Keystone (14 page)

Larue was sitting at his desk,
staring out of the window at the heavy grey sky, when Martín Antunez walked
into his office.

His light
knocking had been ignored, so he had gripped the handle and entered, intent on
putting his report on the boss’ desk in his absence. He had been surprised to
see him there, and had stopped inside the doorway, waiting for a reaction. None
came. It was possible that he hadn’t seen him.

“
Monsieur
Larue
?” he offered quietly.

Still no
response, save for a slight movement of the bottom jaw. He was grinding his
teeth.

“I have
compiled the monthly CSO reports for you, should I leave them on your desk?”
Commercial Satellite Orbit
reports. Not
the most fascinating reads, but essential to the ESA nonetheless.

Larue inclined
his head slightly in the opposite direction, as if listening for a noise from
the cupboards behind him.

Martín
approached the large desk, tidy for the first time since he could remember, and
placed the report carefully on its surface, facing Larue. He had turned to
leave when the man’s voice stopped him.

“Beagle 3
returned some of the most impressive
photos of Mars ever seen,” he began slowly, playing each word over his tongue
as if they were from a vintage red wine to be savoured.

Martín turned
to face Larue.

“Robotic
missions were clearly the way forward. With
Beagle
4
we proved the existence of liquid and solid water on the surface of the
planet, away from the frozen Poles.
 
But
for some reason no one cared. In the ten years that separated Beagle 3 from
Beagle 4
, people became so enthralled by
the prospect of a manned journey to Mars that they completely forgot to get
excited about our rover. If it wasn’t about the
Clarke
¸ it wasn’t worth knowing about,” Larue spat the words out
bitterly. “I made a decision long ago not to let the ESA be a part of the
Clarke
mission. Truth be told, I never
thought it would be successful.”

Martín winced
as he heard the words.
 

Larue looked
at the young Spaniard and smiled. “Do you think I was wrong?”

Martín bit his
tongue. Larue would not be at the ESA for much longer, six months at most, but
he could still not afford to upset him. He may have been powerless against the
other space agencies, but inside the ESA he could still fire people. “You had
good reason to withdraw from the International consortium,
Monsieur
,” he lied. It was no good making him angry.

Larue returned
his gaze to the window. “The
Clarke
’s
landing craft is to be deployed in the next couple of hours, Martin. Tell me
what you know about the mission so far.”

He didn’t want
to know about the mission, Martín thought to himself.
 
He wanted to know what juicy scandals he
could leak, to pass the negative press from one agency to another, across the
Atlantic.

“It’s been a
busy six weeks,
Monsieur
. The Chinese
Lieutenant is dead, a tragic event caused by faulty programming in the
Clarke
’s nanostations –”

“Made in Japan
by JAXA,” Larue interrupted.

“Yes. The Chinese
are not happy with the explanation given by NASA for the accident. Because the
nanostations are Japanese, they are barely on speaking terms with JAXA, too.
China has lost a national icon, and although they have not admitted so
publicly, I think that they blame either the USA or Japan. For their part, JAXA
have stated that it is not possible for the nanostations to fail like they did.”

“Their
simulations in the ISS did not reproduce the incident, did they?”

“No.”

“Interesting.”
Larue was reading as much as he could into the facts, as usual.

Against
Jacqueline’s will, Martín had refrained from telling Larue anything about their
discovery six weeks earlier.
 
Since the
live feed had been shut down and the security loophole Jacqueline had
manipulated had been fixed, he felt that they lacked any concrete evidence.
Circumstantial evidence, such as Su Ning’s concern with her wristwatch, the strange
interaction with Captain Montreaux and the disjointed transmissions between
Mission Control and
Clarke
, while
compelling, amounted to nothing in terms of cold, hard facts.

He was certain
that Su Ning had been killed because she had uncovered the time delay, and he
had no intention of meeting the same fate.

With Larue’s
increasingly desperate behaviour, if he had told him everything he knew, he was
sure that Larue would have been on the phone to
Le Monde
within minutes. Unless they could prove the time delay
existed, which they couldn’t, it would just make everything much worse for the
ESA.

Larue gestured
with his hand for Martín to keep talking.

“NASA continue
to supply us with most feeds from the
Clarke
,
although the raw data has not been coming our way for over a month now.
 
We get what NASA want us to see.”
And over an hour later
, he thought.
“Since the incident with Lieutenant Su Ning, there are a maximum of twenty
active nanostations at any one time, and none of them can be controlled
remotely. We have learnt from sources within the other agencies that Russia,
China and Japan have been lobbying NASA for improved access to the
nanostations.”

Larue moved
his hands through his hair slowly. “What do you think of all this?”

“I think that
we need to be careful,
Monsieur
. We
have no proof that NASA is trying to hide anything, and moreover, we have no
reason to believe that they would have a motive for hiding anything in the
first place. NASA is a scientific agency, and they do not have a political or
ideological agenda.” He chewed his bottom lip nervously.

“
Everyone
has an agenda, Martin, even
NASA.
Especially
NASA.”

“I am still
looking,
Monsieur
. There is no smoke
without fire, certainly.
 
But this is
like looking for a fire without smoke.” He sighed. “I will keep looking,
though.”

Larue stopped
looking out of the window and turned his head to his aide. “Martin,” he checked
his watch. “In one hour and twenty minutes, the MLP will be detaching from
Clarke
and entering the atmosphere of
Mars. If they are going to slip up, it will be down there, away from the
controlled environment of the spaceship.”

Martín looked
at his watch quickly.
It was already
happening
. “I’ll have all my ears to the ground,
Monsieur
.”

Richardson, Marchenko and Montreaux
reclined in their bucket seats in the MLP, strapped down by four thick belts
over their shoulders and round their waists connected by a large metal buckle
that nested comfortably on top of their breastbones. Their legs were supported
by foam padding that extended from the bottom of each of the chairs.
 
It looked like a busy dentist’s surgery, and
the patients were nervous.

The single
empty chair stood out like a sore thumb.

“It’s been
good knowing you all,” Jane half-joked.

“Let’s hope
the computer gets it right this time.” Marchenko was deadly serious.

“Danny,
please!”

“Sorry, Jane.
I am sure everything will be fine. The nanostations are not allowed in here.”

“Captain
Marchenko, please refrain from that subject, it is totally inappropriate,”
Montreaux warned.

“It’s OK Yves,
he’s only kidding,” said Jane.

The Russian
bent his head sideways to look at her. “No I am not,” he said, before grinning.

“
Ten seconds to launch
,” advised the
computer.

“Good luck,
everyone,” Montreaux said, gripping his arm rests tightly. “Good job so far,
let’s make sure we finish it off well down there and get home in one piece.”

Dr Richardson
and Captain Marchenko nodded their agreement.

“
Four… Three … Two … One … Launch!
”

They all
tensed for the expected jolt that they had experienced in training simulations.
It was the moment they had been waiting for ever since they had first floated
into the
Clarke
nearly four months
earlier.

A light thud
was all they heard. The MLP barely moved.

After the
initial shock of the anti-climax had worn off, Montreaux checked his
instruments carefully. Had the release mechanism failed?
 

All of a
sudden, they heard the lateral boosters of the MLP releasing jets of compressed
air into space. The landing craft was now being manoeuvred into a trajectory
that would take it into the Martian atmosphere.

“We have left
the
Clarke
,” Dr Richardson said in
disbelief. “I hardly noticed!”

“We are in a
declining orbit, entry in twelve more revolutions,” Marchenko confirmed.

Montreaux
looked at the control panel in front of him. Millions of calculations a second
were being performed by the MLP’s on board computer, which would control every
aspect of the landing.

As their
decreasing orbit drew them closer and closer to the planet, there was nothing
they could do but watch and hope.

Half an hour
later, the MLP shaved the outer reaches of Mars’ thin atmosphere and gently
forced its way through. The trajectory had been calculated to the last
millimetre, to ensure that their entry was successful.
 
A few degrees out either way would have
resulted in the craft either disintegrating, a bright shooting star against the
Martian sky, or bouncing off the atmosphere and into the depths of space.

The underside
of the MLP was coated in ceramic heat resistant tiles that would have been
quite happy sitting on the surface of the Sun. As the friction of the air
against the tiles grew, they began to glow white hot. The heat caused the
passing gas of the atmosphere to combust, shooting yellow and blue flames
several metres long up above the leading edge of the MLP as it cut deeper and
deeper into the Martian atmosphere.

Inside the
landing craft, the tranquillity of space had been brutally cast aside as
everything began vibrating wildly, jostling the three astronauts against the
bucket-sides of their chairs. A combination of forces assaulted them: the downwards
force of returning gravity, a third of Earth’s but still a feeling they had not
experienced for a long time, coupled with the upwards force of the plummeting
craft, pulling them towards the ceiling.

And then that
returning sense of direction. There
was
an up, and a down.
 
There was most
definitely a
down
.

“Aaaahhhh!”
cried Dr Richardson.

“You’ve done
this before on Earth!” Montreaux shouted above the noise.

“I haven’t fallen
from anywhere for nearly half a year!” she screamed.

Marchenko
managed to reach over and put his hand on hers as she gripped her armrest
firmly. “We will make it, Jane, trust me.” He tried to laugh but the air was
being forced out of his lungs, resulting in a strange scoff. “The chutes were
designed in Russia!”

She released
her grip and took his hand thankfully.

“We’re almost
through!” Montreaux shouted, reading from the instrument panel.

As suddenly as
it had begun, the shaking and roaring of the passing atmosphere outside
stopped. It was replaced by a gentle hissing, and the occasional shake.

“We are in the
skies of Mars!” Marchenko cheered. “Nearly time for our Russian chutes to
deploy.”

They sat in
silence for several long, anxious moments before Dr Richardson could wait no
more.

“How long?” she
cried.

“Thirty-six
seconds” Marchenko replied instantly.

They all
counted it down in their heads.

Montreaux
reached zero and continued down well into the minuses.
 
He had reached minus fifteen, and was about
to mention that fact, when a sharp jerk crushed him against the padding of his
chair. The MLP listed backwards and forwards, so that he had the sensation that
his chair was alternating between being on the ceiling and on the floor

“The swinging
will stop shortly,” Danny reassured them. “It is our momentum carrying us
through, we are like a clock’s pendulum, hanging from the chutes above us.” He
was obviously proud that the parachutes had deployed as planned, while the
others just looked relieved.

The MLP’s on-board
computer was already plotting the ground beneath them, mapping every square
metre of the surface as it went. As it approached the vicinity of Hellas Basin,
it closed in on its homing signal, and small motors began winding in and out
the parachutes on each edge of the MLP, guiding it towards its destination.

“Virtually no
cross winds,” Montreaux marvelled at their timing. “We’re sailing down
perfectly, with a bit of luck we’ll be within a few hundred yards of the
target.”

A control
panel in front of them began to beep repeatedly. Leaning closer, he read the
display and tensed.

“Two hundred
metres to touchdown,” he said matter-of-factly.

The beeping
increased in frequency as they descended.
 

“One Fifty.”

“Our Father,
who art in Heaven…” Jane began to say under her breath.

“I thought you
were a scientist?” Danny joked, squeezing her hand.

She smiled and
continued her prayer. “… hallowed be thy name…”

“One Ten.”

“…Thy Kingdom
come, thy will be done…”

“Ninety.”

“…On Earth as
it is in Heaven.” She stopped. She didn’t know the rest of the words from
memory. “Shit!” she cursed herself for forgetting.

“Seventy. Give
us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses,” continued
Montreaux. “Fifty. As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not
unto temptation, Thirty, but deliver us from evil.” The beeping was now so fast
it created a continuous pulsing tone. “For the kingdom, Fifteen, the power and
the glory are yours, now and forever, Five –”

The MLP
touched the ground and bounced gently like a skipping stone on a pond, its
self-inflated underbelly taking the remaining force of their parachuted
descent. After the first bounce the bags began to deflate, letting the MLP
slide for a few metres along the smooth, sand-covered plain before coming to
rest a few centimetres away from a large, round boulder.

Inside, the
three astronauts lay in total silence for a whole minute before Captain Danny
Marchenko whispered under his breath: “Amen.”

They had
landed on Mars.

Martín leant
back in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what was happening on
Mars, sixty million miles away.

“They will
have landed now,” Jacqueline said, sipping from her coffee slowly.

And we are the only ones outside NASA who
know
, he thought.

“It’s sickening,”
she went on. “To think that the world will be watching in over an hour,
thinking that they are watching it Live.”

He could tell
by the tone of her voice that she was dying to tell someone what they knew.
“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” he checked.

“No! You asked
me not to!” She sounded hurt.

He opened his
eyes and looked over at her.
 
They were
in the coffee room of her floor in the ESA Headquarters, where they had started
meeting up during working hours.

“I’m sorry, I
know you wouldn’t do a thing like that.” His voice was soft and apologetic.

She smiled and
shrugged it off. “I found something this morning that might help,” she said.
“The feed we were watching that night, the live feed, I think I know how to get
it back.”

He sat up and
put his hands round his drink on the table, heating them up on the warm
Styrofoam surface. “Go on.”

“Well, you
know that we can’t intercept the feed coming from
Clarke
to Earth, and as the feed from Mars is going through
Clarke
, we have no hope. They’ve put some
kind of encryption on the transmission that I can’t crack, and since our night
of
hacking
,” she whispered the word,
though the room was empty aside from themselves, “they’ve clearly upped the
security level on everything.”

Martín nodded,
they’d been over this a thousand times.
 
What they really needed was to capture a feed that NASA then
withheld
from the public; that would be
their proof that NASA was screening what the other agencies saw.
 
Unfortunately, during their night’s
investigations, all of the live data they had recorded had subsequently been
aired uncensored.
 
They had been unable
to prove a thing.

“OK, so we
cannot get a direct feed
that
way.”
She had a smile on her face as she looked at him. “But can you think of one
reason why the Mars mission landed where it did?”

He thought for
a second before replying. “It’s an interesting geological site?” he said.

“Another
reason.”

“It’s got a
temperate climate close to the equator?”

She punched
him in the ribs. “One more try!”

He thought for
a while longer before it dawned on him. “
Beagle
4
.”

“Exactly. Our
lovely little rover proved the existence of liquid and frozen water, in
abundance, near the impact crater. It’s essential not only for the crew’s
survival, but also for fuel for taking off from Mars in four months.”

“Where is
Beagle now?” he asked, suddenly alert.

“Luckily, its
current mission plan has it running extended sampling of the Martian soil quite
close to the Crater; it’s still only a little over thirteen kilometres from the
lander site. I’ve done some calculations; at full speed we can have it within
three kilometres of the lander in four days. We will be able to spy on the Mars
mission, and send everything back to ESA headquarters directly, via our
own
encryption.”

He looked over
at Jacqueline and grinned. “You’re great!” he exclaimed.

“Calm down,”
she said trying to hide her blushes. “We still need to get it there. Larue
needs to sign this off, and then it needs building in to the Beagle routes.”

“Put the
request forms in for re-routing Beagle, and I’ll make sure they get approval.
From there, we just have to hope it gets done sooner rather than later.” He got
up quickly, throwing his half-finished coffee into the bin and kissing her on
the forehead.

As he pulled
away from her she caught his cheek with her hand and pulled him closer again,
reaching up with her mouth at the same time. Their lips met and Martín’s
resistance ebbed away as she held him more closely. After several seconds he
pushed her away and looked her in the eyes. Her bright-red lips were swollen
with passion and she had a playful look in her eyes.

He sat down
next to her and put his arm round her waist. Drawing her body against his, he
kissed her again, more passionately.

Mars could wait, for a little while at least
.