one name on a list, wrote in another. “I’m going to drop one of the pilots to make room for you. I already checked. There’s plenty of back-up, with the machine guidance systems and the fact that you all have had some pilot training anyhow. That’s the final crew roster for the Mars launch: Torraway, Kayman, General Hesburgh as pilot—and you.”
Brad protested. It was only a reflex. Once the idea had settled in he accepted it. What Scanyon had said was true enough, and besides, Brad perceived instantly that the career he had programmed for himself could not help but be enhanced by actual physical participation in the mission itself. It would be a pity to leave Dorrie, and all the Dorries, but there would be so many Dorries when he got back…
And everything else followed as the night the day. That was the last decision. Everything else was only implementation. On Merritt Island the crews began fueling the launch vehicle. The rescue ships were deployed across the Atlantic in case of failure. Brad was flown to the island for his fitting, with six ex-astronauts detailed to cram in all the touch-up teaching he needed and could get in the time available. Hesburgh was one of them, short, sure and smiling, his demeanor a constant reassurance. Don Kayman took a precious twelve-hour relief to say good-by to his nun.
With all of this we were quite content. We were content with the decision to send Brad along. We were content with the trendline extrapolations that every day showed more positive results from the effect of the launch on world opinion and events. We were content with Roger’s state of mind. And with the NPA simulation of Roger we were most content of all; in fact, that was an essential to our plans for the salvation of the race.
Thirteen
When We Pass the Point of No Return
The long Hohmann-orbit trip to Mars takes seven months. All previous astronauts, cosmonauts and sinonauts had found them very wearing months indeed. Each day had 86,400 seconds to fill, and there was very little to fill them with.
Roger was different from all the others in two ways. First, he was the most precious passenger any spaceship had yet carried. In and around his body were the fruits of seven billion Man Plus dollars. To the maximum extent possible, he had to be spared.
The other way was that, uniquely, he could be spared.
His body clocks had been disconnected. His perception of time was what the computer told him it should be.
They slowed him down gradually, at first. People began to seem to move a little more briskly. Mealtime came sooner than he was ready for it. Voices grew shriller.
When that phased in nicely, they increased the retardation in his systems. Voices passed into high-pitched gibberish, and then out of his perception entirely. He hardly saw people at all, except as flickers of motion. They sealed off his room from the day—it was not to keep him from escaping, it was to protect him from the quick transition from day to night. Platters of room-temperature, picnic-style food appeared before him. When he had begun to push them away to signal he was done or didn’t want them, they whisked out of sight.
Roger knew what was being done to him. He didn’t mind. He accepted Sulie’s promise that it was good, and needful, and all right. He thought he was going to miss Sulie and looked for a way to tell her so. There was a way, but it all went so rapidly; messages were chalked as if by magic on a board in front of him. When he responded, he found his answers snatched away and erased before he was quite sure he was through:
HOW ARE YOU FEELING?
Pick up the chalk, write one word.
FINE.
and then the board is gone, brought back with another message—
WE’RE TAKING YOU TO MERRITT ISLAND.
And his reply:
I’M READY.
snatched away before he could add the rest, which he scrawled rapidly on his bedside table—
GIVE MY LOVE TO DORRIE
He had intended to add “and Sulie,” but there was no time; suddenly the table was gone. He was gone from the room. There was a sudden dizzying lurch of movement. He caught a quick glimpse of the ambulance entrance to the project, and a quick phantom glimpse of a nurse—was it Sulie?—with her back to him, adjusting her panty hose. His whole bed seemed to leap into the air, into a brutal blaze of winter sunlight, then into—what?