too, more than once, growing and cutting or even dying her hair, sometimes wearing glasses, other tricks.... Also, in order for her to get work, each new self needed qualifications. Really, though, this was only a matter of altering the name and dates on the genuine ones she possessed—no one would be likely to query her abilities once they saw her results.
Increasingly she experienced that feeling, which she had once mentioned to Lefty, of “searching for something”. The problem was, she had no idea what it was she was searching for.
Meanwhile, the world changed.
There were upheavals in Eastern Europe; the Berlin Wall came down, Communism was all but banished from the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union itself fragmented into a loose confederation of independent republics. To those space buffs who had seen a collaboration between the USSR and the USA as the only hope of a manned mission to Mars, it seemed that their dream was shattered. The “fossil life” controversy and the astounding high-resolution images from Mars Global Surveyor, which in 1999 provided indisputable evidence of water on Mars, briefly gave hope that the USA would go it alone with a manned mission, but the public—and thus the government—was divided on whether it was worth the expense.
For a while it had seemed that NASA’s much-vaunted “faster, cheaper, better” policy of using small, unmanned probes would win the day. But the arrival and prompt disappearance of both the Polar Lander and the Climate Orbiter—switched off by little green men, jeered the media—showed clearly that, while perhaps faster and cheaper, this method was certainly not better. The losses proved a blessing in disguise for those who had always wanted humans, not machines, to be the ones to explore the red world.
Eventually a sort of stability returned to the Soviet Republics. East–West trade flourished in an open-market economy, and somehow the European Community also settled most of its differences. The year 2001 became famous—infamous—not for bases on the Moon but for the horrific events of September 11th, and for a while all governments were side-tracked by the so-called War on Terrorism. At best it seemed that an uneasy truce existed between the nations, but eventually governments turned to the idea of an international space extravaganza to divert the eyes of the world from their own problems, to boost investment and employment in technological areas, and (the official line) to foster goodwill and cooperation among nations. Fortunately the latest Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, was in favor of space travel; the spectacular demise of the space station Mir in 2001 had left his country with an unrivalled amount of experience of living in space, but no way to use it. Putin did not like his country’s demotion from a leading power in space to an also-ran.
A joint project was announced, involving the USA, Japan, the former Soviet States, Europe (from which the leading partner was France) and Canada, which latter, early in the twenty-first century, had tripled its spending on space research—in other words, basically the same countries as had been involved in the building of the ISS. Britain, of course, was not a partner this time around, since its governments had stubbornly refused to invest in the adventure of space—and had thus allowed some of the country’s best brains to depart abroad.
In 2001 Aurora joined the Mars Society which, under its dynamic leader Robert Zubrin, seemed to have the requisite drive and the best ideas for a manned mission. Such was the groundswell of interest that NASA was eventually persuaded to allow some collaboration with such organizations, and even industry; multinationals became involved, noting the plethora of opportunities for sponsorship and commercial endorsements of products to be used on the first mission. For all contributions, expertise and experience were valuable; and the Mars mission was going to be expensive—though this aspect could be put into perspective by comparing it with the $12 billion spent every year in the USA and Europe on perfume, almost the amount of NASA’s budget....
NASA, true to form, insisted on a launch date of 2028, meaning that humans would be on Mars to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
Attempts had already been made to convert the formerly Soviet military–industrial complex to more peaceful ends, but it is not always easy to beat swords into ploughshares. There were many stories about what had happened when manufacturers of military rockets turned to making bathroom fittings and suchlike; the results had been disastrous, with poor-quality equipment being made by workers with low morale and no real interest in the product. How much better to put such expertise into making the power-plants for the motors of a Mars mission.
Yes, Mars was the answer. But this time, to satisfy the world, the mission had to be no mere Apollo-like landing—pick up a few rocks and return to Earth within a few days. That would in any case have been impossible, due to the orbital dynamics of such a mission—though, thanks to the development, mainly by the Johnson Space Center, of a new plasma drive that achieved a temperature of one million degrees Celsius contained by a magnetic bottle, the journey could take three months instead of the six or more that years earlier had been envisaged by planners whose horizons had been limited to chemical propellants. Chemical propellants would still be needed to take the ships above the Earth’s atmosphere and to land on Mars, but the plasma drive would be effective for the journey in between. The higher acceleration possible with the plasma drive also solved the very serious zero-gravity problem. The crew would be constantly under one-third gravity, since they would be under power all the way. And neither would they need to depend upon solar panels for electricity.
Even the first flight would be a long-stay mission of over two years. Also, a commitment had to be made to establish a permanent base, small at first but eventually self-supporting. Robot landers would be sent ahead to set up a base, and to deposit supplies. Another incentive was that Mars could then become a staging post for the asteroids, where Earth’s industry would find mountains of minerals, such as almost pure nickel–iron, there for the taking. Further valuable materials would be available from Mars’s two moons and from the surface of Mars itself. Martian soil contains forty per cent oxygen chemically bound up with iron (hence the rusty color of much of Mars), plus magnesium, sodium, sulfur and chlorine, while the atmosphere contains nitrogen. Carbon is available aplenty from the asteroids and from Phobos, the nearer satellite.
Aurora had found the whole prospect completely exciting, and impossible to resist. It was as if there were something—something stronger than herself—dictating to her that she must take part in the great Martian adventure, and doing so became her obsession. She had had little difficulty in obtaining a position back at NASA, and quickly she got to know all the right people.... She had made sure she passed all the fitness and aptitude tests—which she did with no problems—and ended up as a member of the geology team. Not as a British member, of course; she had become an American citizen years ago. She wasn’t the only one in this situation: the Canadian member, Dr. Bryan Beaumont, a volcanologist as well as co-pilot of the Lander, was also of English descent, his parents having emigrated just before he was born.
So here she was, on Mars. Now known as Dr. Anne Pryor, she was seventy-eight and looked perhaps thirty-five.
She had come up with the theory that she must be one of a new breed of human, resistant to both time and disease. What other answer could there be? She took to scanning the media and the more specialist journals for reports or even hints that others of her kind existed, but with increasing disappointment and puzzlement. If they did, they were keeping as quiet as herself. Sometimes she felt a deep loneliness, but she knew no way to relieve it.
* * * *
Anne Pryor, Aurora, came out of her reverie, suddenly dazzled by low evening sunlight blazing through a cleft between two lava outcrops. Near the shrunken Sun the sky was a washed-out blue, but the color shaded through deep pink to a deep indigo only a few degrees higher.
It must be time to return to the Hut—an empty propellant tank which had been parachuted down and landed on small retro-rockets and inflation bags. Sectioned into two halves, the Hut contained living and sleeping quarters plus a laboratory
