The journey away from Earth did begin to draw all five of them together, as each of them felt a growing distance from almost every other member of the human race. Every one else they had ever met became so distant as to be almost imaginary. At first their growing closeness was like a tide, receding but always reaching a higher mark on its return. After Don's first loud clash with Asya, he was more able to notice the danger signs and withdraw from arguments or absent himself completely from company into his tiny room until the claustrophobia overcame him. She slowly began to tolerate his scientific debates and astronomical efforts. She even smiled – painfully - at one of his lame jokes. Then an hour later he snapped at her after a dismissive, scornful comment she had thrown his way. Steps forward, a step back.
They spent a whole ship's day grilling Abdul Qawi on his dubious achievement and testing the limits of his English. The way he described receiving assistance from Ahmed Aqlan, without the latter even realising that there was a plan afoot, made everyone laugh. Naturally, this whole conversation took place with microphones and cameras suffering an inexplicable but temporary malfunction. Abdul Qawi then sketched for them how he had made arrangements to visit a distant contractor – phoned the contractor to cancel the visit without informing SSI –went to inspect the Naqsh's payload – packed himself into it after hiding Don's science instruments elsewhere. Then Naqsh had launched successfully while he was totally sedated, his metabolism suppressed, his breathing shallow. He thought he could remember vague dreams of being tossed around in a screaming desert storm.
He had arranged to have one of the induced-coma devices get 'lost' after its final experimental run. It was a trial version, barely even a prototype, but he had examined the test results thoroughly enough to satisfy himself. However, the reason he'd woken up after about three weeks was that he had rolled over onto one of the intravenous tubes and blocked the flow of the mainly benzodiazepine cocktail that had kept him unconscious. He still claimed that the machine worked, but that the operational usage could be improved. The others each had their own reaction to this, and the debates went on for the rest of the Mars transit and beyond.
Annika found a heady, unaccustomed anger rising up: "Those medications should only ever be used under close medical supervision! It's a stupid thing to do!"
This bounced off Abdul Qawi's cool. "The Sleeper device, they designed to do this exactly. It is expert system. An AI, you say. It reads the body's, you know, signals and brain activity and makes decision." Annika shook her head in bafflement. It was hard to believe someone would do such a thing, but the device itself became a little less of a black box to her. In fact…
"Hey, what were you thinking, anyway? Spending eight months like a corpse in that locker and waking up with atrophied muscles and wasted bones? What good would you have been to us?" It sank in at that moment how irresponsible he had been, and how badly it could have hit the team as a whole.
He shook his head and fixed her with an earnest, wide-eyed stare. "No, no. I know this. I program the sleeper for one month only. So I wake up only a little early. Then start the exercise regiment." Then he sat back, satisfied that he had settled the whole thing to everyone's satisfaction. She sighed. His total fixation on reaching Mars by any means was becoming apparent.
Don shook in silent laughter. Finally, shaking his head: "It's regime, A.Q. Regime. And you're priceless. Utterly unique."
Marco remarked how useful an improved Sleeper device might be for longer journeys – the outer solar system, the Oort Cloud. Don stared at him for a moment, recalling similar conversations over the past two years, sensing the future history branching out into a mist of uncertain potentials. He shook his head and brought himself back to the present, to what was real.
Then Abdul Qawi quizzed them on the journey so far – their launch – the transfer to Naqsh and the automated lunar flyby. He himself had championed this trajectory choice eighteen months before and had written out the basic orbital calculations by hand, on a chain of napkins littered over Nowal's desk during a crucial meeting.
"We had less than a tenth of a percent deviation," Don told him.
The Yemeni smiled back, almost like a child. "Al hamdu lillah," he breathed, "who aligns the Moon and planets for us perfectly. We thread the eye of the needle." It was true. The Moon would not be in a position to slingshot a Marsbound flight again for many years. They had been able to bring almost half a ton of extra payload because of the slingshot plan.
Annika spent much time making observations and honing her descriptive powers. She found her greatest enjoyment in writing blog posts. Whether it was the lurid purple LED-lit vegetable rack or the telescope, or observing the other four humans interact, she found that the sensory deprivation involved in their confinement aboard Naqsh slowly transformed every task into a potential discovery. She could focus on the details of a star's spectrum or a leaf's structure for minutes at a time. She had to pull back from outpouring all of her new-found wonder in her posts. Not everyone would understand.
They had begun marking their passage to their new home well before they discovered the presence of their stowaway. After they had passed a distance of about one light-second from Earth – just after the gravity-assist maneuver around the Moon, skimming silently seventy kilometres above the grey jagged peaks of the Lunar mountains – they threw a party. It wasn't much, but it felt like the creation of a new tradition. They live-streamed it back to their waiting audience: almost a billion were said to be watching. They knew their ratings weren't as high as those of Smaug had been, but they didn't care. Annika advised them to forget the camera: "This is about us today… as well as about them," she said.
Marco and Abdul Qawi got along like a circus, always pranking one another or teaming up on another hapless victim. Annika opened up her bedroom after a long day and discovered a moaning Yemeni mummy arising from the bed sheets, and Marco took to concealing himself in the most unlikely places, even the cramped toilet, eventually surprising each of the crew, even Asya. The unsettling green of a bowl of rice and the interior walls of the refrigerator turned out not to be space fungus after all, but the result of Marco's stash of food colouring. But when they hacked the computer and devised an extremely convincing UFO appearance on the forward viewing screen, their commander shut them down and forbade them from their plots. "This is critical system! Stay away!" she bellowed. Marco began a sharp retort but clamped down on it. Seeing Asya's steely glare and Don's disapproving frown, he exhaled, shrugged and retreated to the exercise room. He spoke little for the next few days. The rain cloud hovering over him was almost visible.
When their nav software told them they had reached the million-kilometre mark, they celebrated again, this time with homemade poetry and skits and silly hats. Then it was ten million, and their conversations with SSI Control and family and friends developed pauses of a minute or two. Gradually the pauses became embarrassments, chances to dredge the mind for something new to say, or turn around and float off to do something else. After that, communication became more like sending audio postcards and letting the answer come when it wanted. More and more, Don felt the darkness around them closing in. He knew from astronomy just how ridiculously insignificant in size they were, alone in the emptiness, watching their homeworld shrink from a big marble to a pea to a bright speck. He took to reading scientific papers or classic fiction while listening to Mahler, acid jazz, cajun, flamenco or South American samba and bossa nova. Sometimes he would have a lettuce leaf in his hand, taking tiny bites to make it last for an hour or two.
He made the mistake of reading a research paper originating in an ESA-funded study of the effects of solar and galactic radiation on the human body. Reaching about halfway through, he was already flinching from the nuclei of iron and other HZE ions slamming into his bone marrow or knocking his neurons into dysfunction. SSI had done everything it could to shield the interiors of Jamal and Naqsh, but they all knew that they were exposing themselves to a potentially deadly sleet of high-energy particles and secondary radiation. He closed that paper and searched his tablet for a good movie to watch instead.
They spent hours playing chess, poker, computer-based strategy games or just talking. They talked through the Smaug case until there was no more to say. There had been signs of life in the NASA and NewSpace orbital photos of the landing site, after all, but all the clues as to the crew's whereabouts and well-being were sufficiently ambiguous as to allow pundits to draw almost any conclusions they wished. Don, because he knew that Julia just had to be still alive, believed that they had moved camp and had found lava tubes or caves to inhabit. Asya scoffed at that, saying that they probably did not have the construction equipment for even such a simple project. No, they were all dead, sadly. Marco came up with plausible failure scenarios for the Smaug's communications gear: the high- and low-gain antennas, the UHF channel to NewSpace's Mars-orbiting relay satellite, the signal amplifiers… somehow there was no signal at all from the crew. Annika, meanwhile, had pulled up files on the Smaug's crew and was analysing the team dynamics that may have caused an implosion of relationships or a breakdown of command structure.
In the end, they couldn't agree on very much at all. Abdul Qawi wouldn't commit himself to any conclusions, but Don had a hunch that he knew something that nobody else did. Or maybe it was just the poker face that A.Q. always wore.
At their halfway point there were several conflicting suggestions on how to mark their passage. Then Don developed serious indigestion, and a backup air circulation fan jammed, and the moment passed. Annika recorded a video message for people back home. Don recovered well, and they settled in to the second half of their cruise.
- + - + - + -
So, here I am again, talking to you from my bunk in the MTV. It's Day 244, and now we can see finer features on the face of the planet, if we look carefully. And I mean without the telescope. It's much larger than a full Moon would be. Soon it will fill the whole viewing window. It will be one half of our universe, with Earth far behind us in the other half. I hope you have seen our latest crew selfie with Mars bombing into the shot through the viewport. Don't expect too many more of those – we're getting busier than ever.
We're gradually accelerating, coasting down the slope of Mars's gravity well. And what will slow us down? Mostly the atmosphere, as I mentioned before. Mars may only have a surface atmospheric pressure about one percent of yours on Earth, but there's enough of it to act as a brake, to slow us into a wide elliptical orbit. Then we de-orbit, and we aim to land within walking distance of our robotically-assembled base at Arcadia Planitia.
We're all looking forward to getting out of this place that we've called home for almost eight months now. Yesterday Don and I carried out a final harvesting from our salad tank and we all had a big leafy meal. It was sooo good, except that A.Q. declared he wouldn't eat any. I think he's still feeling bad about stowing away and stretching our resources a little further than they were meant to go, even though we keep telling him there's enough to go around. He is for sure longing to get his boots on the ground and make himself useful. Those are his own words. He's already been fixing things, working hard and making us laugh.
I'm so glad everyone is getting along at last. I mean, a lot better than we were. It's mainly because we're so focussed now. We have no time for bitching and griping. We've been through a crisis or three, and we've started melding as a team. I don't think we're there yet, though. Once we're building Arcadia Base, I think we'll get some more conflict. Ha. It will make for good television, at least.
But first, the approach and the braking and landing. And as you all know by now, each of those steps is full of procedures and details, precautions against things that might go wrong, and what to do if key systems let us down. All five of us know our roles. It's like studying for a big exam, only this time, failure is definitely not an option.
By the way, thank you to all the students and staff at Kambofar High School in Kano , Nigeria
And for all the many, many other communications from friends around the world, I will do my best to respond to each one – eventually. Your stories and best wishes leave me speechless. I'm proud to know you, the many of you who are striving towards a better future for your communities, and I wish I could bring you all with me, to sit next to me as we approach our new home.
- + - + - + -
Don squinted at the tiny screen set into the floor of the Jamal Mars lander. The cabin lights were dimmed, but the screen was back-lit and quite bright. He glanced over to where Marco was seated in his mission couch, interrogating the Jamal's propulsion system. "Hey Marco," he said, "is the inflation pump meant to show a zero reading at this point in the test?"
Marco carried on tapping keys for a few seconds before looking over. "Uh, like, what point are you at? Warm-up initiation?"
"Yup. I thought, since the foam piston is already pressurised…"
"Yeah, but the pressure sensors are not online at this stage. I'm pretty sure that's how it goes. You get a pressure reading at nominal heat."
"That sounds good." Don nodded to himself and kept watching the zeroes on the pressure readout, and the pump temperature reading as it rose by tenths of a degree every few seconds. He shifted his feet further into the floor straps to keep from floating off. Anybody would be nervous at this point, he told himself. After all, if the pump switched on and began pushing the foam mixture into the heat shield envelope, while the Jamal and its three-metre-tall, cylindrical Service Module were still attached to the MPU, it would be messy. There would be no landing. "How long til MPU separation now? Eight hours?"
"Hnn… yup. Eight and twelve minutes."
Asya had already drilled them repeatedly on the procedures. Their schedule was fixed, but not so rushed that they were panicking. Preliminary lander systems check – MTV hibernation – MPU separation maneuver – heat shield inflation – full lander systems check – hatch seal – seal check - lander undocking – and so on, until they were tucked up in bed in Arcadia Base.
"So I forget," Don continued, attempting a bantering tone but hearing an edge of sourness in his own voice. "Was there a five-minute sleep period in there somewhere, or am I missing something?"
Marco paused in his intense work and threw a grin Don's way. The Brazilian had kept his scalp shaved and had cultivated a tidy goatee since passing the halfway mark on their interplanetary cruise. The effect accented his moods – both gloom and humour. "Oh no, man, you only get to sleep when we finish terraforming that red sucker down there."
Don had to stretch, both to expel the nervous tension in his limbs and the stiffness. "Don't let Annika hear you say that," he said with a smile. "I think she's on my side on that one. We gotta do at least a ten-year stretch on looking for extremophiles before anyone even talks about melting ice caps and engineering any badass fungi."
"Nuh, she's with me on this. We got a date, surfing on the shores of the Elysium Mons beach, as soon as we get the waves." He chuckled. Don glanced at him and realised how much subliminal jockeying for Annika's favour the two of them had engaged in recently. But Marco hadn't really made a move, neither had he. Neither would he. "Jokin', man, just jokin'," Marco muttered. They both got back to work just as Asya pulled herself through into the lander.
She coasted to her own couch and began looking at instrument readouts. "And how is the Jamal these days? Propellant tank pressures, heatshield?"
They reported what they were finding. Marco took a break and moved to look out of the lander's small port. "Hey, what the John Carter is out there?" he exclaimed. "Hey, guys," he stammered, waving them over. Don approached, Asya hung back.
Don glimpsed a flash of red, apparently hanging in space. The port did not give a view of Mars at that point. "I see… something…" he muttered. Then it came into focus: a bright red car. But it didn't quite hang still. It shimmered somehow. He looked at Marco, who winked. Don saw the whole thing all at once after a moment's confusion and gasped. "Commander – could you please come and take a look? It appears that there's a foreign object matching our course." By this time Asya had moved over near the port. He went on, "It definitely looks like a bright red Volta Roadster. But it couldn't be, right?" She glanced out and back with a scowl at Marco, saying, "What are you playing? That's your iPad. Reflecting in glass. Don't be children – get back to work!"
Marco grinned happily, thumbed the image off the tablet's screen and stowed it. "I had you there though, right, Boss? For a split second? And you too, Professor. Admit it: just for a moment you were convinced."
Don and Asya rolled their eyes at each other and shook their heads. At least on this they were of one mind. For an instant he felt that they could become closer, that the trajectories of their lives could intersect at some future point, at least close enough that they wouldn't have to fight and despise each other. "Spaceboy, that was a neat trick, but totally transparent. Nice historical reference, though."
"Don't call me that. I told you before."
Asya regained her couch. "Technically incorrect. Argent's car was in a totally different orbit. Never could match our velocity." But there was a smile hinting at the corner of her mouth, despite her best efforts.
"You call me that again and I'll tell everyone what you left behind in your coffin." Marco had taken to calling the bed closets by a number of more descriptive names.
At that, Asya half-glanced at Don.
Don chuckled. "Bluffing. All I haven't packed is a pile of unwashed socks with holes and that broken e-reader."
Marco could play at being miffed. He was the team clown. He said nothing for a long moment, then: "I'm just sayin', man, don't call me that."
Don had to admit that it was a good act. He really did sound upset about it.
- + - + - + -
Eight hours later, the four crew were strapped into the lander, all suited up, all busy with systems checks. Abdul Qawi was strapped cross-legged in a makeshift seat he had rigged himself on the floor slightly in front of Don and Annika. He also had affixed a customised tablet to the wall in front of him and was following their procedures carefully.
"So…" breathed Asya, after a long string of checks and countdown holds, "we're good to disengage MPU. Are we all go for this?"
Four replies: all affirmative. Once this was done, it would be very difficult to re-connect to the propulsion unit that had powered them out of Earth orbit and into interplanetary space. With it, they could still opt for a slow return to Earth. Without the MPU they were committed to Mars descent.
A key press; an audible thunk from below, then: "Disengaged," she said. "Don, begin the inflation process; Annika, monitor MPU position."
Don already had the heatshield's deployment pump up to operational temperature. It all looked fine. "Switching foam generator and pump to 'Start'."
They waited. Annika reported that the MPU had drifted one, two, three metres from the lander. It would keep its station there before re-docking with the MTV once the lander was gone.
Don watched the heatshield envelope pressure reading, but it stayed close to a lethargic zero. "I'm not seeing the envelope inflating," he said. "It's jittering around three percent but not rising." Weary, after so long cycling through procedures and with no escape from these other people, it felt like this was the last straw.
They were soon all working the problem, checking all thinkable angles.
Abdul Qawi thought of checking the primary instruments in the floor, where Don had done his checks earlier. Between them and their screens lay the computer and metres of cabling, which added the possibility of errors. Twisting around, he stared at the small screen and reported the same readings that they were seeing. Annika confirmed the electrical supply was fine, Marco ran a diagnostic system, and Don reported the situation to Control, who were now too far behind them to play a meaningful role in the situation.
Asya brought together what they knew so far about the problem: very little. "Minimal envelope pressure, so no foam expansion. Pump is good, temperatures all good." She sighed heavily. "It is looking like we have a bad foam cylinder. It is not mixing and expanding. Marco? Ideas?" Marco was supposedly the mission specialist on the inflatable heatshield.
Marco shook his head. "This does not look good. No foam, no heatshield. No heatshield, no atmospheric braking, no landing. We all know that."
Abdul Qawi inhaled sharply, nasally, the sort of thing he did when his mind was racing through some problem or other. "Wait, maybe not true. The basic braking profile needs the inflatable. But we change the angle of attack, we make multiple approaches, we brake more slowly and we don't need the heatshield!" He stared around at them, daring someone to contradict him. "You can run the same calculations. I send them to your screens." He tapped his tablet a few times.
Asya scowled in concentration, scanning his efforts. "We do not try this. This is untested, we do not know risk analysis. Your data not accurate enough. Jamal's computer does not have the processing to model this. Your angle of attack requires an impossible tolerance of attitude control. One tiny slip and… we are vapour. Perhaps Control will compute this – but the delays are too great. Best is we fix this can of foam."
The Yemeni raised his voice, noticeably losing command of his English. "And how can fix that? It is outside, out of reaches. We do EVA? No way! We have no spare can. Why not listen to this?"
Alarm bells clanged in Don's head. "A.Q., we have a commander. At the end of the day, what she says is what we do. We need you to respect that." He felt his cheeks flush as he said it.
"I agree with Commander Komarova," said Annika suddenly. Everyone looked at her. None of the crew had ever called Asya that, apart from the first couple of days after she arrived on the team. She shrugged. "I agree. We should work the problem. The foam system was fully tested and trialed. It's probably some other glitch."
Marco tapped his screen decisively. "It's the mixer. It has to be the gas-foam mixing process. It's clogged. That's my best guess." Then he sat back and exhaled noisily. "But what I would like best is to suit up and go kick that thing til it coughs up!"
The next thirty minutes stretched Don's nerves beyond what he thought was breaking point. But rather than crack up, he found his thought processes slowing like poured treacle. They broke down the heatshield system, conceptually using their screens, to the level of pump lubrication, possible fractures in the titanium alloy parts, chaotic flow in the gas-foam mixing; they analysed everything to death, but nothing shed light on the dysfunction.
Abdul Qawi unstrapped himself and faced Asya, floating gradually higher in the cabin. "You need to listen to me," he said. "We have only one hour, maybe ninety minutes, then we too late to change course. You worked your problem. Now we decide."
She did not even look at him at first. "Sit down," she muttered. She glanced around at the others. "This is not democracy, but you tell me: anyone else who wants to try this dangerous maneuver?" Annika shook her head. Don said, "I think it would be beyond what we are prepared to risk. It could waste the whole mission."
Marco took a deep breath and screwed up his lips. "I looked at his parameters, and it is possible. But, like you said, very, very tight tolerance for error. Outside what we can program this tin can to do. We do not know the maximum hull temperature during descent without the inflatable – it's not been modelled." He shrugged in Abdul Qawi's direction. "Sorry, but I would say it's no-go for that."
"Thank you," she said quickly, before Abdul Qawi could open his mouth. "We will continue to work the problem, and if no solution… we swing around and go back the way we came." Don could tell that she didn't want to say the words.
Rebounding from the cabin ceiling, Abdul Qawi obviously wasn't prepared to concede defeat. "You waste the mission like this! We can do it! What kind of a commander gives up now? We all know about risks! There are ways to reduce this risk. Look at this –" and he moved back towards his tablet.
But Asya wouldn't let his challenge drop. She spoke evenly, but Don knew the hot pressure behind her words. "You? You who forced your way onto my ship? What kind of a man would put this mission in danger by doing that? Do you think anyone will listen to you? You cannot face your life back on Earth – you failed in your country, and you failed to make the crew, and you hate being under the thumb of your cousin, so you inflict yourself on us!" Her voice lowered to a hiss. "You better keep quiet, or we will put you back in your coma in the Naqsh and send you back where you belong!"
Don saw the half-smile this brought to Abdul Qawi's lips, almost a sly look of victory. "Ah," he said, calmly all of a sudden, "now we see your true colours, madam. And this is what the crew can look forward to." He glanced around at the others. "You see?"
But Annika wasn't going to stay quiet. "Please, please, can everyone take a deep breath and quieten down? We are not going to resolve anything with personal attacks and angry outbursts. Let's keep working this. Let's keep respecting our command structure. Okay?" When both protagonists continued to glower at each other, she went on. "Look, let's go over it one more time. We know how the heatshield inflation was designed to work. We know the components. Foam piston, gas mixer, the pump pushes the mixture into the envelope, the envelope cover pops open, the envelope inflates to its operational shape and size. The mixer and pump cut out. The valve closes. Have I missed any major component?"
With a slight, strangled sound, Marco turned back to his screen. "Something you said… something we haven't completely checked… what was it?"
Asya frowned. "Yes. The cover. It does not open because there is no foam pressure to push it open. But is that correct?"
Marco nodded furiously. "Right. Exactly. How can we check? Before the foam mixture hardens and we're stuffed?"
Soon they were all agreed that the only possible method of checking that the external hinging cover had opened was a visual inspection. There was no sensor on that hinge mechanism. The bottom surface of the Jamal's Service Module was designed to open up with the increasing pressure of the inflating heatshield. There was no motor to move the two halves; just an unlocking mechanism, which had been actuated. There should be nothing to keep the doors from opening.
Asya sighed once more, and made as if to speak. They all waited until she was ready. She seemed to be weighing up what she had to say, and finding its weight almost off the scale. "So I will re-enter Naqsh and go EVA from there. I can inspect the heatshield hatch and get it to open if it is somehow stuck."
"But there's no time to brief and prepare for a proper EVA! That takes, what, two hours minimum," said Marco in alarm.
She waved him off. She was already preparing to report this new plan to Control. "This is a known risk. Suiting up is what I do, and this suit is perfected Russian technology. Space is my thing. This is acceptable. These risks we can control." Having sent a hurried message back to SSI, she unstrapped and pushed herself to the ceiling hatch. "I will be in touch. Don, please switch off the pump and gas mixer until we know what is happening."
"Wait," said Annika, "you can't just… Are you sure this is the best thing to do, an hour or two before the aerocapture? It's cutting it very fine."
Asya began to reply when Abdul Qawi interrupted her. "This is for me to do," he said, firmly. "I am also trained in this, but not as much as our commander, it is true. I hope you see why I must do this."
In the middle of unlatching the hatch that led back to Naqsh, Asya froze and stared at him, like a deer caught in headlights. "And why must you?" she asked.
"You are the commander, and the pilot," he began, holding her in his burning gaze, "and you are the key to this mission. You must take these people to the ground. You must command this spacecraft." He smiled, lowering his gaze. "And you do this very well. None of them can pilot this thing if it was needed. Not confidently. I know – I watched them train, remember? But you can." He indicated the outside with a sweep of one hand. "We know risks of spacewalk. We know we cannot risk our commander out there. Anything happen to you, and the mission fails. I am correct?"
Everyone nodded except for Asya. She kept staring at him in icy silence.
"He's correct," Marco said. "You shouldn't be the one doing this. Since it's a relatively simple EVA – just get that hatch open – I volunteer. I got pretty high grades in the Tank of Death. Unlike some people, right?" Don and Annika almost laughed aloud, remembering so well how their training sessions in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston had almost ended in disaster for Don, whereas Marco had taken to the underwater simulations like a dolphin.
"No," said Asya sternly. "Let him do it. He is right this time. Marco, we need you too, in the engineering seat. Let him… let him earn his place on this mission. And I will check his prep. We give him standard five minutes pre-breathing, triple-check all seals and components. No problem."
Don looked at Abdul Qawi. He looked back at Don, with a deadpan expression that seemed to say, I was born for this. No sweat. Don was in awe of the man. He always had been, but this was a moment of truth, a moment of testing.
Just then the radio receiver burst into life. It was the voice of SSI Capcom, and Don recognised Cam MacDonald's Scottish accent with a flash of nostalgia. They caught some of the words the second time through: Negative, repeat negative, sorry but it's a no-go on proposed EVA, guys. Risk analysis strongly indicates…
Asya snorted and, glaring around defiantly at them all, powered off the speaker.
Don and the others stared at her. To him, it felt like deliberately dropping the house keys down a drain hole. It felt like stepping over a line drawn in the sand, a point of no return, a departure into unknown lands.
- + - + - + -
The others listened wide-eyed as Asya talked A.Q. through the preparatory steps aboard Naqsh. They had never heard an EVA prep done so quickly and efficiently. They kept glancing at each other in consternation and an elevated sense of respect for their commander. It was just thirty-four minutes later when Abdul Qawi was ready to egress from the airlock of Naqsh for what everyone knew had to be a short and successful EVA.
Asya was coaching him continuously, talking him through every hatch lever and how to pivot his weightless body in the unyielding suit. "So remember always, you have two tethers. The main tether on your chest, the second on your waist. Always, always keep both attached when you work. Always check each clip when you attach. Double-check. No shortcuts. Confirm?"
"Yes. Roger." He sounded tense, but he had stayed focussed through the drawn-out suiting up procedure. He was wearing the smaller of the two Orlan-derived suits, and it seemed to fit well enough to avoid discomfort. "Ya dabaaba! This is a tank. I am inside a tank," he said, with some humour in his voice. "I can drive tanks, so I am fine here."
Don, Annika and Marco sat and watched while Asya guided him slowly out of the hatch. "It is like lifting boulders. And I am inside the boulder," he muttered at one point. At last he had both tethers attached to the rail on the external hull, and began shifting along towards where the Jamal lander protruded from the rear of the Naqsh MTV. They could hear him breathing, gradually harder and louder, as he negotiated the obstructions of an antenna and an RCS pod.
Annika was watching the suit telemetry. "You're looking OK, A.Q.," she said. "Heart rate just above nominal, oxygen and CO2 levels nominal." Don could tell how hard she was trying to keep the panic out of her voice. They all felt it. Mars had grown to a huge ball, one-quarter crescent of it hidden in darkness. He could see small dust storms, mountains, canyons, cracks in the canyon walls that looked like water runoff. They were getting close. Their trajectory was pointing them towards the limb furthest from the sun, towards the night side. At any moment, part of his mind kept insisting, they were going to crash into the ground. But with a continual effort he maintained a kind of choppy calm. His task was to stand by with the heatshield inflation controls.
After moving onto Jamal from Naqsh – they heard his quiet footfalls through the hull – Abdul Qawi reached the rear of the Service Module and reported in. "Yes, it is the hatch. It is stuck."
Don checked the countdown to MTV separation. Only eight minutes? He knew they had a small amount of leeway by trimming their Mars intercept burn, but he couldn’t calculate in his head how much extra time there would be. There was no way that Abdul Qawi could fix the hatch, get back in the MTV airlock and back into the lander. Asya had already briefed them on an alternative: they were all wearing their pressure suits with helmets to hand, and they could depressurise the lander to allow A.Q. in through the top hatch – as a last resort.
"Stuck how, Abdu?" queried Asya, icily calm. "Can you see the lock?"
"Ya'ni – I mean – it's hard to see. Shade and bright light. I think the locking mechanism is open. Yes. It is unlocked. Open a crack. But how then… I must get closer." They heard his puffs and grunts as he maneuvered to a more useful position. "Ah – I see it – around the edges. The hull of Al-Jamal is a little bend. Bending. What you say? The MPU docking clamps moved."
"It's bent? Warped?" Asya suggested.
"Gah!" Marco huffed. "I told them! It was the Max-Q event. The wind shear that they measured during our ascent, remember? We exceeded the airframe's feeble stress limits. It's bent out of shape."
"Right, it is bent a little near hinges. Stops from opening the hatches. I must pull."
Marco ranted on under his breath about flying a testbed held together with string and good intentions. He veered into Portuguese. Don had heard that kind of thing a great deal over the course of their cruise.
Asya talked Abdul Qawi through his next move, although the only viewpoint she had on her screen was from A.Q.'s helmet cam. He braced his feet on one hatch and pulled at the other, but it only moved through about thirty degrees.
"Okay, Abdu," she said shortly, "remaining time has run out. We need MTV separation, so we'll do your ingress through lander hatch. Do you copy that?"
"Good, good, I… copy. Ingress will be top hatch. I am sure I can open these."
"All crew don helmets and prepare for cabin depressurisation," said Asya. Don imagined that a bus driver in Moscow
Marco advised on detaching the hinges of the hatches. A.Q. would need tools. He had some basic tools in his suit pockets and struggled to extract them.
While Marco talked it through, Asya handled the MTV separation. This was final, Don reflected. They were committed to Mars now. They had to get that heatshield inflated. A rendezvous later with the MTV and a return to Earth would be highly problematic, given the lander's limited fuel.
"These tools – too small! Wait – the SM lockers." The Service Module had two storage lockers, which would normally be accessed directly after landing. It didn't take him long to unlock one and extract the heavier hex screwdriver he needed. "Tayyib – heya – ala tool!" Reverting to Arabic was his way of concentrating, but it shut the others out. "One hinge open. The first hatch opening. Al hamdu-lillah!"
Marco cleared his throat. "That's great. We now have a ten-second mark until Mars Intercept Burn. A.Q., you right now need to hold on tight and stay clear of the OMS side-ports. Are you clear?"
"Yes, yes. I'm clear, Habibi. Holding on very tight. I can see the heatshield. You can inflate any time."
Marco initiated the course correction burn that would send them spearing towards the outer skin of the atmosphere. For fifteen, sixteen seconds they all gained a little heaviness in their couches. Don hoped mightily that it wasn't too much for A.Q. to handle, gripping the structure of the Service Module somehow.
Then it was finished, and at Asya's command Don re-started the heatshield inflation while Abdul Qawi struggled with the last hinge. The cabin pressure was already dwindling towards zero. Don could only hear his own breathing. He glanced through the port. They were falling so close to the surface now that the atmosphere took on substance, and the ground below grew jagged as it raced past. He swallowed. His mouth was bone-dry.
"Second hatch. Open ten degrees only. Hinge fasteners stiff. Too stiff."
Don saw the heatshield envelope pressure increasing sluggishly. Some foam was getting through. The whole process was meant to take five or six minutes, and the foam mixture set hard within about an hour and a half of mixing. Because of the time they had already taken, the foam could already be hardening. They didn't have long.
"Abdu, you need to finish quickly and get back in here, OK?" Asya's voice conveyed concern, but not yet panic.
"When the hatch is open, and heatshield is inflating. Not before that," came the reply. His breathing now hissed and laboured like that of a marathon runner.
Annika reported the spacewalker's heart rate was accelerating. But he still had a good supply of oxygen.
"Envelope is growing. But now I not see the hinge!"
Don cursed. This was morphing from critical to nightmare. They were beginning to pick up the faint tugs of atmospheric drag already. Wasn't there anything they could do from inside? "I suggest I increase pump pressure to maximum. Might push the hatch. Or else turn the pump off, give him a chance."
Asya nodded. "Power off the pump for ten seconds." He did so. Everyone seemed to be talking at once.
"Last time! I am bracing from behind hatch. Pull it open. Yah!"
"Your pulse is over one-seventy! Take it easy out there!"
"Altitude less than two hundred k! We're getting too close, Abdu. Listen to me! Just get in here!"
"Yeah, man, maybe we can manage with half a heatshield. It's good enough!"
"It will not quite move! Ya kalba! Little by little – ahh! Yes! Now just let me – "
Knowing that without a heatshield the Jamal could burn up within the next minute or two, Don flicked on the foam pump again and saw the flow rate climb. "Heatshield is inflating!" he called out. He leaned over to the nearby port and looked down: yes. He could just about see the puffy ring around the base of the spacecraft.
He could feel the buffeting drag catching at the Jamal's aeroshell. It was enough at first to jostle his arms as he sat before his screen, then he found his spine was transmitting the vibrations up to his teeth. He began to feel his own weight. Their deceleration now would be fierce. Even though Jamal was aiming only to graze the rarefied upper atmosphere, their thunderous velocity would make for a fiery encounter.
"It looks close enough, I can touch the ground," they heard Abdul Qawi say. He surely couldn't hold on much longer. He would be ripped away, tethers torn, lost, unless he could get himself back in that top hatch in the next few seconds.
He shifted his primary tether onto the rail that could take him to safety, if only he had time. Clip-clip. Then the secondary. Clip-hnnn-yaa!-clip. Looked up to see the blazing arid textures floating just out of his reach, taking up half the universe. Something like the deserts beyond Ma'rib, but so much bigger. His breath was still rapid and loud. Heartbeat like the whirling drum of the bar'a dance, near the climax of the wedding celebrations, when the weaving circle of men in their ma'waz kilts were waving their djambia knives high and coming to the end of their exertions. He pulled himself up the side of the Service Module as fast as he could, trying not to let the rapidly growing slipstream pull his legs from under him. Another rail. Clip-clip. Halfway along now, where the tool locker was.
No! One of the tethers had caught on something back there!
Regret. Fate. Ma'alesh – Never mind.
He had done what he had to do. Now for a long, long rest. One more quick glance: "So close. We are almost there," was the last thing he said.
Annika was still calling out his medical readouts, stammering, "Is he – is he on his way to the hatch?"
"He can open it by hand," Asya said. "He may need help to climb in." She loosened her harness.
The spacecraft bucked a little and settled down at about a two-gee braking deceleration. They were all breathing heavily and braced in their couches. Marco called out their velocity as it dropped. Through the ports all they could see was glowing incandescence. Asya reported their progress towards an elliptical orbit around Mars: they now had measurable apoapsis and periapsis, a high eccentricity and enough inclination to position them over Arcadia Planitia at some later point.
"I – I don't see A.Q.'s data," said Annika with a sharp rise in tone. "His signal's gone."
Asya uttered something bitter in Russian. She quickly double-checked what Annika saw. "The braking," she said. "He could not hold on. Durak! Idiot! I told him – both tethers. Always!"
"Wait – he must be attached to at least one of his tethers. They will hold at two gee, surely!" exclaimed Marco. "Or will the drag force on his suit be greater? Either way, I will tether myself and go pull him in." He started unbuckling, with difficulty, struggling against his own weight.
"No! Sit down!" came Asya's swift response. She took a few moments to continue, in duller tones. "We lost suit telemetry. That tells us that he is no longer attached. No longer within range. We must not endanger the ship for that. The turbulence if you open that hatch now -" She continued her orbital litany, watching for the moment when they would pull out of the atmosphere and swing out around the planet. "I am sorry," she murmured. To Don it sounded like the apologetic tone he would use when pushed into a tight corner, having to make excuses for his own stupidity or self-interest. They were all stressed beyond capacity, even her. "This is space. Space is a hungry beast."
Asya carried out a small steering burn, and the drag force reluctantly slackened off. They rebounded into vacuum and weightlessness.
For the next five hours they floated, each one numb in a personal fog of shock and grief. Asya was obliged to report the loss of Abdul Qawi to Control. They repressurised Jamal and stowed their helmets. They blanked their screens when they were not on duty. Asya and Marco managed the ship, taking a watch while they looped above the pale ochre orb and swung back towards their destination. Then a further burn at their closest approach that more precisely aligned them for the Arcadian plateau. They spoke only what was necessary. Don craved sleep, hoping he could hide there, and emerge into a brighter world, one in which Abdul Qawi was still sitting there, near his feet, or in which he had never stowed away at all. But he could not hold back the action replays, nor the imaginings of what would come next. Sleep stayed far from him.
Then it was time to prepare for landing. Don woke Marco and Asya – Annika was already running through the checklists – and forced a smile. "We're almost home," he said. Annika beamed him a real smile. Asya acted as if he hadn't spoken.
Marco's boyish face twisted in sudden grief. "It should have been me," he grunted, and turned his head away. Don put a hand on his shoulder, but Marco pulled away. "It should have," he repeated vehemently.
Then Asya called them to order. Helmets back on. Time for the de-orbit burn, the atmospheric entry, supersonic retro-propulsion. Don endured the shaking and the terror by focussing tightly on his assigned tasks: monitoring cabin partial pressures, monitoring hull temperatures, checking on Marco's altitude and descent readings as they swooped lower and lower.
Eight point two k up, three thousand metres off range, R.O.D. three hundred.
There was no glancing out of the ports now, but soft light flickered in on them, as if they were descending through a bright sandstorm.
Three point seven up, seven hundred range, R.O.D. one-fifty-two.
The thin air let up its turbulence, and then they were hovering, maneuvering, and finally Jamal lowered itself to rest with barely more than a quick thud.
Asya had kept herself from taking manual control by a painful exercise of will, Don guessed. Her hands had been brooding over the keyboard and joystick the whole time, itching for a pretext to take over. But Jamal had done well. The programmers, dynamicists and modellers who had constructed the automated system had done incredibly well, building from the success of the initial automated SSI landings twenty-six months before.
Finally it was almost quiet. The cooling metal of the hull ticked. It felt to Don like a graveside silence. They had longed for this moment for so many years.
Marco unlatched his helmet, pulled it off, and let out a tired whoop. "We made it!" he said. But it was hollow.
When they had all removed their helmets, Asya flicked on her microphone and spoke in a clipped monotone. "This is Jamal at Arcadia Planitia. We landed very well. I estimate we are about three hundred metres from the base." She lifted a hand and wiped beads of sweat from her face, then scrolled further down a screen of text. "Thank you to all the many teams and companies who made this moment possible. You did good. And special congratulations to Nowal No'man Saiid who has guided us through many years of hard work and tough challenges. It was your vision which inspired us to keep going." Here she squinted at the screen a moment, unsure. "I hope that you will go out now and celebrate your victory in style with something more substantial than the shawarmas which you used to snack on at work." She threw a sharp glare at Don. He hadn't wanted the job of writing this speech, back at the halfway point of the journey, but he had followed Nowal's guidelines as closely as he could. The trouble was, the words made no mention of Abdul Qawi, neither as a living person nor as a fatality.
There was more to the speech – specific sponsors and patrons, contractors, politicians who needed to be thanked by name.
Finally she reached the far side of the thicket. "At this point I would like to hand over to the other members of the crew, who are waiting to greet you and share their first impressions of this place in which we have arrived."
So they each had a chance to speak to a listening world. It wasn't hard to sound more jubilant than Asya, who, having finished her part, settled back into her couch and closed her eyes.
Annika started, though, by recounting what had happened during the descent and speaking out how she felt about Abdul Qawi. "He insisted on taking the greatest risk, and he wouldn't back down although facing near-certain death. He did it for us. So if anyone still says that there are no more heroes, or that idealism is dead, then I say think again. I know differently, now, even though at first I thought he had stowed away for purely selfish reasons. No, he was following a vision. And rather than let that vision die today, he put himself in harm's way." Then she sobbed, and couldn’t say any more.
Don and Marco both spoke about A.Q. and how they would remember him. They both found themselves saying what they thought Abdul Qawi would want them to do now. It was inescapable. None of them wanted to let his sacrifice go to waste.
A few minutes later they sat and listened to shocked responses from SSI Control. Nowal was at the microphone, and an Emirati prince; and Capcom was Steve Chase, who had insisted on staying in the program to lend his expertise wherever he could. They knew he had recently lost an astronaut buddy to cancer.
But they were not idle as they listened. They prepared for egress. They were growing keen to walk on the surface, now that their comrade's death was slowly becoming packaged in good words and painful feelings. There were atmospheric data to gather, the pre-landed proto-base structures to check on remotely, Marswalk suits to extract from lockers and check over, procedures to review and memorise and rations to chew and swallow.
It had been just getting light when they had landed. By the time they were ready to emerge from Jamal it was halfway to noon. The others insisted that Asya should go first, then they drew lots: Annika, Marco, and finally Don. Even Asya seemed expectant, perhaps not showing her excitement, but infected by their enthusiasm which grew with a guilty reluctance. All four of them had to fight a deep heaviness.
Later on, they had to replay the recordings to remember what Asya's first words had been upon stepping off the long ladder and scraping the soles of her boots in the dark grit. Just at that moment, a reply from Control had arrived over everyone's helmet comms – a nephew of Abdul Qawi had been located and had heard the tragic news – but she remarked on the fine dust that her footfall raised, and how unlike Siberia it all was. Something in Russian then, and finally "So we must get busy now. Lots of work to do. Come out of there, Annika!"
By the time Don squeezed out of the side hatch and trod down the fifteen steps, down the side of the Service Module, feeling the lightness of his body mass and revelling in the sunlight filtered through the hazy butterscotch sky, the other three seemed to be at home on Mars already. Marco had tried high jumps, Asya had found some basaltic rocks, and Annika had described the view out to the undulating horizon in gushing prose, unable to contain her relief at being outside.
Don just glanced around and thought, It's so flat! Then he recalled the briefings and looked northeast. Yes, he could just make out the range of low hills that separated them from Smaug's landing site. They were little more than a smudge on the horizon.
"Time for field trip," said Asya. "Professor? Your lead."
This was it, he thought. At last! The baby-step beginnings of human-led scientific research on Mars. He turned to the Service Module, where Annika was already reaching up, fumbling with the latching mechanism to retrieve the basic geology tools.
Her sharp intake of breath came over the comm as a hiss. "What's that? It's a –"
He saw it then. An EVA tether was stretched from an attachment rail near the lower end of the Service Module and led into the locker, squeezed flat by the tightly closed hatch. "It's one of his tethers!" he burst out. "But –"
Then Annika mastered the stiff latch, the hatch opened quickly downwards, and as she stepped back, a suited body rolled out to fall gracefully at her feet, limbs stiff but flailing against her legs.Read History Makers
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