Rescue Mode - eARC (42 page)

“Many people have said that it’s too dangerous for human beings to risk their lives in space exploration. It
is
dangerous, there’s no doubt of that. But what we are witnessing is that intelligent, dedicated men and women can surmount the problems that they face so many million miles from home. They can adapt, improvise, and overcome the drawbacks of living in that alien environment on Mars. They can survive, and we should be proud of each and every one of them—and the team back here on Earth that supports them.

“Steven Treadway reporting.”

December 22, 2035

07:00 Universal Time

Mars Landing Plus 47 Days

Fermi
Habitat

Catherine broke into a big, beaming smile as Ted Connover stepped from his hammock to the table where the team was having breakfast.

To treat the burns on his face, she and Amanda were keeping his blistered skin covered in nitric oxide impregnated bandages while they attached the WoundStim’s tiny electrodes to the uninjured skin next to the burn. Developed by India after so many suffered severe burns from the detonation of the improvised nuclear device that devastated Faridabad in 2022, the device reduced the amount of time required to heal from severe burns by at least a factor of three, making WoundStim standard equipment among first responders and, of course, the world’s space agencies. The more serious burns on his right hand would be treated the same way, after the wounds on his face were sufficiently healed. The women put Ted’s arm in a sling to avoid having it contact his body as he slept and moved around the habitat until it could be treated.

“The Mummy from Mars,” Amanda said.

“I’m not a mummy,” Ted quipped. “I’m a daddy.”

McPherson and the women laughed out of all proportion to the cleverness of Ted’s remark.

“How do you feel?” Catherine asked.

“Still a little pain,” said Connover, “but I’m glad you cut down on the painkillers: they were making me dopey.”

“Dop
ier
,” Amanda wisecracked.

“What’s for breakfast?” Ted asked.

“You have a choice,” said McPherson. “Reconstituted eggs or cornflakes with soymilk.”

“Just coffee.”

“You should eat something,” said Amanda. “Bring up your strength.” She pushed her chair back from the table and got to her feet. “Eggs or flakes?”

Ted got up too. “I can get it myself. I’ve still got one workable hand.”

Amanda nodded, but stayed beside Ted as he went to the freezer, pulled out a package of eggs, and slid it into the microwave.

“What’s our power level?” Ted asked as the microwave started humming.

“A little over fifty percent,” said McPherson, “with the new pump we installed yesterday.”

“What are we doing without?”

“Lights and heat, mostly.”

Catherine added, “We turn off the lights in areas we are not working in, and we turn down the heat at night.”

“Solar panels okay?”

“Yes,” McPherson answered. “We get plenty of power while the sun’s up.” Before Connover could ask, he went on, “And the gardens are doing fine.”

Ted nodded as the microwave pinged. “We’re going to be all right, then.”

McPherson grinned at him. “Like you said, God willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Bee Benson was sitting in the
Arrow
’s command chair, frowning at the display of their ship’s trajectory. To get back to Earth, the
Arrow
was going to have to coast all the way to Venus, where it would loop around that planet and finally approach home.

No big deal,
he told himself.
Spacecraft have used these slingshot maneuvers since the 1970s, stealing a bit of angular momentum from a planet to change their own trajectories. Gravity assist. Perfectly orthodox technique.

Still, he wished they could go straight to Earth without the need to haul out to Venus.
Yeah
, he thought.
Go straight to Earth and go screaming in like a bloody meteor.
Burn up in the atmosphere. Haste makes cinders.

Virginia stepped into the command center. “It’s almost lunch time,” she said, standing beside him.

He pulled her down onto his lap. “I’m not hungry,” he said. “For lunch.”

She giggled. “You’ve fallen under the influence of Venus, goddess of love and beauty.”

“You’re all the goddess I need,” Bee replied.

“Really?”

“Really. Besides, Venus isn’t so beautiful, once you see her close up.”

“The evening star? Not beautiful?”

“Oh, she looks lovely in Earth’s sky. The evening star. Or the morning star, depending on where she is in her orbit around the Sun. But that’s because she’s twenty-five million miles away from Earth, more or less. When you get closer to her, she doesn’t look so good.”

“The astronomers call her Earth’s twin planet, don’t they?”

“Venus is almost the same size as Earth, true enough. But think about it, her atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide. The clouds that make her shine so beautifully are laced with sulfuric acid. The ground temperature is almost a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The ground glows, it’s so hot. Damned planet’s more like Dante’s Inferno than the goddess of love and beauty.”

Virginia heaved a mock sigh. “How romantic you are, Bee.”

“I’m a realist.”

“But where’s the romance, the adventure, the dream?”

“Virginia, the dreamer in me was wounded when we got hit by that rock. It was killed when we lost Mikhail. I can’t afford to dream if I’m going to get us back home safely.”

She shook her head. “My poor Bee. So much responsibility on your shoulders.”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d have gone crazy weeks ago.”

Virginia smiled sadly. “Ah, love, let us be true to one another,” she quoted. “For the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor—”

Bee wrapped his arms around her. “But we have each other, Virginia. And once we get home, we’re going to build a wonderful life together.”

Her smile turned warmer.
He said once we get home,
Virginia thought.
Not if. We’re going to make it. And he’s going to be all right.

December 23, 2035

04:44 Universal Time

Mars Landing Plus 48 Days

The White House

It was approaching midnight in Washington D.C. The black Mercedes sedan stopped at the White House’s west gate, where the passengers’ credentials were quickly scanned by the guard, then the car drove up to the West Wing portico.

Standing beside the Marine on duty there, Sarah Fleming held her arms tightly around herself. The December night was cold. Past the White House fence she could see the National Christmas Tree, ablaze with colored lights. The city was still buzzing, despite the hour. Most stores were remaining open until midnight to accommodate frenzied Christmas shoppers.

Feels like it’s going to snow,
she said to herself.

The Mercedes pulled up and a man in a dark suit got out, and hurried up the steps to where Fleming was waiting.

“Senator Donaldson,” she said, with a heartiness she did not truly feel.

“Sarah,” the senator replied.

“Come on in,” she said.

As she walked them along the corridor, Fleming said, “The president is waiting for you in the reception room.”

“Can you tell me what this is all about?” Donaldson asked, his voice hard, flinty. “A midnight call to the White House sounds pretty melodramatic to me.”

Forcing a smile, Fleming replied, “He didn’t want any publicity about this meeting. He thought it would be best if you two talked without the ever-present cyberworld watching. I don’t think a public figure can go to the bathroom without someone taking a movie, posting it and commenting on their bowel habits.”

Donaldson made a sour face; his young aide looked shocked.

The reception room was small, quiet, elegant, private. President Harper got to his feet as the three of them stepped in. On the ornate coffeetable in front of the sofa, a small forest of liquor bottles stood waiting. The president already had a heavy cut crystal glass in his hand.

“William,” he said cordially, extending his free hand. “Good of you to come.”

Donaldson made the smallest of smiles as he took the president’s hand. “What’s this all about, Mr. President?”

Harper smiled broadly as he pointed to the array of bottles. “What’ll you have?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Nothing stronger? Something to ward off the chill?”

“Just coffee.”

Fleming went to the phone and ordered a pot of coffee. Harper pointed to the sofa, then sat himself in the armchair at one end of it. Donaldson sat at that end of the sofa.

A butler in dignified white tie came in with a tray bearing a silver coffeepot and three heavy-looking mugs bearing the presidential seal. Fleming poured for the senator and his aide while Harper sat back in the armchair and sipped at his whisky.

“All right, Bob,” Donaldson said, letting some crankiness show, “Why did you ask me here?”

Harper ignored the deliberate impropriety. Leaning toward Donaldson, he said, “Bart Saxby’s had a heart attack.”

“When?”

“Earlier this evening. He’s in the Georgetown University Hospital, intensive care.”

Almost smirking, Donaldson muttered, “Another victim of your Mars program.”

Biting back the retort that leaped to his mind, the president said merely, “He’ll recover, they’re pretty sure.”

“Is this why you asked me here tonight?” Donaldson asked.

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Bill, it’s time for us to talk turkey.”

“About what?”

“About the party’s nominee for the presidency next summer.”

A light glinted in Donaldson’s eye, but before he could say anything, the president added:

“And the future of the Mars program.”

The light disappeared. “You know where I stand on that,” Donaldson said coldly. “Human spaceflight is too dangerous. And too expensive. And I don’t give a damn about life on Mars.”

Keeping his expression steady, Harper said, “No more dangerous than airplanes were, early on. In fact, spaceflight has a much better record than aviation, safety-wise.”

“One of your Mars people died. Another had a serious accident. And now Saxby.”

“Prokhorov’s cancer had nothing to do with his being on the Mars mission and you know it,” said the president. “And Connover’s recovering from his burns. I’d say the Mars team has done an admirable job of overcoming the problems they’ve faced.”

“But it’s so expensive—”

“It’s peanuts, and you know it! Less than one percent of the federal budget.”

“It’s one percent we could use elsewhere.”

President Harper put his glass down on the coffeetable and said slowly, “William, you’ve got to decide whether or not you really want the party’s nomination.”

“What do you mean? Of course I want it. I deserve it!”

Leaning back in the armchair again, Harper said, “If you want my support, you’ll have to reinstate the funding for the follow-on mission to Mars.”

“Reinstate . . . ?”

“
And
promise to continue human missions to Mars and elsewhere.”

“No!”

“Do you think you can get the party’s nomination without my support?”

Donaldson flashed a glance at his aide, who sat frozen, coffee mug halfway to his lips, his eyes riveted on the president.

Then the senator said, “Yes, I think I could win the nomination without your support.”

“Could you win it if I actively opposed you?” Harper asked, very softly, almost in a whisper.

Donaldson’s lean face flushed with anger. “You’d tear the party apart over this Mars nonsense?”

“The public is solidly in favor of this Mars nonsense, as you put it. We’ve confirmed that organic chemicals are there. Some on the team are telling me that there are bound to be fossils too. This is the most important discovery in history and we can’t walk away from it. It’s too important.”

“Fantasy.”

“Then let’s talk about reality. You’d have a hard time winning the nomination if I opposed you, and even if you got the nod, you’d surely lose in November.”

“Because you’d split the party in two!”

“No,” Harper countered. “Because
you
would split the party in two by your opposition to one of our most popular programs.”

“Mars isn’t necessary.”

“Yes, it is!” Harper insisted. “Don’t you understand? We have all sorts of programs for all sorts of needs. But Mars—human exploration of the space frontier—that gives people hope, excitement, something to be thrilled about, something to be proud of. And the technology we develop builds our economy better and faster than all the handouts we offer to the people. Who knows, maybe we’ll find out that Mars had more than bacteria in its history.”

Donaldson started to reply, then thought better of it.

“I’ll support your nomination with everything I’ve got,” Harper promised the senator, “and a united party will win the election in November. If you want the White House, you have to give the voters Mars.”

“I can’t do an about-face like that. I’m on record as opposing human spaceflight.”

“You can become a convert,” the President said, with a benign smile. “It’s been done before. You’ve changed your mind on other issues, over the years.”

“But . . .”

“You give me Mars and I’ll give you the White House.”

“I’ll lose my core!”

“You can persuade them. Only a small set of fanatics will hold out. They’re noisy, but they don’t have the votes and the public’s getting tired of them.” The president leaned forward to tap Donaldson on the knee. “William, this is politics. You have to give something to get something. I’m willing to give you the White House. Seems to me what I’m asking you for is not beyond the realm of reason. Besides, the samples of Martian life will come back while you’re in the White House, not me.”

Donaldson didn’t look convinced.

“What if I told you that you’ll be able to take credit for creating whole new industries and keep American biotechnology preeminent for the foreseeable future?”

Donaldson squinted, turned his head to the side, and leaned forward in a clear indication that he wanted to hear more.