Mars Sample Return 9
A speculative tale based on the history of the Viking Lander experiments and recent NASA plans
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8
Welcome back to Glass Half Full and thanks for reading! In today’s episode, Joan has to come to grips with the activist movement she helped create.
Joan spent the day of her appearance on Cutter Tarkelson’s podcast sailing on Chesapeake Bay. It was late in the season for it, but there was nothing like risking her life in frigid winds on a friend’s rickety sailboat, her phone nearly inaccessible in a dry bag, to make her forget her worries.
She returned to her apartment late that evening to find a crowd gathered on the sidewalk, many with cameras and some with microphones. No TV cameras, thank god. She turned on her heel before they recognized her and headed across town — damp clothes, salty hair and all — to crash at Melanie’s. After a couple days there, with friends reporting that the crowds of alt-media hadn’t yet dissipated, she headed for her mom’s in New Jersey.
The media firestorm only grew over that week, with traditional media finally picking it up. Joan couldn’t bear to watch any of it, the conspiracy theories surrounding the story having multiplied like a bunch of MDMA-addled rabbits. The chief theories centered on the rich trying to depopulate the planet to cut down on the astronomical cost of Universal Basic Income. The most galling part was that many of these “truthers” had spent the ‘20s undermining the germ theory of disease. Now they were certain that Martian germs would wipe out a good portion of humanity — except for those guzzling the conspiracy theorists’ various immune system support tonics, usually at a low $19.95 a pop.
Then Melanie called her. “They’re saying you’re dead.”
“Dead how?”
“Dead dead. Or disappeared by the government. If not actually dead, then renditioned to a gulag in El Salvador.”
Her father, long since divorced from her mother, called soon after. “I’ve got reporters at my door. What’s going on, daughter?” His last name was the same as Joan’s, making him easier to find, while Joan’s mother had reverted to her birth name.
Joan knew she had to do something. She went back through the offers she’d gotten from spacetubers and found one in Canada. He knew his rocket science and he was apolitical, as far as she could tell. A trip to Toronto sounded like just the thing to throw off the media hordes, and if nothing else, an appearance on this show would provide proof of life.
During the interview, she reiterated the uncertainty she’d tried to express to Tarkelson — that nobody really knew what the Mars samples might contain. The chances might be tiny, but the consequences could be dire. Especially when alternatives were available. To his credit, the spacetuber also wanted to assess the risks honestly, not gin up fear or outrage in his audience.
After a couple of days sampling Toronto’s Chinese restaurants, Joan returned to the US to find that she’d been labeled a traitor to the cause. Someone in the government must have paid her off or threatened her family, the thinking went. Which was fine with her, because all the podcasters and alt-media journalists immediately lost interest in her.
She returned to her apartment to find the sidewalk refreshingly empty. She spent the winter applying for jobs and fellowships she didn’t get and wondering how she would pay off her student loans. At her darkest moments, she considered becoming another shill, selling her own wellness formula targeted at Martian microbes. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She once again became a connoisseur of the cheapest ramen noodle brands.
Then, with the touchdown date approaching, Mel had pushed her to host the watch party, since it could only lift her mood. Her friend had done most of the work to organize it.
Now here they were, gathered around her TV, waiting for the return capsule to crash into the silt of a Utah playa. Jared was still shaking his head at the recklessness of this maneuver when another kind of recklessness appeared on the screen: a group of utility trucks charging across the desert, a vast cloud of dust billowing in their wake. Some of them sported large banners, but the shot was too distant to make out what they said.
“Sean, are those the capture team’s vehicles?” asked the broadcast’s host.
“No,” said the NASA expert, “I don’t know what’s going on there, Sarah. It’s too soon for our team to be approaching the site, and it looks like these vehicles are coming from the wrong direction.”
The view switched back to the tracking cam, which had lost the capsule and now showed empty sky.
“Folks at home,” said Sarah, the host, “we do have a situation on the range. We’re not going to show it, to avoid giving the intruders any further publicity.”
“Good choice,” said Sean. “This mission has had a lot of unwarranted controversy, and now it looks like it’s gotten out of hand. And to think that it all started with someone inside NASA.”
“Let’s get back to the mission, shall we?” Sara said, her voice strained.
Jared turned to Joan. “I think you’ve upset poor Sean.” Joan knew he was being sarcastic. As an environmental attorney, he was used to pissing off government officials, and even took pleasure in it.
“I never meant to,” she said weakly. She still didn’t know what she would have done differently, if given the opportunity. Was it her fault that people could only handle yes or no answers? Whereas the truth usually took the form of a probability.
Now a flash on the screen interrupted the commentators, and a circular pressure wave spread out above the desert, the camera still panning wildly to find the capsule. Then the rumble of a sonic boom, the sound dampened by audio compression.
“As you can see,” said the host, “our camera team is trying to track the capsule, but it’s a small object falling very fast.” A black dot zigged and zagged in and out of frame, then the camera focused in on a plume of dust rising from the desert floor.
“We have touchdown,” said a crackly voice from mission control. Strangely, Sean had nothing to add. A moment later, the view switched to a split screen, a shot of the dust cloud surrounding the capsule on the left and a view of the anchor desk on the right. Sean was no where to be seen. Sarah stared at the camera, her smile frozen in place. “Sean will be back with us momentarily.”
The producer wisely shifted back to a full-screen shot of the landing site, the dust cloud dissipating to reveal the capsule, a disk-shaped lozenge about the size of a dorm fridge. “It looks like the capsule landed right-side-up,” said the host. “It seems like it’s in good condition, wouldn’t you say, Sean?”
Sean’s voice sounded like he was stuck in a well. “It sure does, Sarah, but we won’t know anything until the team can approach it.”
The view switched to a couple of white vans traveling along a gravel road. The vans stopped and white-suited figures emerged, methodically unloading a variety of equipment.
Sarah soldiered on in the absence of her co-commentator. “Our team will now approach the capsule cautiously, examining the area for any radiation, toxic chemicals, or anything else that might be a danger. The capsule also has to cool down from its descent through the atmosphere.”
Sean, still with that echo to his voice, shouted, “Yes! That’ll show ‘em!”
Jared smirked. “Our NASA expert seems to be watching a different channel.”
Joan hoped nothing too bad was happening to the people in the trucks. Were they protesters? Was she somehow responsible for them being there?
No answers were forthcoming, and they heard no more from Sean. The broadcast continued with bland, bureaucratic predictability, the teams carefully approaching the capsule, with long periods of waiting as they assessed their instruments. Sean was replaced by a younger man named Tony, who appeared at the anchor desk looking not quite ready for NASA primetime, his hair askew and one collar of his NASA polo shirt turned upward.
“Our next expert guest works in mission safety, isn’t that right, Tony?”
“That’s right, Sarah, all the steps you see the team taking, they were developed in our department. They’re meant to assure the safety of the recovery team, the surrounding community, and the environment.”
“And with this mission, the entire planet, am I right?” Sarah observed.
“Correct. We’re well aware of the risks, and we take our mission incredibly seriously.”
The pair went on to discuss the particular procedures the team was carrying out on the ground.
With the major excitement over and the slim likelihood of anything too interesting happening in the foreseeable future, Joan’s guests began making their excuses. It was evening now, and many of them had other parties or dates.
Jared and Mel were the last to leave. “Let’s spare a thought for poor Sean,” Jared said at the door. “That’s probably the last time they’ll let him anywhere near a hot mic.”
After they left, Joan stretched out on the couch. A mistake, considering how much she’d had to drink. She woke up a couple of hours later, the NASA stream still playing. It was dark in Utah now, with portable floodlights illuminating the scene as a forklift deposited the capsule in the well-padded interior of a cargo truck. The team spent a few more minutes securing it in place, then closed the heavy doors.
“Now the convoy will head to the MRTL lab at Dugway Proving Grounds, where our scientists will carefully screen the samples for any sort of dangers, from radiation to live bacteria.”
The truck moved off at a slow pace, escorted by emergency vehicles with their flashers going. It would probably be the slowest, safest motorcade in history.
“That brings us to the end of our livestream,” said the host. “Check back tomorrow, when we’ll have coverage of the capsule’s transfer to the lab.”
She switched off the TV. Now she could only wait. She didn’t have any contacts at NASA who could tell her what was really happening. Only Marcy, who didn’t have that kind of access. Joan wanted to believe that no news would be good news, but she’d outgrown that particular fairytale. Never had she hoped so fervently to be proven wrong, while a tiny part of her couldn’t help wanting to be right.
She got a drink of water to wash away her headache, then went to her computer, wondering which fellowship she should apply to next.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please consider hitting that like button, sharing it with your friends, or even subscribing or upgrading your subscription. And please leave a comment with your thoughts.
Mars Sample Return will be back next week with the Big Finale (which might possibly be two chapters, or one chapter and an epilogue — I’m still deciding).