Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (46 page)

            “How about some help?”

            “I’ll see what I can do. Abby, get down to
Kennedy and get CSM-119 and whatever else you can squeeze out of them – a
couple service modules would be nice – on a truck to Boeing. Monday would not
be too soon. Feel free to use the President’s name.”

            “Rog.”

            “Susan, training. As soon as Abby has specs for
the CM, get to work on a new training plan, get the flight parameters from
Gabe. Gabe?”

            Gabe nodded. “I’ll put together tentative launch
plans for anything we might launch on and we can fine tune it once we’ve made a
decision.”

            Susan nodded.

            “Sorry Sue, but for the time being you’re gonna
have to set your flight surgeon hat aside and become an astronaut/pilot,” Jeff
said. “You know the drill, you’ve been in the simulator. We’ll need to
reconfigure to match what Abby comes up with and rewrite the flight manual.
Also, let’s see if we can get some expert advice. Sylvia Creighton was
skeptical, but I thought maybe just a bit jealous. Talk to her. See if we can
get some NASA astronaut technical assistance, even if it’s off the books and
under the table. Also, see if you can make contact with the Apollo and Skylab
astronauts that are still around. See if any of them are willing to drop by for
a chat.”

            “Okay.”

            Jeff smiled and nodded his head. “We’re gonna be
the first people to set foot on Mars. Let’s get this done.”

Saturday, November 9,
2013 (T minus 864 days)

“Boss, we’re ready for you.”

“Thanks Chrissie. Be right down.” In the MCC were
fifteen young university doctoral candidates and post-doctoral researchers
standing around, all seemingly talking at the same time, pointing, oohing and
awing. Jeff walked over to the stage, stepped up and nodded to Abby, wagging
his finger across his throat.

Abby stuck two fingers between her
lips and issued an ear-piercing whistle. “Okay, everybody take a seat!”

As everyone quickly settled down,
Jeff glanced around the room and smiled. “Good morning. Welcome to Wrentham
House. My name is Jeffrey Grey and we’re going to Mars.”

Everyone immediately leaped out of
their seats with thunderous applause.

Jeff motioned them all to sit, and waited a moment for
quiet. “Thank you. The fifteen of you have been selected from more than 6,000
applicants from all over the country – hell, all over the world – to take part
in an adventure the likes of which no one on this planet has ever seen.
Approximately twenty-nine months from now we are going to launch the first
manned mission to Mars. This is a private mission. NASA is not running it, we
are. And we’ll be doing it from right here – this room. Now, you are not NASA
professionals, and neither are we. And that presents all of us with a mighty
challenge because, nevertheless, we are all going to have to think, act and
operate like professionals, because four lives will depend on it. And mine is
one of them.

“I know that not everyone here has
met. I would ask you all to stand one at time and introduce yourself, but
except for Gabe none of us would remember past the second or third person, so
we’ll forego that part and just get to know everyone in due time. I would
however like to introduce you to the crew. First is your boss. This is
Christine Mallory, Chrissie to her friends, but to all of you from now on, she
is FLIGHT, and she is to be addressed and regarded as such – at all times.
Mission Control belongs to her. The redhead by the door with the ear-piercing
whistle is Lieutenant Commander Abigail Nolan. Abby is the Head of Flight
Operations and Command Module Pilot. That tall cool drink of water over there
is Dr. Gabriel Frederick, Ph.D. Gabe is the Head of Engineering, and mission
Flight Engineer and Navigator. We trust in Gabe not to make us a
Lost in
Space
sequel. Finally, over here on my left is Dr. Susan Lú, M.D. Sue is
the Head of Space Medicine, Head of Planetary Operations, Chief Geologist, and,
uh, I dunno, half a dozen other things. And she is our Flight Surgeon.

“Now, you are all volunteers so set
aside any notions you may have of getting rich here. But then you’ve all been
starving students for years now so that’s nothing new. Right?”

There was laughter around the room.

“For your part, over the next two
and a half years there’s really not a whole lot going on. This is practice. A
month from now we’ve got four launches in seven days to be followed by ten
months of thumb-twiddling and then a few minutes of sheer terror. And then
another sixteen months until things get really interesting – March 2016. From
then until splashdown in October 2018, this room will be manned seven by
twenty-four. Not fully staffed, but at least someone sitting FLIGHT; you might
say, a Watch Officer. It’s now November 2013. October 2018, in case you have
difficulty with higher math, is just about five years from now. Yes, we are
asking for a long-term commitment from you. We understand that things will come
up and that not all of you will be here at the end. If you need to pull out,
we’ll understand. But PLEASE, understand how important this is, which I presume
you do because you’re here. If you need to pull out, please give us as much
warning as possible.

“Alright, I’ve gone on long enough,
I’ll turn this over to FLIGHT who will explain what’s going to happen over the
next week… and years. FLIGHT?”

Chrissie stepped up onto the stage.
“Thanks boss. Okay, now I’m sure you’ve all read the information I sent you, so
there’s no point in going over that again. You know what the basic plan is.
What we are going to do this week is familiarize you with Mission Control
operations. Based on your individual skill sets, I’ve already assigned a few
positions. The rest will start off with luck of the draw. That said, eventually
most of you will be learning several positions. In fact, those of you that stay
with us for the long haul will eventually be sitting at the FLIGHT console as a
Watch Officer, but that’s a long way off.

“Now, something you don’t know is
that we can do all this online. We have the capability for you to login from
your dorm room or apartment and effectively function at your assigned position
just like you were sitting here in the MCC. It is, obviously, not quite as
easy. It’s a little slower and communication between desks is not as easy. But
it can be done. We have no plans to actually do it that way but it is a very
useful training tool. So, what we’ll do is familiarize you with the setup and
the training routines and then send you all on your way and do the rest online.

“Alright, now… let me see, okay,
everybody get up and line up along the wall there and I’ll make the initial
assignments and then we’ll do a launch run-through just so you can see what
it’s like. As I said, most of these aren’t permanent, you’ll eventually rotate
through several seats. Okay, we’ll start from this corner right here.

“Flight Dynamics Officer, FDO or
FIDO, Dr. Paul Ellis, Caltech, Aeronautics.

“Rendezvous & Guidance
Procedures, GUIDANCE, Jerry Oliver, University of Illinois, Applied
Mathematics.

“Ground Controller, GC, Mike
Lindsey, Purdue, Applied Physics.

“Propulsion & Booster, PROP or
BOOSTER depending on what you’re doing, Sheri Boehm, Harvard, Aerospace Engineering.

“Guidance Navigation & Control
Systems, GNC, Dr. Kristy Covby, Virginia Tech, Planetary Science.

“Maintenance, Mechanical & Crew
Systems, MMCS or MAX, Dr. James Springer, Penn State, Astronautics.

“Electrical Generation and
Illumination, EGIL or EAGLE, Dianne Dufour, USC, Applied Mathematics.

“Emergency, Environmental &
Consumables Operations Manager, EECOM, Robert Vandergriff, Georgia Tech,
Applied Mechanics.

“Flight Activities Officer, FAO,
Dr. Joanne Leach, MIT, Astronautics. By the way, whoever is sitting FAO, you'll
also be handling EVAs, extra-vehicular activities, should any take place.

“Instrumentation &
Communications Officer, INCO, Dr. David Barnett, University of Michigan,
Applied Physics.

“We’ll skip FLIGHT for now, that’s
my seat.

“Spacecraft Communicator, CAPCOM,
Carol Hanson, Cal Berkeley, Astronautics. Carol, you’re liable to be a little
bored there as we have no capsule to communicate with in this first round of
launches. But we need to prepare for it anyway.

“Data Processing Systems, DPS or
DIPS, Dr. Wran Chao, Caltech, Computer Science. Wran, might as well make
yourself at home, you’re not going anywhere. This is why you’re here.

“Public Affairs Officer, PAO, Dr.
Heidi Christianson, Caltech, Mechanical Engineering/Aeronautics. Heidi, yeah, I
know, PAO is probably beneath the dignity of a Caltech Ph.D. in Engineering but
we need somebody in that seat that understands what’s going on and speaks the
language. Don’t worry; you’ll rotate out of it.

“Mission Operations Director, MOD,
Dr. Julio Mendoza, Penn State, Aeronautics. Julio, don’t get too excited, MOD’s
not quite as prestigious as it sounds. MOD is our communications with the
outside world, other than PAO. You’ll be dealing with all the entities that,
well, we don’t own: Johnson, Kennedy, the Cape, ULA, SpaceX, blah, blah, blah.
You’ll be particularly busy during launches.

“And finally, Medical Officer,
SURGEON, Rebecca Stockman, Salve Regina, Nursing. Our very own local girl. And
obviously, Rebecca, you’re not going anywhere either. You’ll be working under
the tutelage of our Flight Surgeon, Susan.

“Alright, everybody comfy? Okay,
we’re gonna get right to it and conduct a run-through of launch one. This is an
Atlas V 521 launching from pad LC-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. This
launch will take place four weeks from now on December 7
^th
. We will
commence at T minus 30 minutes and counting.” Chrissie walked back to her
FLIGHT console and initiated the training routine.

Jeff motioned to Abby, Gabe and
Susan, nodded to the door and the four of them met in the ground floor hallway.
“What do you think?”

“There’s an awful lot of talent in
there,” said Abby.

Gabe smiled. “I think Caltech won.”

Jeff laughed. “Duh. I wonder why?”

“I think Chrissie has done a
stupendous job,” Susan offered. “To put all this together, particularly with
her lack of technical background. Wow, what a Herculean effort.”

Jeff nodded. “Agreed. And it will
be recognized.” He shook his head, “I don’t think she’s slept since October.”

Lunch that day consisted of a two-foot
tall stack of pizzas in the MCC but supper for their new crew was a bit more
elaborate. Two twelve-foot dining tables were setup in the dining room and, to
take some of the strain off of them, Jeff had hired a cooking and clean-up
crew. Following small group tours of the house and a social gathering in the
great room, promptly at 7:00 PM everyone was seated for dinner.

Jeff stood and raised his wine
glass. “A toast. Again, I wish to thank all of you for coming and volunteering
for this program. I know it’s going to add greatly to your already considerable
workload, but I trust you will find the experience rewarding and, over the long
haul, beneficial to your careers and future endeavors. As the British general,
Sir Brian Horrocks said to his XXX Corps just prior to launching them into
Operation Market Garden during World War II, this is a story you will tell your
grandchildren, and mightily bored they’ll be. Welcome aboard.” As he took his
seat he asked of the room, “So, how’d it go today?”

There was a chorus of “Good” and
“Great.”

“Ah, no problems?”

“There was one minor glitch,” said
Sheri Boehm, GUIDANCE.

Jeff smiled. “And that was?”

“Well, FLIGHT threw us a curve.
There was an auto-docking failure on the B-Centaur and we discovered it’s not
as easy to drive as it looks. There were a few fender benders. Then Commander
Nolan came in and made it look way too easy.”

Jeff laughed. “Pretty good pilot,
isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“Perhaps sometime on down the road
she can take you up in our Citation and let you experience a little
weightlessness.”

Eyes lit up around the room.

“Oh please,” Abby groaned, “we just
had the upholstery cleaned.”

He smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen,
there are an almost incalculable number of things that can go wrong in a
mission like this, and over the next few years you’re going to see most all of
them in the trainer. And many of them you will see more than once, because you
will have to know what action to take in the event of an actual emergency. It’s
like flying an airplane. Pardon my French but, shit happens, and you have to be
prepared for it. When taking a check flight in an aircraft you haven’t flown
before, you just
know
that the instructor is gonna hit you with an
engine out on a missed approach. It’s like death and taxes, it’s inevitable.
Still, when it happens it scares the living daylights out of you. Well, maybe
not Abby, but it sure scares the hell out of us mortals.”

Gabe nodded. “That’s a fact.”

After dinner the group was shuttled
back to their hotel with instructions to get a good night’s sleep and be
prepared to start up again first thing in the morning. As they pulled out Jeff
turned to Chrissie, “You look beat.”

“Yeah, these past few months have
been pretty hectic.”

“I know. Before you turn in, can I
talk with you for a minute in my office.”

“Sure.”

They walked upstairs and both sat
on the sofa in Jeff’s office.

“I won’t keep you long,” Jeff said.
“I just wanted to tell you that you’ve done a magnificent job with the MCC and
all the preparations. I don’t say ‘thank you’ often enough to you guys, but I’m
saying it now. I hired you as a secretary and, well, because that’s how things
sometimes turn out, asked you to become an aerospace engineer in sixteen months
– all on your own. And you did it.”

Chrissie smiled. “I had a little
help. Gabe and Abby have crammed more knowledge into my head than I thought it
could hold. Sometimes I think my head is about ready to explode.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling. But
Chrissie, you done good.”

“Thanks boss, but that’s what you
pay me for.”

“Yeah, and not nearly enough.” Jeff
stood and walked to his desk. “Starting today, I’m putting you on the same
salary and benefits plan as Gabe, Abby and Sue. You’re every bit as important
to the effort as they are and it’s only fair that you should be adequately
compensated for your work.”

Chrissie’s jaw dropped.

“And to make up for past neglect on
my part, here’s a little bonus.” Jeff handed her a check.

“A hundred thousand dollars?!” she
gasped. “I can’t take this!”

“Sure you can, and you deserve
every penny of it.”

Chrissie got up, gave him a hug and
a kiss on the cheek. “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine my life
would take this path.”

Jeff grinned. “That makes two of
us.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’re going to go to bed and
get some sleep. You’ve got another long day ahead of you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” And she headed for the
door.

“How are they doing?”

She paused at the door. “Good. Real
good. That’s a lot of very smart people.”