The door to the station’s control center opened noiselessly, revealing a row of control stations and a window overlooking the docking bay. The station captain, Christian Norge, waved his guests in, careful not to disturb the crew. Looking out of the viewport, they watched together in silence as the enormous shape of the Strawberry Roan glided in. The reactor module made up the fore section of the ship, followed by a four-hundred-foot span of white racks, each one filled with shipping containers. The Roan was coming back from the Moon, and in a matter of hours these would need to be unloaded and new containers would have to be put in their place, ready to be flown back on the journey out. Now the crew section of the ship was coming into view, the aft of the ship. The freighter came to a graceful halt and a docking tunnel extended from the station to the crew section.

  After a couple of minutes Norge could see movement through the windows on the tunnel, but it was too far away to make out the individual faces.

  Penderton glided up and put his hand on the railing around the viewport. “It’s a beautiful ship, Mr. Norge,” he said. “One of our most reliable and most profitable. Will it be ready on schedule?”

  A cargo freighter on the way to Mars. Norge could see some logic in it. These were workhorses. Reliable machines that would drive a few hundred tons of cargo anywhere, given enough time. And if the engineers at Translunar Aerospace said they found a way to extend the life of the engines, all the better. The problem with the idea wasn’t mechanical, the problem was Penderton.

  “Your ship will be ready, Mr. Penderton, you can count on that. We have the fresh fuel rods standing by, ready to install as soon as unloading is complete. Our technicians are already heading down there to start inspecting the systems. We can give you an estimate of how many hours of maintenance we’ll need once they finish their diagnostics.”

  “Excellent. And has the Spacer’s Union leadership found a candidate crew for her yet?”

  Norge took his eyes off the ship and looked at Penderton. “See, there’s where we have a problem. They aren’t so sure we can have a crew safely trained for this Mars mission by the time the launch window opens. And I’m starting to have some doubts myself. They asked me to ask you whether it wouldn’t be wiser to wait for the next transfer window to open.”

  “That’s absurd,” Penderton said. “Why would we wait two years? Our mission plan is to fly a crew to Mars orbit, take in the scenery for a few months, and fly back. Without a lander to complicate things there’s no difference to flying to the Moon and back.”

  “With all due respect, there’s no aspect of the mission that isn’t completely different here.” Norge listed off items with his fingers. “Navigation without the benefit of a positioning system, figuring out medical contingencies when you’re 20 million miles away from a hospital, keeping the ship maintained and operating for 5 years without being able to dock.

  “Have you ever tried to swap out a faulty radiator panel in a space suit? When we’re running between Earth and Moon we save that sort of thing until we get to the terminal station at either end. On this Mars trip there won’t be any pit stops. It’s possible to do it without being docked at a station but it ain’t easy. And that’s where training and building up muscle memory for these procedures comes in. You practice that 200 times in a simulation pool and you’re starting to get the hang of the motions.”

  Penderton frowned. “If the Union can’t find the competence for this mission I’m confident we can outsource,” he said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve got a contract with the Union to crew all your cargo ships, that includes the Roan here. If we decide that the spacers won’t be able to train properly in time, won’t be safe taking her to Mars and back, then it’s not going anywhere. At least not this transfer window.”

  “That contract covers our cargo missions taking goods between Earth and the Moon,” Penderton said. “This is an interplanetary mission to Mars. You said it yourself, it’s completely different. Apparently it requires a different set of skills.”

  Penderton pushed himself away from the window, and nodded his head towards the maze of corridors leading to the docking tunnel.

  “I’m going onboard to speak with the captain about this opportunity. Think about if the Spacer’s Union wants a place in the history books. There may not be room for a crew that’s overly concerned with safety.

  “My company will give you two weeks to make up your minds.”

  With that, he floated down the hall. Norge simply stared after him, shaking his head.

  * * *

  “Stealing a ship won’t work.”

  The young engineer spread his hands in frustration. The board room was crowded with most of Phil’s electrical engineers. Its single long table was littered with tablets and printed diagrams, marked up with pen. The smart-screens on the walls were similarly crowded, a mess of differential equations and field lines.

  “Knowing what we know, there’s no way to sustain a plasma field that can cloak a XN-3400 class ship from radar. There’s simply too much real-estate to cover in the envelope. Even if we knew how, there’s no time to develop this thing. The coils on Dr. Vernier’s satellite were small and passively cooled, we’d have to develop a whole new magnetic bottle and a coolant sub-system to fit our ship.”

  “And then install it without anyone noticing,” an older engineer added. “Not to mention fly it without anyone testing it.”

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  “Exactly,” the younger man said.

  There was a murmur of agreement in the room. Phil looked over at Harold, seated next to him. He smiled weakly and shook his head. “You told me so,” he said. “You told me three months ago this would never work.”

  Harold returned a half-smile of his own. “It looks that way,” he agreed. “Seems like the only ship that can make it out of the system is the one Translunar Aerospace is sending two months from now. It helps to actually own the ship, I guess.”

  Phil was out of options. He thanked his staff and left the briefing room, wandering through the mostly-empty halls of the organization. Stepping outside, he walked along the sidewalks connecting the main buildings of the campus. Eventually he found himself outside the building housing the lander. He swiped in.

  The lander’s assembly bay was empty now. Only a few dim lights remained on, but Phil had no trouble making out the truncated cone of the lander. This object was built for a single purpose, and now it might end up in a museum, decommissioned and unused. All the work to build it all those years ago. All the work he’d put in to restore it to flight readiness would now be wasted.

  A chill of outside air made him turn his head. Harold had found him and was walking over. He leaned against the wall next to Phil, crossing his arms and fixing his eyes on the lander.

  “We could still go back to square one, you know,” Harold said. “When Translunar Aerospace actually gets their crew back in one piece, all those transport companies on that list of yours will suddenly be interested in getting a piece of the action. It’d be an easy sell, right? You have a crew, you have the mission plans, they have the ships.

  “Being first isn’t everything, you know. The first guy who invented the railroad died penniless. It was the second guy who actually figured out how to make it profitable. He’s the one who made rail work.”

  “You’re making up that story, do you even know their names?” Phil asked.

  “No, but you know I’m right. There’s still 2nd place.”

  “There’s no room in the history books for 2nd place,” Phil said.

  After a long minute of silence Phil came to a conclusion.

  “At that meeting just now you said there’s only one ship going to Mars, and it’s not ours,” he said slowly. “I think you’re right. And I think we’re about done with our work here, Harold. We’re quitting.

  “And I’m going to give Penderton the lander.”

  * * *

  “Don’t worry, we’re shielded here,” said Phil.

  The two men peered into the small observation window, just large enough so both could look at once. Inside the dark chamber sat the ion thruster. A large flat circle some twenty feet across, with concentric circular grooves covering the surface. Above this was a ghostly blue glow, a plume of light that seemed to rise like a hologram from inside the grooves.

  “And you say this has been running for years without pausing the experiment? No maintenance whatsoever?” Penderton asked.

  “That’s right. Over 1958 days now.”

  “This is quite the hobby you have here,” Penderton said.

  Phil ignored this and gazed inside the vacuum chamber a little longer. About three more days until the lab’s xenon tanks would be due for a recharge. But this time they wouldn’t be filled again. This engine and the others would be shut down, sold at auction somewhere. He guessed they’d proven his point by now.

  “Let’s go see the lander,” he said.

  They climbed the ladder on the side, and opened the hatch that led into a small airlock. On the other side of the inner door was a surprisingly spacious lower deck. Racks for space suits and other equipment lined the walls, and a single tiny window gave a view of the assembly room. This would be the staging area for surface excursions, and would double as a lab to analyze samples.

  “Impressive,” Penderton said. “You could get 20 people to fit in here.”

  “We did try that once,” Phil said. “It was a little tight. Luckily there’s more room upstairs.”

  The mid-deck was living quarters. Five tiny cabins for the crew lined the walls. A washroom, a galley, and a decent-sized common area took up the remaining space. Not too big, but then a nine-month surface stay wasn’t too long of a lease.

  Phil leaned against a wall while Penderton poked his head up through a hatch and examined the flight deck.

  “Well, what do you think?” Phil asked.

  “I think you’ve done a fantastic job here. You’d think this thing just rolled out of a NASA assembly building.”

  “It’s a magnificent piece of over-engineering, and we spared no expense restoring it. It’s been stripped down to its frame and rebuilt piece-by-piece. After all that work it’d be a crime not to send it to Mars.

  “Will you take it?”

  On the way back to Phil’s office, the two men ran into Deidre Maxwell. The pilot was waiting outside the door of the human resources office, tapping her foot impatiently. When she saw Penderton there was a flash of recognition, then a smirk formed on her face.

  “Hey Phil, I’d like a word with you,” she said, jerking her thumb towards the door. “There’s some sort of holdup with our severance benefits, and I’ve been waiting all morning to talk to someone.”

  “Not now, Deidre. I’m about to finalize some business with Mr. Penderton, here.”

  “Oh, this is Mr. Penderton?” she asked, feigning admiration. “Not the Mr. Penderton, of Translunar Aerospace? The man who decided he was too good to use a Union crew? The man who figured out how to fly a cargo freighter without anyone to operate it?

  “What an honor.”

  Penderton was about to say something when Phil cut in, facing Deidre. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t insult my guest,” he said. “I’m sorry we had to let you all go, but it sure as hell wasn’t his decision. Translunar Aerospace has nothing to do with it.”

  “I don’t appreciate your assumptions,” she said, glancing at Pendertron. “I’m not insulting him, I’m merely offering my opinion that his personnel decisions are about to bite a big chunk out of his ass.”

  She glared at Phil. “And you? You’re an idiot for shutting this all down. Mars has been your dream for as long as I’ve been training here, and here you are about to literally give the keys to Mars to this fucking suit.

  “I can’t even stand to fucking look at you right now.” And with that she stormed off down the hallway.

  Outside the main offices Michael Penderton was walking back to his car when Cardano’s pilot caught up with him. Was the name Maxwell? He thought so.

  “Can I help you?” he asked her.

  “Maybe we can help each other,” she said, smiling. “You need a pilot who can fly a cargo freighter like it’s supposed to be going to Mars. I need a career change.”

  Michael looked down at the Spacers Union patch sewn onto her jacket. “You’re a Union member, all of Cardano’s crew are Union.”

  “I don’t have to be,” she said.