“No, no.”
“They want more money.”
“It’s 2019 now, not 2018.”
No. They couldn’t move it out again. GM and Boeing pulled out when the schedule last slid. So now it was Kia and Cessna for the Wheels and the Kites. Good names, yeah, but not blue-chip. Maybe it would boost the ratings, that bit of risk, that added chance…
Evan nodded. “Yeah, it’s a crap cocktail, all right.”
“We can’t do this,” Jere said. His voice sounded hollow and faraway.
Evan shrugged. “We have to.”
“What’s the problem this time? They lied again? They fucked up? What?”
“No.” A sigh. “It’s the testing that’s killing us. Five drop modules, five backout pods, five Wheels, five Kites, the big package of Returns, a ship with a fucking centrifuge, for God’s sake, goddamn, it’s a lot of shit to do!”
“So what do we do?”
“We push. Or we scale it back.”
“What? Take it to three teams?”
“No. Scale back the build and the test. Leave out the backout pods, for example.”
“What happens if the team can’t make it to the Returns?”
A slow smile. “Tough snatch, said the biatch.”
“What?”
“Before your time.” Another shrug. This one slow, lazy, nonchalant. “If they can’t make it to the Returns, they probably can’t make it back.”
“Will this get us back on track?”
“We could do more.”
“What?”
“Skip final test of the Kites and the Wheels. All they are is a bunch of fabric and struts anyway.”
“And?”
“Leave the spinner down on the ground.”
“How are the contestants supposed to stay in shape?”
“We’ll put in a whole lot of Stairmasters. They can exercise. Gets us another sponsor, too.”
“And?”
“And that might get us back on track. Or so say our formerly communist friends.”
“Will they guarantee it?”
“They aren’t guaranteeing anything anymore. But I think it’s a lot more likely that we’ll make the deadlines if you drop some of the fluff.”
Fluff. Yeah, fluff. Just a bunch of safety gear. Nobody will notice.
“We’re taking a big chance.”
“What’s a bigger chance? Going to ’19 or making a few changes?”
A few changes. Nothing big. Nothing major. Nothing we won’t be crucified for if it comes out.
“Can we do this clean? Can we make it look like we never had plans for the centrifuge, the backout stuff, all that?”
“I’m sure we can arrange something.”
Jere let the silence stretch out. Evan was watching him intently. In the dim light of the office, his weathered features could have been the craggy face of a demon.
“Do it,” Jere said finally, softly. Hating himself.
Wheeling had been easy back on Earth. The training had been out in the Mojave, nice smooth sand and little rocks that you could bounce over easy, and nice and flat as far as you could see.
But Wheeling was a bitch and a quarter here on Mars. Keith Paul gritted his teeth as he came to another long downhill run, scattered with boulders as big as houses and ravines that could catch the edge of the wheel and fuck him up good. He’d already dug the Wheel out twice, once when he swerved to avoid a slope that would pitch it over and ended up in a ditch, and once when he got to bouncing and bounced over a hill into a ravine.
And man, did it bounce! Whenever it hit a rock. Sometimes a foot, sometimes a couple, sometimes ten or twenty feet in the air.
They probably got some good vid of my terrified mug, Keith thought. That wasn’t good. Weakness was never good.
But he was being strong on other things. He was making good time across the desert. He’d been up rolling at the moment dawn’s light made the landscape even dimly guessable.
Other idiots are probably picking their way along like grandma in a traffic jam, he thought, and smiled. Because he was going to win.
And he was strong on the offers, too. Everyone had talked to him. Both the PA idjits, the associate director, Frank, everyone. They’d promised him everything but a blow-job and a hot dog, but the money hadn’t changed.
Almost on cue, the voice. This time it was Frank.
“We’re prepared to make you another offer,” Frank said.
“Shoot.”
“It’s our final offer,” Frank said. “And it’s a very generous one. By air, you have a good chance of being able to pick up the Ruiz team and take the prize as well. You are currently leading the three remaining teams by a fair margin.”
“What’s the offer?”
“Three million. Plus all the gifts and benefits we’ve discussed before.”
Keith shook his head.
“Keith?” Frank said.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re very bad at math.” Though the idea was intriguing. With three million, he could live pretty well down in Mexico…
No! Stupid! You’re a winner. You’re in the lead. Three is not thirty.
Frank sighed. “It’s our final offer,” he said.
“No.”
Silence for a time. “Your decision has been noted,” Frank said. He didn’t sound surprised.
Noted?
“What does that mean?” Keith said. Like, were they going to try to disqualify him or something?
Silence.
“Ass! What the hell does ‘noted’ mean?”
Silence.
“Fuck you, then!”
Silence. On and on.
Was it possible that he could run this whole thing and not win due to some technicality? No. No. He was a winner. He was going to win.
And if they tried to take that away from him, God help them.
Evan hadn’t believed Jere about Russia. Now he did. All it took was a couple of days of traveling into the hinterlands in the awful winter chill, grabbing cold-slick vinyl seats as their drivers deftly slid around potholes on the treacherous black-ice roads, potholes that looked as if they could hide black bears, potholes that looked like they could swallow the car, potholes so big and deep and dark they might have gone straight through to some beautiful tropical beach in Brazil.
Now they were standing under the bulk of the main launcher, all four of them, Evan and John Glenn and even Ron Gutierrez, his ever-smiling dad. Not really John Glenn, of course, but that’s what everyone called him. Frank Sellers, another good generic white-boy name. He was a wannabe-astronaut, never really flew anything after his training in the 80s, something about the shuttle blowing up. Now he was training to fly the Mars Enterprise (some money from the Roddenberry estate). Frank was one of the concessions they’d won. The Russians could build it, fine, but it had to be an American pilot. The spikes on the preliminary audience surveys were real clear on that fact.
When Frank first came down, he’d referred to the Enterprise as the Trash Can, and the name had stuck. The comparison was apt. It was squatty and cylindrical, and it did have a utilitarian functionality, and it was even somewhat battered and dirty-looking.
“How goes it?” Evan said, after they’d made their intros.
“Good, good,” Frank said. “We’ve had some problems with the electrical systems, nothing major, just the usual shakedown crap, and they’re worried a bit about the air, but I think…”
“The air?” Ron said. “On a journey this long?”
Frank shrugged. “They’ll make it work,” he said.
“It doesn’t seem very confidence-inspiring.”
“If you could have seen half the stuff I saw behind the scenes at NASA, you wouldn’t worry. These are good guys. They’ll figure it out.”
“If you say so.”