Martian Valkyrie

When, as a result of our “nominal” and “planned” maneuver, we gradually pulled away from the Norwegians, the media cried foul. However, by that time, they could do nothing but throw words at us.

Not so Halvorsen. I was in my cabin ten days before our Mars orbit injection when the Norwegians threw us yet another twist. We watched it on the telescope, recorded it, and I’m still not sure I believe it: the Norwegian ships separated without despinning! The one on the approaching leg of its rotation just let go of its tether, and its rotational velocity instantly became additional velocity toward Mars! It was like a stone released from an ancient sling, headed right toward my heart.

I stared for five minutes, then played the file back again. “Give me the revised arrival times,” I finally told the computer.

It was as bad as I feared. The lead ship, the Amundsen, had gained only about thirty meters per second, which would still leave it still more than a day behind us when we got to Mars. The trouble was that they were planning to go right down if they could, and we were going to do parking orbits, surveys, transfer to landers and so on, before actually going down. If all went right with both our plans, our first landings would take place within hours of each other—theirs first.

I stared at the screen and composed my thoughts for the next call. It would not be my place to educate the ISA leaders under whose authority I commanded this expedition, but the experienced astronaut within me was saying that the Norwegians had a chance.

I needed to break the news gently.

At least, if their landing was successful, it would minimize the perturbations of our extremely complex and interrelated mission plan.

But on the other hand, our expedition would not be first, and I would not be the first man to set foot on Mars. Once more, I reviewed our mission plans, the Martian weather, where our landers were and so on. There was still a chance, if the lead Norwegian ship didn’t touch down on the first pass. That, I thought, would depend on Per Nordli’s skill and nerve.

Not exactly, as things turned out.

The simultaneous deep space restart of our nuclear rockets was ten times as complicated as the chemical midcourse maneuvers. But we did it without incident, silencing many critics. One after another, our ships turned their damping drums and their reactors went critical. A trickle of hydrogen flowed into the particle beds to cool them and run the turbines. The computers did a million cross checks. Deviations were within nominal limits.

We passed the orbit of Deimos— twenty thousand kilometers out—in good form. We would meet the moon itself, with our supply depot, after our main engine burn at periapsis put us in an elliptical transfer orbit. At Deimos, we’d do a short circularization burn with our chemical auxiliary propulsion and “land” on the tiny moon to take on propellant before sending landers to Mars. That was the plan.

Our Phobos camera sent a picture of our four ships with the volcanoes of Tharsis in the background; it was a spectacular picture. I felt a moment of triumph. Our majestic convoy, the symbol of Earth’s pioneering spirit, was headed in to mankind’s new planet!

This impressive close formation approach, however, had been another “discretionary” part of the mission plan. Originally, the ships were going to come in at one day intervals. But that would have meant another day before I reached the surface.

My moment of triumph was shortlived. Hours before, the Amundsen had made a final course correction— an expected maneuver given the chancy aerobraking ahead of it. But the trajectory report indicated that the Amundsen had actually done a major burn toward the planet! The burn had cut hours off its trajectory, but it would hit the Martian atmosphere at a slightly higher velocity, just an hour before our burn. So the Norwegians weren’t racing? I thought about negative lift and velocity-squared aerodynamic effects and could guess that something besides the race might have led them to this suicidal dive into the Martian atmosphere, but it wasn’t very convincing. No, I decided, Per Nordli was taking this risk so Halvorsen wouldn’t lose his diabolical little race.

?Madre diablo! Given the way he managed all the other news about the expedition, couldn’t Dr. Worthing have held that announcement back from us until we were safely in orbit?

But no. As we approached our eight-hundred kilometer periapsis, the Amundsen went past us, rounding the rim of the planet. We watched its entry on images from the robot telescopes on Deimos—a long trail of fire covering almost a quarter the circumference of the planet, which then winked out.

Had the Amundsen crashed? Had it burned up before reaching the surface? I both feared, and—forgive me— hoped that might be the case.

But no. We saw the landing pictures taken by an automated camera on the Norwegian supply ships and relayed from Earth just as we prepared for our insertion burn. Then there was that historic video from the cabin of the Amundsen.

When Halvorsen has a point to make, he doesn’t go half way. Despite his talk of Per being better with piloting and trajectories, the first person to land on Mars with the Norwegian and United Nations flags on the side of her ship was Dr. Ingrid Bodil Karinsdatter.

“May their malfunctioning toilets line their vacuum tents with their own dung,” Mustaffa muttered. But other than that, there were just stony looks all through operations.

We were demoralized. We’d lost a race we hadn’t known we were in until it was too late, and we’d lost it to someone we regarded as a bimbo. If you are European, perhaps you say, “So what? That’s a juvenile attitude. Professional astronauts shouldn’t be fazed by that.” But most of my men were not from your culture; their pride had been wounded and their values insulted—and we still had a great many very complex things to do.

Spacecraft had to be prepared for thrust after four months of no gravity. Countless things were stowed. Chairs were moved to the aft bulkhead. A myriad of checklists were executed. Finally, the count reached zero.

On the Zhang-Diaz a gentle thrumming vibration took hold, and a sense of down returned. There were disturbing clatters and crashes as things forgotten fell aft, but the thrust ramped up smoothly. The other ships kept pace and formation. I crossed my fingers and hoped the blow to our morale would have no effect, at least not now.

Perhaps it would have made no difference, but perhaps if the crew of the Leonov had been mentally and emotionally sharp, they would not have missed some things and a water bulb would not have fallen from the sill of a viewport and broken on a relay box that should have been closed, soaking its contents as thrust increased.

And the pilot would not have switched circuits to their backups in exactly the wrong order, causing the Leonov’s lander to separate when deceleration built up to half a gee.

And the lander would not have continued forward to strike the decelerating Calypso.

And the suddenly lighter Leonov would not have moved backward relative to the Clarke and into the exhaust of the latter’s nuclear rocket.

And the radiation level monitors aboard the Leonov would not have shut down their reactor before they had braked into the proper orbit, forcing them to complete the burn with what remained of their maneuvering fuel.

And the Clarke’s computer would not have shut down its engine to avoid endangering the Leonov when it found the latter spacecraft in its exhaust cone.

Caramba! Perhaps something like that would have all happened anyway, as Halvorsen anticipated, because of the complexity. But I think it was because we were on edge, unhappy at losing the “race,” and already dreaming about getting home.

The Calypso’s chemical propellant tanks ruptured, but they somehow retained attitude control by gimbaling the main engine, avoided hitting the Martian atmosphere, and limped into a high equatorial orbit. Mustaffa cut our burn short manually to follow them and, using prodigious quantities of our maneuvering fuel, we managed a rendezvous.