IGMS Issue 50 (9 page)

Debra smiled at her boss, and then watched the sky as the booster, with her reactor core on its tip, climbed higher and higher, until all that was left were the dust and exhaust that drifted over the launch zone.

Two years to the day from Debra's presentation in the Excelsior suite of the New York hotel, the
Determination
broke Earth orbit.

After a week of in-orbit systems checks and modifications, the deployment, testing, and stowing of the auxiliary solar panels, not to mention crew acclimatization--barf bags for everybody--the trip to Jupiter began, with seventeen men and women, representing all of the continents, all of them under civilian contract to Groomer's company, and all of them having some kind of skill pertinent to the creation and manning of an actual outpost on one of Jupiter's icy moons.

Which moon, exactly, was yet to be determined. Assuming the ship survived the journey, they'd select a site based on up-close readings. Jupiter's supremely strong magnetic field had to be carefully watched out for. Earlier robotic probes had always had to chart a cautious course. A crewed mission was no different.

Debra was ecstatic. Horribly space sick, but ecstatic.

"You know," said the ostensible captain of the
Determination,
a former airline pilot named Frank Pakinski, "the cameras might take a lot more footage of you if you could keep the green stuff out of your hair."
Debra gave him the finger, cupped her bag to her mouth, retched three times, and went back to studying her instrument panel. Thus far, the reactor was performing beautifully. Super-efficient fuel use. Low thrust, but constant. So constant, in fact, that the entire ship enjoyed a tiny dose of pseudo-gravity. Not enough to make the tornado in Debra's stomach go away, but enough so that objects left floating free gradually clunked against the rear bulkheads. As time wore on and the numbers multiplied on a per-second-per-second basis, the ship would gain not only more relative velocity, but more of a sensation of gravity.

At some point, they would have to turn the ship around and brake into Jupiter orbit, with its numerous moons, deadly magnetic field, and the best night sky view in all of the solar system--save for, perhaps, Saturn. But that was still months away. And the reactor core had only been up and running for a very brief time. Debra almost didn't dare sleep for fear of being away from her instrument panel if something started to go wrong.

However, as days wore on into weeks, the space sickness eased, along with the nervousness Debra had felt about her design. She took to minding other bits of the craft--helped by a little trio of other engineering geeks, two of whom had been plucked from the private sector, and the other from MIT. Nobody was under 25 and nobody was over 45. An emotionally mature, physically healthy lot. People used to working in teams, with an eye to getting things done. But not without points of friction.

And since there were hundreds of cameras throughout the ship, not a single moment of argument, nor even heated discussion, went unnoticed.

Moreover, everybody's space jumpsuits looked like the flame-resistant NASCAR drivers' coveralls, replete with advertising logos. Every meal had a brand name on it, too, as did every drink, every tool, and every piece of equipment. The interior and exterior of the ship looked like a vulgar Christmas tree: commercialized.

And yet, Debra found she didn't mind as much as she thought she might. After all, she was going to Jupiter. Occasionally, she stole moments of private time in the sleeping bay where cameras had been explicitly banned. Video and text letters to and from her parents and her brother's family in San Francisco were a welcome sanity saver. As were, to her surprise, candid conversations with the guy who was footing the bill.

"Pakinski tells me your thruster works like a dream," Ben said over the audio-video link.

"So far so good," Debra said. "All my math has been right, and we're doing even better on the fuel-use gradient than I anticipated."

There was a short pause as her response went all the way back to Earth, and then Ben's response had to be transmitted all the way back to the
Determination.

"I told you: Anything the government does, private enterprise can do for far less cost with far better results."

"Yeah, well, you just keep thinking happy thoughts for us up here, boss. It's a cakewalk, for now. But any number of things can go wrong, and we don't dare talk about the fact that if something really bad happens, there isn't any way for anyone on Earth to fly out and rescue us."

Beat. Beat. Beat.

"Nature of the adventure, Deb. Nature of the adventure. I think maybe it was Carl Sagan who once said--where space exploration is concerned--that the hazard is an inseparable component of the glory? And believe you me, there's plenty of glory to go around for the entire crew of the
Determination
right now."

"Is that so?" Debra asked.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

"Yup. Ratings are huge. We've got one of the best scores in the weekly slot, and re-runs throughout the week are strong too. More companies want to get in on the action. They say they'll pay us big money if we'll radio you their logos, and you print them out on the ship's color printers, then tape the printouts up in opportune spots where the cameras will see them."

"Good Lord, Ben, there's not a single inch of unpainted, unadorned surface in the whole ship! Maybe we should have considered renting screen-saver space on all of the control panels and other workstations?"

Beat. Beat. Beat.

"Heavens, Deb, that's one hell of an idea. Damn, why didn't I think of that? We could enlist any and every sponsor we wanted!"

"Shall I get myself and the other engineers on it?"

"Of course!"

"Okay. Consider it done. We'll be in touch as we get things set up. It should be easy."

Beat. Beat. Beat.

"Thanks. And Deb? Seriously. What you all are doing . . . this is heroic stuff. Ground-breaking. Nothing anyone in history has ever done it before. I mean, you're going to actually
land
on one of the moons of Jupiter! Set up shop! I still can't believe it myself."

"Well, keep your lucky rabbit's foot nearby, and keep rubbing it when we're in your thoughts, boss. Because we've still got a long way to go. And there are no guarantees when we get there."

Debra's words proved sadly prophetic.

Disaster struck when a tiny piece of debris--a rock no larger than a baseball--put a nice hole through one of the three fuel tanks. It took half the crew, working in space suits, to assess, contain, and repair the damage. Most of that tank's contents had bled away into interplanetary space, leaving Pakinski and the rest to decide whether or not the internal systems damage, combined with fuel loss, was severe enough for them to prematurely terminate the trip.

Debate was heated. Half the crew wanted to brake, turn back, and go home. The other half--Debra included--wanted to go forward.

They argued to the point of screaming. Some of the crew came to blows, with cooler heads prying them apart before someone did permanent damage. Pakinski ordered everyone into lockdown status, confining different people to separate parts of the ship, to cool things off. And so that Debra and the others on the engineering team could give him some hard numbers.

"Give it to me straight up," the captain ordered, as Debra met with him over cups of hot coffee in the ship's command module. They were each braced feet-first on the module's back wall, looking at a huge LCD screen which had been rotated around for convenient viewing. Debra's fingers flew across the touch-sensitive surface as she manipulated the three-dimensional diagrams and schematics on the screen.

"See this?" she said, pointing to several systems that blinked an angry yellow.

"Yeah," Pakinski said.

"That little piece of interplanetary shit damaged every single one of these items. And while the secondaries and tertiaries have kicked in, losing so much fuel means we will reach a point of ultimate no return."

"Bingo," Pakinski said.

"What?" Debra asked.

"Pilot talk," he said. "The critical point at which the fuel you have left is only just enough to get you back to your starting point. Fly even a minute farther, and you won't be able to get back home."

"And we're almost there," Debra said. "Within the next 24 hours. We go past this time tomorrow, and we won't have the fuel necessary to brake, turn around, and go back to Earth."

Debra was painfully aware that cameras across the bridge were beaming every second of her analysis to Ben Groomer's receiving dishes on Earth. Doubtless this meeting would be a supremely hyped selling point for the week's greatly-anticipated episode: C
risis on the ship! Will they turn back, or will they go on, knowing that they possibly doom themselves to no return!

"What's your gut say?" Pakinski asked.

"My gut says we've come too far to give up now. My head says we were mad to do this in the first place, so go back."

"You know," Pakinski said, his expression becoming thoughtful, "as a civilian airline pilot, they train you to be hyper-conservative. Take no chances. Make no risky decisions. Everything erring so far on the side of caution, your entire flight plan structured around decision points designed to ensure that your aircraft makes it back to an airfield--somewhere, somehow--with everyone aboard in one, unperturbed piece. Would you believe me if I admitted that I am scared out of my mind right now?"

"Me too," Debra admitted, wrapping her arms around her chest.

Pakinski rubbed his eyes, took a long drink of coffee, then sighed.

"If we go back," he said, "the whole point of the trip gets lost. The television show. The colony at Jupiter. All of it, wasted."

"And we live out our long, safe lives on Earth, never getting to say we went for the gusto," Debra said.

Pakinski's expression turned bemused.

"You don't seem like the gusto type to me," he quipped.

Debra looked at him directly.

"I'm not," she said seriously.

"But you're not going to vote to turn us around, either?" he asked.

"No."

"And if the others vote to go back?"

"You're technically in charge. Think we can go forward under mutinous conditions?"

"No way in hell."

"Right, so . . . we have to hope it's unanimous. One way or the other."

"I think so, yes. And we need to decide before the night watch is through."

"Yup," Debra said. Then she went back to her bunk and waited.

"Ratings are in orbit!" Groomer crowed. "No pun intended."

At this point, the lag time--back to Earth--was so distracting, rapid fire conversation was no longer possible. You talked, then waited, and waited, and then came the response, and you talked, and waited some more. And on, and on.

"If memory serves," Debra said, "the Apollo 13 mission was a big attention-getter too."

Many minutes passed . . .

"The Apollo 13 guys were heroes," the boss finally replied, "even without landing on the moon. And now that you're trying to decide whether or not to turn
Determination
around, it's like the whole world is holding its breath. They want to know what's going to happen. Do you all push on--literally, Jupiter or bust? Or do you bring the ship back home, having fallen short of the goal, but saving the crew? You should know that every talk show and every pundit is going wild with this. People saying you should go for it. Other people saying you're stupid to go for it, and that the only sane choice is to come back. And they're all watching the clock, knowing that you have to make a final choice within mere hours. There is literally nothing else more important on Earth right now, than what you're all deciding to do up there."