
Separation complete, Ryan reoriented the spacecraft again so that its engines were in front of it. He fired them, slowing the spacecraft. It dipped down toward the Martian atmosphere.
He rotated the spacecraft again so that its engines were behind it. The nose of the craft bobbed down to an angle against the atmosphere recommended by the computer, and Ryan fired the engines again. The spacecraft began a long, slow arc downward.
Within ten minutes, Conn and Ryan could see the glow of superheated plasma outside as Yars’ Revenge descended through the thin Martian atmosphere.
Conn had re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in SSEVs, the reusable flyers that were the means of transport from the Dyna-Tech space station to Earth, a dozen times. A stab of fear cut through her as the plasma glow bloomed outside a capsule-shaped, barely-maneuverable projectile. An SSEV gave her the illusion of control. Here they were simply dropping out of the sky.
Communication was impossible for two minutes as the plasma burned, but once on the other side Conn and Ryan heard the news that the Dyna-Tech lander, the Harmonia, had begun its own separation sequence.
“Doesn’t that mean they started twenty minutes ago?” Ryan asked. Communications took almost ten minutes to get from Mars to Earth, and then another ten from Earth to Mars. Conn said nothing.
Clear of the plasma burn, Conn switched on the outside cameras. The main screen in the lander filled with the rust-colored, alien landscape of the planet beneath them. “Twenty-five thousand meters,” she said. Ryan scanned the monitor for recognizable landmarks.
Conn watched another monitor. Its telemetry data would tell her when to deploy the lander’s parachutes.
At the moment, it was telling her something else. “We’re overshooting,” she said.
“I was just going to say the same thing,” Ryan said. He swore loudly.
“I’m going to fire the engines,” Conn said. She swiped her finger across the screen. Attitude jets spurted, tipping the capsule so that the engines were pointing into their fall. She swiped again, toggled two switches, then stabbed a button. The engines roared, and the two astronauts were crushed downward in their seats.
When she’d landed on the moon, she’d been standing. She wasn’t sure she could sit still through this whole ordeal.
Conn burned the engines for six seconds. They let gravity do most of the work at this stage, but despite appearances, the lander was more than just a lump falling out of the sky. Gyroscopes and gimbals spun and adjusted, and attitude jets fired, keeping the capsule from tumbling end over end. When the six seconds were up, telemetry looked better, if not perfect. She adjusted their attitude again. Back on track. “Twenty thousand meters.”
“Yars’, Adventure. Ops reports that D-T begins its descent in . . . two minutes from right now. You guys have a good head start.” Conn was glad to hear it, but she almost wished she hadn’t fired the engines to slow them. It was going to be close.
Both astronauts had memorized the outside landmarks on the way down, at least to the extent possible without a comprehensive survey. Ryan went a full minute without recognizing anything.
“Where are we?” he snapped. “This isn’t the way down.”
“We’re definitely going down,” Conn said, as Martian wind buffeted the spacecraft and rattled her teeth. She immediately wished she hadn’t tried to lighten Ryan up.
“Damn it, Conn, we have to be off track! Do you recognize anything?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “And I’m watching the telemetry very closely. Everything is fine. Fifteen thousand meters.”
“Screw that,” Ryan said, turning to face her. He leaned in so his face was closer to her and said, “you don’t have any idea where we are, either!”
“Look, there,” Conn said quickly, pointing at the big screen. “That’s the mountaintop that tells us we’re about 2:20 to touchdown. We just passed over it. Did you see it?”
Ryan wasn’t listening. He held his head in his hands and let out a scream of frustration. “Adventure! Do you see us? Where are we?”
“We’re right on track, Ryan—”
“I see you looking good from here, Ryan,” Ginny said.
“What is wrong with you two?” Ryan then seemed to pick out a recognizable landmark. He got quiet, and sank down into his seat some.
“Ten thousand meters.”
Conn couldn’t spend time worrying about Ryan’s state of mind. It was time to throw open the parachutes. “Ryan, I’m about to deploy chutes,” she said. “You’ll want to brace yourself.” Ryan said nothing.
Conn released the drogue chutes, small chutes that helped the main parachutes open. Soon after, the main parachutes deployed. They were pressed into their straps.
“God—can’t you be more careful?” Ryan wheezed. After a time, they were no longer being pressed, and Conn started to feel the more pedestrian tug of Martian gravity for the first time.
“Two thousand meters. Ryan,” Conn said, gently, “we’re being blown around a bit. I’m going to burn the engines for about a second and a half, get us fully back on track. OK?” Ryan didn’t reply. His face was red as a stoplight, and his breathing was heavy.
Conn fired the attitude jets to orient the capsule the correct way, then fired the descent engines. After a second and a half, she liked their telemetry a thousand times better. “Fifteen hundred meters,” she said.
“After that last one, you’re looking great,” Ginny radioed. “I found the D-T frequency and I’m monitoring them. They’re not even in their comm blackout yet. You’re way ahead of them.”
The Martian landscape rose up to meet them. Conn was scheduled to fire the engines in spurts four times once they descended past 365 meters.
“Do you recognize where we are?” Conn asked.
“Yes,” Ryan snapped.
“Five hundred meters.”
A wind ya
nked them to the right. They were too low to course-correct. Their landing would be off.
“Three hundred fifty meters. Get ready, I’m burning the engines in three . . . two . . . one . . . now.” She burned for a second and a half, rested for two, burned, rested, burned, rested, burned. “And . . . 150 meters. Brace for impact.”
They slammed to the ground. The spacecraft kept itself upright, groaning with the effort. Conn heard them skidding across the Martian surface. There was a bang as they hit a boulder. Their teeth rattled. Attitude jets spurting in every direction, they came to a halt. They had already gotten farther than Cole Heist had.
Conn felt a wave of relief, and had it in mind to give Ryan a hug. They had to get unbuckled, first. Ryan clawed and tore at his straps, frustration making him growl. Conn quietly undid herself, and asked Ryan if he needed a hand.
“No, I don’t need a hand,” he spat. “How about a thank you?”
Conn didn’t know what to thank him for. Each engine burst, each attitude jet firing, each maneuver she had made for them on the way down had been Ryan’s responsibility.
SIXTEEN
"Here We Are"
July 5, 2039
The world, or at least the eight hundred million people who followed the expedition on the feeds, breathed a collective sigh of relief. The second crewed landing on Mars was already a success in a critical way.
Dyna-Tech was twenty minutes from touchdown. Time for the astronauts to pull on their O2 tanks and gloves and disembark. Conn’s first visit to the moon had been made in a full-blown pressure suit, with the associated limited range of movement. She and Ryan would wear T-fields out onto the surface of Mars, for which Conn was grateful. The oxygen tanks, some twenty-seven kilograms (sixty pounds) on Earth, weighed ten (twenty-two) on Mars. And other than the O2 tanks and the associated bubble they wore over their heads, they would be unladen and free to move however they wanted.
Finally unstrapped, Ryan held his head in his hands, in a grip that looked like he had an awful headache. Conn asked if he was OK and reached out to touch his shoulder, but he sprang up and swatted her away. “It’s too much,” he mumbled as he found his gloves and pulled them on. “Too much.”
“You should put your O2 tanks on first,” Conn said. For them to be adjusted and opened up, it was better to use an ungloved hand. Ryan just glared at her. Gloves on, he made to cross the capsule to where his O2 tanks hung, but he hadn’t accounted for the gravity. He sprang into the air, kicked his feet twice, then came down arms first in a heap.
“We trained for this,” Conn told him. “Remember the pool.” They had simulated Mars gravity in the pool at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston. Ryan didn’t reply. He grappled his way to his tanks, then threw them over his shoulders and shrugged into the straps. He wrenched the breathing bubble over his head and attached it to his collar. He touched the pendant he wore which controlled his pressure field, and it came to life, surrounding him.
“Ready to depressurize?” he asked. Conn nodded and turned on her own pressure field. She had a hand on the valve she would turn to vent the air out of the capsule, but Ryan had yet to turn his O2 on.
“Are you all set?” she radioed. “O2 on?” Ryan fumbled at the controls of the air tanks, and finally ripped off one of his gloves. He turned the air on, and replaced his glove. Now he looked scared—anxious, no doubt thinking about the historic steps he was about to take.
Conn was grateful that everything they said wasn’t being plastered all over the feeds, the way her every word and sound were when she went to the moon the first time. Flight ops could hear them, but that was it.
“I’m worried about your state of mind,” she said to Ryan as she spun the valve wheel. Air began to hiss out of the lander. “You need to get yourself together. Almost a billion people will be watching and listening.”
“You don’t think I know how many people will be watching and listening?”
“If I were you I would hurry up and appreciate it,” Conn said. “Go out there angry and frustrated and believe me, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Ryan said. “You don’t want me going out there first. You want to be first.”
“That’s so not it,” Conn said, laughing. She had all the firsts she would ever want.
“Bullshit,” Ryan spat. The air continued to drain from the lander.
“Look, you guys,” Julie Bloom said. She was the current voice of flight operations. “The feeds want us to turn you over to them so they can hear. They’re already watching. Can you please get it together? You’re going to embarrass yourselves.”
The air pressure drew equal to the pressure outside. “She’s right,” Conn said. “A billion people are watching. Let’s open the hatch, and you walk out onto the surface of Mars.” Ryan didn’t argue, or say anything. “That’s all you have to do. That’s all anyone’s going to remember. Then we explore for a while, wait for Dyna-Tech to build its portal, and then we’re out of here. Back home.”
“You know what would be a riot?” Ryan asked. “You and me fight long enough for Dyna-Tech to land and then they’re the first ones on Mars.”
“Yeah,” Conn said, cautiously. “We don’t want that. Right?”
“You don’t,” Ryan said.
“What do you mean I don’t?”
“No. You want to be first. You drove Harold Barnes out of the project so you could take his place, so you could be right here right now.” His face was red. “You weren’t the first person on the moon, you know. First woman. After, what, sixteen guys? That’s got to rankle you.”
“Ryan, let’s get you out onto the surface. OK?”
“You weren’t even the first interstellar traveler. It was Luan Yongpo who got the spacecraft and the computer to work. It was all him. Wasn’t it?”
“Ryan. I’m going to open the hatch. The feeds are going to want to listen in. Can you cut it out? Please?” She stutter-stepped to the hatch, and cranked open the airtight seal. She watched Ryan. She leaned down on the lever and pushed, and the door came open. She pushed it out of the hatchway. She looked at Ryan.
“Go ahead,” he said, waving at the hatch.
Conn let out a frustrated noise. “Ryan, for God’s sake, just go! It’s Mars! You’re here! You made it!”
Ryan stepped gingerly toward Conn and the hatch. Soon he faced the opening, Conn out of his way to the right. She gestured for him to walk outside.
He grabbed her wrist and yanked. She tumbled onto the floor, knocking Ryan over. Her O2 tanks rode up her back and hit her in the back of the head.
Ryan sprang up. He skittered on his feet but kept his balance. He walked toward the hatch.
Conn reached out with her leg and tripped him. She expected him to fall forward through the open hatch, but he caught himself. He turned and tried to fall on top of Conn. Conn wriggled out of the way, then got on top of him, holding him down and saying “Ryan! Stop! I’m sorry!”
Ryan pushed her off of him and away.
She shuffled a couple backward steps, then tripped on the lip of the hatch. She fell backwards out of the lander, and after a drop of about half a meter, landed on her rear end. On the surface of Mars.
Operations abruptly turned on the audio for the feeds, hopeful they would catch the first words said on the Martian surface. They did:
Conn scrambled upright and said, “You asshole.”
She looked down. She was standing on Mars.
She looked up. Ryan was in the hatchway. He turned and shuffled off deeper into the lander.
She growled and let Ryan pout. She spun and looked all the way around.
Everything was the color of rust. Wind-smoothed boulders and crags surrounded the lander. The wind skittered pebbles across the ground in front of her. Dust swirled in the air. She heard the ticking of grit bouncing off her breathing bubble.
She felt a chill. She knew the temperature outside her pressure field was seventy-five below, Celsius,
but looking at it, it could have been a windy autumn day on Earth.
In the distance to the north, mountains made partly of precious ice. To the east a great, burnt-orange mountain range sprawled off into the distance. As planned, she had landed them in a valley between the two. She estimated they were no more than a kilometer away from their initial target.
The moon had given her the sense of something that had never been disturbed. Mars looked to her like something that had seen life at some far distant time in the past, and patiently awaited its return.
“Here we are,” she said.
“Conn, we’re going to go ahead and call that the first words said on the surface,” Julie said. Conn tried to figure out what she meant. When she realized, her face got hot and she swore—under her breath this time.
She looked up. Off in the near distance, she saw the Dyna-Tech capsule falling through the pinkish sky, three gaily colored parachutes above it. It looked like it was falling too fast for safety.
“Burn your engines,” she muttered. “Come on. Burn. Burn!”
It did, but too late. It sank fast through the sky, and crashed to the ground with a sickening noise like twisting metal.
SEVENTEEN
Repairs
July 5, 2039
The crash finally prompted Ryan to exit the lander. Together, he and Conn rushed toward the scene, a kilometer or more away. Though running was much easier on the body in thirty-seven percent Earth gravity, they were both winded when they arrived.
The structure of the lander, its shape, was intact. The bottom was folded in on itself from the impact. The hatchway had become misshapen, and the door hadn’t, so that there were gaps around the door. Conn dearly hoped Daniels and Izzy had been wearing pressure fields and O2 tanks.
Before she could act, Conn heard a voice calling her over her radio. “Conn Garrow…Conn Garrow, are you out there?”
“We’re right outside, Scott,” she told Daniels. “Are you two OK? We can help, but I think you have to try and open the hatch from your side.”
Girl on Mars Page 9
