First Landing

by Robert Zubrin

  “Roger. Here we go.”

  Again the vehicle flew. Again it crashed. Again it flew. Again it crashed. Townsend’s attempts went on for hours, but on every try the simulated ERV lifted off the landing stage, rose a few feet, and started to lean to one side. Each time, the colonel compensated with the joystick, but always too much or too little, so that within seconds the simulated flight came to an end in a fiery crash on the virtual Martian sands.

  Finally, the pilot had to admit defeat. “It’s no good. Without the CPU, the ERV is completely unflyable. We wouldn’t get three hundred feet. Dammit!”

  Rebecca stared out the window into the slightly moonlit Martian night. “We were home free. How could this have happened?”

  The question was rhetorical, but Townsend took it literally.

  “I spoke to Mission Control. They reexamined the vehicle onboard health monitoring records. That board has been out since January 28, 2012.”

  Gwen looked up sharply. “The night the propellant was drained!”

  “That’s right. It must have been Holloway. He didn’t just drain the ERV’s propellant, he burnt out its CPU as well.”

  But the analytical part of McGee’s mind was intrigued. “Could he have pre-programmed those other equipment failures as well? The rover breakdown, the air-exchanger problem?”

  Townsend shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “I doubt it,” Rebecca said sourly, looking at Gwen, but fell quiet when the colonel gave her a warning look.

  He drew a deep breath. “There’s no use denying that this is a massive setback, but don’t give up hope. I’m going to confer with the flight control systems experts at JSC tonight. Maybe there’s some way we can patch the flight control CPU from the Beagle into the ERV, and make it halfway flyable.”

  Gwen was unconvinced. “I don’t think that’ll work, Colonel. It’s a totally different type of system.”

  Stripped so quickly even of this forlorn hope, Townsend could only mumble. “Well, maybe something can be done.”

  Rebecca turned away to stare out the window again. “Still stranded.”

  The colonel looked at the rest of the devastated crew. As an astronaut, he didn’t have a clue what to do, but as an officer, he did. I can’t let morale collapse again. I need to show some confidence. He cleared his throat. “I think it’s time the four of you turned in. I’ll do the telecon with JSC alone. Maybe I’ll have good news for you in the morning.”

  The crew looked bleakly at each other. Having nothing to say, they obeyed.

  Rebecca, however, could not sleep. Through the middle of the night, thoughts kept running through her head. We were so close. How could the burnt-out CPU have gone undetected for so long? True, Mission Control had been otherwise occupied, and no one had bothered much with the ERV as long as it had no fuel . . . but still. Whoever had sabotaged that board could also have doctored the ERV health-monitoring records. An inside job. That meant the sabotage could have been performed much more recently, most likely in the several days since the snow had been obtained. It could have been done at Mission Control . . . or here. Why couldn’t Townsend see that?

  Then she heard it. In the compartment next to hers, someone was getting up. Gwen.

  Rebecca put her ear to the wall and very distinctly heard the sound of a Marsuit being zipped on. She’s going EVA in the middle of the night. Another sabotage attempt! Should I tell the colonel? No. I’ll follow her and catch her in the act.

  Rebecca waited for Gwen to exit her compartment and then quickly and silently slipped into her own Marsuit. The flight mechanic was moving quietly herself, but Rebecca could track the sounds of her motions into the central solar flare shelter that served as the corridor to the lower deck, and then down below to the airlock. As soon as she was certain Gwen had gone downstairs, Rebecca slipped out of her stateroom and headed toward the central shelter as well.

  On the way, she passed the control room and was surprised to note that Colonel Townsend was still in his chair, apparently conferring with Mason and some JSC engineers via telescreen. She managed to get past the open door without his detecting her and climbed down the stairs, closing the flare-shelter door behind her. Once she reached the lower deck and saw that Gwen had already transited out the outer airlock, she opened the inner lock door, cycled the system herself, and followed the flight mechanic out into the Martian night.

  As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Rebecca could see by the dim light of Phobos Gwen’s lithe figure heading toward the ERV. She smiled grimly to herself. Gotcha, you little redneck saboteur. This time you don’t get away with it.

  Keeping low to avoid being spotted, the doctor followed Gwen across the dark landscape, and managed to position herself not twenty meters away as her opponent cycled the Retriever’s airlock and entered the vehicle. She calculated her next move. The lock is in the ERV’s lower deck. She’ll go for the upper deck. That’s where all the controls are. That’s where she’ll do . . . whatever it is she is planning. Rebecca counted to sixty, then followed Gwen into the return ship.

  Entering the ERV’s pressurized lower deck, Rebecca eased off her helmet. As she crept past one of the work-benches, she spotted a crowbar. The sight of this object, both tool and weapon, suddenly made her realize how dangerous her situation was. The saboteur had already proven murderous intent, more than once. If it’s Gwen, she could attack me right here, then make up some story. Townsend would believe anything. Rebecca felt a flash of fear, but strengthened her resolve. She picked up the crowbar, took a deep breath to prepare herself for the confrontation, and boldly climbed the ladder to the control deck.

  As she entered the upper deck, she saw Gwen slouching by the control panel. The major had already removed her helmet and was bent intently over the controls. Hearing a creak of metal, a whisper of footsteps, she turned to see Rebecca advancing toward her holding a crowbar.

  “This time you’re caught!” Rebecca’s face was grim.

  Gwen was startled, amazed. “You!” she shouted, and leapt at Rebecca. The mechanic moved fast; before the doctor could swing her crowbar in the close quarters, Gwen snatched the weapon out of her hand and tossed it to the far side of the room. Reacting quickly, however, Rebecca seized the instant to deliver a well-styled karate kick, catching the flight mechanic in the side.

  Taken by surprise, Gwen stumbled back across the room, moving oddly in the low gravity. “Where’d you learn to kick like that—ballet school?”

  Rebecca smiled proudly. “Five years of karate.”

  Gwen’s eyes were dark with hate. “Really! Well now I’ll show you what you can learn in eighteen years in the Smokies.”

  As Rebecca maintained her elaborate karate stance, the miner’s daughter doubled her fists and advanced like a tomboy street fighter. When Gwen got close, Rebecca lashed out with another fancy kick, but Gwen took a quick step back, parried the kick after its force was gone, and then stepped in to punch the doctor straight in the face.

  Rebecca recoiled in pain, putting her hands up to protect herself, to little effect. As the flight mechanic advanced, pummeling Rebecca with her fists, the doctor, with her veneer of karate training gone, could only offer feeble, disorganized resistance.

  She still had her sharp tongue, though. “So, you don’t mind killing people with your bare hands . . . instead of little staged accidents?” she taunted, but the answering blow from Gwen told her that words would be of little use.

  Rebecca tried to retreat across the cabin, interposing chairs and other objects, but it was futile. Again Gwen hit her, and again. Then she stumbled against the ERV control panel. Help, I need help! Where’s the alarm button? There! She hit the alarm, then another blow sent her stumbling across the cabin.

  Again the fists came toward her. All Rebecca’s technique was gone, but she still had a fierce will to live. Knowing only that she had to stop those fists, she launched herself at Gwen like a brawler and grappled the other woman’s hands—but in seconds, Gwen wrestled her to the floor. />
  The flight mechanic’s face was wild. “I’ve had all I’m gonna take from you!”

  Rebecca struggled, but could not get loose. “You stupid animal! How can you just kill us all? Why are you doing this?”

  Then she saw it on the floor next to her—the crowbar. Somehow, she wrenched a hand free and grabbed the tool, giving Gwen a solid whack on the side of her shoulder. Her opponent winced, but countered, slamming Rebecca’s arm down so hard that she lost her grip. The crowbar skittered away across the floor, clanging down the hatch, and taking with it Rebecca’s last hope.

  “That does it!” Gwen shouted. Her eyes crazed with rage, the mechanic reached down for her knife.

  Pinned to the deck, Rebecca watched with horror as Gwen ripped the weapon from her boot, then swung it down toward Rebecca’s chest with lethal intent. At the last instant, Rebecca summoned adrenaline strength and caught Gwen’s arm. She struggled, using both hands to hold off the blade.

  Gwen was forced to use one hand to hold Rebecca down, while she strained to push the knife with the other. In the low Martian gravity she had to poise herself in a kind of push-up position in order to shift her full weight forward to keep Rebecca’s shoulders pinned to the deck with her left hand while trying to force down the knife with her right. But even with only one hand, the tough flight mechanic was much stronger than the doctor. The knife relentlessly moved toward Rebecca’s chest.

  There were only inches left to go. Rebecca screamed. “Gwen, stop! Stop! Help! Help!”

  Rebecca struggled desperately, but it was hopeless. The point touched her Marsuit, pressing into the fabric. In seconds, it would all be over. But still, the doctor wouldn’t give up. She writhed this way and that, kicking wildly, to little effect. As her last gasp, she finally got her knee up, and using all the force she had, hit Gwen in the lower abdomen. She couldn’t strike hard, but the effect was dramatic.

  Suddenly, Gwen recoiled, looking gray and sick. She dropped the knife and scrambled backward, clutching her belly protectively, eyes wide with disbelief and fear. Her eyes rolled, and her mouth opened. Gwen paid no attention to the knife as Rebecca grabbed for it. Instead, she stumbled over to the other end of the ERV cabin and started to vomit uncontrollably. Then she sank to the deck and cradled her abdomen, eyes wide, protecting her . . . womb?

  Rebecca stared at Gwen with shock and the dawning of understanding. The flight mechanic had been keeping to herself a great deal, had often looked drained, perhaps ill. Gwen heaved again, but no vomit came out.

  Through a haze of adrenaline, the doctor’s clinical training kicked in. “You have morning sickness! You’re pregnant.”

  Gwen coughed. “That’s right, bitch.”

  “Who? When?”

  “Luke.” Gwen coughed again. “That bastard. In the rover.”

  Just then Colonel Townsend charged into the ERV upper-deck cabin, finally responding to the alarm and the shouts through the intercom. He surveyed the two disheveled women and the wreckage strewing the cabin. “What’s going on here?”

  Rebecca brushed back her brunette hair with one hand in a vain effort to appear presentable. “I heard Gwen slip out of the Hab in the middle of the night. I thought she was planning sabotage, so I followed her. When I got here, she attacked me.”

  The colonel turned to the mechanic, his expression pale and stony. “Major, what’s your explanation?”

  Rebecca preempted Gwen’s explanation. “Colonel, she’s pregnant.”

  “She’s what?”

  “Pregnant,” Rebecca repeated flatly. Gwen looked away, not denying the fact. “It explains a lot lately.”

  Luke and McGee arrived in the cabin, hastily suited after the alarm. Townsend regarded the new arrivals sardonically. “Welcome aboard, gentlemen. I’ve just been informed that my flight engineer is pregnant. Would the lucky father please be good enough to reveal his identity?”

  Gwen huddled against the metal wall as Luke sheepishly held up his hand. McGee seemed astonished.

  Townsend stared the geologist in the face. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.” His sarcasm was searing. “Was it fun?”

  Rebecca interrupted the dressing-down. “Colonel, this is a very serious situation.”

  Townsend turned to face her. “You think I don’t know that?” he said excitedly. “As if we don’t have enough problems around here, now we have crew members brawling in the middle of the night, or banging each other—and a baby on the way, to boot.”

  Rebecca forced herself to be calm and authoritative. “You don’t understand. A child born on Mars can never return to Earth. The difference in gravity would almost surely cause developmental differences in bone thickness, blood volume, heart rate, immune functioning.”

  Gwen took alarm. “The hell you say.”

  Rebecca’s voice was clinical. “This fetus has to be aborted at once.”

  “Aborted!” Gwen made a halfhearted effort to launch herself at Rebecca, but was blocked by McGee. “Baby killer! I’ll never let you do that to my child, you liberal trash, you godless murderer!”

  Townsend slammed his fist down on the control panel. “Cut it out!” Somehow, Gwen recovered enough composure to silence herself.

  The colonel waited a few seconds for order. “I just found out from JSC that there’s a spare computer card for the ERV right here on Mars, in the second ERV that was landed down in the Valles Marineris. Its CPU circuits check out green. Apparently, Holloway didn’t bother to wreck it. We’ve got only one chance to get it before the dust storms return. We need to leave as soon as possible.”

  A mission into the Valles Marineris! The shaken and confused crew waited expectantly for Townsend’s orders.

  “I’m going. I’ll take Professor McGee, since his personnel profile shows mountaineering experience. We’ll be back within five days and settle this matter then, when you’ve all cooled off.” He swept his gaze from Rebecca to Gwen, huddled on the floor, to the geologist standing stunned near the stairway to the lower deck. “I must say that I’m disappointed in all of you. All of you. In the meantime, Major Llewellyn will sleep here in the ERV, and reside here except for duty watches. Dr. Sherman will stay in the Beagle. Luke, I want you to make sure that these two stay far away from each other.”

  “Yes, sir,” Luke replied.

  “All right, then, let’s break up and get some sleep. The professor and I have a long hard trip ahead of us, starting at 0600 tomorrow morning.”

  NASA JSC, HOUSTON

  OCT 29, 2012 22:30 CST

  Tex Logan stared at the Mission Control records, examining the files over and over.

  Logically, the data made no sense. There had been too many critical failures to explain away as “accidents.” There had to be a saboteur, someone who continued to act long after Craig Holloway had been booted out of the picture. The old NASA veteran knew that some of the crew members suspected a wrecker in their midst, but that couldn’t be true, since every single person on Mars had been targeted in apparent acts of sabotage. And even if that were not the case, a saboteur among the crew was just impossible. Tex knew them personally, every one. They all had rough edges, it was true. But they were all great people, real troopers. None of them could possibly betray the team.

  And now there was this new mystery, the burnt-out computer card in the Retriever. Mission Control logs said the card had been destroyed months ago, on the same night the propellant had been dumped. But Tex was sure he’d checked the ERV flight control CPU the following morning, and the health-monitoring system had shown green.

  After the fuel loss, Colonel Townsend had deactivated the reportage system for the ERV flight systems health-monitoring unit, since that data was no longer of any interest. Here at JSC, Tex had had no opportunity to check it for the past nine months. But no matter what anyone said about his memory, the old NASA veteran was sure of it. On the morning of January 29, that subsystem had read green. But now, according to the data logs, it had shown red.

  Something very fish
y was going on around here.

  It was 10:30 P.M., and given the late hour, the only other leading member of Mission Control still present was Rollins. The others had gone home or to the bars; to their families, their hobbies, their so-called lives. Tex and Rollins had been the butt of considerable ribbing about their workaholism. According to the others, they could be found at Mission Control at all hours, because they had no “lives.” Well, Tex had a life, and it was Mission Control.

  He had joined at the age of twenty-one in December 1968, one week before the Apollo 8 launch. He’d been here when that crew first rounded the Moon at Christmas and read Genesis aloud to a marveling world. He’d been here the following July and cheered madly with the rest when Armstrong and Aldrin had first walked on the Moon. He’d been part of the team that helped save Apollo 13. He’d been there for Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, and the first launch of the shuttle Columbia in 1981. He was at Mission Control when Sally Ride flew in 1983; he’d been there to cry out in agony when Challenger exploded in 1986. He’d been there when Hubble was launched, and when it was fixed—all three times. He’d worked the Mir missions and the Space Station missions, and the launch of the Retriever, the backup ERV, and the Beagle.

  And he would be there when the Beagle’s crew returned, dammit! Because they would. He would see to it. No matter what it took.

  Al Rollins was a much younger man, who had been posted at Mission Control for only a decade. But despite his youth, Rollins was old-school too. He would have fit in during Apollo.

  Let the rest of the bunch enjoy their so-called lives. Al Rollins and Tex Logan had more than lives: They had a mission.

  He called Rollins over. “Al, somebody has been screwing with this computer.”

  “Why do you say that?” Rollins liked the old guy, loved his colorful stories of the early NASA. In a way, Tex Logan was his model; but Tex’s proclivity for conspiracy theories was legendary.