“I wanted us to be there first,” she said hollowly. “I wanted us to beat the Chinese ship and get to Mars first, but not like this. Not because all those other people died.”
“I know,” I said. We hugged like people do at a funeral and she went off to find her parents.
The news about the Golden Dragon was hitting us all really hard, but Nirti had the biggest heart of any of us. She wasn’t processing it very well.
I kept thinking about that girl, Ting. She was about to turn fifteen when their flight left, which meant she was a little older than me now. According to the data we got from news reports, she was the only child of a woman who was the Golden Dragon’s chief mechanical engineer.
I know. Another toolpush’s kid. I don’t much believe in fate or coincidences, but that was kind of hard to dismiss. Ting was like me. A mechanic, a kid on a spaceship, a voluntary exile from Earth.
One of the reality show producers contacted Colpeys and asked for each of us to give our reactions to this new development. It made me so mad. It made me want to scream obscenities at the camera.
If it bleeds, it leads.
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
We all did the interviews. Even gray-faced Luther, though his was pretty short. When I watched it later, I saw that they edited his segment so it looked like he was really emotionally torn up about the Chinese. You couldn’t tell that his glassy eyes and tears were really because he desperately needed to get back to the toilet. Even with everything that was going on, I laughed my ass off.
When it came to my interview, I kept it simple. “They have a smart crew of well-trained people on board,” I said. “Whatever’s going on, they’ll figure it out. No doubt at all.”
It was all crap, though. We knew they didn’t have enough supplies. But sometimes lying is easier than telling the truth.
Lansdorp made a statement too. He said that the resources of Mars One were at the disposal of the Chinese government and that the crews of both of our colony ships were ready and willing to help the astronauts aboard the Golden Dragon in any way we could. Maybe that was lip service, but no one on our ships took it that way. Even if the Chinese were already on Mars and had beat us onto that page of history, they were still people.
It was Dad who put it the best way. “Of course we’ll help them. We’ve all left so much behind. Surely we can discard politics along the way. This isn’t one space program proving itself by rescuing some other country’s failed attempt. This isn’t Europe, Africa, and America riding to the rescue of the Chinese. It’s not about any of that. It’s about people helping people. It’s about basic humanity. Everyone who sets foot on Mars will be a Martian. We have to think like that or we’re going to accomplish nothing out there.”
The producers used that as the last segment, and the credits rolled after a long moment of the camera focusing on my dad’s face.
Chapter 65
* * *
Mom didn’t give me much of a chance to drown in my own moods. She took me with her to inspect the ship—inside and out.
My first EVA on a moving spaceship was a whole lot different from goofing around on the Lucky Eight.
It meant putting on the big white spacesuits. Even in micro-g they were bulky and awkward. Not heavy anymore because of new developments in materials and microminiaturization of equipment, but weird and clumsy. That also meant putting on the MAG diaper and long johns and all that junk. The cotton comfort gloves were nice, though. They keep the outer gloves from chafing at the points where you have to apply pressure.
What most people don’t know is that the suits aren’t tight. There’s room inside to wiggle around and stay as comfortable as possible. There’s also a slight lag time when you move, because your hand or foot has to make contact with the inside of the suit and then push it. You get used to that.
The suits are white to reflect heat, and yes, there is heat out there. The sun’s shining all the time and there’s no atmosphere to stop it and no nighttime to cool things down. I know, that’s different from what you’ve probably read. The real science geeks out there will yell “2.7 K” anytime anyone asks how cold it is. I know, I’ve heard them. And sure, in the deepest part of outer space, way beyond the heat of any sun, the ambient temperature is 2.7 degrees above absolute zero on the Kelvin scale. But . . . we weren’t in that kind of space. We were in the solar system. The “solar” part means that we were in the neighborhood of a sun, and it was always shining. The bright side of the moon—the part that gets hit by the sun—gets as hot as 248 degrees Fahrenheit. Mind you, flip over to the dark side and it gets nippy. Down around minus 338. Brrr.
So out where we were, a few hundred thousand miles from Earth, the real danger wasn’t freezing . . . it was the vacuum. So far, no one had ever been chucked out of an airlock, so we didn’t really know what it was like to be “spaced.” No one was lining up to find out, either. I mean, we were crazy but we weren’t stupid. The mission doctors told us that the first thing that would happen would be that our eardrums would rupture because they couldn’t hold back the pressure. Then everything with moisture in it would swell . . . and that includes the brain. So basically you’d be in screaming pain before you suffocated from lack of air.
But you wouldn’t freeze. Not sure that’s a win, though.
Spacecraft are built to withstand the buildup of heat caused by sunlight. Our suits did that too. And there was even a little bling because the sun visor had some real gold in it.
Our EVA wasn’t anything critical. Nothing was falling off the ship. I think Mom was trying to shake me out of the mood I’d been in since hearing about the Golden Dragon. We were tethered to the ship, which was still moving at thirty-two thousand miles an hour. You’d think that we’d get whipped off and left behind, but that’s not how it works. Remember, we were also traveling at that speed. It’s a hard thought to grasp. Harder still when you’re out there with only a cable and some metal hooks between your spaceship and dying in the void. They can’t stop and rescue you. If you’re gone, you’re gone.
So the first thing I did with Mom was go over every inch of the airlocks, the hooks, and the handholds, and then double-check the compartments built into the exterior of the ship. That was where we stored extra tools and some emergency equipment. The Huginn was small inside, but outside it seemed enormous.
“Take your time and get everything right,” said Mom, her voice crackling over the radio. We had several different channels, including one that connected us with the reality show. Later during this space walk we’d use that for the entertainment of everyone at home sitting on couches with pizza and cold bottles of Dr Pepper. Right now, though, we were on the “specialist” channel, which allowed the team leader to select who was in on the conversation. According to the screen display on the upper left of the inside of my visor, there were only two lights, indicating that it was just the two of us. Private conversation, Hart family style.
“This is going to take forever,” I said.
“Are you in a particular hurry to be anywhere?” she asked.
“I guess not.”
“Good. Now open the panel and check the manual override.”
We were outside the secondary airlock. There was a keypad for entry, and in the event that failed, there was a big hydraulic lever behind a white panel. I took out my screwdriver, attached the magnetic end to the first of four bolts, and unscrewed them. The bolts were attached to lengths of high-test airline cable so they wouldn’t float away. Once the bolts were off I turned the handle set into the panel, felt the bolts release, and then lifted the panel cover off and let it swing on its small safety cable. The lever inside had two arms and a crossbar.
“Tell me what you see,” said Mom.
I didn’t touch the handle, but I leaned close to examine everything. It was all very clean and neat. However there were two thin strips of red electrician’s tape wound once around the center of the handle. I knew that tape. I saw it in my dreams. It was a kind of signatur
e and it made a statement.
“You inspected this,” I said.
“Of course,” said Mom. “And . . . ?”
“You repaired it?”
“Are you asking or telling?”
“Telling. You repaired the handle.” I turned to her. “Is this why you came up early?”
“It’s one of the reasons, Tristan,” she said. “Can you tell me what I did, and why?”
I didn’t even have to take a second look. I knew my mom’s work. “You either found a mechanical fault or you thought there might be one, and you replaced the handle mechanism.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s clean. Everything’s clean.”
“Spaceship parts are supposed to be clean. It increases efficiency and safety.”
“Sure,” I said, “but there’s space program clean and there’s Hart clean.”
She laughed, pleased. “That’s something you learned very well, Tristan. It’ll save lives one of these days.”
“So which was it? Did you find an actual fault or—?”
“No. But the stress tests on this mechanism were too close to the yellow zone for me.”
“Heard that,” I said. We worked for a while and then Mom stopped, paused for a moment, then reached out to touch my shoulder. “Tristan, do you know why I didn’t come to meet you and your dad when you arrived on the Lucky Eight?”
“Yeah, I think I do,” I said.
“If you were me, what would you have done?”
I thought about it as I closed the panel and tightened the four bolts. She didn’t push me for an answer. Finally I said, “Look, I know how you are when you’re working. It’s all about the work and you don’t let anyone or anything break your concentration. I get it. If you want to know what I would have done in your place, taking into account all the weight that’s riding on getting it done right . . . then, sure, I’d have done the same thing. Maybe I’d have left a voice mail message or something, but maybe not. I wasn’t in that situation so I can’t really say.”
She made a small sound. Not an actual word. I tightened the last screw, getting it exactly right, then stowed my screwdriver and inspected my work. Doing what she did. Focusing on the practical stuff before I shifted gears into the emotional. Maybe it was that moment, out there on the skin of the Huginn, deep in the black, when I got it. Got her. It was nothing she said.
I turned to her. “A lot of people think you’re cold,” I said. “You know that, right? They think you like machines more than people. Or that you only care about being right and you don’t give a crap about what people think or feel. But I know that’s not true. It’s completely backward. You wouldn’t do all the stuff you do, or do it in the way you do, if it wasn’t all about people. About keeping them—us—safe. About keeping everything working so they don’t get hurt or get scared. I know about what happened on the Olympus Space Station. You don’t ever talk about it, but I know.”
She stared at me, unable to speak.
“I love you so much for who you are and what you do,” I said. “I always have and I always will.”
We didn’t hug. We were in big space suits floating in outer space. And . . . we’re Harts. It wasn’t a hugging moment. Instead Mom reached out a gloved hand, and I took it. A single squeeze, held for two full seconds.
“I love you, too,” she said.
We floated at thirty-two thousand miles an hour for a few seconds. There was no way in any world we’d have had this real a conversation on the ship, face-to-face, without space suits and helmets and opaque visors between us. Not Mom and me.
She shoved a wrench into my hand.
“Stop daydreaming, Tristan,” she said. “We still have a full ship to inspect.”
Which is what we did.
Chapter 66
* * *
Izzy . . . I wish you could see the stars.
I’ve been concentrating so much on the mission and my own crap that I forgot to tell you about the stars.
On Earth we can see a few hundred of them most nights, and a few thousand if it’s really clear and there’s no moon. But out here?
God.
It’s like floating inside a black bag filled with diamonds. You can’t begin to imagine how many there are and how beautiful they look. Stars and planets, and whole galaxies, spinning out there in the bottomless black. Glittering. Shining. Endless. Perfect.
Some people come out here and they feel small, overwhelmed, dwarfed by it all. They get so insecure they cry.
Some people look at the stars and they get frustrated because we’ll never reach them.
When we look at stars we don’t even see them as they are. We see them as they were when the beam of light started out on its way across the black. The light from Proxima Centauri is more than four years old when it reaches us. Some of those stars are really galaxies more than ten billion light-years away. Some of those stars we see don’t even exist anymore. And there are new ones whose light hasn’t reached us yet.
I’m not going to lie and say that I understand all the science about relativity or light speed or even distance, but I get the gist. All we’ll ever have of those stars are their light, their beauty. All those mysteries will burn out there forever.
Izzy . . . I wish you could see the stars from up here. I wish you could see how beautiful they are.
I wish you were coming with me.
I wish.
I wish.
Chapter 67
* * *
Days went by. We had no new information on the Golden Dragon. Not a word. I kept pulling up the news stories to look at pictures of the Golden Dragon and its crew. Looking into the eyes of Ting gave me a weird feeling. Maybe it was ESP or maybe I was a little nuts, but I swear that every once in a while the eyes in that picture changed.
“You’re still alive,” I said one night as I looked at her picture. “Aren’t you?”
She was an engineer and mechanic, just like me. It didn’t matter that we were separated by language, culture, politics, and millions of miles of distance. It wasn’t as weird as it sounds. I didn’t have a crush on her, nothing like that. And it’s hard to explain. We were both the same, and I wanted her to be alive.
Every day Mom kept me busy with inspections and repairs—which were really not repairs but mostly taking pieces of equipment apart to clean and inspect them, and then putting them back together again. Her logic was this: If you know a mechanism all the way down to the smallest spring or screw, then when something does go wrong you’ll be able to assess and diagnose with greater efficiency. Most people might find that kind of stuff boring, but it kept me from going insane.
I hung out with Nirti a lot, and without the others around—Zoé and Luther were still fighting space sickness—I got to know her better. Luther was right; she’s gay. She kind of had a crush on Zoé, but Zoé is straight. So there were all sorts of frustrations built into our new life. Besides, like I told Herc, sex wasn’t on the Mars One overall colony game plan. Not for the first few waves of colonists. Unless they figured out all the problems about having babies out here, I’d be forever known as the Virgin of Mars. Sigh.
There were huge parts of every day that weren’t structured. Free time.
The highlight of every day was Izzy. We were getting to the point in the trip where conversation had small lags. That would increase every day, until it would be easier to record messages rather than have conversations.
For as long as it lasted, though, I wanted to see my girl. To talk to her.
“Tristan!” Izzy said, and her smile was incredible. It lit her up.
“Hey,” I said. You couldn’t see that smile and not return it. It was that kind of smile.
She was in her room, at her desk. I could see her bed and bookshelves behind her. The wall of framed photos. My face was in too many of those pictures, and there was a new one, a big picture of Izzy and me at the Madison High Reach for the Stars Fall Carnival. It must have been a candid photo because I don??
?t remember it being taken, and I guessed that it had been taken by one of Mindy’s people. It was professionally framed in dark red wood, but I knew Izzy hadn’t put it there. It was way too cheesy for something she would have picked. We were laughing, with my arm around her, both of us looking up at something. It looked like one of those placeholder photos they put in picture frames at the store. Look at the happy, carefree people. Izzy glanced at me, saw me looking past her, and turned to follow the line of my gaze. When she turned back her smile had become something else. Still happy, but in on the joke because she knew I understood what it was. She didn’t have to say it.
“How are you doing?” I asked Izzy.
“I’m good,” she said after a few seconds’ delay. “Driving is a little nerve-racking. They’re going to do a whole episode of the show about me getting my permit, taking lessons with Dad, then with Mom after she ‘fired’ Dad from teaching me because of that parking lot thing. And then they’ve been following me all over. Driving to the mall, driving with Herc and Spice to the movies, driving to school. Everywhere.”
“Sounds like tons of fun. Riveting television.”
“There’s some good stuff,” she insisted.
“Like what? You kill anyone? Run over any old ladies? Stray dogs? Squirrels?”
“Don’t even! I almost hit a bunny who ran off of the Murphys’ lawn. Poor little thing got so scared she stopped in the middle of the street. Okay, so the guy behind me nearly hit me, but what was I supposed to do? Run it over?”
“Did the other car rear-end you?”
“Huh? Oh, no. He just got mad and yelled and then got into a screaming match with the camera guy. It was sooooo embarrassing because everyone heard it and started coming out of their houses and . . .”