Rescue Mode - eARC (21 page)

“Well, none of us do.”

She sighed. “It makes me think of the things I want to do and did not have the courage to think of doing until now. Looking death in the face makes one think about such things.”

“Like what?”

Catherine leaned closer to him, close enough that he could smell her hair. At that moment he thought it was the sweetest smell he could imagine.

“Hiram, I want you,” she whispered. “Now. I’ve wanted to be with you since we were in training, and I can’t help but think you feel the same way.”

McPherson nearly choked on his chicken. He could feel his face turning red.

He managed to stutter, “I . . . have I been that obvious?”

“Terribly.”

McPherson sat in silence for several heartbeats, staring into Catherine’s soft brown eyes. He wanted to reach out and take her into his arms, but the rational part of his mind made him hesitate. Besides, he told himself, these damned seat belts will hold us down to our chairs.

“Catherine,” he said slowly, carefully, “I’ve thought about damned little else ever since we first met in training. But . . . but here, on this cramped little bucket, I just didn’t think it would be appropriate. I mean . . . hell, you sat through the same lectures I did when we were in training. When they were telling us we shouldn’t fraternize, all I could think about was fraternizing with you.”

With a knowing dip of her chin, Catherine said, “I honestly believed I could put away my human feelings for the duration of the trip and be the egghead scientist. But I can’t. Especially now that there’s a chance we might not live to see home again.”

McPherson leaned back in his chair and stared at the luke-warm chunks of chicken on his plate.

Feeling elated and miserable at the same time, he told her, “Catherine, I can’t. I just can’t. Not because I don’t want to. You’re a very beautiful woman. You’re also a very beautiful person, someone I’d like to know better and, well, I’d like to think that if we have something between us it would be more than physical, more than just a desperate attempt to get away from the fact that we might not have a tomorrow.”

Clermont looked at Hiram, pursed her lips, then smiled sadly.

“Hi, you are going to be a great catch for some lucky woman. Old-fashioned morality is very rare.”

“I’m not—”

She patted his hand. “I’m not so ruled by my hormones that I can’t control them when I need to. And I do want to, now.”

McPherson felt his face reddening again. At last he said, “Well, let’s finish eating and help get this ship back together so we have more to look forward to than dying out here in the middle of nowhere. I’ve got some very important business to attend to when we get back to Earth.”

Catherine smiled. “So do I.”

July 26, 2035

11:30 Universal Time

Earth Departure Plus 103 Days

The Workshop

Ted Connover stood next to the latest generation 3D printer that sat in the rear of the habitat’s third level, behind the exercise equipment. It was an unassuming-looking device: essentially just a box with a flat panel display that was used to show a Computer-Assisted-Device file of whatever was programmed to be printed.

Ted was fully trained on the 3D printer and knew that as long as it functioned properly there were only a few things aboard the
Arrow
that couldn’t be repaired or replaced by it.

“I saw my first 3D printer at the local community college,” Ted was saying. “The instructor called it a ‘first generation
Star Trek
replicator.’”

Virginia Gonzalez was staring at the device. To her, it looked like the one she had at home in her garage, except that perhaps it was a little more sleek and streamlined.

“To be honest,” Connover went on, “I had no idea what he was talking about. I hadn’t seen any
Star Trek
shows at the time, but I knew it must be something fantastic because of the excitement in his eyes.”

“
Star Trek
was a good show,” said Hi McPherson. “When I was a kid I bought every episode and streamed them wherever I went.”

Connover ignored Hi’s comment. “Then the instructor showed me how it worked. He poured in some plastic powder, at least I think it was plastic. He uploaded to the printer the specs of the chair we’d designed using some cheap CAD software. And, voila! A few minutes later we smelled that burning plastic smell and before our very eyes a chair was being formed, layer by layer, until we had a piece of furniture that Barbie could have used in her pink doll house.”

“You printed a Barbie chair in a university mechanical engineering department?” Gonzalez asked, amused incredulity clear in her tone.

“It was a community college, not a university,” Connover corrected, “and yes, we built a Barbie chair. The instructor wanted to start small, I think, probably because he had a limited budget. But I also think he wanted something practical.”

“Or he had a daughter who was into Barbie,” said Virginia.

“Maybe,” Connover conceded. “In any event, I was mesmerized. To me, that 3D printer was like magic. That semester, we printed gears, tools, even a toy car with wheels that actually moved. All that with a hobbyist 3D printer and design software we found on the Internet. That was twenty-some years ago, at the beginning of 3D printing and now I understand why he said it would change everything.”

“It sure as hell has,” McPherson said. “I don’t know what I’d do without mine. Just before we left I printed a replacement rotor for my 1984 Mazda RX-7. God, I love that car.”

Virginia agreed. “I have an electro-optical 3D that I use to make replacement boards for my antique radio collection. I’ve got radios that go back to the 1920s and I have to improvise. The newest printers can make circuit boards, old-style transistors, just about any other radio part you can imagine.”

“Vacuum tubes?” Connover asked.

Crestfallen, Gonzalez shook her head. “No.”

“Not yet,” said McPherson.

“I don’t think I’ve made a trip to a hardware store in the past three years,” Connover said. “Can’t say I cried a river when the printers started driving hardware stores out of business.”

“And toy stores,” McPherson added. “And box retail stores, even the companies that ran sweatshops in Asia and Africa.”

More thoughtfully, Gonzalez pointed out, “I guess we ought to remember that 3D printers changed everything about the global economy and supply chain. Printers like this one here,” she pointed, “got cheap enough for the masses, and lots and lots of people were put out of work.”

Looking annoyed, McPherson asked, “Now that we’ve had our global economics lesson and decided what we all want for Christmas, can somebody please tell me how this 3D toy is going to help us?”

“We’re going to print replacement spars for the truss,” said Connover.

“Replacement spars?” McPherson looked skeptical.

“The engineers back at mission control will have a design ready to upload to us later today or early tomorrow,” Connover said. “Once we have the file, we can feed it to the printer, put in the raw materials, and build ourselves the spars we need.”

Gonzalez asked, “Why don’t we use this gizmo to replace the water and propellant we’ve lost?”

Connover shook his head. “It can only make things from the raw material we put into it. We don’t have any spare hydrogen. Or oxygen, for that matter.”

“But we have raw materials for the truss?” McPherson asked.

Nodding vigorously, Connover said, “Yep. Down in the storage bays. Iron filings, carbon dust—”

“You mean soot?” Gonzalez interrupted.

Connover chuckled. “That’s right: soot and lots of other materials.”

McPherson scratched his beard as he said, “You think we really can repair the truss?”

“I do,” said Connover. “I really do.”

And he thought,
We’ll get through this. You guys will get back home safe and sound, back to your families. But I don’t have a family to come home to. I don’t have anybody back home.

July 28, 2035

13:15 Universal Time

Earth Departure Plus 105 Days

Extra-Vehicular Activity

Inside his EVA spacesuit, tethered to the truss near the spot where the rock had done its damage, Ted Connover looked into the darkness of deep space. He stared at the stars, gleaming steadily like unblinking eyes watching him.

Makes you feel pretty small,
he said to himself.
Small and lonely.

His thoughts drifted to Vicki and Thad, as they always did when he had time to think, to remember.

I wonder if they’re out there, looking back at me. Are they sad? Are they with God, whatever that means? I’m the one who should have died. I’m the one who decided to go to Mars, to leave them millions of miles away.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
I’m the one who should have died, not them!

“Ted, are you with me?” Virginia Gonzalez’s voice sounded sharply in his helmet earphones.

He snapped back to the here and now. Turning to look at Virginia’s spacesuited figure, he replied, “Yeah, Jinny, I’m here. I was just . . . thinking.”

“I hope you were thinking about the repair. I was starting to wonder.”

“No, I was just . . . thinking. But now it’s time to get to work. Let’s get this job done so we can go home.”

“Copy that!”

With deliberate, careful motion, Connover reached into the toolbag that contained the makeshift spars and clamps that the engineers back on Earth had designed and uploaded to the
Arrow
’s 3D printer. He’d run through the process for attaching them to the truss at least fifty times in the past day and a half, using the simulated truss that they’d also printed out for the same purpose.

But those simulation exercises had been performed in the ship’s pressurized habitat, first using his bare hands and then the gloves of his EVA suit. Now he was outside, in the vacuum of space, in the bulky, cumbersome suit. Once the suit was pressurized, the gloves had ballooned as they always did, making it a real effort to flex his fingers or grasp anything.

*

“Steven Treadway, reporting from the damaged
Arrow
.”

Treadway appeared to be hovering weightlessly beside Bee Benson just inside the ship’s main airlock, where Prokhorov and Amanda Lynn were helping Ted and Virginia out of their EVA suits, all of them in zero-g.

Although this news report appeared to be live, from the
Arrow
, the spacecraft’s distance from Earth made a truly live interview impossibly awkward. So Treadway had asked his questions from the 3D virtual reality studio in New York and Benson had answered them from the ship. The long pauses in-between, while their messages crossed the gulf of space, were edited out at the studio. Then the patched-together interview was aired and gave the impression that it was all happening in real time.

“Astronauts Ted Connover and Virginia Gonzalez,” Treadway intoned, “have just reentered the ship after three hours outside, working to repair the badly-damaged main truss that connects the crew’s living and working habitat to the propulsion system they will need to bring them home.”

Gonzalez looked drawn, tired. Connover was grinning, though, and made a thumbs up signal with his still-gloved hand.

“It appears their repair effort has been successful,” Treadway said. Turning to Benson, standing beside him, he asked, “Commander Benson, is that right? Was the repair made successfully?”

“Yes it was, Steve,” Bee replied. “Mission control has confirmed that the truss is now strong enough for us to enter the Martian atmosphere and use its drag to slow us into an orbit around Mars.”

“That’s very good news,” said Treadway, smiling.

Benson’s grin was much wider. “It sure as hell . . . it certainly is.”

Putting on a more concerned expression, Treadway said, “Many viewers have been asking why you have to continue to Mars and stay there a month before you can begin the trip home. Why can’t you start home sooner?”

On tens of millions of television screens around the world, the image of the
Arrow
’s airlock area gave way to a computerized 3D animation showing the orbits of Earth and Mars, with the position of the
Arrow
marked between the two.

Benson’s voice explained, “We’ve got to wait until the Earth moves along its orbit to the place where we can reach it. If we leave Mars too soon, Earth won’t be where we need it to be.”

Treadway’s voice said, “Even with the nuclear rockets that power the
Arrow
, the ship can’t move wherever it wants to. The ship is still subject to Newton’s laws of motion and orbital mechanics.”

“Right,” said Benson.

“Unless the ship arrives at Mars and departs on schedule, it won’t have enough fuel to return to Earth.”

The animation gave way to the “live” scene at the
Arrow
’s airlock. Connover and Gonzalez were almost completely out of their EVA suits, only their leggings and boots still had to be removed. Their undergarments, lined with water tubes for cooling, made them look a bit like thinned-down versions of the Michelin Tire man.

Still standing beside Treadway’s virtual image, Benson said, “We have to follow the path we started out on. No detours allowed. Even if we decide not to go down to Mars’ surface, we’ll have to stay in Mars orbit for thirty days before we can start for home.”

Treadway nodded understandingly. “But the good news is that the truss has been repaired.”

Benson smiled again. “Yes, that is good news. Very good news.”

Standing in the airlock area, looking at a monitor screen that showed Treadway, millions of miles away, Benson resisted the urge to cross his fingers.

The truss is repaired,
he said to himself.
But will the patch hold up when we enter Mars’ atmosphere?

IV

M
ars

A
pproach

August 1, 2035

Mars Arrival Minus 93 Days

14:12 universal Time

NASA Headquarters, Washington D.C.

Bart Saxby, Robin Harkness and Nathan Brice, flight director for the Mars mission, sat behind a table on the stage in the NASA press center, facing a room full of reporters, photographers and camera crews. Seated along the table with them were representatives of the Japanese, French, Russian and Canadian space agencies, plus a pert-looking brunette NASA public affairs officer.