voices were raised again. Romero was telling Jones how important it was to take samples from large boulders, if they could, because large rocks wouldn’t have moved far from where they were formed. And the context of a sample was just as important, to the good geologist, as the content of the rock –
Jones was telling Romero where he could stick his geological hammer.
This isn’t good enough, York fumed. We can’t keep sending these clowns to the Moon. Beanie hats, and kids’ jokes –
We can’t go on like this. If we’re really going to Mars we need a new class of astronaut. A better breed.
Ben had continued to encourage her to apply, to join the program. Maybe I should. I know I could do a better job than a moron like Chuck Jones.
She went back to the truck, and got more coffee.
Mission Elapsed Time [Day/Hr:Min:Sec] Plus 001/13:45:57
‘You are go for TOI,’ capcom Bob Crippen said. ‘One minute thirty.’
‘Thank you,’ Gershon replied.
York pulled on her helmet and locked it to the neck of her pressure suit. She fumbled slightly, her fingers clumsy inside her stiff gloves. She buckled her canvas restraints around her.
Once more she felt cool, stale air wash over her face.
Ares, assembled, was a slim, fragile pencil of metal. It was a big, bright object, and it would be easily visible from Earth, as a naked-eye star passing over Cape Canaveral.
Stone said, ‘Go for ET H-two pressurization.’
‘Confirm.’
York began closing switches that would raise the temperature inside the booster’s two great External Tanks. Liquid hydrogen would boil and evaporate, and the resulting gas would force liquid propellant through the feed pipes and into the combustion chambers of the MS-II.
York was a geologist, and that was why she was going to Mars. But a crew was only three people. So, if you expected to fly in space, you had to expect to study up on a lot of mundane crap that was necessary just to keep the spacecraft and booster working.
And Natalie York’s specialty was the External Tanks.
She knew enough to give expert papers on External Tanks to the industry. In fact, she had given a paper on them, God help her.
‘One minute,’ Gershon said.
York glanced at the window to her right. She was over the west Atlantic, and it was early morning down there; she could see boats on the Gulf, ribbons of land laid out like a cartoon map.
TOI was Transfer Orbit Injection: it meant departure from Earth orbit, the start of the long transit to Mars. This was a key moment in the mission – in her life, in fact.
But a day and a half here, orbiting Earth, wasn’t enough.
She had tried to fix some of the more memorable scenes of Earth in her head. Night over Africa: the fires of nomad encampments, spread across the desert. Thunderstorms over New Zealand: lightning like flashbulbs, exploding under cottony layers of cloud, discharges sparking each other in great chain reactions covering the country.
November 6, 1986. That was the day when Ares was due to return to Earth orbit. Mission day five hundred and ninety-five. Then I’ll be back; I’ll be seeing you again. A bright Sunday morning, with my crates full of bits of Mars.
‘Ares, you are go for the burn,’ Crippen said.
Stone set the ‘master arm’ switch to ON, and York could see him checking over the rest of the instrument panel. Guidance control was set to primary; thrust control was on automatic; the craft was in the correct attitude; the engine gimbals were enabled, so that the nozzles could swivel, like eyeballs in their sockets, to direct the craft.
Eight seconds before ignition, York felt a push at her back. Ullage: small rockets firing around the base of the stack, settling the propellants before the main burn.
‘99:40,’ the commit code, started flashing up on the small computer screen before Stone. Are you sure you want to do this?
There was a small button marked PROCEED under the screen. Stone reached out a gloved finger, and pressed the button.
Gershon counted down: ‘Five. Four …’
York braced herself.
There was a distant rumble, carried through the stack, as the MS-II’s four huge engines ignited, three hundred feet away from her. The acceleration was low, almost gentle, pushing her into her couch with a soft pressure across her chest and limbs.
After thirty-seven hours of microgravity, she felt enormously heavy. But at least it was smooth: this time, the ride really did feel like the simulator. Later in the mission – when Ares had burned off its fuel, reducing its mass – the acceleration of the MS-II would be a lot tougher.
Gershon read out velocity increments. York could hear how his voice was masked, slightly, by the gum he chewed. Juicy Fruit. How can you eat gum in a spacesuit? Gershon wasn’t above sticking a wad to the inside of his faceplate, with his tongue, for retrieval later. The guy was gross.
‘Ares, Houston, you’re looking good here,’ Crippen said. ‘Right down the old center line.’
‘Thank you,’ Stone said. ‘Things look fine up here too. Rates looking good.’
She looked out her window. The Earth was falling away, visibly; it was a remarkable sight, as if the Earth was a special-effects prop, being hauled away from her window.
The sense of motion, of speed, was remarkable.
‘How’s it going, York?’ Stone asked dryly.
She started. He’d caught her rubber-necking again. ‘Fine. Fine, Phil.’
She turned back to her station. She had her job to do, and she should get to it. It won’t fail because of me. The mantra of everyone involved with the Ares program.
She stole a glance at Stone. He was watching his own readouts, eyes fixed on the goal, apparently oblivious to her again. Stone was in utter control of himself. He always was.
She began to watch the status of the External Tanks in earnest, their brief biographies spelled out by the displays in front of her.
Floods of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, sixty-four thousand gallons a minute, pumped out of the Tanks to be consumed in the engines of the MS-II. Already the pressure in the Tanks was dropping away, she read; to keep the pressure up, there was a complicated backfeed system which took vaporized gases back from the engines into the Tanks. The fuel system was surprisingly complicated, elaborate, a system of huge pipes, fountains of supercold liquid propellants cascading into combustion chambers as hot as the sun …
In the middle of the burn, Crippen said, ‘Okay, Ares, Houston, we’d like to try for the TV request.’
Stone and Gershon both stifled groans. York glanced up self-consciously, at the little Westinghouse TV camera fixed to its bracket above her head.
Crippen said, ‘We would like five minutes’ worth of TV, and we would like an exterior shot, with a narrative if you can give us one.’
‘Copy,’ Stone said.
NASA was following a policy of televising the most dramatic moments of the mission. It was all to drum up interest and enthusiasm for Ares, to allow the great American public to see what they were paying for. A feed from the Command Module to the TV companies had been provided during the launch itself, for example. But York wasn’t so sure that had been a good idea. The launch probably looked too damn comfortable, to a generation that had been brought up on the glamorous pyrotechnics of Star Wars.
Stone