April 5, 2035
Earth Departure Day
12:15 Universal Time
New York City
Steven Treadway stood in the middle of the nearly empty television studio, in front of a blank green wall. In the 3D monitor sitting alongside the camera crew, he saw his image in the command center of the Arrow, standing between Bee Benson and Hi McPherson. He had thought about wearing sky-blue coveralls, like the crew, but his producer had insisted on his trademark white shirt and slacks.
“Less than an hour to go,” Treadway was saying.
Benson nodded solemnly. Pointing to the digital clock on the control panel, he said, “Fifty-two minutes and six seconds.”
“Are you nervous?”
Benson looked surprised. “Nervous? No. I don’t think so.”
“Did you get a good night’s sleep?”
“Certainly.”
“I’m excited,” McPherson said, grinning through his thick dark beard. “I’ve been working all my life for this, and now we’re really going to Mars!”
“Did you get a good night’s sleep?” Treadway asked the geologist.
“Like a kid on Christmas Eve,” McPherson replied. “You know, if you don’t get to sleep Santa Claus won’t come.”
Treadway chuckled tolerantly, then turned back to Benson. “How important is the timing for your launch?”
“Actually, we have a two-day window for TMI.”
“The Trans-Mars Injection burn,” Treadway explained. More NASA alphabet soup, he complained silently to himself. “That’s when you fire the rocket engines that start you on your trajectory to Mars.”
McPherson interjected, “Mars and Earth are at the closest points in their orbits right now. If we miss this window, the two planets won’t line up in this way again for two years.”
“So it’s now or never,” Treadway said.
McPherson corrected, “Now or two years from now.”
“Yes. Right.”
“We’re ready to go,” Benson said, quite seriously. “We’ve checked out the spacecraft and all its systems.”
Treadway said, “So, in less than—” he peered at the digital clock—“fifty-one minutes, you’ll light off the nuclear rocket and start for Mars.”
Benson nodded.
“Does it worry you that you’re so close to a nuclear reactor?”
“We’re fully protected by the shielding,” Benson said, matter-of-factly. “Actually, we’ll be exposed to more radiation from the cosmic rays in interplanetary space than we’ll get from the reactor.”
Treadway thought that trying to provoke an interesting reaction from Benson Benson was like trying to get an elephant to fly.
Looking straight into the camera, Treadway said, “In fifty-some minutes this spacecraft’s pumps will start tons of hydrogen propellant flowing through the ship’s nuclear reactor. The hydrogen will be heated to several thousand degrees and stream through the rocket nozzles with more than twenty-four thousand pounds of thrust, pushing this enormous spacecraft into a trajectory that will take it to Mars.”
Benson said, “We’ll coast most of the way. The TMI burn will only last forty minutes.”
“And that’s enough to send you all the way to Mars?” Treadway asked.
McPherson said, “It’s like throwing a baseball. You heave it as hard as you can and then it coasts.”
“All the way to Mars,” Treadway repeated.
“All the way to Mars orbit,” Benson corrected.
Looking directly into the camera again, Treadway said, “And I’ll be with you every mile of the way—virtually.”
Benson broke into a genuine smile. “Glad to have you aboard, Steve—virtually.”
* * *
Ted Connover sat strapped into the pilot’s seat in the command center, marveling at how the ship responded—no, how it felt—as they went through the final moments before TMI burn. She’s alive, he said to himself. He could feel the pumps chugging, the hum of electric power flowing through the ship’s miles of wiring, her air ducts softly sighing. She’s alive.
Benson floated into the compartment and strapped himself into the left-hand seat.
“Everything okay back there?” Connover asked.
“They’re all strapped down in the galley, watching the TV screen.”
“They’d get a better view from the observation blister.”
“Can’t squeeze all six of them into the blister.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, we get a good view up here,” Connover said, pointing to the thick quartz window that curved atop the control panel.
Benson agreed with a nod.
The speaker grill on the control panel squawked, “TMI in two minutes.”
“Copy TMI in two,” Benson replied.
Looking through the window, Connover saw the blue and white curve of Earth and the narrow strip of blue atmosphere hugging it.
So long, Earth, he called silently. See you in a couple of years.
And he thought of Vicki and Thad, watching their TV set at home. Wish they had a 3D set, he thought. I should have bought one for them. Are they nervous? Frightened?
Nah, he told himself. They know we’ll be okay. But two years is a long time. Thad’ll be graduating high school by the time I get back.
“TMI in one minute,” mission control announced. A row of lights on the control panel flicked from amber to green.
“Reactor rod insertion,” said Benson, his voice flat, emotionless. Connover marveled again at how self-contained Bee could be. It was taking all his self-control to keep from fidgeting like a kid on his first roller-coaster ride.
“Reactor core temperature nominal.”
“Copy nominal core temp.”
“Pumps starting.”
“Copy pumps.”
Thirty seconds to go, Connover saw. He licked his lips. Time seemed to stretch like taffy. Einstein was right, he thought. Time is relative.
“Thirty seconds.”
So long, Vicki. So long Thad. I’ll bring you back your own personal Mars rocks.
“Fifteen seconds.”
Connover listened to the automated countdown, his pulse thumping in his ears. He glanced over at Benson. Cool as an iceberg. Maybe that’s why they picked him over me; Mr. Cool instead of the cowboy.
More than six hundred feet down along the ship’s gridwork backbone, tons of liquefied hydrogen began to flow through the nuclear reactor and, superheated, out the rocket nozzles.
“TMI burn,” said mission control.
Connover felt the push in the small of his back, felt the ship vibrating, felt a totally surprising pang of remorse, regret. He barely heard Bee’s clipped acknowledgement that TMI burn had started. He knew he was leaving Earth to travel farther than any human being had traveled before. He’d thought he would feel triumphant. Instead he felt a sense of—what? Disappointment? Fear? No, what he felt was loneliness.
“Good luck, Arrow,” said mission control.
The ship was thrumming. Not the bone-rattling roar of a liftoff from Earth, but a gentler, smoother surge of thrust that was starting them off on their long, long journey.
Connover turned to Bee, who looked distracted, almost perplexed. And he understood why. The mission timeline called for the ship’s commander to make some pithy, quotable, optimistic statement for the benefit of the media and the history books. If he didn’t come up with something soon, the moment would be lost. Connover knew that Bee had been rehearsing whatever the hell it was he wanted to say, but now he seemed tongue-tied with stage fright. He grinned inwardly at Bee’s discomfort, and immediately felt guilty at his reaction.
Benson seemed to suck up his gut. Lifting his chin, he said, “Houston, Darmstadt, Moscow, Tsukuba. The Arrow is away. Our next stop is Mars, where we will take humanity’s first steps on a truly alien world for the benefit of all the people of Earth. Wish us luck.”
Then he blew out a long, sighing breath.
“Good luck, you guys,” mission control repeated.
Connover realized that Bee had touched all the bases by addressing the American operations center first, since the United States was footing most of the bill for the mission, and then other three key partners’ operations centers: Darmstadt for the European Space Agency, Moscow for the Russians and Tsukuba for the Japanese.
Clicking the microphone off, Benson turned to Connover and said, “Ted, can you believe it? We’re really on our way. I was actually starting to wonder if this day would ever come.”
Connover grinned at Bee. Underneath that layer of ice he’s as excited as I am, he realized.
“I knew it would happen,” Connover said. “I just wasn’t sure it would come along during my lifetime. It’s been more’n sixty years since Apollo. Hell, von Braun thought that we’d go to Mars in the nineteen eighties. He was off by damned near half a century.”
“Better late than never,” Benson said, with some fervor. “Did you hear that they’re going to announce the crew for the next mission later this week? We’ll get back about a month before they depart. We might even be out of quarantine in time to shake their hands.”
“Maybe Senator Donaldson wants to cut out the manned space program altogether,” Connover said.
“That’s crazy.”
“You know that and I know that. But there’s a lot of people who think the same way he does.”
Benson tilted his head slightly. “Well, our going to Mars ought to take the wind out of his sails.”
Connover brightened. “Yeah, that’s right. ‘Specially if we find something really big. Like life-forms.”
“Amanda says the best she’s hoping for are maybe finding organisms that have survived from when Mars was a lot warmer and wetter than it is now.”
“Martians.”
“Microscopic things. Bacteria, something like that.”
“But they’ll be Martian, just the same,” Connover insisted. “We’ll be big heroes when we get back.”
Benson smiled patiently. “We have to get there first.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s take it one step at a time.”
Connover said, “Well, the first step has worked out all right. We’re on our way.”
“Right. We’re on our way.”