Chapter 22 – My Favorite Martian

by Steve Hufford

“Cav, I’m so sorry. For everything…”

“Stacy?”

“I’ve been up all night, missing you, and regretting so much. All those games…”

She burst into tears for good effect, recalling how useful they had been to unman Cav on more than one occasion.

“Ah, c’mon Stace…”

Her sly smile was beautiful in its way, even as she pushed out another sob for his benefit. She knew she would be more than his match once they were reunited and face to face. Proximity, perfume and her curves would work their ineluctable magic. Cav, always her favorite Kiwi, was no competition, but he would surely meet her needs once again.

Fred, meanwhile, was learning about the needs of early pregnancy. There were some nauseating times when she just needed quiet and rest; and others when she felt an urgent prompting to scarf down some slightly unusual food groups. What was up with that? Perhaps her body manifesting it’s own wisdom to obtain an essential trace element needed by her baby?

Regardless, she managed to keep Finn in the dark with some modest subterfuge, claiming her increased appetite must have come from the extra workouts she was beginning in preparations for… The Trip!

The prospect of a completely new life ahead, and the amazing gift of carrying new life within, put her over the top each day. She was so ebullient and glowing that people would have started to wonder and talk, were it not for the fact that the excitement was building for everyone in her immediate circle.

Fred and Finn had been working long hours with Reid, Mealon, and the NASA team to lay out the parameters of their venture. And the NASA team members were so deferential to Mealon, it was almost funny. Years of tight budgets had given them strong incentive to brownnose any billionaires who wanted to bankroll interplanetary manned flights.

“Mr. Usk, can I get you a coffee?” and “Mr. Usk, would you like to see some options for doing just that?” were frequent refrains.

Mealon was very happy, thrilled to bring his design skills to the task, yet Finn and Fred couldn’t help noticing that it was the NASA team that really fixed the final destination on Mars, set a fairly aggressive launch schedule based on their weather predictions and modeling of planetary trajectories, established the scientific goals for the mission, and provided the engineering as well as the propulsion platform. Mealon’s contributions mostly decked out the passenger capsule with more polish and ultra-light veneer than had ever before graced a Mars-bound rocket.

It was a win-win situation for sure.

Until some worries began to intrude on Fred’s happy days. What if the suspended animation during flight didn’t work for her baby-to-be? Initial plans called for a closely monitored hiatus of six months’ sleep-acceleration / time-suspension. Would critical fetal development be halted permanently? Or would it start back up after the delay? The delicate and amazing choreography of embryogenesis was still poorly understood, even after years of research focused on how the Zika virus engendered microcephaly. Would the baby’s nutritional needs be greater than what her suppressed and suspended metabolism could provide? Had SATS ever been tested on a pregnant woman before? If they knew, would NASA even let her go on this flight?

She had a lot to figure out, more training ahead, and only 6 weeks left before launch. At least, she thought, she would be underway before the start of her second trimester. There was a chance of keeping the whole thing under wraps, as long as she could do her medical research covertly and find good news.

As a few more days passed, the best news for Finn, and also for Reid, was that NASA scientists had based their mission goals almost entirely around the drones that only their favorite company could provide. Full mapping of the surface of Mars was indeed possible, and with their payload of 256 PAL 9000s, each carrying a multispectral scanner, it would only take about three months of constant flight, recording, and simultaneous transmission once they established the data network on the red planet. The mapping would surely reveal mineral or other resources sufficient to open up Mars to commercial interest, which would bring the private sector investments needed to build the infrastructure for large-scale colonization. And a likely need for yet more drones.

NASA was transitioning to a new role as the interplanetary Department of Commerce, which was just fine for everyone who made or invested in PAL 9000s. So Finn, Fred, Reid, Mealon, and even Chet Beau-Zeau were in a pretty good place.

Cav, depauperate and earthbound, was about to make another tragic move by flying to Stacy like a moth burning itself out against a porch light, but he, too, had a chance to benefit financially. The battles over Venus had not yet begun, and Interplanetary Luxury Lines and its ILL Mars Mover were just cocktail hour musings for Fred and Finn.

“Hey Red, can you please bring some more salsa?”

“What?”

“These chips are bone dry. Can you please bring some more salsa?”

Fred, who had liked her nickname ‘Red’ ever since she saw Carey Grant and Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story, stopped spooning salsa into her mouth. Another craving. Weird.

“Sure, coming right up!”

“Thanks. That’s better… Hey, did you hear what the atmospheric team said today?”

“Which one, Earth or Mars?”

“Earth team this time. We might have to shift the launch date until later. Or earlier. They don’t really seem to know.”

“Wow, what’s up with that?”

“Their models don’t work well anymore. Global warming - now they’re calling it ‘global weirding’ - has put way larger bands of uncertainty around all their predictions. In short, they aren’t confident they can find a storm-free launching window for us to get past the atmosphere. And you know how critical the precise trajectory is at that stage of our journey…”

“Oh”, her mind was counting down the 280 days as she spoke. “How long do you think it will delay launch?”

“That’s just the point. We can’t know because they don’t know. Their only solution is for everyone to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. They’ve scheduled us for our pre-flight physicals tomorrow.”

Fred had recently learned their physical’s blood sample tests would surely let NASA in on her secret. She had to let Finn know before the secret came out. Remembering that inspiring line from Shakespeare, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”, she gathered her courage and waded right in.

“Great. I’ve got news, too.”

“Oh?”

“Yes… when we lift off, we won’t be the only people onboard.”

“I think I know that already. Mealon, Reid, and at least two of those NASA scientists are going to be onboard. Maybe more if the payload calculations work.”

“That’s not what I meant. What I meant is that I’m pregnant. Our baby will be there with us!”

Fred had never seen Finn so completely at a loss. Luckily, it took him but a moment to leap up, wrap her in his arms, hug her tighter than ever before, and exclaim,

“Honey, you have made me the happiest man on Earth, and soon to be on Mars as well! I love you so much.”

Meanwhile, the poorest fifty-year-old expat Kiwi in San Francisco, if not on all of Earth, was about to leave the ground, taking a short flight south to visit Stacy, thanks to the e-ticket she had provided. It was a short flight, but he was sure he could still charm a few extra small bottles from the beverage cart stewardess.