April 4, 2035
Earth Departure Minus Thirty-two Hours
21:14 Universal Time
Earth Orbit
As their ferry module approached the Arrow, Benson glanced at Connover, sitting beside him. The American astronaut seemed outwardly at ease, his arms floating languidly almost at shoulder height, a relaxed grin on his face.
Leaning forward, holding both armrests firmly, Benson focused on the control panel’s central display screen. It showed the Arrow’s tubular docking station, a big crosshairs painted across its middle.
“Down the pipe,” Benson muttered.
Mission control picked up his words. “On course. Docking in seventy-five seconds.”
“Confirm,” said Benson.
The docking maneuver was fully automated, although Benson was ready to grab the controls if anything should go wrong. Mission control was reading off the distance separating the two spacecraft:
“Fifty . . . forty-five . . .”
Connover said, “Nothing for us to do.”
“They also serve who stand and wait,” Benson quoted.
“Sit and wait,” Connover quipped.
The painted “X” was rushing toward them.
“Fifteen,” counted mission control. “Ten, five . . .”
The screen went blank and they felt a slight lurch. Green lights sprang up on the control panel.
“Docking complete.”
“Confirm docking complete,” came the disembodied voice. “Nice work, fellas.”
“Trained chimpanzee could’ve done it,” Connover muttered, with a smile.
Benson turned to him, made a little grunting sound and scratched under his armpit. Connover looked stunned with surprise. Humor? From Bee?
“Okay,” Benson said to the scientists as he unbuckled his safety harness. “Get up slowly. No sudden moves. Don’t turn your head if you can avoid it.”
Connover floated up from his seat and edged into the aisle behind. The six scientists were unbuckling and getting up slowly, warily.
Connover swam past them to the hatch set into the compartment’s floor, opened it, and pulled himself down into it.
Catherine Clermont moved slowly into the aisle, bumping into McPherson, who flinched back from her.
“Pardón,” Clermont said.
“My fault. After you.”
Amanda Lynn pushed herself up out of her chair too hard and she sailed upward, bumping her head against the ceiling panels. “Damn!” she snapped. Virginia Gonzalez, tall and graceful where Amanda was built more like a fireplug, grabbed the biologist’s belt and pulled her gently down to the aisle’s matting.
“Thanks,” Amanda mumbled, her dark face looking embarrassed.
“De nada,” said Gonzalez.
One by one they made their way to the floor hatch and pushed themselves through, Benson the last. Huddled together in the narrow access tunnel, they watched Connover check the small display panel set into the bulkhead that held the main hatch. On its other side was the hatch of the Arrow. Its trio of indicator lights were all green.
“Ready to pop the main hatch,” Connover said.
“Open it,” Benson called, from the end of the line of crew members.
McPherson realized he was holding his breath.
Don’t be such a goofball, he admonished himself. If there’s a leak between the two hatches, we’ll all be dead in a few seconds. Holding your breath isn’t gonna help.
Connover pulled the hatch open, then opened the hatch of the Arrow. McPherson felt his ears pop, but there was no other remarkable sensation.
Connover pushed himself through the hatch, then turned back to face the others. “All clear,” he said. “Come on over.”
Prokhorov, hovering at the head of the line, called to Benson. “Bee, come up here. You should be the first. You are mission commander.”
Benson cracked a mirthless smile. “We won’t stand on protocol, Mike. You go right ahead.”
Already inside the Arrow’s airlock, Connover said, “Well, make up your minds. Who’s going to be first?”
Prokhorov shrugged and pushed himself through. “That’s one small step for a Russian,” he said.
“And one giant wait for the rest of us,” Amanda Lynn wisecracked, with mock impatience.
They all laughed. All except Taki Nomura.
Slowly they made their way up from the airlock to the interior of the habitation module, drifting weightlessly, like wraiths or newborns floating in the womb.
“Home sweet home,” said Virginia Gonzalez, her voice hushed.
“For one hundred and seventy-eight days,” Prokhorov said.
Then we go down to Mars and live in the Fermi module, Connover told himself. And I finally get my chance to fly.
Although each of them had shipped up to the Arrow before, to stock the individual privacy cubicles with their personal belongings, now it was different. Each realized this was the real thing. Tomorrow they started for Mars.
Taki Nomura swam weightlessly to her own cubicle and slid the screen shut. Alone, with no one to see her, she began to shudder uncontrollably. Stop it! She commanded herself. You’ve worked for years to get here, don’t let stupid fears overwhelm you. You represent your family’s honor, the honor of Japan. You will not succumb to irrational fear.
It is illogical for you to feel claustrophobic. All your life you’ve lived in small chambers, surrounded by others: family, college roommates, coworkers. This is no different. Get a grip on your foolish emotions.
The tiny privacy cubicle seemed to close in on her, like a coffin, like one of those old horror films where the walls crush anyone inside the chamber.
Fists clenched, body doubled over, Taki fought her inner demons. I am here as part of my family, I will not disgrace them. Of all the Japanese who applied for this mission, your government chose you. Do not fail them. Be brave. Be like a Samurai.
Suddenly she laughed out loud. It was ludicrous. A Samurai? I am the team’s physician and psychologist. I am here to look after the physical and mental health of my crewmates. And it seems I’m the one who needs a therapist.
“What’s so funny?” Virginia Gonzalez’s voice called from the other side of the compartment’s screen.
Taki took a deep breath, then slid the screen back. “I am,” she said. “I was thinking of my parents, back in Osaka, and how proud they must be of me.”
Gonzalez arched a finely sculpted brow at her. “And that made you laugh?”
Bobbing her head hard enough to make her rise off the floor, Taki said, “I have a strange sense of humor, I suppose.”
Up in the command center, Benson scanned the indicator lights and display screens of the control panels that stretched in a semicircle around his seat. Connover hovered behind him.
“Everything in the green,” Benson said. “We’re good to go.”
Connover said, “Not until we check out the lander.”
“Right.”
“No sense going all the way to Mars and finding the thing won’t work.”
“Right,” Benson repeated.
Mission protocol called for Connover, who would pilot the lander to the surface of Mars, to check the craft before they broke orbit and started their Trans-Mars Injection burn. That meant that Connover had to get into a spacesuit and prebreathe its low-pressure oxygen for two hours before he went EVA and worked his way down to the module where the lander was housed.
Pointing to one corner of the control panel, Benson said, “All the lander’s systems are in the green.”
Connover nodded. “Yeah, but I’ve got to do a visual check.”
“I know,” Benson said. “We’d better get suited up.”
Another provision of mission protocol was that no one went EVA without a backup crewmember also suited up and ready to go out, should a problem arise. Each of the scientists was trained for space walks, but neither of the astronauts wanted to rely on what they considered amateur talent of the others.
Six hours later, Ted Connover emerged from the payload module that contained the landing vehicle and carefully sealed its hatch.
He attached his spacesuit’s tether to a cleat by the hatch and started back along the gridwork truss that formed the backbone of the Arrow.
Gliding out and away from the spacecraft as far as his tether would allow, Connover looked up and down its length. Rocket nozzles at the rear, then the bulk of the nuclear propulsion system and its shielding. Big, bulbous tankage holding the hydrogen propellant. The payload module, a combination warehouse and hangar for the lander to protect it from any stray micrometeors that might ping the ship.
Looking forward, up the central truss, Connover saw the rectangular radiator panels that distributed the ship’s excess heat, then the much bigger, square dark solar panels that provided the ship’s electrical power. The habitation module was half hidden by the solar panels. From this distance it looked pitifully small.
“You okay out there?” Benson’s voice sounded in his helmet earphones.
“Fine,” Connover responded. “Everything’s hunky-dory.”
He heard Benson chuckle. “Haven’t heard that expression since I was a kid at my grandmother’s house.”
Connover grinned inside his helmet and started working his way up forward. But he stopped halfway there and gaped at the splendor of the Earth, sliding by below him. Deep blue ocean, flecked with purest white clouds. On the curving horizon stretched a thin brown area.
Christ, Connover realized, that’s South America. Those are the Andes Mountains. They looked like furrowed little wrinkles from this height.
“Are you going to stay out there all day?” Benson said. But his tone was light, almost bantering. He’d done plenty of EVA work and he knew how hypnotic the view could be.
“I’ll be home in time for dinner, Daddy,” Connover kidded back.