April 4, 2035
Earth Departure Minus One Day
18:27 Universal Time
Kennedy Space Flight Center
Rocket launches are always emotional experiences. No matter how many launches a person witnesses, those last few minutes of countdown get to you. Your heart seems to beat in synchrony with the ticking of the countdown clock.
Bart Saxby was perspiring in the afternoon heat as he stood in the top row of the VIP stands, sandwiched between Florida’s senior senator and the White House’s chief of staff, Sarah Fleming. The president had wanted to attend this launch, but a sudden crisis in India forced him to remain in Washington.
Several rows lower, Vicki Connover and her fourteen-year-old son, Thad, were on their feet with everyone else. Thad had his fists clenched, his face set in a grim scowl.
He looks so much like his father, Vicki thought as she struggled to keep from crying.
“THIRTY SECONDS AND COUNTING,” announced the loudspeakers.
Everyone seemed to hold their breath. Out on the launch platform the rocket booster stood tall and alone, waiting, waiting.
“FIVE . . . FOUR . . . THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . .”
Flame burst from the rocket’s base, engulfed in a heartbeat by billows of steam, all in utter silence. The launch stand was more than a mile away and no one in the stands made a sound.
The booster rose in elegant grace, breaking clear of the bonds of Earth, lifting into the cloudy sky.
“LIFTOFF! WE HAVE LIFTOFF!”
And then the roar of the rocket engines washed over the visitors’ stands, wave after wave of thunder, shaking the world, rattling the bones, gushing the breath out of the watchers’ lungs.
Vicki burst into tears, whether of joy or fear or desperate longing she didn’t know. Through blurred eyes she saw her son, tall, lean, so very young: he was crying, too.
Bart Saxby kept his eyes dry, barely. The searing pain in his chest eased as he craned his neck to watch the booster tracing an arching line across the sky.
“A picture-perfect liftoff,” Steven Treadway said. To those in the physical audience he looked a man standing in front of a green screen wearing a mesh net on his head with multiple fiber optic links trailing behind. To those watching on ordinary television or streaming the event online, he appeared to be standing much closer to the launch—close enough to have his clothing catch on fire had the simulation been reality. For the estimated fifty million people who subscribed to the VR Net, they were there with him, experiencing the launch from his auditory and visual point of view. Other physical senses, like the stomach and bone rattling caused by the low frequency sound of the rocket engines were added to the VR stream by technicians who had long since prepared the necessary special effects.
“The eight men and women of the Mars team are on their way into orbit, where they will link up with the Arrow spacecraft that will start them on their thirty-five-million-mile journey, in a little more than twenty-four hours.”
“Whoo-eee!” Ted Connover yelled.
He was strapped into the right-hand seat of the crew compartment, Bee Benson on his left, the six scientists behind them.
The booster was roaring and shuddering, shaking so hard Connover’s vision blurred. It was like riding a dragon, he thought. It brought out the cowboy in him and the yelp of adventure burst forth.
Benson appeared totally calm, as if he were sitting in his living room.
Yeah, Connover thought, if your living room bucks like a bronco and thunders like a bull.
“Stage separation in five seconds.” In Connover’s earphones, the steady, flat, unemotional voice of mission control, back on the ground, sounded mechanical, robotic.
BAM! The explosion sent a shock wave through the crew compartment.
“Stage separation,” said Benson, tightly.
“Confirm stage separation,” mission control answered.
The rocket’s second-stage engine burn was slightly less thundering and rattling than the discarded first stage had been, but still the crew compartment shook hard.
Connover wanted to turn around and see how the scientists were doing, but the safety harness confined his shoulders too tightly.
“How’s everybody?” he hollered over the rocket engine’s roar.
A few grunts and mumbles. Benson shot him a disapproving look.
So what? Connover challenged silently. You can play it Canadian cool; I get excited every time I ride one of these blasters.
Suddenly the noise and vibration shut off. Just like that. One moment they were shaking and roaring, the next complete tranquility, totally calm.
Not entirely silent, however. Connover heard a pump winding down, somewhere behind them, in the equipment section of the spacecraft.
His arms floated up off the seat’s armrests. Microgravity. Weightlessness.
Then Connover saw that Benson’s hands were still gripping his armrests tightly. Not so cool after all, he realized.
Before he could say anything, though, Benson announced, “Initiating docking maneuver.”
In his earphones Connover heard mission control. “Confirm docking maneuver initiation.”
Loosening his shoulder straps enough to half-turn in his seat, Connover looked over at the scientists.
“How’re you doing, team?”
“Fine,” McPherson answered.
Prokhorov started to nod, then held himself back. “Every time I go to zero-gee I get woozy. This is my seventh space flight and I still feel . . .” He waggled one hand.
“I’m okay,” said Amanda Lynn.
“Me too,” Virginia Gonzalez reported. Pointing to her neck, she added, “I put on two anti-nausea patches before we launched.”
Taki Nomura said nothing, but Connover saw she looked grim, uptight.
Taki’s been in orbit before, he told himself. She’ll be okay. It’s just the first few minutes of weightlessness, when all the fluids in your body start shifting around. She’ll be fine.
But she said nothing as she sat rigidly in her seat and gave a short, slow nod.
Thirty-two hours of weightlessness, Connover thought. Once we break orbit and start the Mars trajectory we can spin up the Arrow and get some feeling of weight. Until then, though, it’s zero-g.
He grinned. He enjoyed weightlessness. He had always wondered what it would be like to make love with Vicki in zero-g.