1
PORTALES, NEW MEXICO
Thrasher had wanted to keep the headquarters of Mars, Inc., as close to his own Houston offices as possible. But Sampson and the Kahn brothers insisted it should be near the New Mexico spaceport, where most of their launches would take place.
Sid Ornsteen broke the deadlock by suggesting Portales. It was more or less halfway between Houston and Las Cruces, had an excellent university, and to clinch the argument, he pointed out that office leases in Portales were less than half the going rate in Houston.
Thrasher reluctantly agreed, although he worried about being too close to Vicki Zane. He thought the distance between Albuquerque and Houston was just about right: close enough for them to get together for romantic weekends, far enough to allow him to keep from getting entangled.
When Linda suggested he rent a condo in Portales rather than taking a hotel room every time he traveled there, Thrasher vetoed the idea. “No condo. I don’t want anybody thinking I’m setting up house.”
Standing in front of his desk, with the panoramic view of downtown Houston’s skyscrapers behind her, Linda shook her head knowingly. “’Anybody’ meaning a certain redheaded newswoman from Albuquerque?”
Thrasher grinned. “You know me too well, kid.”
Quite seriously, Linda said, “You’re what my grandmother would call a reprobate.”
“Maybe so,” he admitted. “But after two marriages and two divorces you can’t blame a guy for being gun shy.”
“You need a woman in your life,” Linda insisted.
“More than one,” said Thrasher. “More than one.”
Linda threw up her hands and stamped out of the office.
Thrasher chuckled and muttered to himself, “Women.”
The Portales headquarters was hardly imposing or impressive. It was an old warehouse, abandoned by its former owner, an automobile tire retailer who had gone bankrupt—because of gambling debts in Las Vegas, according to the local rumor.
Thrasher had the place cleaned up, and set up movable partitions for offices and work spaces. Best of all, he had converted part of the parking lot into a helicopter pad. The city council had balked at the idea, but Thrasher personally appealed to the zoning board, dropping incredibly broad hints about the job opportunities that Mars, Inc., would create. Several members of the zoning board had teenaged children or kids in college; Thrasher’s appeal passed by a one-vote majority.
Now, as he looked out the window of the helicopter as it approached the parking lot at a steep angle, he thought that the zoning board had made a decent decision. The former warehouse was on the fringe of the city, a district of small factories and warehouses; there were no residential areas within several blocks to be bothered by the noise or the danger of a crash.
We could even offer helicopter transportation to the other companies in the neighborhood, he thought as the chopper landed in a swirl of gritty dust. Make a couple of bucks; maybe the chopper can pay for itself.
It felt chilly as he strode through the bright afternoon sunshine to the door that stood beneath a bold red mars, inc. sign. April in New Mexico, he thought. Still winter, almost. There’s still enough snow in the mountains for the die-hard skiers to get another shot at breaking their necks.
The offices inside the former warehouse looked temporary. The bare girders of the ceiling made the place feel like an empty, echoing airplane hangar. And it still smelled vaguely of old tires, Thrasher thought. The partitions of the cubicles were only shoulder high, and most of them were bare, the cubicles unoccupied. That’ll change, he told himself.
Jessie Margulis’ cubicle was bigger than most of the others, because he had an oblong conference table butted against his desk like the long leg of a T. When Thrasher breezed in, Jessie was sitting at the desk, staring admiringly at a model that looked distinctly ungainly to Thrasher.
It was perched on a wooden base, a bulbous cylinder with a fat wheel attached to one end of it by four spokes.
“That’s it?” Thrasher asked, without preamble.
Margulis looked up from the model. “This is it,” he said, smiling like a kid who’d just unwrapped his birthday present. “This is the vehicle that’ll take us to Mars.”
Thrasher pulled a chair out from the conference table and plopped into it.
“Jessie, I’ve got to tell you, it doesn’t look very sexy. In fact, it looks kind of ugly.”
Margulis’ smile widened. “It’s going to be assembled in space. It’ll go into orbit around Mars. Never touch the ground, never fly through an atmosphere. It doesn’t have to be sleek and sexy.”
“It’s not going to look good on TV.”
“So what? It’s going to be home to seven people for just about two years. They’re going to love it. And so will you.”
“What’s this wheel thing?”
“Living quarters. That’s where the crew will live during the six-month flight to Mars. It spins to give the crew a feeling of weight.”
“Oh?”
Slipping into his lecture mode, Margulis explained, “The biggest problem we faced was the fact that the trip takes a minimum of six months. The crew would be in microgravity all that time.”
“Zero gee,” said Thrasher.
“The science people call it microgravity.”
“They’re weightless, like up in the space station.”
“Right. But after six months of microgravity, they won’t be in any physical shape to go down to the surface of Mars and work there. Their muscles will be deconditioned.”
“How bad—”
“People coming back from six months on the space station need a week or more to get back to normal on Earth.”
“But Mars’ gravity is lighter than Earth’s, isn’t it?”
“About one-third.”
“So is there really a problem here?”
“According to the medical people, the physiologists, yes there is.”
“And this wheel thingee will solve it.”
“Damned right,” said Margulis, fervently. “The wheel rotates at a rate that produces a feeling of Earthly gravity.”
“So there’s no problem with weightlessness.”
“Better than that, Art. Better than that.” Margulis was almost gleeful. “As the ship proceeds to Mars, we gradually despin the wheel—slow down its spin rate—so that by the time they arrive at Mars they’ve been living under Martian-level gravity for weeks.”
“You can do that?”
“Damned right we can! The crew can go right down to the surface and start working as soon as they get there. Isn’t that neat?”
Thrasher nodded in admiration.
“And on the way home,” Margulis went on, “we reverse the procedure. By the time they get back to Earth they’re fully re-adapted to terrestrial gravity!”
Thrasher saw that Margulis was as happy as only an engineer can be when he’s hit on an elegant solution to a difficult problem.
He nodded graciously. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Jessie. It may not look like much, but it’ll get the job done.”
Margulis’ face grew more serious. “One problem, though, Art.”
“What?”
“We’re going to need more than six Delta IV launches to get all the components into orbit.”
“More than six? How many more?”
“I’m figuring on nine.”
Thrasher winced. “That’s fifty percent more than we’re budgeted for.”
“Plus one, maybe two as backups. In case of launch failure.”
“Double the budget, just about.”
“The budget was preliminary, you know.”
Thrasher sighed. “I know, but still . . . doubling the heavy lift budget. That’s a tough proposition.”
The engineer asked softly, “You want me to see if we can squeeze by with less? Cut corners?”
“No,” Thrasher said. “I’ll break the news to Jenghis Kahn.” To himself he added, I’d better wear a bulletproof vest when I do.