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A week later, with the strength of nine million pounds of sheer thrust, the five of them were moving at a speed of twenty-five thousand miles an hour, leaving Earth orbit on a sure trajectory that would take them to an intercept with the planet Mars—and the atmospheric anomaly that, as far as remote sensing was able to determine, was still present. Still mystifying.
A voyage to the Red Planet meant two hundred days in space, one way. Two hundred days without seeing blue skies, white clouds, green grass. Two hundred days confined in a space not much larger than a small, one-bedroom apartment. And each day, time dilated. There were no sunrises, sunsets, or any other occurrences that might promise a person that their existence was moving along in an ordinary world. Real-time communications with Earth began to stretch into halting exchanges punctuated by several-second delays. Then fifteen seconds. Then thirty. Then it would take minutes. By the time they reached orbital insertion at Mars, a round-trip message would take almost twenty minutes.
Brett remembered Day 100—the halfway point. It was the day he realized he was adrift on a sea a hundred trillion times wider and more open than the largest ocean back home. Looking out the viewport, he could see nothing behind them, nothing in front of them—only star-dusted infinities on each side. It was the day he felt small, lost between worlds, bound to neither one. Long past a mission abort point, still tens of millions of miles from his destination, he wondered, My God, what the hell am I doing out here? What have I done? It was not unlike how he’d felt when she left him.
Carrie had long, platinum-blond hair that framed a kind, youthful face. She was cute. Adorable, in fact. The love of his life. And then, one day, she left. With no explanation. Brett had no idea where she was or what had become of her. Until, many years later, a mutual friend told him about the cancer—and that she was gone. In that instant, Brett slipped through a window that exists between moments—a window into the surreal. He was a man between worlds. Lost.
After Day 100, he busied himself, so as not to dwell on the alarming truth about his celestial position. He went over his previous analysis of the anomaly, and he carefully rehearsed his entry, descent, and landing procedures. These would mostly be executed by software, but still, he ran the drill. Over and over. There could be no errors. No second chances, especially out here. No vehicle, manned or unmanned, had made it to the Red Planet and back again to Earth. A million things could go wrong. A million things had to go right.
Day 200 came, and Epoch 1, using an aero-braking technique, achieved a successful orbital insertion around Mars.
“My God,” Martin said, a shiver in his voice. “It’s Mars. Look at it!”
Brett pressed himself to the viewport, and felt a tide of awe rush in. They were drifting over the Tharsis region of the Red Planet, and centered beneath them was Olympus Mons, an extinct shield volcano that soared eighty-nine thousand feet above the surface of the planet. They’d all studied the pictures of it taken from Mars orbiters over the decades. But as they saw it now, gliding past them, its sheer mass was astonishing—three times the height of Mount Everest back home.
For the next twelve hours the team of scientists settled in: they secured an orbit that would keep them at a distance of twenty kilometers from the anomaly, ran thorough checks of all systems, and unpackaged and assembled equipment that had been stowed since launch.
Finally, they began a comprehensive analysis of the anomaly.
And then, an hour later, it all changed.
“This is crazy,” Martin said.
Debra floated past him to her instrument bay, passing a computer tablet to Kate. Kate swiveled away toward another panel, where she performed a data upload that would be sent back to Earth via their high-gain antenna. Howard and William studied their own findings, murmuring between each other.
“It is. But it’s accurate,” Debra said.
“So what you’re saying is… it’s gone now.” Brett said.
The question hung beneath an unbearable stillness in the ship.
“It looks that way,” Martin finally said. “No signature, no traces that it was ever there.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. It was never there to begin with. The anomaly was a malfunction in our sensors,” Howard said.
Martin shook his head firmly. “No. No way that’s possible.”
“I’d say just about anything’s possible, Martin,” Howard replied evenly.
Kate added, “It doesn’t explain what happened to MAVEN. We’re still missing a spacecraft that we know did not deorbit and burn up in the Martian atmosphere.”
Brett said, “So the anomaly was here an hour ago, and now it’s… gone.”
“Shut like a window,” Debra said. It was the word window that gave them all a moment of pause. Martin locked eyes with Brett, and there was complete understanding between them.
“Maybe it’s not gone. Maybe it’s just… closed,” Brett said.
“So. What now?” Martin asked. The mission prep had been a rigorous exercise in contingency planning, yet the possibility that the anomaly would simply vanish… That was one possibility that hadn’t been considered.
Brett floated gently to the viewport, stopping himself there, gazing down at the curve of the Red Planet. Mars. They were orbiting Mars—the very first people ever to do so. No one else had ever seen it. Not this close.
“Guys, we’re at Mars. The only ones. We’ve still got surface and sample operations to conduct. I suggest we proceed. We can still make history out here. Our window is still open.”
And so they all fell into agreement, and began preparing for surface operations. Brett would pilot the Mars Lander down to the surface and make the first footprints in the soil. He’d do a short-range survey and collect rock and soil samples, each no bigger than an aspirin, and place them in a cache. Then, using the newly developed Mars Ascent Engine, he’d leave the planet and rendezvous with Epoch 1. They were scheduled to spend another several months in orbit. If the anomaly didn’t reappear, they’d spend that time doing further atmospheric analysis. And then they’d begin the journey back home.
The surface op began just as expected. Brett safely undocked the lander from Epoch 1 and began a descent toward the upper atmosphere of Mars. All systems were stable, all lights were green. He could hear Martin in the voice-operated switch, or VOX unit, of his helmet.
“Okay Lander, you’re in the approach corridor, looking good. No trajectory correction required. You’ll be making first contact with the upper atmosphere in just a few seconds.”
“Copy that,” Brett replied, now feeling an unmistakable tremor in the frame of the lander. Soon, he knew, it would become a far stronger vibration as the enormous force of atmospheric friction began to slow his vehicle. He would feel g forces on the magnitude of seven during peak deceleration, and the heat shield beneath him would reach temperatures as hot as the surface of the sun. For about ninety seconds Brett would become a meteor.
“Okay, picking up strong vibrations here in the lander,” he said out loud. Hearing the sound of his voice brought immediate comfort. “Everything’s still looking good on the panels.”
He felt the pressure on his body as the forces of hypersonic speed crossed swords with friction.
“Ninety seconds of this, twenty seconds of peak deceleration followed by—”
BANG. Brett snapped his gaze toward the sound at the side of the lander. What the hell was that? Did something burst? Helium tank? He checked his panels. All green. He closed his eyes and spoke softly to himself.
“Twenty seconds of peak deceleration followed by parachute deploy at mach two point one. Heat shield separation ten seconds after that followed by—”
Brett heard a voice on the radio.
“You’ve drifted, Lander. Brett, your position is…target landing ellipse…recomp…”
Martin’s voice was cutting in and out, his words reduced to mere syllables. Brett fumbled with the VOX icon on the wrist display attached to his suit.
It still showed a healthy signal strength.
“Wait. Epoch One, say again?”
There was nothing.
“Martin? Martin? Epoch One, I can’t hear you—”
“…an…ly…it’s back…an…en…”
Brett shouted, “I can’t hear you, Martin! Did you say something about the anomaly? Epoch One, do you copy me?”
All at once, the spacecraft went dark. Every display, every indicator light failed, plunging Brett into iron cold darkness. Then, alarmingly, the forces of deceleration ceased, replaced by a plunging sensation through sheer emptiness. As if… as if the atmosphere itself had opened beneath him and he was falling down a very deep hole. Absolute vertical descent. An express elevator with the cables cut.
Panic sank its fangs into him like a rattlesnake before he even knew it was there. His heart rate broke a gallop, his breath coming in short, staccato gasps. I’m falling, he thought loudly. I’m falling!
Brett groped with gloved hands until he felt a panel of the spacecraft he could grab hold of. He closed his eyes, feeling motionlessness, yet there remained the terrible sensation of a plunge. Terminal velocity, he thought. I’m a meteor. I’m dead. This is it. Oh, God, if you’re real… please… I don’t want to die out here. I don’t want to die.
There came another bang, a shotgun blast of sound. Immediately, Brett felt himself gain seven times his body weight, and he fell unconscious.