Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (57 page)

Gabe leaped up and hugged Jeff. “Oh
my god! It’s there!”

Jeff kissed her. “Told you it’d be
okay. She’s on the ground, alive and well. That’s close enough. Good job.”

“Thanks.”

Abby
and Susan jumped up and joined them.

Jeff gazed into the eyes of each of
them in turn, then nodded and smiled. “We’re going to Mars. We can do it, I
know we can. We’re gonna turn a page in the history books that others have only
dreamed of.”

All three returned smiles and nodded in agreement.

Abby pointed at the screen. “First
image is coming in.”

Jeff looked up at the screen and
watched as the scan lines made up
Pathfinder
’s first image of the Basin.
“Good god!”

Susan gasped. “The sky’s pink.”

“Yep, it sure is, so’s the ground.
And, we’re in the plain.”

Abby shook him. “Home run, boss!
Dunes, small rocks, relatively flat. God, we can navigate that.”

“Yes we can.”

“What direction are we looking?”
said Gabe.

“Um,” he squinted, “it’s
nine-thirty in the morning there so… let’s see, from the shadows looks like
maybe northwest, more or less. See anything you recognize?”

“No, not much to see in that image.
Foothills on the horizon, but I can’t tell what they are. Is that a small hill
out there on the right edge?”

“Looks like it.”

“How far is that?”

“I dunno. Maybe a thousand meters.”
He called across the room. “FLIGHT, just put ‘em up as they come in, then get
somebody to stitch ‘em together into a panorama.” He shrugged. “Try and figure
out where the hell we are.”

Heidi nodded. “DIPS, you got that?”

DPS, “Got it FLIGHT. Next image
coming up.”

The next image appeared.

Gabe grinned. “Yeah, that’s a hill alright. There’s
the rest of it. It’s by itself, so probably not part of the two southern
ridges.”

Jeff laughed. “Don’t worry about
it, we’ll figure it out. For now, we’re doing just fine.” He wrapped his arm
around her shoulders and grinned. “You did good. You got us there.”

She grinned. “Thanks.”

“Once we get the full pan, we
should get some shots of the ground. It looks really level.” He glanced over at
the
Pathfinder
telemetry. “Inclinometer is reading about two degrees of
slope. That’s nothing. Looks like it may be sitting on bedrock between some
dunes.”

Gabe nodded. “The radar did a great
job of finding a flat spot. That’s good news. God, that terrain looks a lot
like what
Spirit
imaged in Gusev.”

“Uh huh. Thank god it doesn’t look
like the Viking sites. I’ve had nightmares about that for two years.”

Abby leaned her head on his
shoulder. “Maybe you can finally sleep well tonight.”

Jeff kissed the top of her head.
“Maybe I can at that.”

She wrapped an arm around his waist
and hugged him, then whispered in his ear. “Meet me in the hot tub later and
I’ll make sure of it.”

He glanced at her and chuckled.

Gabe shook her head. “Look how dark
the rocks are compared to the regolith.”

Jeff nodded, trying to get his mind
off Abby’s proposal and back on the subject at hand. “Yeah, seems to be the
norm planet wide.”

The next image appeared.

“God, Jeff, look!” said Gabe.
“There’s another hill, farther away, maybe two kilometers. See it?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“We’re looking just about due north
now, aren’t we?”

“Maybe a few degrees east of
north.”

“Okay, so if we’re on the southern
edge we shouldn’t see much in that direction, we’re looking out across the
plain, and we don’t. I think we’re down near the crater. Maybe just a little
northeast of it.”

“That’d be close enough for me.
It’s not an entirely bad spot.”

“Yeah.”

He kissed her cheek. “You did it,
Gabe. It’s close enough.” He turned to Abby. “Now, it’s your turn. You need to
get
us
there.”

She nodded. “I will. If Gabe and Heidi can build it,
I’ll fly it.”

Jeff wrapped his arms around Gabe, Abby and Susan.
“Until now it was just a dream. But now I’m convinced it’s a reality. We’re
gonna do this. We’re gonna mail home images of our footprints in that sand.” He
glanced at each of them. “And in 735 days, the world will look up in the night
sky and know that we are there.”

They all nodded.

Thursday, October 2,
2014 (T minus 537 days)

At the tap on his office door, Jeff
glanced up to see Gabe peeking in. “Hi, come on in.”

“You’re not busy?”

“Don’t be silly. When have I ever
been too busy for you?”

She slowly crept up to his desk.
“The descent camera images arrived.”

“And?”

She handed him a THEMIS IR image
and pointed. “X marks the spot. We’re right there, 13.72º south, 21.66º west.
We missed by 12.14 kilometers.” Gabe grimaced and hung her head.

Jeff stared at the image for a
moment. “Wow. Right between those two ridges. Nice shot.”

She groaned. “Only about a thousand
meters from the western one.”

“Well, a thousand meters is a
thousand meters. We missed it.”

She sighed. “Yeah. But we’re so far
south, we’re on the THEMIS VIS image.”

“Really? Let me see.” She handed
him the image. “Whoa, cool.” He whistled softly. “Okay, that explains why we
can’t see much beyond a couple kilometers east or west. We’re in that valley.”

She whimpered. “Yeah.”

He looked up her. “Gabe, I don’t
know what you’re whining about. We’re on the ground, it’s not a bad spot, we
missed the obstacles, and everything’s working. What’s the problem?”

“I missed by over twelve
kilometers! We’re more than two kilometers outside the landing ellipse. That’s
the problem.”

“Oh, Jesus. Who cares?”

“I care.”

“Well, stop worrying about it,
we’re there. Gabe, one of the reasons we picked the site was because there was
room to spare. This will do.”

“Yeah, I know.” She shrugged. “It’s
gonna take me a while to go over all the telemetry and figure out what went
wrong.”

Jeff shook his head and groaned. “Why
are you wasting your time with that? Who cares what went wrong? This was a
one-time mission. It’s done. Well, at least that part. Two weeks from now, when
Columbus
gets there, it’ll have a target – a nav beacon – and my concern
won’t be missing it, it’ll be dropping 850 kilos of payload right on top of
it.”

She looked at him, pouting. “But, Jeff, I missed. I
need to know why.”

He sighed, stood, stepped around
the desk, and started toward her.

Gabe took a step back and held her
hand protectively in front of her face. “You’re not going to hit me, are you?”

Jeff froze, staring at her in
astonishment. “Hit you? Jesus, Gabe, of course I’m not going to hit you. Why
would you think that?”

She looked down, clearly upset.

“Gabe, look at me.”

She glanced at him, nervously.

“Who hit you?”

She grimaced and sniffed. “My
mother used to hit me when I was bad.”

“When you were… bad?”

“When I’d make mistakes.”

“Your mother hit you when you made
mistakes?”

She nodded.

Jeff frowned, shook his head and
bit his lip. “Oh god. Gabe, come here.”

She slowly stepped up to him.

He wrapped his arms around her. “I
would never hit you, and neither will anyone else. I won’t allow it.”

She leaned her head on his
shoulder.

He kissed her forehead. “Gabe,
starting with nothing more than some 40-year-old drawings, you put this entire
mission together in 17 months. You designed the hardware, the software, and you
did what no one else has done. I doubt NASA, with 18,000 employees could have
done this.” He lifted her chin, gazed into her eyes, and said softly, “Do you
have any idea how proud I am of you?”

She shook her head as tears welled.

“Well, I am. Even if we never take
another step, we’ve already accomplished what the critics said was impossible.”
He grinned. “And, in the history of space exploration, your name will be
mentioned prominently.”

Gabe clutched him and sobbed.

Jeff chuckled softly. “Oh, there
you go again. What are you crying about now?”

She slowly lifted her head.
“Because, Jeffrey… I love you, and I want to get it right for you.”

He leaned
his forehead against hers, touched her cheek with his hand, and spoke softly.
“Gabe, you did get it right. You got us there and… I love you too. I really do.
But it’s not time for that yet. We’re going to Mars.” He kissed her. “You and I
will get around to loving when the time is right. Okay?”

She
whimpered, “Do you promise?”

He gently
placed his hand on the back of her head and pulled her tightly to him. “Yes, I
promise.”

She
sniffed. “Jeff, I don’t want to live without you.”

He
nodded. “Okay, wait right here. Don’t move.”

“Okay.”

Jeff went
back around to his desk and punched the ‘Do Not Disturb’ button on his phone,
then turned off the lights. “Come here.” He took Gabe’s hand and led her to the
sofa in front of the fireplace and sat. He patted the seat beside. “Sit down,
Gabe.”

“Okay.”
She sat beside him.

He put
his arm around her shoulders. “Gabriel, I think it’s time you and I had a
little talk.”

“About
what?”

“You.”

She
looked at him nervously. “What about me?”

“Everything.”

“Huh?”

“Gabe, I
want you to tell me everything. What went on in your life? What makes you
tick?”

She
stared at her hands, nervously clenched in her lap. “Do I have to?”

“Yes.
It’s time.”

Gabe hung
her head and sighed. “Alright.” She took a deep breath. “My mother started me
on the piano when I was three, just to see if I was any good. I was. I picked
it up right away, and I could instantly memorize any music mom set before me.
But that didn’t mean I could play it. That frustrated her, she expected instant
perfection. Also, I didn’t do well in school when I was young. It bored me. It
was way too easy. I was the poster child for ADHD. One of my teachers told my
parents she thought I was retarded. Dad and mom took me to a child
psychologist. He thought I might be an idiot savant. I was great at the piano,
for my age, but pretty worthless for anything else.” She paused and shook her
head. “I was always very emotional, and would throw tantrums, fall down on the
floor kicking and screaming. Mom figured there wasn’t much use in trying to
reason with me, so she trained me like you’d train a dog – reward and
punishment.”

Jeff
grimaced. “Oh god.”

“She’d
give me a piece of candy when I’d do well, and beat me when I didn’t. Dad
didn’t find out about her, uh… technique, until I was twelve. When he did find
out, he divorced my mother and got custody of me. I didn’t know any better, and
I hated him for leaving mom. He couldn’t handle me either and, with his busy
career, didn’t have time to fool with me, so he sent me off to a private boarding
school. I hated it and kept running away.”

Jeff
pulled her close.

She
leaned her head on his shoulder. “Then one day I convinced myself that I was
insane and everything was my fault, and I tried to kill myself by jumping off a
bridge.”

Jeff
gasped.

“Fortunately,
I hadn’t had much of a background in physics at that point, and didn’t realize
it wasn’t high enough. So all I managed to do was get cold and wet. Following
that, my father also thought I was insane, and had me committed. Counseling,
shock therapy, drugs… more reward and punishment. They had a piano there. I
wasn’t supposed to be in that room, but one night I snuck in and played. A
psychiatrist caught me, but didn’t say anything. I guess a thirteen-year-old
playing Rachmaninoff from memory impressed him. He took an interest in me and
over the next couple months hit me with every test in the book, and some I
think he made up. Then one day he sat me down in his office and explained to me
that I wasn’t insane. Quite the contrary, I was a genius, a genius like he’d
never even heard of. He eventually talked to my father and got me released and
sent back to school.

“After
that it was different, suddenly things were clearer. I could do things. I
started using my brain.” She paused and chuckled. “There was no test I couldn’t
ace. I could remember every word of a lecture, and every page of a reading
assignment. When it came time to take the test, all I had to do was look up the
answer in my head. And the more I did it, the better I got at it, to the point
where I could all but instantly recall almost anything. I really liked math,
because I could see it, like music. I can see the notes on the staves, and I
can see math equations the same way. Doesn’t matter how complex… calculus,
differentials, fractals, complex analysis, it’s all there. When I started
college, the piano was all I had any experience with, so that’s what I majored
in. But, they required us to have a math class. So, I looked over the catalogue
and decided I wanted to take a class in multivariable calculus. They wouldn’t
let me take it, cause all I’d had was high school math through trig. I begged
the professor to let me audit the class. He finally relented. By the end of the
semester he’d convinced me to major in math. So I switched to a double major
and made a career of school and living on scholarships and grants and loans,
because I was good at it. And then one day this lunatic that’d won the lottery
and decided to go Mars knocked on my door.” She grinned. “And the rest, as the
say, is history.”