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  The president replied, “Because human explorers are much more adaptable, much more flexible than robots. Machines can answer questions you know how to ask. On Mars, we’re looking at a new, unprecedented situation. There are going to be surprises—and disappointments, too, I imagine. Humans on the scene can deal with those unpredictable situations much better than machines can.”

  “Despite the costs? And the risks?”

  “One human mission will gather more information, make more discoveries, than a dozen robot probes. People are cost effective when you’re exploring a new frontier.”

  “I know a lot of religious fundamentalists who don’t think so,” Treadway said.

  The president grew serious. “Yes, there are some people who think that this contradicts the Bible. They accuse me of colluding with the Godless Chinese to perpetuate a hoax that will drive people away from the church.”

  “Which is why they’ve opposed your Mars program.”

  “Well, I believe that knowledge is always preferable to ignorance.” Before Treadway could frame his next question, the president went on, “And if we do confirm that there is life on Mars—even if it’s only some microscopic bacterial type of life—it’ll show that God’s creation isn’t limited to our one little world. It’ll show that God’s bounty is limitless, won’t it?”

  Treadway hesitated, then replied, “I think I’ll leave it to the theologians to debate that one.”

  Leaning forward to tap Treadway on the knee, President Harper said, “I know there are plenty of people who think that we shouldn’t be spending money to explore Mars. Who think we should spend that money here on Earth. Well, it is being spent here on Earth. We don’t shoot the money into space! It’s spent right here, on scientists and engineers, on technicians and mechanics and schoolteachers and truck drivers and grocery workers. It adds to our economy. And the knowledge we’ll eventually earn will bring an enormous bonus to our economy. You wait and see.”

  Treadway felt puzzled for a heartbeat or two. Then he realized that this was the moment to end the interview.

  “Well, I couldn’t ask for a better summation of your faith in the Mars program than that, Mr. President. Thank you very much.”

  “Thanks for this opportunity to speak from my heart to the American people.”

  And Treadway thought, Too bad he can’t run again. He’d get my vote.

  April 1, 2035

  Earth Departure Minus 4 Days

  19:43 Universal Time

  Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas

  “These things continue to amaze me. I don’t know why; you’d think that after the hospital bioprinted a new kidney for my sister that I’d be accustomed to just about anything coming out the side of one of them.” Mikhail Prokhorov frowned at the 3D printer.

  Hi McPherson grinned through his beard. “It is sorta like something out of Star Trek, isn’t it?”

  The two men, together with Taki Nomura and Catherine Clermont, were standing in the workshop section of the habitation module mockup. Nomura had poured a beaker of clear powdered plastic into the blocky, gray device. It had chugged away for several minutes, then chimed. When Nomura slid its lid open, there rested a perfectly formed lens.

  Clermont asked, “Will it work?”

  “Sure it will,” Nomura replied. She lifted the lens from the printer, held it up to eye as if she were checking its specifications, and then fitted it into the circular housing they had printed a few minutes ago. They then stepped over to the workbench where the body of the telescope they were making rested.

  “The objective lens fits here,” Nomura said as she tightened the fitting around the newly attached lens. “Now we’re ready to test our new telescope and it only took us two hours to build.”

  “Voilá!” said Clermont happily. “I want to go outside and see the Three Sisters.”

  “Not Mars?” asked McPherson.

  “Non. We’ll see Mars soon enough. The first constellation I learned as a child was Orion and it is still my favorite. One day we will go there also.”

  “Let’s get to Mars first, okay?” said McPherson.

  Prokhorov shook his head as if he’d witnessed some sleight-of-hand trick. He said, “It’s no wonder the so-called Chinese economic miracle collapsed almost as quickly as it arose. Who needs megafactories when you can have one of these in your garage?”

  “This one is a little more advanced than what most people will have in their garages,” said Nomura.

  “I gathered that when we printed the motor for the telescope mount,” said Prokhorov.

  “That’s why we’re briefing you on it now,” Taki said. “Bee checked everybody’s dossiers. He wants to make sure none of us has missed anything before we go.”

  Still looking unconvinced, Prokhorov asked her, “You can make anything with this device?”

  Suppressing a superior grin, Taki answered, “Anything. As long as you have the proper raw materials to put in and what you’re making isn’t too big for the printer to hold.”

  Shaking his head again, Prokhorov said, “It’s like magic.”

  “No,” McPherson countered, “just technology. Kids are using 3D printers to make everything from model airplanes to electronic circuit boards. And so can we.”

  “Magic,” Prokhorov insisted.

  Clermont pointed out, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

  “Arthur C. Clarke,” said Prokhorov, his brow still furrowed. “I’ve read his work.”

  Prokhorov relaxed into a rueful smile. “Perhaps you could use it to build more brains for me.”

  The night was dark and clear. The Moon was down and stars glittered across the heavens.

  Ted Connover held his wife’s hand as the two strolled along the edge of the lake. From a distance they looked like a pair of college lovers, which they had been—many years earlier. Now Vicki was Johnson Space Center’s head librarian. And he was leaving for Mars in four days.

  Vicki murmured, “Five hundred days. And nights.”

  “What’d you say?”

  Smiling up at her husband’s face, Vicki said, “You’ll be gone five hundred days. And nights.”

  He nodded. “Long time.”

  “You’ll be busy enough, though.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ll have a lot to do, mission assignments and all that. Then you’ll be landing on Mars and exploring.”

  He stared at her for a long, silent moment. Vicki was almost his own height, but where Ted was a solidly built welterweight, she was slim and delicate, like a china doll.

  “Honey, I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Arching a brow at her husband, Vicki teased, “Locked away in a tin can for five hundred days and night with four unattached women.”

  “You’re not serious!”

  “That Clermont woman is French. And Virginia Gonzalez is a real looker—”

  “Come on, now. Catherine’s been making eyes at McPherson all through training, and Jinny’s not my type.”

  “Tall and tan and young and lovely,” Vicki sang.

  “I like ’em short and tiny and altogether beautiful,” Connover insisted.

  “For sure?”

  “For sure.” Then he realized, “Hey! You’ll be alone for five hundred days, too.”

  “Not entirely alone.”

  “I’ll tell Thad to keep an eye on you.”

  She was laughing openly now. “You’d expect our son to be my chaperone?”

  “My watchdog,” Connover said, in a mock growl.

  Suddenly her laughter cut off. “I’m going to miss you, Ted.”

  He pulled her toward him. “I already miss you, hon.”

  They kissed, by the gently lapping water, beneath the silent stars.

  “I love you, Vicki.”

  “I love you, Ted.”

  They pulled apart slightly. Then Connover looked out across the lake. Rising above the blocky buildings
of the space center, an unmistakably red point of light gleamed at them.

  Connover pointed. “There he is.”

  “Mars,” Vicki whispered.

  “Mars,” Connover breathed.

  April 4, 2035

  Earth Departure Minus 1 Day

  11:45 Universal Time

  Kennedy Space Flight Center

  Promptly at a quarter to seven a.m. the eight men and women of the Mars-bound Arrow spacecraft left the astronaut center and walked, single file, through a crowd of onlookers toward the van that would take them to the waiting rocket booster.

  They were wearing sky-blue coveralls and baseball caps. Prokhorov wore his cap slightly askew, as if it was alien to him. Catherine Clermont had hers perched delicately atop her chestnut-brown hair.

  As they strode toward the waiting van, the crowd of NASA workers, government bigwigs and news media reporters broke into spontaneous applause and calls of “Good luck!”

  Bee Benson led the little parade, looking slightly self-conscious. Behind him, Ted Connover grinned and waved at his wife and teenaged son, standing in the front row of the cheering crowd. The six scientists also waved, almost shyly.

  Steven Treadway brought up the rear of the mini-procession, talking nonstop with the miniaturized microphone pinned above the pocket of his usual long-sleeved white shirt.

  “The team isn’t wearing spacesuits,” he was saying, almost in a confidential undertone, “because they won’t need them. The vehicle that will carry them into their orbital rendezvous is exactly the same type that has ferried all the equipment and supplies to the Arrow, plus the human technicians who put the various modules of the Arrow together in orbit.”

  He drew a breath, then continued, “Their ferry vehicle will mate with the Arrow’s main hatch, and the crew will step into their Mars-bound vessel just as safely and confidently as if they were stepping into their own homes.

  “And it will be their home, for the one hundred and seventy-eight days it takes them to reach Mars.”

  In the VIP stands flanking the control center, Bart Saxby watched the van drive off to the waiting rocket booster, silhouetted against the gray morning sky. The meteorologists had predicted cloudy skies, but enough visibility to go ahead with the launch.

  Saxby felt a mixture of pride and resentment as the van approached the launch stand. He had had to fight hard to get this final Mars launch done at NASA’s facility at Cape Canaveral, instead of at the commercial operation in New Mexico, where all the other launches had taken place.

  “Dammitall,” he had exploded more than once, “this is a NASA operation, not some tourist excursion. We’re going to launch the crew from the Kennedy Complex.”

  The objections were many and intense, including those of the governor of New Mexico and both that state’s senators. The commercial interests that were building their business on space industry and space tourism were apoplectic at the decision.

  But Saxby fought all the way to the White House, and after some hard bargaining, President Harper had finally agreed with his NASA chief. The final launch—the big one—would be from the Cape.

  Saxby should have felt triumphant, but as he watched the elevator carry the eight crew members to the top of the booster, he found himself worrying.

  Every ground launch has been fine—so far, he thought. What if this one goes sour? We’re using exactly the same booster as all the other launches, but what if this one fails? What if we kill those eight people?

  He felt a burning pain in his chest. Ignore it, he told himself. You can’t have a heart attack; not here, not now. Tomorrow you can drop dead if you have to. But today you’ve got to see those eight people safely into their vessel.

  Treadway felt a pang in his chest, too, as he stood on the launch platform, forlornly watching the elevator cab take the crew up to their module atop the booster.

  He took a deep breath, then turned to face the camera standing a few feet away. “This is as far as I go, physically. But I’ll be with the Mars crew every inch of the way, in three-dimensional virtual reality.”

  Craning his neck at the booster’s upper stage, he continued, “For now, though, all I can do is the same as what you millions of viewers are doing: wish those eight brave men and women good luck and godspeed on humankind’s first mission to Mars.”

  For the first time since he’d been a child, Treadway felt tears trickling down his cheeks.

  April 4, 2035

  Earth Departure Minus 1 Day

  18:27 Universal Time

  Kennedy Space Flight Center

  Rocket launches are always emotional experiences. No matter how many launches a person witnesses, those last few seconds of countdown get to you. Your heart seems to beat in synchrony with the ticking of the countdown clock.

  Bart Saxby was perspiring in the afternoon heat as he stood in the top row of the VIP stands, sandwiched between Florida’s senior senator and the White House’s chief of staff, Sarah Fleming. The president had wanted to attend this launch, but a sudden crisis in India forced him to remain in Washington.

  Several rows lower, Vicki Connover and her fourteen-year-old son, Thad, were on their feet with everyone else. Thad had his fists clenched, his face set in a grim scowl.

  He looks so much like his father, Vicki thought as she struggled to keep from crying.

  “THIRTY SECONDS AND COUNTING,” announced the loudspeakers.

  Everyone seemed to hold their breath. Out on the launch platform the rocket booster stood tall and alone, waiting, waiting.

  “FIVE . . . FOUR . . . THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . .”

  Flame burst from the rocket’s base, engulfed in a heartbeat by billows of steam, all in utter silence. The launch stand was more than a mile away and no one in the stands made a sound.

  The booster rose in elegant grace, breaking clear of the bonds of Earth, lifting into the cloudy sky.

  “LIFTOFF! WE HAVE LIFTOFF!”

  And then the roar of the rocket engines washed over the visitors’ stands, wave after wave of thunder, shaking the world, rattling bones, gushing the breath out of the watchers’ lungs.

  Vicki burst into tears, whether of joy or fear or desperate longing she didn’t know. Through blurred eyes she saw her son, tall, lean, so very young: he was crying, too.

  Bart Saxby kept his eyes dry, barely. The searing pain in his chest eased as he craned his neck to watch the booster tracing an arching line across the sky.

  “A picture-perfect liftoff,” Steven Treadway said. To those in the physical audience he looked a man standing in front of a green screen wearing a mesh net on his head with multiple fiber optic links trailing behind. To those watching on ordinary television or streaming the event online, he appeared to be standing much closer to the launch—close enough to have his clothing catch on fire had the simulation been reality. For the estimated fifty million people who subscribed to the VR Net, they were there with him, experiencing the launch from his auditory and visual point of view. Other physical senses, like the stomach and bone rattling caused by the low frequency sound of the rocket engines were added to the VR stream by technicians who had long since prepared the necessary special effects.

  “The eight men and women of the Mars team are on their way into orbit, where they will link up with the Arrow spacecraft that will start them on their thirty-five-million-mile journey, the day after tomorrow.”

  “Whoo-eee!” Ted Connover yelled.

  He was strapped into the right-hand seat of the crew compartment, Bee Benson on his left, the six scientists behind them.

  The booster was roaring and shuddering, shaking so hard Connover’s vision blurred. It’s like riding a dragon, he thought. It brought out the cowboy in him and the yelp of adventure burst forth.

  Benson appeared totally calm, as if he were sitting in his living room.

  Yeah, Connover thought, if your living room bucks like a bronco and thunders like a bull.

  “Stage separation in five seconds.” In Connove
r’s earphones, the steady, flat, unemotional voice of Mission Control, back on the ground, sounded mechanical, robotic.

  BAM! The explosion sent a shockwave through the crew compartment.

  “Stage separation,” said Benson, tightly.

  “Confirm stage separation,” Mission Control answered.

  The rocket’s second-stage engine burn was slightly less thundering and rattling than the discarded first stage had been, but still the crew compartment shook hard.

  Connover wanted to turn around and see how the scientists were doing, but the safety harness confined his shoulders too tightly.

  “How’s everybody?” he hollered over the rocket engine’s roar.

  A few grunts and mumbles. Benson shot him a disapproving look.

  So what? Connover challenged silently. You can play it Canadian cool; I get excited every time I ride one of these blasters.

  Suddenly the noise and vibration shut off. Just like that. One moment they were shaking and roaring, the next complete tranquility, totally calm.

  Not entirely silent, however. Connover heard a pump winding down, somewhere behind them, in the equipment section of the spacecraft.

  His arms floated up off the seat’s armrests. Microgravity. Weightlessness.

  Then Connover saw that Benson’s hands were still gripping his armrests tightly. Not so cool after all, he realized.

  Before he could say anything, though, Benson announced, “Initiating docking maneuver.”

  In his earphones Connover heard Mission Control. “Confirm docking maneuver initiation.”

  Loosening his shoulder straps enough to half-turn in his seat, Connover looked over at the scientists.

  “How’re you doing, team?”

  “Fine,” McPherson answered.

  Prokhorov started to nod, then held himself back. “Every time I go to zero-gee I get woozy. This is my seventh space flight and I still feel . . .” He waggled one hand.

  “I’m okay,” said Amanda Lynn.

  “Me too,” Virginia Gonzalez reported. Pointing to her neck, she added, “I put on two anti-nausea patches before we launched.”