Tag: short story

In front of that same study desk twelve years later, Elena Ferreira sat in a comfortable chair, now turned so it very nearly faced its companion, the small table between them removed after it had reflected too much of the bright studio lights set up in all corners of her ceiling.

In the other chair sat Ayla Gleason, whose soft sweater and slacks contrasted with a face full of makeup that looked harder-caked in person.

“Really, Commander Ferreira, I want to thank you for agreeing to sit down with us today.” Gleason was adjusting her lapel microphone even as an assistant stepped in to test the commander’s.

“It’s my pleasure, Ayla,” she said graciously.

The newswoman smiled, though she kept looking down, focused on the lines of her sweater neck. “No, but I know everyone must want a piece of your time, and we’re only a couple of hours from launch.”

“I love your show, though. It still gives me a little thrill to know that there are whole episodes of the news produced right here on Mars—something we’ll get the chance to see first.”

Gleason looked up, still smiling, then glanced over to her producer, standing behind one of three cameras trained on the two women. “Are we good to go?”

The producer checked his watch, then nodded and pointed as a light blinked on over the central camera.

Gleason looked straight at her subject, smile still anchored on her face, and launched right into the interview. “So, Commander, this is a historic day for the Martian settlements.”

“It is.” Ferreira tried to resist the urge to look into the camera. “Construction was officially completed on Launch Site Beta less than two weeks ago, and today is our first launch.”

“And is this anything like you imagined when you became the first woman on the surface?”

“Honestly, no. I was one of those people who got caught up in the dream of going to Mars even before I really thought it through. The reality of what we have here is even better than I ever could have dreamed.”

Gleason took a beat to let that land. “Now, tell me a little something about those early days on the Zorya capsule.”

“You know, it’s hard to believe it now, seeing everything that’s grown up here, but, when I first landed, all I really remember is the loneliness. Everybody thought it would be this glamorous thing to be the first human on Mars, but nobody had yet walked on another planet, let alone lived there long-term, so far away from Earth that it was basically a one-way trip. I was the guinea pig, and supplies came down in the lander by remote. For fourteen months, I was literally the only person in the world.”

“You had to ride out three of our Martian dust storms during this time, right?”

The shift was abrupt, but Ferreira had told the story often enough to transition. “That’s right. I think we’re probably used to seeing them through the safety glass, and the thin atmosphere just makes it look slow-moving, so we forget how violent they can be. I was actually cut off from the orbiter for six weeks at one point.”

“You did have the option of launching the evacuation pod.”

“And I nearly did at one point. The lander was a compact little thing, and it got claustrophobic sometimes, but during a storm, it actually made things easier, knowing I had nowhere to go.”

“But you did consider evacuating?”

“Grit had damaged the seal of the airlock on the supply platform side. I might have panicked a little when I saw damage to the seal on the airlock. But there was nothing to seal; the supply lander was offworld, and the storm subsided in time for me to go outside and make repairs before it came back.”

“And that was just before month fifteen, when the IAC decided to send a second crew member down with the supplies to join you.”

“Ryosuke Oda, who had been part of the orbiter crew. He landed to help me offload supplies and then returned to the orbiter, and did that six times before they brought him down to the surface permanently, so we could start mapping out the plans for Dejah Thoris.”

Gleason leaned in as the camera next to her started pushing in closer too. “Now, even as we speak, there’s a single lander on the surface of Venus.”

“Commander Townsend in Icarus, yes.” The commander shifted in her chair, trying not to lean too far into camera. “I’ve been able to review some of their transmissions, and his quarters look so much like mine did, it’s frightening. Though I will say I’m glad I had a proper window.”

“No windows on Icarus?”

“The windows are flat-screen virtual displays fed by dozens of armored microcameras embedded in the exterior of the lander base. It’s the only way to withstand the acid rain.”

“Do you have any advice for Commander Townsend, since you’re the closest thing humanity’s had to where he is now?”

“Well, I guess I would tell him to hang in there. Everything we’ve done here has accelerated the timeline for the Venusian missions, so we’ll have people down there to join you in no time.”

“That’s right; originally, you’d hoped to launch Icarus from Daedalus IX, and that was moved up as far Daedalus VII. Do you ever worry about the accelerated timeline?”

“It was always our hope that we’d be able to do something like this. The IAC has a solid track record for establishing our footholds ahead of schedule, just like the mining colony we established on Earth-Trojan TK7, which we settled fully three years early because of what we’ve learned here on Mars. Now we’re turning those lessons toward Venus—it’s what makes those fourteen months on my own here worth it.”

***

The windows flashed white—for a moment, the sensors were overwhelmed by a bright burst of lightning. When they came back, the clouds outside swirled, bucking violently, but in striated patterns Townsend had never seen on earth; small white patches of cloud crested yellow waves like puffy floats of seaweed on an ocean. For a moment, it looked like they were islands conforming to the surface of water, hills and valleys forming and then inverting themselves as they rode the rolling tide… and then a warm vent from below blew one of the islands apart entirely. Townsend shook his head and turned down the brightness of the display, making it look as though a sheer shade had been drawn.

His bed took up one whole end of the metal chamber; a desk stacked high with switchboard controls and technological manuals took up the short wall opposite. The walls were metal and sterile, and, with the windows dimmed, the space had an institutional feel.

A few printed photos had been stuck to the wall next to his bed with refrigerator magnets, a low-tech display that reminded him of a corkboard he’d had over the bed at the academy. There was a photo of his parents, posed with the dog they’d adopted last year. Another showed him with half a dozen academy classmates taken on a camping trip a year after their formal graduation, each a sweaty mess stripped to undershorts and hiking boots, having climbed to the top of a mountain before the first had launched into space. One showed him in his old room at the academy, arm around his roommate; he and Diggs had taken it the day of graduation, showing the envelopes containing their assignments to their respective missions. Diggs had also sent a photo from his latest post, showing him standing next to his new wife, whom he had met on-base, a guidance procedures officer originally from Atlanta named Riahann Miranda.

Icarus had been an entirely multinational effort, but it was, at least to date, not exactly racially diverse—seeing Miranda’s fawn skin and Diggs’ darker complexion had always been a striking reminder of all the rest of life still out there, that existence beyond Bayless and Sviderskas in orbit came with more color and variety than the distant audio transmissions from the moon.

Townsend kicked off the command desk and sent the chair wheeling the few feet across the room, then plucked the photo off the wall. He smiled as he stared down at it, spinning absentmindedly the same way he had done as a cadet.

The videoconference chirped again, and he wheeled back to the desk. The interface hung in the air above the desk, projected over motion sensors. He waved his hand through the icon for the communications program, though he barely looked up as Bayless’ face filled the projection. “How’s it hanging, Braeden?”

“What was the state of the seal?” the mission specialist asked, lights from a dozen holographic readouts reflecting on his face.

“What seal?”

“The seal around the contact points on the airlock to the escape module—was it damaged?”

Townsend shook his head. “It looked fine from the inside, but an alarm went off when I closed off this end and evacuated the air.”

“Damnit—that’s what Darwin was afraid of. So long as that vacuum holds the escape pod in place, we can ride out the storm and send down the supply lander as soon as we replenish the fuel cache…”

Bayless trailed off, but Townsend knew what was coming. “But if the seal’s breached, it’s only a matter of time until the airlock fails.”

“Listen, Adam, Darwin wants to loop Houston and Reykjavik in on this, see if there’s anything they can come up with.”

“Absolutely not. They’re tied up with the Ariadne launch.”

“There’s still time to scrub Ariadne. They can try again at the next alignment.”

Townsend smacked the desk, harder than he meant to, knocking the photo onto the floor; his handkerchief slipped off after, pooling on top of the photo and covering the faces. “That’s twenty-six months away, Oyarsa base will be facing the asteroids, and they won’t have nearly the clear shot they’ve got today.”

“They’re already prepping the orbit-first trajectory for Ariadne II. This won’t set them back. And there’s a protocol in place, Adam—this kind of situation takes precedence.”

“It’s not going to get any less harrowing here—we’ll still take precedence in two hours. Just let Ariadne get away, then you can loop in whomever you want.” He almost chuckled to himself. “It’s not like anyone’s expecting me to come home from here anyway.”

Bayless looked down, shaking his head sadly. “That’s the same thing Moscow said. But somebody needs to know what’s going on, don’t they? You’ve got family in North America.”

“They can hear about it in Ottawa the same time they hear about it in Houston. Just let Ariadne get away first.”

From the end of the base came a sigh of twisting metal as the ruined escape pod began to sag.

ARC-2 and ARC-7 raced across the sunrise line and into the dark. Descending into the atmosphere, the ground might have been barely visible, though a single fissure was the ground’s only distinguishing feature over the horizon in every direction. That fissure had been traveling from sunset to sunrise for four months; the drones streaked forward to make the journey in reverse in 36 minutes.

Estimated time to the Icarus lander, 113 minutes.

***

Bayless glanced up as Svidersaks drifted back into the observation deck. “Do we have a rescue plan?”

“Recife thought, as of the last reading, the supply lander had just enough fuel to tip the whole lander up 90 degrees. We’d lose the evac pod immediately, but if we compress the air first, the vent into the lock would hold back atmo like a diving bell just long enough for Adam to build a poor man’s barricade over the ruptured hatch. Then he seals himself in his quarters behind the secondary thermal shield to wait out the weekend sitting on his command console. With all power diverted to air cooling, they had every confidence they could talk us through retrofitting ARC-10 to refuel the lander via ARMORER.”

Bayless shook his head. “And then you had to ruin it by pointing out the obvious.”

“I told them I was speaking to them from the supply module, docked in orbit. The next ration drop isn’t scheduled until next week. They’re back to the drawing board.” She sighed. “We need to get them fresh readings on all the sensors.”

“I’m still working on it. The fuel resupply is coming on Sunday?”

Something clicked with that, and he looked up at the captain as the same understanding washed over her face and they both finished the thought, “—with Nwende.”

Nwende Morester, a South African engineer who had until recently been serving on Project Heimdallr—the orbital telescopes around Phobos and Deimos—had been recalled to a resupply station on Launch Site Alpha and informed she would shore up communications repair work on Daedalus. With arrival in Venus orbit only four days away, she was nearly finished with her solo journey to becoming the first astronaut to orbit both Mars and Venus.

Sviderskas knew Bayless was already working the problem, but she had to ask. “What would it do for our transmission capabilities to Darwin if we relay through the Mesektet?”

“Connection stability increases almost 70%, with an increase in lag time of… less than two seconds.”

“I want the uplink established yesterday,” she said decisively. “And I heard the commander, but I’m going to tell Darwin to loop in Reykjavik anyway.”

She turned to send the message in private again, but was stopped by Bayless’s voice. “What happens if the general finds out we’re countermanding an order?”

She swallowed hard, willing herself over the line. “Janik’s in command. He owes me a favor.”

Aboard the Mesektet, Nwende Morester faced the rear bulkhead, angled as suggested by the AIC’s compass-style Earth Finder app on her tablet. Her knees rested gingerly on a prayer mat she’d fixed to the floor with magnets, and braced her hand against a nearby ladder rung to lever her forehead down to the mat as she finished the last repetition of her prayer and meditation. After nearly two years following Phobos around Mars’s orbit, she was used to her tablet calling the adhan. Though the Martian day was less than twenty-five hours long, the additional thirty-nine minutes was still being hotly debated among scholars of the Hadith, and the near-perpetual twilight of Mars’s thin atmosphere had encouraged a “false 24” pegged to the time zones of Earth command centers instead of to the passage of the local day. Transit to Venus had only made the five calls a day more disconnected from any notion of what would be traditionally considered night and day, and when she reached Venus, she knew that a “day” would last more than 2,800 hours and 580 salahs. She was starting to understand why no imams had yet gone offworld.

But given that her name was Afrikaans for “Morningstar,” a reference to Venus, she’d been unable to deny the pull of the transfer. She’d actually been under consideration for pilot of Daedalus VIII before being assigned to Heimdallr, so this long trip, despite being a lonely flight, had felt like a homecoming.

Finally letting herself drift off the mat, she noticed an alert on her tablet, and opened it to find a mission specialist from the Daedalus VII orbiter glancing between several readouts and the comms feed on his own device. “How quickly can you establish a comms link to Earth?” His Glaswegian brogue, normally soft and lilting, was unusually on edge, and Nwende was already pulling herself back toward the center of the craft, where the communications center was located.

“Full transmission capability in less than two minutes,” she confirmed, resetting her iduku.

“We’re going to need to relay as much data as you’re able to send. I’m afraid we have a situation with Icarus.”

***

In 2146, Commander Ferreira had loomed, larger than life, over the rotunda, but she smiled warmly as she shrank to one side of the projection, allowing illustrations of what she was discussing to appear and animate as she spoke.

As you know, the technology developed to allow a permanent staff on Launch Site Alpha was a significant step forward, and set the groundwork for much that has come since, including the Stribog missions to Mars and the establishing of a manned colony on the surface. Since the inception of the space program, there had been strict limits on the time an astronaut could spend in reduced gravity before it began to wreak havoc on the body. But with the option of emergency evac to Earth, lunar missions began developing technology that increased artificial air pressure to near-Earth levels and even started to simulate Earth’s gravity, making fitness standards more reliable and astronaut metabolism more relatable to their earthbound norms. These advances, combined with increases in propulsion technology that allowed for faster transit, allowed the first crewed flight to Mars, and the establishment of a temporary landing base that, with supplies dropped from an orbiter, would expand to become the first Martian colony.

Today, there are four Martian colonies. In honor of our planet’s imaginative and even imagined history, we’ve named them after Martian characters in literature—Oyarsa, Ylla, Gekko, and Dejah Thoris. But with the first of our exciting new programs, we will soon be breaking ground on a fifth site unlike the others, and more significant to our ever-expanding space program: Launch Site Beta.

Over the coming decade, six chosen cadets will travel to Mars as mission specialists and take part in the day-to-day administration of the Martian colonies, as construction begins on a launch site three klicks west-southwest of Oyarsa base. While the specialists have their health closely monitored to ensure the final stage of our program remains a safe and likely proposition, we will begin preparing for the launch of Ariadne I—the first return flight from Mars to Earth.

The mission will be a milestone, not just for returning one of our mission specialists to the planet of his birth, but because we have plotted a return trajectory—from Launch Site Beta to splashdown in the southern Indian Ocean—for a week in mid-June. The closest passing of Mars and Earth in ten years will allow us a launch date on June 14, the fiftieth anniversary of the completion of Launch Site Alpha.

The editor of the video must have expected what would come next, because, as the animation of the proposed return trajectory played, Commander Ferreira was hidden, allowing her continued speech to be paused. In the rotunda, the cadets broke out in applause.

The feed then cut back to the commander’s face, and a hush fell over the crowd.

These same technological developments, though, are not limited to our Martian projects. As we announced at this very Mission Fair two years ago, we’re also turning our attention toward the sun, and the untapped resources that may be waiting for us on our closest planetary neighbor.

As you know, our command centers in Asia and the Pacific are currently preparing for the first mission to blast off at the new launch site in Alice Springs, Australia—Daedalus I, a manned craft bound for low orbit around Venus. Starting with Daedalus II, we will begin launching unmanned drones from the orbiter to test the limits of our technology in withstanding the exaggerated pressure and unforgiving chemical composition of the Venusian atmosphere. By Daedalus IX at the latest, we’re confident we can release what, thanks to our piggybacking on the Daedalus missions, we’re calling the Icarus lander.

Icarus will be a self-contained command module, lowered to the surface by the landing units on either side, one to be used for supplies and one as an emergency escape pod, equipped with drones and an all-terrain rover to assist in laboratory testing, construction and repairs outside the module. While the atmosphere will make traditional windows impossible, it will otherwise be very similar to the Zorya capsule that brought me to the Martian valley we now call Dejah Base.

While the first two Daedalus missions are already fully staffed, we will need to select several cadets to enter specialty training to staff the subsequent missions, including one who will become the pilot of the Icarus module—and the first man or woman on the surface of Venus.