“Politically impossible to vent into atmosphere, these times,” Viktor said.
Raoul nodded. “So they’ll have to fly it to low orbit on a booster. Maybe a big Proton IV?”
Viktor nodded. “Is cheapest way up, sure.”
Katherine said, “I don’t know anything about the U.S. and Soviet programs, but I do know orbital mechanics. Surely they can’t do all this development work and lift for Mars when we do? So they miss the window, and the energy price to catch us gets huge.”
Axelrod slapped his palm on his desk. “Exactly. So they have to fly later, much later. We can’t really guess what trajectory they’ll choose. My spy guys haven’t picked up anything about that.”
“They could go for a smash-and-grab mission,” Katherine said. “Miss our window and make the next one, twenty-six months later. Land, grab something, then fly home fast to beat us by a few days.”
Axelrod obviously liked watching his team perform. “So what’s stopping them?” he coaxed.
Katherine said, “It can’t work. They wouldn’t have time to gather all the samples, do the geology. Without a pretty detailed set that meets the Mars Accord standards, they won’t win, even if they do get back first.”
“You all agree? It seems impossible?” Axelrod swept the room with his concentrated gaze.
They all looked at each other and nodded. Julia wished they had time to hash this over, do some figuring on paper, but it sounded right to her. They could check it all later, of course, but Axelrod liked this seat-of-the-pants style. “So how can they win?”
“If we lose,” Viktor said. “Fail. Blow up. Crash.”
They had all thought of this, and only he had the courage to say it out loud, Julia realized.
Axelrod pressed them further. “So it’s a big gamble for them, right?
Nobody throws down maybe twenty, thirty billion on a toss of the dice like that. So there’s gotta be a backup motive.”
Julia was getting a bit tired of this teasing, but the man must have some point. How could he be so sure there wasn’t somebody on this planet more foolhardy than Axelrod himself?
Raoul said suddenly, “If they lose, they still have the nuke.”
A murmur of agreement as it dawned on them. Raoul said with zest, “A whole new kind of rocket. One that’s two or three times more efficient than our boosters.”
Axelrod beamed approvingly. “A ship they can sell to anybody who wants to do deep-space work. Plenty of money to be made in the next couple decades, opening up high orbits.”
Viktor said, “Going to asteroids. Prospecting. Mining.”
“Who has enough vision,” Katherine observed thoughtfully, “to do that?”
“Too big for company?” Viktor asked. “Seems to me.”
Raoul said, “Must be countries, sure—and they must be using Russia’s old Soviet work. The U.S. wouldn’t sell anything they have in storage from their old nuclear program, Nerva.”
Viktor smiled dryly. “The mob at the top of Russia now, they will sell their grandmothers.”
“Sell is the word,” Katherine said. “They need the cash. But invest? I doubt it.”
Raoul smiled. “What major players are left out of the Consortium? China. Europe. India. Probably not anybody from South America—they do not have the technology.”
Axelrod laughed. “You all get A-plus. Right! Point is, I couldn’t include the whole damned planet in the Consortium. So now some others are ganging up on us. We’ve got a European-Chinese collaboration on our tail. Call themselves the Airbus Group.”
“It takes courage to leapfrog us,” Katherine said. “A nuclear rocket. What are they using for shielding?”
Axelrod said, “It looks like they have liquid hydrogen as their initial fuel. After that, we don’t know.”
The room dissolved into cross talk as the crew speculated on the Airbus approach. Axelrod let it run for a few minutes, then waved for silence. He was a master at commanding a room, Julia noted, but could not see how he did it. Charisma was always in essence elusive but still apparent.
He grinned, a confident, tanned man with the budget of a small nation riding on his decisions. “My spy guys confirmed that Airbus bought some Soviet nuclear propulsion gear. Plus discarded U.S. government stuff done with contractors. Equipment we traced to an assembly building in South America, which turned out to be a blind. It’s now in China.”
“Makes sense,” Viktor said. “They have big launch facilities. Buy Proton stages from Russian agency. Assemble there.”
Axelrod folded his arms. “That’s about all I know, except one more little mystery. Who will fly their mission?”
“Uh-oh…” Raoul said. Julia could see they had all thought of the same, obvious solution.
Axelrod grinned. “Right again. None other than your old crewmates—Marc and Claudine. Must say, I didn’t think that when I rejected those two from this program, they’d turn up flying for a competitor.”
“They’ll need some others,” Katherine said. “Probably Chinese, maybe Euros.”
Axelrod agreed. Julia ground her teeth. “I would like to confront Marc. How can he betray his country by working for a foreign group, after all the years at NASA?”
She regretted it the moment she said it. He’s there because you got him bumped…
“He’s a private citizen and this is not a classified project—it’s a public competition,” Axelrod said, smiling grimly.
“We all know Marc fairly well,” Raoul said. “He’s like us. He dreamed of going to Mars all his life. And look, Julia, you didn’t hesitate to have him dumped in favor of Viktor.”
“I didn’t! That was not my decision to make.”
