A Step Beyond Read online

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  “We should not underestimate the importance of this project,” said Satomura. He was disappointed by how little press the Greenhouse probe had received. In his mind, they treated it as they would a sideshow at a circus. Endicott signaled his agreement and was about to launch into an explanation of how Earth could very easily meet with the same fate when Nelson, perceiving Endicott’s intent, pressed on with the flight plan.

  “The passage from Venus to Mars will take six months,” he said. He touched the red planet, and it increased in size until it filled the entire screen. The room assumed a pink glow.

  “The god of war,” said Schebalin to himself, but his voice was picked up and amplified by a sensitive microphone connected to the communications console. He smiled awkwardly.

  “Both ships will use the Martian atmosphere to aerobrake. They will strike the atmosphere at thirty-thousand kilometers per hour. The rapid deceleration will produce a force of five-point-five g’s. This is essentially the same maneuver that caused the aerobraking accident seven years ago. We lost three of our best astronauts then. They were good friends of mine. The problem was an unpredicted atmospheric disturbance that shifted the angle of entry. The onboard computer failed to compensate correctly for the change. We have since updated the program and are highly confident the aerobrake will be successful.”

  The next chart showed two dotted lines circling the planet Mars.

  “Once the maneuver is completed,” Nelson continued, “both ships will assume a twenty-four-hour elliptical orbit with an inclination angle of approximately thirty degrees. After several days in orbit, we will initiate descent operations. My landing crew will consist of Lieutenant Carter, Major Brunnet, and me. Dr. Endicott is to remain aboard the Liberty.”

  “Our crew,” Schebalin said, “will be Colonel Dmitri Komarov, Major Tatiana Pavlova, and Dr. Takashi Satomura.” Unlike the others, Satomura did not acknowledge his name with a nod or a smile. His expression remained unchanged, oddly impatient.

  “The Mars Excursion Modules will separate from the main vehicles and descend to the planet’s surface,” Nelson continued. “We will land at the base of Olympus Mons, approximately two klicks above mean planetary level.” The planet grew several times in size, and Nelson pointed at a spot at the base of a volcano with his pen. “Major Brunnet.”

  “Olympus Mons is the largest known volcano in the solar system,” Brunnet said. A large photograph of the volcano appeared on the screen. “It towers twenty-seven kilometers above the surface—three times higher than Mount Everest. The caldera is eighty-one kilometers across. The base of the volcano spans nearly six hundred kilometers. It also contains some of the youngest lava flows on the planet’s surface. The age of these flows is determined by crater density. This site will answer one very important geological question: When did volcanism cease on Mars? Rock samples from this region will be varied in age and chemical composition. They should provide a good cross section of Martian geological history.”

  “The decision to land on Olympus Mons was not without controversy,” Nelson said. “The elevation was thought by some to be too great to provide sufficient aerobraking, and the site too rocky for a safe landing. But geologically Olympus Mons holds considerable promise, and a majority of our scientists were determined not to pass it up. They chose a site lower than originally considered and reworked the landing strategy to compensate for the elevation. They also redesigned the landing gear to be able to handle less than perfect conditions.” Nelson scrolled the screen eastward and pointed to a spot inside a large, jagged canyon. “The team led by the Russians will land here. Commander Komarov.”

  “Like you,” Komarov said, “we were lured to a spot that holds great potential. Candor Chasma. Six degrees south, seventy-three degrees west. We are to land on a small mesa, one-point-three kilometers high. Candor Chasma belongs to the Valles Marineris canyon system. The system stretches nearly four thousand kilometers in length. To give you a better sense of the size, the Grand Canyon in America is only four hundred and fifty kilometers long. Valles Marineris would stretch the entire length of the United States. It is as much as seven kilometers deep, which is three times deeper than the Grand Canyon. We’ll be using an airship to explore the chasm. A dirigible, I believe you call it. But I will let Dr. Satomura describe the scientific value of this site.”

  “This region is interesting for many reasons,” said Takashi Satomura, stepping forward with a laser pen. “The walls of the canyon are layered. We believe the layers are from different periods of Mars’s geological past. They contain the history of Mars. And to some degree our solar system. To give an example, samples taken from the layers could be used to determine the climatic cycles of Mars. If these cycles correspond with those on Earth, such as the great ice ages, we can assume they were due to variations in the sun’s output.”

  “Or it could lend further credence to Milankovitch’s theory regarding the influence of planetary rotation upon climate,” Endicott remarked.

  “Of course,” Satomura said. “All depends on what we find.” He traced the outer perimeter of the canyon with his laser beam. “There are those who believe that the canyon could have been an ancient lake. We know that life on Earth began in the oceans approximately three and a half billion years ago. We suspect that conditions on Mars at that time were similar to those on Earth, and that Martian life may have lived in the waters that once filled this canyon.”

  Carter listened with amusement as the two nations rationalized their respective landing sites. There was another reason, more genuine, yet unspoken. Neither nation wanted to be out-done by the other. As agreed by both beforehand, their ships would touch the ground simultaneously, or as simultaneously as conditions would allow. The Russian and American commanders were going to emerge from their landers, descend their respective ladders, and diplomatically hop onto the Martian soil at precisely the same time. A symbolic gesture of unity. Man, not a Russian, not an American, but man, an Earthling, would land on Mars.

  Despite this gesture, politicians soon came to the realization that one landing site could be superior to another. The Russians, who realized it first, announced they would land at Candor Chasma, perhaps the most promising site with respect to geology and the search for life. The Americans, not wanting to be outdone, retorted by announcing they would land at Olympus Mons, the highest and most spectacular mountain in the solar system. The site for the failed Volnost mission had been the ancient channels of Mangala Vallis—an equatorial site, relatively safe, but geologically dull in comparison to Olympus Mons or Candor Chasma. The glory had been in being first. The challenge posed by the two sites had the unexpected result of reinvigorating the space program. As Carter smiled inwardly at the thought, a change in Komarov’s tone drew his attention back to the discussion.

  “While we are on the planet’s surface, Vladimir will conduct an investigation of the supply ship for the Volnost. The ship, which is configured similarly to the supply ship for this mission, with its cargo hold and backup lander, has lost power, and we want to find out why.

  “The two landing crews will remain on the surface for two months. Their duties will be many. They will spend much of their time exploring the surrounding terrain and conducting surface experiments. They will depart the planet in the excursion modules. Trans-Earth injection will occur on December 17, 2022. This time,” Komarov said, tracing the dotted line with his finger, “rather than swinging by Venus, we will set a course directly for Earth. We are scheduled to arrive eight months later. The ships will aerobrake into the Earth’s atmosphere, where they will be picked up by orbital-transfer vehicles and tugged back down to low-Earth orbit and the newly constructed Orbital Quarantine Vehicle. The facility will be separate but adjacent to this space station. We are to remain in quarantine for two weeks.”

  “And if we are found to be contaminated?” Tanya asked. “Then we stay quarantined until it is determined the contamination does not pose a threat or until it is neutralized. We don’t anticip
ate any complications.”

  Tanya Pavlova watched Colonel Komarov as he checked his console and verbally relayed the settings back to Kaliningrad. His voice was mature and confident. Not like her husband’s, which would on occasion crack as though he had not entirely grown up. She loved her husband, but at times he could be so childish, and his suspicious nature was a constant annoyance. Komarov was different. He was older than Vladimir, more fatherly. His military stature and large body, almost too large to fit in the cockpit of the jets he flew, commanded respect. There were rumors that he had been unfaithful to his wife, but that did not disturb Tatiana. With such a man the problem had to be with the woman. Not that it was any concern of hers.

  Vladimir’s jealousy annoyed Tanya. He had struck her the other night because he thought she was getting too friendly with Komarov. Of course, he had overreacted. Komarov had placed his hand on her shoulder, that was all. She thought that perhaps it was guilt that made Vladimir act so. She suspected him of having an affair just a few months earlier during a training exercise in Japan. She hadn’t confronted him yet, because she still wasn’t sure. A friend of hers was checking into it. Or, she thought, perhaps his jealousy stemmed from suspicions that she had married him to secure a spot on the mission. There was some truth to that, but not to the extent imagined. She had fallen in love with Vladimir and would have married him anyway—just not so quickly.

  She had to admit, though, that she was attracted to Dmitri and felt a certain warmth when she was near him. The gray streaks in his hair gave him an air of distinction.

  She remembered an incident back on Earth when all four of them had been submerged underwater in the immersion facility. The facility was used to approximate weightlessness. During the two-hour session, she, at first unconsciously, had stayed close to Komarov through the training maneuvers. As Vladimir grew visibly irritated, Tanya became angered by his distrust and paid less attention to him. That, of course, only aggravated the situation. The tension increased until everyone in the tank felt it. When they finally emerged, she and Vladimir exchanged a few sharp words before charging off in separate directions; under any other circumstance no one would have noticed, but they were training for a two-year stay in space, and their trainers were instructed to notice such things. The trainers filed their report that evening.

  The next morning the couple was called before a special review board, which included several mission psychiatrists. It was just a marital spat, they explained to the board. A perfectly normal thing. These were not perfectly normal circumstances, they were informed by one of the psychiatrists. Confinement of the sort they were about to endure could place unusual demands on the human psyche. Even a spat had the potential to blossom into something of graver consequence. It was their responsibility to select cosmonauts who could control their emotions. If a repeat of such behavior occurred, the board might be forced to reconsider its selection. It was the first and last public outburst between the two. But in private . . . Tatiana didn’t want to think about that.

  “Prepare for separation, over,” announced a voice over the intercom.

  Komarov turned toward Vladimir. Vladimir, without looking up from his console, nodded to confirm they were ready.

  “The Druzhba is set for separation,” Komarov announced. “Sokop?”

  “The shuttle is set.”

  “Initiate separation.”

  Vladimir flipped the switch that instructed the computer to initiate the separation sequence. A message appeared on the main console that the grapples had been released; moments later, he noticed that the stars outside his portal had shifted as a spring pushed the two ships apart. Several tiny rockets, each with 870 pounds of thrust powered by a mixture of monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, fired on the shuttle when it was a safe distance away.

  “Separation complete,” Komarov announced. His voice was cold, professional, without emotion. It was Vladimir’s duty to announce the separation. But Komarov had noticed Vladimir’s mind had drifted, and this was his way of getting Vladimir’s thoughts back on track.

  “Your orbit looks good.”

  Vladimir glanced over at Komarov. He had a great deal of respect for his commander. Ever since Vladimir’s days in the Furuze Military Academy, Komarov had been a hero of his. Dmitri Fyodorovich Komarov was spoken of with godlike reverence by the young cadets. He was the great Russian test pilot, running neck and neck with his famous American counterpart, Al Carter. Everyone knew that he would have beaten Carter in the race to put the space plane into orbit had it not been for budget constraints. It was not Komarov’s fault he had lost that race. The previous century’s rash of programs to reform the Russian economy, each more chaotic and corrupt than its predecessor, was to blame. Vladimir’s respect for his commander did not, however, alleviate his suspicions.

  He had no proof. He had never caught them in the act. There was no hard evidence he could point to. Just suspicions. The way she acted around Komarov. Hands sliding by each other and hesitating before continuing, the tone of her voice when she talked to him, or a smile when there was no reason for a smile. When he confronted her she would become angry and deny it was anything more than his overactive imagination. The more suspicious he became the more angered she would become and the more it would seem, as a result of her anger and a desire to strike back, that her attentions were diverted to Komarov.

  Vladimir did not want to believe that his wife could be unfaithful. There were periods when she would act as if no other man could possibly interest her, and she would love him and caress him and speak softly to him, and he would forget his suspicions. But he had no way of knowing for certain whether or not she was having an affair. It angered him not to know, and it angered him even more that he did not know whether his anger, which she resented, was justified.

  Komarov, he knew, was not to be trusted. He did not know if he could trust his wife. He did not know if he were distorting innocent gestures into something secretive and lustful. It might be, as she said, nothing more than his imagination. There was only one way to know for sure, and that was to catch them in the act. His thoughts were disrupted by a distant voice that he recognized as Colonel Schebalin’s. The colonel was reviewing the scheduled activities with the crew.

  They would spend the next three days in geosynchronous orbit, running through a seemingly endless checklist to verify that the system components functioned according to specifications. The components and their redundant counterparts had been checked and rechecked a multitude of times, at the manufacturers’, prior to assembly at the RSA plant, after assembly, prior to launch, after launch while in low-Earth orbit, and now in geosynchronous orbit, before the final burn that would send the ship and its crew on their way toward Mars.

  Queen’s Gambit Declined

  “Liberty, this is control. You are go for burn, over.”

  The crew aboard the Liberty were making final preparations for trans-Mars injection, a maneuver which would free their ship from the gravitational pull of the Earth and establish a trajectory for Mars. Carter checked his flight-deck console and, pleased with what he found, gave Tom Nelson a thumbs-up.

  “Roger, we are go for burn. Out.”

  Carter could feel his heart beating. He watched his hand as it moved in slow motion through the weightless environment of the spacecraft. His finger trembled as it pulled down on the metallic gray switch to ignite the main engines of the spacecraft’s Trans-Mars Injection stage. The TMI stage held 450,000 kilograms of propellant. Within the next few minutes, the entire 450,000 kilograms would explode in the rocket combustion chambers beneath them. The force of the explosions would accelerate the ship to a velocity of 26,000 kilometers per hour. Carter heard a voice counting backwards.

  “. . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one. We have first-stage ignition.”

  A stream of supercold liquid hydrogen flowed into preburners, where it combined with liquid oxygen to produce hydrogen-laden steam. The steam drove the turbopumps, which fed the fuel a
nd oxidizer into the main injectors. The Liberty was fitted with two engines; each engine had four turbopumps and one main injector. The injectors sprayed a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen into the combustion chambers. The entire fuel supply for the first stage was forced through the system within a matter of minutes. If an injector failed to maintain a critical pressure within a combustion chamber, then the chamber would become unstable and explode. The ship would be destroyed. Despite the danger, the risk was relatively low. The basic design of the engine had been in use for many years in the space shuttle. The thrust from the engines pushed the crew back into their seats and propelled the ship to a speed twenty-two times that of sound.

  “Control, this is Liberty,” Nelson said. “The first-stage engines are at seventy percent, over.”

  “We confirm, over.”

  As the ship accelerated, the g forces increased. After several weeks of weightlessness, the astronauts could feel their bodies regain their normal weight. Then they grew heavier, several times heavier than they would have felt on Earth, and since they had begun to adapt to the weightless environment of the space station, the effect was intensified. Carter lifted his arm from his seat and placed his hand several inches in front of his face. As he struggled to hold it steady, the g forces caused it to shake. He occupied his mind with the struggle and found a certain pleasure in it. And then suddenly his hand became very light and flew away from his face. He was able to stop it within inches of the flight-deck panel.