Marco

Marco

September 2029

It's a great idea to bring the crew out here to Hatta Dam. We need a break – the training has drained me. The others, too. Getting out of Dubai, even for half a day, is a relief like escaping from jail. I hadn't realised just how tense I was.

We straggle down the hill to the little dock where they rent the kayaks. It's not much of an outdoor adventure. The dam is pretty small. But we're a newly mixed-up team. Baby steps. Asya and I are still the newbies, even though I can barely put myself in the same sentence as her, with all her experience and that hard-headed attitude. Look at her now, hanging back behind Don and Annika, glowering at the whole scene.

Don isn't talking much, just essentials so far. He's had enough of people for the day, I think. We need introspective types with goatees. He will devote himself to his science, I can see that. But when we four are the only people around for millions of kilos, he'll be forced to interact. There won't be any crowds to exhaust him, as there are here all the time.

"Hey, Marco, you kayak much in Brazil?" he asks. I shake my head and grin. A little paragliding, I tell him. He raises his eyebrows.

I like Don. He gets on with his job, and he is an OK conversationalist once he gets one-to-one with me. Just don't try him in a big loud group.  He's been to Brazil, loves it, and knows that he hasn't seen it all, understands that it's a huge country with more variety in it than the US. And better music. It's good to be appreciated now and then.

And he's a gentleman. There, he helps Annika to get set in her kayak, talks to the rental guy, then tries to get Asya to go next. Good luck with that, Don.

Wow, look at Annika cut the water. She knows how to handle that paddle. She'll be around the corner in the little lake before I get in. The whole thing's only about 300 metres across. But listening to her talk in the bus as we came over, I can't believe she's on this crew, as far as her personality goes. Sure, she's got the sharp mind and the background for sure, but she seems too gentle to want to conquer a new world. What motivates her? What will she be like in a crisis? Maybe she's just what we need. She won't be shouting orders; she may be the one to keep her head. We're all over-achievers, at the top of our fields, but everyone's still human. If – no, when – a crisis hits, what keeps us calm and pulling together?

Don's away on the water, and Asya's climbing in. She talks loudly, but not about herself so much. When I asked her what it was like up in the ISS, she lectured me on Russia's contributions to the station and to space exploration in general, as if I'd picked an argument with her. But the more I talked with her, I could see she's not angry with me or anyone else – it's just the way she always talks. She relates OK to Annika, not so much to the rest of us. She's slow to make friendships. Perhaps when she does get to know us she will go deeper. I have a feeling we can trust her in a crisis, and I don't mean just her cosmonaut training.

Now here I am in line, peering at the water. I'm the fourth member of the crew now. If I had to describe myself it wouldn't be so flattering. I'm fairly short, about one metre sixty, with a scrub of black hair and beady eyes which my mom says are mischievous. These days I think it's more puzzled than mischievous. Like, How did my life lead me here? What does it all mean? Did God choose me for this role, or is it all a roulette? Cameron says I have the grin of a wolf. I think it's more like a hungry jackal.

I used to think I was one tough hombre after I did my stint in the army, but all this study and fast food erodes the small amount of body-building I find time for. Man, I'm thirty-eight years old! No way!

At least my dad acts like he's proud of what I've done so far. Last time we spoke, his eyes were saying, So tell me again why you're doing this and not helping me out with the church here in Salvador? But instead he smiled and told me how proud he was of me and how everyone's praying for us. I grinned back, trying to look natural. I can't yet explain to him the journey I've been on, and how distant heaven feels from here. I can't explain it to myself.

Now I'm settled into the kayak. The seat feels too wide for me, and the life preserver is too tight. I'm sliding around as I turn up the power and try to catch up with Asya. We're strung out in line astern, except that Annika has dug herself a tight braking turn and is waiting for us to catch up.

Good for her, because this is meant to be an exercise in teamwork. Find the orange cans that they've dotted around the shoreline, describe the geology, practise our capsize drills in the middle of the lake. How am I doing with the teamwork thing? A.Q. says I'm fine but to work more on correcting others, catching them in mistakes and not taking the easy way out which is to grin and ignore it, or make a little joke. He nailed me on that one.

Where is A.Q., anyway? Oh yeah, back there up the path a little, watching us with one eye and talking with Nowal with the rest of his face. He's always glancing at us coolly, weighing us up. He seems more relaxed now he's got me and Asya in the primary team. Only two years until launch! Man, we have a lot to cover.

Is this really happening to me?

I always thought I would grow up to be a bus driver or a policeman. Policeman was always my favourite dream-job when I was young, up until I went to college and got serious about life. I saw who I really was. The policeman dream must have been from all those times I went with my dad into the Alagados favela and saw the dealers, and the drug victims staggering around, and the gangs roughing up the locals or shooting at each other. I heard people's stories. I can still see their worn-out faces. I heard how the local cops didn't do anything, didn't even go in there most of the time except to raid a drug pusher and beat some people up. That was so wrong. I remember vowing to myself that I'd do something about it when I was grown up. My best friend Hugo's dad was a policeman, but a good one I think. He was shot dead one day in the line of duty. Hugo wore it bravely. Still does.

So what am I doing, going to Mars? Trying to escape from all the troubles here? That's how a lot of people talk to me, the ones who don't know me too well. They say, 'Good luck Marco, I wish I could escape from all this insanity too! Will you take me with you?' But nobody would be selected into training if that was their motivation, unless they had a very smooth tongue.

If I trace back how I got to here from college in Salvador, at least there's a trace of wanting to do the right thing – hoping to get some training in civil engineering to build good roads and buildings, instead of the piles of under-strength concrete they call architecture back home. But I could never sit still and study one thing. I always had about ten books lying around. Electronics, robotics, fluid mechanics, ancient languages, cellular biology, economics, orbital mechanics, Homer, Dostoyevsky – I spread myself so wide, my primary coursework suffered, but I loved university.

Then there was the scholarship from Embraer. Working for their Special Projects office in São Paulo was a blast. I ended up after five years with my eyes set on a postgrad degree in Space Systems Construction and a void in my life where my faith used to be. It's not that I rejected God or Jesus, it's more like they faded away as I was so busy working and living in the big city. Man, the night life there!

Or was it me who faded away? I expect God is still there, alright, but I have no clue what he thinks of my adventures.

I'm daydreaming. Meanwhile we've found three of the marker cans. Don has dictated a ten-minute monologue on the local geology. Annika tried a capsize roll and did some swimming. We all laughed, her the most.

Don draw-strokes up to me as we're having a breather. Behind us the arid stony cliff jags into the sky. So you studied Space Science in São Paulo? he asks. He's making a huge effort to break out of his scientific detachment.

Yes, something like that, I say. I started my Masters in space engineering but transferred to Rio to add some planetary science and robotics. We chat about that for a bit – how it's impossible to learn enough about space exploration in one lifetime, how the field is growing exponentially. I tried to specialise in the engineering systems we will need on Mars to construct a habitat, but in the end I felt more like a journalist who had to report on a dozen different issues each day without digging far into any of them. I told Don how good it feels to be deep into SSI's program, getting my hands on the real machines and software we'll be using, and helping to develop it.

I feel your pain, he says with a tired grin. Every day I spend training on the comms and IT side, people in my field publish at least two more papers. I'm drowning in papers.

Asya is demonstrating an eskimo roll. She makes it look so easy. I get nervous thinking that it's my turn soon. As a distraction I keep on chatting to Don. We touch on our family backgrounds. His dad is a retired college teacher. Sounds just like Don, only older and less adventurous.

I seem to remember that your dad's a pastor, says Don. What does he think of all this?

I can tell he's trying extra-hard to be friendly. He's about as solidly atheist as you can be, from what I've seen. I clear my throat and search for a vague response: He's cool, I say, nodding in an explanatory fashion. Then it's suddenly time to do the capsize drill. Take a deep breath. Here I go –

Onwards to Doubt

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