by Ben Bova
June 15, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 71 Days
03:17 Universal Time
Communications Center, the Arrow
Ted Connover realized he was spending most of his free time in the comm shack, sending messages to his dead wife.
He woke up with the vague memory of a dream that had racked his troubled sleep: he’d been back in college, trying to find the classroom where he was supposed to be taking a final exam. He awoke still looking for it.
Wearing only his shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, Ted tiptoed through the sleeping area, barely aware of the light snores and mumbles of his crewmates. He slipped into the comm shack, sat in its only chair, and turned on the audio recorder.
Keeping his voice low, he began, “Vicki, I miss you. There are so many things I want to tell you about the trip, about how much I love you, how much I miss you, and now I can’t. I don’t even know why I’m recording this. You’ll never hear it and I know I’ll never play it back, but for some reason I’ve got to send you one more message.”
He hesitated, thinking, Maybe this is therapy. Maybe this is how I’m trying to work my way through this.
Taking in a deep, shuddering breath, he continued.
“Did it hurt? God, I hope you didn’t suffer. And Thad. Poor Thad. I so wanted to be there when he graduated from college, when he got married, when he . . . when he . . . gave us a grandchild.”
He was on the verge of breaking into tears again, he knew. Sucking in a deep breath, Ted fought for self control. At last he resumed: “Did I ever tell you that one of the reasons I accepted this slot, going to Mars I mean, was not just because I’ve always dreamed of going to Mars but because it was going to be that start of something big. Something bigger than you and me. Bigger even than our country. It’s the start of our species finally growing up and leaving the cradle. And I wanted to be a part of it so I could share it with my wife, my son, dear God, with my grandchildren. And now? What’s the point? What’s the goddamned point?”
Forcing back the tears that welled in his eyes, Ted went on, “Enough. Enough of my selfishness. I’m starting to cry because I miss you. I miss you. You’re wherever you are and I’d like to think that a part of you is here with me now. But I don’t think I can believe that. But, Vicki, I want to believe it! I miss you so much!”
June 24, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 80 Days
16:48 Universal Time
The Capitol, Washington D.C.
“What’s this all about, Billy?” asked Senator Martin Yañez.
Hiding a pang of distaste at being addressed so familiarly by such a junior member of the subcommittee, Senator William Donaldson replied, “What else? I want your vote.”
The two men were alone in the spacious conference room allotted to the Senate Subcommittee on Space. Part of the Senate’s Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation, the space panel was one of the many subcommittees that included consumer protection, product safety and insurance; communications, technology and the internet; aviation; the Coast Guard; and transportation, merchant marine infrastructure, safety and security.
During President Harper’s first term, the Congress had formed a select committee for the Mars mission. But once the mission had been launched, the select committee was dissolved and the Mars mission, as far as the United States Senate was concerned, had to compete for attention and funding against airplanes, ships, consumer protection, scientific research, the internet and a host of other concerns.
“My vote?” Senator Yañez asked innocently. “On what?”
Unconsciously glancing over his shoulder before he spoke, Donaldson said, “It’s time to shut down the manned space program.”
Yañez and Donaldson were sitting at one end of the long, gleaming table. Aside from the two of them, the plush dark leather swivel chairs along the table were empty. So were the slightly less sumptuous chairs along the marble walls. Yet they kept their voices low.
They were an odd couple. Donaldson was lean and flinty, a caricature of the New England schoolteacher he had once been. What was left of his once-blond hair had long ago turned dead white. He wore a dark three-piece suit, as always, with his trademark “Don’t Tread on Me” lapel pin. Yañez was stout, almost corpulent, his suit jacket flapping unbuttoned, the front of his shirt straining across his girth. Instead of a tie he wore a silver and onyx bolo.
“Kill the manned space program?” he hissed. “Are you crazy? My constituents would hang me in effigy! And not by my neck, either!”
Donaldson put on a reassuring smile. “Don’t get yourself in an uproar. Killing NASA’s manned space operations will mean more business for your state’s private spaceport, not less.”
Yañez’s beefy face showed doubt.
Donaldson explained, “If we get NASA out of the manned space business, where are the corporations that’re working on the space station and the moon base going to go for launch services? To New Mexico!”
“Or California,” Yañez replied guardedly. “Or Texas.”
“You’ll get your share.”
Shaking his head slowly, Yañez objected, “How can you even think of cutting manned space with that crew heading out to Mars?”
Donaldson put on an air of a patient schoolteacher educating a backward Latino.
“They’ll abort the Mars mission, bring those people back home.”
“Abort it?”
“Their pilot’s wife just died in an auto accident. He’s in no emotional shape to fly the crew to the surface of Mars. He’ll kill them all.”
“Ted Connover? He’s solid as a rock.”
“Not from the psych reports I’ve seen,” Donaldson countered. “He’s become moody, keeps to himself. Which is pretty damned hard to do on that floating Winnebago of theirs.”
“They’ve still got more than three months before they reach Mars. Connover will pull out of it by then.”
“Will he? What if the psychologists at Johnson determine he’s not in shape to fly the lander? Even if they don’t, we can find plenty of shrinks here in D.C. who’ll decide our way.”
Yañez stared at his subcommittee chairman.
“And there’s the accident at the moon base,” Donaldson went on. “Two people killed, one of them an American. How do you think the public will react if the whole Mars crew gets killed?”
“Jesus.”
“You’ll be saving lives, Marty. It’s the only decent thing to do.”
Yañez loathed being called “Marty,” but he nodded thoughtfully. “Saving lives, huh?”
“But we’ve got to act now, right away. The Mars ship reaches its point-of-no-return in ten days. After that, they’ve got to go on to Mars no matter what.”
Again Yañez shook his head ponderously. “I don’t know, Billy. The president is a hundred and fifty percent behind manned space.”
His smile turning just the slightest bit sly, Donaldson said, “That’s another reason to act now. Take the wind out of Harper’s sails. Cut his balls off.”
And finally Yañez understood. Harper had beaten Donaldson for the party’s nomination for president, won the election and then won re-election.
Donaldson’s been nursing that grudge all these years, he realized. It’s the old political axiom: Don’t get mad, get even.
Leaning back in the softly yielding swivel chair, Yañez asked the crucial question.
“What’s in it for me?”
Donaldson closed his eyes briefly. “Oh, I suppose that we could get the Department of Transportation to tighten up its regulations on private space launching facilities.” Before Yañez could object, he went on, “Tighten them in a manner that New Mexico can meet, and Texas and California can’t, without spending a lot of money on improvements.”
“That’s pretty tricky.”
“But it can be done.”
Yañez thought it over for all of ten seconds. Then he stuck out his thick-fingered hand. “You’ve got a deal, Billy.”
&nb
sp; Donaldson’s smile turned genuine. “I appreciate it, Marty. You won’t regret it.”
July 21, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 107 Days
17:14 Hours
Infirmary, the Arrow
“So how do you feel?” asked Taki Nomura.
Ted Connover was sitting in the only visitor’s chair, at one end of Nomura’s minuscule desk. The infirmary was pocket-sized: not even one bed. If anyone got sick or was injured, they’d be placed in their own privacy cubicle.
Ted’s eyes flicked to the unblinking red light of the recording camera before answering, “Okay, I guess.”
“Sleeping all right?”
A nod.
“Dreams?”
A shrug. “Nothing special. They usually fade away when I wake up.”
Taki said nothing. She’s like one of those Buddha sculptures, Connover thought. Her lips smile but those almond eyes are trying to x-ray me.
“You’re eating well,” she said.
Connover grinned. “Considering the food aboard this bucket, that might be a sign of insanity.”
“The food could be better,” she conceded.
For a long moment they faced each other, saying nothing. Then Nomura very clearly reached out one hand and clicked the camera off. The red eye closed.
“All right, Ted. The official part of this examination is over. Now it’s just you and me.”
Looking just the slightest bit suspicious, Connover asked, “So what do you want to know that I haven’t already told you?”
“How you really feel.”
“Like I said, okay.”
“You said, ‘Okay, I guess.’”
Almost sheepishly, “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”
“So what’s the ‘I guess’ all about?”
Connover bit his lips. Then, “I . . . I feel sort of . . . numb. Like I’m embalmed or frozen in ice, kind of. Like I’m empty inside.”
“You’re holding your emotions in check.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Suddenly he wanted this interview to be over. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m getting damned sick and tired of everybody pussyfooting around me. Ever since Vicki’s accident, it’s like they’re waiting for me to crack up or something. Hell, Mikhail’s the only one who’s talked to me straight for the past week.”
“Mikhail can be insensitive.”
“Maybe. But at least he tells you what he really thinks.”
“And the rest of us don’t?”
“No. Not really.” Before Taki could reply, Ted went on, “Oh, you’ve all been very supportive, really. I shouldn’t complain. It’s just that . . . that . . .”
“That what?”
“You all look like you’re walking on eggshells around me. I’m okay. Vicki and Thad are dead and there’s nothing I can do about that. Let’s get on with the job and stop treating me like I’m some wounded animal, for God’s sake.”
“Is that what you really want?”
“Yes!”
Nomura smiled at him. “You know that Houston’s been on my back about you. They’re worried you might not be up to the job.”
“Christ, the job’s all I’ve got left! Let me do what I came here to do.”
“That’s fine by me, but the Mission Control people are wondering if they shouldn’t order an abort.”
“Abort!” Connover snapped. “That’s fine. That’s great. They abort the mission and we go back home and for the rest of my life I’ll know that it was my fault we didn’t get to Mars. Goddamned paper-pushers. And they think I’m crazy!”
Taki burst into a delighted laugh. “You’re right, Ted. They’re the crazy ones.”
“Damned straight.”
“No abort,” said Taki.
“It’s too late to abort, anyway,” Connover said, almost to himself. “We’re past the ninety-day mark. If they ordered an abort now we’d have to go all the way to Mars anyway, swing around the planet, and come home. Might as well land and carry out the mission.”
“Might as well,” Taki agreed.
Connover nodded enthusiastically.
More softly, she said, “I’d trust you with my life, Ted. I hope you know that.”
His face, his whole body relaxed. “I know it. But thanks for reminding me. I appreciate it.”
“The whole crew is with you, Ted.”
“I wonder if Bee would obey an abort order,” Connover mused. “Probably would. He’s too straight-laced to tell ’em to go to hell.”
“Would you?”
“If I were in Bee’s place? Yep, I’d tell them where to stuff it.”
“I don’t think I’ll put that in my report.”
“Put it in. What’re they going to do, fire me?”
Nomura smiled at him. “Okay, Ted. I’ll make my report to the chief of the psych team. Suitably edited.”
“Whichever,” Connover said, getting up from the tiny chair. “Thanks, Taki.”
“Just doing my job,” she said. But once Connover had ducked through the narrow hatchway, Taki started to wonder if the big boys back at Johnson would accept her report or override it.
Suddenly the ship lurched. Taki rocked sideways in her chair and the alarm klaxon began to howl.
III
Collision
July 21, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 107 Days
17:22 Hours Universal Time
The Rock
Not unlike the collision between the massive eighteen-wheeler and the lightweight, energy-efficient car that had killed Ted Connover’s family, the collision between the tiny rock and the massive Arrow was governed by the laws of motion that had been established when the universe began, nearly fourteen billion years ago.
If the rock were stationary, then it wouldn’t look all that intimidating. Measuring only a little more than a foot in diameter, on Earth a person could have picked it up and moved it easily. But it wasn’t stationary. It was moving at more than thirty miles per second relative to the Arrow.
After swinging through the inner solar system for nearly fifteen million years, the rock finally encountered another sizeable body. It struck the Arrow along its latticework spine, nearly severing the beam that kept the primary modules of the spacecraft together and functioning. Chunks of debris, mostly aluminum alloy crosspieces that made up that part of the beam, sprayed outward from the point of impact and plowed into the habitat module where the crew lived. Tens of tiny holes perforated the thin skin of the inflated section of the habitat, immediately causing a pressure drop inside. Other shards penetrated the thin aluminum skin of the crew’s sleeping area, piercing the walls and allowing the precious water in the radiation shield to spray out into space. Still other fragments impacted the ship’s propellant tanks and propulsion system.
There was no explosion visible from the outside. An external observer would have seen the ship suddenly shudder and then expel a spray of fragments that collided with the other, intact portions of the ship. The rock was also fragmented: each of several dozen splinters went whirling into new trajectories around the Sun, likely to orbit peacefully for more millions of years.
Inside the ship it was like an earthquake. In less than a second, the crew went from a pleasant one-third gravity to being thrown around like rag dolls. The full-spectrum lights went out; a heartbeat later the emergency lights penetrated the darkness, but feebly, dimly.
The shirtsleeve environment, with its constant gentle hum of air circulators, abruptly changed into a frenzied rush of air escaping into space through the many holes torn in the habitat module’s skin. The boring sameness of day-to-day routine instantly gave way to chaos and near-panic as the little self-contained ecosystem that was the Arrow instantly changed into a death trap.
July 21, 2035
Earth Departure Plus 107 Days
17:23 Hours Universal Time
Command Center, the Arrow
Chaos. There was no other word to describe the scene playing out before Benson’s eyes. A moment ago he had b
een sitting at his post in the command center, talking with Virginia Gonzalez about her research work on laser communications. Now he was trying to figure out what the hell had happened as he struggled to regain his orientation in the near-darkness and chaos enveloping the Arrow and her crew.
Through the open hatch he could hear shouts of confusion and fear. And that damned klaxon was beeping away maddeningly.
Thanks to years of training, Benson reflexively reached for the control panel and banged the button that turned off the wailing klaxon. Everybody knows we’re in trouble, he told himself. Mission Control knows it, too; or at least they will in another few seconds.
The first order of business when air is leaking from the ship is to put on the emergency air masks and survive long enough to figure out what’s happened and how to deal with it.
Gonzalez was staring at Benson like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, clutching the edges of the chair she was sitting in, frozen with sudden terror.
Okay, Benson said to himself, they made you the commander; now command.
“Get your air mask on! Now! Feel that wind? The air’s blowing out of the ship. If you don’t move you’ll be dead. Go!”
Gonzalez blinked and stirred herself. She rushed to the wall panel that held the masks. She wasn’t alone. From wherever they had been at the moment of impact, the entire crew reacted as they’d been trained and grabbed for the masks that were stowed in each section of the habitat module.
Benson moved too. He knew that he only had minutes to pull a mask from its locker and slip it over his head. Not designed for EVA in space or on Mars, the emergency masks were simply face-covering protectors with small air bottles designed to be worn during an emergency such as this. They had enough air to keep a person alive for about two hours in a low-pressure environment. Long enough to find and repair all but the most serious of hull breaches. But the masks had none of the self-contained pressurization and heating/cooling systems of the full EVA spacesuits.
