The Martian Race (10 page)

The chancy air of racing fever could not disguise that, after all, this entire gaudy attraction could explode on the launch pad—gone in an instant, leaving behind only graveside tributes and a mountain of debt.

On a chilly evening she found herself sharing a limousine with Axelrod, coming back from a pointless backslapping banquet for Consortium bigwigs, and she pressed him on whether he could truly bring together all the elements before their launch date. “The money alone—”

He grinned. “Ah, my Julia, always worryin’. Any idea how much the Summer Olympics bring in?”

“Uh, a billion?”

“Last ones, five billion—and they last just three weeks!”

“But most of going to Mars is boring, just sitting in a tin can for half a year—”

“Sure, we don't sell that. We sell danger.”

“The landing?”

“And the launches. Both of ‘em, from here and there.”

“Okay, that's a couple of tight moments—”

“There's tension building to that, y'know. Will they make it? What's the aerobraking look like, anyway? That kinda thing.”

“You can't show much at landing—”

“Sure we can. I'm having a TV mounted just behind the aeroshell so we can see you guys skipping along the top of the air, landing—the works.”

“And TV on the rovers?”

“Of course.”

“How about in our suits?”

Her sarcasm was lost on Axelrod. He arched his eyebrows. “Too hard to fit ‘em into the helmet, but we'll have great little portables. On live feed, right back to the hab, tight beamed to us here, join the Mars Adventurers, you can ride along with the astronauts. Every time they turn a corner, you're seeing stuff nobody ever saw. Same time as the astronauts see it, too.”

“I'm a little bothered by the whole feel of it.”

“Might I remind you that Stanley of ‘Dr. Livingston, I presume’ was a reporter. He paid for his fare to Africa and into the jungle with stories for a newspaper. One of the polar explorers, the one who got to the South Pole first, Shackleton—he wrote books, gave lectures, even showed the first movies of Antarctica. All to finance his exploration.”

“Okay, that's history.” She was wearing an evening dress, a sheath that showed too much of her bony clavicles. To argue with a man it helped to wear serious clothes, maybe working coveralls and boots. Here she felt at a disadvantage. “Now, these endorsements—”

“Got my sub-rights people on the job full tilt. We go for the outdoor gear makers, use their stuff on Mars. High-tech companies, they give us first-class stuff, we show you astronauts using their gizmos on Mars, and charge them for the privilege. Logos, brand names—plenty of room here.”

“I don't like some of them. Athletic shoes? We can't wear those on Mars.”

“In the habitat you can.”

“Warm clothes—L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, Archivo—those I can see.”

“You should get a squint at the ski contract we're about to sign.”

“Ski?” She laughed. “That's one product we certainly can't use.”

“Look, the way we figure, some sponsors don't want in on something that could fail big-time. Fine, let ‘em sell to the cotton-top market. But the young male market—they'll go for goods that look ballsy, just being associated with goin’ to Mars.”

“I have to give you this—you have audacity.”

“Just market sense, is all. I'm gonna make you all rich and famous, you watch.”

The crew began to feel rushed. They were coming down to the wire on training routines and nothing was converging right.

Viktor spent twelve-hour days in the simulator doing endless aero-braking trials. The avionics crews were having trouble getting the parachutes to deploy. The tests carried out at 80,000 feet kept finding that the chutes got snarled in the tumbling turbulence of Mach 3. Even the aeroshell, built by Martin Marietta to NASA specs, was showing dangerous signs of pitting and cracking as it slammed into the tenuous Martian carbon dioxide—all as simulated in wind tunnels, of course—at hypervelocities typical of their entry. All these problems had to be dealt with, and fast.

Axelrod had the astronauts running from one problem to the next, saying laconically, “I don't want you all to get stale, y'know.” Then he would wink. At first Julia liked that gesture. After a dozen or so of them, they became supremely irritating.

Compared with the Consortium, the NASA style was infinite pains, infinitely prolonged. Katherine in particular was concerned that they were sacrificing safety to make the next launch window in just five months. As backup pilot she and Julia were training together, in simulators side by side with Viktor and Raoul. Julia had to keep track of shear and heating diagnostics while Katherine tracked their height, velocity, pitch and yaw, compensating for deviations from the flight path in a time-allowance window only two or three seconds wide. The work was usually difficult, often impossible, and always harrowing.

Axelrod was always around somehow, checking, cheerleading, and expecting more. One day Julia and Katherine crawled out of the sim pod at the end of a seemingly endless day, stiff and tired and reeking, and Axelrod had been there with some empty advice. He hung around the work areas a lot more than any NASA exec ever had, and Julia rather liked the effect. Everybody was more on their toes, and felt part of an effort that ran on zeal, not just money.

But today Axelrod's banter somehow seemed vacuous and Katherine whirled on him, spitting out, “You and your chatter! Running off to close more deals on rights while we bust ass here. We're putting our lives on the line and you talk profit, profit, profit.”

Julia was shocked. Into the dead silence Axelrod smiled very slightly, as if he had been expecting this, and said mildly, “I put in three billion of my own. You lose your ass out there, I lose mine down here.”

Katherine had calmed down then, but only for a while. Something was gnawing at her, Julia could feel it in the tremor of her voice and flickering of her eyelids. But Katherine would say nothing of it. The astronaut hardass carapace was not restricted to men. To get far at NASA the women had acquired it—including, Julia realized, herself. But she hoped she knew when to turn it off.

The psych boys were briefing them all in private about Extreme Crew Dynamics Challenges, as one of the lectures titled it, but here the whole idea of the tight-knit, teamwork crew fell apart: Katherine wouldn't talk. Julia's counselor believed that the two women were essential in defusing the tensions that inevitably would develop. But somehow the chemistry between the two was wrong. Julia didn't quite know why, not in a way she could describe, but she sensed it. Katherine dismissed the problem with a snort.

Pilots were often like that. Astronauts were superior pilots, and super-superstitious, far more so than ordinary air pilots ever were. Parts of the training grid had to follow just so, or it was bad luck. Never mind that they all counted on impersonal laws to get them through the harsh accelerations and intricate orbital maneuvers of deep space; they were still brooding primates afraid of nature's quixotic tricks, underneath it all.

Katherine, always super-rational in her manner, was no different. But she would not talk about anything personal, would not establish the links that would fend off trouble when they all lived in the same tin can.

So when Katherine took Julia aside for a stroll in the park near their simulation training building at Johnson Space Center, munching on an apple, Julia got her hopes up. No alarm bells went off, though Katherine's stiff-backed pace seemed odd.

“I wanted you to be the first to hear,” Katherine said. “Even before Raoul.”

“Well, I appreciate whatever—”

“This is big. Big.”

“I sensed—”

“I'm pregnant.”

“What!”

“It happens.”

“But you—nobody—how could—”

“It happened.”

“But medical won't like an abortion this close to—”

“No abortion.”

“Huh?” Not brilliant, but Julia could not quite believe the conversation was taking place.

“Raoul and I are good Catholics.”

“Abortion is out?”

“That's the way I feel.”

“But my God, no astronaut gets pregnant accidentally.”

“I did.” Katherine's gaze was steady, almost blank, as if she were watching Julia's reaction under a microscope.

“So you're off the crew.”

“I don't want to take the baby to Mars, no.”

“My God.”

“I told you first because I thought you'd be the most sympathetic.”

“What are you going to do?” A useless question, of course.

“Raoul …”

Which turned out to be the real point. Raoul was torn.

Katherine told him that evening. The father was yet again the last to hear.

To her amazement, Julia heard all about his reaction the next morning.

Now that Katherine was not going, she opened up. Became a babbler. Told Julia how Raoul had been made speechless and round-eyed the night before, gone out, slammed the door. Had come back two hours later, confronted her. He had the same conclusion: “For an astronaut, there are no accidental pregnancies.” Meaning that they all kept precise track of their bodies, the sometimes errant machines that carried them inside other machines into the black sky.

Julia had the bad luck to be alone with the two of them that morning. Raoul both wanted to talk and didn't, starting to edge up on the subject, then sliding away. Katherine was going to tell Axelrod and stand down from the mission. “But that'll scrap the whole flight,” Raoul said at last.

“Possibly,” Julia said carefully. “We could find a replacement pilot.” Though she had no idea how.

“I will
not
consider an abortion,” Katherine said.

They all stared miserably at the floor of their small coffee lounge. Between Katherine and Raoul hung the air of a played-out argument, nothing left to say.

“I've got to tell him.” Katherine hauled herself to her feet.

“Let me think,” Raoul pleaded.

“Got to,” Katherine said forlornly, and left.

When he heard the news, Axelrod just gaped. Katherine described to Julia the man's stunned silence, his inability to muster any of that rogue charm. She had delivered the news and walked out, leaving him staring blankly at his magnificent view of the Johnson Space Center complex.

Raoul spent the day in his training exercises, not far from Julia. She understood him and wondered what she could do to help. Like them all, he wanted Mars, bad. More importantly to his crewmates, he was a master mechanic who had worked on Mars technology development constantly since his first missions to the space station. Without him their chances of survival were significantly worse.

Julia told Viktor, of course. “He must go,” Viktor said. “Pilots are easier to replace than Raoul.” He included himself.

Axelrod came and hauled Raoul away, brushing aside flight director Brad Fowler's objections to any interruption in the training schedule. For an hour Julia labored away at her tasks, knowing that up on the top floor Axelrod was attempting to persuade Raoul. Imaginary dialogues ran through her head while she toiled at integrating electronics and analog/manual systems, the legacy of the digital age. On Mars, brute force might well be more reliable than the latest snazzy chip from a hot manufacturer—but try to tell that to the whiz kids designing stuff these days.

Word had spread somehow among the crews and she could feel the unease in all the teams around her. The afternoon wore on. The PR people heard of it. She wondered who told them, then guessed that the savvy publicists had created a secret network of informants inside the Consortium, both to head off bad news and to ferret out the good. Nobody worked merely through channels, not in a seat-of-the-pants operation like this.

To Julia's amazement, Raoul came back to the training modules around six
P.M.,
just as everybody was starting to show signs of wear. He had found Katherine and had it out. Unbidden, Julia and Viktor went to the coffee lounge and joined Raoul there. He wasted no words. “I will remain on the crew.”

“My …” was all Julia could muster. “Axelrod—”

“It was not his arguments that made me stay. He even offered money, but no—it was the mission. I could not be who I am if I did not go.”

Julia saw what he meant, something in the crinkled eyes and twisted mouth. Between him and Katherine things could not have worked. This way, though he would not see her for two and a half years, they would still have goals in common—the baby, and Mars. One goal each. Somehow this delicate equilibrium had been worked out during the long, bone-wearying day. She did not truly want to know how they had done this; some things were better left forever private. He would be gone before their child was born, and might never see it. But he could do nothing else.

For some reason, Katherine could not do otherwise either. Why had she precipitated this crisis? Some mysterious chemistry of motherhood, Mars, and … what? Julia had often wondered about this element in herself, the unlit cellars of her mind. Women astronauts usually had decided long ago not to have children. They had unbearably complicated careers. Katherine was mid-thirties, her clock ticking loudly. Had it simply swamped her other voices?

That evening Julia tried to talk to Katherine, more out of curiosity than any impulse to help the mission. But Katherine would not come forth. From that day on, she would not speak to the press or to the Consortium team. For all purposes, she simply vanished from their tracking scope, a fallen flyer.

A day later she ran into Raoul outside the simulator quad. He glanced at her, away, back. “Julia?”

“Hey, hi.” She felt awkward and started to walk on.

“Uh, got a minute?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Come in here.”

Into an alcove for suit-up prep. With all the work suites and suits, there was only room to stand. He turned and his eyes were big, brown pleas.

They were alone because the techs and support staff were off fixing some sudden glitch in the electronics, a colossal board malf nobody understood. Old boards, not the new top-of-the-line antimonide layers Axelrod was springing for, of course. They were going to Mars first class. Especially if it saved weight.