Star of Fire 火星 Mars Space People

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Part 1. The Road Runner

For long-duration space flights such as Mars, the crews would be confined inside their spacecrafts for nearly a year. With so much time on their hands, they’d react like…other normal human beings; they’d want sexual diversion. It is therefore unrealistic to plan future flights without coming to grips with the problem of women. Naturally the women would be fully operational crewmembers…not only there for sex. - NASA Administrator, Charles Berry, M.D.
America was like the proverbial donkey stuck between two haystacks; design a heavy lift vehicle required for a direct throw of the habitat to Mars or perfect the next-generation nuclear drive vehicle which promised a shorter transition to Mars and the capability to go to the asteroids and beyond. Both of these technologies had been developed in the 60s by NASA, which terminated the programs and dispersed the expertise. The first manned habitat launch was supposed to be based on using a nuclear propulsion vehicle during the transition to Mars; when the nuclear propulsion vehicle’s schedule slipped, there was a belated attempt to develop a heavy lift vehicle using the Shuttle engines and the Shuttle external tank (the original Ares design). NASA’s new administrator, Michael Griffin, entertained the use of Earth and lunar/Mars orbital rendezvous approaches for lunar and Martian exploration. Two years after the initially-scheduled launch the Ares V heavy lift stack was used to launch the Road Runner habitat direct to Mars.
The Russians had launched two of the prepositioned assets on Mars, the Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) at Mars Site 1 and an Earth return vehicle (ERV) at Yellowstone – Mars Site 2. The first stage of the Russian heavy lift Energia used older, low-tech components. The Americans had launched the habitat at Mars Site I direct from Canaveral. Kerosene and liquid oxygen powered the Energia heavy lift vehicle’s first-stage rocket engines. Hydrogen would have been better but liquid hydrogen has its own problems. Hydrogen is less dense (needs more storage space per pound) and is a hard cryogenic liquid fuel – needs to be chilled much cooler than methane or oxygen. Call hydrogen the Houdini fuel. Hydrogen, like liquid helium, will seep out of any cell, pipe or fitting. And finally, hydrogen is highly explosive in any atmosphere supporting human beings.

The Road Runner, November 2012

Because of the delays in the launch of the Road Runner habitat to Mars, the Road Runner crew had been together for five years before their trip to Mars had even left the surface of the Earth. All five knew the remaining four better than they had ever wanted to know anybody. First names were used during training since that would be the procedure used off world. NASA had delayed the launch of Road Runner for one Martian year (one Martian year = 686 Earth days), time that was well spent improving the Road Runner and the launch booster/secondary stage stack.
The interplanetary nuclear propulsion unit still wasn’t ready so a modified Ares/Centaur heavy lift stack launched the Road Runner to Mars. Training with the Chinese Cheng Ho No Wings trainer, aka the Grasshopper, had put some reality into their simulator training. Additional training flights in a stripped down ERV had shown that their simulator training would be adequate. The two command pilots and one of the military pilots each had ten low-altitude ERV launches and landings as pilot-in-command (PIC), with 2 flights as PIC for the JAFOs (just another observer), the mission scientists, in Jiuquan, China. Before the launch to Mars, all five crewmembers had had two to 5 months in the weightlessness of the International Space Station. Let’s not forget that the two commanders and Major Worthley had been commanders on the resurrected shuttle.
Space people live and think in inertial space, cold micro gravity and lack of atmosphere, not aerospace. The newest class of astronauts felt they were better trained and had better equipment than the Apollo astronauts. The launch of the Road Runner from Cape Canaveral had been spectacular and flawless – not even the usual delays to settle the nerves of some system engineer had occurred. An ERV for returning the astronauts from Mars and a habitat had landed successfully on Mars. A second ERV had been launched from Kazakhstan two weeks before the Road Runner on a slower and more efficient orbital transfer ellipse. The 2^nd ERV would be inserted into low Martian orbit several weeks after the Road Runner landed, allowing a last minute selection of the landing site. A site selected on the ground should be better than one picked from orbit. Moving a site that was found to be unsatisfactory would be time-consuming and difficult.
The Road Runner was predominantly an American project with the exception of a few European and Japanese research-oriented packages. The ERV design was totally American. The feel-good international cooperation in the International Space Station had soured during NASA’s efforts with the cash-strapped Russians. Seemingly by chance, this crew was lily-white; this would be the new AMERICAN frontier, in capital letters. [Possession of a common cultural heritage was one of the flight crew selection criteria.] There were six flags on the moon and every one was Old Glory. Yes, the first flag on Mars would have 50 stars. Hoo rah.

Chapter 1. Commander Elton “Al” Hollis

Vertigo, 1975

Lieutenant Al Hollis entered the Aviation Medicine building behind the dispensary for his first training in the physiology of flight. Al was two months into primary flight training at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in the Florida panhandle. Fifteen of the air cadets milled around two technicians standing laterally to a chair that looked like it came right out of a barber’s shop, except for the Disneyland-style large arm rests extending and curling towards each other near the front of the chair.
The cadets were told not to stand up after the chair stopped spinning. Al sat in the chair with his head resting on his legs facing to his left. The technicians spun the chair around several times and abruptly stopped its rotation. Al was told to sit up. His face went blank and his eyes twitched from left to right. Al’s mind left the premises – classical vertigo symptoms. As Al tried to stand up he reacted to a sensation of falling backwards, overcorrected and fell forward. The technicians caught Al as he lurched forward; they’d been through this scenario before. As Al watched the other cadets take their turn he hated the experience. Loosing control of one’s mind and aircraft just hadn’t been something that he had thought could happen to him. The other physiological compromise that threatens aviators is more insidious – hypoxia.

Altitude Chamber

Al cast a weary eye at the cylindrical chamber designed to expose potential aviators to reduced atmospheric pressure and explosive decompression. Ten of the aviators entered the chamber with five acting as spotters, keeping their oxygen masks on, while the other five were subjected to pencil and paper tests as the pressure altitude of the chamber was increased [air pressure decreased]. Some cadets were giggling in the euphoria of hypoxia, observing their blue fingernails and the occasional tremor of their hands and fingers. The cadets could see, after donning their oxygen masks, that they had failed their pencil and paper maze-tests miserably – without even realizing it while under physiological compromise. Explosive decompression can cause the bends, the diver’s disease, releasing dissolved nitrogen into the blood. The bubbles of nitrogen can cause permanent capillary and nerve damage as well as the well-known pain in the joints.
The thrust of the Ares V heavy lift booster had been the limiting factor in the weight of the Mars habitat. Even after all the hours spent in conferences by psychiatrists, psychologists and medical doctors, thousands of emails and hours of talk radio, the fairing measured 25 feet in width by 3 stories – ergo 5 crewmembers. Commander Hollis knew how far off some of the FBI-generated criminal profiles had been in the past; now he was living within a NASA political consensus – the crew would consist of a strong commander with two married couples. Odd man out, he was more of a bachelor than a warrior often separated from his family. He had got his acceptance into astronaut training before the bomb dropped – the remaining four astronauts of the primary crew would be married couples. Damn, damn the politicians, experts, psychologists and psychiatrists. The candidate pool had shrunk considerably. How many qualified astronauts had spouses that were worth their fare to Mars?
His wife had been reasonable enough not to divorce him before he got this assignment. Maybe she thought there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Bitch that she is, she probably thought I’d be messing around with little green women. A military career is hard on any marriage, but some couples just click. He and Melinda had never adjusted to each other, even though the sexual attraction had always been there. Hollis believed that if thoughts and prayer could kill, his wife would have snuffed him a long time ago. The arrival of the kids removed all thoughts of divorce and he and Melinda tolerated each other. If this tin can just got him to Mars, he would be the leader of the first mission to Mars. The next notch in his pistol, by command prerogative, would make him the first man to leave his footprints on Mars. There’s only a fifty/fifty chance that I’ll come back from this mission.
Screw the academic elitists. Hollis’ world was black and white with no room for moonbeams. Political decisions were above his pay grade. Apply firepower and maneuver to close with and destroy the enemy. Occupy the dirt you have captured and await further orders. He knew he had been the second choice for this command; Commander Leitershofer had turned down the job because his kids were in Little League. Well, his oldest boy Fred was in Little League too and his daughter would probably make the state finals in gymnastics. So what? One by one, he passed the weaker troops on the pyramid. Now he was babysitting two couples that spent their whole time burning up his food and oxygen, by exercising, practicing extravehicular activities inside the spacecraft and screwing. His crew did more docking maneuvers in a week than all the astronauts in the world had performed before this flight. What a fall this was from commanding a flight of Marine F-18s in Kuwait. Semper Fi. Was there any chance of there being some giant bugs or dragons to fight on Mars?

Backup Crew

Commander [Colonel] Leavitt was the biggest suck up and Bubba of the bunch. Hollis knew that Leavitt was involved in getting the Lawrences and Bradleys assigned to him instead of a real crew. He loved calling Leavitt his backup. The only immediate joy Hollis got from his crew was the certain knowledge of the agony and frustration (Dare he say rage?) that the selection of his crew as the primary crew over Leavitt’s second-rate crew had produced in the backup crew. Leavitt’s crew was NEXT to the best; my crew is the best.

Chapter 2. Launch

Being a habitat vehicle, the Road Runner’s job as a spacecraft would be finished when it touched down on Mars. Fuel would have to be transferred from the Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) to enable a stripped-down habitat flight into Martian orbit, a contingency plan that wasn’t likely to be implemented. The vehicle prepositioned on the Plymouth landing site, a MAV, was rarely called by either its official name or the corresponding NASA acronym by the crew. An ERV was capable of landing on and taking off from Mars; rendezvousing in Martian orbit would be unnecessary. The MAV vehicle would be named later. It had nothing to do with superstition – why provoke Fate? Returning to Earth seemed to be an afterthought, something far in the future. The MAV in the landing area had refueled itself, creating methane and oxygen from reactant hydrogen transported from the Earth and carbon dioxide from Mars. The second vehicle, an ERV, had touched down about 90 kilometers from the first at a site that would later be called Yellowstone Caverns after the American national park where extreme microbes had been found to exist in its hot springs. The cameras of the Caidin orbiter caught the image of a strange cloud – it could only be a venting of water. Mission Control, wanting to believe that it was the periodic eruption of a Martian geyser, called the occurrence, which was never seen again, Old Faithful. The Road Runner crew would determine if the next group of astronauts and the Sparrow habitat would land at the Yellowstone site.
The Road Runner wasn’t pretty. The two command pilots thought a vehicle should be elegant, something a spacecraft usually isn’t. Road Runner was as pretty as a midwestern water tower and just as functional. The astronauts were well aware that the Russian technicians at Kaikonur, Kazakhstan called the Road Runner a honey wagon. That Russian description upstaged the German magazine, Der Spiegel, which called the Road Runner a large garbage can.

Chapter 3. Trans-Mars Injection (TMI)

Communication in Earth orbit is easy, one ground station after another. Soon after leaving Earth orbit, the Road Runner would be dependent on the three giant deep space network dishes, spaced approximately 120 degrees apart around the Earth. The Gladstone dish, located in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, was the closest deep space dish to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The astronomers at the Green Bank [Telescope] antenna in West Virginia would use their superior technology to upstage the three dishes any time that they could.
The single stage TMI expendable hydrogen/oxygen Centaur II vehicle inserted the habitat into its outbound trajectory to Mars with a second burn. Nuclear thermal propulsion would be available for later missions and would speed up the interplanetary leg, but that scenario had retreated into the future. The best use of the nuclear propulsion units would be to refuel them and park them in space rather than using them as expendables. Rendezvousing with orbital vehicles such as the nuclear propulsion modules presents its own problems.
Hollis: Centaur TMI separation.
Public Affairs Officer: TMI separation confirmed.
Hollis: Goodbye Earth. See ya all later.
Public Affairs Officer: The Road Runner is on its way to Mars.
The Road Runner escaped the grizzly-bear hug/embrace of the home planet, coasting out of the Earth’s gravitational influence. The Earth and its moon shrunk to points, two of many points of light on the celestial sphere dominated by the sun.

Chapter 4. The Rock Doc

What was it about Major (Doctor) Wesley “Bucky” Lawrence? wondered Colonel Arnold Stahlman, Major Lawrence’s commanding officer. There were no traffic violations or disorderly conduct reprimands in his personnel folder. It wasn’t his flying ability – he had been first in his class in primary flight training. He was in perfect shape and had been captain of his wrestling team during high school in Thousand Oaks, California. Something like a fat lip or black eye didn’t bother him in the least. He had commented in his last promotion interview that he often won his high school wrestling matches because he was in better shape, not because he was the better wrestler. What did his living with a Chinese classmate at Boston University medical school for two years say about the tin man? The girl had been whisked away by her parents soon after graduation and she had interned in Toronto. That was the end of that story.
Wesley’s father had been the commanding officer for the 334^th Flight Refueling Wing of the California Air National Guard based out of March Air Force Base. Wesley enlisted as an avionics technician on the C-141B transport, when his father was a squadron commander at the 445^th Transport Wing at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix. Wesley went to basic training at Black Lac, Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, finishing off the summer milling around the maintenance hanger at Sky Harbor in Phoenix, taking flights wherever he could. He finished one semester at Arizona State University before he got his orders for avionics technician school with a specialty in inertial navigation systems and flight controls. The avionics school had been just a good refresher course for him since he had already completed his father’s Air Force avionics correspondence courses for high school projects. After returning to Arizona State a chance attendance at a paleontology seminar changed his major from geology to geopaleontology during his junior year. A course in planetary geology caused him to consider the stars and space.
There was a freeze on applications for pilot training in the Air National Guard as Wesley prepared for graduation and he couldn’t find any other commissioned slots in any Air National Guard or Air Reserve unit that he was qualified for. Wesley applied to some medical schools as well as for an Air Force scholarship for medical school. The interviewers from the medical school admission boards were very skeptical about his career goals. He was most likely the only applicant for medical school in the world pursuing a degree in geopaleontology. (Wesley would not be the first geologist/astronaut – PhD Jack Schmidt of Apollo 17 had already picked up rocks on the moon – “Oh, what a lovely day… there’s not a cloud in the sky.”) Finally, he got a tentative Air Force flight surgeon scholarship (which probably turned the tide on his admission application to medical schools) and he was admitted to Boston University medical school in the People’s Republic of Beantown (Boston). Damn. So screw the UC medical schools and Stanford. Returning to Phoenix (Luke Air Force Base) after interning at Boston City Hospital, he tried to squeeze into flight training at his advanced age of 27. Okay, it was his father’s connections that got him in.

Craig Air Force Base

When Wesley reported for primary flight training his younger classmates critically watched his every move. The doctor had had a free ride in medical school from the Air Force. Now the old fart expected a free ride in flight school. The resentment was especially strong among the Old Boys’ Net from the Air Force Academy. They had had to earn their admission into the Air Force Academy and then into primary flight training. Now Captain Lawrence was their flight leader because of his seniority.
The first few weeks cured all misgivings from the kids. Captain Lawrence was competitive but didn’t have an observable ego. He was a better athlete than most of the Academy jocks and seemed to run just for the fun of it. He acted like he had been brought up on an airport, which he had. His father’s unit of F-4 Phantoms was posted in Germany for his father’s single active duty tour in the Air Force. It became obvious to the other pilot trainees that it wasn’t just his father’s connections but his nurturing as well – Captain Lawrence had been only four years old when his father’s German friends at Lage Lechfeld, near Augsburg, Bavaria, had requested his father’s and his assistance in aligning the wheels of a Luftwaffe Tornado fighter/bomber.
Lawrence went to kindergarten in Germany. German children start school a year earlier than American kids, so Wesley was usually the youngest kid in his classes when he returned to the real world. He lost a year completing his undergraduate studies for his premed requirements and his training in the Arizona Air National Guard. The experiences in Germany had broadened his view of the world.
Something was missing – a killer instinct, the charisma of leadership, responsibility – he was a technician plain and simple. And don’t trust anybody that doesn’t drink. [Wesley didn’t drink on religious grounds.] Lawrence’s obligatory beer at Happy Hour or at a promotion party didn’t fool him. Lawrence collected degrees and honors, not friends. Now he had to recommend him for astronaut training.
The letters of recommendation from two active duty Air Force generals and Senator McCain were negatives for Colonel Stahlman. Well, good luck. Pilots and especially astronauts hate doctors.

Chapter 5. Queen of Mars

Major Agatha “Aggi” Worthley was an American citizen because her mother was American. Her mother Mary met her Australian father Warren when he was surfing in California via Hawaii. Mary made fun of his stories of 10-meter waves on the north side of Oahu and she conned him into taking a surfing trip to Monterey Peninsula. Mary thought dodging in and out of the spikes of rock in Monterey Bay was a blast and soon Warren, against his better judgment was doing the same. Instant companions for life. Against all odds, the Homo sapiens couple lived long enough to reproduce.
Aggi was raised at her father’s ranch in southern Australia but went to live with her mother’s brother in Santa Cruz to increase her chances of getting into an American university. She got into Stanford, Harvard and the Air Force Academy. Against all her best friends’ advice she went to the Academy. After all, Colorado Springs, Colorado was close to all the best skiing. And flying machines.
Major James Wentworth, as a member of the Academy admissions committee, went to see Aggi’s high school team play beach volleyball in the California State Finals during his screening process. Aggie’s report card and letters of recommendation indicated that he was dealing with a nerd that would be better off at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Caltech. A 6-foot Amazon roller-bladed into the court wearing a halter and what might pass for a bikini. Fortunately she put on a shirt and shorts before the matches began. Aggie attacked the ball as if she was involved in a personal vendetta with it. Now this is what the Academy needs. Wentworth’s recommendation was high in superlatives, even for an Air Force Academy recommendation.
Major/Doctor Lawrence looked at the possibilities. Being single was now a negative, as far as becoming an astronaut going to Mars was concerned. Of the six female pilots, two were married and two weren’t astronaut material. That left the Australian and the Patsy Cline look-alike from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He’d start at the top of the list. The Australian was a good-time girl – what would she see in him? Dr. Lawrence kept reminding himself that his uncle Ket always said faint heart never won fair maiden. He would have preferred the approach of some of the pre-historic cavemen that he had studied at the dig in Ethiopia – boink her on the head and then drag her by the hair to his cave. The major began stalking his prey.

Initial Moves

The good doctor spotted Aggi (How had he become so familiar with a colleague?) three times in the cafeteria, but she was never alone and always seemed to be in a hurry. It would have to be at the Officers’ Club. Aggie walked into the room like she owned the place – not a brisk walk, an aggressive feline walk, a body-language expression of confidence. She wore her curly, almost kinky hair in a pigtail. Her face projected at you, not peeking out past curls or strands of hair. Major Hanson was sitting with two of the female pilots. “Now’s as good a time to as any make an fool of yourself,” he mumbled to himself. Oh no, one of the men is walking over to the table. Major Lawrence did a right hand turn as the obstructive pilot snapped a one-liner to the table and kept on a heading to the men’s room. Major Lawrence did a left turn and turned on final for a straight-in approach to the table. Reduce power and adjust approach speed. He cleaned up his flaps and spoilers at the table.
Never one for small talk he said, “Major Hanson, could I have a word with you?”
“Is it about my physical, Dr. Lawrence?” asked Aggie.
So this is how she thinks of me, thought Bucky. [Bucky had not functioned as a medical doctor during his flight training and was functioning as a fighter pilot full time with medical duties gratis to the Air Force.]
As she stood up, Major Lawrence was barely looking down into her eyes. Brown Raggedy Ann freckles on both cheeks. Freckles on her neckline. Freckles on her … The good doctor caged his eyeballs with a great show of willpower and his eyes remained glued on her bright blue peepers. He only had a one-inch advantage on Aggie and had never been this close to her.
“No,” he said, “it’s something else.” He motioned her to an empty table in the back of the room. They sat down at the table and he started his elevator spiel.
“I’ve got a small ranch in Prescott, Arizona and should make a good living when I work full time as a doctor. I would like to marry you, since it would make it easier for us to become astronauts.” A frown came to Aggi’s face – did she think she was too good for him?
“We wouldn’t have to have sex or anything, just stay together enough to make it appear that we’re married,” he blurted out.
It occurred to Major Hanson that she was having a joke pulled on her so she glanced back at her friends. Her comrades lowered their eyes to their beers. Finding her voice, Aggi asked, “Shouldn’t you be on your knees or something?”
Major Lawrence dropped to one knee and the words came out of a raspy, dry throat, “Major Hansen, will you marry me?”
The bar of the Officers’ Club became quiet except for two tables near the windows whose occupants wouldn’t have been distracted by a daisy-cutter bomb. Major Hansen felt a tinge of vertigo and grabbed for her wits. She asked, “Will you give me your Harley?”
Major Lawrence mulled this over for what seemed to Major Hansen to be minutes. His answer was barely audible. “What was that?” squeaked out of Major Hansen, who had caught the dry throat thing.
“Yes, take the bike.”
Aggi answered formally, “I’ll have to think about it.”
“Please do,” said Major Lawrence, seemingly oblivious to everything around him.
He stood up and walked by the table, heading for the exit. Aggi returned to the table where her two friends were looking up at her for an explanation. Aggi needed and took a drink of her Foster’s Ale.
What’s a girl to do? Two proposals (pronounce that propositions) in as many days. She might just have to hire a secretary to screen and schedule these guys. Back home in Australia it would be a straight forward “let’s spend the night together.” Boys and their toys. Mars and/or Motherhood?
Somewhere inside Major Hansen a constellation of neurons was telling her what her mother had on every opportune moment, your biological clock is running. Major Lawrence was only mildly interesting to her and probably couldn’t dance worth a shit. But first and foremost, you don’t mess around at the office.

Hawg Heaven

Major Lawrence had to wait 12 days for an answer to his proposal. Major Aggi Hansen kept the email quite terse to avoid any misinterpretation of its meaning.
Dear Major Lawrence,
If you could bring my Harley to the Female Bachelor Officers Quarters at 17:00 Friday, we could discuss your proposal. You may use the left saddlebag for your personal effects. Later.
Major Hansen
Major Lawrence parsed the message carefully. They would be going somewhere requiring extra underwear. He had the left saddle bag so he would be pilot-in-command. She was going to let him drive under supervision, but he had the advantage. He would have Aggi on the Harley where lack of physical contact wouldn’t be possible. A little crank of the throttle and she’d either be glued to him or sitting with her pretty butt on the highway. [Aggie, an experienced hunter, was giving the major enough bait to hook himself on, the Tender Trap.] The possibilities were exothermic and infinite.
The ride from Nellis Air Force Base south through Vegas relaxed Aggi and she leaned her head on Bucky’s back. The purr of the Harley was soothing. She could feel Bucky’s hard abdominal muscles even in their relaxed state. The desert sun was at right angles to the highway running south to Laughlin. Aggie realized that her presence was distracting Bucky and found his attempts at self-control amusing. [Deleted some hanky-panky on the motorcycle that couldn’t get by my editors – astronauts don’t engage in such behavior in respectable novels or in real life.]
The couple continued south with their personal world changed. Mother Nature, in her mysterious way had created a solid bond between the two. Although Major Hansen told herself that the screening tests would continue, she had made her decision.

Laughlin

Aggi had reserved two motel rooms in Bullhead City, Arizona across the Colorado River and time zone delimitation from Laughlin, Nevada. The motel was seedy looking, but the ground level rooms were open to the parking lot – the Harley could be parked inside Bucky’s room. After checking into their rooms, they ran across the street during a small break in the traffic. There was an excellent Mexican restaurant across the street with a patio facing the Colorado River and the casinos across the river/state line. The El Indio restaurant had an especial of a grande shredded beef chimachanga.
Their waiter responded to Aggi’s question about ale, “A la verdad, we have Foster’s. Porque no?”
They caught a river ferry after dinner and went to a show featuring impersonations of the singing stars of the 50s. Back at the motel, they went straight to Bucky’s room. There had been no discussion about the reasonableness of their sleeping together.
Aggi was snoring gently as Bucky glanced out the window at the moon over the neon lights of Laughton. He had been a fool, seeing Aggi almost every day and doing nothing about it. A man meets women every day that he’d like to spend the night with. Over time he even meets several that he’d be willing to marry in a marriage of convenience but Aggie was the one. Aggie would be his mate even if he had to give up flying and get a real job. Life really knew how to throw curve balls.

Honeymoon Down Under

The aborigine shaman abruptly stopped his hypnotic low-frequency chant. He moved close to Aggi and grabbed her hand. He looked into Aggie’s eyes with a start. The shaman’s chant was almost inaudible.
“There will be a girl with snake eyes. You are the mother/protector of snake eyes. You are crowned the Queen of the Blood World. You are the Mother of the Blood World. Be careful while near water – it can be dangerous. There is a light girl who runs, climbs and speaks in tongues. That is as far as there is light.” The shaman moved to Bucky and continued his droning.
Two photographs appeared in the National Enquirer the next day. The first was a frontal picture of the couple, nude to the waist, painted in aborigine ceremonial designs. Major Hansen’s bare breasts were sanitized by an airbrush. [The original photograph was posted at many sites on the Web, including the Enquirer space page.] The second photo showed the couples’ backs. Bucky’s back had a stylized Mars symbol – a circle with a spear. The spear was shaped like a trident – three barbs and had a broader and longer shaft than was usually depicted. Aggi’s back was painted with the corresponding Venus symbol – a mirror. The circle was replaced by an ellipse with its major axis 30° to the horizontal.
Aggie got pregnant as launch time approached – it was obvious that the Road Runner wouldn’t be ready. The backup astronauts polished their acceptance speeches for the delayed launch, twenty-six months in the future. NASA put its best spin in their press releases describing the pregnancy of the second-in-command of their primary flight crew to Mars. Leitershofer, Aggie, Hollis and Leavitt were the original short list of potential commanders for the initial Mars mission.
Aggie dedicated a scrapbook to articles and cartoons concerning her pregnancy – her favorite was a baby floating freely in amniotic fluid holding its umbilical cord in one hand, surrounded by the torso of a pregnant astronaut floating in space holding an umbilical to an Apollo-era space capsule.
Aggie’s schedule was cut back and she was surprised by Commander Hollis’ support, even though her pregnancy would most likely cost their crew the flight to Mars. Hollis got into a fistfight with astrophysicist Fran Belanger of the backup crew, when Fran made a remark about having a baby crying for its midnight feeding on the Road Runner.

Chapter 6. Transit

Mars the desert planet. The Road Runner fell upwards, coasting from the Earth to Mars. The blue-and-white (and brown) marble of Earth faded to a blue point as the rusty marble Mars grew to a disk. Mars, the god of war, seemed to be warmly greeting the five Earthlings to their new home. Two married couples and the commander, all American. Was Mars a flame beckoning a space moth to its doom, the Road Runner destined to become one more piece of Earth junk to be added to the international debris field on the far side of the planet? Three mid-course corrections were accomplished, tweaking their ascent. NASA Mission Control informed the Road Runner that the Chinese manned flight to Mars had been cancelled for this opposition. The Road Runner was in the lead of the race to Mars.
Major Bradley was looking at the red spot that was Mars when he spotted something that looked like a comet. It was moving too fast to be a distant object and he called Commander Hollis over to the port. The object looked like a blend of Northern Lights and the silk veils of a belly dancer. The reflected (?) light shimmered like real Northern Lights in a life-like manner, reminding Hollis of a flimsy Portuguese man-of-war (jellyfish). It was impossible to judge the object’s distance, velocity or size as it passed into the blind spot of the habitat, out of sight. Reggie remembered the ribbing that his flight crew had endured after they had reported a formation of foo fighters (lights) off the coast of Salvador, Brazil. The dancing light phenomenon was duly recorded in the ship’s log but has never been satisfactorily explained.

Chapter 7. The Bradley Family – Sonja Hughes

Sonja was the youngest of four girls born to Wichita farmer/aerospace engineer Harold Hughes and his wife Annette. Harold migrated to Wichita after receiving a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Iowa in Iowa City via Rockwell-Collins in Cedar Rapids. He was doing well financially with his GI Bill money from Uncle Sam and flight pay from flying Thuds (F-105 Thunderchiefs) with the Kansas Air National Guard. He had flown F-4D Phantoms during his 6-year active duty tour. The farm mortgage had been paid off for years and Sonja and her older sister Cynthia acquired an adjacent farm. The farms didn’t always make money and Harold’s overtime bonuses varied with the ups and downs of the aerospace industry. Boeing-Wichita understood that the harvest came first and that aviation was a day job to its farmer/employees. The engineers transferred from Seattle rarely stayed in Wichita much longer than the year required to qualify for their resettlement bonuses.
Sonja was a tomboy who learned to dance from her mother and three older sisters, all of whom had earned considerable wages as dancers, even when they were students. Sonja was a natural gymnast and had the long legs of a classical dancer. Gymnastics fell by the wayside when her breasts began hitting the horizontal bar.
Sonja’s next oldest sister, Cynthia, got pregnant with her high school boy friend when she was twenty. Motherhood put an end to her professional dancing career but she managed to finish her junior year at Wichita State. She moved into the baby Hughes farm with her new husband, an avionics engineer at Boeing.

Tornado Alley

Sonja jump-started her dancing career while still a junior in high school with the help of Cynthia’s driver’s license. Sonja’s mother and her sisters rarely used make-up except for a hint of lipstick. She went to her employment interview dressed in one of Cynthia’s dresses and wearing one of Cynthia’s wigs. Her make-up was excessive and she talked like a girl from the San Fernando Valley. When the owner examined her face with a suspicious look after a scan of her license, Sonja pulled off her wig revealing her short brown hair. There were two shifts of dancers on Friday, because of the noon lunch and happy hour, something that usually resulted in a shortage of dancers. Rosebud, the owner, looked over her customers – young engineers from Boeing and enlisted men from McConnell Air Force Base, pointed to the dressing room and said, “No time like the present. I’ll give you a tryout right now.” Sonja became a regular dancer at the Alley for the next three years, through her last two years in high school and one year at Wichita State.
Transferring to the University of Kansas with a major in pre-med forced her to transfer to a new bar called the Galaxy in Kansas City. Sonja could only dance at the Alley during summer vacations. A third personality evolved - that of a serious medical student. Sonja was expanding her horizon to the frontier of her flat mid-continent state.

Eye Candy

Captain Bradley brought his technicians to the Tornado Alley lounge to celebrate their being awarded a unit citation for their performance in the Operational Readiness Evaluation during the Reforger winter maneuvers in Germany. The crew was sitting at the best seats in the house, the chairs ringing the stage. The major had been to girlie shows all over the world but the Alley fit his sensibilities the best. Youth and nudity couldn’t top dancing talent in his book. Sergeant Valentine insisted that he had to see Cynthia, his favorite. Valentine was right as usual – Cynthia mimed the words of her accompanying music and seemed to direct her gestures right at Captain Bradley when she danced. He and Sergeant Valentine became Friday afternoon regulars at the Alley. Valentine called Cynthia over to their table about a month after they had become regulars and introduced her to Reggie. Reggie thought he was in love, lust or something in between.
Reggie finally got up enough nerve to ask Cynthia for a date and she flatly told him that she didn’t date customers. Reggie’s reply was that he’d have to stop being a customer brought a smile. Next month, after another non-serious request for a date, she said that she was going to a Boeing engineering union social and he could come, if he wanted to. He wanted to.
Reggie agreed to follow her van with his Ford F-150 pickup to the union hall in Derby. Reggie could see her dressing in the darkness of her van. Finally Reggie heard the engine of her van start up and he followed her south from the lounge. They turned into an unpaved parking lot in front of a non-descript building. The parking lot was almost full. Reggie walked over to Cynthia’s van and a strange woman jumped out of the van. The war paint (makeup) was gone. Could this be the evil twin sister of soapy fame? Was Cynthia’s body in the van wrapped in a body bag?
This girl had short brown hair, no false eyelashes and was wearing a tractor jacket and a denim dress that covered her kneecaps. She ignored his look of disbelief and grabbed his hand. She stopped dragging him after about twenty feet and turned to face him, “Oh, and the name’s Sonja.” What happened to the San Fernando Valley girl? They walked into a cavernous meeting room and sat at one of the large tables. Reggie noticed a lot of white shirts and Boeing/union pocket protectors filled with two rows of pens.
An elderly couple entered with a woman who was obviously their daughter. The man walked over to Sonja and greeted her. “Evening, Sonja. Who do we have here?” he asked.
“Dad, this is Reggie Bradley. Reggie’s at McConnell. My father, Harold. Dad works at Boeing.”
Harold glanced at Reggie’s chronometer (watch) and asked, “What do you fly?”
“KC-10s. Did you fly?” replied Reggie.
“I still do, but they won’t let me fly the fighters anymore at the Kansas Air National Guard. They made me a maintenance officer. The last real aircraft that I flew were Thuds (Thunderchiefs, F-105s). Now I have to make do with our JetStars. I’m working on an update to the B-52s at Boeing. Are you familiar with the update?”
“Vaguely, but I’d be happier with a new bomber, instead of another update,” answered Reggie.
Harold introduced the rest of his family as his wife and daughter walked over. “My wife Annette and my daughter Cynthia,” said Harold.
Reggie glanced at Sonja and said, “Glad to meet you folks. I’m Reggie Bradley.” They sat down and the family and town gossip began. Reggie was included as much as possible. Annette studied her daughter and Reggie.
“Are you a doctor?” asked Mrs. Hughes. “Sonja’s going to be a great doctor when she gets out of school.”
“No Ma’am, I’m a pilot. Doctor?”
“I’m a medical student at the University of Kansas,” explained Sonja. Facades faded as Sonja and Reggie’s eyes locked. Reggie fell in love with the Cynthia persona.

Chapter 8. Reginald Melvin Bradley

Reggie had always wanted to fly. The first real plane that he saw as a boy was a crop duster powdering a field on his way to school. A demonstration ride and fifteen minutes at the controls in a military C-47 Gooney Bird with his father’s friends reinforced his ambition. Reggie liked planes with a crew to talk to and a spare engine or two or three. His sixteen-page paper on cockpit resource management was well received by the multiple-member crews of the Air Force even though it became the butt of many disparaging jokes from the fighter jocks. Reggie advocated zero tolerance of rogue pilot behavior. Some pilots even cracked caustic jokes contending that the suck up paper had been instrumental in his selection as an astronaut.
Reggie had enjoyed his short stint flying B-1s but got out as soon as he could by volunteering for a reduction-in-force cutback in B-1 pilots. B-1s never flew anywhere interesting and transports provided more flying time. He didn’t want to see Bagdad this way, anyway. Reggie had no other ambition but to retire from the Air Force before he got a desk job, get a slot in the Air National Guard or reserve flying C-141B transports or tankers and fly full-time as an airline pilot. After that he would retire to his maple tree farm in West Virginia and work as a volunteer at the Smithsonian Aviation Museum at Dulles International Airport. One uniform was as good as another as long as he was flying. His acceptance into the astronaut corps surprised him more than it did the bypassed aviators.

The Grotto, San Luis Obispo

Reggie dropped his suitcase and the couple engaged in a long deep kiss and embrace. Reggie opened the door and a blue hue escaped from the dark room. Reggie picked Sonja up and carried her across the threshold of the special honeymoon suite. The music was a recording made by the musician formerly known as Prince.
A dancing cage hung from a high, mirrored ceiling; a canopied bed and a transparent bar with a silver champagne cooler completed the room’s furnishing. The walls were all stone with no windows. Sonja guessed that she was going to have to sing for her supper.

Astronaut Flight Surgeon

Sonja had a Young Eagles flight and minutes at the controls of light aircraft when she was selected to be an astronaut-scientist. Reggie got her two orientation flights in a T-34 Mentor and a T-38 Falcon. She spent two weeks of leave time at home in Wichita with the military flying club at McConnell Air Force Base progressing to the solo cross country flight. She reported to Williams Air Force Base for primary training with trepidation until she was greeted at the terminal by the younger brother of her high school boyfriend. Gerard had had a crush on her in junior high and would be in her flight during training. Sonja would always consider this the best year of her life in spite of the separation from Reggie who was busy with his shuttle flights.

Chapter 9. Orbiting Mars

Three days out from Mars a short burst from the habitat’s rocket engines inserted the Road Runner into a minimum energy orbital capture path. Commander Hollis manually fired up the main thrusters to perform the insertion into a low orbit. The elliptical insertion orbit allowed the thin atmosphere of Mars to slow the Road Runner to orbital speed using a minimum amount of fuel. The flight crew settled into the programmed orbital-braking routine. Each time the spacecraft passed close to Mars, dipping into the denser atmosphere, slowed the habitat’s velocity in its elliptical orbit until the orbit became nearly circular. The atmosphere glowed with the passage of the spacecraft through its denser parts. The Apollo astronauts had described the corresponding phenomenon in the Earth’s atmosphere as “flying in a neon tube.”
Various checklists were completed including the stowing of gear in preparation for the landing. The time between aero braking events gave the crew a lot of time to take in the scenery of their new home. The Red Planet had raised a veil of red dust over its face. The crew was stranded in orbit until the dust storms abetted - so near yet so far.
Public Affairs Officer: Low Mars orbital insertion accomplished. The crew will have to wait for the dust storm to subside.
The barely visible cones of the massive volcanoes slowly penetrated the dust clouds and the other features of Mars revealed themselves. The top of the dust cloud slowly dropped into Valles Marineris. Two weeks later Houston cleared the Road Runner to commit to a landing.
Public Affairs Officer: The Road runner has been cleared to deorbit.

Chapter 10. the ice, 2010

The turbulent Southern Ocean surrounds the frozen continent of Antarctica. Antarctica is twice the size of Australia, terribly beautiful with two thirds of the world’s fresh water frozen in its ice cap. Half of the land in Antarctica is above 6500 feet and remains relatively untouched by man. Antarctica is so inhospitable that the majority of scientists and tourists visit Antarctica during the austral summer, winter in Europe.
The polar regions of Mars can be compared to those of the Earth, with careful regard to where the analogy fails. With days of comparable length and a similar offset of its rotational axis on the ecliptic plane, we would expect similar growing and melting cycles of the polar caps as on the Earth. Mars’ mean orbit is about 1.52 times that of the Earth making the Martian year a little more than twice the length of an Earth year. The greater distance from the sun makes Mars much colder than the Earth. The surface pressure of the Martian atmosphere at the Martian surface is less than 1% of that of the Earth, probably the result of its smaller size. The atmosphere is predominately carbon dioxide and its environment is harsh by earthly standards, even Antarctica.
A habitat mockup was transported to McMurdoc Sound on the Antarctic Peninsula by a cargo freighter from Huntsville. The astronauts would take baby steps towards living on Mars by spending four months on the ice, the Antarctic veterans’ description for Antarctica. A portable fish hut protected the crew while they were on the surface from the elements while providing a pair of the astronauts safe access to the silent, icy waters beneath the surface ice. There would be time to scuba recreationally beneath the ice as well as simulating the procedures of operating in the hostile environment of Mars, everything that is, except social isolation. The scientists and workers on McMurdo Sound socialized with a vengeance, given their small number.
The flight crew trained intensely for about two months before Commander Hollis flew to the main base at McMurdo Sound. His friend, Colonel Jonathan “Jon” Harris had a company of Marines training in the mountains near the base and the commander started spending his weekends at their camp.
The CH-63 Sea Stallion helicopter flew in late in the afternoon. It was obvious that the two pilots and Commander Hollis had been drinking in the chopper, the commander to excess. The trio went to the cafeteria for coffee while the crew chief and two gunnies unloaded the helicopter’s cargo.
The Bradleys and the Lawrences were sitting in the back of the cafeteria when the boisterous trio came in and ordered coffee. Commander Hollis stumbled over and greeted them. He spilled some of the contents of the cup of coffee he had ordered on his overcoat and he scowled at the stain. Sonja stood up to steady him and the commander shrugged loose of her hand. “I’m okay. I don’t need any help from any of you, specifically I don’t need any help from any Mickey Mouse doctor,” he said and turned to leave.
Reggie was standing in his way. “Do I hear an apology, Sir?” he asked.
“No, and hell no,” was the commander’s response.
Major Bradley’s right hand started to rise and Hollis saw the right side of Major Bradley’s hip start to rotate. As Hollis ducked to his right, Bradley’s left came out of nowhere, a body blow to the chest. The commander collapsed like a sack of potatoes. Major Bradley wasn’t mad or even pissed off. True to the Iceman handle that he had acquired when he was a young lieutenant, his pulse rate remained flat. The commander simply had insulted the flight crew and his wife, and that required a response. He opened his fly and urinated on his prostrate commander. Piss on the desert planet. Commander Hollis was in no hurry to get up.
The two Sea Stallion pilots started backing up, deserting their fallen comrade, and bumped into Aggie, who was blocking the door. She was three inches taller than either of the pilots. “I want you to check into the guest house for the night,” she directed. “If I see either of you near the chopper tonight, you’ll never fly for the military again. Understood, gentlemen?”
The pilots nodded and retreated hastily into the cold night. “Did you see the size of that broad?” asked Sam, the pilot.
“Yuh, they were magnificent,” answered Alfred Galante, the copilot.
David slapped Alfred on the back of the head. “You’re hopeless.”
Alfred chuckled, pleased with himself for the response his joke had elicited from his senior pilot. Aggie watched the men from the windows in the lounge, wondering what they were talking about.

Chapter 11. The ERV Inspection

Commander Al Hollis accompanied General Zhou of the Chinese PLAAF up the temporary stairs into the second flight-qualified ERV. The ERV was flanked by two engineering prototypes, which didn’t have rockets or fuel tanks. The systems on the prototypes were run by base power but the soon to be launched ERV had four operational high-temperature fuel cell-based power systems. The consumables and reactant hydrogen would be loaded in Russia, just prior to launch. Zhou applied power to the spacecraft flight deck and engineering stations. The ERV would be biologically sanitized and sealed before shipment to the launch site in Russia. Hollis didn’t say so, but he knew that there wasn’t a chance that the Road Runner habitat would be ready to launch. The nuclear propulsion system slated to drive the habitat from Earth orbit to Mars orbit was falling behind schedule. Still, having two space vehicles on Mars with a successful ERV landing on Mars would help the weakening support for the whole expensive program.
Commander Hollis and Major Reggie Bradley were discussing the second ERV made for the Americans by the Chinese. “We’re missing something here,” said Reggie. How were the Chinese doing so much better on their ERV variant than the Americans were with their habitat? In spite of some major glitches with the first MAV sitting on Mars, it was operating well, partially filled with fuel. How did the Chinese know that the rear windows of the rover would fail during thermal stress just by driving the rover around the parking lot? A trip to the environmental testing facility at Eglin Air Force Base had produced the failure immediately. The fuel generation on Mars Site 1 was stopped when it was obvious the generation would be successful, selecting a just-in-time procedure since the generated cryofuel would just bake off and be lost. All in all, the outsourcing of the spacecraft shells and the ERVs to the Chinese seemed to be working out. Zhou’s pilots and engineers had created more than three times the number of engineering change requests (ECRs) than both the NASA and Boeing engineers.
“Sure, we ended up paying extra for implementation of the changes, but any engineer would agree that several of the large changes were needed and added substantially to crew safety and the likelihood of mission completion,” said Reggie.
“I’d just feel better if I knew it was an American-built ERV bringing me back home,” said Commander Hollis but even he had to admit that the Chinese seemed to know the ERV as well as the American astronauts. “Outsourcing certainly carries ‘built by the lowest bidder’ to a new low,” said Reggie.
“Zhou must have an astrologer, he’s so sure and adamant about certain changes,” said the commander, “and those ETs are unnerving. Do you think that they’re religious fanatics?”
Reggie answered, “They just appear to be Chinese teenagers that have been trained extensively in engineering. They seem to have had minimal jet training and the Grasshopper just runs on kerosene and liquid oxygen. Their pilot training doesn’t match ours or even the taikonauts.” The men agreed that all of the crew should get as much training in the Grasshopper as they could get funding for before they returned to Houston to train on the Road Runner simulators.
Zhou recommended putting an extra nuclear electrical generator or more solar panels and an electrolysis plant in the ERV in spite of the theoretical difficulty of extracting water from the permafrost on Mars. Illogically, given the unlikelihood of the Road Runner’s launch during the next launch window, Zhou’s recommendation for additional quantities of food stores to be loaded onto the ERV was granted. Somebody had apparently concluded that the automated systems of the ERV would need a little help and oversight from the humans of the Road Runner and that the astronauts would be spending a lot of time monitoring the processes going on in the ERV. Delivery of the nuclear propulsion stage for transiting from Earth orbit to Martian orbit slipped and the American astronauts went back to their simulator training for another area or Martian year.

Chapter 12. Touchdown

The term Mission Control was a misnomer for a Mars mission; Houston, Texas was a world away. Life and death decisions would be made in real-time on the Road Runner. First Olympus Mons and then the other mountains peeked out at the astronauts. After what seemed to be months of waiting and simulated landings the crew finally got concurrence from Houston to descend. Hollis directed another blast from the small rocket engines and the Road Runner was committed to a landing. Commander Hollis described the progress of the spacecraft as it flew in, mindful that his words would take 14 minutes to reach Mission Control in Houston, and then only if Mars wasn’t in the way. Atmospheric drag continued to decelerate the spacecraft and another short blast from the trimmer rockets selected the area of possible landing sites. The glow from reentry could now be seen, even in the light of the Martian day. The homing beacon had been turned on from Earth several hours ago; the terrain map on the navigation display showed the landing site, Plymouth – Mars Site 1, as a warm, glowing bull’s eye. The shaking seemed to go on forever. When the vibration quieted down enough so that the crew started to sense hopeful signs that they might make it to the surface, Commander Hollis deployed the panels that acted as air brakes. The brown and yellow terra firma (whatever) slowed down its approach and the terrain started to look familiar. The vibrations became even more intense. The pop of the parachutes was the final torment to the crew. They knew that they hadn’t made it.
The commander jettisoned the parachutes manually and things quickly became hectic. Commander Hollis selected a manual landing (what astronaut wouldn’t?) when he saw the roughness of the terrain. A manual landing made the telling of the story more interesting and would allow for embellishments. He slipped the Road Runner to the left and long to line up with the landing site. He thought the terrain looked a little too rough and then he saw the MAV. Lights surrounded the landing area with a large X in the middle. The uncoupled flight director computer was putting them right on the X. Hollis thought he saw a Chinese character beyond the X from the perspective of the Road Runner’s approach path. He headed for the X and landed just 25 meters away. Dust shot away from the flames of the Road Runner rocket engines and the surface became a blur.
Aggi: Contact Light.
Hollis hammered the engine stop button with his fist and the Road Runner landed with a thud.
Hollis: Right, engine stop. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm off.

Hollis: Houston, Mars here. The Road Runner has landed.

Sonja: Commander, there are people on the landing site.
Hollis: Close the video feed to Mission Control. Break all communication. Activate a secure channel with Capcom.
Public Affairs Officer: We have temporarily loss the video signal from Mars. Commander Hollis is maintaining contact by communication radio. Telemetry indicates a perfect landing with no equipment failures.
Public Affairs Officer: Commander Hollis has requested a rest period at this time for the crew after the Road Runner is shut down. Mission Control has approved the rest period for the astronauts.

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