Michael Penderton sat in his office as he skimmed over his afternoon schedule. The engineer was next, shouldn’t take long, then he had some time to review some of the numbers before the budget meeting. He took a moment to adjust his tie before pressing the contact on his desk. “Go ahead and send in my 2:15.”
The engineer walked through the door. A shaggy-headed man with a crooked nose, his dark eyes seemed to take in the whole room as they moved beneath thick eyebrows. They lingered on the glass display case with the model ships for a moment before finally making eye contact with Michael.
“Mr. Penderton,” the engineer said, a crooked grin stretching across his face as he reacted over the desk to shake hands. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, you have a beautiful set of models, by the way. I’ve always had a soft spot for the XN-3400 series.”
“Please, make yourself comfortable Mr. Cardano,” Michael said, gesturing to the chair next to his guest. “I can see you have real practical tastes. Not everyone can appreciate a real workhorse when they see one.” He glanced at the case with a small smile of his own. “How can I help you today?”
The engineer sat forward in his chair and laced his fingers together. “I run a small organization with the goal of putting the first humans on Mars. Putting them there and bringing them home, of course. We want to show there are other places waiting for us besides Luna, and we need one of those beautiful ships of yours to make it happen.
“We’re a small group but I have some very talented people working for me. We have everything we need. Landing system, crew, ground staff, engineers, and complete mission plans. All we need is a ship to take us there.”
Michael folded his hands on his desk and studied the man sitting across from him. Here was a puzzle. He didn’t know Phil Cardano personally, of course, but he had a reputation as a dependable chief engineer with a few of the rival carriers. What was he doing here, what was he really after?
“Mr. Cardano, I think you’re confusing us with NASA. We do low-thrust cargo missions between Earth and Luna. They’re the ones in the Mars business.”
“That’s just the problem, they’re really not.” Cardano managed a wry smile. “Can’t say I blame them of course… I have a number of contacts at NASA and I can safely say they’re not interested in another Mars shot any time this century. Hence my little organization, hence this little meeting today.”
Michael rested his chin on his hands. He gave Cardano a hard look. If this was a joke he was done with it.
“You’re an expert on low-thrust ion propulsion, right? Do you happen to know the service life of an ion thruster, say the kind installed on our XN-3400 fleet?” Michael asked.
“I certainly do. Fourteen months.”
“And you say you have mission plans. How long would it take to fly a low-thrust trajectory, how long to take a ship parked in low Earth orbit and fly it into Mars orbit?”
The engineer scratched at his chin, “Well that would depend on a lot of factors…” his eyebrows worked for a moment as if going through the calculations on the spot. “Our most likely plan, my current favorite, puts us there in two years. It’s two years, 21 weeks to Mars, plus 39 weeks in orbit while the lander’s on the surface, plus one year, 19 weeks for the trip back.”
“You want to explain to me how an engine rated for fourteen months of service is going to last almost five years in deep space?”
“There’s no real trick to it, we just run under-powered. A light-bulb rated for a year can easily last five if you lower the voltage enough - these electric ion engines are essentially the same. You dial down the voltage nice and low and ring erosion slows down. Going along at half-thrust we can get some amazing endurance from these guys.”
“How amazing?” Michael asked, raising an eyebrow.
Cardano flashed a grin. “Would you believe 70 months?” He produced his tablet from his long jacket and pushed it across the glossy desk. “We’ve got an engine in our lab, been running for just short of six years. 2045 days to be precise, non-stop. No modifications, just turned the voltage down real low.”
Michael picked up the tablet and looked over the reports in front of him. He felt a strange sense of possibilities opening up as he scanned through the data. Six years, it was insane! Where was the mistake, what was Cardano messing up?
Cardano continued, “Engines like this have been the focus of my entire career. I know what they can do. We’ve got two more that were acquired more recently. Three years and eight months for them. In all three, diagnostics are completely nominal.”
On paper, it could work. The engineer wasn’t joking after all. Michael looked up from the reports and locked eyes with Cardano.
“You might be onto something here. You really want to lease one of our cargo ships and take it on a four and a half year voyage to Mars and back?”
“Well there’s one small detail I haven’t brought up yet,” Cardano said, rubbing the back of his neck. “My organization is competent, but small. We have funding, but we don’t have the sort of funds that would let us commission a voyage like this.
“I’m not looking to lease a ship, I’m looking for a sponsor willing to provide a ship.”
Michael rested his chin on his hands again and closed his eyes. Suddenly he felt very tired. The budget meeting might have to be postponed.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
He sighed as he passed the tablet back across the desk.
“Mr Cardano, I don’t think our goals are quite in alignment here…”
* * *
240 kilometers above the Earth, the enormous ship finished her fueling procedures and cast off. Thrusters fired in unison along her entire length, gently pushing the giant away from the transfer station. Station and ship passed together into the shadow of the Earth, turning the ship into a string of lights stretching in the distance. At some unseen signal, the main engines ignited. Not the violent flames of the nuclear rockets but a gentle blue glow - ions streaming out of the rear of the vehicle and pushing her forward. Over the next five months the ship and her 350 tons of cargo would spiral out away from the Earth in an ever-widening orbit. At the end of 22 weeks she’d reach the Moon, ready to unload and pick up freight bound for Earth.
240 kilometers below, Phil Cardano watched the two bright dots as they slowly separated in the night sky. He pulled the shutter down over the train window and tried to get a little more comfortable in his oversized coat. Still a few hours from home.
He had to find a ship. How was he going to get his hands on a damn ship?
It was raining when Phil pulled into his parking space. It was raining harder by the time he reached the doors to the lab and buzzed in. He hung up his soaking overcoat on the rack and made his way to his office. From somewhere behind his desk he produced a towel and made an effort to dry off.
He opened his laptop and sighed as he accessed the list of shipping companies. He scrolled down past dozens of crossed out names until he found the one that wasn’t. At the press of a button, a thick black line struck out “Translunar Aerospace Transport Corporation.” Penderton’s ships were off the list.
His fingers tapped the desk rhythmically as he worked the problem. Translunar had been the last option. Not the last carrier by a long-shot, but the last operation big enough to afford to spare a ship for a round-trip to Mars.
Phil leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He could hear the rain pelting the office window behind him. Dozens of companies between here and the Moon, hundreds of ships! And not one of them could be spared. Where was their taste for glory? Where was their sense of history? All he needed was a single container ship…
Suddenly he stood up and turned to face the window. As he stared out at the rain he ran his fingers through his hair and came to the inevitable conclusion. But he wasn’t going to be able to do it on his own, he was going to have to ask the old bastard for help after all. Harold Davies. Harold would say yes this time.
Phil checked his phone. Just enough time to drive over to his office before lunch. Harold could be a reasonable man on a full stomach. He grabbed his coat and headed back out into the rain.
* * *
Harold Davies considered himself a reasonable man. So long as the other person could articulate their point of view in an intelligent way, he would hear them out fully before pointing out any mistakes. Now here was Phil, and he wasn’t quite sure he had heard him correctly.
Harold took a sip of his beer. “Do you mind running that by me again?”
Phil leaned forward again, raising his eyebrows pointedly. “I need you to help me steal a cargo ship.”
“That’s what I thought you said,” said Harold. He considered this for a moment. “No. You’ll be stranded with burnt out engines before you get halfway to Mars orbit. I have a gun in a safe back in my office that I’d be happy to loan you. It’d be a much simpler way to commit suicide.”
“Alright smart-ass, you don’t know everything, OK? You can avoid burn-out in a standard multi-ring thruster if you reduce the power supply. It gives you a geometric increase in operating life, provided you can live with the lower thrust, and it works at any scale.”
“This again? That’s why you invited me to lunch? This is the same bullshit you were spouting seven years ago,” Harold said.
“I’ve tested it, I’ve been testing it! Turn the engines down below a critical threshold and ring erosion drops to almost nothing. You could make it to the asteroids & back by installing extra propellant tanks to 90% of the birds flying today. Would it take a while? Yes. But you could get there, that’s the point.”
“I don’t buy it. You’re wasting a good lunch on nonsense, let’s talk about something else.”
In response, Phil simply held up his tablet and passed it across the table.
Harold shook his head but examined the tablet between sips of his drink. A part of him was curious about what Phil Cardano had screwed up. The man was talented enough, which just meant his mistakes tended to be subtle. By the time Harold was done studying the technical reports, the food was arriving at the table.
He ordered a second beer.
“Why me?” Harold asked. “There are a dozen other engineers you could have talked to. The runs we worked together weren’t always the smoothest sailing. Why are you asking for my help?”
Phil took a sip of his own drink before answering. “It’s very simple. You know me, I can sometimes get carried away by my own ideas.”
“True.”
“Sometimes, unfortunately, other people can get swept up in my enthusiasm and get carried away with me.”
“Like Hamlin and the recycler incident.”
“Exactly,” Phil said. “Like the recycler incident. Of all the engineers I’ve worked with, you’re the only one who is 100% immune to this effect. I’ve never once convinced you to help with a bad idea.”
“Ah, you want somebody who can call you on your own bullshit.”
“Precisely.”
“Stealing an 2000 ton container ship and flying it to Mars is a bullshit idea,” Harold stated flatly.
Phil gave a small chuckle. “Aren’t you so bored of flying between Earth and the Moon over and over again? Haven’t you ever wondered what it’d be like to follow in the footsteps of the old explorers, setting sail somewhere no human has ever reached? The Moon used to be this romantic, untouched thing hanging in the sky. Now every time you look up you can see the lights from 10 million colonists. What’s exciting about bringing a ship-load of fertilizer and toilet paper to the Moon?”
“Spare me the elevator pitch, Phil. Did you happen to know stealing a billion-dollar nuclear-powered cargo ship is illegal? Because it’s extremely illegal. Your best case scenario is life in prison.” He tapped the tablet. “That’s if your work is valid and if you can actually survive the round trip.”
“Come on man - it’s Mars. Only one crew gets to the first. Ever. Aren’t you at least curious what it’d be like to walk on a world nobody’s ever touched before?”
“Wait, ‘walk’?” Harold asked. “You’re going to bring a lander?”
Phil nodded slowly.
“Show me.”
