Space Stations

The sandstorm gradually cleared up. Over the next several weeks, with Linde Hoerter keeping a watchful eye on the Martian weather pattern, the team from Trailblazer took turns in going below and setting up a temporary habitat on Mars by converting one of their two supply ships. Eriksen decreed that the habitat, which had been designed based on the previous knowledge of the Martian surface conditions, would not be safe in severe sandstorms. The habitat needed to be beefed up considerably if human beings were to live on Mars for an extended period.

Boutillier and Okita made a special trip to Ares to bury Ritter and van Dijk. Okita had brought with his communications unit a minirecorder containing Wagner's

Goetterdaemmerung and played it as they buried the two bodies in the reddish sand, after encasing them in hermetically sealed containers. Knowing what was taking place down below, the stirring music brought tears to the eyes of the four astronauts remaining in Orbital Base Phobos.

The time came for Trailblazer to return to Earth. The ship had been designed for a four-person crew. Two out of the six people on Phobos would have to stay behind and wait for the return of Trailblazer with a two-person crew. There were provisions enough on the ground and on Phobos to keep them in good shape for up to a year.

At a gathering of all six members, Eriksen set out to select the two who would remain behind. He regarded it to be his duty to be one of the two. If the captain was expected to go down with his ship, he should be expected to stay behind, shouldn't he? He was trying to find a second volunteer from his crew.

Eriksen's good intentions were sidetracked again by his dauntless Cajun pilot.

After two months together on their voyage out, plus several months spent on Earth getting ready for the mission, it was well known to all that Eriksen was a happily married man with a loving wife and two small kids, who were anxiously waiting for his return. It was also no secret that Linde Hoerter had a fianci, whom she planned to marry on her return. And, Nobuo Okita had an ailing mother at home. For those reasons neither Hoerter nor Okita volunteered to stay behind but they made it clear that they would be willing to do so if called upon by the captain. Ivanov had gotten married only a few months before Ares' departure and his wife had not seen him for almost a year; besides, his leg had not yet healed completely.

The Cajun pointed out those undeniable facts about the four and then declared that he had nobody in particular he had to go back to and he was therefore the logical person to stay behind. He carefully avoided saying anything at all personal about Jeanne Monier.

Instead, Boutillier looked at Monier—with his eyes eloquently saying the unspoken words. She looked straight back, answering his unvoiced question.

She volunteered immediately.

Eriksen clearly saw the inevitable. “All right, if you two think you can manage to survive by yourselves for the next six to nine months, so be it.”

Silently, Boutillier said to himself, To be really alone with Jeanne for six months! From where he sat now, even nine months would not seem long. Besides, this would give him plenty of time to explore Phobos for any sign that it might have been used as a space station a long time before.

Eriksen had to caution him not to use Valkyrie to go back to Mars except in the event of utter emergency, aware that he had no way of enforcing his injunctions once he was gone. Still, Jeanne would probably be a moderating influence on the audacious Cajun.

Well, he didn't tell me not to go to Deimos. That's another place where I could look for information about the origin of the Martian moons. Boutillier smiled to himself as he thought of all the explorations that Jeanne and he could be doing together.

Upon his return to Earth, Captain Eriksen was going to recommend that Space Station Phobos (Fear) be renamed Orbital Base Hope in view of the bright future he foresaw now.

History records that the first person to walk on Mars was from Trailblazer, and the first people to land on Mars alive were from Ares. And, the first two residents of Phobos were from both ships.

This story is dedicated to the memory of Professor Juergen Rahe, who capably directed the Planetary Exploration Program at the NASA Headquarters until his tragic death in 1997. He was a good friend and colleague for more than three decades. A Martian Crater was recently named after him.

BLACK HOLE STATION

by Jack Williamson

MY father used to joke that he was four hundred years older than my mother. He was Esteban Fenway, copilot of Ian Arkwood's Space Magellan when they discovered NBH Draconis, the quiescent black hole just two hundred light-years north of Earth. Arkwood died there. Off the ship, exploring its tiny iron asteroid, he was caught by a radiation burst from something falling in. My father got home with the news.