Part 4 (1/2)
No. Kieu's authentication was right: in all the ways that mattered, the man was not, and had never been, Simalli Fargeau. Something, long held against her chest, shattered and broke into a thousand jagged pieces.
”You're wrong,” she said, gently. ”The sins of the father are his own to carry, and to atone for.” Gently, slowly, she drew him into her embrace, feeling the weight and the warmth of him in her arms like a sun-soaked stone. ”Welcome back, child. You are here among kin.”
THUNDERWELL.
Doug Beason
One of the longtime standbys of science fiction is the story that hangs on a life-or-death problem, and then shows how the problem might be solved by scientific or technological breakthroughs.
Such is Doug Beason's ”Thunderwell.” The first human explorers to reach the planet Mars are doomed to die because their supply vessel has failed.
Can some futuristic piece of technology save them?
But wait a minute. Beason isn't using futuristic technology; he's describing a technological capability that has been available to us for several decades, but has been discarded because of political issues.
Whether the technology succeeds or fails, however, this story-like all good fiction-deals with far more than gadgetry. The human element is a basic, inescapable factor. As is the Second Law of Thermodynamics: you have to pay for everything you get.
The six-man crew on board the Mars...o...b..ter received the video-feed seven minutes after it was transmitted from Earth, twenty minutes after the supply s.h.i.+p's engines failed to extinguish. Silently watching the transmission, the men in the cramped stateroom s.h.i.+vered. The s.h.i.+p was primarily kept cool to conserve heat. It also helped to mask the smell of six astronauts living in close quarters during the six-month flight.
Six months that now might stretch out to who-knows-what after the failure of their supply s.h.i.+p.
Marine Colonel Mark Lewis, crew commander and mission geologist, displayed no emotion; nor did any of the crew. They had all watched the supply s.h.i.+p on the screen, and they all had counted out the seconds the main engine had continued to burn, a good minute and a half after it was supposed to shut off. They all knew what it meant.
And they all knew there was nothing they could do about it.
So as true professionals, they turned away from the display and pushed off to their stations, preparing for the next phase of their journey-aerocapture around Mars, using atmospheric friction generated from dipping into the thin Martian air to slow them down and pull them into an elliptical orbit.
Colonel Lewis hesitated before turning to his checklist. They had a s.h.i.+pload of work to do before they landed, and there really was no time to send a message back to Earth. NASA would know that they knew about the supply s.h.i.+p, and since there was nothing they could do about it, following the next step on the checklist was the only option that made sense. They'd all known the risks, and they'd all had no second thoughts. Solving insurmountable problems was one reason he'd signed up for the trip, and he'd jumped at the chance to command the first manned mission to Mars.
In his mind this was just a glitch. A big glitch, but a glitch nonetheless.
He wondered if his wife would understand.
From the view on the screen in NASA's DV Lounge, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. But everyone knew that something was wrong.
The supply s.h.i.+p bore silently through the blackness of s.p.a.ce. Minutes before, no one in the lounge had seen the propulsive kick from the chemical oxy-hydrogen engine as the mult.i.ton s.p.a.cecraft was inserted into its Hohmann trajectory to Mars. Similar engines had been used dozens of times before, some on unmanned probes to the outer planets or the inner Solar System. JPL's exquisite calculations had placed every probe's position to within centimeters of where they had been needed to rendezvous with Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond.
But now that the supply craft's chemical propulsive burn had inexplicably continued for ninety seconds longer than needed, the unmanned vessel was traveling much too fast to ever be aerocaptured by Mars. There was no reserve fuel left to insert the supply s.h.i.+p into an elliptical orbit, and there was no way to slow the craft, to stop it from hurtling past Mars and into the depths of interplanetary s.p.a.ce.
On a separate, private channel, the NASA Administrator spoke grimly as the silence in the DV Lounge seemed to last forever. Poorly insulated from Was.h.i.+ngton, DC's stifling heat, NASA's Distinguished Visitors room was nearly unbearable, both in temperature and from shock.
Finally, somebody whispered. ”What about plan B?”
The Honorable Heather Lewis turned away. ”Didn't you hear the Administrator? That was plan B,” she said bitterly. She closed her eyes, trying to erase the image from her mind. On the screen, the s.p.a.cecraft was little more than a dot, jumping around on the monitor because of the vast distance.
Dammed technology, she thought.
All because of a ninety-second increase in the burn. A minute-and-a-half mistake, and six lives snuffed out. Six astronauts, the first manned mission to Mars. And her husband, Colonel Mark Lewis was one of them.
Heather's military deputy, Brigadier General Mitch.e.l.l, lightly touched her arm. ”Ma'am, the press is gathering outside. They've either heard about the failure or they've suspected something's wrong. I suggest we get you back to the Forrestal Building.” The Department of Energy headquarters building housed the Honorable Heather Lewis's agency and would be a refuge from the press corps.
Heather nodded, trying to focus. ”Can't we ignore them?”
General Mitch.e.l.l shook his head. ”Probably not. They smell blood, and you'll be running a gauntlet, Dr. Lewis.”
”Then let's just push our way through them.”
”Once they discover that the chemical engine on the supply s.h.i.+p failed, they'll ask why you killed NASA's nuclear propulsion program,” Mitch.e.l.l cautioned. ”It's the second chemical failure in a row, and ultimately they'll blame you. They'll say that a thermal nuclear engine wouldn't have failed.”
Heather stiffened. ”That was years ago and doesn't have anything to do with this situation.” This is about my husband and five other astronauts! Not about a political decision she'd made years ago. Then, the administration had been willing to do anything to prevent technology related to nuclear weapons proliferating to terrorists.
”Then when they corner you, don't acknowledge anything. Remember-technology is never foolproof. Everything fails, even throttles on chemical engines that have always worked before.”
Heather nodded.
In a fail-safe effort to place humans on Mars, NASA had launched a supply s.h.i.+p four months before the manned mission left Earth. That way, the manned s.p.a.cecraft would not have to carry the entire three years of supplies needed for a round-trip mission to Mars. The strategy was to position the first supply s.h.i.+p into Martian orbit, and the crew would rendezvous with the s.h.i.+p once they arrived four months later. A docking procedure NASA had perfected since the Gemini era.
The six-person crew was two months into their mission when the first supply s.h.i.+p's engine failed to fire and it pranged into the Martian surface. But no worry, the backup-”plan B”-the second supply vessel, was launched within weeks, while the crew was still on their way to Mars.
There were enough provisions on their own s.h.i.+p to last them over a year, and the newly launched s.h.i.+p would provide more than enough supplies to ensure their return-extra propulsion, consumables, and enough margin for them to bring more rocks and dirt back to Earth than all the lunar material brought back from the Apollo missions combined.
Two supply s.h.i.+ps, one launched before the manned mission and the other after. In theory, it was a fail-safe, no-sweat solution to a problem for which NASA had prepared for decades.
Until now.
Heather straightened and drew in a deep breath. ”Let's do it.” Head held high, she strode purposely out of the DV Lounge.
Camera flashes popped, reporters elbowed their colleagues to gain position. A striking blond woman in a red jacket shoved an oversized mike into her face.
Heather pulled herself up as the gauntlet squeezed shut.
”Dr. Lewis! Dr. Lewis!” The blond reporter placed herself center in the camera's field of view and said breathlessly, ”This was the last opportunity to mount a rescue operation using chemical propulsion...”
Heather frowned. ”Rescue? The last I heard, the crew is doing fine and the Discovery doesn't need a rescue mission.”
Someone murmured off-camera, ”They will once their food starts to run out.”