A Step Beyond Read online

  He was tired and drunk, but his mind was racing. His thoughts became more vivid when he closed his eyes, which was why he could not fall asleep. Just northwest of the canyons were three prominent volcanoes standing like giants side by side. They were perched on top of the Tharsis bulge, a large swelling in the Martian surface. “Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons.” His speech was slurred. He looked down at the calderas and wondered what the volcanoes might have looked liked when they were active. He could visualize fire spewing from the vents and dark smoke twirling high in the air and glowing red lava flowing slowly down the sides. They were dead now, but remnants of their past glory scarred the surrounding land. The ground was rippled, with snakelike extensions where the lava had stopped and hardened. Portions of the volcanoes were buried in their own lava, from fissures along their flanks that had erupted.

  His eyes were drawn to a single volcano northwest of the others. Surrounded by low-level plains stood the largest known volcano in the solar system. Olympus Mons. Home of the Greek gods. It was where the American-led crew would land, approximately thirty-five hundred kilometers northwest of Candor Chasma, well outside the range of the manned rovers, but within the range of the Russian airship. He studied the peculiar land formation encircling the volcano. The geologists referred to it as the aureole because it looked like a radiant halo. Its origin was a mystery. Some speculated it was the collapsed remains of an even larger volcano. Others believed it was formed by massive landslides. Satomura favored the first explanation.

  He focused on the very top of the volcano. Despite the small aperture, he knew it to be a mammoth caldera over eighty kilometers in diameter. It had, at one time in its past, contained a sea of bubbling magma. He was envious of the Americans, who would be sending rocket-driven probes into the caldera.

  With the aid of a computer simulation, he had stood at the very edge of Olympus Mons, but all he had been able to see was a wall of rock. The base was a sheer cliff that stretched six kilometers into the sky. No matter how far back he moved he was unable to make out that Olympus Mons was a volcano. Above the cliff the upward slope was gradual, almost imperceptible.

  He took another drink from the container and allowed his eyes to wander. The planet was barren. Other than the whisper-thin clouds of water and carbon dioxide that floated in the upper atmosphere, there was no movement. The surface beneath the clouds was motionless. It was heavily cratered and covered with rock. Water did not flow through the riverbeds, and smoke did not vent from the volcanoes. Unlike Earth, it was not painted in pleasant colors: it was murky shades of gold and maroon and dark crimson, except for the north and south poles, which were ashen white.

  Satomura grunted as he stretched, and having forgotten he was in a weightless environment soon found himself floating backwards. There was little he could do but wait until he reached the far wall.

  “Oh well,” he said, and took the last sip from the container. “Close portal.”

  The metallic shutters that protected the portal glass from micrometeoroids closed shut and replaced Mars with a white panel.

  “I must go to sleep,” he said to the empty container of sake, and shook it to mimic agreement.

  “We are go for separation,” Carter said. He was seated next to Nelson inside the lander. The seat behind them was empty.

  “All systems check,” Endicott said over the intercom. “Roger,” Nelson replied. “Ten seconds to separation.”

  The first few seconds passed in silence, then Endicott started the countdown.

  “Docking latches have been released,” Carter announced.

  The Mars excursion module was pushed outside the Liberty by a spring inside the docking bay. A television camera transmitted the event back to Earth. Several billion people, crowded around high-definitions, would be watching the images twenty-one minutes and thirty-three seconds later, the time it took for the transmission to reach Earth. Carter, who had maintained a perpetual five o’clock shadow for the past several months, was clean-shaven in honor of the occasion.

  “The Shepard has just come into view,” Endicott said. The lander was named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to fly in space. The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth twenty-three days earlier. Endicott was watching the craft through the Liberty’s forward portal.

  There were two red buttons, both marked ABORT, that

  Carter would have to push simultaneously to terminate the landing. The computer would recommend an abort if something went wrong, but it would be up to him to activate the sequence. He would have to decide whether the computer had advised him correctly or whether a glitch in the software or a malfunction in the hardware had resulted in a false warning. If the hazard was real, he would have to decide whether he could pull them out of the danger by taking manual control. They only had one chance to land. It was his opinion that the abort thresholds were set too low. He was determined not to abort unless he had absolutely no other choice.

  “Burn attitude obtained,” Endicott said. “Fifteen minutes to deorbit burn.”

  They were going to fire the braking engines of the Shepard to lower its orbit. If it were to make a direct descent from its current orbit, the deceleration would be too great for the astronauts to withstand without risk of injury. At the time the mission was being planned it was not known exactly how much calcium their bones would lose. And although they were in much better shape than they would have been without the artificial gravity on the Liberty, their bones were still more fragile than they had been on Earth. The four-point-nine g’s they would have undergone was considered unacceptable. By lowering their orbit they would reduce the deceleration to two-point-two g’s.

  “Engines have been armed,” Carter announced. “Forty-five seconds to burn.”

  “Roger, you are go for deorbit burn.”

  “Countdown to burn: seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . ignition.”

  “I have visual confirmation, over.”

  They were pushed back as the braking engine fired. The ship started to slow down and descend. The burn lasted forty-eight seconds.

  “Burn complete,” Carter announced, as the lander began to drop. “Deorbit engine shutdown. E minus fifty-seven minutes.”

  Carter allowed his head to fall back on his shoulders and roll to one side as he savored the taste of the gum he had placed in his mouth prior to locking down his helmet. He was in his element. The Shepard was his baby. He would take over the controls from the computer when they were close enough to pick out a landing site visually. He wanted to take over now, but knew he had to wait. The entry was too complex for a human to handle. From the corner of his eye, he peeked up at the high-definition to see how Endicott was holding up. He was alone now and would be for the next three months. Well, that’s what he said he wanted. Endicott smiled back awkwardly.

  Tatiana watched her husband on the high-definition monitor as he counted the seconds to impact with the Martian atmosphere. His face was expressionless, his voice disciplined and military. It was what the Russian people expected from their cosmonauts, but for Vladimir it was too perfect. His voice should have cracked or there should have been a smile or a grimace or a nervous twitch or something. To anybody but Tatiana he would have seemed perfectly normal; to her he was too normal. His cold professionalism reminded her of Komarov; the similarity was unnerving.

  They would be apart for the next three months. He was to remain aboard the Druzhba, while she was on the planet’s surface with Komarov and Satomura. She knew their upcoming separation bothered him. She knew that he still suspected her of being unfaithful even though he had not said anything for some time, and knew that he did not trust her alone with Komarov. The next three months would be difficult. Perhaps it would be better that way. Perhaps he would become less dependent upon her. That would be nice, she thought. But as she watched him, an uncomfortable notion that there would be trouble ahead swelled inside her. His face was a mask of sculpte
d iron, the muscles beneath the skin taut and rigid. There was no emotion in his voice, just the flat sound of the countdown.

  “E minus one minute,” he said. “Atmospheric spectrometer activated.”

  “Activation confirmed,” Komarov replied as he glanced at a stream of data flooding the lower half of Satomura’s monitor.

  Tatiana looked quickly out the portal and saw that outside was still black. Sprinkled with stars. She looked back at Vladimir.

  “E minus zero seconds. The Gagarin has just entered the Martian atmosphere,” Vladimir said. “Entry angle is fourteen-point-twelve degrees.”

  She did not feel anything at first. The computer flashed 0.05 g. They were 240 kilometers from the surface and eight minutes and forty-seven seconds from touchdown. She looked over at the portal and still no change. Her heart was pounding quickly in her chest, and Vladimir and his troubles were slipping from her mind as she began to sense the weight of her body.

  “L minus seven minutes.”

  “Spectrometer deactivated.”

  She scanned the control panel and focused on the event timer, where the seconds appeared to be ticking at an accelerated pace.

  “L minus five minutes,” Vladimir said.

  His face began to bounce and break apart into a haze of white snow. They were losing contact with the Druzhba. Tatiana felt heavier as the g forces gained intensity. The display indicated 2.2 g’s. Turning her head to look out the corner of her eye at the portal, she saw the red-and-orange flickering of flames.

  The lander was shaking from the turbulence. Her muscles tightened. She tried to relax, telling herself it was not as bad as what they had endured a couple of days earlier. She looked up to see if Vladimir had reappeared, even though she knew it was too soon. The high-definition monitor was filled with snow that crackled like tiny firecrackers. For the next few minutes they would be entirely on their own. All communications had been severed by the ionized gases that surrounded the lander.

  As she watched the instruments on the control panel, the altitude decreasing, the velocity increasing, she visualized the red Martian surface growing larger as their capsule plunged toward it. A wondrous feeling chilled her body. She was about to land on a strange planet.

  She felt a sudden jolt.

  “Main parachute deployed,” Komarov announced. “L minus one minute and thirty-three seconds. Five-point-nine kilometers.”

  The flames disappeared, to be replaced by a pink sky. The high-definition monitors displayed a rocky, red surface that swayed back and forth with the motion of the craft. The surface was chopped into an intricate network of canyons. Valles Marineris. Although she had flown the landing simulator many times before, the sheer size of the gorges startled her. They were growing in size with each second. The edges of Valles Marineris disappeared over the horizons, and all she could see were canyons. It was an imposing sight.

  “L minus sixty seconds,” Vladimir said, as his image reappeared on the monitor.

  “Five seconds to descent-engine ignition,” Komarov said. “Four, three, two . . .”

  Tatiana was pushed back into her chair by a second jolt.

  “We have descent-engine ignition. Parachutes have been jettisoned. Deploying landing gear.”

  She heard the sound of the landing gear extract itself. “Righting maneuver complete,” Komarov said. The ship, which had been coming in at an angle, was now heading straight for the surface.

  Tatiana could see the sides of the canyon as they descended into it. She felt as if she were being swallowed up by the planet. The opening was gigantic. The canyon wall outside her portal was nearly one hundred kilometers distant. She magnified the image on the monitor and could see thick layers of rock sandwiched one on top of the other. Each layer was from a different period in the planet’s evolution. At the rim the stone was much darker and appeared to be basalt, a dense rock formed by molten lava. As they descended, the tiers became thinner, compressed together by the rocks above them. The tiers near the bottom were from earlier periods in Martian history.

  They were headed for a mesa in the center of Candor Chasma. It rose a little more than a kilometer above the canyon floor, but was still a kilometer beneath the surface. The satellite photographs of the landing site showed the surface to be relatively flat and free from boulders. They were expecting mostly sand. But the monitor was cluttered with rocks.

  “Surface is rough,” Komarov said calmly. “Assuming control. Prepare for manual landing.”

  “Recommend alternate landing site,” Vladimir said. “Proceed to seven degrees south, seventy-seven degrees west.”

  “Negative,” Komarov responded. “We’re going to take her down here.”

  They were only fifty meters above the surface, and the thrust from their engines was beginning to kick up sand. Tatiana pressed forward as far as the restraint straps would allow to get a better look at the monitor. There was no place to land. The ground was covered with rocks, some of which were large enough to pierce the hull. The dust was beginning to swirl and obscure their view.

  “I’m taking her up ten meters,” Komarov said. As the ship climbed, the dust cleared and fell back onto the rocks.

  “You have nine minutes and twenty seconds of fuel before descent abort,” Vladimir warned.

  “I’ll have her down long before then,” Komarov replied. He looked over at Satomura and raised his eyebrows. “Where to?”

  “Let’s try north,” Satomura said.

  Carter was looking down inside the ancient vent of Olympus Mons. The giant rim encircled the vent like a castle wall that had been ravished by violent bombardments. Portions had collapsed and crumbled into the caldera, leaving large gaps. Through the gaps, molten lava had spilled and flowed down the sides, forming long, spidery trails of hardened magma that seemed to stretch forever. Inside the volcano were several vast craters, broken circles, overlapping each other. Each crater was formidable in itself. The largest was over forty-two kilometers in diameter.

  “Parachutes have been released,” Nelson announced, as the ship jumped forward.

  Carter returned his attention to the job of piloting the lander. They were heading for the base of the volcano on the southeast side. The site was about five kilometers above mean planetary level. As a result they had less room to brake. The Shepard was still traveling fast enough to come in at an angle. It was heading straight for the side of the volcano, a vertical wall of rock towering four kilometers above the surface. Just like the simulation, Carter thought to himself. The wall of rock completely filled both monitors.

  “Five seconds to retro-rocket ignition,” Endicott announced over the intercom.

  The rocks grew larger, and it looked as if they were going to crash into the side of the volcano. Carter caught Nelson glancing over at the override switch that fired the retro-rockets. He looked back at monitor and thought the cliff did look close, but he did not let it bother him.

  There was a deafening roar as the restraint straps pressed deeply into their flesh. A mixture of fluorine/oxygen and methane combusted and burst through the plug nozzle of the descent engine with 140,000 pounds of thrust. Long, hot flames shot out of the bottom of the Shepard. The red cliffs disappeared behind the bellowing exhaust.

  Carter glanced at the event timer. The ship initiated the maneuver to right itself and start its vertical descent. He looked out the side portal, and the wall of rock seemed no more than two hundred meters away.

  “Close,” he said, chewing his gum. “Going to have to back her up some. Appears we overshot the landing site. Receiving transponder signal loud and clear.”

  “A few more seconds and we would have been a permanent fixture on that cliff,” Nelson said as he looked out the portal.

  “Optical illusion. Just seemed closer than it really was because it’s so large.”

  “You gentlemen all right?” Endicott asked.

  “Never better,” Carter replied. Nelson gave a thumbs-up to the camera and a forced smile.

  �
��You are point-six kilometers northwest of Landing Site Alpha,” Endicott said.

  “Roger,” Carter replied, directing the craft away from the volcanic wall.

  “I have visual contact on Monitor B,” Nelson said. “Looks clean.”

  “Landing Site Alpha is a go,” Carter said.

  “Take her down easy,” Endicott said.

  “Fifty meters,” Carter said. “Forward five.”

  “Fuel looking good,” Nelson said. “We can be selective with our real estate.”

  “Forty-five meters.”

  “Starting to kick up some sand.”

  “Forty meters. Northeast two. Looks like we could land just about anywhere. I’m going to take her down.”

  “You are within fifteen meters of the transponder.”

  “Some rocks coming into view. They’re directly below,” Nelson said. “Take her forward ten.”

  “Appears I spoke too soon,” Carter replied with a Southern drawl. “Forward ten. Twenty-five meters.”

  “Fuel pressure good. All systems check,” Nelson said. “Fifteen meters.”

  A cloud of fine red dust engulfed the lander.

  “We have lost visuals. Radar shows flat ground.”

  “Five meters,” Carter said. With a slight bump the Shepard settled onto the Martian surface. “The Shepard has landed.”

  “Abort status?” Endicott asked.

  “All systems green,” Carter replied as he flipped several switches above his head. “We are stable. Proceeding with shutdown of descent engines.”

  “Checking ascent engines,” Nelson said. The monitor in front of him filled with a schematic of the engines and a diagnostic readout. Segments of the schematic turned from blue to green as the computer ran through the check. They were preparing the ship for an immediate liftoff in the event they determined it was unsafe to stay. The last blue line disappeared, and the words READY FOR LAUNCH flashed on the screen. “Engines have passed emergency diagnostics.”