Rescue Mode - eARC (22 page)

Saxby wondered if he looked as tired as he felt. That sullen pain in his chest had returned. Nerves, he told himself. He always gotten chest pains when he was anxious or edgy.

He hadn’t been sleeping well since the accident, and had been awake this day since four a.m. He’d been in his office by five-thirty and had his daily teleconference with the mission team in Houston at six, where he was updated on what had happened in the
Arrow
while he’d been trying to sleep. At eight-thirty he had a ten-minute discussion with Sarah Fleming, the president’s chief of staff, and now here he was—baggy-eyed and strung tight—ready to answer questions from an aggressive gang of news hounds.

Be positive
, he told himself.
Be up beat
. If they get the impression that the crew’s in trouble it’ll be like sharks sensing blood in the water: feeding frenzy.

Saxby wished he could be on the
Arrow
, with the crew, on his way to Mars. As a former astronaut, he preferred the problems and perils of space flight to the daggers and land mines of a hostile news conference.

The order of the questions had been determined by lottery, with the first going to a reporter from one of the 24-hour news channels and the remaining bouncing between online outlets, television and web broadcasting stations, newspapers, blogs, and just about anyone with a presence on the net lucky or tenacious enough to get into the pool.

The first half-dozen questions were about the health of the crew, their families’ reactions, and the overall condition of the spacecraft. Saxby was content to let Harkness, the agency’s director of human spaceflight, handle most of the answers.

The questions were coming faster now, and they were getting tougher.

“You mentioned that the damaged solar arrays have been partially repaired,” asked the science reporter from the
Washington Post
. “Why bother with solar panels when the spacecraft’s nuclear reactor is undamaged? It is undamaged, isn’t it?”

Saxby glanced at Brice, who grasped the microphone in front of him with both hands, like a stranglehold.

“The reactor is in perfect condition,” Brice said, forcing a smile, “but it isn’t bimodal. It’s designed for propulsion, not generating electrical power.”

“Wasn’t that a mistake?”

“No. Our design team considered making it bimodal, but it quickly became obvious that it would be too complicated. It would add a lot of weight to the spacecraft and drive up the cost. We just didn’t have the budget—”

“So cost factors prevented you from making the reactor deliver electrical power,” the reporter said. It wasn’t a question.

“Cost was part of the equation,” Brice said, his smile gone. “But only part. The deciding factor was complexity. That’s why we decided to use solar panels for the ship’s electrical power.”

The next questioner was one participating virtually, a woman who ran a spaceflight blog in Quebec, with her youngish face peering intensely and in 3D from the one of the monitors set up for that purpose.

“So what about the solar arrays?” she asked. “Can you tell us about the fix?”

Glad to be in positive territory, Brice replied, “The solar arrays were damaged by the meteoroid strike and we initially thought the crew would have to make do with less than half power for the rest of the mission. Fortunately, the damage was limited to only one section of the panels.”

“So—”

Brice refused to be interrupted. “When the onboard computer detected the initial damage it shut down two entire sections of the solar array as a precaution. Once we isolated the problem and restarted the system, the spacecraft regained most of that lost power. They’re now operating at about eighty-five percent of normal power.”

“Will that hold up all the way to Mars?”

“Yes,” Brice said firmly.

Saxby leaned into his microphone and amended, “We see no reason why it shouldn’t. We know the solar flux all the way to Mars, the amount of sunlight that will hit the panels. We see no problems with electrical power aboard the
Arrow
.”

The chief of the
PhiladelphiaInquirer.com
’s Washington bureau, lean and lanky, got to his feet like a carpenter’s ruler unfolding.

“We’ve seen reports that the water recycling system isn’t working at full capacity and the crew doesn’t have enough water, even with whatever they might be able to bring back to the ship from the habitat on Mars’ surface. I’ve asked some medical professionals and they tell me that the crew simply can’t survive with less than half water rations for the return trip. Do you have some sort of contingency plan or are those eight men and women going to die of thirst on their way home?”

There it is
, thought Saxby.
The land mine.
The pain in his chest flared.

The nine men and two women sitting along the table looked back and forth at each other. Saxby realized it was his responsibility to handle this hot potato.

“We’re still working on the water problem,” he began. “The crew immediately reduced water consumption by twenty-five percent, which we know is enough to allow them to survive for a long time. But it just isn’t good enough to get them home.”

“Then what can we expect?”

“We currently estimate that they will run out of water within just a few months of their departure from Mars.”

The reaction from the audience was palpable. The reporters stirred, muttered, began to shout questions.

“Please!” Saxby shouted at them. “Mr. Goldstein has the floor.”

“Does that mean they’re going to die before they can get back to Earth?”

“It means,” Saxby said, raising his voice again to quiet the buzzing chatter among the reporters. “It means that we haven’t worked out a solution to the problem. We’re still looking at all the possibilities.”

A reporter from the European Union jumped to his feet. “Cannot the water recycling system be repaired? Can they use parts from the habitat on Mars to fix the recycling system?”

Saxby felt grateful for the question. Nodding to the European, he explained, “The
Fermi
habitat does have a water recycling system, but it isn’t designed to work without gravity. Recall that Mars has a gravity of roughly one-third of Earth’s, but the
Arrow
spacecraft is effectively in zero gravity.”

He paused and realized that every eye was on him. Even the others along the table were focused on him.

“The recycling system on the
Arrow
was designed to work with or without gravity, since we knew that the ship would be in zero gee for a portion of its flight, but we intended to rotate the ship to give it a Martian gravity level for most of the mission. The ship’s recycling system and the system on the
Fermi
simply are not compatible. We saw no reason to add to the
Fermi
habitat’s complexity by making it capable of operating under weightless conditions. That would be like designing an automobile to operate under water. It just doesn’t make engineering sense.”

Saxby was tempted to hide the real reason, but could not. “Don’t forget the cost. We could have made all the
Arrow
’s systems fully redundant and cross-compatible with the
Fermi
habitat if we’d had the money. The engineers would have enjoyed the challenge and the safety people would have loved the inherent redundancy. But there was never enough money.”

Saxby sagged back in his chair and half-listened to the rest of the questions. The propellant leak. The increased risk of radiation exposure from the ship’s water loss. How will the repairs to the truss hold up?

Saxby had asked himself those questions thousands of times since the accident. And the answer was always, I don’t know. I just do not know.

The woman from Quebec
roused him by asking directly, “Mr. Saxby, what about the crew’s mental health? I know that many psychology experts were worried about the crew’s ability to maintain their sanity for such a long trip under the stressful conditions of deep space flight. But with this accident and the rather bleak prospects for their safe return home, how are they holding up?”

Saxby knew the official answer. And the crew had put on a good face during their ongoing interviews with Steven Treadway. But he also knew what the realities were.

“Ms. Marquez,” he replied, “that’s a question that hits home with me personally. I know these people. They’ve all had dinners in my home, and of course we’ve been working together professionally for years. I personally recruited Amanda Lynn to join the agency.”

He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I’ve been in space. I have some idea of the stress they’re under. We have a team of experts watching them all very closely, and the ship’s medical officer, Dr. Nomura, is also a licensed psychologist. To answer your question—they are responding
very
well to the pressure. In fact, they’re holding up as well or better than the experts have predicted. They’re doing their jobs, day by day, and we’re providing them with all the support we can. I would like to ask each of you in the media to do the same and report fairly and honestly on what’s going on in that spacecraft. Please remember that they have access to the news nets out there and they can hear, watch and read whatever you report. So please make it accurate and be sensitive to who will be receiving your words.”

Then Saxby pushed his chair from the table and got wearily to his feet. “Thank you all very much. That’s all for today.”

As he walked slowly away, he heard the reporters behind him getting to their feet. No applause, but no calls for more answers, either.

Okay,
Saxby thought, rubbing his chest.
That’s over and done with. Time to get back to work.

August 12, 2035

Mars Arrival Minus 82 Days

13:10 Universal Time

The
Arrow

Amanda Lynn glided through the access tube, avoiding using the handrails as much as she could because she liked the sensation of flying that weightlessness provided. Using the handrails seemed like cheating to her.

When her head popped through the hatch at the end of the tube she saw Bee, Virginia and Taki gathered at one of the galley tables, engaged in animated conversation. She launched herself toward them.

“Hey guys, may I join you?”

“It’s the human torpedo!” Virginia laughed and held up her hands as if trying to protect herself.

Amanda stopped herself by grabbing one of the unoccupied chairs. “Whassup?”

Virginia grasped her bottle of rehydrated smoothie as Amanda pulled herself down onto the chair and reached for the ends of the safety belt.

“We were just talking about how bored we are,” Gonzalez said. “You know things are bad when some of the smartest people in the world traveling to Mars on a crippled spaceship start complaining that they don’t have enough to do.”

Taki Nomura said, “We knew that boredom was a risk, but we didn’t expect it after the accident. Boredom combined with a sense of helplessness can be a serious issue.”

“Helplessness?” Amanda asked. “I don’t feel helpless. Do you?”

“Come on now, Mandy,” Virginia countered. “Be honest. Don’t you feel . . . well, trapped?”

Amanda looked at them for several heartbeats, trying to sort out just what it was that she did feel, deep down in her soul. At last she replied, “Not trapped, exactly. Worried, certainly. I mean, I wish we hadn’t hit that damned chunk of rock, but we seem to be limping along okay. So far.”

“So far,” Benson agreed.

“It’s Ted I’m worried about,” Nomura said. “We all run the risk of depression, but Ted’s lost his family. I know it’s hit him hard, but he’s going about his business as if nothing’s happened.”

“You want him to break down and cry?” Benson snapped.

“Maybe it would be better if he didn’t hold his feelings in.”

Virginia said, “What worries me is the water problem.”

“Says the lady with the smoothie in front of her,” Amanda teased.

“I’m staying within my water ration,” Virginia answered.

Benson said, “The brain trust back home is looking at workarounds for our water problem.”

“But so far they haven’t come up with anything,” Virginia pointed out.

“Not yet,” Bee conceded.

Taki said, “The psychologists back home tell me that worrying that we’re going to die, combined with all this time on our hands with nothing to do, nothing productive to accomplish, is just ripe for negative thinking. And in Ted’s case, with the extra emotional load he must be carrying, they’re getting pretty worried.”

“I’m not worried about Ted,” Bee told them. “He’s strong. He’ll be okay.”

“Or he’ll crack up and walk out an airlock,” Taki said.

Virginia took another sip of her smoothie. “So, Mandy, with all this talk of suicidal depression and death, do you still want to join us?”

Amanda looked at the three of them and saw a mixture of emotions on their faces. Taki looked worried, but then she always looked worried. Maybe it was the bone structure of her face. Or her personality.
Doesn’t matter,
she thought.
She has a damned good reason to be worried.

Bee looked stolid, impassive, like a statue carved out of granite. He wouldn’t show any fear at the edge of hell. The “captain’s burden” is what she’d heard it called. Like the skippers of those old-time vessels who went down with their ships.

And finally there was Virginia, with her striking good looks and her superior attitude. She was the only one of the three of them that might crack, Amanda reckoned. She wondered if Virginia’s smoothie might be spiked.

“I’ll join you, but you’ll have to change the topic of conversation. I hate depressing talk. When I was growing up in Detroit I heard a lot of ‘you can’t do that’ or ‘it’ll never work’ or ‘they’ll never let a black woman do that.’ I just decided to ignore such talk and get on with what I wanted to do.”

“And you succeeded so well,” Virginia sneered, “that here you are, on a crippled spacecraft heading for Mars.”

“Beats Detroit,” Amanda countered.

They all laughed.

“Seriously,” Amanda told them. “I mean it. No more negative talk! Please!”

“Okay,” said Benson. “We’ll put aside the negative talk and deal with the boredom. What would you like to do today?”