“I’m cold,” Gwen said with a violent shiver.
That, at least, was something he could deal with. McGee quickly found a blanket and covered Gwen’s chest and arms.
“That’s better.” She smiled.
“Extension beginning, rotation complete,” Rebecca recited.
Gwen yelled in pain. McGee’s face went white, but Rebecca was all business. She placed her stethoscope to Gwen’s swollen lower section and listened for a few seconds. A trace of alarm flashed through her eyes. McGee caught it and suddenly his fear changed to terror.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The heartbeat indicates fetal distress. That baby has got to come out fast.” Rebecca hesitated for a bare moment. “Okay, Gwen,” she commanded. “You’ve got to push now. Push!”
Gwen tried her best, but the pain only increased. “It’s no use.”
Rebecca reached into the birth canal and felt around for the problem. “Dammit, there’s some kind of blockage.”
Gwen screamed again, but Rebecca kept probing. “It’s the baby’s leg. It’s caught.” She tried to move the small limb, provoking another horrible scream. The mechanic started to twitch wildly.
“Hold her still, Kevin. Hold her still!”
McGee clenched his teeth and pinned his wife as she screamed again, enough to set even Townsend’s nerves on edge all the way out in the galley. Luke went deathly pale. Each of Gwen’s cries was worse than before. Townsend started to pace. Luke put his hands over his ears.
Again Gwen screamed, telling of pain and agony beyond comprehension.
“I can’t take much more of this,” Townsend muttered.
Then the most horrible scream of all rang out. The commander looked wildly at Luke. “What’s going on? She’s dying!” There was no time to lose. Townsend ran and pushed open the door. Stumbling into the lab he was greeted by a new cry. The cry of a baby.
The colonel stopped, shocked. Rebecca held a blood-covered infant, which was crying lustily. A lot of blood. He looked at Gwen, but the flight engineer was alive. McGee was holding her sweaty hand. As they watched, Rebecca toweled off the baby, put drops in her eyes, then handed her to the new mother.
Gwen smiled at her tiny daughter, then announced to everyone, “Her name is Virginia Dare McGee.”
“After the first English child born in America,” McGee explained. “The first American. She is the first Martian.”
Overcome, Rebecca broke into happy tears.
“Rebecca, you were great,” McGee congratulated. “I guess all that delivery room experience never wears off.”
“This was my first,” the doctor sniffled.
Everyone was astounded.
Rebecca held her head up bravely. “But it won’t be my last. I never saw it before. This is what biology is really all about. It’s about life, and . . .” Rebecca hesitated for a second, glancing over at Gwen holding her baby. The others looked at her expectantly.
“And life’s a miracle!” the biologist concluded triumphantly.
Gwen smiled at her child, and nodded in agreement.
OPHIR PLANUM
JULY 20, 2013, 09:00 MLT
The departing crew stayed for four more days, because they could. But July 20, Space Day, was time to leave.
Final farewells took place on the lower deck of the Beagle. Hands were shaken all around, and Gwen and Rebecca shared an emotional embrace, their differences resolved by much more than words.
Then the Hab’s door closed. As McGee, Gwen, and baby Virginia watched through the windows of the Beagle, the departing trio trooped across the plain to enter the ERV. Townsend was the last to climb the ladder; as he prepared to enter the hatch, he turned to give a thumbs up, which Gwen returned. Then the hatch closed.
McGee, Gwen, and Virginia stood by the window and waited. A few minutes later, with the briefest of warnings, the ERV Retriever lifted off with a roar and disappeared into the Martian sky.
Returning upstairs after the departure, the castaways entered the galley. There on the table was a box, labeled in Rebecca’s handwriting, “For Gwen.”
The mechanic opened the cardboard container. Inside were two toy horses, fine models really, of the Tennessee Walking breed. Gwen could see that they had once been carefully hand painted, but the paint was worn, as if loving hands had petted the horses and played with them, many times over many years.
There was a note in the box. It read “Their names were Misty and Comet . . .”
With a tear in her eye, Gwen pranced the little horses before the fascinated Virginia.
CHAPTER 28
ABOARD THE ERV RETRIEVER
APPROACHING EARTH
MAY 16, 2014 10:30 CST
EXCEPT FOR THE short rations, the journey back to Earth began well enough. However, the ERV had never been designed for a three-hundred-day transit back to Earth, and during the final third of the flight, subsystems had begun to fail. That was when they really began to miss Gwen Llewellyn.
Fortunately, the ship’s life-support system was built out of multiplexed sub-units, so they did not lose all capacity at once. But as one water-purification module after another dropped off-line, the crew had to increasingly put off the washing of clothes, kitchenware, and personnel, until by the 270th day they stopped altogether. The loss of water recycling also meant the loss of oxygen recycling, since oxygen makeup was provided by the water electrolysis units. By the final day of the return flight to Earth, even the compressed oxygen reserves on board had run out.
At his control console, Colonel Andrew Townsend drew shallow breaths of the foul cabin air. To his left, Luke Johnson was floating, peering out through the porthole at the Earth, which was now looming huge. Behind him, Dr. Sherman drifted alongside some medical oxygen tanks, checking the gauges of these last reserves. Townsend assessed his two remaining crew members; both were short of breath, their eyes red, their faces and clothes dirty, their expressions taut with tension. They’ve almost had it. Do I look that bad, too?
“There it is. We’re almost home,” Luke mused out the window, but his voice was far from jubilant. The subtext was unspoken, but telling nevertheless. Having come this far, must we die of suffocation now?
The radio crackled with Phil Mason’s voice. “ERV Retriever, this is Houston Control. We have you on radar. You are go for splashdown in South Pacific Quarantine Zone number three. ETA ninety-seven minutes.”
Townsend picked up the microphone.
“Houston, this is Retriever. We copy. SPQZ 3. Laying in final descent program now.” He began typing in the required commands, but was interrupted by a light touch on his shoulder. He turned to discern Rebecca floating behind him.
“Colonel,” the doctor said, urgency in her voice, “the last of the emergency medical oxygen is gone. We don’t have ninety-seven minutes.”
“How long do we have?”
“Blackout . . .” Rebecca panted. “Blackout in no more than thirty.”
The pilot clenched his fist in frustration, then a cool resolution set in his mind. He surveyed his instruments. Very well. He announced his decision with steel in his voice. “Then we’ll just have to come in steeper. Fasten your seat belts folks.”
Luke and Rebecca looked at each other in alarm. They barely had time to scramble to their chairs before Townsend hit the retros.
Kevin McGee sat in front of the camera in the Beagle’s galley with as many butterflies in his stomach as he’d ever experienced at any college tenure hearing. He had written his speech, rewritten it, practiced it a thousand times, until Gwen just told him to be himself.
The transmission had to be timed perfectly, so it would arrive at Earth just before the Retriever began its descent. He had learned not to leave well enough alone with politics on Earth. Despite the Administration’s victory in the election, there was still a great deal of public hysteria over the bogus back-contamination issue. Wexler had filled him in on the deal the Administration had struck to mollify that sentiment, and the “con
tingency plans” that had accordingly been put in place—plans that could easily cost the lives of the returning crew. The only assistance the pair on Mars could give their former crewmates now was that delivered by the power of their words. It might not be enough, but they had to try. Townsend, Rebecca, and Luke were going to need all the help they could get.
Gwen set the recorder running before he even gave her a signal, and McGee had no choice but to start. “Hello, I’m astronaut Kevin McGee and this is my wife, flight engineer Major Guenevere McGee. I’m sure by now our faces are familiar to many of you.”
Gwen sat next to him, holding the ten-month-old child in her lap. “And this is our baby daughter. Say hello to the people, Virginia.” She waved one of the little girl’s arms.
McGee cleared his throat, decided that sounded too stuffy, and continued. “As our crewmates approach Earth, we’re making this broadcast to let all of you know why we have stayed behind. We understand some people have said that we’ve been abandoned here so the President can use us as an excuse to request funding for more Mars missions. Those stories are entirely false. In fact, the President both begged and ordered us to return to Earth with the rest of the crew, and we refused. Tonight, we’re going to tell you why.”
He looked at Gwen, then back at the camera eye. “I’m a historian, and I know that a society cannot have progress, or growth, or hope, unless there is an open frontier. That’s what made America in its frontier days such a powerful engine of progress for all of humanity. It was a place where people could write their own rules, where stupid old habits could be thrown away, and newer and better ways could be tried. Before the discovery of America, the old world was like a play that had already been written, and all the leading roles assigned.
“But the American frontier created a stage where the actors could make up their own parts and their own script. We became the most creative nation in history, because we could see the infinite potential of the human mind, if only it’s given a chance.
“Now, though, we’re slowing down. We have bureaucratic regulations for everything. It’s become much harder to find a place where we can try new things, so fewer new things get tried. In most fields that seem to involve risk, our technological progress is grinding to a halt. We don’t build new cities anymore, and so we’ve begun to think of ourselves not as builders of our country, but as mere inhabitants.
“Our frontier has been gone too long, and now our nation is losing the spark. We can’t let that happen. Here on Mars, we have a chance to open a new frontier that can breathe life back into our civilization. That’s why I have to stay here, to make sure we don’t lose this chance for renewal.”
He turned to his wife, and the baby gave him a gushing smile in return. “Look, I’m a scholar, not a hero. What gave me the strength to put myself on the line for these ideas is the fact that I’m head over heels in love with the bravest and finest woman ever born—and she’s staying.”
Gwen blushed a deep red.
“It was Gwen who first saw the truth of why we can’t leave Mars behind. I’ll let her tell you in her own words why.”
She handed little Virginia over to McGee, who bounced the baby on his knee. She seemed nervous as she started speaking. “Before I came to Mars, I thought this place would be a dead world, a big barren rock, like the Moon. And while the only living things we’ve found were little one-celled plants, the place didn’t seem dead to me. Instead it seemed more like a place that was waiting, waiting for something.
“Kevin and I went out together on the first rover trip, and we drove all over the place and saw the most amazing things. We saw dry lakes and riverbeds, deep canyons, and towering mountains, and for a while it was hard for me to tell what it all meant. But on our second day out in the rover, we watched the Sun come up, the most beautiful sunrise you ever saw. The land lit up, and I knew that Mars wasn’t just a rock. It’s a world, a world that deserves to be filled with people and with life, with the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea. Why else would God have made such a wondrous place, if not to be a new home for all his creatures?”
The Retriever’s course change did not go unnoticed by the many radar stations of NASA’s Deep Space Tracking Network or the Near Earth Tracking Network. Reports from these systems were rapidly relayed to Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.
Within three minutes of Townsend’s action, Alicia Castillo passed Phil Mason a sheet of paper. For a long five seconds, the flight director could only stare at the message in disbelief. Mastering himself, Mason picked up his microphone. “Retriever, this is Houston. Radar tracking has you way off course. You are coming in too steep. You could burn up. You are going to miss the quarantine zone.”
After a few seconds of anxious silence, Townsend’s voice came through crackly static. “No time for that. Out of air.”
The crazy flyboy was going to try to evade quarantine! “No! Negative. You can’t do that. Colonel Townsend, respond.”
“What do you want us to do?” the radio voice responded. “Hold our breath?”
The Chief of Operations gripped the microphone. “You don’t understand, Colonel. The President’s deal with the opposition calls for shooting you down if you are off-target for quarantine.”
This time, despite all the static, Townsend’s voice came through loud and clear. “Let them try. We’re coming in. Retriever out.”
Mason slammed his fist down on the control console. “Dammit!” He stood staring at the huge map of the Earth displayed on the opposite wall. Across the map a light moved, showing the present and projected course of the Retriever.
All eyes in Mission Control were on the flight director. Everyone knew what he knew. Alicia was at his side. “What are you going to do?” she asked softly.
Mason swallowed the lump in his throat. “What I have to.” As if in pain, Mason reluctantly picked up his phone. “Get me the White House.”
The silence in Mission Control was like death.
Strapped in their chairs, the three returning Martian explorers endured significant g loads as the Retriever shook with the vibration of reentry. Rebecca wore a pair of headphones and turned dials.
“Colonel!” she shouted above the din, “I’m picking up a series of high-frequency radio bursts coming from the continental United States.”
Townsend’s gaze did not shift from his dismal control readouts. “Play it!” he yelled.
Rebecca threw a switch and a series of very high-pitched pings erupted from the loudspeaker in staccato repetition.
The pilot could not believe his ears. “That’s BMDO targeting radar! The bastards are painting us.”
Luke’s depression instantly turned to panic. “What are you going to do?”
Townsend’s voice was cool. “Make it interesting.” With that, he jerked forward his control stick, and the Retriever’s nose pitched down, sending the craft on a deeper dive into the atmosphere. G loads increased, and an eerie red glow lit the porthole.
Trapped in the cramped metal vehicle, the crew began to perspire. Rebecca kept her eyes on the life-support readouts. “Cabin temperature 115. Hull temperature 1750 and rising,” she recited in level tones.
Townsend did not reply, but noted the information internally, along with the reconfirmed observation, She’s a cool one, that Dr. Sherman.
But Luke had completely lost control. “The hull’s starting to ablate!” he shouted. “We’re going to burn up!”
Townsend stared at his controls. The ship was not rated for this treatment, but it might survive. . . at least for a short time. “Come on, baby,” he muttered. “Just a little bit longer.”
BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE COMMAND
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, COLORADO
MAY 16, 2014 10:45 CST
Deep inside Cheyenne Mountain at the Ballistic Missile Defense Command, preparations were being made for drastic action. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Bernard Winters, stood with other high-ranking officers in front of a hug
e illuminated map of the world. Blinking lights moved across it in various trajectories, and the assembled officers observed every movement with keen interest.
On a desk nearby, a small TV was playing the broadcast from Mars.
“General Winters, sir,” said a colonel, approaching nervously, “we confirm Retriever well off course for quarantine. Heading toward populated areas at hypersonic velocity. Its trajectory is way too low for safety.”
He handed Winters a sheet of data, which the general absorbed with a rapid glance. Winters stared at the situation map, and then looked over to the TV. A thirtyish woman with red braids was speaking, her dirty NASA coverall adorned with an American flag and a Silver Star. Her thin, lined face and bright eyes spoke of courage, matching that spoken for by the Star. “Our crewmates, who’ve been through the thick and thin of this place with us, are coming back today,” she said. “They can tell you the wonder of this world, and of the new chance that God is giving us here. They can show you what we’ve seen. Please listen to them.”
“Your orders, sir?” the colonel interrupted. “All defensive systems are armed and ready.”
The general looked to the rows of weapons officers waiting at their consoles, then back to the brave young mother on the TV. He swallowed hard, then pursed his lips. “At that altitude, if we have to shoot, we’d better be accurate or collateral damage could result.” He turned to the colonel and gave his order: “I want an immediate and complete systems check run on the targeting software for all antimissile systems.”
That was incredible. It took a moment for the colonel to find his voice. “But sir, that will disable the system for close to an hour.”
In response, Winters gave the other officer a blank look. “Then you’d better get to it, Colonel.”
Then understanding dawned. Holy shit, the colonel thought. Disabling the system is precisely his intention. Suddenly, the officer felt much prouder of the uniform he wore. A big knowing smile crossed his face. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. A complete systems check.” He rushed off to implement the order.
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