“Surprise!” Axelrod sat straight up, face animated again. “I like the idea.”
“What idea?”
“Of lovers going to Mars. Better ratings for the TV coverage, for sure. First, a big wedding. Plenty of advertising spin-offs, if we play it right. ‘What would you take on a Honeymoon to Mars?’ Victoria’s Secret could run up a whole line of low-gravity lingerie, I’ll bet.”
She wanted to laugh, but he was perfectly serious. And happy.
“You want Viktor, you got him. I stand by my crew.”
Wedding? Marry Viktor? “I don’t really know if we’re ready for that yet.”
Axelrod looked surprised. “I think it’s got to play this way.”
“Why?”
“The whole world is watching. I don’t want people saying I’m running a program that flouts the marriage bond.”
She looked at him, struggling to hide her incredulity. Hadn’t he had three marriages already? Carefully she said, “I don’t either. I just need a little time.”
“Don’t take too long.”
“Well…it’s all right with me, but I need to talk to Viktor.”
“Sure, sure. But no marriage, no Viktor on this flight.”
“Marc—”
“You wouldn’t be sleepin’ with him. Makes all the difference.”
“Doing it on camera, that makes the difference here?”
“You bet.” He smiled in a completely open way, no guile at all. Or was he really a quite accomplished actor, after all? She could not tell.
Then her astronaut training asserted itself. “Uh, won’t the habitat have to be altered to take an extra crew mem—”
“No changes.” Axelrod waved both hands in dismissal. “Too late for that, we’re fabricating the hab right now.”
“But—”
“I’ll bump Marc. Tell you true, only big difference between him ’n Viktor was, Marc’s better looking and speaks well.”
“Not…not piloting?”
“Viktor’s a shade better, the simulations showed.”
A wave of confused relief washed over her. Marc was a good friend. She had not seen this coming. “I never thought you would, honestly, I’m—”
“Don’t have to. I’ll do that. You think Mars, I’ll think Earth.” He winked. “Specialize. Now, then, let’s pick the big date.”
Viktor was tricky to deal with.
Not that he needed to be persuaded. Julia discovered to her surprise that he was happy with the idea of getting married. In his complicated Russian soul, what bothered him was her going to Axelrod in the first place. As pilot, he would be commander of the mission. He worried that he wouldn’t be accepted as the clearly chosen leader.
But Raoul and Katherine didn’t seem to mind the switch. Raoul had always had more in common with Viktor than with Marc. And as a couple they were preoccupied with some internal dialogue of their own.
Marc was furious. He blamed Julia, accusing her of plotting to remove him from the crew. Then he was gone.
Julia had the most trouble with her father. Harry referred to it as a “shotgun marriage” and wouldn’t be cajoled into feeling better about it. In some ways, Australia wasn’t really in the twenty-first century, she mused. He’d wanted Viktor to ask for her hand, not be told about her choice. And he resented Axelrod’s forcing the decision. When he was offered a long-delayed consulting trip to Africa, he went, missing the wedding. Her mother, Robbie, would make the trip alone, in one of Axelrod’s private jets.
Axelrod assigned each of the crew a media representative. They needed that. The impending wedding raised the issue of sex in space, and they became fodder for the tabloids.
They were now not just a team, but The Couples. Julia and Viktor, Raoul and Katherine. The press corps became an ever-hungry beast. Parents, friends, enemies, managers who had barely known them—all became suitable targets for microphone-in-face journalism.
NASA had created plenty of opportunities for the press to, well, press against the astronauts. Axelrod killed that attitude immediately. “Thing is,” he explained to the four, “you are a commodity now. Don’t want to oversell you.”
Katherine said straightforwardly, “I’m not a commodity.”
“Partners, then,” Axelrod said smoothly. “Partners in the Consortium.”
Raoul supported his wife’s objection. “We have rights to our own stories, I believe.”
“So you do.” Axelrod nodded vigorously. He was sitting on his mahogany desk, and the four of them were alone with him, a rarity. He had ordered champagne brought in to celebrate the “consolidation,” as he termed it, of the team.
Raoul said, “Then we should manage our own relationships with the media.”
“You shall—when you can reap the benefits. Right now, you train.”
Viktor said, “Good. No speaking to those fellows.”
