Bunsen will not make the same mistake. His work will never be forgotten. He will spend his father’s money, every last dollar if necessary, to change this world for the better — or he will die trying.
2
‘Throttling engines to fifty per cent.’
Judd Bell stares out of the rectangular portal and takes in the rust-red surface below. The landscape reminds him of the Central Australian desert he knows so well, though he’s a long way from the Northern Territory today. He is, in fact, two thousand feet above the surface of Mars in the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. In front of him a Heads Up Display (HUD) projects an outline of the spacecraft’s descent trajectory onto the portal’s glass. He peers through it, scans the dark red planet for the landing point.
‘I see it.’ It’s a kilometre in the distance. He works the hand controller and fires the manoeuvring thrusters, pushes Orion towards it. ‘Sixteen hundred feet, down seventy.’
The astronaut’s mouth is dry. Apart from that he feels good, considering he’s spent seven months with five other astronauts sardined into a spacecraft the size of a small condominium. He’s sure his current goodwill is the result of the pure oxygen being pumped into his bubble helmet, which is also the reason for his dry mouth.
An alarm sounds in his headset. Judd’s eyes don’t move from the portal as he speaks into his helmet’s microphone: ‘What’s that?’
The question is directed at Delroy ‘Del’ Tennison, the thin, balding copilot standing beside Judd and studying a bank of LED screens and gauges. The Florida native references a screen as he kills the piercing drone. ‘Program alarm eleven-oh-seven.’
‘Why?’ Judd knows that alarm has something to do with the landing computer being overwhelmed with data but he doesn’t know how serious it is. It’s Del’s job to find out. He manages Orion’s systems, Judd just flies it.
‘On it.’ Del’s eyes flick between three LED screens, searching for an answer.
Judd breathes in and focuses on the Marscape below. He caresses the controller and eases the spacecraft onwards. Orion is similar to the Lunar Module that landed on the Moon — except it’s five times larger and carries three times as many people. Shaped like a short, fat bullet it has four levels housing crew quarters, scientific equipment and supplies for a month-long stay on the red planet. On the top level is the flight deck, where Judd and Del currently stand, side by side, strapped into harnesses. Behind them are their four crewmates, suited, helmeted and belted into their chairs. They sit silently. At this point theirs is a watching brief.
Judd focuses on the HUD for a moment then surveys the deep-red surface below. ‘Thousand feet, down fifty.’ Through the low light he can see the landing point clearly for the first time.
It’s not good. At all.
His feeling of goodwill vanishes. This mission has been a long time coming, the culmination of a billion man-hours of concerted effort and a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money, all to have the onboard computer direct the spacecraft to a landing point slap-bang in the middle of a crater the size of Yankee Stadium.
It’s not a big crater by Martian standards but it’s big enough, with sides so steep a landing is impossible — Orion would simply slide down the incline as soon as it touched down. To ice the cake this crater is both filled with and surrounded by boulders which range in size from medicine ball to Cadillac Eldorado. It would only take a small rock snagging one of Orion’s four spindly landing legs to damage the ship irreparably. Then the crew, unable to leave the planet, would spend the rest of their truncated lives staring up at a distant blue speck, wishing they’d never dreamed of visiting the stars when they were children.
‘Not liking the look of this.’ Judd keeps his voice even, doesn’t want the words that reach Mission Control in two minutes to scare the cattle. Not that it matters. In two minutes this will be over and there’s nothing the gang in Houston can do about it. They have no control over this ship. They’re too far away.
Judd works the hand controller, pivots the ship and takes a look at his surroundings. He needs to find somewhere else to land that’s about the size of two tennis courts side by side. There’s nowhere obvious; boulders dot the landscape. He sets Orion on a course to cross the crater.
Judd’s more concerned than fearful. He had, for a long time, been fearful, but that passed after he saved the space shuttle Atlantis off the north coast of Australia. Of course, he isn’t flying a shuttle today so that is part of the reason, too. He hadn’t trusted the shuttle but he trusts Orion. It is a brand-new piece of equipment, specifically designed and purpose built for the task of interplanetary travel, without the Nixonian budget cuts and cobbled-together Frankenstein design that compromised the shuttle.
The alarm trills in Judd’s ear again. Del kills the noise and pre-empts Judd’s question. ‘I’m looking for it.’
‘Seven-eighty, down twenty-five.’ Judd searches the landscape as Orion clears Yankee crater. There are boulders everywhere and still no place level enough to put down. He works the hand controller again, slows the rate of descent. ‘How’s fuel?’
‘Eleven per cent.’
He’s used too much gas tooling around, avoiding Yankee crater then looking for a level spot. Judd doesn’t say anything but he wants to swear. Instead of dropping the f-bomb he says: ‘Okay. Four-fifty feet down sixty.’ He scans the scenery again. There must be somewhere he can land this bucket.
‘There.’ He sees a spot. It’s not too far away, looks wide enough, without too many rocks, and it’s level. He works the thrusters, angles Orion towards it. ‘Got an answer on that alarm?’
‘Still looking into it —’
The ship shudders and the HUD projection flickers, then disappears from the portal’s glass. ‘I’ve lost Heads Up.’
Del’s voice is panicked. ‘Guidance computer is down.’
‘Guess we got an answer on that alarm. Go with the back-up.’
Del works the touchscreen in front of him, reads the news, his voice incredulous: ‘They’re both rebooting. It’ll take two minutes.’
‘This is over in one.’ Judd breathes out, really wanting to swear now. He knows what he must do. Without height or speed information he’s going to have to seat-of-the-pants it. ‘Going visual.’
‘Commander!’ Del’s stunned voice is an octave higher than usual. That one word tells Judd everything the forty-two-year-old is thinking, which is: ‘Dude! No. We abort-to-orbit. You don’t land on Mars without a guidance computer.’
Abort-to-orbit is a last resort as far as Judd’s concerned. The guidance computers may have failed but Judd trusts this machine. All those dollars and man-hours demand that he parks this sucker safely in the Martian dust and mankind can finally say it has reached the planets. ‘How’s fuel?’
‘Descent quantity.’
‘Okay.’ It means Judd has ninety seconds to land the spacecraft — minus the twenty per cent he must save in case he needs to twist the red abort-to-orbit handle by his left hand if something unforeseen happens. He has seventy-two seconds and counting.
Judd pushes Orion towards the only landing area that looks remotely suitable. He estimates his height at three hundred feet. ‘Give me remaining fuel time minus abort.’
‘Fifty-seven seconds.’
Orion drops towards Mars. Judd scans his chosen landing spot and realises it’s nowhere near as good as it looked from a distance. It’s actually terrible and is littered with rocks. They’re not as large as the boulders surrounding Yankee crater but they’re big enough to be a problem if the metre-wide footpad at the end of one of the landing legs was to come down on one at an awkward angle. The legs have two metres of suspension play built into them but that won’t do any good if the footpad is destroyed and the spacecraft tips on its side.