Another re-edit, sorry. Thanks, all for the kind comments. They are valued.
4
Cape Kennedy:
To prevent last-minute infections, they'd been kept in clean room isolation the last three weeks, permitted only prison-type contact with friends and family. Plexiglass and wall comms separated them from the people they loved, and potentially harmful germs. Everyone else who approached the crew wore clean suits, white caps and masks.
Their launch window was fairly small, for Mars wasn't a willing target. Half again as far away from the sun as Earth, and moving along at considerable speed, the little red world could not be aimed at directly, but had to be 'led', the way a hunter after grouse or pheasant would place his shot ahead of a fleeing bird. The equations and plotting were complex, and mind-numbingly exact. A single misplaced decimal might have put them millions of miles off course, and there were no islands or foreign shores to wash up on; just empty space and a cold, lingering death.
On the bright side, they had a human pilot, and weren't entirely dependent on the figures streaming off the navigation computer. Should something appear amiss, John could override the computer's flawed decision, execute a few burns, and put them back on course. In theory, at least.
The day of the launch, the crew were awakened at three-thirty AM. They were fed a hearty breakfast, which Pete, Roger and Linda polished off with gusto. Kim Cho and John picked at their steak and eggs without visible enthusiasm, too keyed up to eat.
Then came the fun part: after a last-minute briefing and a bit of a send-off ceremony, they were hooked up to various portable monitors, given 'Maximum Absorbency Garments' to put on, and then assisted into their many-layered launch survival suits. These last weren't meant for space walking. They would only inflate if the ship suffered a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure, or if the crew were forced to eject at high altitude. Nevertheless, donning monitor patches, diaper, skin-tight neoprene and gore-tex body suits, followed by the protective red oversuit, then gloves, boots and helmet was a bit of a process, requiring nearly a NASCAR pit crew for each astronaut.
Pete joked through the whole thing, claiming that his mother had prepared him similarly for the bus stop in Saginaw, Michigan. John recalled the deep, bitter cold of Wyoming, and winced appreciatively. Back then, he'd been stuffed into nearly as many layers, himself... without the MAG, parachute, survival pack and life vest, of course. But then, Burlington Jr. High School hadn't been quite so far away, or so hard to get to.
The helmet locking into his suit's neck ring gave him a weirdly isolated, deep-sea diver feeling. In certain lights, he could see his own reflection from the curving glass, and his breathing seemed suddenly very loud. He tested his comm, receiving answers from Pete, Linda, Roger and Kim that sounded as if they were right by his ear rather than half a room away.
"Hey, Guys," Pete laughed, "Your noses itching? 'Cause mine sure is. Damn, a scratch 'd feel good right now, wouldn't it?"
From one and all (even the reserved and proper Kim) came a mock-
aggravated chorus of, "Shut up, Pete!"
Then the oxygen cut on, whispering into his helmet during a brief systems check, and John said good-by to Earth. Not without difficulty, he put aside thoughts of his family to bond with his team, giving himself totally over to the task at hand, and to Mars.
Elsewhere:
Probably, there had never been a more securely defended space shot. International Rescue had a generous handful of operatives among the scientists and executives at NASA, just as they did in many of the world's national militias.
With the Agency's tacit consent, Scott sat with Alan in Thunderbird 1, hovering high overhead at the blue-black edge of space. Thunderbird 2, with Virgil and Brains aboard, circled below the spaceship's planned launch path, ready to lend a hand should the craft experience an in-flight emergency. Once or twice, Virgil had matched speeds with a plummeting jet liner, sliding just beneath to slow the aircraft's fatal descent. The life saving trick had worked well before, and he was more than ready to use it again.
Far below, under a hundred feet of roiling ocean, Gordon waited in Thunderbird 4, all the while very much hoping that his services would not be required. Using a comm buoy, he kept in touch with Scott and Virgil, listening to the countdown clock with one ear, and to his smuggled passenger with the other.
TinTin's presence made what would otherwise have been a tense, fingernails-on-chalkboard wait a great deal more bearable. She found absolutely everything exciting, and her hasty dives, whenever the comm screen flashed to life, made it very difficult for Gordon to keep a straight face. In short, whether perched on the arm of his chair, or hidden beneath the instrument panel, finger pressed to her lips, TinTin brightened and warmed the waterbird's dim little cockpit.
Out at the Cape, meanwhile, in the nearest viewing stand, Jeff Tracy awaited the launch with his mother, his ex-wife, and Lady Penelope. Cindy was there, as well; not on the job, this time, but as a friend of the family. Jeff had ignored the irritating young woman after a single, hard glance, but grandmother patted the metal bleacher to her left, indicating that Cindy was welcome, so she sat down to wait with the others. She wasn't much the praying sort, but Grandma Tracy had the matter in hand, her gnarled fingers sliding across the crystal beads of a rosary, her lips moving in constant, silent conversation with God.Cindy wasn't disposed to laugh, thinking, "After all, any port in a storm," and, "...need all the help we can get." The day was humid, and blistering hot, with a gusty wind just shy of scrub-speed, but not for anything would Cindy have given up her spot to seek shelter.
The Launch pad:
A bit later, carrying temporary life support packs, the crew walked from the transport bus to the white room, last stop before boarding Endurance. (The name had been chosen, after much debate, for the courage, perseverance and teamwork shown by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of explorers).
Endurance was a space plane, rather than a rocket or old-style shuttle. Modular, she was constructed to take off like an airplane, orbiting the Earth many times at increasingly higher altitudes to build up the speed and momentum needed to reach the moon station. There she'd drop off her spent fuel tanks and aerodynamic mid-section, and be mated to the huge, powerful engines that would see her to Mars and back. It was a beautiful design, the Earth-side assembly reminding John of Thunderbird 2, but sleeker, with canard-tipped delta wings, a pearl grey hull and more sharply pointed nose. Corporate logos, too, but John focused past them.
Fellow astronauts, reporters and well-wishers cheered them alongtheir way, taking pictures and calling out encouragement. Pete and Roger worked the crowd like Hollywood stars, waving and grinning, but the women were more restrained, and John actually had to be prodded before he got his head out of the memorized checklists and remembered to smile. In one particular image, which Grandma Tracy printed out and framed, he had exactly the same, slightly guilty, look he'd worn when caught at four years old climbing out the window to set a rooftop 'reindeer trap'.
In the white room, smiling engineers made a few last adjustments, then admitted them to the ship through a forward airlock. Pete was the last to step in, giving the world a final, cheery wave before the hatch thudded shut, and latched. The white room then detached and pulled slowly away, folding up on itself like a wheeled accordion
Inside the ship he was all business, taking a seat on the flight deck beside John, and connecting all his hoses to life support. Together, they worked their way through what seemed like a solid hour of pre-flight checks and run-ups, testing and re-testing every failsafe, redundant system aboard ship. Behind them, the others strapped in for the long wait.
NASA never did anything in a hurry; experience had taught them that it was always the least likely, 'Yeah..., like that'll ever happen!' scenario that would rise up to bite you on the butt. So, they tested it all, one system at a time. Five could have done it in seconds (and did, after John secretly up-loaded her), but procedures had to be followed, despite the rampant 'go fever' gripping everyone on board.
At last, Mission Control, Pete McCord and Endurance herselfagreed.
"Endurance, you are go for launch. Repeat, go for launch!"
And the countdown began.
At the edge of space:
Aboard Thunderbird 1, Scott didn't like what his long distance scanner was showing him. Getting Alan's attention (Brains had fitted the cockpit out with a second seat), he keyed in a higher magnification, saying,
"What do you make of that?"
Alan craned past his older brother for a better look at the comm screen. He saw a dark van, a motor boat, and three armed men with what looked like field glasses and some sort of big, green-metal tube.
"Uh..., some folks parked out by an old boat slip, I guess...," he mused, a sudden frown marring his baby-soft features. "They sure don't look like fishermen, though. What's that guy got..? Some kind of shoulder-rocket, or something?"
"Don't know," Scott grunted, arming his Bird's lasers, "But he isn't getting the chance to demonstrate. Keep an eye on him, while I call local law enforcement. If he twitches, fire."
Alan's sky blue eyes grew very wide.
"We're not gonna, like... I mean, it won't...?"
Scott shook his head, but his expression was hard.
"I've cycled back the setting. It'll get his attention, but he'll most likely survive." And then, because Alan still seemed concerned and reluctant, "Anti-gov terrorists don't play, Alan, and neither do I. You thought this was a joyride? If that bunch down there are what I think they are, they'll blow John and the rest of the crew out of the sky without a second thought, and stand there, cheering the fireworks."
Alan nodded. Swallowing hard, he lined up the sights and kept his finger on the firing stud, waiting intently while Scott called his brothers, and the local security force. For a long time afterward, there was no sound in the cockpit but comm chatter, and the soft thrum of Thunderbird 1's throttled-back engines.
Virgil took the alert in stride. Nodding grimly at Scott's transmitted image, he replied,
"Want me to go buzz them? I can get within a hundred yards, then drop the EM cloak; put a crimp in their plans, and a smear in their shorts, guaranteed."
Scott snorted, a brief smile flickering across his tense face.
"Hold that thought, Virge, and get as close as you can, while still inside the flight path. We might just pay a social call, at that."
"FAB, Scott. On my way."
Turning to the engineer strapped in beside him, Virgil said, "Hang on, Brains. You're about to see what this girl can do."
Hackenbacker managed a single, queasy nod, and began patting his pockets for another Dramamine tablet.
"Eh- FAB," he said. Some days, the life of a two-fisted, fightin' man of science wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Gordon, though he seemed distracted at first, was equally ready to go.
"An inlet, y' say?" he inquired, already punching in coordinates, "How deep?"
"According to the latest soundings, just deep enough for you to block the mouth," Scott replied. "Law enforcement are on their way, but it never hurts to be careful."
"No panic, Scott," Gordon replied, sending the boxy little sub into a steep dive and northward turn. "We..., that is..., I've got this. I'll throw 'em a bit of a surprise party, if they try t' break for open water."
His brother's image nodded.
"Right. Keep to cover, though, and stay safe."
Aboard Endurance, John was surrounded by a galaxy of indicator lights, gauges, and instruments, his hands firm on the yoke and throttle. Through the forward window, the metal ramp seemed to stretch into deep blue infinity, something of a cross between the tall rocket gantries of old, and a runway. The occasional heron soared by, blithely unaware that the monster at the bottom of the gantry, quiet since being wheeled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building, was about to join them in the air.
He counted silently along with the launch clock, triggering ignition at '10'. The big Jupiter 4 spaceship waited, poised at the end of her rail, engines coming to slow, ground-shaking life. Big as they were, powered by an incredibly explosive mixture of liquid hydrogen, oxygen and powdered aluminum-13, they had to be kept many miles away from the buildings and crowd.
...All indicators green, and the warm throb at his left wrist still repeating their prearranged signal; morse code for 'A-OK'...
Beside him, Pete said, the grin fully audible in his transmitted voice,
"Time to light the fuse and do this, baby. We got places to be, and Martians to see."
In the stands, Grandma had stopped praying. Instead, she took Cindy's hand, squeezing it tightly as the numbers ticked off, and the distant spaceship began to shake itself awake.
"10... 9... 8... 7... 6..."
Squinting through sun glare and heat wiggles, she shaded her eyes with the hand not holding Cindy's. Like the rest of the crowd, they were on their feet, whispering along with Mission Control's dry, calm voice,
"..5...4...3...,"
The ship hurtled along the gantry-ramp, seeming conscious of her own ferocious power as she made ready to burst from Earth. The noise, even at so great a distance, was deafening.
"...2...1..."
Gathering speed, she lifted, spurning contact with the dust and rock of her birth.
"...0..."
Endurance thundered into the air, vaulting up and forward on twin spears of sun-like flame.
"We have lift off! Ladies and gentlemen, we have lift off of the spaceship Endurance, destination, Mars."
Screams and cheers erupted from the stands, from the hundreds of thousands of people who'd gathered at the Space Center to watch, and from a billion living rooms, bars and public squares around the world, anywhere someone had a comm or TV set.
Victoria Tracy sagged between Jeff and Cindy, watching tearfully as the spaceship dwindled to a comet-like spark. To the rest of the world, Endurance might have held humanity's pride and future, but to Victoria, it contained nothing more precious than her grandson. Jeff embraced her. If she hadn't known better, she'd have thought he was crying.
At Mission Control, Gene grinned around at all the flying paper and whooping flight engineers, straightening his "Starship Enterprise" tie as he prepared to hand Endurance off to Houston.
Thunderbird 1:
Something sparkled from below, a laser-sighted rocket launcher tracking Endurance across the sky.
"Fire!" Scott growled, but Alan had already hit the button. At nearly the same instant, Thunderbird 2 seemed to materialize from thin air, the roaring shock of her passage flattening everyone in the boat, while 4 rose from the depths to block the inlet, dripping algae and slimy green water. The would-be saboteurs never had a chance. Their stories, when the police hauled them off at last, battered, burnt and gibbering, were as entertaining as they were far-fetched.
Endurance:
The Ares III crew knew none of this. Seven miles per second... that's what they had to have, approximately, to escape Earth's gravity well. Ramp, launch site and space complex, all flashed back and away as the big spaceship blasted into the air. Under John's hands she felt eager and powerful, like a nervous race horse. He couldn't let her out all the way, though, not until they'd gained 60,000 feet.
As the Air Force chase planes slipped into place beside them, he silently rattled off, word for word, the relevant page of the procedure manual, watching his instruments while Pete kept a casual hand by the abort switch. There was so much vibration and noise, the gut-slamming force of her acceleration was so great, that it skirted the ragged edge of human tolerance. Thus, the centrifuge training. Over a hundred such simulations made it just barely possible to keep functioning, now.
35,000 feet, and Florida was over the horizon and long gone. Nothing but Atlantic and sky, and the fast approaching African coast. The chase planes, on full burn, could no longer keep up. Signaling 'thumbs up'
through their canopies, the pilots dropped back, and headed for home.
40,000 feet. They'd long since broken the sound barrier, were starting their second orbit.
50,000... John made ready to feed organically stabilized aluminum-13 powder into the ravenous engines, where the volcanic heat would burn away the powder's coating and trigger a second, violent acceleration.
"Hold on...," he told the others, fighting grimly for enough wind to speak, "here comes... the good part..."
60,000 feet. A sparkling torrent of aluminum roared into the engines, caught, and exploded with such force that the ship's momentum nearly doubled. The crew's suits, responding to input from their physical monitors, inflated around legs and lower torso to force blood up toward heart and brain. Even so, Roger and Kim Cho lost consciousness. Linda browned out for a few moments, as did Pete. John had logged far more flight time than NASA was officially aware of. He didn't pass out, but his vision shrank to a red-veined tunnel, and each breath became a desperate, gasping battle. There was worse to come.
Seventy-five miles up, about the fourth time they'd circled the Earth, John and Pete together keyed in the nuclear engines. The radioactive firestorm accelerated them yet again, just as the last of the rocket fuel burned off. A giant baseball bat, swinging up from beneath and smashing them against their seat straps, sent Endurance sling-shoting away from Earth and out into space. Blue turned to black through the windows, the stars burning pure, hard and white-hot beyond. At last, free of Earth's gravity well, the pain and pressure eased, replaced by a free-floating, 'which way is up?' peace (and a little nausea). They'd done it. Step one on a very long list, checked off.
Before he responded to Houston, Pete removed his helmet, unhooked his hoses, grinned over at John and said,
"Was it good for you, too?"
John shrugged and smiled, blue eyes never leaving his readouts.
"I've had better," he allowed.
McCord chuckled, unstrapping to float beside the seat.
"Damn, you remind me of your father!" He said, "Only funnier. Okay, I'm gonna head back and get started on the 'to do' list. You keep it straight and level up here."
The pilot nodded and went back to work, answering a host of queries from the Houston and moon-based computers about his polar coordinates, velocity and flight angle.
Meanwhile, thrilled andgroggy, the mission specialists behind them doffed their own helmets and gloves, watching as the discarded articles went pirouetting off through the air. Sort of like the 'vomit comet', only the micro-gravity would continue until they reached the moon, over 240,000 miles away.
Already very far behind, Scott called,
"Base from Thunderbird 1; she's away." Adding softly, "Good luck, John. Take care."