Chapter 62: New Moves

“You can see the engine’s flame in the sky now,” the announcer said in the background as the long-range cameras picked out the actinic flare of the fusion engines high in the sky.

We were in Kenya, awaiting the return of Mars-One. Kelly had tried to insist on a U.S. landing, but I had firmly vetoed that. The large Orion spacecraft was coming down where we needed it to be for a complete check-out and re-fit, not playing a part in some political posturing.

She had been similarly disappointed when I refused to immediately send the returning astronauts to Washington or New York for a spectacle. They were all going into isolation per the protocol developed by NASA decades before. Another week in isolation with a select medical staff was a smart precaution, even if I really wanted to join them to see Chrissy.

“Vector looks good,” Terry, the acting Capcom, said over the circuit. “Angels twenty-mike, descent velocity is two hundred meters per second.”

If they did not slow, they would impact in one hundred seconds. Of course, the fact that the engines were visibly firing meant it would be longer, and that they would be moving much slower soon.

“Emergency crews standing by,” Terry said. “Medical teams and isolation vehicles standing by. Angels fifteen-mike, velocity one-eight-zero. ETA is two minutes. Commence pad flooding.”

With the heat produced by the engines in their final breaking maneuver, we needed to insulate the huge, mobile, reinforced concrete landing pads we had built for the Orion fleet. Each pad was roughly one hundred meters square. A mesh of high-temperature superconducting materials was laid on top of the pad, allowing the rapid dissipation of heat. Additionally, we were now pumping tens of thousands of liters of water across the pad, to keep the intense plasma from damaging the mesh.

“Angels seven point four - mike, velocity 100 meters per second.”

We could all see the massive ship with its curved white hull balancing on the bright spears of light from its engines. It was visibly slowing as it clawed is way down from the sky.

“One thousand meters, velocity niner-two meters per second,” Terry said.

“Six hundred meters, ninety meters per second.”

I held my breath. They were still moving too fast, but I knew the final deceleration burn was programmed for five seconds.

On cue, the engine plasma increased and the giant ship slowed further.

“Eighty meters. Fifty meters.” Terry continued to count down the distance.

“Two meters. Engine cut-off. Touchdown! Mars-One has landed.”

We all cheered.

“Mars-One, control. Welcome home,” Terry said after looking my way for any comments. I had waved him off.

“Control, this is Mars-One. All systems green, engine shut-down complete. Post landing check-list PL10 in progress, over.”

“Mars-One, Control, roger. We’re estimating about ten minutes to cool the landing surface and prepare for debarkation, over.”

“Roger, ten mikes. We’ll be ready. It’s been a long strange trip for us and we’re looking forward to seeing you all,” Todd Walton said.

I sat back and watched the news coverage on the monitor as most of the major networks broke into whatever they were showing to announce the safe landing of Mars-One. While hardly surprised, I was a little disappointed that the Chinese news agency, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, was the only major channel not covering this news.

My phone rang. After glancing at the caller-ID, I smiled and hurried to answer it.

“Welcome home, Chrissy,” I said.

“It’s so good to hear your voice again without any transmission lag,” she replied. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too. How are you feeling?”

“I feel fine. We kind of got used to one-gee again on the way home. That landing was a bit rough with the final braking, but not too bad. How are you feeling? What are you going to do to show me how much you’ve missed me?” she added in a husky voice. I could tell she had cupped her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone for a modicum of privacy.

“I thought I’d look at you via a window for a few days and call you a couple of times a day,” I teased.

“That’s just cold,” she replied. “Who came up with these quarantine requirements, anyway?”

I laughed. “Blame NASA and Jyl. Then look on the bright side. I got them to reduce it down from a planned twenty-one days to only a week. I’ll be waiting for you a week from today and promise to show you how much I’ve missed you.”

“You had better make good on that promise, mister, or there will be some trouble in River City.”

“Mars-One, this is control, ground power connected and we’re ready to connect the isolation vehicle to airlock one, over,” Terry said over the radio.

“Control, roger. Checklist PL10 is complete. We are powering down all internal power and operating systems. Mars-one, signing off.”

“Paul, it looks like I’ve got to go and get ready to disembark,” Chrissy said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. I’ll see you soon.”

A few minutes later, I watched on the internal cameras of the isolation transfer vehicle as she walked out of the airlock and moved to one of the comfortable seats on the air conditioned bus. She immediately grabbed a fresh orange from the tray of produce we had provided and sat down with a smile as her crew mates joined her. She looked good in her green flight suit. Her blonde hair and blue eyes shown and it looked like she had lost a little weight, but that might have just been her tiny waist being accented by the cut of the suit.

Todd Walton, the mission commander, was the last off of his ship. The airlock doors were closed behind him, and ground crews began the atmospheric purge even as the bus-like transport pulled away.

Terry White turned around from the workstation in front of me and grinned. “Fourteen souls sent to Mars, and the first six are back safely. I think we’ve done a pretty good job,” he said.

“We definitely have. How is the base crew doing?” Eight of the astronauts had remained on Mars at the base to begin establishing a sustainable habitat and start exploring the Martian landscape. The three geologists and one botanist that made up our core scientific team there had already published several initial reports on the soil structure near the base.

“We just sent the tape of the landing to them. It will be a while to hear their reactions, but their morning report indicated everything was fine. We’ll need to get the ship cleaned and inspected, then get going on the re-stocking and loading procedures. I’d like the re-supply mission to go before Thanksgiving.”

“Agreed, but let’s not cut any corners. They have plenty of consumables to last them until the new year, if needed. Let’s not set a specific date until we’re done with the mission debriefs and everyone is out of quarantine.”

He nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. Now that all of the excitement is over, maybe you should head back up to Astra. Orion-three will be docking up there tomorrow, and I suspect you’re going to want to sit in on those debriefs in person.”

I smiled and nodded.

“Do we really have a choice?” Jyl asked as we sat on Astra brainstorming ideas to make the long-term zero-gee environment of a deep space mission more tolerable.

We had seen significant muscle loss and bone density drops in the crew on Orion-three during their extended stay at ‘the nugget’ to deploy the wrapping material and then nudge the orbit of the rock to guide it someplace useful. We had known it was a risk, and agreed it was tolerable for one mission, but it was now obvious we needed to do something different.

“So,” Allen said as Billy jotted notes down. “We can either design and build a new ship configuration, tie up two Orions and make a tether hub they can both dock with, and then spin around to build up some semblance of gravity, or we can refit them with improved zero-gee exercise equipment and institute a monitored physical regimen for the crew to lessen the impact of zero-gee?” He looked my way. “Are we sure the ROI is there for a new ship design?”

I looked over at Katiana. “Have the assay figures changed?”

“We’ve got some higher percentages of rare earths in the cores, but I don’t know what that does to the ROI figures yet. I need to spend a little time with Thomas getting my head around that.”

“Terbium and Dysprosium concentrations are higher,” Thomas said. “We don’t know how uniform the interior is yet, since the overall density is lower than expected. It could be a sticky aggregation of rocks that we’ll need to fully process to understand.”

“Which we have to do in a zero-gee environment as well,” Jyl said, bringing us neatly back to the first question at hand; how to keep people healthy in a zero-gee environment.

“Okay, we have all of the first principles down for a station or a tether configuration. How long do we have until we need a final answer?” I asked.

“The nugget will get to L-5 late next year,” Katiana stated. “We expect the braking to take less than a month, so we don’t really have a deadline until we want to go after another asteroid, or start processing the nugget.”

“Give me a guess on value,” I challenged Thomas.

He pulled out his calculator and punched some numbers.

“For Dysprosium alone, there’s probably at least four million dollars worth in the nugget. Terbium is likely close to the same. The other rare earth elements will probably add up to three or five times that. We need to heat it all down and process it. Capturing the hydroxyl and any other gasses is going to be tricky, but I’m guessing we’ll have to solve that anyway.”

“So, Allen, the short-term ROI is not going to make sense to even pay for the R&D on a new ship, let alone capital costs. Luckily, we don’t need to make a profit on this right out of the gate. The rare earth elements will be useful in our own actuator production.”

I did not add that the Chinese would not be happy if we had an alternate source to those elements. We had seen a slow, but steady price increase over the past year. Lila and team were watching that, along with hundreds of other Chinese variables, trying to figure out what Minister Sun was up to.

“Then you want to build a new ship?” he asked.

“Yes, and no. I think we should use the OTV design and a tether approach to spin them for some semblance of gravity.”

“That’s going to be a long tether. Also, do we need to be able to move from ship to ship without suiting up? It’s more than a tether if we do,” Allen said.

“Balance and spin rate are going to be an issue as well,” Thomas said. “We’re using the sewage and water systems here on Astra to keep things in balance without over-using the station keeping thrusters. Two ships may make that less of a problem,” he added. “I’ll have to look at that.”

“Okay, Tamara, can we get some of the engineering team in Barcelona looking at a tether configuration based on the L-4 collider design? I’ll work with Thomas, Katiana and Jyl on the OTV configuration for us.”

“We still need to reconfigure any Orions we plan on using for the Mars run, if the mission profiles are going to keep them in zero-gee for extended periods of time,” Jyl said.

“Let’s pull Terry and Megan into that discussion. I’m not sure that we’ll have extended zero-gee ops around Mars for a while.”

Allen was shaking his head. “The build plan has them spending less than a day in orbit for the next few trips. If they are doing a site visit, they’ll still drop pretty much straight in and then return any samples to the base rather than evaluate them in orbit like we did for the first mission. We should be good there.”

“What about other deep-space research missions?” Katiana asked. “I don’t really think spinning a couple of OTVs makes sense if you’re moving around much under acceleration.”

“True,” I replied. “How about we share the data with NASA and get them to make recommendations.”

Jyl scrunched her nose at me. “They are going to take forever to give us a recommendation.”

“Probably, but they can at least feel involved that way,” I countered.

“How about we make a preliminary recommendation and ask them to recommend changes or enhancements? That way, we can reconfigure Orion-Three and Four and have them ready for your next mad-cap mission.”

“Okay. I can agree to that,” I said. “Anything else for today?”

Tamara re-capped the agenda, decisions, and follow-up items for us all and then we adjourned. I was surprised to see Thomas remain sitting at the conference room table, lost in thought.

“Thomas?” I asked.

He looked up. “How many people do you think will be involved in the mining activity?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I haven’t given it that much thought yet. What do you think?”

“I think it could be a lot, in the long-term. Short term, I can see it being less than a hundred. I’m wondering if it makes sense to start building a station at L-5 for that work. Using tethered ships is not going to give us much lab space to work on processes. We’re going to be bouncing back and forth between L-5, Astra, Aristarchus, and Earth to work through the engineering problems we’re likely to encounter. We need to start thinking longer-term.”

I sighed. “I don’t disagree, but it’s not going to be cheap or quick to build a second station. We’re just getting to break-even on Astra from a fully depreciated perspective.”

“What if we moved Astra out to L-5?” he asked.

I thought about that for a moment. “Hilton might not be happy, but I don’t think most of the research firms leasing space here would care much. Let’s keep pushing on evaluating the tether concept, and I’ll have someone work on numbers for a second station. We could always build here, and then move either out to L-5.”

“It’s going to take more than a year to build another station. That’s when the nugget will get to L-5. I really want to be able to get going on breaking that down.”

“I know you do, my friend. I want you to as well, but we can only move so fast. You realize the Chinese are not going to be happy if we determine asteroids can give us an abundant source of rare earth elements, right?”

Thomas scowled at me. “I let you deal with that bullshit. I just want to get going on figuring out how to process that thing. Fusion makes heating it simple, but we’re going to have to spend a lot of time with engineers to construct something that lets us heat it without rocketing all around the solar system. I’ve got some ideas, but need to get building to test them all out.”

“Get an engineering team put together,” I said. “Give me a list of skills or people you need and a week and I’ll get a team established and reporting to you.”

He shook his head. “Have them report to Katiana and make her the program manager. I don’t want to deal with people headaches.”

I smiled, understanding his desire, and agreed.

“Oh, my, God,” Chrissy said as she recovered from her third orgasm in less than thirty minutes. “I’ve missed your loving so much, but I need a break,” she gasped as she fell back against the bed.

I smiled down at her. She was as beautiful as ever. Her blonde hair had grown out from the shorter cut she had left Earth with, and her tan had faded some, but the dusting of freckles across her nose and piercing blue eyes still made me smile. I slipped from her and fell to the side before hugging her.

“I’ve missed you, too,” I said. “I’m glad you’re home safe.”

She squeezed my hand. “It feels like home,” she replied. “Before, I felt like we were always at ‘your place’, wherever that might be, but now I feel at home wherever we are together. I love you, Paul.”

I kissed her. “I love you, too.”

She snuggled into me and pulled my fingers to her lips for a soft kiss.

“What do we have to do today?” she asked. “I’m assuming you’re not going to let me keep you in bed and just fuck you silly all day.”

I laughed. “Much as I would enjoy that, I think your Mom and Dad plan on joining us for lunch in an hour or so.”

We were at our Sydney house, less than a block from her childhood home. We had flown from Kenya last night, African time, when the quarantine had ended for the returning astronauts. The eight hour time difference had gotten us into Sydney around four a.m. and Chrissy had dragged me to bed as soon as we got to the house. We had made love furiously, twice, before falling asleep. Breakfast and a morning shower had been delayed by another, gentler round of love making. After having a quick bite to eat and cleaning up, Chrissy had pulled me back into bed for another go. I had enjoyed giving her two wonderful orgasms with my fingers and tongue before finishing with her long, muscular legs wrapped around me and her heels pulling me closer as I joined her in her final orgasm.

“Well, I guess you had better shower by yourself this time,” she said playfully. “That’s what tripped us up last time.”

“I will, in a minute,” I said as I slipped my hand across her still tight nipples and then trailed my fingers down to her sopping, sensitive pussy.

She grabbed my hand. “No more of that,” she chided. “I’ll never make it to lunch if you get me started again.”

I laughed, kissed her, and then slipped from bed to head for the shower.

Later, we were both presentable when the doorbell rang and her parents joined us in the kitchen. Chrissy gave each of her parents big hugs. Camilla gave me a peck on the cheek, and Bluey gave me a rough hug and pat on the back before we all settled around the table.

Lunch was filled with stories of Chrissy’s adventures in space and on Mars.

“It was exciting,” she said at one point, “but also a bloody lot of hard work. I’m proud of what we accomplished, but there is a lot more to do up there before we have anything close to a sustainable base.”

“What do you mean?” Camilla asked. “You’re not going back right away, are you?”

Chrissy and I shook our heads at the same time.

“No,” I said.

“Not right away,” Chrissy added. “But I am going back. I want to be on the build team for the next major expansion. For now, we’ll add a few more accommodation and lab modules, but the plan calls for some significant habitat building in a year or so. I want to be there for that.”

Bluey gave me a questioning look. “What’s the difference?” he asked.

“Right now,” I said. “We’ve not tried to build hydroponics spaces or anything to allow us to establish an approach to self-sufficiency. Eventually, we want to minimize the consumables needed to sustain the base. We did the same thing at Aristarchus, and are just getting to the point were we could curb the supply missions substantially.”

“I helped build those facilities on the moon, and want to be involved in the build out on Mars, since I think we can improve on how we did it at Aristarchus,” Chrissy said.

“We probably did over-engineer things for the first build-out,” I said.

“Plus,” Chrissy continued, “if we are going to offer tourist accommodations, I think we’ll do some really special building with a view of either Hebes Chasma or Perrotin Crater.”

“That would put those accommodations pretty far from the base,” I said. “Hebes Base is about mid-way between the two.”

Chrissy was nodding. “Fifteen klicks, roughly. We’ll need either a hell of a subway, or more reliable rovers that can move through a dust storm, but the views at either would sell a bunch of tickets, if we built it.”

“I thought you might be done going up there after this trip,” Camilla said with concern in her voice.

“Mum,” Chrissy said. “It’s hard to explain, but building things up there, on the Moon or Mars, is so much more rewarding than designing and building down here. Up there, I know I’m one of a handful of builders. Down here, I’d just be another construction worker, or architect, or engineer.”

“It makes you feel even more special,” Bluey said with a nod. “We just happen to think you are pretty special already.”

Chrissy grinned and leaned over to give her father a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Dad. I think everyone here is pretty special as well.”

“Hear, hear,” I agreed as I raised my glass. We all had mimosas on the table, even if we had not drunk much of them.

“So how long are you home for?” Camilla asked after downing a good portion of her drink. “Are we going to see more of you than what is broadcast on the telly?”

Chrissy looked at me. “That depends. Paul hasn’t gotten around to discussing missions and plans with the crew yet.” She raised an eyebrow in invitation to me.

“Well,” I drawled out. “There are some options. We’re planning the next Mars rotation for November or December. That will mostly be re-supply and rotating some scientists and engineers. We won’t do any major expansion until we have some results back from the geologists and botanists up there. But we do want to finish the Hotel at Aristarchus, and NASA is lobbying for a radio telescope on the dark side of the moon. We’ve also been looking at surveys from Tsiolkovskiy crater and might want to go back there for some more work.”

“But what will Chrissy be doing?” Camilla asked.

I didn’t really want her parents to be influencing her decisions, but continued.

“Well, first all of the crew has a mandatory two weeks of recovery leave. That means, she is off-duty for at least that long. After that, it’s likely she’ll be offered the lead position for the Aristarchus construction. We’ve decided to run a pressurized tunnel from the landing area to the hotel on the crater rather than run rovers between the two.”

Chrissy smiled at me while Camilla frowned. Bluey kept a neutral expression, but finished his drink in a long gulp.

“I don’t know if...” Camilla began.

“Mum,” Chrissy interrupted. “It’s my decision,” she said forcefully.

She looked at me. “Dearest, what if I didn’t want to work on the tunnel?” she asked sweetly.

I smiled back. “We’ve got lots of other work in progress. I’m pretty sure you can have your pick of assignments.”

Chrissy and Camilla laughed, but Bluey gave me a strange look.

“You know,” Bluey said a few minutes later. “You’re going to have to tell all your stories again tonight at dinner, for Jane.”

“Assuming she comes home for dinner,” Camilla said in a tone of frustration.

“Problems?” Chrissy asked.

“Boy problems,” Bluey said. “She thinks some wanker footy player is more important than family. We offered to let her stay home from school to see you today, and she turned us down flat because she wanted to see Brad after school.” His tone said more than his words. He obviously was not a fan of Brad.

“Who’s Brad?” Chrissy asked. “She never mentioned him in any of her emails to me.”

“He’s just a boy,” Camilla started. “But Jane’s been acting like a git since she started dating. Paul, is Ali the same way around boys?”

I shook my head. “She’s actually pretty well behaved. Of course, knowing security is nearby might have something to do with that. We had some entitlement issues a while back, but I think she’s gotten her head screwed on better recently. She has decided she wants to apply for the service academies next year.”

Bluey shook his head. “I wish Jane would set a goal on something like that. I guess we got lucky with this one,” he added, pointing at Chrissy.

“I’ll talk to her tonight and see what’s going on,” Chrissy said.

“Good luck. I think half of her antics are aimed at trying to show up her big sister in some way.”

“That’s not good,” I said. “Why do you think that?”

“It seems that every time Chrissy’s face was on the news or on the show, Jane would do something foolish, usually with some boy. Brad is just the most recent,” Camilla said.

“And the worst,” Bluey added. “I’m almost of a mind to just up and move away from Sydney, but I don’t know that she would behave differently anywhere else.”

It was an interesting statement, and something I needed to discuss with Bluey, but in private. Instead, I asked, “What’s she want to study?”

“No direction. I think that’s the biggest problem. Chrissy, if we end up kicking her ass out, don’t let her lean on you.”

“Dad, it can’t be that bad,” Chrissy said.

That evening, it became apparent it was. Jane was late to the dinner Camilla invited us to, and had plenty of attitude to justify her tardiness. Before we even sat down for dinner, the conversation was strained. She demonstrated a lot of the same behavior that Ali had, last spring. By the time the port was poured, both Chrissy and I were ready to escape Jane’s hostile glares and sniping comments.

“Jane!” Chrissy finally said sharply. “We were always told if we don’t have anything nice to say, to shut our gobs. I’ve had about enough of your bullshit tonight.” She stood up as Jane looked at her in shock. “Mum, Dad, thanks for a wonderful dinner. Next time, we’ll have you over, but let’s leave the little shit here.”

Without another word, she turned and headed out the door. I thanked Camilla and Bluey and hurried after her.

“God, she has turned into a complete shit in the past year,” Chrissy said as I caught up to her.

“Hormones?” I suggested.

“Just a bad attitude. I’m really glad Ali isn’t around her for both of our sakes.”

“Well, Ali was a bit of a problem in the spring,” I reminded her. “You never really got the full brunt of her then.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You were training. I think you were on the Moon when I finally had enough. Her spring break was no break. Terry got her a familiarization ride in a helo. He had it set down in the High Uinta’s and had a little chat about her attitude. Then he handed her a survival pack, and literally kicked her ass out for a crash course in survival. Mike Keller was holed up nearby to keep an eye on her, but let her sort things out on her own. He didn’t reveal himself for nearly three days. After that, he had a few more heart-to-heart talks about growing up and appreciating what she had. By the time she came back, she had a different attitude. I sent her off on a few long weekends in Africa to reinforce how privileged she was.”

“Christ, you never told me that. Why not?”

It was a good question.

“I didn’t want to distract you. I also knew it was a life lesson she needed to learn. You saw how much better she has behaved since then.”

“But I didn’t think you had anything to do with that,” she countered.

I shrugged. “I didn’t have much to do with it, other than letting it happen. Terry and Mike and Tamara had the hard conversations with her.”

“Do you think we could enlist them for Jane’s sake?” She asked.

I shook my head. “Ali’s issues were about entitlement. It seems like Jane is jealous and lacking ambition. I thought it was just your mother exaggerating, but she was nasty to you, your Mom, and your Dad, and barely civil to me. I don’t know that the same approach would work for Jane.”

Chrissy sighed. “She needs to grow up. She’s sixteen going on thirty. She’s going to learn the world doesn’t owe her shit, and if she doesn’t learn it soon, it’s going to land on her like a ton of bricks.”

“Well, I think Ali did get a sense of that from her experience,” I said a moment later. “Maybe we should mention a few of the wilderness programs I fund to your folks. It might not be as drastic as what I sent Ali to, but it might at least get Jane’s attention.”

Chrissy looked at me. “I think the one in Kenya and Tanzania might open her eyes,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I bet they even give some school credit. Let me talk to Mum in the morning. Thanks,” she finished before giving me a quick kiss.

Then she got a steely look in her eye.

“But don’t keep something like that from me again. There is no reason you should have to carry that sort of burden alone.”

I could only nod.

“Hey, Chrissy, welcome back to Earth,” Jer said with a smile as he came into the kitchen at the house in Park City. I was surprised when he walked over and gave Chrissy a hug. “It’s good to see you here again,” he said.

Chrissy beamed.

“It’s good to see you, too. You’re growing up,” she said as she stood and checked his height. “You’ve shot up since June.”

Jer blushed, but nodded. He had gained a couple of inches in the past two months. I suspected he would top out around six feet tall, but still had a few inches to go.

“Maybe you can take him shopping for some better fitting, and looking clothes,” I said teasingly. “He has about worn out all of his sloppy sweat pants and keeps insisting he doesn’t need anything else while he’s still growing so fast.”

“Dad,” he protested.

I just laughed. “It’s not like I can’t afford to put you in some decent clothes. Besides, you’re going to need some gear to wear camping in a couple of weeks,” I added.

“Are you going with us?” Jer asked Chrissy as he grabbed a glass of milk and joined us at the kitchen table.

“I’m not sure. Where are you planning on going?”

“Dad promised we could do a long weekend in Zions or Escalante. I want to capture the fall colors and the landscape down there.”

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