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CHAPTER 22:
Radical Solutions



Gavin T @TaketaniDoc

Farewell Mars!

Richmond Times Features @JenButler

Whoo, six months isolation on top of a volcano is no joke, but sometimes a sense of humor is necessary. Tonight’s live-stream looks at crew psychology—and outtakes from our less serious moments. Inside Astronaut Training—Streaming live at 1900 EST on @RTFchannel11016.

ChirpChat, August 2043


Either Glenn wasn’t the only one to think about sterilizing the food supply, or someone at MMC was finally listening. A couple days after he sent his recommendation, Jeff Ling, the Moonbase chief medical officer, came to see him. The man was ten years younger than Glenn, and had been a resident on temporary duty to Moonbase when Glenn had been CMO. While he didn’t always share the concerns over lapses in Marsbase crew health maintenance, he had sought out Glenn’s analysis of the Marsbase One and Percheron crew issues.

“Shep, the head of human spaceflight at Johnson thinks it’s food contamination and that they should sterilize the stores. He’s been talking to the Tucson Boys and Girls Club and says they are thinking along the same lines. That’s as close as you’re going to get to an acknowledgement that you’re right.”

“Good. So, who tells her, and when?”

“It needs to come from Space Force, since Doc Barbier is acting Percheron medical officer, which puts her under my authority as CMO Third Space Wing. I’ll send the comm this afternoon, but put everybody’s name on it. However, I wanted to talk with you, first. I want to put your name at the head of the list and to hell with what anyone else thinks. You have more experience than the rest of us and I wanted to see if you’ve thought of anything else to add. After all, I haven’t forgotten everything I learned from you—the most important fact being that nothing is ever final.”

Glenn put his fingertips together and affected an old man’s voice. “Good, good, my young padawan. You have learned well.” They both laughed, then the medical officer left to send his communication.

Finally, someone was listening.


The technique was as easy as Glenn had said; put the food and water into the cargo hold and open the door to expose it to hard vacuum and solar radiation. The not-so-easy part was that food would have to be removed from the sealed vacuum and radiation-proof packaging for the treatment, then crew would have to repackage the food to store it for a few more months. It would have to be done by vac-suited crewmembers, since repressurizing the hold before sealing the food would defeat the purpose of the sterilization process. Sterilizing the water was more difficult. Exposure to vacuum would boil the water, leaving only a cloud of ice crystals floating in vacuum. The low boiling point wouldn’t do anything to kill bacteria or viruses, so the water would be pumped into radiation transparent containers, large water bladders similar to giant water balloons. Those would be placed in the cargo hold, then exposed to the ionizing radiation by direct exposure to sunlight.

That was the plan. It just didn’t work out that way. Glenn watched and listened with a sense of growing horror to the recordings transmitted back to Earth from Percheron.


“Captain! Captain, what you doing?”

Approximately two months’ worth of food and water had been placed into the cargo hold in preparation for the vacuum and radiation sterilization.

“Captain, please! Please don’t do this.”

The transmission originated on the bridge of Percheron. Captain LeBlanc had been complaining of strange dreams and had been showing signs of anxiety and nervousness. Percheron’s medic had asked Dr. Barbier to prescribe some antianxiety medications in hopes of calming the captain down, but she’d begun acting erratically and saying things that did not make sense.

“They want it. They want it all, but they can’t have it. I’m not going to let them have it.”

“Captain who are you talking about? There’s nobody else here.”

“They want it, they do. They told me in my sleep. They came and told me they wanted our food, our people, everything. I can’t let them have it.”

“Captain, please stay away from those controls. Security! Security to the bridge!”

Security on Percheron was two Space Force soldiers who doubled up in other jobs—Master Sergeant Bialik, the medic, and Technical Sergeant Philips, the assistant to the ship’s engineer. The bridge hatch opened to reveal the two soldiers who immediately moved to separate First Officer Dvorak and Captain LeBlanc. The latter had one arm out and was reaching for a small blinking button on the ship status panel. That button should have been covered by a safety latch, but a jagged piece of plastic, with a few drops of blood hovering in the free-fall environment of the bridge stood testament to the ongoing struggle between the two officers.

LeBlanc was raving. Her words did not make sense—something about aliens wanting their food and water, and planning to kidnap the crew. While Master Sergeant Bialik stood back with Major Dvorak, Tech Sergeant Philips kept the captain away from the console . . . until she kneed him in the groin, causing him to double over and release his grip. Dvorak and Bialik were too far away as LeBlanc reached out and pressed the flashing button.

Percheron shuddered.

Depressurization alarms throughout the ship could be heard over the various comm feeds. The view shook slightly as airtight bulkheads closed. Red lights appeared at many places on the status console as a recorded alert sounded.

“Depressurization, cargo bay one. Depressurization event, cargo bay one. Alert. Alert. Alert.”

The food! The water!

If the cargo bay was depressurized without gradually pumping out the atmosphere, it was possible that the food and water was damaged or even blown out into space. The two soldiers subdued the captain, although she continued to struggle. Major Dvorak moved to the console to assess the damage.

“Bridge to engineering. Chief engineer Scott, please tell me the cargo was secured.”

“Bridge, this is Lieutenant Katou. Scotty’s not here—he was in the cargo hold. We were trying to secure the load and he shoved me toward the hatch as the bay doors blew out.”

“Katou! Can you see in there? What’s the status?”

Another voice came over the comm. “Oh! Oh, my God! It’s all blown out!”

“Calm down. Who is this?”

“It’s Doctor Barbier; I’m in the observation galley. I saw it happen. The cargo bay doors just blew outward. Engineer Scott pushed Lieutenant Katou toward the hatch, but Scotty was in there without a suit! He’s gone. The food is gone—the water is gone—oh my God, what are we going to do?”


The conference call was one of the largest in the history of spaceflight. In addition to the Houston and Tucson mission control centers, medical officers in Dayton, Huntsville, and Moonbase were joined by Dvorak, Barbier, and Bialik. The communications delay between Earth and Moon was only about one-and-a-half seconds, but Percheron was still in close enough proximity to Mars to cause a nearly twenty-minute one-way comm lag.

Captain LeBlanc continued to rave about aliens trying to steal crew provisions. Yvette had run a brain scan which confirmed that the captain was experiencing elevated activity in the visual and auditory processing centers of her brain. Her neurotransmitter levels were also elevated—likely the source of the anxiety and insomnia before the incident. She was hallucinating, but as far as LeBlanc was concerned, her brain was telling her that there was actually something there, real, or not.

It was only the start of Percheron’s crew problems, though. With the loss of the chief engineer and medical disability of Captain LeBlanc, the ship was short-staffed. Major Dvorak and Lieutenant Katou could fill in, but no one knew the ship like Scotty. Dvorak also had to act as ship’s captain and mission commander, unless he wanted to yield to returning Marsbase One commander, Gavin Taketani. They could draft the Marsbase engineers, too, but Amit’s specialty was habitats, while Steve Green specialized in construction. No, they were better off with Katou and Philips—at least they were familiar with the ship’s fission-fusion drive system.

To make matters worse, more crew members were reporting irritability and mood swings. Once again, it was worse in women than in men—at least the female Percheron crew showed symptoms earlier, and with greater severity, but now all showed the effects of a disturbance in the human body’s delicate endocrine balance. Ground-based medical teams were still saying that the problem had to be in the food, while the space-based medical teams cautioned that even sterilization might not be enough if the issue was chemical and not biological.

On top of that, there was the issue of two months’ worth of lost supplies.

“We send them food. That’s what we do. We send them more food and water—something where we do the quality control. Something that we know is good.”

“Jason, that is just nuts! We can’t do that. How are we going to send a ship, hit a moving target, and get it there before things get even worse?”

“We strap on every single booster we can get our hands on. We can use an unoccupied drone. We did it with cargo ships to get the basic components to Mars. We sent out drones, and they were there waiting when the astronauts arrived.”

“But we have to hit a moving target! Percheron is on its return already. Their trajectory changed again when the cargo hatch was blown.”

While the rest of the team argued, Glenn sat silently and thought about the problem. They needed to get resupply to Percheron; it would need to go on a fast drone. That meant putting every booster they could manage on it and accelerating to a high rate of speed so that it wouldn’t take six months to reach the ship.

Of course, no matter how they did it, it wouldn’t necessarily take six months for a cargo drone to get to Percheron—they could meet it halfway in two to three months. The current argument was in favor of simply supplying enough food and water to get home. Glenn knew that the problem was not simply about having the supplies to get home. The crew was sick; in two months they could be dead or dying. Only Percheron crew were seriously affected so far, but the Marsbase crew would be next.

“So, we strap on every booster we’ve got. If we can do a six gee or even a ten gee for an hour, it would be enough to get that drone moving at a high rate of speed. We can get it there in a week or two instead of months!”

“Jason, did I mention that you’re nuts?”

Six gees, ten gees—Glenn thought about it. There was another problem that no one had yet mentioned. Even if the drone only took a week to reach Percheron, would the crew be coherent enough to complete the remote docking procedures and bring the drone on board? The deterioration of the captain had been much too fast. Even more important—someone had to unload the medical supplies and treat the crew once the cargo drone arrived.

Glenn started tapping on his comm tablet to send a secure message to Marty.


To: Martin Spruce

From: Shepard

Subject: Gee Tolerance

Marty, what’s my maximum tolerance?

—Shep


About a minute later Glenn got a response.


Maximum G tolerance likely around six gees. Shep, what are you thinking?

—M


Glenn turned off his microphone. He’d already turned off his video link. There was no need to waste Orbit to Earth bandwidth for the dozens of people on the call. With the audio turned down, he commed Marty.

“What the hell are you planning to do, Shep?”

“And a jolly good afternoon to you, too, Marty!” Glenn replied in a cheerful voice.

“Don’t give me that. General Boatright made me listen in on this cluster—” He broke off before completing the phrase.

“Well then, you know we need to get supplies out to Percheron fast. These guys are talking about strapping on every booster they can get their hands on and boosting at six or ten gees for an hour to gain enough velocity to make the trip in a week. They want to send an unmanned pod, but I’m afraid that unmanned is just going to add to the disaster. There needs to be somebody on board. There needs to be someone who can tolerate high gee-load.”

“You’re a fool, Shep.”

“No, Doc, this has to be done. I’m the one to do it, we both know that.”

“No, not that kind of fool. It’s that old saying about how fools rush in where angels fear to tread. You’re a fool, Shep, but you’re right, you’re the fool we need. I’ll have the lab team work on it, and I’ll figure out how to broach the subject with General Boatright. By the way, we’ve got a new suit for you for extravehicular activity. Boats wanted me to send it up next month, but I think you’re going to need it right away. If there’s a way to do this, we’ll figure it out, but we can’t let anybody else know.”

“Sure, but you’re talking about checking it out with General Boatright. How is that not letting anybody know?”

“We can trust him. We have all along. You’d be surprised, Shep.”

“Okay. Well, I trust you and if you think that’s the best way to do it.”

“Definitely the best way to go, Shep. The general knows your capabilities as well as we do. He’s your advocate; he’s been fighting to get you back into space. He authorized the new EVA suit, and as I said, he wanted me to send it to you soon. I’ll have it put on the next shuttle.”

“That sounds like a plan. I guess I need to get myself on the crew that’s packing supplies.”

“I suspect the general can help with that as well. After all, you’re the most experienced medical officer in orbit right now.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that somewhere recently. Okay, I need to get back to this whine-fest. Keep me posted, Marty.”

“Yeah, well, before you do that. Have you talked to Jen?”

“Geez, you’re as bad as Nik.”

“Yes, I am. We care about you, and we like Jen. She was good for you.”

“Look, I sent her a card, but as soon as she got out of the isolation phase, this whole situation blew up.”

“That’s—a partial excuse, but I’m not letting you off the hook. You need to call her.”

“Why? What do you know that I don’t?”

“It’s not that, it’s just—you’re about to do something stupid. Before you do that, you need to settle things.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Don’t make me call your Aunt Sally.”

“Ugh. You fight dirty.”

“I mean it, Shep. Do it.

“Yes, Marty. I will. Now, I really do need to get back to this conference call.”


Glenn listened as the arguments went back and forth. The plan was now to send freshly packed food from Earth. There was discussion of sending water, but it was shouted down by others complaining about the cost in ground-to-orbit lift just to get water to space when there were other sources. That led to discussions of how to ensure they sent pure (or at least, clean) water and air. Eventually they settled on water from asteroid ice. The growing space stations at the L2, L4, and L5 Lagrange points were mostly supplied by capturing near-Earth asteroids with high ice content. Additional supplies of air would be produced from asteroids that were heated to release water and nitrogen. The water would be distilled and electrolyzed, and the nitrogen and oxygen combined into breathable air.

Everything that could be, would be packaged on Earth, boosted to orbit, combined with additional supplies in orbit, packed into a cargo pod, then sent on its way. It would take every booster they could spare—and a few they couldn’t—to send the cargo drone on its way. The argument then turned to how to ensure that the pod would be able to rendezvous with Percheron. It would be moving at an extremely high velocity in the opposite direction, and would need to turn and decelerate to match trajectory with the Mars ship. That meant more fuel, more thrusters . . . and more weight.

Space Force was confident that they would be able to do everything by remote control. They would preprogram course correction and matching to get the cargo drone alongside Percheron. From there, the Space Force crew of Percheron would be perfectly capable of snagging the pod and bringing it to dock with the ship and unload the supplies. The MarsX personnel were not quite convinced but it really wasn’t up to them. Percheron belonged to NASA and Space Force. They were the ones who built it, operated it, and crewed it. MarsX was just along for the ride.

The NASA teams were mostly silent. They knew how hard it was to do rendezvous in low orbit, high orbit, even lunar orbit, but they’d managed it at the Moon and Mars. On the other hand, those events had the benefit of alert and confident crews.

“Has anybody considered the fact that the Percheron crew may be too sick, or even disabled by the time the cargo pod gets there?”

Glenn was surprised somebody else was thinking on the same lines. He looked back at the conference indicators to see who spoke. Ah, it was Ling.

The Space Force and NASA experts dismissed the concerns. If need be, they could handle rendezvous and docking by remote—even with up to forty minutes’ round-trip transmission lag. Glenn thought they were overconfident. Again, Ling expressed Glenn’s unvoiced concerns.

“But with the time lag, wouldn’t it be more prudent to send someone with the cargo pod?” Ling’s question was met by laughs.

“No human can survive the acceleration,” NASA administrator Chuck Gallant said. “If we make it safe enough for an astronaut, the supplies won’t get there in time.”

“I can think of someone who could do it. Shepard could.”

“The clockwork astronaut?” Gallant scoffed. “Hell no, we’re not putting a cripple with an artificial heart on a high-speed rocket.”

“That’s not very inclusive of you, Chuck,” a new voice said.

“Who said that?”

There were chuckles and muttering, but with most participants having turned off their video feeds, there was no way to know who had spoken. After a few more heated words, the conference broke up. They had a plan to pack a cargo pod with clean food, water, and air, plus a bunch of fuel. They would strap on as many boosters as they could manage, and send the pod like a bat out of hell to rescue Percheron. What was not in the plan was a final determination of how to manage rendezvous if the crew was incapacitated.

Deep in his heart, Glenn knew that the basic concept would work, but it needed something more.

It needed him.


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