16
MARS, INCORPORATED
Valentine’s Day. Thrasher hurried from his limousine to the entrance of the Marriott Residence Inn, with Linda Ursina scampering along beside him. A Blue Norther was sweeping through Houston, making Thrasher realize the truth behind the old saying that there’s nothing between Texas and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence.
“Lord, it’s freezing!” Linda said. She was wearing a lined leather coat over her businesslike pants suit, but it was obviously too light for the weather. Thrasher, in nothing but a tan sports jacket and brown whipcord slacks, agreed with a shivering nod.
The first meeting of Mars, Incorporated’s board of directors wasn’t scheduled to begin for another hour, but Thrasher wanted to be there first, to make sure that everything was set up properly and to greet his directors as they arrived.
The hotel manager was just inside the door, all smiles.
“Sure is cold out there, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yep,” said Thrasher, grateful for the hotel’s warmth. “Is everything set up?”
“Yes indeed,” the manager replied, leading Thrasher and Linda to a bank of elevators. “You’ll be in the executive suite, on the top floor.”
“Good,” Thrasher said, thinking, That ought to impress Sampson. And the Kahn boys.
Fifteen minutes before the hour appointed for the meeting, all twenty of the directors of the newly-formed corporation had arrived in the executive suite. The conference room was a little crowded, but Thrasher thought the sweeping view of Houston’s skyline would make up for it. That, and the long table filled with drinks and finger foods.
He greeted and chatted with each of the directors as they arrived. Once all twenty were present, Thrasher called out, “Okay, I think we can get started now.”
He went to the head of the gleamingly polished table and watched the directors arrange themselves along its length. Sampson sat at his right, of course. The Kahn brothers opposite him. Will Portal nonchalantly pulled out a chair halfway down the table. No pretensions for Will, Thrasher told himself, smiling inwardly. Uta Gelson, Nels Bartlett and the others arranged themselves within a few moments. Linda took up her usual post along the wall, recorder in hand, alongside Francine Timons, Thrasher’s public relations director.
Once they were all seated, Thrasher—still standing—wiped his glasses, replaced them on his nose, and said, “I want to thank you all for joining this mission. We’re going to make history.”
Somebody muttered, “Instead of money.”
Thrasher ignored the comment. They went through the agenda with surprising alacrity. Thrasher was elected chairman of the board by acclamation. Sampson was named vice chairman, and David Kahn—after a whispered conversation with his brother—accepted the post of treasurer.
“That fills the legal requirements for forming a corporation in the sovereign state of Texas,” Thrasher said. “We’re in business.”
They broke into applause. Briefly.
Then Sampson asked, “Who’s our legal counsel?”
“I’m using the same firm that Thrasher Digital uses: Towers and Towers.”
Sampson nodded. “Are you getting a volume discount from them?”
Polite laughter.
After a few more questions and answers, Thrasher said, “Now I’d like you to meet the guy who’s heading up our technical team.” He turned to Linda and nodded. She spoke quietly into her smartphone.
Everyone turned to face the door as Jessie Margulis stepped into the conference room. The engineer was wearing an actual suit, dark blue, and a Texas Aggies maroon and white tie. He looked uncomfortable as he stood by the door, all eyes on him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jessie Margulis, the best engineer in NASA—until this past January first. Now he’s the chief engineer of Mars, Incorporated.”
Another spattering of polite applause.
Margulis blinked shyly and went to the empty chair at the foot of the conference table, next to Vince Egan. As he sat down he pulled a smartpad from his jacket pocket.
“I have a few slides to show y’all,” he said.
Thrasher groaned inwardly. Every NASA presentation always begins with, “The first slide, please.”
Linda went to the nearest window and touched the control panel. Storm shutters slid slowly down, darkening the room.
The wall above the buffet table lit up and showed: MARS, INC. PRELIMINARY PLAN.
Margulis fiddled with his smartpad and a chart appeared on the wall.
I hope he doesn’t bore them to death, Thrasher thought.
“We’re going to use the Earth-orbital assembly technique,” Margulis said, aiming a laser pointer at one of the boxes. “Instead of building a rocket booster big enough to lift the whole spacecraft and send it to Mars, we’ll use existing commercial boosters such as Boeing’s Delta IV to lift the craft in segments and assemble the segments in low Earth orbit.”
“Won’t that be expensive?” Uta Gerson asked.
“Not as expensive as developing a whole new booster,” said Margulis.
“How many launches will you need?” Sampson asked.
“I’m figuring on a minimum of six. That includes lifting the propulsion system and its propellant, plus all the life-support supplies.”
Will Portal, the only other engineer at the table, asked, “Do you plan to send supplies and fuel for the return flight on ahead, separately?”
In the darkened room, Thrasher could see Margulis relax into a grin. A fellow geek boy to talk to.
“You’re thinking of the old Mars Express idea,” he said to Portal.
“Zubrin’s plan, yes.”
“We’ll be looking into that, of course,” Margulis said. “We’ll have to do a cost analysis and weigh the consequences of a possible failure somewhere along the mission profile.”
“Failure?” piped Charlie Kahn.
Spreading his hands, Margulis said, “Rockets blow up sometimes. Spacecraft go dead. It’s a long way to Mars. We’ve got to factor in the effects of possible failures.”
“You mean somebody might get killed?”
Before Margulis could reply, Thrasher said flatly, “It’s a possibility. We’ll be doing everything we can to make that possibility as small as we can, of course.”
“Zero defects,” Margulis said.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a program NASA instituted during the Apollo program. Every piece that goes into the spacecraft is examined and tested. Every single weld, every component of every vehicle, every shoelace, even.”
“Instead of just taking samples at random and testing them,” Portal said.
“Yessir,” said Margulis. “Zero defects is our goal. No piece goes uninspected or untested.”
“That will be expensive,” Gelson murmured.
“Not as expensive as a failure,” snapped Thrasher.