The Attempt (The Martian Manifesto Book 1) (21 page)

The two astronauts jetted their way below the Pegasus and over to where the two landing skids were hanging down. Sam noticed that the red planet was visibly closer and that time was running short. “There’s not enough room in there for both of us,” Sam said. “You’ll never fit in there with the blowtorch and have room to work. I’ll go in and get positioned, and then you hand me the blowtorch. After I cut an opening and get onto the flight deck, I’ll let you know so you can follow. Meanwhile, we’ll need to keep our friend inside distracted. Hold on a second while I change frequencies.”

“Brother Jacobs,” Sam said a moment later over the main cabin speakers. “The Commander and I are proceeding to cut through the airlock doors. I suggest that
everyone keep far away from them.”

“Never!” Brother Jacobs shouted from where he was against the
inner door. “Platinums One and Two. Come here and guard the door with me,” he ordered. Then into the air he shouted, “We will not let you pass. If necessary, my Platinums will hurl you along with themselves away from the ship! No sacrifice is too much for them to ensure our success!” As the leader finished his comment, George, who had drifted over with Jeff to guard the door, looked worriedly at his fellow Platinum. When he did not receive a return glance, he stoically stayed drifting by the airlock.

“Jacobs my man,” Sam muttered as
she changed the frequency back to Roy, “you are nothing if not consistent. I wonder if your Platinums are rethinking their allegiance just now after that last comment.” A second later she addressed Roy as the Commander closed his jet control arm back into his suit and clung onto the ship’s landing superstructure. “Our friend is taken care of for the moment. I’m ready. Hand me the torch.”

Sam ignited the tip of the device
and leaned her back against the landing struts. As she held the lit end against the bottom of the flight deck which was above her, she made sure to make the first hole far away from her face. As soon as the flame broke through into the airspace above her, a rush of air came hurtling out, blowing the flame back along with sparks that flew all around. When that had subsided, Sam tested the flame periodically near the opening to discover whether all of the air in the flight deck had escaped. In about a minute, she found that she could proceed with cutting into the chamber above.

As the cut line extended into the
shape of a rectangle, Sam decided to leave one side attached so that she could lever the section up like a hatch.  In a few more minutes, she had completed the cut and turned off the blowtorch. She leaned her back into the landing gear struts and kicked up with both legs. The metal gave way an inch. She kicked again, and soon had the metal in front of her pushed up into the flight deck. Sam scrambled into the space above, and the first thing she did was lock the door leading to the main cabin. “I’m in and secured the door,” she said to Roy. “You can come up now.”

When Roy’s helmeted head appeared,
Sam reached down and helped the Commander up through the hole. “Pegasus,” she ordered. “Retract the landing skids and close the landing doors.” She looked down through the hole in the floor, and could see the landing skids against the backdrop of the red planet. The skis were coming up and the doors were closing, shutting out the view. “Pegasus, repressurize the flight deck,” she commanded. When her visor indicated the pressure in the cabin had stabilized, Sam pushed the panel she had cut back down so that it was flush with the floor. “As long as we leave the landing gear up and the doors closed, we’ll maintain the pressure in here,” she told Roy.

Now that they were
safely inside, Sam issued another order to the ship’s computer. “Pegasus, release voice lock and resume normal operations.” When she saw on her visor display that the ship had recognized her voice and complied, she said to Roy, “We can remove our helmets now.”

“Great. Let’s get started. First, check the systems and give me a status,” Roy said as he took the left hand seat. “
How are our maneuvering thrusters?”

Sam checked the
instruments and readouts from her normal right hand seat. “The front thrusters have a few percentage points of fuel left. We can probably do a couple of maneuvers, but not enough to complete all of the ‘S’ turns needed to bleed off speed for a landing. That’s assuming we had some way of slowing down in the first place so as to not burn up. Without fuel for the main engines, we’d be coming in much too hot. So now, tell me; what’s the plan you had in mind? Are we going to do an aerocapture?”

Sam, of course, was referring to a maneuver that had been used successfully many times by probes the Earth had launched to the red pl
anet. In order to save fuel, multiple probes that had been dispatched to Mars had entered large looping orbits and then proceeded to just skim the top of Mars’ atmosphere on each low pass, slowing down slightly. The probes would then loop around the planet and dip back down again at each nearest approach, slowing further. Each orbit would bleed off speed, allowing the probe to circle closer and closer on each pass.

“That won’t work,” Roy said. “It could take weeks for us to do enough orbits to slow down to the speed needed to perform a landing. We don’t have enough food, air or water to last that long. We’
re going to have to do a skip reentry.”

“
A skip reentry? Do you mean skip off the top of the atmosphere and try to meet back up with the AB Cycler?”

“
No, the cycler is too far away by now and moving much too fast. We would need the main engines in order to catch it. I’m talking about something that was done a few times by the Soviets long ago, but never attempted otherwise.”

“Alright, I’m not sure I like the sound of this. Enlighten me.”

“There are a few trajectories when approaching a planet. If your angle is too steep, you burn up. If it is too shallow, you skip off and head into deep space. The proper trajectory, as we all practice, is the size of the thickness of a piece of paper when compared to a basketball.”

“Yeah, yeah. They make us all watch
Apollo 13
and
Armageddon
during training,” Sam said impatiently.

“But if you’re going too fast, even hitting that paper thin slice of an angle will still cause you to burn up. There is one trajectory, however, at one perfect angle, that will allow you to come in hot, burn through th
e atmosphere slowing down, go higher up to cool off slightly, and then come in for a landing. Think of it like throwing a rock at a lake so that it skips one time before it plunges into the water.”

“And you said it was do
ne successfully on Mars?” Sam asked dubiously.

“No
, but the Soviets performed it with some of their Zond circumlunar probes back in the 60s. The craft looped around the Moon and came back to Earth and successfully did a skip reentry. NASA even programmed the technique into the Apollo command modules, but never used it except in simulations.”

“Why didn’t they teach
us about this in the sims, and why hasn’t it been used since?” Sam asked.

“Because you need perfect guidance in order to execute it. We’ve never had radar stations
here on Mars that could provide the feedback needed to hit that very narrow entry angle. However, we’ve now got the colony supply ship that we launched. It should have landed a few minutes ago, and it has a perfectly good radar system.”

“But it’s not deployed yet.”

“That’s why we need the guys already there to deploy it for us.” Roy changed the ship’s radio frequency to the Mars base channel and started his distress call.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! This is Pegasus Commander Roy Olstein calling the
Star-Kissed Mars base. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! Do you copy?”

Commander Grant Stiles was sitting in his cabin reviewing Sergey’s latest report on the accuracy of the Gyro
jet bullets when the call came over the habitat’s speakers and startled him. NASA had commanded radio silence with the approaching AB Cycler and the Pegasus was still a month away from its scheduled landing. Per protocol, the frequency was left open at all times in case of emergency. This sounded like one of those times. He rushed out of his room into the main area and up to the communications array panel.

“Commander Olstein, this is Commander Stiles. We copy. Roy, what’s your status?” As Grant was saying this
, his three other teammates rushed into the main room, having heard the Mayday call. Brad had hurried upstairs from his control console where he was continuing attempts to free the stuck rover while analyzing the surrounding crater. Sergey had run out of the MMTV where he was updating the transport’s software while it was connected to the habitat. Charles had sprinted out of his cabin where he was composing messages to family on Earth, informing them that his wedding had been called off.

“You’re not going to believe this, Gr
ant,” Roy transmitted. “Somehow, the leader of the colony learned about your run-in with the alien creatures on Mars and that NASA ordered all of us to create weapons. He’s convinced himself and the others that they need to meet with the head alien, or the Great Consciousness as he calls it. They want to get all lovey dovey with it and protect it and keep everyone else away. The group keeps chanting how they want to ‘land and merge’ with the alien. When the leader, called Brother Jacobs, discovered how the existence of life on Mars was kept secret from him, he and his group hijacked the Pegasus.”

“They hijacked your ship?” Grant said in disbelief.

“That’s right. We had to chase it with our suits’ thrusters and cut our way onto the flight deck and lock them out. Unfortunately, our main engine fuel is exhausted. Since the fool launched the ship without refueling, we have no way to perform a deorbit burn. It didn’t seem to matter to him that the twenty-five men, women and children would all get killed. He kept saying how the Great Consciousness would take care of them and land them safely so that it could meet with them. Since we have no fuel, I want to attempt a skip reentry.”

“A skip reentry?” Grant repeated.

“Da, da, I know of this,” Sergey said coming up to Grant. “We Russians perfected it long ago. But Commander,” Sergey sa
id leaning in to the microphone, “you will need precision guidance to execute such maneuver.”

“Yes,
is that you, Sergey?” Roy asked, recognizing the accent of the Russian. “That is correct. We launched the colony supply ship which contains a radar array. I need one of you at the base to deploy and activate it.”

“It would take us an hour to get to your landing site, according to my report
about your colony’s destination,” Grant said. “We couldn’t get there in time to help you.”

“The radar array and its power are programmed to deploy by remote manual control,” Roy said. “I can send you the
frequency and command codes. Once it’s deployed and active, I’ll need you to also relay its signal from your location. This way the computers on the Pegasus can triangulate our exact position at all times.”

“Da, I can do this,” Sergey said.

“Is there anything else you need from us?” Grant asked.

“Yes, I’ll need you to come out an
d assist us after landing. We may crash, and most of the people on board do not have spacesuits. Bring all the spares that you have. In addition, we’ll need to deploy the habitat for the colony. The more hands that we have to set up, the faster we can get everyone safely inside.”

“Alright, we’ll get going immediately, Roy. Serge here will get the radar deployed
remotely. The rest of us will bring suits and emergency kits with us in case anyone is injured.”

“One more thing, Grant. Were you aware that the Chinese were about to land on Mars?”

“No, we haven’t had any reports from Mission Control on that. They’ve been keeping a tight lid on all information reaching us.”

“Well, just be careful while you’re out there. I don’t know where they are landing, but I had a brief conversat
ion with one of them and he didn’t sound too friendly. I guess the tensions on Earth have ratcheted up since we left.”

“We’ll keep an eye out
for them and thanks for the warning. If they mess with us, they’ll be in for a surprise. We’re not totally helpless anymore, thanks to Serge. We’ll see you shortly. Good luck!”

# # #

In the lower level of the habitat, the hopper was still active in its hiding place and relaying all conversations to Probe Spit and the Master.

“
Here is the opportunity I have been waiting for,” the Master said. “This Brother Jacobs and his group will want to come to us. They have stated that they want to protect us from the others. We should be able to easily lead one or more of them directly here.”

“We will reveal ourselves to them?” Spit asked.

“Yes. By the humans’ conversation, it is obvious this group will not reveal us to the others, and have no wish to attack. They seem so eager that they will most likely come willingly and unsuspecting of any danger.”

“How will we do this?”

“Direct the hopper to hide on the Earthlings’ transport. They are planning to meet with this group after they land. We will relocate the hopper to this new group’s vicinity and expose it at the right moment. Send the instructions immediately, before the opportunity has passed.”

Probe Spit directed the hopper to enter the rover and hide while the astronauts were still upstairs. It was commanded to
monitor all activities and await further instructions.