7 June 2002
Lander Hall
Phobos Transfer Orbit
Altitude: 5700 mi
Alexei had the gauges; Laura kept her eyes on the window.
The engineers had only given her a small triangle, much like the old Apollo crews had. She stared out eagerly, searching for any details she could make out.
The exterior cameras were getting everything of course, and she could easily glance at the feed that was streaming in on the central monitor, but she wanted to see it with her own eyes. Geologists were a visual lot. She wanted to feel the photons bounce off this rubble pile and go right into her cortex. It was a visceral sensation. No one had ever been this close before. If they failed, no one might ever be this close again.
Alexei tended to revert to Russian when he was concentrating. It was just as well. She was near useless when it came to rendezvous procedures. And that’s what this was. Schoolchildren and reporters would call it a landing, but when your target had a gravitational pull that was best described with the term “micro” it wasn’t going to be much of a landing. The plan wasn’t so much to touch down as much as it was to latch on to the surface.
You could escape Phobos’s gravity with a ramp and a go-kart. When they split the
Hall in two in a few days, the resultant push from the pyros would do much of that work. After that, the engines would get them back to
Orion without much strain.
For having only one shipmate, she and Alexei really hadn’t bonded on this little road trip. Twenty-four hours ago, they’d departed from the
Orion-
Buran rendezvous in this dual-hulled spacecraft. The lab module, not much more than a tin can with a tool chest and an air lock, had served as Laura’s private residence on the way out. She’d spent the flight unpacking the stowed equipment and checking the two space suits.
The module itself would be left behind when they broke away at the end of the mission. There was no use in hauling everything back to
Buran. And someday, there was a vague hope, the lab itself might serve some purpose if another Phobos mission was called for.
Alexei had stayed in the command module, sleeping in his chair so as never to be more than a meter away from the rendezvous radar. She felt it was overly cautious of him. The computers had plotted this trajectory months in advance, with further guidance from Orion’s radar readings taken as the big, lumbering cruiser had come in last week.
With the radar now indicating they were less than 20km out (a benefit of being away from the Americans was the use of metric for all ship’s systems), she had joined her crewmate on the flight deck, all the better to get a look at the biggest rock she’d ever lay claim to.
Her Russian was mostly conversational, and she hadn’t had much call to practice it thus far. It had been a lovely, uneventful half-year crossing the void. She stole a look at Alexei, the wisps of grey hair making inroads from his temples. When she turned back to the window and the cold surface of Phobos it made her wish that she’d studied up a few more Russian translations for words like “excitement” and “beautiful”.
The monolith wasn’t visible at this angle. She knew it wouldn’t be. Their trajectory had been plotted out long ago. She wouldn’t see the building-sized boulder until she opened the lab hatch tomorrow.
At five kilometers out, Alexei seemed to acknowledge the need for her input as he switched over to English. His accent, like their target, was gravelly and rough, but she took it as a kindness that he chose to do such critical work in a language she was more comfortable with.
“Laura, could you run diagnostics on the piton guns, please?” he said, nodding to the panel by her left hand.
Silently she pulled up the schematics and all systems shown green. “No issues. A, B, and C ready to fire on your command.”
“All good. Closure rate is coming past five meters per second and accelerating… slowly,” he gave a small grin. “We’ll fire the pitons at one hundred meters out. So nice not to have Star City chattering away all the time.”
“We’re still here with your telemetry data if you need it, Alexei,” came the voice of Jensen over the radio.
Orion might be far away, but the radio link meant that they were in close communication the whole way.
She smirked, thinking that Alexei might have preferred to not have the reminder. He seemed to enjoy the deep isolation of space travel. She pulled a plastic-wrapped string cheese from the storage box and pushed it towards him. It tumbled through the air, and he snagged it with a thankful smile.
“Should be fine from here. Tell them what you see,” Alexei said. He keyed a switch that moved her microphone to VOX.
She pressed her face to the window and began to talk about anything that caught her attention. Pockmarks, boulders, craters, ridges. Anything was a potential new discovery. Every vista that she could see was an undiscovered country.
It hadn’t been all that long ago that serious people thought Phobos might be some sort of long-abandoned Martian space station. Before probes had put the theory to rest, the idea that Phobos’s light gravity might indicate a hollow core, perhaps with artifacts of long-dead Martians aboard, was a perfectly valid hypothesis. Mariner and Farsight had put those theories to rest decades ago, but, staring at the surface now, she was more and more convinced that this wasn’t so much a rock as it was a pile of pebbles.
They would have a good test of that theory in about ten minutes. They’d have proof by tomorrow.
“Arresting relative motion now,” Alexei said. She felt a small jolt from the engine bringing their closing velocity to zero.
“
Orion,
Hall. We are in hover at one hundred meters. Preparing to fire the pitons.”
“Roger,
Hall. Confirm your abort safeties are off before firing sequence commences, over.”
“Confirmed,
Orion. Safeties off. Engines are functioning and we are at one-percent throttle.”
“Proceed with caution, over,” came Jensen’s voice again.
Alexei snorted and pulled his microphone away, “If we were the type to proceed with caution, this would have been a robotic probe.”
Laura smiled and nodded. “Ready to go?”
“If you would do the honors, comrade Winters,” Alexei said, indicating the firing station.
Laura felt a certain pride in being the one to hit the big red button. The trio of jolts from the exterior guns came at the same instant.
“Pitons fired,” she said. Before she could come up with something pithy to say there was a flash of black dust that spread from the top-left corner of the camera feed. A moment later, more filled the screen from the top-right and bottom-center.
“Impact!,” Alexei said. The spherical clouds of dust blossomed from the surface and began to disperse in a thinning haze.
“Okay, we’ve got dust pellets incoming,” she said.
“As expected. The shield will hold,” Alexei said.
His faith in Russian engineering notwithstanding, she flinched as the tic-tic-tic of dust particles hitting the forward section of the lab module reverberated through the spacecraft. None of the particles were large enough or fast enough for the rendezvous radar to identify them as a problem, but it was disconcerting nonetheless to know your spacecraft’s thin outer hull was being pelted with rocks.
In a moment, the danger had passed. No red lights, no leaks. No catastrophe. All was calm aboard the spacecraft
Asaph Hall.
“Activating winches,” Alexei said.
Trading the sound of pelting for the slow churning of electric motors, the quiet cockpit of the Hall was filled with a low drone. The pitons, having dug into the surface of Phobos, now needed to hold long enough to draw in the spacecraft slowly.
“Slackening on B. We might have to refire it.” Laura said, responding to the yellow light on the screen in front of her.
“I think it will hold,” Alexei said.
“Steady and slow,” Laura admonished.
“Da,” Alexei said. His slip into Russian told her that he might be more nervous than he let on.
“Twenty meters from the surface,” she said.
With a slight bump, the forward shield of the lab module came to rest on a semi-flat bit of rock and dust. The spray of pellets made lazy arcs in the light gravity and as the gentle dance of dirt and spacecraft came to a conclusion, Laura realized that, for all the tension in her mind and the cables, the system had worked more or less as expected.
“
Orion,
Hall, we are down safe on the surface. Thanks for all the help. We’ll let you know what we find.”
7 June 2002
Lander Hall
Phobos
Monolith Base Camp
Calling this a moon was a bit of a stretch. Phobos, she was almost sure, was just a captured asteroid that had perchanced to swing by Mars’s orbit at just the right time. An oblong potato-shaped rock, it lacked all the features you’d want in a proper moon. No bright round face to light up the evening sky. No ancient lava seas, cooled down to make a nice flat spot for a base. No tales of its beauty that gave rise to ancestral lore.
Additionally, to call this a walk was something of a misnomer. What she was about to do was more like a spacewalk than a surface excursion. For practical purposes, she planned to maintain a feet-down orientation, but she was prepared to improvise if the need arose.
To keep the time as she waited for the air to cycle, she held up her hammer at eye-level, released it, and watched the gradual motion that it took towards the floor. It took twenty seconds to fall.
Standing in the small, one-person airlock she stole a glance at the camera over her head. Alexei would monitor her first steps from the command module. He was her lifeline to the rest of humanity, and it was hard not to think of him as the voice of God.
“Ready for egress,” she said. Somewhere back on Earth, masses were waiting with bated breath. She really didn’t care about that. They’d be gone in a few days. There was work to be done.
“Clear to proceed,” Alexei said. She saw the light go from red to white and slid the hatch door open.
The surface had a rusty brown color, mottled with splotches of black and white in random places. In the distance, just off to the left, was her monolith.
A massive boulder, the size of a football pitch, stood a quarter mile away. The shadow cut a hard line across her field of vision. The stone had the general color of every other patch of ground she could see, but one of her objectives was to discover if it was always here, or a piece of rock that had settled in this place after the general area was formed. She would take samples soon and begin the search for answers.
“You seeing me on the tele now, Alexei?” Laura asked.
“Da, take your step. Good to go,” Alexei responded.
Lifting a booted foot over the threshold, she planted it in the surface and snapped a photograph for posterity’s sake. She lifted her foot, saw a crisp print left in the surface, complete with the Union Jack that she’d asked for when they’d customized her spacesuit. Another photo to preserve the image and show the half-inch or so that the surface had given when she’d stepped out.
She smiled and bent down, careful to make slow movements in the dirt. Two feet and a knee on the ground, she brushed the dust with her fingertips, took a pinch of it and held it to the light.
There was time for geology aplenty, but she felt a bit of whimsy at this culmination of a life of rocks and rockets.
Back in Kensington, everyone she’d known as a girl leaned in close to see what she’d say.
Laura Winters deposited the first sample of Phobos into a plastic bag, sealed it up and stood. She looked around at the dusty deposits that surrounded her ship.
“Reminds me a bit of cinnamon. Maybe we thaw some out and have a go at a proper cuppa.”
8 June 2002
Lander Hall
Phobos
Monolith Base Camp
It was easy to think of the monolith as something alien. It was an imposing presence, vaulting up from the ground, presenting a sharp angle and a flat surface. It would have seemed out of place almost anywhere.
She looked to her left and right, surveying the sharp line in the dust that marked the edge of the stone. “
Orion, be advised. I’m going to climb up and see if I can spot any changes in detail.”
“Safety first, Laura,” Jensen said.
“Here goes nothing,” she said, springing up from her feet. A vertical leap that would have put Michael Jordan to shame. She flung herself off the surface and watched the striations of rock and stone sweep by her helmet as she rose. The shoulder-mounted camera would pick up everything as well as it could. She used her Cambridge-trained eye to look for anything noteworthy.
The cascade of layers in various earthtones was mesmerizing. She could see fissures and cracks in the surface. This monolith might be impressively odd, but it had no signs of artificiality. You could find rocks like this almost anywhere in the solar system. But, as she studied the face in front of her own, she was more and more convinced that the monolith was a visitor to this world, just like her. This rock hadn’t sprung up from the core of Phobos. It seemed to have arrived with a gentle touchdown… just as she had.
Sparing a glance at the summit, she gauged the safety of trying to land on it and take samples. Her knee-spring leap was only going to get her about halfway up, but it would be child’s play to land and take another jump that might reach even higher. Lacking that, she could arrest her motion with a hand or two at the apex of this current vault and haul herself up farther. This was only walking in an academic sense. She felt the freedom of motion that came from a spacewalk in low Earth orbit.
As her momentum paused, she reached out and gripped the rock in two spots, pausing and hovering there, with thirty meters of nothingness between her boots and the surface. Holding on with one hand, she withdrew a sample hammer from her belt and chiseled out a chunk of stone. Shards of rock brushed away and fell in agonizing slow motion to the surface far below. She watched, dazzled, as the slow physics led the pebbles through perfect kinematic arcs. This fun house of Newtonian motion would have been a lovely place to teach the principles of low-speed motion.
She twisted her new prize in the light and looked to see what she could glean from the outer surface. It certainly wasn’t the same stuff she found on the ground. The lack of dust was enough of an indication for that. She also saw some discolorations and a line that might be a vein of copper. It would certainly warrant more study. She would come back tomorrow and try to reach the summit. For now, she chipped off a few more samples, bagged them, and the released her grip for a featherlight descent.
She made the trudge back to Hall, kicking up dust with each step. It was unavoidable. She could look over her shoulder and see thinning domes of grime from each footstep she’d taken. Ahead of her, Alexei was bagging samples. She snapped a photo of him with the
Hall as the background. It would make a great shot with the sun behind her shoulder.
She looked around to see if there were any unusual stones or regolith. Anything she would do well to pick up, examine, and collect. Truthfully, any of this was worth its weight in platinum.
Laura kicked the ground with her boot and watched the dust spray up in a wide arc between her and Alexei. It had the look of a blackened peacock plume, slowly collapsing outward.
She moved to help Alexei with some of the core samples he’d been gathering. The cosmonaut had been assigned the boring geology tasks while she’d gotten in a bit of rock climbing.
“Be advised,
Orion. We are dirty. This is just dirt-dirty, at this point. Every step kicks up more dust. Alexei’s suit makes him look like he’s been dipped in a pile of soot. I’m betting mine looks similar,” Laura said.
“Confirm that,
Orion,” Alexei said, taking a photograph of Laura from a few meters away.
Laura slung the bucket around gently and slid it into the airlock. She could see a thin layer of grime caked on the outer hull. It spread all the way up the side of the lab module. She brushed some off onto her gloved fingers.
“A loose pile of rubble that’s too stubborn to break apart and too isolated to become anything more,” Laura said.
“Sounds like my first marriage,” Charlie Hickory said over the radio.
Laura smirked. She hadn’t gotten much out of her roommate on the flight out, but clearly Charlie wasn’t the kind of woman who should have gotten married in the first place.
“
Hall, this is
Orion. We are ready for you to begin closeout procedures on this EVA. You’re approaching your darkness limits. We want you to secure samples and prep for evening checklist tasks. Do you read, over?”
Laura replied for the both of them as she pushed a few more sample bags through the hatch, “Copy,
Orion. We are preparing to close out. We’ll get cleaned, get dinner, and get some sleep and then be back at it in the morning.”
9 June 2002
Lander Hall
Phobos
Monolith Base Camp
She woke to an angry hornet screaming in her ear. A red light illuminated the small, cramped cockpit and stirred her eyes with an intense demeanor.
As she returned to consciousness, she felt the one thing that an alarm was bound to evoke: fear.
Alexei came back to reality in more or less the same moment. She was glad to have his company as his side of the control panel had even more flashing lights and alerts than hers.
“What is happening?” she asked, eyes wide and reaching for the Master Alarm button. The angry hornet was silenced as she depressed the rounded square light.
Alexei was already into pilot mode and scanning the instruments. He rattled off some Russian that she didn’t catch and then said, “Lab module temperature has spiked. Over pressurization in the RCS lines. Oxygen sensors in the lab are offline. Internal pressure rising.”
“Oh, God,” Laura said as he analyzed this unfolding disaster.
“It’s a fire. Fire in the lab module,” Alexei said.
“Concur. Activate suppressors,” Laura said, reaching for the switch to her right.
“Nyet,” Alexei said with a commanding tone. “We’re already overpressured in the lab module. The CO2 purge will put us over the limit,” he said, pointing to a rising pressure gauge.
“We have to do something,” Laura said. She stole a glance down at the hatch that led into the lab module. There was no window to indicate the danger, but she could almost feel the heat rising from the cylinder below.
“We have to disengage,” Alexei said.
“We can’t leave!” Laura said.
“If the fire reaches the RCS lines, then we explode,” Alexei said.
“We’ve got samples down there!” Laura said.
“They’re lost,” Alexei said.
“Let’s try the CO2 purge,” Laura said. “If it blows the lab, we’re still sealed in here.”
“Too dangerous to our hull,” Alexei said.
“We can’t just abandon it to burn. If it holds, we can salvage what’s left. If it doesn’t, then it’ll crack along a seam and outgas.”
“Unless it fails at the hatch combing, then it’ll crack us like an egg!” Alexei said.
“It’s a calculated risk,” she said, reaching for the fire suppression button.
Alexei put a hand up between them, “Nyet! Too hot. We go!”
“Let me try,” she said, activating the button for the CO2 purge.
The rush of gases into the closed cylinder below them made a sinister hiss as it reverberated through the ship’s piping and plating.
With frozen breath they watched the gauges, keeping an eye on pressure and temperature together. Laura took a moment to steal a glance at the mission clock. Signal acquisition wasn’t for another twelve minutes. Until then, they were cut off from the rest of humanity, including their crewmates on
Orion.
Alexei emitted a Russian curse and her attention snapped back. “Pressure is past the red line. RCS is reaching criticality. Temperature gauges below aren’t going down,” he sighed, trying to be gentle. “Laura… we have to go.”
She looked down at her feet, thinking of the fifty pounds of samples that were sitting in a bucket under her work bench. She spared a look at the box under her arm rest that held five rocks and eighteen vials of Phobos dust. It was a tragedy of immeasurable proportions to leave without every last rock they could haul. But it would be a bigger tragedy to never leave at all.
She nodded and wiped a tear out of her right eye.
“Launch,” she said.
Alexei began to activate the launch sequence. By the checklist, it took forty-eight seconds for the engine’s diagnostic checks to run. She spared a look out the window at the surface. She held up the digital camera and took a few final shots.
“Twenty seconds,” Alexei said.
Before she could ask him about the trajectory, there was a violent surge that threw her into the seat restraints.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Pressure drop. It failed. The lab cracked,” Alexei said.
The entire spacecraft lurched hard to the right. The outgassing from the lab module was leaking into space, acting as a massive, off-center thruster. The overpressure from the fire-seared gases and the excessive carbon dioxide was now on an eager mission to fill the void of the universe, one molecule at a time. The rush of kinetic energy on a fast-track out of the sealed can gave a hard shove to the lander in the opposite direction. The lurch turned into a twist.
“We’re tipping,” Alexei said.
“Blow it! Undock!” Laura said. Alexei reached for the switch, but Laura was faster. She pulled the latch down and a loud bang of explosive bolts fired a meter under their toes.
The twist became a slow tumble. Alexei took the controls and twisted to counter the motion.
Hall’s engines ignited on their abort program and fired full for fifteen seconds. The motion carried them away from Phobos and easily through escape velocity.
Laura spared a look out the window and saw the remnants of the lab module below. One panel had blown out and twisted, curling into a truncated spiral as it had been blasted off its welded seams. She could see the vapors of cabin atmosphere rushing out into cold vacuum, crystals forming in their wake. The lab module kicked over onto its side and began to roll, like a barrel, for a few yards across the surface. The ragged edge dug into the dust, kicking up a small tsunami of black and brown particles. The spray engulfed her view of the lab module and she turned away.
“My God,” she said, appalled at the sudden and unfair loss of her samples and her mission. She turned to her crewmate, “Are we okay?”
Alexei frowned at the gauges and pulled up a schematic on the screen. Laura could see the computer chewing on a new orbital trajectory.
“The orbit… we launched at the wrong time,” Alexei said, more to himself than to Laura.
“We had to break away,” Laura said.
“We are on the wrong side of the planet. The rendezvous calculations were not designed for this separation at launch,” Alexei said.
“But we’re still in a similar orbit. Won’t we come around eventually to the right place?”
Alexei frowned and indicated the ellipse that marked their new orbit. The lowest edge skirted what the computer had marked as the upper Martian atmosphere.
Hall was not designed to fly in an atmosphere of any kind.
“I have to correct to raise our apogee,” Alexei said.
“Should we ask Earth for new numbers?” Laura said.
“Nyet. By the time we come around, we’ll be too low. I need to raise this now. Every second makes it harder,” Alexei said.
She nodded and let him work. Alexei input a few commands into the computer. She saw him consult a legal pad and scribble some calculations, then change the parameters on his program. A moment later the engines fired again. The cosmonaut frowned at the fuel gauge, but Laura saw that the ellipse now cleared the thick hazy circle that marked entry interface altitude.
“Are we okay?” she asked again.
“We won’t reenter. But we now lack the fuel to get back to
Orion,” Alexei said. He looked very resignedly at the gauges in front of him.
A beat passed in silence. Laura looked out at the thin red crescent that marked the sunrise over Mars.
Hall was slipping towards, it, getting ready to come back over the day side.
A few moments later, the radios crackled to life. Jake Jensen’s voice filled their ears, “
Hall, this is
Orion. Do you read? We’re seeing big changes from your telemetry since LOS. Can you confirm?”
She switched her headset mic to the mission channel and replied to the hail.
“
Orion, this is
Hall. We have a serious problem.”
10 June 2002
Orion
Athena II
Flight Day 155
Jake ran a pen down the legal pad and looked at Charlie’s numbers again. He couldn’t find anything wrong with the figures. He sort of wished that he had. It would have been more comforting to discover a flaw, an error, something to correct.
Charlie had always been good with orbital mechanics. She was widely regarded as one of the best in the entire astronaut corps with navigation and trajectory calculations. If she hadn’t been an astronaut, she would have made an excellent computer. Her interpersonal skills were often a confirmation of that.
She was floating on the other side of the science module, eating peanut butter in a pita. She stared at him with the eyes of a professorial praying mantis.
“Cap, you’ve looked it over five times now. Are there parts of it you don’t understand?” she asked, chewing the last bite.
He sighed. When all your coworkers were geniuses, it was tough to tell the difference between confident and cocky. He really didn’t want to trust his entire life, legacy, mission, and crew to a blonde-haired savant from Nebraska, but such was the hand he’d been dealt.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you Charlie, but it’s such a big move,” he said.
“You wanted a solution. I gave you one. There’s no safe here. Look out the window,” she said, gesturing vaguely to
Orion’s cockpit.
“Final margin of five percent?”
“More like three. You’re not gonna be able to play around on final descent.”
“We hit bingo before three hundred and that’s the end of…” he paused. Not quite sure whether his next words should be “the Athena program” or “NASA.” Either would have been a reasonable statement.
“If you’re worried about the final, I can take the stick,” she’d said. It wasn’t a power grab. To Charlie, this was simply a service she was offering.
“I’ll think about that on the way out,” he said.
“You’ll have about three hours to make that decision,” she replied. “I know this is your choice to make, but I think you’ll agree, it’s the only choice to make.”
He nodded. “My kingdom for a fuel tank,” he said.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” she said. With a push she floated away towards the service module.
“And there’s just no way to do this with
Orion?” Jake asked, calling to her as she left.
Charlie poked her head back in, “She’s too big. We’d be cutting into safety margins for the trip home.”
He released the legal pad and tapped one corner of it. Watching it slowly tumble in the microgravity. The papers fluttered and fanned out in a pattern that was both mundane and pretty.
She’d spent three hours with the computer this morning, in an undisturbed frenzy of keystrokes and calculations. Houston hadn’t liked this idea, but they’d also been unable to present a better one. He swam through the hatch and looked out at
Buran’s cargo bay.
Buran’s docking hub was right out in front. To his left, he saw
Aqsarniit docked, fully-fueled, and ready to go. He was about to put her through quite a ride. He stared out at the little cone and wondered if she had what it took to be the hero of this mission.
He sat in the chair and took a long breath, letting it out. Every commander he’d ever respected had had a moment like this. A choice between crew and mission. Between safety and sacrifice. It was the reason he had the left-hand seat. To assess the risks. To make the best decision for crew safety and mission success.
He had a duty to rescue Laura and Alexei, but he also had a duty not to endanger the rest of his crew. The burden of command was knowing the balance between those two forces. Now that it was in his hands on this grandest of moments, he felt thankful. It was so utterly clear. He thanked the gods and the cold equations for the clarity they’d bestowed upon him.
“Okay, Houston. We are now requesting authorization to proceed with the rescue-to-landing option on our next orbit. I know the authorization window will be tight, so, unless we hear otherwise, we’re going to assume your affirmation. We’re just not happy with the numbers we’re seeing from
Hall. Not wild about waiting for three more orbits. Over.”
Jensen turned off his microphone and rubbed his eyes. That was arguably the most insubordinate he’d ever been since he walked into West Point thirty-two years ago. He tried to remember that he was in this seat to make hard decisions and to improvise, when necessary. It seemed very necessary now. Laura and Alexei did not have the fuel or air to wait for another day. Risking his entire crew on a rescue seemed dicey, but he’d be damned if he was going to abandon two of his people in a stranded orbit, and blowing the entire landing was just as distasteful.
He switched his microphone channel to the inter-ship circuit.
“Attention, crew of Athena II. Pack your bags and muster at the forward hatch in twenty minutes. We’re going.”
10 June 2002
Aqsarniit
Athena II
Flight Day 155
Laura and Alexei each peered out of their small, triangular windows. They could see
Aqsarniit in the distance, slowly getting larger with each passing minute.
“Alexei, can you give me the closure ratings from your radar, please?” Charlie asked over the radio.
Alexei rattled off some figures in Russian and Charlie replied with an American-accented “Spasiba.”
Hall’s docking port was open and ready to accept her sister ship. The cylindrical Phobos-lander was about the same size as her Mars-bound counterpart. The universal docking latches, a staple of crewed spaceflight since the Soyuz-Skylab expedition of 1976, were going to save Laura and Alexei the indignity (and danger) of abandoning their lander through vacuum to try and join their crewmates in the Aurora-class capsule that was now closing in.
Space rescues did not have suited astronauts leaping off of crippled ships to reach for a savior with outstretched fingers. Tensed souls watching back on Earth would not gasp at the site of a flailing astronaut tumbling off into the void. Such things were white-scarved relics of science fiction.
Still, the next couple of hours would be scary.
Laura was able to wave at Commander Jensen through the windows of their ships as the distance closed to a few meters. The slight bump at the moment of capture was a testament to the skills of Charlie Hickory and her finely tuned calculations. The impact had all the violence and fury of a hummingbird landing.
The latches closed with a subtle grinding motion and ten minutes later, the hard seal was confirmed. Within thirty minutes, the crews were shaking hands and transferring samples over to
Aqsarniit. They’d have to go up and down with the crew, and Laura cursed the fact that it would cost them some launch mass when Athena II departed Mars a year and a half from now. She also spared a thought for the fifty pounds of rocks that had been bagged, tagged, and left in the lab that lay wrecked back at their landing site.
Laura had tried to steal one last look at Phobos during their interminable wait, but the alignments and rotations of the ship, planet, and moon meant that she wasn’t able to spot the remains of their botched expedition. Assuming she survived that long, she would send a request to Goddard to have one of the Hubbles take a look.
There was something so raw and callous about finality. Whatever was to come, she could never get back the last few days. She was about to be the first woman to walk on four worlds, but she would invariably long for a few more minutes on the third. Without a trace of doubt, she knew that wistful desire would never leave her spirit. She took one last look around
Hall’s command module, patted the control panel in thanks for its faithful service, then left it for dead.
Entering
Aqsarniit, she found her empty seat and strapped in. There was nothing more for her to do now. In orbit, a geologist was a little more useful than a chihuahua.
“Charlie, what’s my clock now?” Jensen asked.
“Fourteen and counting on burn one,” Charlie said.
“Okay, I’m gonna transfer over. You have command until I’m back in this seat. If anything goes wrong with the burn…”
“Leave you behind, land the ship safely and continue the mission,” Charlie said, finishing his thought.
“What? No. Are you kidding me? Something goes wrong with the burn, you come and rescue me no matter what! What’s the matter with you?” he said, laughing as he unbuckled his harness.
Charlie laughed, “Wait, wait. Anyone got any trash he can take over?” she asked the crew.
“Trash?” Laura said, looking around the small, conical cabin.
“Anything we don’t need for the surface. We’re already toting a few Phobos samples and we’re coming in from higher than planned. Anything we can do to help the heat shield is found money,” Charlie said.
Alexei handed over a small bag with a few loose items. He grimaced as Jake carried it away. Laura looked at him questioningly.
“One of Sasha’s bears and Sergei’s toys,” he said, shrugging. “They’ll still reach Mars… in a few hundred years.”
She nodded. Keepsakes from home were not a thing to be discarded lightly. She had a greater grasp on the situation now.
“Commander, what do you think about leaving the bike?” Charlie asked.
“No. If you’re wrong then we’ll need it once we’re down,” Jake said.
“If I’m wrong, we’re not gonna get down,” Charlie said.
Jensen gave her a look that ended the conversation. Then he pushed off swam into
Hall.
Brett was dogging the hatch that led to Hall and then he buckled himself into his seat again. Laura’s radio headset crackled again, and Jake’s voice came over the radio from a couple of meters away.
“Can we throttle up gradually or does it need to be full open?” Jake asked.
Charlie responded, “I’d rather give it all in a burst. It’ll make things easier with the math on the way down. It’s all going anyway. Are you worried about the connections?”
“I’m worried we’re about to mash two ships together that aren’t designed for that,” Jake said.
“Auroras are built to handle the push from
Orion’s engines,” Charlie countered.
“This ship isn’t!” Jake said, from the spindly
Hall lander.
Charlie winced and nodded inside her helmet, “Copy. But a gradual throttle up won’t be as much help. Acceptable risk.”
“Okay, space cowboy time,” Jensen said. “Give me the count, Hickory.”
“Twenty seconds to full burn,” Charlie said.
Laura shivered and braced herself.
The burst of acceleration wasn’t violent, but it was sudden. This rescue only worked with the use of every drop of
Hall’s remaining fuel. There was no way to transfer the chemicals from
Hall to
Aqsarniit, so now Hall’s engine would burn one last time to kick the paired-up spacecraft into a particular periareion. The burn only lasted thirty-eight seconds, but it was all the little lander could give them.
Charlie furiously worked her fingers over the keyboard in front of her. Laura watched her face, looking for an answer amidst the eyebrows and lips and nose. None came.
“RCS dry?” Charlie asked over the radio. The hatch opened as she finished speaking.
“Burned with the mains. Lasted about eighteen seconds,” Jake said, swimming back through and reclaiming his seat. “How are we looking?”
“Heavy, fast, and high,” Charlie said.
“How bad?” Jake asked.
“Not bad. Not great,” Charlie said.
“Do we violate your reserve for short final?” Jake asked.
“Ask me after separation,” Charlie said.
“The atmo vent should give us a kick,” Jake said.
“Fly jumping on an elephant,” Charlie said.
“Beats nothing,” Jake said.
“Blow it,” Charlie said.
Jake reached up and, for the second time today, hit the button marked UNDOCK.
There was a
whumph and a gentle stirring in the
Aqsarniit as they released the dead husk of the
Hall lander into a ridiculous, useless Martian orbit.
Charlie didn’t spare a glance out the window. She kept her eyes on her navigation screen. She hit a button and the numbers changed once more. She wrinkled her mouth.
“Survivable… probably,” she said.
An hour later,
Aqsarniit sent its final call to Houston.
“Houston,
Aqsarniit, we have entry interface. Expect to lose comm in just a bit. Thanks for everything. We’ll call you back after we’re down,” Jake said.
Immediately the Master Alarm began to blare. Charlie reached up and depressed the button to turn it off. Jake flashed her a look through his faceplate.
“What? We knew that was going to happen,” Charlie said.
The alarm had sounded because
Aqsarniit was outside the recommended entry corridor. In order to slow the spacecraft down from an even higher orbit, they had to use more and more of the Martian atmosphere. The ship was already more than a hundred miles off-course and at an angle that threatened to skip right back out of the atmosphere. The only way
Aqsarniit would reach a safe landing within a reasonable distance of Athena Base was to scream through the upper atmosphere, trading heat and energy with the whisps of Martian air.
The maneuver, which, if Charlie survived this, she planned to name after herself, was a fusion of aerobraking and EDL sequencing. She had spent many a happy hour pouring through the fine details of the Aurora lander specs, learning the full capabilities of her engines, heat shields and thrusters. She felt confident that the shield would hold up for this extended stay in the fires of ionized atmosphere, but she’d also felt confident that her first marriage would be forever.
For six minutes, all they could do was monitor the temperature gauges. It was hard to root for the heat, but Charlie had to remember that every bit of thermal energy meant a trade of kinetic energy. Good people had built that heat shield. Trust the engineering.
Aqsarniit, named for the Inuit word for an aurora, was doing honor to its namesake, sending a searing orange flame over the blackened Martian dawn. It was mid-afternoon at Athena Base and Charlie had every intention of eating dinner inside the HAB.
She watched with unblinking eyes as the digital needle on the temperature gauge reached its zenith, then began to wind back. That she was still seeing it was proof that the shield had done its job. She checked the clock. Things were as she expected. The timeline was holding.
“Max heating passed. Shield sep in forty-five,” she called out. Retreating to clipped aviation tones gave her a bit of calm in this midst of the firestorm two meters from her head.
“Copy,” Jake said, using the same uber-professional cadence.
“When we get back, we should really try this in the simulator,” Brett said from his chair.
“Shut up, Navy,” Jake called back.
“Okay, we’re approaching the corridor now. Pyros armed,” Charlie said. “Fire.”
Nothing happened.
“Oh c’mon,” Charlie said.
“Excess heat must have burned out the pyros,” Jake said.
“Or the circuitry,” Brett said.
“Kick the mother, Jake!” she said.
Jensen fired an index finger into the panel next to his control yoke. A low rumble filled the interior as the landing gear deployed early. There was a brief sound of grinding metal, a shrill squeak, and then a scratching swirl of noise as the
Aqsarniit’s heat shield fell away.
“Shield loose! Radar lock! We’re still hot, but it’s workable,” Charlie said.
“I can live with that,” Jake said, taking in the new numbers from the radar. The ship lurched a bit as the drogue parachutes released, then lurched harder as the main chutes deployed.
“Okay, we’re still fast, but good chutes,” Charlie said.
The Master Alarm blared again. Charlie punched it before it could hit its second wail.
“401 again. I know we’re fast, dammit. It’s a thin atmo. Leave me alone,” she said, more to the computer system than her crewmates.
“HAB omni signal,” Brett said.
“Yeah, but our LPD is for laughs,” Jake said.
“We’re still on the program,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, I’ve got sixty-three percent in the tanks. Call the play,” Jake said.
“Cut the chute on my mark. Passing four-thousand,” she took a long breath and exhaled, “Mark!”
The sudden return of acceleration indicated the release of the parachutes. They’d done well, but the retro rockets were stronger and needed a clear sky above them to avoid any trouble.
“Canvas away,” Brett said.
“Hit it, Jake!” Charlie said.
Jensen squeezed the trigger on his control yoke with the fingers of his right hand and pressed the RCS purge with the fingers of his left.
Aqsarniit’s engine trio fired everything at maximum thrust. All RCS fuel was depleted before the ship reached one-thousand feet. The slight off-vertical angle would have to be accepted. There was no fuel to spare for attitude control. The landing cam showed a cluster of rocks and sand approaching a bit too fast. There was no need to look though. Wherever she was aiming was where she would hit.
Her gear was down and her tanks were quickly evacuating.
Aqsarniit had become a toasted marshmallow on entry. With any luck, she’d avoid becoming a smore.
“Brace, brace, brace!” Jake called. Again, a useless gesture. The physics would decide everything now.
The whirr of
Aqsarniit’s engines ceased about fifty feet above the surface. Bingo fuel. Charlie had done all she could. So had Jake. So had
Aqsarniit.
Impact with the Martian surface was around fifty-four miles per hour. The springs of an Aurora lander’s gear systems were officially designed to handle up to forty. Unofficially her engineers had calculated that forty-five could be endured if the ship was at an optimal angle.
There was nothing optimal about
Aqsarniit’s landing.
Landing legs B and C sheared their springs on impact after a full compression. The springs on landing leg A were not as well-crafted. Nor was the anchor bolt that held leg A in place. The result of which was that the thick plate of material that separated the leg A housing from the sealed crew compartment above was compromised by a knee joint that had fractured in the initial impact.
The protection plate, thus compromised and now endowed with a sharpened protrusion, cut into the sealed crew cockpit. The plate and knee joint thrust upward into the chamber between seats three and four. The breach was quickly followed by a rapid outgassing of the spacecraft’s internal atmosphere.
Jake opened his eyes and felt pain in his back and jaw. He’d clenched hard at the last moment. It took his brain a moment to realize that he was still alive and well. Before he could find out about the rest of his crew, he could hear air leaking out of his ship.
Turning his head, he could see an angry, spindly mass of metal angles poking around where it had no business. As he discovered this intruder, he noticed that the floor under him was tilted at an improper degree. Anything that could have come loose had done so, including the seats that contained Brett Morrison and Henri Roussault. The pair seemed shaken, but alive. At least he could see the surprised movement of their arms.
An unmanly shriek had emanated from Morrison’s radio as he realized how close he’d come to being the first victim of impalement on the planet Mars. The
shkurrr of outgassing didn’t bother him nearly as much as the frightful knowledge of his close call. Henri might have enjoyed a similar sentiment if he wasn’t too focused on the sudden ache he now felt coming on.
The crew had all survived a rear-impact that might have killed a highway driver. Speeds like this were survivable, but any paramedic on the scene would have demanded they get checked out for injuries both internal and external.
“Everyone okay? Sound off,” Jake said.
“Hickory good,” Charlie said.
“This is Alexei. I’m okay,” Alexei said.
“Morrison, green,” Brett said.
“Laura here. I’m all right,” Laura said.
A groan came over the radio, “Roussault. Clear,” came the call from the French biologist.
“Okay, keep your suits sealed. Check for leaks. We are outgassing and that’s poison right outside your face plate. Anyone got a leak?”
A series of “no” and “negative” filled the air at the same moment. Jake was satisfied.
Unbuckling the harness and sliding gingerly from his chair, Jake frowned at the garish hole that had been punched in his nice, clean spacecraft.
Aqsarniit had given everything to keep her crew alive. Now she was a wreck.
“Charlie, before that thing freezes, can you tell me how far to HAB?” he asked, indicating the computer in front of her.
Charlie ran some numbers and breathed for a moment. Henri groaned and the radio mic caught it.
“You all right back there, Henri?” Jake asked.
“Pain in my back,” Henri said.
Charlie looked over the display and before she could speak, the screen went dead. Jake noticed the loss of the monitor.
“Did you get it?” he asked.
“Six miles west-southwest of HAB,” she said.
“Six miles?” Jake asked.
“Give or take a bit,” Charlie said, shrugging.
“We just fell from ten-thousand kilometers, you’re telling me we’re only six miles from our landing site?” Jake asked.
“We’re about seven miles from the landing site. We didn’t want to come down right on HAB,” Charlie said.
“Seven miles?” Jake asked.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, gesturing to the dead monitor.
“That’s…” Jake started, lacking the proper words to express his amazement.
“I’ll try to do better for you next time,” Charlie said.
10 June 2002
Aqsarniit
Athena II
Sol 0
Extricating themselves from a cracked and compromised lander took the better part of an hour. In contrast to the dignified egress that Athena I had taken, with their proper show of flags and footprints, the crew of Athena II crawled out over a hatch combing and more or less spilled out onto the surface, one-by-one, over the course of thirty minutes.
No television cameras recorded their first steps or first words. No crisp salutes accompanied the raising of another Old Glory. They had simply survived, which was, for the moment, enough.
Jensen stood in the red-orange sand, trying to get a bearing on Athena Base. He’d studied the maps and photographs of this place until he knew it as well as the face of his son. But, as the adage goes, the map is not the territory. From satellite photos, Mars told one story. From the ground, another.
He faced east, the sun over his shoulder as it sank inexorably lower in the sky. They needed to get to Athena Base before nightfall. Safety, heat, air; their suits were limited in the ability to provide all three. And the
Aqsarniit had already passed out of her usefulness.
Charlie came around to where Jake was working. He was in a crouch, plotting a crude course in the sand using rocks that stood for HAB and their current position. He was attempting to make a map in miniature.
“We aren’t close enough to see the HAB. How sure are you of our position?” he asked as she came up from his flank.
“Best I could do before the computer died,” she said. “I’d say ninety-percent.”
“Confidence or arrogance?” he asked.
“What’s the difference?” she replied.
He snorted.
“What’s your best guess for a direction?”
She angled a forearm towards the horizon. Directly away from the sun, then swung it a few degrees north.
“You’re just dead reckoning now?”
“You asked,” she said.
“If we can’t get there by dark, we’ll need a conga line,” Jake said.
“What about the bike?” Charlie asked.
“I checked. Landing cracked the chassis. Now it’s just a pair of off-balanced unicycles,” Jake said.
“That was mass we could have used.”
“It was designed for a long landing, not a hard landing,” Jake said.
“Okay, conga line,” Charlie said, moving on with her day, “I’ll see if I can find some rope. I’ve got five hours of oh-two left. How about you?”
“A little less,” Jake said.
“Should be enough, but we need to leave now,” she said.
Jake rose from his squat, “Let’s get the…”
The radios crackled and a very loud voice filled their ears. “to the coordinates of your projected landing site. If you can read this, please respond immediately.”
Jake reached for the knob on his belt that controlled the radio volume and dialed it back.
Charlie pointed to the north-east. “Hey, look at that. Rover’s here.”
The rounded cylinder of the excursion rover crested the low ridge to their left. The pre-recorded message from Earth cycled through another enunciation.
“Athena II, this is Houston. We have sent the excursion rover to the coordinates of your projected landing site. If you can read this, please respond immediately. Repeat. Athena II, this is Houston. Athena II, this is Houston. Do you read? We have sent the excursion rover…”
13 June 2002
Athena Base
Athena II
Sol 3
They’d waited until Athena Base was up and running before putting on the movie. Jensen had liked that Cale Fletcher and Athena I had had a movie night to start off their surface operations and, to honor his absent friend, he was resolved to carry on the tradition.
Avoiding spoilers from folks back home had been a bit of a problem. He already knew that there was a glorious fight scene and a reference to the Death Star’s laser, but he was still going in relatively unspoiled.
The crew sat in a V formation around the dinner table, with the large screen on the far wall. He used his laptop to hit play and then shut it so as to avoid the light from the monitor ruining the image.
The lights of HAB 1 went dim as John Williams’s score swelled up. The brilliant yellow Star Wars logo receded into the void, followed by the bold letters Episode II: The Clone Blitz.
The opening scene was a spot-on tribute to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Watching an assassin droid run through a gauntlet of traps in the middle of an ancient Sith temple immediately brought to mind Harrison Ford and the old films of Jensen’s youth. It was a lovely bridge between past and future.
For the next two hours, he watched, enthralled as Heath Ledger brought a troubled dignity to the role of Anakin Skywalker. Seeing the young actor portray enthusiasm, ambition, and a bit of veiled wrath was an achievement in and of itself. He silently complimented George Lucas on the casting decision. The chemistry between Ledger and his costars, both Portman and McGregor, was palpable.
The return of Maul was a stunning moment. Seeing those robotic legs descend the ramp and invade the castle of Alderaan had caused audible gasps among the crew. When Maul had laid waste to the Jedi Academy, it was a visceral reminder of the horrors that gun-violence had wrought in schools. He felt relief that Congress had begun to seriously consider a Constitutional amendment to change the nation’s stance on gun possession.
The finale, on the ringed world of Geonosis, had been a culmination of everything he loved about the series. Watching Obi-Wan tangle with an assassin droid, seeing the narrow escape from Tarkin’s laser, the emotional conversation with Count Dooku, all of it felt earned. Then that horrific ending with Jedi dropping dead left and right. His chest clenched at the shock of it. The fade to black was a devastation. At least Mars would occupy his time as he waited for Episode III.
The rest of the crew wasn’t quite as taken by the film as their commander, but as they cleaned up popcorn and finished their evening activities, each had something more or less positive to say about the film. Henri had found it pedestrian, but entertaining (trust the French to be reliable in their criticisms). Charlie and Brett had matched Jake’s own enthusiasm but weren’t quite resolved about the “Force Virus” as a plot device. And Laura and Alexei seemed too exhausted from the week’s adventures to offer more than a smile and a nod before heading to their respective bunks.
Jake settled in for a good night’s sleep and began thinking about the checklist to prepare Clifford for the drive out to Site B. An hour later, unable to fall asleep, he pulled out his headphones and laptop and queued up the film one more time.
2 July 2002
Excursion Rover “Clifford” (60km NNW of Athena Base)
Athena II
Sol 23
For a variety of reasons, not the least of which was international status, Brett Morrison had operational command of the expedition to Site B.
Until IASA’s inflatable habitat was up and running, Site B was the official moniker for the area where Flat and Ortona had found the permafrost readings on Athena I. The data from the ground-penetrating radar and the survey robot that was left behind had been nothing short of tantalizing. Buried fifty meters under the surface, there seemed to be a large pocket of water-ice. The exact size and amount were subject to speculation, based on the readings that Athena I had brought back, but the general consensus was that this was now the most valuable patch of ground for a hundred-million kilometers in any direction.
Likely as not there were many other similar areas on the planet. This site didn’t seem to be geologically unique, but, until more aquifers were located, humanity was determined to suck this one dry and squeeze all the knowledge and resources that it could from this dusty chunk of ice.
Three days ago, Morrison, Winters, and Roussault had departed from Athena Base in the large expedition rover, Clifford. The plan was for them to locate the IHAB that had landed about a kilometer from Site B, tow it to the ideal location, prep it for operational use, and then acquire the first samples of the subsurface ice. If all went according to plan, Site B would become the second outpost on the planet and, potentially, a logistics hub for exploration throughout the region.
It all depended on what could be learned in the coming weeks.
With driving done for the day, Morrison and his team were just settling in for the evening meal. They each sat in a cramped bunk in the tight quarters of the expedition rover and talked about whatever came to mind. Tonight, the subject was the potential benefits and ethical downsides of terraforming. The one agreed-upon thought was that this was a conversation that would lack relevance for at least another half-century.
Morrison was using the water dispenser to wash his face and utensils when the main computer emitted a triple-beep through the cabin speakers.
“Downlink from
Orion. Earth has something they want to tell us,” Morrison said. “Henri, can you plug in and patch it to the speakers?”
Henri connected a cable from the communications console to his laptop. After a long moment to boot up and sync the systems, the transmission played through the rover’s ceiling speakers.
“Expedition crew, this is Houston. We had a few items to share and wanted to talk to you before you bedded down.”
Morrison recognized the southern drawl of John Crichton who was clearly pulling CAPCOM duty back in Houston today.
“Analysis is still being done on telemetry data from the
Hall lander. The leading theory at this point is that electrostatic dust from Phobos was able to enter the lab module either through the open airlock door or possibly through a faulty valve in the reaction control system. The build up of dust led to some unknown electrical variables which then compromised internal wiring within the lab module. As the onboard heaters drew more power, a small fire began. There was likely nothing that could be done to save the ship at that point.”
Crichton paused for effect. Henri and Brett both took a moment to look at Laura, who held a very British stiff upper lip.
Through the engineering-ese of official language, mixed with some Kentucky windage, the message translated to, “We don’t know what the heck happened. We’re blaming it on Phobos and saying it was no one’s fault.” Truthfully, all the finger-pointing on two worlds wouldn’t change what happened, nor would it get back the lost samples and lost surface time. Lacking sufficient evidence to the contrary, it would do no good to blame the only two explorers who had ever walked on four worlds. Laura and Alexei would not be denied their hero’s welcome when they got back to Earth.
Crichton’s voice continued, “All current data from the IHAB module looks good. We have no residuals for the surface deployment procedures. We do not anticipate diverting Athena III assets to you at this time.”
That had been a longshot. Athena III was set to land, three years from now, on the opposite side side of the planet, with the goal of exploring a totally new area. If Site B wound up being something truly extraordinary, then Athena III surface assets might be retasked to Site B in anticipation of establishing a larger outpost, but they’d need to find more than some subsurface ice to do that. Maybe a Martian microbe would do the trick, a fossil might be just as good. But more than likely, it’d take the equivalent of the Martian Library of Alexandria to get NASA to change its long-term plans.
Crichton’s voice seemed especially happy with that statement as he was on the prime crew for Athena III.
The recording continued, “We want to remind you that any and all discoveries which are made on Athena II are to be credited to the entire Athena team.”
The French biologist laughed, “You hear this, Brett? If we find Martians, you can’t name them after yourself.”
Brett smirked, “Okay, I can’t take credit. But if I learn to talk to them, can I lead them on a crusade back to Earth and go all ‘War of the Worlds’ on everybody?”
“I don’t see why not?” Henri said.
Laura rolled her eyes, “Are we not supposed to find an ape city or something?”
The men turned to look at her, surprised. She continued, “You saw that awful film last year. That man with the Boston accent gets away from the apes and then realizes that he was on Mars the whole time or something?”
“Yeah, I saw that movie, but I couldn’t follow it,” Brett said.
Henri countered, “The crime of what that man did to my fellow countryman’s novel.” He then emitted a few soft curses in French to condemn Wahlburg, Burton, and the entire enterprise of trying to remake the Planet of the Apes.
17 July 2002
IASA Outpost (120km NNW of Athena Base)
Athena II
Sol 39
A six day trek. Five days to set up the lab. Another three days to set up the drill. Then two more days to swap out the motor when the first one had a fault. And two more days again for the agonizingly careful process of cutting into the ice and making it ready for study.
So much for Martian Perrier.
It was time now. They were there. She deftly brought the microscope to the front of the glove box and angled it in front of her workstation. There was no way to look through the lens directly, but she had connected the camera to the lab monitor at the back of the habitat.
Even through the glovebox’s thick casing, she could still feel the cold seeping into her skin. This little outpost lacked all the amenities of Athena Base, and Athena Base wasn’t exactly a five-star kind of place. The thick canvas and minimal structure meant that the IHAB was only slightly more sophisticated than the emergency tent that Clifford could deploy. Still, now that they’d moved out the field equipment, it had more elbow room than any place on the planet.
Laura held the slide up to the light and checked for any problems. She found none. Then she placed it under the microscope. Henri and Brett each sat on a crate behind her and angled to look at the screen.
“Let’s see what we’ve found.”
