The Martian Race

by Gregory Benford

  “A toast to the first lake on Mars,” she said, “and to the discoverers.”

  They clicked mugs and drank.

  “Can tell why Julia is so happy: she thinks we're going to build hot tub in the greenhouse.”

  “Now that's an idea. But first, what does Earth think?”

  “Well, they'd prefer more cores to make sure all the hills are pingos. First indications are, though, that this is probably good enough.”

  “Good enough for the government, as they say,” said Raoul with uncharacteristic levity. Raoul was the top mechanic on the team, and ritually cynical about governments. He even disliked the fact that NASA had separately contracted with the Consortium to supply some geological data.

  “Too bad we're not working for the government, eh?” shot back Marc.

  Julia looked over at him, surprised. The brief exchange left much unsaid, but all understood the shorthand. Tensions were definitely building as the launch date approached. No one wanted to be the cause of a delayed return. The search for subsurface water had gone slowly, disappointing some of the mission backers, raising the specter that the team would be asked to stay longer to complete the mapping.

  They didn't seem in a mood to discuss her going back to the vent. Time was pressing, and the next item was the engine test. She had better wait before bringing it up at all.

  She knew through the years of working with these guys that timing was everything in prying up the lid of the male mind. She had learned that in the toughest of schools: NASA, and beyond.

  After Katherine dropped out, there had been strong pressure to have an all-male crew. Many within NASA hadn't wanted a woman along at all. Adding one had inevitably made for tensions, but on the other hand, it also gave half the possible Earth audience somebody to identify with. And the Consortium could be subtle.

  Even on Mars, the undeclared war between the sexes continued. As the sole woman on the mission, she had been the target of special psychological counseling during the final months before the launch. Her marriage to Viktor clarified what NASA delicately termed IRA, for Interpersonal Relationship Activities. Instead, they concentrated on how she could tell one of the “guys” that he was wrong without getting into a pissing contest. Someone was worried that she would bruise fragile male egos if she found fault with her crewmates.

  She needed to be positive, supportive, but indirect, they said. No criticism of her crewmates. And they had her read old studies of the relationships between airline pilots and co-pilots. “Co-pilots on commercial aircraft use indirect hints to correct pilots who are making mistakes, even though these mistakes can be a matter of life and death,” read one of the learned studies she'd been given. Hollywood screenwriters got it wrong again, had been her first reaction. All those airplane terror movies, and the cockpit scenes fraught with punchy dialogue, hadn't happened.

  “Captains give more than twice as many commands as first officers, reinforcing the arrogance of rank. Airline accident reports, however, show that first officers often must correct captains’ mistakes,” she'd read.

  She'd tried to imagine how this scenario would work on Mars. What if she had to tell someone he'd left the airlock open without seeming to be critical? No shouting, “Close the @#$%! airlock door or we'll all die!” Instead she was supposed to say, “May I borrow your scarf? There's a breeze somewhere.” And then fall to the floor gasping for breath. What about something slightly more direct, like, “Oh, did you think it was getting a bit stuffy in here?”

  She'd started to chuckle to herself. Okay, Instead of “Your helmet isn't buckled down right,” she could say, “What a novel way you've arranged your helmet. It's so much more interesting like that.” Or, to Viktor, “I love you, but you're about to drive this rover off a cliff.” By then she had been convulsed with laughter.

  After that, she found excuses to stay away from the counseling sessions. The whole idea of having to assume a passive role was repugnant.

  And ultimately, they just didn't get it: a few bruised egos would be survivable. Pussyfooting around stupid mistakes would not be. Mars never forgave.

  6

  AUGUST 2015

  SHE HAD FELT TROUBLED, AFTER SHE HAD GOTTEN VIKTOR ONTO THE crew.

  She had gone into the meeting with Axelrod without a thought of pushing Marc off—she'd been prepared to resign. Her NASA experience should have warned her. Crew selection was the most Byzantine of all the rotations at NASA, fraught with personality and pull. Nothing was ever done for just one reason. In the Missions Operations Directorate there had been an intricate promenade of personalities and rank and “pull,” traits that now seemed as distant and stylized as the mating dance of birds.

  Still, at NASA, the art of picking crews took time and much influence-peddling, government style, and there was time to second-guess. Not here. Axelrod had done his calculations and acted with only a moment's thought. She lacked such decisiveness about people. Quite acutely she felt the soft inner squishiness of them, how easily damaged. With Viktor she shared a hesitant vagueness about emotional matters. This was the standard astronaut profile—strong on externals, weak on communication of internals, as current psych-talk had it. But that did not mean that she was unaware of people's feelings. Wounding Marc had been painful, even if she was not the primary decider.

  There was precious little time to brood about it, though. After Marc left, they all swung into relentless mission training.

  Using centrifugal gravity simplified many tricky engineering points. Plumbing and structural designs were far easier to make work with gravity to help. But there were plenty of new techniques to master. Despite this being a private venture, work got sliced into the same pigeonholes as at NASA: operations planning, robotics, computers, flight support, vehicle systems, operations managing, payload, habitats, EVA.

  Axelrod had imported NASA veterans to run these, too. Soon the air was thick with acronyms, clipped sentences, and can-do mannerisms.

  Then Axelrod called them into another astronauts-only meeting in his office, with thirty minutes notice. He sat on his desk again, carefully arranging the creases in his dark blue tailored suit before beginning.

  “We're a team, right?”

  Nods all around. Julia nodded enthusiastically. She liked these conditions. The NASA Astronaut Office had been a perpetual playground of primate rivalry. Pilots looked down on mission specialists. Veterans lifted eyebrows at the newbies. Military thought the civilians were soft. Doctorate holders felt themselves above all others; they were in it for the science, not the ride.

  “I've got something to tell you that will demand that you pull together.” Axelrod was savoring this, for some reason she could not detect. Then she saw: he was in the team, too. As close as he would ever get to being an astronaut. Luckily, he was more important than just another team element. He knew how to cut through layers of NASA fatty tissue.

  The special demands of going to Mars with just four astronauts had disrupted the NASA style. Ideally astronauts were supposed to be interchangeable. That broke down somewhat under the space station's pressure for detailed specialists, and disintegrated under the work specs for Mars. Crews of four or six could not explore a whole world without a lot of special knowledge and techniques. So this team had few overlapping abilities.

  “This is entirely top secret. Not even a hint to the press or anybody else, even inside the Consortium. Clear?”

  They all nodded. Axelrod's assistants all left the room as if on signal.

  “Remember that Mars flight gear I tried to buy? One-of-a-kind hardware? Well, NASA turned me down, then the ESA people. So I put some industrial espionage people onto tracing where it had disappeared to.” He lifted eyebrows. “Guess.”

  Nobody did.

  “I always like mysteries, just about the only kinda book I read. I go for the real detection stories, with clues you piece together. So let me give you an intercept my spy guys decoded. Engineering stuff.” He arched eyebrows, apparently to warn them of approach
ing jargon. “It says, ‘Configured in bi-modal, we can run after launch in ‘idle mode’ with thermal power output of one hundred kilowatts. Therms are removed and routed to a turbo-alternator-compressor Brayton power conversion unit using a helium-xenon working fluid. A finned radiator system (expendable on aeroassist braking) rejects waste heat. This also reduces decay heat propellant loss following propulsive burns.’ Whew!”

  Viktor said very quietly, “My Lord.”

  Axelrod took no notice. “So that clue led us to—”

  “Someone is building a nuke,” Viktor said.

  Axelrod blinked, and for the first time in Julia's experience an uncertain smile flickered. “How'd you know?”

  “That is describing how to use a nuclear thermal rocket to give electrical power,” Viktor explained slowly. “After boost phase, still have solid core propulsion system. There is plenty more energy left in the Uranium-235 plates. Run it at low level, circulate water or some other fluid, make all electricity ship needs.”

  The others nodded. To Julia it made sense. But Axelrod stared at Viktor, startled. “Damn it all, you're right. My spy guys took another three weeks to work that out.”

  “Do not know rockets.”

  “Well, they said they did. My staff thought so, too.”

  “Get new spies. I know couple Russians could do this job better.”

  “Y'know, I just might.” Axelrod breathed in sharply and started with fresh momentum. “Maybe Viktor can guess who's behind that message.”

  Viktor frowned. He was not the kind of engineer who speculated, much less made guesses. “I smell some Russian work, but that makes no sense as only player.”

  “Right, kinda,” Axelrod said. “They got some old Russian gear. A set of plates to lodge the U-235 in, plus a containment vessel.”

  “From old Soviet program? I heard the team at Semipalitinsk ran a nuclear thermal rocket in fixed mode for a thousand hours.”

  Axelrod nodded. “That checks. No environmental controls then, I guess.”

  Viktor snorted. “Was when people not scared of anything nuclear—bomb, rocket, or nuclear family, too.”

  Axelrod smiled uncertainly at this little joke. “My background report says that Soviet job worked just fine.”

  “Ran it underground, like nuclear test.” Viktor tilted his head, in his typical thoughtful pose. “No venting of exhaust gases to surface. Not much radiation count in the exhaust anyway.”

  Axelrod gazed around at his team, obviously liking his guessing game. “So who's doing it, guys?”

  Nobody spoke. Julia knew that Axelrod thought in financial terms first, so she said, “Someone who thinks they can beat us to Mars and not spend thirty billion doing it. With all the new work a nuclear rocket requires, I don't think they can keep prices down.”

  Raoul said carefully, “There is enormous development work required. Nobody ever actually flew a nuke, y'know.”

  “Politically impossible to vent into atmosphere, these times,” Viktor said.

  Raoul nodded. “So they'll have to fly it to low orbit on a booster. Maybe a big Proton IV?”

  Viktor nodded. “Is cheapest way up, sure.”

  Katherine said, “I don't know anything about the U.S. and Soviet programs, but I do know orbital mechanics. Surely they can't do all this development work and lift for Mars when we do? So they miss the window, and the energy price to catch us gets huge.”

  Axelrod slapped his palm on his desk. “Exactly. So they have to fly later, much later. We can't really guess what trajectory they'll choose. My spy guys haven't picked up anything about that.”

  “They could go for a smash-and-grab mission,” Katherine said. “Miss our window and make the next one, twenty-six months later. Land, grab something, then fly home fast to beat us by a few days.”

  Axelrod obviously liked watching his team perform. “So what's stopping them?” he coaxed.

  Katherine said, “It can't work. They wouldn't have time to gather all the samples, do the geology. Without a pretty detailed set that meets the Mars Accord standards, they won't win, even if they do get back first.”

  “You all agree? It seems impossible?” Axelrod swept the room with his concentrated gaze.

  They all looked at each other and nodded. Julia wished they had time to hash this over, do some figuring on paper, but it sounded right to her. They could check it all later, of course, but Axelrod liked this seat-of-the-pants style. “So how can they win?”

  “If we lose,” Viktor said. “Fail. Blow up. Crash.”

  They had all thought of this, and only he had the courage to say it out loud, Julia realized.

  Axelrod pressed them further. “So it's a big gamble for them, right?

  Nobody throws down maybe twenty, thirty billion on a toss of the dice like that. So there's gotta be a backup motive.”

  Julia was getting a bit tired of this teasing, but the man must have some point. How could he be so sure there wasn't somebody on this planet more foolhardy than Axelrod himself?

  Raoul said suddenly, “If they lose, they still have the nuke.”

  A murmur of agreement as it dawned on them. Raoul said with zest, “A whole new kind of rocket. One that's two or three times more efficient than our boosters.”

  Axelrod beamed approvingly. “A ship they can sell to anybody who wants to do deep-space work. Plenty of money to be made in the next couple decades, opening up high orbits.”

  Viktor said, “Going to asteroids. Prospecting. Mining.”

  “Who has enough vision,” Katherine observed thoughtfully, “to do that?”

  “Too big for company?” Viktor asked. “Seems to me.”

  Raoul said, “Must be countries, sure—and they must be using Russia's old Soviet work. The U.S. wouldn't sell anything they have in storage from their old nuclear program, Nerva.”

  Viktor smiled dryly. “The mob at the top of Russia now, they will sell their grandmothers.”

  “Sell is the word,” Katherine said. “They need the cash. But invest? I doubt it.”

  Raoul smiled. “What major players are left out of the Consortium? China. Europe. India. Probably not anybody from South America— they do not have the technology.”

  Axelrod laughed. “You all get A-plus. Right! Point is, I couldn't include the whole damned planet in the Consortium. So now some others are ganging up on us. We've got a European-Chinese collaboration on our tail. Call themselves the Airbus Group.”

  “It takes courage to leapfrog us,” Katherine said. “A nuclear rocket. What are they using for shielding?”

  Axelrod said, “It looks like they have liquid hydrogen as their initial fuel. After that, we don't know.”

  The room dissolved into cross talk as the crew speculated on the Airbus approach. Axelrod let it run for a few minutes, then waved for silence. He was a master at commanding a room, Julia noted, but could not see how he did it. Charisma was always in essence elusive but still apparent.

  He grinned, a confident, tanned man with the budget of a small nation riding on his decisions. “My spy guys confirmed that Airbus bought some Soviet nuclear propulsion gear. Plus discarded U.S. government stuff done with contractors. Equipment we traced to an assembly building in South America, which turned out to be a blind. It's now in China.”

  “Makes sense,” Viktor said. “They have big launch facilities. Buy Proton stages from Russian agency. Assemble there.”

  Axelrod folded his arms. “That's about all I know, except one more little mystery. Who will fly their mission?”

  “Uh-oh …” Raoul said. Julia could see they had all thought of the same, obvious solution.

  Axelrod grinned. “Right again. None other than your old crewmates—Marc and Claudine. Must say, I didn't think that when I rejected those two from this program, they'd turn up flying for a competitor.”

  “They'll need some others,” Katherine said. “Probably Chinese, maybe Euros.”

  Axelrod agreed. Julia ground her teeth. “I would like to confront
Marc. How can he betray his country by working for a foreign group, after all the years at NASA?”

  She regretted it the moment she said it. He's there because you got him bumped …

  “He's a private citizen and this is not a classified project—it's a public competition,” Axelrod said, smiling grimly.

  “We all know Marc fairly well,” Raoul said. “He's like us. He dreamed of going to Mars all his life. And look, Julia, you didn't hesitate to have him dumped in favor of Viktor.”

  “I didn't! That was not my decision to make.”

  “It got made at your instigation,” Katherine said mildly, not looking at Julia.

  “I was going to quit—”

  “So you say,” Katherine shot back. “It sounded a little Machiavellian to me and—”

  “I just didn't want to leave Viktor,” Julia sputtered. “You have no right—”

  “I'm only saying what a lot of people around here—”

  Julia jumped to her feet. “Damn it, I had no idea—”

  “Oh, come on—”

  “Quiet!” Axelrod's booming voice cut through. “Sit.” Julia sat.

  Viktor held up both hands, palms out, and said to all, “We do not run this show, remember.”

  Axelrod sat back, watching the strained faces slowly rotate toward him. “Right. I take responsibility. At the time I sure didn't think I was making things easier for a competitor, but that's how business works. There's always somebody coming in on your blind side.”

  Julia seethed inwardly at Katherine's remark. She felt guilty enough about her part in Marc's dismissal, but to be accused of having planned it… Still, her training told her to put the conversation back on a less emotional plane. “Marc is determined to get to Mars any way he can. They can't possibly carry out the trials we would have to just getting a nuclear rocket to a reliable state. He and Claudine and whoever else—they're risking their lives, big time.”

  Raoul sat back, folded his arms. “We all know that the Chinese have been cutting corners on space for decades. This is new, cutting a corner nobody else has before.”