I know, gloomy thoughts.
And I realized I was kind of slipping down into a depression. Luther, Nirti, and Zoé had a lot of laughs, and some of the instructors and trainers were hilarious. We watched a lot of comedy, too. Stand-up specials and movies. The Mars One project was filled with laughter. So, I know I’ve been making it sound worse than it was. That’s on me. Or maybe that is me. It was scary, too, because I needed to break out of that before I let them strap me into a chair on that rocket.
Sucked.
The smart thing to do would have been to go to the mission psychologist and open up, but I knew I wouldn’t do that. No way. The second smartest thing would have been to talk to Dad, but he was really busy and had his own stuff to deal with, what with Mom gone. He hadn’t cracked a single joke since she went up.
Who then? Herc? He’d go straight to the family lawyer, who would go to the mission director. Luther? It was tempting. Could we talk about that, though? I wasn’t sure enough to risk it. I knew that Luther wanted to go to Mars more than anything. He was already writing his story for the history books. I am not joking, I’d seen the Word file.
I spent a lot of time inside my own head, working it out.
Understand, I did want to go. This was who I was and being part of this mission made me feel like I mattered, like I was really going to play a part in something special. Most of the time all I needed to do was look at the big picture and I felt good about all of my choices, even the hard ones. But is anyone 100 percent committed to anything, ever? Is there anyone who can absolutely swear that there isn’t—and never was—some doubt? Some worry that, despite the decisions you’ve already thought through and the promises made, that it’s still a bad call?
I knew that if I went to the mission shrinks they’d scrub me and my folks. They didn’t want us to have any doubt. Was I the only one who felt like this? Or did every single person on this mission have moments like this? I had to believe they did.
Funny, but thinking that made me feel a little better about it.
Chapter 45
* * *
The last days burned off.
I didn’t crash—emotionally or psychologically. I didn’t bail and I didn’t tell anyone what I was feeling. Instead I threw myself into the training and let that keep me steady.
It would have been really nice if I could have fixed my own head as easily as I could repair a damaged starboard solar alpha rotary joint or a malfunctioning intake valve on an oxygenator.
Sure, and after that I’d cure the common cold and solve world hunger.
Izzy and Herc kept calling and texting. They were worried about me. Or maybe they just wanted to keep in touch while it was still easy. Soon it would be radio, and then long-distance satellite communication with a time lag. Even using the latest Laser Communications Relay System—LCRS—there was going to be a delay in any conversation.
Mindy set up interviews with me almost every day. The closer we got to launch the higher the ratings rose for Tristan and Izzy. And for the other shows. There were twenty-seven reality shows running right now. Nuts.
We also had a whole slew of mini–press conferences with corporate sponsors. These were companies that were absolutely throwing money at Mars One in exchange for us taking their products to the red planet. I’m not joking. Coke, Nike, Apple, McDonald’s, and about a hundred more were paying huge bank for endorsements. That meant at some point one or another of us on the mission would take a selfie or stand for a photo holding a bottle or a can or something. Think about that. Here’s me in my clunky white EMU space suit standing on the soil of another world holding up a pair of Nike’s new Mars Runners or a tub of KFC. Sure, the fried chicken tub, Coke cans, and other products would be empty and the running shoes would be useless up there, but these corporations were not afraid of writing checks with a lot of zeroes on them. Mars One needed the bucks, so we all agreed to smile our way through the press conferences, film promos on Earth and on the trip, and do stand-ups on Martian soil.
Was the whole world nuts? You betcha, and we were taking that brand of crazy all the way across space.
Chapter 46
* * *
Zoé and I were working in a half-million-gallon deep pool, practicing buddy rescue techniques in our space suits, when we got the first update about the Chinese ship. Luther came and jumped feet-first into the pool to tell us to come up. We did, and by the time the crane lifted us out of the water and onto the side of the pool, Nirti had the big wall-mounted TV monitor tuned to the mission channel. Director Colpeys was on camera, looking grim and depressed as always. Or maybe a little grimmer and more depressed. Hard to tell with him.
“—Chinese government today officially confirmed that they have launched a ship to Mars carrying a crew of twenty-two astronaut-colonists,” he said gravely, and my heart sank. “That ship, Red Dragon, was assembled inside the Shanghai Wheel but then rendezvoused with a launch platform in deep orbit, two hundred thousand kilometers from Earth. The existence of this platform was known to the governments of a few countries, including the United States and Russia, but that information was not shared with Mars One until today, following this morning’s statement by the president of the People’s Republic of China. The Red Dragon was launched this morning.”
“Wait,” gasped Luther, “what? I thought . . .”
Zoé grabbed Luther’s arm. “This morning! That’s great. We still have a chance.”
“How?” I asked. “We don’t leave for days . . .”
“Speed,” she said. “Ever since we found out about the Chinese ship I’ve been reading all about their technology. Everything I could find. They have great ships, but their rockets aren’t in the same league as the new-design SpaceX rockets that will launch our transit vehicles. Our rockets can achieve greater speed, and our launch window is better. So, we might even catch up.”
Zoé rattled a bunch of numbers for fuel tables, launch angles, weight-to-thrust calculations, variables, and more.
Nirti cut me a knowing look. She’d told me in confidence that Zoé had an amazing recall. True total recall, what’s called a photographic memory, isn’t a real thing. Zoé had hyperthymesia, which is a fancy word for a highly detailed autobiographical memory. That means she could remember every detail of her entire life. She also had an eidetic memory, which means that she had a much greater capacity to remember images, sounds, or objects with perfect clarity. Put those things together with off-the-charts IQ and you had a teenage supercomputer. If she spit out a fact, you could bet on it being accurate.
“Yeah, but ten days,” insisted Luther. “That’s a lot of time.”
“The fastest Chinese rocket ever tested,” said Zoé, “reached seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour. The rockets we’re using on the transit vehicles tested out at thirty-two thousand miles per hour, and that was still in the combined field of Earth and lunar gravity. If we fire them again midway we could theoretically reach thirty-nine thousand miles an hour. Possibly more depending on length of burn. They’ve worked those calculations out a couple of times. That’s more than fast enough to catch up to the Red Dragon.”
“It would also cut down the travel time by a couple of months,” said Luther, nodding.
“Never going to happen,” I said. They all gave me sharp looks.
“And why not?” demanded Nirti.
“Because even though they did the math we didn’t run the tests.”
“So what?”
“So,” said Zoé, stepping in on my side, “it would change every part of the mission: we’d have to launch at a different angle and redo all of the navigational calculations.”
Nirti made a face. “Again . . . so?”
“And it would mean we’d burn up our reserve fuel,” she said, and I nodded.
“Who cares?” asked Luther. “We’re not coming back.”
“No, but we don’t know everything about what’s out there,” I said. “If there’s a problem, if one of the ships fires inco
rrectly or they have a mechanical fault, if we get hit by a micrometeoroid . . . jeez, there’s a million things that could go wrong. If we don’t approach Mars exactly right and have to do last-minute course corrections in order to slow enough for a safe landing,” I said, shaking my head. “If we were going to burn through the extra fuel just to catch the Chinese then we’d be gambling too much. My mom would never allow it.”
Luther grinned. “Your mom? She’s just a used-car mechanic. She doesn’t know jack about—”
I grabbed a fistful of Luther’s shirt and jerked him forward so that we were nose to nose. “That’s my mother you’re talking about, asshole.”
Luther tried to slap my hand away and shove me back but I had the leverage. Zoé grabbed Luther and tried to pull him away from me, and Nirti put her hands on my wrist. I ignored them and shook Luther as hard as I could and then thrust him backward with such force that he lost his balance and fell. The people closest to us stepped back, looking annoyed as if this was typical kids horsing around. No one seemed to notice or care that we were scuffling. Or maybe the thought of us fighting never entered their minds.
It entered mine, though; I can tell you that. And from the way Luther came up off the deck, fists balled, I knew it was on his mind too. His dark eyes seemed to flash with real heat and he stepped to me, but I was right there, ready to bring it.
Nirti stepped between us and jammed her tiny palms flat against our chests like a boxing referee.
“Stop it,” she snarled. “Right. Now.”
Chapter 47
* * *
The night before the launch we had a huge ceremony. We were all in Mars One jumpsuits, our names embroidered in white on red-and-white cloth. Thirty-nine of us sitting in two rows on a stage. Only Mom was missing.
Five thousand seats were stacked on risers so that the audience made a huge half circle around the stage. There was a band down front, special sections for the press, and reserved seating for invited guests: heads and deputy heads of state, dignitaries, and, of course, movie stars. There was one section of seats reserved for the CEOs of the TV networks that owned the reality shows, and some Hollywood producers who were planning to make movies about us. There was a big screen behind our chairs to project the image of whoever was at the podium, and it seemed like every person who had the power of human speech needed to be photographed saying something. I zoned out. My cell was on mute but it vibrated in my pocket constantly. Sneaking it out and hiding it in my hand took some ninja skills. But I managed.
Herc: You look like ur falling asleep.
Me: I AM.
Herc: WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!
Me: Bite me, puny earthling.
More speeches.
Izzy: R u ok?
Me: Bored.
Izzy: How can u be bored? Ur going to Mars.
Me: Not soon enough.
No reply from her for a long time. And I’m sorry to say it took me a while to realize how stupid and insensitive my text was. I felt like inviting Luther to take a really good punch at my face.
Finally the keynote speaker came up to the podium. It was Dr. Ilse Aukes, a physicist who had worked with the founders of Mars One to develop the technology that had turned dreams into a reality. Dr. Aukes was a small, silver-haired woman with an enormous intellect. After she went through all of the greetings and compliments and all the thank-yous, Dr. Aukes talked about the mission. This was the point at which I sat up and listened.
“The questions I have been asked many thousands of times since signing onto Mars One back in 2012 are . . . why? Why go to Mars? Why now? Why at all? Why send people? Why not continue to send robots? What’s the point?”
I watched the audience; some of them were nodding at those questions. Even some of the sponsors. Dr. Aukes had a science nerd’s nervous smile. I liked her. We all did.
“Why go?” she asked the audience and, via satellite and cable, the world. “Why indeed. If we could go back in time and ask that question of the first humans to migrate out of Africa or the Aboriginal people who settled in Australia fifty thousand years ago, perhaps their answers—could we but understand the language—would be the same as mine. As ours. New land, new things to see, new places to live, new opportunities to be free. And . . . on a more mundane and less heroic level, the chance to build commerce. The Phoenicians traded throughout the Mediterranean three and a half thousand years ago. It is possible some of them made it as far as Central America. The Greek explorer Pytheas of Marseille was the first to circumnavigate Great Britain and explore Germany twenty-three hundred years ago. I expect there are those among his peers and critics who thought he was mad, that he would fall off the edge of the world. We all know that he did not. Pytheas was one of many visionaries who wanted to see farther than was possible from where he stood. He had to go and prove that his theories were correct. We also have the diaries and records of explorers like Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook. And there is strong evidence that the Chinese reached Chile in 1407. I could go on and on. Exploration is part of the human experience, and a need to discover is key to who we are, how we’ve grown, and why we’ve survived.”
More nods from the crowd; they were interested now.
“We love this planet. Our home. Our mother. We love her, but we have abused her, neglected her, damaged her, and now we are crowding her. While some of our colleagues in the sciences and in world government are working to repair and reverse the damage done to this world, others of us have thought to look beyond. To new worlds. To new places where mankind can live and grow and thrive. We know that we cannot live for extended periods of time in zero gravity. And the moon is not a world we can make habitable. It has no atmosphere and the gravity is only one-sixth of Earth’s. For those and many other reasons it is not the future home of mankind. A way station, to be sure. A research lab, no doubt. But we will never till the fields of Luna.”
For some reason more applause broke out.
“Why go to Mars?” asked Dr. Aukes. “We go because it alone, of all the reachable places we know, offers the best potential for human life. We must and will go there. This has been my dream, and it’s become the shared dream of the fine men and women who share this stage with me, and of those hundreds training now for the next ships. And the next. And the next. Our robotic probes and rovers have proven to us that Mars was once warm and wet. Eleven years ago we found the first proof of liquid water, and we know without doubt that there is water ice there, and in abundance. Perhaps we will even find life there. Microbes in the groundwater, or bacteria.”
Much more applause and Dr. Aukes waited for it to die down. “Why go to Mars? We go so that we understand more about our own world. The changing climate is our greatest threat, and we know that Mars has undergone catastrophic change. By examining it, by studying it, perhaps we will unlock secrets that may contribute to the saving of Earth. That is not a pipe dream—that is geophysical science. It is planetary science. After all, it was studying the atmospheric dynamics of Venus that led us to a true understanding of the threat of global warming by greenhouse gases. Mars is the world most like Earth and it is a book waiting to be read.” She paused and looked around. “Why go to Mars? We go for the challenge. Oh yes. We humans thrive on challenge, and without it we falter and fail. There is a saying in America that necessity is the mother of invention. We, as the dominant species on this world, are in need, and we must pioneer new areas of science and deepen our understanding in all areas of knowledge.”
Sophie Enfers was seated right behind me and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “Look at them. They’re eating this up.”
I nodded because she was dead right. Dr. Aukes had the crowd in the palm of her hand. If there was anyone out there who had doubts, she was winning them over. Sophie gave my shoulder a squeeze and sat back. I cut a look over my shoulder and saw that her friend Marcel was sitting with her. He gave me the same kind of dirty look he always did. I ignored it, though I was glad he wasn’t going on the Huginn.
“Why go to Mars?” said Dr. Aukes, her voice rising in pitch and power. “Because never in the history of humankind has so great an undertaking been attempted by a group so diverse in ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, and political affiliation. For once—for once—a group stands together, not as members of their countries, but as representatives of the grand and wonderful collective called the human race. We send them as pioneers and explorers, yes, but first and foremost they are our ambassadors. Of conscience, of goodwill, of humanity at its best. You ask me why go to Mars? And I say that we—emphatically we—must.”
The crowd went nuts.
Chapter 48
* * *
After the speech there was a party. A huge spread of food for the guests. Unfortunately the mission specialists and astronauts were not allowed to eat any of the fancy catered food. We drank vitamin water and ate small protein bars and tried our best to look like we enjoyed them. Luther, I think, did. Either he was a great liar or he was adapting faster than me to the realities of life in space. Fine dining was one of the many things we were leaving behind.