T-Minus Two

by K. G. MacGregor

  Vio shrugged. “Meh. It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s repulsive.” Vio drove her crazy sometimes and it was best not to encourage her. “Forget it. They’re breaking us up into groups today. I’m Blue. We’re supposed to have three days of baseline tests before they make the first cut. Concentration, comprehension and physical fitness. All starting in about”—she checked her watch, an expensive Sinn from her mother that would be useless on Mars because the days were forty minutes longer—“eighteen minutes.”

  “That’s enough for one round of BattleStorm.”

  “I don’t have a joystick. You’d kill me in about three seconds if all I had was a keyboard. Besides, I don’t think these people would appreciate hearing me get my ass blown up while they’re trying to study.”

  “Guess who finally showed up online this morning?” Vio asked.

  “This morning?”

  “This morning here, like twelve hours ago when I got up.”

  “I hope you’re not going to say that BattleStud creep. I thought he’d get lost after the whipping we gave him last time.”

  “No, not BattleStud. JanSolo. He came in when we were at Level Nine and still managed to catch up and take us all out. I lasted to Level Thirteen.”

  Mila had never actually seen JanSolo online, just his scores. The top four of all time. “So he’s real. I kind of figured he was fake to make people keep playing so they could try to beat him. Was he really that good?”

  “Hell, yeah. We could take him together though. Hop on when you get done today. I should be out of bed by then.”

  “No joystick, remember? Anyway, my brain will be wiped by tonight.” The minutes were ticking away and she hadn’t yet eaten breakfast. “Time to go. I’ll catch you later in the week.”

  They’d been divided into four color-coded groups—Blue, Green, Red and Orange—sixty-four candidates per group. On her way to their check-in station in the computer lab, Mila downed an energy bar and a carton of orange juice, the latter from a vending machine.

  Everyone inside was dressed in the cargo pants and T-shirts they’d worn the day before. Not clean ones—the very same ones. Three days before they could change, according to the handbook. Their clothes would probably be filthy by then, but at least they were allowed to shower every day and put on clean underwear. For now, anyway. If she made it as far as the analog trial, they’d have to simulate conditions in space, where doing laundry was a major ordeal.

  To Mila’s extreme displeasure, Toloti was also Blue. No escaping her for the next few days.

  “Hey, Mila. Nice hair.”

  The urge to pummel her impish grin was almost overwhelming. Instead, Mila ignored her and proceeded to the check-in table for her blue wristband and schedule. First up were tests in the computer lab to measure concentration and memory.

  She hung back to give Toloti time to claim a seat, and then settled into a computer carrel far away on the back row.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  The familiar husky voice sent a thrill to her core. An uncontrollable thrill. A stupid, inexplicable, uncontrollable thrill. “It’s yours.”

  How was she supposed to concentrate with Jancey Beaumont sitting beside her?

  “Good morning.” A diminutive man—from his dark features and sing-song accent, she assumed he was Indian—rose from behind the control console at the front of the room. He wore dark slacks and a yellow polo shirt, which Mila now recognized as the staff uniform. “My name is Dr. Chet Viswanathan. Dr.V if you prefer. We’ll begin today’s exercises with…”

  An introductory page appeared on each monitor that allowed everyone to follow along as he described the procedures. The entire test was computerized and scored individually, and the sample questions were straightforward. The object was to assess short-term memory and the ability to concentrate.

  Seemed easy enough to Mila, even with Jancey Beaumont distracting her from the next seat.

  The test began with a series of triangles. At rapid fire speed, she indicated with her computer mouse if the triangle was pointed up, down, left or right. About ten slides in all, she guessed.

  Effortless.

  The next set of triangles had dots inside. One, two, three or four. She had about four seconds to choose the correct answer. Two left? Three down? Two down? Three right?

  More challenging, but manageable.

  Then the triangles were different colors. Four down green? Three right green? Four down red? Four right red?

  She survived the triangle array only to see it replaced by four colored rectangles with a number inside. What color was four? What number was yellow?

  Eight rectangles on the screen. Sum of the yellow. Product of the red.

  After each set of tests, Mila waited for…hoped for…would have killed for a break, but the problems kept coming. Always the same pattern. An easy one with each new grouping but increasing in complexity at each step. A peek at her watch—forty-eight minutes—cost her a question, and nearly the whole grouping. On a space mission, a lapse in concentration like that could be deadly.

  At one hour, the screen went blank and Dr. V stood from his platform again. “That completes Part One. In a moment you’ll see your score, along with how you ranked in the Blue group. Your concentration and memory scores will be averaged with those from comprehension. Those who score in the top half and also pass the physical fitness test will proceed to the second round.”

  As if she weren’t anxious enough. She rubbed her eyes furiously and rolled her head in a circle on her shoulders. Others in the room stood and stretched, talking with their neighbors to decompress.

  After a few seconds, her score appeared. She’d missed only seven of nearly four hundred problems, for a score of ninety-eight percent.

  Awesome. Concentration was one of her strengths. She’d proven that in her work at Delft when she waded through massive computer programs to find errors as small as four decimal points. No one on their team was better with details.

  Then her group rank appeared: five.

  Bloody hell! Four people in the room missed fewer than seven over a span of an hour. How was that even possible? Maybe because there were at least that many trained astronauts in the Blue group. If she was fifth in her group, she’d be twentieth overall after the other groups tested. Good enough to make the next cut, but not the finals. And this was supposed to be one of her strong suits!

  “How’d you do?” Beaumont peered around the carrel to peek at her screen. “Seven. Not bad for the first try, but you’ll need to get better.”

  When the major leaned back in her chair, Mila took the liberty of peeking at her score. Perfect.

  Perfect!

  “For those of you worried about your score, I have good news,” Dr. V said. “Over the next three days, your test will be divided into six segments, with the lowest score dropped from your average. Now that you are acclimated to the structure and format, you should perform better. However, the remaining segments will be longer and more difficult. We’ll begin Part Two in T-minus three…two…one.”

  She’d so hoped for a bathroom break.

  The test started out like the first segment—sets of problems increasing in complexity—but this time, the visual displayed for only three seconds, followed occasionally by a screen from which she had to select the correct response based on memory. As the test wore on, the display time seemed to decrease, as did the time she had to mark her answer.

  Mila tuned everything else out, refusing to glance away from the screen even for an instant. She played BattleStorm the same way and some of her sessions with Vio lasted hours. By her estimate, this segment was already twice as long as Part One, but still she focused, even ignoring the fly that began buzzing around her head.

  Finally—finally!—the screen went blank and the room let out a collective groan. Even Jancey Beaumont flopped against the back of her chair.

  “Still perfect?” Mila had to ask.

  “We’ll see. That damn fly was a pain i
n the ass. I never had to deal with flies in space.”

  Mila checked her watch. The test had lasted two hours, forty-five minutes. After what the major had endured on Guardian, it was clear why long periods of concentration were important. An article in Scientific American from twelve years ago—which Mila had saved and read dozens of times—detailed the extraordinary efforts Beaumont had made to guide her vessel into an adjacent orbit with the crippled Russian ship and complete a docking procedure. The entire episode had spanned seven hours and required continuous adjustments and monitoring. Only a well trained, highly disciplined astronaut could have accomplished such a feat.

  The last line of that article stuck with Mila to this day. It was a quote from the major dismissing her own heroics. I did what I was trained to do.

  Her new score flashed on the screen. Perfect. And tied with two others for first.

  “Better?” Beaumont didn’t wait for her answer, leaning around the carrel to peek. “There might be hope for you yet, Todorov.”

  * * *

  The gymnasium was partitioned into eight fitness stations, each staffed by a pair of training assistants wearing yellow polo shirts. The Blue group was subdivided into teams of eight, one team at each station.

  Jancey had hoped to find herself with Todorov, the poi-hating, forward-thinking engineer with the focus needed to make the next cut. It would have been nice to see if that brain was matched by enough physical capability to handle the rest of their training. A lot of the brainiacs she’d known at NASA were out of their element in a gym.

  The director of fitness training was a Canadian, Danielle Zion, dressed in dark blue warm-up pants and the yellow staff shirt. According to her bio, she was fifty-two years old, but that had to be a misprint.

  Fifty-two! Jancey considered herself fit and healthy for forty-three, but she paled next to Zion, a model of athleticism with finely sculpted muscles and short bleached-blond hair that stood at attention. A drill sergeant in sneakers.

  “You’ve seen the schedule,” Zion barked from the center of the gym. “You’re mine until five o’clock. The fitness test is not a competition. Repeat. Not a competition. It’s an elimination test with minimum requirements. You don’t get extra points for running the fastest, lifting the most or stretching the farthest. You’ll work with a partner from your group. We have three days together. You’ll be tested at every station on the last day. You fail even one of them—you’re out.”

  Most of the candidates appeared to be in decent shape. Not surprising, since they knew the minimum requirements and had months to prepare. Nonetheless, it was still possible a handful would come up short.

  “I have one rule: Don’t hurt yourself.”

  Jancey didn’t have to be reminded. Pulling a muscle or spraining a joint would mean certain disqualification.

  From her own experience in space, she was well aware of how hard it was to maintain muscle tone in zero gravity. It was one of the reasons she’d been chosen for the extended mission instead of a man, since NASA researchers felt she’d have an easier time staying fit than someone with more bulk. She hoped the Tenacity committee would come to the same conclusion, especially since she’d proven those researchers correct.

  Her team started at the sit-up station, which was equipped with mats and stopwatches. A placard indicated the required baseline—forty sit-ups in one minute—along with instructions to complete at least three timed trials before moving to the next station.

  The group consisted of four men, two women and one ready-made team, a married couple from Japan. The men paired up immediately, leaving Jancey to team with the other woman. She was a few years older with a mass of curly red hair breaking free from a tie. From the looks of it, she hadn’t spent quite as much time in the gym as the others.

  “I believe you need a partner,” the woman said, extending her hand. “Shel Montgomery, Helena, Montana. Freelance space journalist.”

  Jancey introduced herself.

  “You’re kidding, right? Everyone knows who you are. Hell, I bet you’re the reason half of these younger people are here.”

  “Now you’re making me feel old.”

  “Age is a state of mind. Show them how it’s done.”

  Since Shel was already holding the stopwatch, Jancey went first. Sit-ups were part of her regular routine, and she easily reeled off sixty-four in one minute.

  “I think I’m screwed,” Shel said, swapping positions so Jancey could hold her feet. “I’ve been trying to work out ever since I got word to come to Hawaii, but I have a lot of neglect to make up for. I hadn’t done sit-ups since high school.”

  Unfortunately for Shel, it showed. Thirty-one, and during the last five, her face was as red as her hair.

  “You can do this, Shel. There’s a trick. I’ll show you.” In slow motion, she demonstrated an abbreviated crunch, lifting only six inches off the floor. “It’s all about the abs. You don’t need to involve those other muscles. Pick a spot on the ceiling and focus on it. That’ll keep you from losing your form.”

  On her next try, Shel managed thirty-six.

  “That’s it. You’ll easily get to forty by Wednesday. I guarantee it.” As much as Jancey hated to admit it, helping and encouraging someone else was intrinsically rewarding. She might not have been so generous had it been Mila Todorov, who had the potential to be a significant rival. Her perfect score on the concentration test was nothing to take lightly, especially since she’d never gone through formal astronaut training. Plus she had special knowledge of propulsion systems.

  Over at the next station, Todorov was climbing a knotted rope to the rafters as smoothly as if it were a ladder. As her arm stretched upward, her T-shirt rose to reveal the rippling muscles of her torso.

  Jancey wasn’t the only one to notice. Zion watched from directly below, her face fixed in a look of admiration. Or was it something else? Todorov was definitely worth a second look with her taut body and exotic eyes.

  But not worth the distraction. Jancey needed every single synapse trained on her goal of getting to the round of one-twenty-eight. It would be foolish to assume she’d make the first cut just because she was Jancey Beaumont. The new blood around her was fit, young and smart, and there might even be some among them who were as hungry as she to go. It wouldn’t do to let someone like Mila Todorov distract her, even for an instant.

  * * *

  “Push it up from your chest, not your shoulders,” Toloti said. She stood behind Mila to spot the thirty-pound barbell.

  It wasn’t the way she usually pressed, but admittedly, it took the strain off her triceps and transferred it to her pectorals. Despite the benefits, she hated taking direction from Toloti.

  No matter what Zion had said about only needing to pass the baseline scores, as long as the invisible hand that controlled them kept pairing her with Toloti, there would be competition to see who was stronger, faster and could do more reps. The cynic in Mila considered she might be a plant to see if she would break under psychological torture. The secret to controlling her fury was closing her eyes and imagining she were pushing the barbell into the bridge of Toloti’s nose.

  “Nineteen…twenty. That’s it. My turn.”

  Toloti’s presses looked effortless, not a single grimace or even a slowing of pace as she ticked off twenty reps. Showoff.

  The most challenging task Mila had faced during her PhD program and postdoc was dealing with the personalities of her colleagues, especially when her fellow graduate students bonded socially and brought their Happy Hour atmosphere to the propulsion lab. If she could have done the project on her own, it wouldn’t have mattered. Instead she’d been forced to adapt.

  Adapt and persist. What astronauts were trained to do.

  She looked admiringly across the gym at Jancey Beaumont, whose face was streaming with sweat from her agility drills. A fine specimen at forty-three years. A fine specimen at any age. She had the whole package—fitness, intellect and a mental focus unmatched by anyone in the room. />
  The major picked that moment to look up, catching Mila in her gaze.

  Toloti punched her arm lightly. “You having a nice nap?”

  Mila settled onto the bench and gripped the bar. As she pressed upward, she inhaled, a voice in her head clearly enunciating, “Screw.” On her exhale, that same voice said, “Toloti.”

  Screw. Toloti.

  Chapter Four

  Mila liked her chances for surviving the first cut. She’d sailed through the fitness test while turning in top scores in concentration and comprehension. None of that meant she’d sleep peacefully, since the results were to be posted the next morning. She was as anxious as anyone.

  The cafeteria line offered a buffet for dinner, one with a variety of choices rather than the same plate as everyone else. As she’d done every night so far, she went to the pasta bar, loading up on shells, pesto and crumbled feta cheese, with a simple salad. On principle, she also took a scoop of poi.

  The sight of Toloti eating alone gave her pause. Toloti, Toloti. She was trying to get into the habit of using her first name, Andi. The selection committee would expect them to be friends by this time.

  It was reasonable to want some downtime alone to decompress from their rigorous testing schedule, but she couldn’t escape thinking they all were under observation. No one knew who was on the selection committee. Perhaps the woman checking meal cards or the man wiping tables. Virtually anyone could be writing reports and slipping them into their files for consideration. She had to prove she could get along as a member of a team.

  “Okay if I sit down?”

  “Sure thing.” By her typically bubbly demeanor, Andi was extremely pleased. “Ew, I cain’t believe you’re eating that poi crap. That stuff is gross.”

  Mila’s initial reaction was to bristle at the notion that it was any of Andi’s business what she ate. Saying so, however, would defeat the purpose of sitting with her. Besides, she happened to be correct. “It’s very high in fluorine, which is good for bone density.”