THE DEPARTURE
1
The personnel chosen for the Mars expedition were shuttled to the assembly station riding in low orbit a scant three hundred kilometers above the surface of the Earth. At that altitude, the ponderous bulk of the planet curved huge and incredibly beautiful, filling the sky, overwhelming the senses with broad expanses of blue oceans decked with gleaming white clouds, a world rich and vibrant with life glowing against the cold black emptiness of space.
Mars was a distant pinpoint in that blackness, a steady ruddy beacon beckoning across the gulf that separates worlds.
The assembly station itself was a composite habitat made out of a Soviet Mir space station linked to a reconditioned external propellant tank from an American space shuttle, bigger than a twenty-room house. The Mir part of the assembly station was attached to the shuttle tank about midway along the tank’s long curving flank, looking like a tiny green gondola on a huge matte tan blimp. The Soviet hardware contained three docking ports for shuttles or the smaller orbital tugs.
Here the sixteen chosen scientists would live and work for more than a month before they departed for Mars, getting accustomed to one another and to their expedition commander, Dr. Li. And to the eight astronauts and cosmonauts who would operate the Mars spacecraft and be in command of the ground teams.
Hanging in the black emptiness a few hundred meters from the assembly station were the two long, narrow Mars spacecraft, gleaming white in the harsh sunlight, attended by swarms of orbital tugs and massive shuttles while tiny figures in space suits hovered around them, dwarfed to the size of ants, buzzing back and forth constantly, transferring supplies and equipment every day, every hour. Compared to the bulbous dull brown and green shapes of the assembly station the Mars craft looked like sleek racing shells.
In orbit the entire assemblage of vehicles and human beings was effectively in zero gravity, weightless. Jamie felt his guts dropping away the instant the shuttle rocket engines cut off. His inner ears were telling him that he was falling, falling endlessly. Yet he could see that he was strapped firmly in his seat down in the crowded middeck compartment of the shuttle, jammed in with five technicians on their way to a week’s work. Their coveralls were stained and frayed from hard use; Jamie’s were so new there were still creases on his sleeves.
All the scientist-candidates had spent at least a few days in orbit during their years of training. Jamie had also flown three flights on the Vomit Comet, the big jet transport plane that simulated zero g by diving from high altitude, then pulling up into a long parabolic arc that produced about half a minute of gut-wrenching weightlessness. He knew what to expect and he did not panic. Still he could feel his stomach churning and his head going woozy.
Jamie felt all the classic symptoms of space adaptation syndrome as he followed the veteran technicians past the shuttle’s hatch, through the narrow metal chambers of the Mir, and into the more spacious receiving area of the huge shuttle tank. It was not like seasickness, not exactly. His head felt stuffy as his body fluids shifted within him, free of gravity’s pull. He felt slightly nauseous, disoriented, almost dizzy. As if he had come down with a heavy dose of flu.
Medical personnel took him in tow, literally, and after a perfunctory examination cheerfully pronounced him normal. They gave him a slow-release medication patch to stick behind his ear and told him that all the Mars scientists were assembling in the main briefing area. Jamie started to nod, found that the head motion made him feel as if he wanted to upchuck, and settled for asking directions to the main briefing area.
He knew enough to go slowly up the central passageway, pulling himself along easily on the ladder rungs that studded all four walls, like a swimmer working his way along the hull of a sunken ship. It was difficult to think of ceiling and floor when up and down had no objective meaning. Jamie began to think of the passageway as a deep well with metal walls that he was climbing, floating weightlessly as he made his way in dreamy slow motion toward the top.