 
MARS COLONY AGATHA: NIKKI RED

BY JACK CHAUCER

Copyright Jack Chaucer 2019

Smashwords Edition

ISBN-13: 9780463886335

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this e-book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover art by Damonza

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART 1

CHAPTER 1: An International Chorus

CHAPTER 2: Epic Decision

CHAPTER 3: A Long, Long Way

CHAPTER 4: The Link

CHAPTER 5: Red Zeppelin

CHAPTER 6: Parking Lot Reunion

CHAPTER 7: Sisters in Space

CHAPTER 8: No Softballs

CHAPTER 9: Last Supper on Earth

CHAPTER 10: Mars is a Lucky Guy

CHAPTER 11: Dancing with the Stars

CHAPTER 12: Space High

PART 2

CHAPTER 13: Black Aces

CHAPTER 14: Song Inside a Letter Box

CHAPTER 15: Hazed

CHAPTER 16: What Now Genius?

CHAPTER 17: 12-Story Horror

CHAPTER 18: No Further Communication

CHAPTER 19: Is Matt Damon Here?

CHAPTER 20: This is Mars

CHAPTER 21: Backflip and Cartwheel

CHAPTER 22: No Interplanetary Sexting

CHAPTER 23: Ups and Downs

CHAPTER 24: Agatha F. Christie

CHAPTER 25: The First Cemetery

CHAPTER 26: Dome of The Rising Sun

CHAPTER 27: Badge

CHAPTER 28: Throwback Girl

CHAPTER 29: Space Truckin'

CHAPTER 30: Sucker Punch

CHAPTER 31: For Martians Only

PART 3

CHAPTER 32: Distant Early Warning

CHAPTER 33: Water and Wine

CHAPTER 34: Full Medical Disclosure

CHAPTER 35: Lifesaver

CHAPTER 36: Don't Call Me Betty

CHAPTER 37: Sea Hag's Secret

CHAPTER 38: Prescription Laughter

CHAPTER 39: The Perfect Sandstorm

CHAPTER 40: Fourth Rock from the Sun

CHAPTER 41: Captain Uranus

CHAPTER 42: Dearly Beloved

CHAPTER 43: Population Twenty-three

CHAPTER 44: Aggy

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For John and Phyllis,

and Ida

PROLOGUE

September 8, 2022

Den Helder, Netherlands

Strapped to their acceleration couches inside the Mars Red One crew capsule, six astronauts waited for the heavy-duty thrusters to catapult them off the North Holland peninsula.

Through clear-bubble helmets, Nikki Janicek and her unlikely friend, Thomas Harvey, flashed each other electric smiles, exceeding the combined wattage of 100 kids on Christmas morning and 100 newlyweds. All of that Earthly stuff seemed so trite compared to this: the first humans to blast off for Mars or die trying.

Two Dutch, two Americans, one German and one Australian. And yet, as the rocket and its boosters began to quake beneath them, Nikki's mind focused on a man in Antarctica.

She thought about Sam "Snowbow" Archambeau waiting for the September sunrise to reach the South Pole after six months of darkness. She smiled recalling him getting a haircut in a lawn chair next to the frozen barbershop pole. And then Nikki's eyes welled up remembering him snapping her photo as she clung, upside down, to a mirrored globe on the bottom of the world.

It was time to let go.

Nikki closed her eyes and blasted upward, blazing a trail of hellish fire and heavenly white smoke toward a new world just waiting to be discovered.

***

September 8, 2022

South Pole Station, Antarctica

Snowbow sat on his bunk and finally sharked his thumbnail through the sealed envelope marked, "Do not open until I blast off!" It had been inserted in an outer envelope that had flown from Amsterdam to Cape Town to Christchurch to McMurdo Station to South Pole Station.

As he unfolded the red construction paper inside, Snowbow smiled at the incongruity of a rocket girl using snail mail to communicate her last Earthly message to him:

Dear Sam,

Has the sun come up down there yet? I will never forget watching my first South Pole sunrise with you. And you were right. You can leave Antarctica, but it's always a part of you, especially after spending a long, dark and "toasty" — aka insane — winter there.

Now that I've regained my sanity just in time to blast off for an even more insane and deadly adventure, I want you to know that you'll always be a part of me, too.

The truth is I never would've survived those six months without your presence, your winter-over experience, your awesome sense of humor and your ability to help heal people who used to hate each other. Thomas and I have gone from enemies to friends, from training for a mission to actually boarding a rocket for Mars.

None of this happens without you.

Know that I am leaving this Earth, quite likely for the last time, thinking of you and missing you so much. In fact, as I write this, I'm blasting one of my favorite songs, "Connected by Love," by Jack White.

We are, Sam.

So as far as I'm concerned, you're coming to Mars with me.

I love that this Red One mission is going to the South Pole on Mars in search of liquid water. South Poles have been good to me (mostly thanks to you), so I go full of hope. I am (mostly) not afraid to die if something goes wrong.

No matter what happens, I wish you all the best in whatever you do and I will sign off my final letter as an Earthling with a message truly from my heart:

I love you and I sincerely hope we meet again some day. It doesn't matter which planet, as long as we're both on it together, watching the sun come up.

Love,

Nikki "Now Red for Mars" Janicek,

genuine member of The 300 Club,

winter-over crew 2020

xoxoxoxo!!!!!!!!

Sam shuddered through an exhale after absorbing this amazing left hook to his heart. He forced a smile while shaking his head with regret. For the first time in his life, South Pole Station felt like a prison.

He had allowed himself to become too comfortable here, even in the minus-100-degree nights of June. His spirit of adventure had been surpassed by someone younger, bolder and more beautiful — by someone who loved him _and left him behind anyway_.

Being a legend at Earth's South Pole didn't matter anymore.

That was the past.

Nikki had given him a present... _a future_.

### PART 1

### CHAPTER 1

### AN INTERNATIONAL CHORUS

**September 8, 2022**

Thousands of feet over the North Sea

"Scheisse!"

Two years of rigorous training and one precious shot at making history all came undone with the German word for shit, just 47 seconds into the mission.

"Engine mal...," Otto tried to declare, but before the German pilot could finish the word and swat the flashing button on the digital console above him, the onboard computer beat his manual abort sequence.

"Ejection rocket burn" were the last words Nikki heard before blacking out.

The crew capsule popped off the rocket and adjacent boosters like the cork off a champagne bottle.

From the launch complex on the North Holland peninsula thousands of feet below, the crew cone could be seen tumbling through the bright blue sky with a comet-like tail before three white parachutes shot out above it and steadied what was left of Mars Red One. The rest of the bottle pitched sideways out over the North Sea, destined for a splashdown somewhere between the United Kingdom and Denmark.

Much closer to shore, Nikki, Thomas and their comrades began to wake up from the severe G-forces of the initial ejection and separation, and from their long-imagined dream of a distant rendezvous with Mars.

"I don't even know what's worse, this disaster or losing out to that insufferable ass, Musk," lamented Irene, the Dutch astronaut strapped in to Nikki's right.

Tears streamed down Nikki's cheeks as she realized they had suffered the fate she had least prepared for — not Mars, not death, but the uncertain purgatory of another chapter here on Earth.

Thomas leaned forward enough to Nikki's left that he could see her miserable face behind the protective bubble.

"So much for our first date on Mars," he quipped.

She appreciated his attempt at humor and forced a smile through her tears as the capsule rocked. A second, larger trio of parachutes shot upward, slowing their descent even more.

"Well this will be the longest fall from grace in the history of mankind," Julie, the co-pilot, observed in her Australian accent.

"At least we're alive," Otto pointed out.

"A flawless ejection, just what we set out to do," Irene countered bitterly.

Nikki had a hard time forming any words. The gut-punching disappointment overwhelmed her and only added to her nausea in the wind-buffeted, claustrophobic crew module. Even though they had practiced the ejection sequence many times in a simulator, she could not believe it actually had become their fate.

When the capsule finally smashed into the white-capped waves of the North Sea, tossing the white-knuckled astronauts around like six dimes in a washing machine, Nikki had to let it out.

"Fuck it all!" she screamed.

For some reason, her comrades laughed, and in perfect harmony, made it an international chorus: "Fuck it all!"

"Hey, at least we found liquid water," Thomas deadpanned.

Even Nikki managed a laugh at that painful irony.

### CHAPTER 2

EPIC DECISION

September 9, 2022

Den Helder, Netherlands

Nikki stared at her muted iPhone, the one she never thought she'd need again, and marveled at the frequency of the flashes.

Light, dark, light, dark — a new message from someone on the wrong planet, seemingly every second.

She had killed the ring tone, David Bowie's "Starman," a hundred flashes ago. Too painful to listen to now.

Now.

More like _now what?_

After these endless medical tests in this ghastly white Dutch hospital; after her parents, Roger and Lynn, were allowed to see her, hold her tight and tell her it was all meant to be, what would become of her?

That frightening thought quickly was replaced by flickering flashbacks of violent vibrations — another round of PTSD re-enactments of the liftoff to nowhere.

Nikki grabbed the phone off the bed and forced herself to scroll the texts as a distraction. But before she could read three words, the message of an incoming call snared her attention. "SpaceX" it said.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Nicole Janicek?" the female voice asked.

"Yes, who is this?"

"Jane Rushmore, personal assistant to Elon Musk. He'd like to FaceTime with you whenever you feel up to it, though I caution his offer is extremely time-sensitive."

"Offer?" Nikki gasped, suddenly wondering if the doctor had slipped her some opioids for her aching neck and back. "Is this a joke?"

"Absolutely not."

"Then I'll talk right now if he wants."

"Great. He'll pop up shortly."

Seconds later, Nikki answered a FaceTime request from the CEO of SpaceX. Her jaw dropped when his famous face appeared on her phone.

"Hi," she said, instantly star-struck.

"Hi Nicole, sorry to interrupt your recovery," Elon said, a smile tugging at his thin lips.

"No problem. Call me Nikki."

"Call me Elon. Also call me a fan of your bravery and your red hair," he said, referring to her dyed streaks of misplaced optimism.

"Thanks... guess I was presumptuous that we'd actually get there."

"Aren't we _all_ insanely presumptuous? We have to be. How are you feeling physically? It looked like the ejection went well at least."

"A few aches and pains, but all in all, as good as I could've hoped considering what happened," Nikki replied.

"And the others?"

"Everyone survived, but they've got us all in separate rooms for tests."

"Good to hear. Well, I'm calling because I've got a crazy offer for you... a totally unfair offer actually, given what you just endured yesterday. But for some nagging reason, I just have to ask."

"Go ahead."

"Would you still like to go to Mars?"

Nikki's stunned face caused Elon to chuckle.

"Seriously? When?"

"Same launch window. The 22nd."

"That's in, like, less than two weeks," she pointed out.

"Correct."

Elon's determined eyes showed no sign of a prank.

"You already have a crew for that mission obviously," Nikki said.

"I have five. I'm pulling one back for our second crew, which lifts off in '24."

"This late? Why someone like me... from a different mission?"

"Similar mission actually, but a much better rocket and ship," he replied with confidence that bordered on arrogance. "We used to call it the Big Fucking Rocket, or BFR, but they made me go PC with it, so now it's Super Heavy Starship, or SHS. We already landed an unmanned cargo ship there successfully."

"Yes, I remember watching video of that landing," Nikki said, "but again, why choose _me_?"

"Because you're a proven survivor, an early-in-life graduate of adversity university: first a school shooter, then The Bridge abduction, now this."

Nikki exhaled. "Wow, you really do know my story."

"You're rather famous at the moment, especially here in the States, in case you haven't been watching the news."

"No, I don't want to see endless loops of abort footage. My brain is playing back enough of that already."

"Understandable," Elon nodded. "All I can say is I promise we'll get you into space this time. We've tested the SHS for four years. She's ready to go. It's going to be epic. My gut tells me you're the final piece this crew needs."

"I'm completely flattered and blown away by your offer... but do they know yet?"

"The crew? Yeah, they know I'm changing one spot — a late wildcard, if you will. Say yes and we'll fly you to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for our medical team to check you out. Then you'll need to meet the crew and start catching up. You'll have nine months in space to acclimate and prep for the mission before you get to Mars. Plenty of time."

Nikki shook her head in wonder and disbelief.

"How long do I have to decide?"

"Twelve to 24 hours," Elon replied with a smirk. "Totally unfair offer, like I said."

"This _is_ crazy," Nikki nodded.

"Beyond," he smiled.

"What if your crew hates me for being the late sub... or bringing bad luck associated with the Red One failure?"

"You let me deal with the crew. It's a fun group. They'll love you. Regardless, they need to be ready for all kinds of variables and unexpected shit to happen on this mission, so a late crew change is just the start. If anyone did have a problem, it opens up another spot. We've got a deep roster of people trained and raring to go."

"This is just...," Nikki exhaled, her head spinning. "Where on Mars exactly?"

"Planum Australe, just like the Red One mission. It's too high up and way too cold, but that's where the underground lake is, so we'll plant our flags down there and start drilling. We've got a new graphene drill bit we can make with a 3-D printer that we're bringing along. We can't wait to use it. If the bit breaks, just print another one. We've got mini nuclear-powered heating systems for the winter months to back up the solar arrays, and ice-bubble blast domes for the hab and the future water station that act as insulation and protection from solar radiation at the same time. And of course, I've packed some fun Tesla-made transportation just waiting to spin tires and kick up some Martian dirt."

"Amazing," Nikki gasped.

"You've got some South Pole experience, I understand."

"I do."

"Good. Same thing, different planet... sort of."

"Survival odds?" Nikki asked, fully anticipating an entertaining reply.

"No worse than driving home from a bar at 2 a.m. on a weekend night," he replied with a playful grin. "I'll call the mission dangerous to deadly, but doable.... Better odds than with Red One for sure."

"Apparently that's not saying much."

"You're still alive right now, so I thank them for that.... I'll say 90 percent chance you survive liftoff and the burn to Mars. The rest truly is unknown. One thing I do know is if we don't get there first, your former company is up next."

"What?"

"I've heard The Bridge is launching from South Africa before our second crewed mission in '24, with or without the currently incarcerated Dr. Peter van Wooten. His old man Willem never gives up."

"Oh my God, don't even," Nikki said in disgust. "I hope they're not going to the South Pole, too."

"I don't think so, but I'll be damned if those d-bags get to Mars first," Elon said. "Forget The Bridge, Nikki. Just imagine yourself staking an American flag into the clear carbon-dioxide ice on the South Pole of Mars and sealing your legacy as a true American hero."

Nikki took a deep breath while pondering her third chance to go to the Red Planet in four years. The first one ended amid arrests and scandals on the ground in Cape Town; the second got doused in the salty, September-chilled waters of the North Sea.

"It's not about being a hero for me," she finally told Elon. "I've been drawn to space and going beyond this world since I camped out under the stars on Mount Washington as a teenager. I'm ready to experience a new, unspoiled planet. If I'm among the first six to do it, that's a bonus. Let's go!"

"Epic decision, Nikki. Welcome to my Mars Colony A crew," Elon beamed. "Jane will get back to you shortly with airline arrangements out of Amsterdam. I'll see you in Florida very soon."

As her phone went dark again, Nikki's heart sank at the thought of a second round of good-byes.

### CHAPTER 3

A LONG, LONG WAY

September 10, 2022

Den Helder, Netherlands

Nikki embraced both of her parents at the same time and lost it.

The sobbing and the tears soon spread from her to them, and they didn't even know the half of it.

"I'm the worst daughter in the world," she finally declared, stepping back from them now and taking them both in — an ill-suited, rightly divorced pair only drawn together here in this Dutch hospital room because of her.

"Nikki, stop talking like that," Roger said, trying in vain to be discreet about wiping a tear from his eye. "You're alive... after all that fire and smoke, we thought you were..."

The fire captain's voice trailed off. His trembling lips conveyed the rest.

"I'm a cruel and selfish daughter," Nikki persisted.

Lynn gasped, grabbed her daughter by the shoulders and sat her back down on the hospital bed.

"Nikki, you're not making any sense. Are you sure you passed those tests?"

Roger exhaled and found his voice again.

"Are the doctors lying to us?" he asked.

Nikki took a deep breath of her own and set them straight.

"The doctors did not lie. I am fine... but I'm still going to Mars."

Her parents looked at each other like she was destined for a mental ward, and Nikki let them have that rare moment of bonding before lowering the boom.

"Elon Musk called me. He wants me on the SpaceX crew that launches on the 22nd."

"Are you out of your frigging mind?" Roger snapped, throwing his hands in the air.

"I told you..."

"This is a prank, right?" Lynn interrupted, her temper also rising.

"No, it's not."

"And you said _yes_?" Roger asked.

"I did," Nikki confirmed.

"After you almost got blown up two days ago? I can't believe this!" Roger shouted, storming out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

Nikki's body jumped at the sound, but Lynn's eyes — two weapons of disappointment, anger and hurt that only a mother could wield — didn't even blink.

"How could you?" she growled.

Nikki just looked down at the white tiles.

"How many times do I have to watch my only daughter try to cheat death?" Lynn continued. "I really think you have a death wish, Nikki, and I can't attach myself to this anymore... _because my heart can't take it!_ Do you understand?"

Nikki nodded with soaked eyes.

"Because while you somehow keep surviving — Thomas' gun... The Bridge... six months at the South Pole... and now a total rocket misfire — more and more of me gets killed every time."

The second time the door closed, there was no slam, but it shook Nikki even more.

***

Thomas squinted and then smirked at the news.

"You really want to go up in a rocket again after that?" he asked as they sat together in a private hospital lounge with tinted windows.

Nikki tried to ignore that part of it and envision a smooth, zero-gravity journey through space.

"I... we have spent the last two years training and gearing up for this... and it all came crashing down in less than a minute," she said. "I thought it was over for me... and now it isn't. How could I not say yes to _Elon Musk_?"

"How was he to talk to?"

"Very cool. Somewhat down-to-Earth, ironically... I just wish he had another spot for you."

"I don't know," Thomas said, running his hands through his sandy brown hair and stretching back. "Part of me is fine with staying here now."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I feel like I finally have my freedom... from school and prison, from those Bridge assholes and training... from everything."

"What will you do?" Nikki asked, struggling to envision Thomas working a 9-to-5 job, married with kids some day.

"I have no fucking idea," he replied with a laugh. "But I might just go home."

"New Hampshire?"

"I think so. Maybe I'll try to see what life is like there when I don't feel like a loser."

"You're _so_ not a loser anymore, Thomas... and I'm actually gonna miss you," she said, offering him her hand.

"We're _so_ past a parting handshake," he countered, brushing her hand away.

"You're totally right."

She expected a hug, but he surprised her with a quick kiss on the lips as well.

Thomas cracked up at her stunned reaction.

"You're going to Mars, Nikki. You won't be here to press charges."

Nikki tilted her head and smiled looking into his playful blue eyes, no longer cold and full of anger like they were in high school.

"You sure have come a long, long way," she said.

He nodded, then shrugged.

"Now it's your turn to _go_ a long, long way... try not to die," Thomas advised.

As Nikki hugged him one more time for likely the last time, she smiled and savored those final four words, from a man, no longer a boy; no longer with a pistol in his hand, aimed at her.

A long, long way indeed.

### CHAPTER 4

THE LINK

September 11, 2022 — Launch-Minus-11 Day

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Cruising stealthily in a black Musk-designed Tesla sedan from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base toward nearby Kennedy Space Center, Nikki stared out the tinted window at the Atlantic Ocean and recalled her last disastrous visit to Florida in August 2019.

It began with her defying The Bridge leadership's orders in Fort Lauderdale and nearly ended when she was struck by flying debris as Hurricane Felicia raged in Miami Beach.

But she lived.

And now she was back, and free, and here by her own choice.

She was ready to leave Earth on her own terms; saddened by her parents' objections, but determined to blast her life so far past the ordinary.

Thirty-eight Raptor engines, quietly waiting on iconic Launch Pad 39A, would propel her beyond her imagination and into a cold, beautiful and deadly reality.

Dozens of Space Shuttle liftoffs had cleared that same pad; two missions had ended in explosions, deaths and parental heartbreaks.

But Nikki truly believed she would survive to see Mars up close.

Her extensive training in Antarctica had steeled her spirit for this all-in mission to deep space, and now Musk's unexpected lifeline after the Red One splashdown only convinced her further that she was destined to actually land there in 2023 at age 26. Wow.

KSC headquarters rose about 10 stories in the foreground with massive American and NASA flags draped down one side. The boxy building was surrounded by sprawling parking lots dotted with palm trees, but Nikki's eyes initially were drawn to the sleek, futuristic SpaceX sign on an adjacent rectangular building. The left leg of the X in the logo shot up diagonally and arced away, like the trail of rocket smoke.

Beyond all of that, at the edge of the ocean, the stainless steel Super Heavy Starship gleamed as it aimed toward the bright blue sky. From Nikki's vantage point more than a mile away, it looked like a child's toy, and in a way it was. Musk had been experimenting with rockets of all sizes since his aloof engineer father literally left Elon to his own devices during a rough South African childhood split from his mother and siblings. In reality, the full SHS stack stood 387 feet, 82 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.

This was beyond freedom.

Where this rocket would take her, there would be nothing but red dirt, ice and murderously thin air. No government. No police. No trees or animals. No streets, with or without names. Just a brand new, very old and very empty world, apathetic to the arrival of six human beings, one of whom remained an 11th-hour, L-minus-11 stranger to the other five.

Nikki scrolled through their names on her phone one more time:

**1. Commander Xander Vermilyea.** Really? Internal rhyme? Nikki still dabbled in poetry, but that name in the email Elon's assistant sent her sounded more like a Muskian prank.

**2. Pilot Jo Guigere.** Not Joe. Not Josephine. But female, Nikki presumed. Awesome.

**3. Engineer Ulysses Parker.** She wondered if his middle name started with an S. like the old Civil War general and president who now graces $50 bills.

**4. Dr. Susan Wilkes.** Nikki tried to suppress her brain's urge to stick with the 1800s theme, add "Booth" to her name and charge her as an accomplice in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

**5. Specialist Edward Etergino.** "E Squared" immediately came to her mind as a possible nickname.

And what would they think of Specialist Nicole Janicek, the late and unexpected wildcard crew member with the red streaks in her hair?

_If I can find a way to get along with the person who shot me for six months at South Pole Station, I'll find a way to get along with these people,_ Nikki vowed.

But first, she was scheduled to meet face to face with the visionary who designed the car she was riding in and the spaceship that would drive her to Mars.

***

Jane Rushmore, blonde and personable, ushered Nikki into an eighth-floor suite where Elon Musk, hipster-techno-casual in a black short-sleeved shirt and jeans, quickly looked up from his phone and grinned. The SHS pierced the blue horizon in the massive window behind him.

Still star struck, Nikki hesitated for half a beat before crossing the surprisingly drab, outdated carpet to shake his hand in the large, rectangular room.

"Welcome, Nikki. How was your flight?" he asked, guiding her toward a pair of recliners. "Come relax. Can I get you anything?"

"Good, no, I'm fine," she replied as they both sat down across from one another.

"Most people I know try to avoid flying on September 11th out of, you know, extremely warranted superstition, but we're L-minus-11, so..."

"It was no problem," Nikki said, struggling to form more than simple sentences in this surreal moment.

"How old were you in 2001?" he asked, still grinning.

"Four," she said, finally allowing herself to exhale.

He nodded as if he already knew that. "Back then I was one year away from launching SpaceX in a California office about the size of this room and look how far we've come. I'm still renting space... this time from NASA."

"But now you've got a rocket on that launch pad right there ready to take six people to Mars," Nikki pointed out while gesturing toward the window.

"Can you believe you're one of them?"

"No... this all seems like a dream."

"I'm glad you said dream and not a nightmare."

"Oh, I'm scared," she admitted.

"So am I. Perfectly normal. This is gonna be big... truly the start of something monumental in human history. Deep space travel and establishing a human base on Mars."

"What do you see as my role in this mission... other than trying not to die?" Nikki asked, smiling as she realized she just echoed Thomas' parting words to her.

Elon fed off her smile and practically bounced in his chair as he talked, with his hands in constant motion.

"I really see you as the link, the communications link between Starship and Earth on the burn to Mars, and then between Colony A and Earth from Sol 1 on," Musk said, referring in space jargon to the crew's first day on the Red Planet. "You're considerably younger, more charismatic and less of a technical person than the rest of the crew, so I really see you as the person to help tell the story of this mission, human to human."

"Wow," Nikki beamed.

"It's an important role... getting on camera, wearing GoPros, shooting videos and sending video emails — v-mails — to interact with especially young people and children in classrooms on Earth," he continued. "Think of yourself as the first travel guide on Mars, encouraging the next generation to want to help set up a city there some day. Because this mission will be far more effective and inspiring if we maintain that human connection with Earth every mile and every step of the way."

"What can I say? I'm humbled and amazed to do that," Nikki said.

"Fantastic. Now when I say interact, as you know, there's about a 20-minute delay in communications between Mars and Earth, so the videos will be more like a one-way video letter, if you will, and then you'll receive the reply from Earth."

"Of course."

"The less glamorous role for you would be to get extremely involved in keeping the common areas and cabins clean aboard ship and in the Martian hab environment..."

"Housekeeping?" Nikki asked with a smirk.

"Your word, not mine," he replied with a laugh. "But essential either way."

She nodded, biting her tongue and smiling. "Anything else?"

"Oh, there'll be many other tasks, I'm sure, but one very real thing to keep in mind is you are the most expendable crew member. I know. I'm shamelessly blunt. But that's a fact."

Nikki picked up her jaw, tilted her head and understood.

"I know. I totally get that."

"It just means that when there are dangerous situations or choices or truck runs to be made, you should be the first to raise your hand."

Nikki's eyes met Elon's and didn't blink.

"I will do that."

"Good. Even if any of the other five tries to be the hero and insist, you remind them what I've told you here today. This mission is all about sacrifice. It has no chance of succeeding without it."

"I'm so ready," Nikki told herself and the leader of SpaceX. "You have no idea how awful it felt to come crashing down and lose that opportunity."

"On the contrary, I know exactly how it feels. I've seen my share of exploding rockets. And that's why I reached out to you... someone who would appreciate this second chance like no one else."

Nikki took a deep breath and grinned. "I do appreciate it and I thank you for tracking me down. I'm truly blown away by all of this."

"You're welcome," Elon said, standing up and offering her a hug. "And officially, _welcome_ to the mission."

Nikki accepted his embrace and smiled.

"Thank you. What's next?" she asked.

"Dinner with your commander and crew. You better enjoy real Earth food while you can get it. And after that, I have a little surprise movie for all of you. It should be an inspirational and bonding experience."

### CHAPTER 5

RED ZEPPELIN

September 11, 2022 — Launch-Minus-11 Day

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

They entered the crew lounge together, but Nikki felt all eyes on her, not Elon. What a strange new world she had crossed into, and she hadn't even left Earth yet.

"Hey Martians, here's your sixth crew member, Nicole Janicek," Musk said casually with a playful bow and a sort of game-show-host hand gesture that made Nikki blanch.

"Nikki is fine," she managed to say, her own frozen attempt to keep it casual.

"Indeed you are," a tough-looking, short-haired woman quipped unabashedly as she was the first to shake Nikki's hand. "Jo Giguere. Welcome aboard. Are you ready for Round 2?"

Nikki nodded at the shorter woman, who seemed like she'd hold her own in a boxing ring.

"I am... more than ready to actually escape Earth's atmosphere this time."

"We will," the pilot said, her confidence reassuring to Nikki. "This is Commander Xander," she added, hooking her thumb at the next crew mate in line to greet her. He stood a foot taller than Jo and rocked a black SpaceX T-shirt while the others wore white.

"Welcome aboard," Xander Vermilyea declared, shaking her hand firmly. "We'll get you up to speed on the mission straightaway," he added in a South African accent that reminded Nikki of her old Bridge nemesis, Dr. Peter van Wooten.

"Thanks... I can't wait get started," Nikki said while noting Xander's hair was even shorter than Jo's. She felt utterly out of place with her long, wild and red-streaked look. "Should I cut this?" she asked.

"What?" Jo gasped.

"Well I'm looking around at all of you with short hair..."

"Or _no hair_ ," a strapping, bald black man interjected with a hearty laugh, which rippled through the rest of the crew. He bypassed the hand shake and went straight for a bear hug. Nikki rolled with it and smiled. "I'm Ulysses, but everyone calls me Pluto because they can't handle my size and they don't know how to classify me."

"Nice to meet you, Pluto," Nikki said, trying to loosen up a little. "Or should I call you Jupiter instead?"

"Oooh, I like that," he replied. "I love her already, Commander X," he added, putting his arm around Xander, who nodded but clearly wasn't that comfortable with Pluto's touchy-feely approach.

An Italian-looking man, his dark hair graying above the ears, and a tall Asian woman flanked Nikki next. Edward Etergino and Susan Wilkes both shook her hand and welcomed her to the crew.

"Call me Sunny," Susan said with a radiant smile. "How are you feeling after what happened the other day?"

"Better than I expected, especially after getting the call from Elon," she replied, nodding toward a suddenly aloof Musk, who was snacking on potato chips out of a bowl on one of the long, rectangular tables. His mind seemed to be elsewhere.

"Well, he is full of surprises," Eddy said, his voice loud and friendly.

"Hopefully you don't all hate me for taking someone else's spot," Nikki said with a cringe.

"How can we? We know it's all Elon's fault," Eddy bellowed at Musk, but in a jovial tone.

"You guys get all the glory and I get all the blame... I know how it works," Elon chimed in, not even knowing what the topic was from half a lounge away.

But that did seem to stir him from being deep in thought because then he came over, stood next to Nikki and put his hand up to quiet the room.

"I just want to say a few words before you eat and then I have a special world premiere film for you to watch after dinner," Elon said.

"Oooh," Pluto responded as the others clapped.

"Any hints?" Jo asked.

"It's not a 'Rocky' movie," Musk waved her off with a grin.

"I like MMA, not that prehistoric fake boxing shit," she shot back.

Everyone laughed. Nikki was so relieved that the crew seemed so loose and fun. If they were rocketing to their deaths, at least they'd be cracking some jokes along the way.

"Seriously, there will be no more crew changes," Elon continued. "This is the group that will make history next June and land on Mars. I'm tripping balls just thinking about it and I'm not even going, so I can only imagine the adrenaline you guys are running on right now. Just remember... it's a marathon, not a sprint."

"Wait, we're only going 26.2 miles?!" Pluto asked with a look of feigned horror. "I want a refund!"

"Metaphors are lost on these creatures," Elon told Nikki as the kitchen crew entered and began setting up a buffet on one of the long tables. "I can't compete with food," he added to the whole group. "As I told Nikki earlier, chow down on the real Earth food while you can get it, and I'll be back later to introduce the special film."

"I bet it's soft porn," Jo blurted out to laughter.

Elon's grin couldn't get any wider, but he just shook his head and exited the lounge.

The six astronauts soon were helping themselves to a Sunday buffet of roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and buttered rolls. They all sat together at one table and Nikki fielded questions in between bites.

"How rough did the ejection go?" Xander asked.

"Pretty violent," she replied. "The side-to-side jolts at first made me feel like my rib cage was going to crack, and I just figured this is it — the rocket's going to break apart any second. I was totally in shock while we were coming down and it got more gentle, and I realized all that training and anticipation were for nothing."

"Until now," Pluto said, finally looking up from his plate.

"Where did you train?" Sunny asked from directly across the table.

"South Pole Station, McMurdo Dry Valleys and The Bridge has a launch complex in South Africa. Then I had my Red One training in the Netherlands and Norway."

"What was your favorite?" Jo asked.

"Hmm... probably South Pole Station."

"Really?" Eddy piped up.

"Yeah, that place just changes your life... complete darkness... it's like you're already traveling through the stars there... then the slow-motion sunrise over weeks," Nikki said wistfully. "You never see Earth the same way again. You already feel so detached from what everyone considers normal."

"A good preview of what's to come for us," Eddy nodded. "I've done a couple of spacewalks on the ISS and that detached feeling is quite the high..."

"Why didn't you just slash your umbilical tether, Eddy?" Xander ribbed him with a grin.

"Yeah, but NASA would've fired me for that," he deadpanned.

Everyone cracked up.

"Are all of you single?" Nikki asked with a smirk.

"Oooh," Pluto jumped in his chair. "Skip right to the good stuff, girl."

Nikki fought through her blush. "I'm asking more out of curiosity because we're leaving people behind."

"Oh," Sunny nodded.

"Elon wouldn't let us come into this mission with a significant other," Jo said with no hint of a joke. "That was part of the deal. He wanted us totally focused, with no chance of regrets or backing out because we might never come back home to that special someone."

"Seriously?" Nikki asked.

"It's true," Xander confirmed.

"Did he ask you if you were with someone?" Jo asked.

"No."

"That's bullshit," Pluto declared, throwing down his napkin in exaggerated disgust.

"I guess he just assumed I was single and he's right," Nikki said. "I was already supposed to be on my way to Mars right now anyway."

"How old, or should I say, how _young_ are you?" Jo asked.

"Twenty-five."

"Wow, I'm no longer the baby of the group," Sunny replied.

Nikki guessed her new comrades were in their mid to late 30s or 40s. Sunny seemed next youngest, likely in her early 30s.

Elon then popped back into the lounge.

"Hey, it's time to fire up our movie."

Nikki's crew mates clapped.

"This is an exclusive premiere of a film that will be seen by the rest of this world in December, when you're all well on your way to Mars," Elon said as his assistant, Jane, passed out virtual reality headsets to each of the astronauts.

"VR, cool," Jo said.

"Yes, put them on and go grab a comfortable seat," Elon instructed.

They all headed for nearby sofas and recliners.

"Do we need to be far apart so we don't punch anybody?" Jo asked.

"It's not that kind of film," Elon replied with a grin.

"Too bad," the pilot lamented.

"This movie will whet your appetite for our Mars mission," Elon predicted. "It was made by one of the artists, an American film director, who traveled on our six-day trip around the Moon in March as a guest of Japanese billionaire Yusaka Maezawa."

Nikki and her crew mates cheered.

"He incorporated music by the musician in the group, still photos from the photographer in the group, narration from the writer in the group... you get the idea," Elon said. "It's called 'dear Moon.' Enjoy."

The VR headset now firmly in place, Nikki settled into a recliner and prepared for liftoff to the Moon.

The rumbling of the Raptor engines slowly increased, but the screen remained black until a clip from the 1950s comedy "The Honeymooners" flashed in front of her. "To the Moon, Alice!" portly Jackie Gleason shouted with a faux upper cut at his unimpressed, red-haired housewife. It was so unexpectedly inartistic that Nikki and the other astronauts laughed out loud.

Then snippets of President John F. Kennedy and Apollo-era astronauts from the 1960s talking about going to the Moon peppered the VR screen as the rumbling sound intensified.

That was followed by a montage of liftoff images from the Apollo rockets, and finally, a Go Pro-type view of Maezawa and the artists waving while strapped into their launch seats as the SpaceX rocket vibrated toward full thrust.

The deafening roar of the actual liftoff blasted Nikki's ears, and the camera atop the nose of the ship gazed down at fire and Earth, the former separating from the latter at an exponentially rapid pace.

A series of audio communications between the commander and Kennedy Space Center control chirped intermittently as the rocket cleared the launch pad and raced into the crisp, blue sky. Those radio bursts soon faded and a beautiful piano melody took over, serenading the spaceship and its crew on the ride out of Earth's atmosphere and toward the blackness of space.

The music continued as the ship jettisoned its reusable first-stage rocket, sending it on a graceful fall back toward the Atlantic Ocean below.

"And so it begins," a Japanese man's voice said. "A six-day, 240,000-mile journey to the Moon and back."

The second-stage engines then revved and erupted, accelerating the spaceship on its burn toward what now filled the screen — a half-lit, half-shadowed, fully cratered lunar masterpiece.

"Dear Moon," the man's voice continued. "We are your humble guests. We have felt your pull — from the tides in our oceans, from your radiance in our eyes. We need to see you up close. Show us your beauty. Inspire us to create. Teach us more about who we are and our place in this spectacular frontier we call the universe."

As the blue-and-white Earth slowly spun smaller, the Moon drew the ship and its now jubilant, free-floating artists ever closer. GoPro cameras captured Maezawa and his friends smiling, laughing, tumbling and dancing in zero gravity on the cruise of their lives. Still-frame close-ups of each of their faces, and then zoomed-in shots of their eyes gazing out the ship's massive windows, eventually transitioned into what seemed like hundreds of amazing views of Earth, space, the stars and ultimately the Moon.

The luminous lunar surface nearly blinded Nikki until the shadow of its dark side slowly rotated into view. A woman's voice then sang Cat Stevens' classic hit, "Moonshadow," as the ship made its slow, wide turn around the Moon and started the journey back home.

The remainder of the film featured images of the return voyage, the artists aboard ship and the works they created — paintings, poetry, sculptures, clothing, multimedia art — all set to an original score of classical music that pushed Nikki to the brink of tears. She loved the film's pure, real, understated beauty, and she freed herself to truly believe she was on the verge of experiencing space, too.

When it was over, and the Mars crew had finishing clapping and hugging each other, Elon Musk stood proudly in front of them and gave them one last thing to think about.

"There are no limits to what we can do," he said. "We are destined to be a multi-planet species. You six will prove that very soon. Complete your final days of training together with the belief that Mars not only is within our reach, but also will be ours to populate, terraform and resuscitate from dead and desolate to alive and kicking."

The crew clapped and Eddy pointed at Elon.

"A Simple Minds reference, nice," he said, in reference to the band's 1985 song, "Alive and Kicking."

Elon nodded and smiled. "I guess we're both men of a certain age, Eddy, but truth be told, I'm more of Sinatra "Fly Me to the Moon" guy than an '80s music guy."

"Makes sense. You really are an old soul, boss," Eddy laughed.

"Regardless of musical taste, I won't be satisfied until I hear a live band jam in a bar on Mars," Musk said.

"Oh boy... looks like we better start practicing," Pluto said.

"Who here can sing?" Jo asked the group.

"Not me," Sunny said with a chuckle.

"Nikki's definitely got the right hair to lead the band," Elon noted with a grin.

She shook her head. "I'm not much of a singer."

Pluto put his arm around her like he had known her for years, not a couple of hours. "Don't worry, Nikki. We'll sing backup for you."

"Pluto, you can sing lead," Eddy said. "I've heard you."

"Only if you pay me like a lead singer then," he quipped.

"Controversy already," Elon chimed in.

"We'll need a name for this band of ours," Xander pointed out.

"The Nikki Six," Eddy blurted out, a reference to Motley Crue, another 1980s-era rock band whose bassist is Nikki Sixx. Coincidentally, the guitarist's name is Mick Mars.

"She just joined this crew, Eddy, so let's not give her top billing just yet," Xander said, winking at an embarrassed Nikki.

Eddy waved him off and suddenly acted like he came up with another brilliant band name.

"That's fine," he said. "I've got it, people. How about Red Zeppelin?"

"Good one," Elon agreed as they all clapped.

"Clever, Eddy. I like it," Jo said, grinning and slapping him on the back. "And I think we'll be _just_ far enough away to escape Led Zeppelin's lawsuit."

"Elon, can you have your guys slap some red paint on Starship before liftoff?" Eddy asked, chuckling.

"Yeah, a hot fire-engine red," Jo saucily piled on.

"Absolutely not," the SpaceX chief replied. "The ship is stainless steel with white interior, the spacesuits are white with black trim... if you want red, you've gotta earn it and reach Mars."

### CHAPTER 6

PARKING LOT REUNION

September 15, 2022

Middlebrook, New Hampshire

Adam Upton was easy to spot walking out of Dunkin' Donuts — a stocky young man in shorts, ice coffee in hand, with a prosthetic left foot putting a hitch in his gait.

Thomas surprised him before Adam opened his car door.

"Hey Upton," he said, offering his hand.

"Holy shit! Lee?!" Adam shouted, using an old, loaded nickname to warmly greet his former friend, former shooting-plot accomplice, former enemy and former fellow South Pole winter-over experiment of The Bridge.

They shook hands and even half-hugged before Thomas eyed his bionic foot.

"How is it?" he asked Adam, who also lost two toes on his right foot to frostbite after getting stranded in a snowcat mishap near South Pole Station in August 2020.

"I'm sorta used to that one now," he replied. "It's still weird driving with three toes on the right foot. I always feel like I'm slamming on the brakes to make the damn thing stop."

Thomas shook his head.

"You came back _here_?" Adam asked.

Thomas shrugged.

"I saw your liftoff fail on YouTube," Adam said, taking a slug of coffee. "That was fucking sick."

"It sucked hard... fucking tanked that thing in the North Sea."

"Did you and Nikki get tossed around with that ejection... like rolling around on top of each other and shit?" asked Adam, bug-eyed with enthusiasm conversing with his old classmate from nearby Lakeview Regional High School.

"Yeah, we fucked each other in front of four foreign-speaking astronauts while we crashed down, dumbass," Thomas deadpanned, cracking up Adam so much he nearly fumbled his coffee.

"It's cool to see you again... after all the shit we've been through," Adam said.

Thomas nodded and smiled. "Not your average shit either."

"Is Nikki back here, too?" Adam asked with his familiar pang of yearning. His crush on Nikki extended back to high school, when she helped talk him out of joining Thomas in the plot to shoot up Lakeview. Her rejection of his advances at South Pole Station also fueled his reckless joyride into an Antarctic storm, costing him his foot.

"Nope," Thomas replied. "Elon Musk just called her up and put her on his rocket to Mars. She blasts off again, like, a week from today, I think."

"Unfucking real," Adam mumbled, unable to mask his disappointment. "Is she still dying her hair?"

"Yeah, it's red now. For Mars."

Thomas used to razz Adam for never closing the deal with Nikki, but he let it go this time because he had experienced the same feelings for her and the same result.

"I think she's really leaving the planet for good this time," Thomas predicted, purposely without a hint of emotion. "I bet SpaceX will get it done."

Adam's initial enthusiasm had been sucked away, so Thomas changed the subject.

"What are you doing these days?" he asked. "Did you go back to being a mall cop?"

"Yeah, but I'm in the parking lot security vehicle these days. I can't walk the place like I used to.... I'm also driving for Uber and UberEats on the side."

"With three toes?"

"I made sure not to put that in my profile.... At least I'm getting decent reviews. Hey, do you need a place to crash?"

"I do actually," Thomas said. "Where you living?"

"An apartment complex not too far from Rainbow Lake. You remember my kid brother, Brody?"

Thomas nodded.

"Well, he just moved out of my place and in with his fiancée..."

"What? That little punk is getting married?"

"It's true, and he ain't that little anymore. So I could actually use a roommate to replace him if you're interested."

"That might work," Thomas replied.

"Fucking cool. What's your number these days?" Adam asked, pulling out his phone.

They exchanged numbers and made a plan to meet up at Adam's place later that day.

As Thomas turned to head back to his car, Adam yelled, "Hey, I guess we'll watch Nikki's launch together."

"Yeah," Thomas replied. "Nikki Red goes to Mars. What will we ever do without her?"

That question, left hanging in the warmer-than-usual September air, went unanswered.

### CHAPTER 7

SISTERS IN SPACE

September 17, 2022 — L-Minus-5 Day

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Sunny sat to Nikki's left in the Crew Dragon simulator's equivalent of a back seat. The real Crew Dragon was the command capsule atop Starship and its Super Heavy boosters.

The women both looked up at a 45-degree angle at the four-person front row — Eddy, Xander, Jo and Pluto from left to right. A three-screen, mostly digital console hung above Xander and Jo, who could tap the controls with their black, high-connectivity gloves or, in the case of an emergency such as a fire or depressurization, push one of the manual buttons below the screens.

A red "eject" button loomed biggest of all among the row of manual options, right below the middle screen, in case of a catastrophic liftoff failure. That's the button Nikki's eyes kept settling on as Xander and Jo practiced their pre-launch checks yet again. They usually just worked in the simulator as a duo, but today featured a full-crew launch dress rehearsal, complete with sleek spacesuits and tinted-glass helmets.

Special plates beneath the simulator began to quake and vibrate to recreate the violence of liftoff — something Nikki had grown accustomed to by now. She reached out and held hands with Sunny, whose beautiful smile could calm the most uneasy of souls.

Nikki's apprehensions didn't have much to do with the final training sessions or the actual trip to Mars. She worried more about the questions she might be asked at the crew's pre-launch press conference in three days given her late addition to the mission and her eventful past.

She especially wondered if her parents would show up for the launch eve farewell dinner for family members.

As the pretend Crew Dragon "blasted off" successfully inside the SpaceX hangar at Kennedy Space Center, Nikki silently wished they would just stay away. She already had simulated leaving them behind once before, and now she wasn't sure she'd survive the real thing.

***

Sunny and Nikki dove deep into the massive pool inside the sprawling SpaceX training facility. They grabbed the 10-pound weights waiting for them on the bottom and pumped them up and down as they moved them further along. Then they darted back up to the surface and gasped for air.

"Did you start with 2-pounders like I did?" Sunny asked.

"3," Nikki replied, removing her goggles. "Or was it 2.5? Everything was in kilograms and meters with Red One. I'm glad I'm blasting off from my home country this time."

The two women, wearing white one-piece SpaceX swimsuits, both popped up out of the pool and sat on the edge with their feet dangling in the water.

"This is my home country and it isn't," Sunny said, wringing the water out of her long, fine dark hair.

"What do you mean?" Nikki asked.

"I was born in China and adopted by American parents."

"Really? How did that work out — pretty well if you ended up here, I would imagine."

Sunny nodded. "Yes, I grew up in California, went to Stanford — they've been so supportive. They're the only parents I've ever known."

"How old were you when they adopted you?"

"Less than a year old."

"Wow. Did you ever try to find your parents in China?"

"I thought about it when I was younger, but I never pursued it. I just figured what's the point? They didn't want me back then, why would they now?"

Nikki pondered that.

"It's amazing it worked out so well for you, and yet you probably always wonder what life would've been like if they had kept you and raised you in China, right?"

Sunny nodded. "I do sometimes. Isn't that strange?"

"No... not at all. I wonder what life would've been like for me if I had never got shot in high school, never got hired by the creepy Bridge and never dated a 39-year-old divorcee, a decision that seemed to piss off my mother for good," Nikki said of her former boyfriend, author William Osborne.

Sunny's jaw dropped. "Oh my God. Elon told us most of what you've been through, but that's one hell of a journey..."

"And yet without all of that, I wouldn't be here right now, five days from blasting off to Mars with you."

"True.... So your mom won't be here Wednesday night for our last dinner on Earth?"

"I don't think so. We haven't communicated since I told her I accepted this mission right after the Red One failure. She and my dad both seemed pretty done with me... and how can I blame them? I know almost dying in front of them on at least two occasions so far in my life is too much to take. I get that. I wouldn't want to be my mother or father."

"Awww... I feel so bad for you, Nikki."

"Please don't. I'm in the process of coming to peace with all of it, and honestly, I'm really looking forward to going to Mars with the five of you. I can't believe how much you've accepted me, especially considering how late I came into this."

Sunny gave Nikki a big poolside hug.

"We are family now," Sunny said. "We will have a bond that no one else, not even our parents, could understand. I look forward to getting to know you better... in space."

Nikki chuckled. "How weird is that? I barely know you on Earth, but we'll become like sisters in space."

"And on Mars," Sunny pointed out. "But I also will be your medical doctor. _Can you handle that, sister?_ "

Sunny's surprising, Clint Eastwood-like delivery on the question made Nikki laugh so loud her echo lapped the gigantic pool.

"Apparently you can't," Sunny added, before dropping her Dirty Harry face and joining Nikki in laughter.

### CHAPTER 8

NO SOFTBALLS

September 20, 2022 — L-Minus-2 Day

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

"Nervous?" Jane Rushmore asked Nikki as they walked toward the media room in the NASA building.

"Yes and no. I've done these kinds of things before, just not on this scale."

"Just be you... even though that doesn't always work out well for Elon," Jane said with a loaded grin. "We've definitely had plenty of damage-control moments together, but what else can you do? Be yourself, answer their questions the best you can and fly off to Mars."

Nikki smiled. "Can we take you with us?"

Jane chuckled. "Um, I think Elon would veto that. He needs me too much here on Planet Earth."

Nikki nodded as they entered the large, squarish room full of reporters, cameras and glowing lights. The astronauts, dressed in white SpaceX jumpsuits with name tags, took their seats on a raised platform in front of the national and international media horde.

Elon entered through a different door a moment later and claimed the middle seat, flanked by three astronauts on each side. He'd upgraded his look to a black blazer over a white-collared shirt and jeans.

"Just be you," echoed through Nikki's brain as she glanced at Musk a couple of seats to her left.

One of Elon's communications people walked by the table and made sure all seven of the interviewees had their little microphones attached correctly to their ears and protruding in front of their mouths. Another SpaceX PR person introduced Elon and the crew to the media by name, said the CEO would begin with a few remarks and then the news conference would be opened up to questions.

Elon began as he usually does, talking in spurts, sometimes with long, ponderous pauses in between.

"Welcome everybody... this is an exciting time for all of us here at SpaceX, NASA and the Kennedy Space Center.... When I launched SpaceX twenty years ago in California, I dreamed of this very moment... this time of amazing anticipation in the days before crewed liftoff..... There have been so many ups and downs, successes and failures... at our rocket engine testing facility in McGregor, Texas... at our HQ in Hawthorne, California... at our launch pads here in Florida... at our landing platforms in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.... All of that has led us to where we are now... two days from Thursday's historic liftoff, a day we fully expect to be the successful start of our six-person mission to Mars.... We know the risks, but we have tested, we have trained and we have prepared to the best our ability. Now it's time to have the courage to follow in the footsteps of the great Apollo missions and finally take that next giant leap.... There is no turning back. We're ready, it's time to go to Mars and establish Colony A."

Elon nodded to the emcee, who pointed to the first questioner.

"Jim Fuller, Miami Herald," the reporter said as he stood up among his sitting colleagues. "Elon, back in 2016, you said in an interview, quote, 'The first journey to Mars is going to be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There's just no way around it. It would be basically: Are you prepared to die? And if that's OK, then you're a candidate for going.' End quote."

Elon grinned. "No softballs to start with?"

Fuller shook his head, smiled and continued. "What's your take on those words six years later, and perhaps each of the astronauts could speak to that as well."

Elon nodded and turned more serious.

"I do remember saying that, believe it or not, probably because all of that remains very true," he said. "There are no guarantees. I've selected these six brave people because they know A. they could die on any part of this mission; B. they could make it to Mars, survive the brutally harsh conditions and still never make it back to Earth; and C. they're still willing to go and attempt to execute their tasks at a high level.... You know, I think we owe them all a debt of gratitude and appreciation for what they're about to take on. This is not for the weak and fearful. This is for the boldest people we could find."

After a long pause full of camera clicks and flashes, Musk nodded to Commander Xander Vermilyea for his answer.

"Thank you, Elon. Yes, we know the risks. We knew them when we began training and we know them now. We all believe in this mission or we wouldn't be here. It's part of our beings now, and we're extremely ready and excited to go."

Jo Giguere followed him and smiled as she talked, exuding confidence with every word.

"I want to do this with these special people," the pilot said. "I want to experience space and Mars as a human being, not in a photograph sent by a robot or some virtual-reality video. My life would be unfulfilled without this mission. I've flown countless missions for the Air Force on the most cutting-edge jets, but I know all of that will pale in comparison to this mission."

Eddy Etergino spoke next.

"We're thrill-seekers, this group. And if you want to be the first to do anything, you know risk and the possibility of death come with that. So be it. That won't deter me, and it's such a powerful feeling to experience this with five other people who feel the exact same way I do. It also feels amazing to know all of humanity is rooting for us. We appreciate that support and we want to do this for everyone."

Eddy turned to look at Pluto, whose smile already was lighting up the room to match the media wattage.

"I sure as hell ain't going for the food," Pluto quipped with a laugh, cracking up the press corps and everyone on the platform. "No, I think we have spent most of our lives dreaming and working for this moment, and now that it's almost here, it's crazy and surreal and powerful. It is life or death, but we're all gonna die some day, so we might as well go for it and try to make history, right?"

Sunny, who sat next to Nikki, then gave her answer.

"We're all explorers here, so this is the ultimate mission.... We're so fortunate to have this opportunity to represent humanity in space. I think that's how we see it."

Nikki was caught off guard by the short answer, but took a deep breath when Sunny smiled and nodded at her.

"Having just survived a failed liftoff with Red One, I can tell you I feel more confident that this mission will succeed and I'm totally grateful to get a second chance so soon because I thought my only shot to go to Mars was gone in that instant," Nikki said. "So... bring it on. _Let's get there this time_."

Elon grinned at her as her crew mates chuckled.

"See the pressure I'm under... just from Nikki alone," Musk told the media with a big smile.

The emcee pointed to the next reporter with a question.

"Steve Petrarca, Boston Globe. What does Nikki bring to the crew and why make that change so late in the process?"

Elon nodded, fully expecting such a query.

"Nikki brings toughness... a unique blend of experience and youth... intangibles like that," he replied. "I've told my crew from day one of training to expect the unexpected. They've always known there could be changes if I felt they were necessary to the success of this mission."

"Nancy Armour, USA Today. How did the replaced astronaut react to the late change and how has the change impacted the chemistry of the crew?"

Elon grimaced while pondering that.

"I don't really want to get into all of that," he said. "I will say the other astronaut remains in the mix for our second crewed mission two years from now. As for chemistry, we adapt. That's what this whole mission requires. We must adapt to succeed."

"Cari Noga, Detroit Free Press. Elon, what worries you most about Thursday's liftoff and the mission in general?"

"Everything, so I don't sleep much," he quickly replied. "But I feel confident about the liftoff... that's the easy part really.... Docking with the tanker in Earth orbit is crucial. If that doesn't go as planned for any reason, we won't have the fuel for the burn to Mars. Even if there's any significant delay with that, we could miss our window.... But I guess what concerns me most is the landing on Mars. That's my biggest initial worry, before all that comes with the crew attempting to actually survive on Mars, because there's a lot that can go wrong. Much of the landing and retro-propulsion sequence will be automated, and Xander and Jo will have the ability to course correct as needed, but you're still talking about sticking a very complex landing on a distant, inhospitable planet with no surface oceans to splash down into if we're off kilter for any reason.... Just because the cargo ship landed there successfully last year doesn't guarantee success with this ship next summer. Every landing has its own challenges and variables, and now the consequences of failure go much higher with six humans on board."

"Jeff Bennett, Wall Street Journal. Why take the extra risk of landing near the South Pole, where it's much colder, higher terrain and dark for the longer Martian winters?"

"Higher risk, higher reward," Elon replied. "Follow the water. It's that simple and that critical. There's liquid water under the Southern polar plain, and we'll ultimately need that to survive and establish a city on Mars."

Musk nodded to the next reporter.

"Jacqueline Stoughton, Las Vegas Review-Journal. Is there a plan to bring the astronauts back from Mars at some point?"

"The short answer is yes," Elon said before talking more quickly. "But that will take some time, and the crews of Starships 1 and 2 understand they'll be there for the long haul while we're transitioning to the ITS propellant system, which moves rocket fuel away from the current kerosene/liquid oxygen combo to methane and liquid oxygen. It's another huge challenge, but it would be pretty absurd to try to build a city on Mars if your ships just kept staying on Mars and not going back to Earth at some point. You'd have this massive graveyard of ships."

"Steve Pearson, Brass City Bulletin, Waterbury, Connecticut."

Nikki gasped as she turned her head toward the familiar voice and face of the reporter who mentored her during her brief internship at that newspaper in 2018. His investigative story on The Bridge also helped spur major media coverage of that shady organization, resulting in a 2021 police raid of The Bridge's "God complex" facility in Cape Town, where Nikki was being treated more like a science experiment than a human being for a planned Mars mission. "Oh my God... Steve."

"Yes, it's me, Nikki," he said with a grin. "Small world, eh?"

She smiled and nodded.

"I assume you're aware of The Bridge Group's resumed efforts to launch a ship to Mars for arrival in 2025, despite their leadership's troubles with the law," Steve said. "They, too, are planning to land in the Planum Australe region. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that..."

"As if she didn't have enough to think about," Elon interjected with some annoyance at the question.

"It's OK," Nikki told him. "I'll take this. First of all, it's good to see you again, Steve."

"You as well," he replied.

"Second, I don't really care about The Bridge," she continued. "I mean, without them and their training of me, I definitely would not be here today, but I've learned and grown beyond all of that. It certainly doesn't surprise me that they'll never quit trying to go to Mars, but I just want to focus on this crew, this mission and us being successful. That's what matters now. It's time to leave all that other baggage behind."

### CHAPTER 9

LAST SUPPER ON EARTH

September 21, 2022 — L-Minus-1 Day

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

The man who once carried her injured body out of South Miami Hospital, temporarily escaping the clutches of Dr. Peter van Wooten, did not fail to show up now, on the eve of liftoff.

Nikki spent most of her young life hating her father — for cheating on her mother; for leaving them behind and starting a new family in North Carolina with Jamie and their twin daughters, Kelly and Karla; for not being there when she needed him.

But ever since he took her out to a New Hampshire bar for her 21st birthday and she all but tricked him into apologizing for his many transgressions, Roger had proven himself worthy of his large, fatherly frame.

Nikki hugged him tightly and he kissed the top of her head.

"I had to come," he said. "I didn't want you to leave this planet the way we left things in Holland."

"I'm glad you did," Nikki said, wiping tears from her eyes. "No mom, though."

Roger shook his head. "She couldn't watch another liftoff in person. She wants you to call her after the dinner."

Nikki nodded and tried to compose herself as the other astronauts mingled with their loved ones all around them.

"Are you ready?" her father asked.

Nikki exhaled. "Yes. We're really going to Mars tomorrow. There's no turning back now."

Roger looked down at her, grabbed her shoulders and gave her the biggest smile she had ever remembered seeing from him.

"Then how could I not be proud of you, Nikki?"

"Really?... yeah... _how could you not be?_ " she prodded him with a playful tone despite her trembling lips.

Nikki and Roger ended up at the same round table with Jo and her father, Frank, and Sunny and her adoptive parents, Greg and Kathy. After they all warmly greeted each other, the group sipped wine, munched on cheese and crackers, and discussed the mission.

"So it will be like early spring there when you land?" Frank asked Jo.

"Apparently... no flowers though," the navy-pant-suited Air Force pilot was quick to point out.

"No lawn to cut either," Greg chimed in with a grin.

"Lots of red rocks, dirt and ice as far as the eye can see... which won't be far in a sandstorm," Jo said.

"I just hope you kids will be OK," Kathy said, putting her hand on Sunny's hand.

Sunny smiled at her and nodded. "We'll be fine, mom. We have each other."

"Six people... millions of miles away," Kathy continued, nudging her glasses further up her nose, closer to her watery eyes. "I mean... aren't we crazy to let them go and try to do this?" she asked the other parents.

They all chuckled, trying to force a lighter mood.

"She never listened to me before... why start now? Right, Nik?" Roger asked her as playfully as he could given the situation.

Nikki rolled her eyes. "It's our choice. Somebody's gotta do it. Why not us?"

"Aren't you still in shock from the last liftoff you went through?" Kathy asked her.

"No... I'm in shock I get another chance," Nikki replied.

"Exactly," Jo agreed with a smile, as Kathy shook her head and took a big gulp of wine.

"This is literally the trip of a lifetime," Sunny told her frazzled mother. "We're so fortunate to have been chosen out of all the people on Earth."

Frank tried to change the subject.

"Just in case you didn't know, my daughter likes women," he told Sunny and Nikki as Jo blushed and gasped, and everyone else chuckled uncomfortably. "So don't be surprised if she asks either or both of you out on a date. You two will be her only options going forward, I guess."

Jo playfully smacked her handsome, military-clean-cut father in the shoulder.

Then Kathy asked, "What exactly would constitute a date on Mars?"

"One thing's for sure, once you leave the hab and ice dome area, there will be no PDA," Sunny quipped. "Keep your lips inside your bubble helmet at all times or you'll turn blue very fast."

They all laughed except the doctor's worried mother.

"Good, common-sense advice, Dr. Wilkes," Jo said, smiling and raising her wine glass.

Frank followed suit, hoisting his glass and adding a quick toast.

"Godspeed, you bold, beautiful and brave explorers," he said, full-throttling the charm. "We ordinary Earth humans are all in your debt. It's about time we finally put some boots on Mars."

They all clinked glasses and drank to the mission.

After the main course arrived and the conversation waned, Nikki struggled to eat the sumptuous surf-and-turf dinner. Her stomach was in knots from the emotion of her last supper on Earth and her final moments with her father. She'd never sit next to him again. He'd never get to walk her down some red dusty aisle during some Martian wedding ceremony to God knows who. There would be no more opportunities for her firefighter father to rescue her, and he'd likely take his last breath here some day without his oldest daughter by his side.

It was all too much for Nikki in that instant.

She excused herself from the table, walked into the banquet room's restroom and cried in a stall for what seemed like a long time.

When she finally emerged from the restroom with her red-streaked hair, tear-streaked blue mascara and red, puffy eyes, her dad was standing there waiting for her. He didn't say a word. He understood.

She practically fell into his open arms.

"I'm gonna miss my baby girl so much," he told her, squeezing her tight. "Now go make history."

### CHAPTER 10

MARS IS A LUCKY GUY

September 22, 2022 — Launch Day

Middlebrook, New Hampshire

New roommates Adam and Thomas threw a tailgate party for Nikki's Mars liftoff from their living room.

They already had cracked open their second beers each from an 18-pack of Bud Light and it was only 10:55 a.m. — five minutes before the scheduled launch.

Wisps of smoke rose from Super Heavy's bottom as Nikki's friends watched the countdown clock tick down on the flat-screen TV anchored to the wall. Thomas reached for another chip from a bag on the coffee table as Adam stared at Nikki's smiling face yet again. The news station kept running a loop of video from the astronauts' final thumbs ups and waves to the cameras earlier that morning before being loaded into an idling van for the drive to Launch Pad 39A.

"I can't believe the only girl I ever really loved is going to Mars... where I'll never see her again," Adam lamented.

Thomas laughed it off, but then cut it short. He knew Adam was serious.

"Don't sweat it, man. She's the kind of girl no one can have. She's too out there, too different. Perfect for a place like Mars."

Adam stretched on the sofa while pondering that.

"I'm just glad I got to slap her naked, frozen ass when we joined The 300 Club down at South Pole Station," Thomas added with a nostalgic grin.

Adam laughed. "Yeah, that was my favorite part of an otherwise miserable experience," he said, reaching down to rap his beer can against his prosthetic foot a couple of times. "Running from the 200-degree sauna into the 100-below bullshit — Nikki in bunny boots and nothing else..."

"How about those other foreign hottie scientists?" Thomas lustily recalled.

"My f-f-fucking t-t-tits are f-f-fucking numb!" Adam perfectly re-enacted a Danish scientist's animated reaction to the frigid experience while Thomas howled in laughter.

"That's one thing I'll definitely remember for the rest of my life," Adam added proudly.

Thomas crashed his beer can into Adam's and smiled. "You bet your ass... _and Nikki's ass_ ," he agreed loudly as they both laughed and guzzled.

The news anchor's voice took over while they drank.

"T-minus one minute and we're still all systems go on this clear and beautiful morning at Kennedy Space Center," he said, the smoke thickening beneath the rocket's engines.

Adam leaned forward on the sofa and suddenly fought tears.

"I'm gonna miss that girl," he admitted quietly.

Thomas heard him and put his arm around his husky friend.

"Me, too, man... we all go way back together," he said.

Adam coughed and then exhaled.

"You used to hate her so much in high school..."

Thomas nodded. "I know. I did."

"T-minus 30 seconds," a SpaceX mission control voice had taken over now.

"It's been one strange trip," Adam said.

"And it's about to get a whole lot stranger for Nikki, but how cool is this?" Thomas asked, pointing his beer can toward the screen. "I'm so fucking jealous of her right now... all that Raptor engine power sitting under her ass, just waiting for the flip of a fucking switch."

"T-minus 20 seconds."

Thomas raised his beer even higher. "Safe travels, my friend."

Adam, with tears in his eyes, hoisted his beer, too. "Mars is a lucky guy," he mumbled.

"T-minus 15 seconds... guidance is internal..."

Thomas laughed loudly. "What did you just say?"

"T-minus 10 seconds... ignition sequence... 9... 8... 7..."

"I said Mars is a lucky guy!" Adam shouted this time, smiling despite his watery eyes.

"6... 5... 4..."

"That's what I thought. Good one, man," Thomas said, extending his hand to help pull his gimpy pal into a standing position for liftoff.

"3... 2... 1... zero."

The sparkling steel ship shot upward into the beckoning blue sky, a mirror of human ingenuity riding a compressed supernova of fire and smoke.

"We have liftoff of SpaceX Super Heavy Starship on the first manned mission to Mars," the voice declared.

Thomas and Adam stood in silent awe as their mutual friend, heroine and crush left Earth, rocketing toward a new life far, far away.

***

On a viewing stand packed with family members and friends, Roger held his phone camera toward the sky and followed the rocket until it filled the screen, and followed it some more, until it was just flame against the blue.

A tear streamed down his cheek as it became apparent that this time his daughter truly was on her way to a destiny he never could have imagined.

"You'll always be my little Nikki, no matter where you go," he whispered.

He stopped videotaping when his first ex-wife called.

"I can't believe she's really gone," Lynn said, sobbing.

"An absolutely perfect liftoff," Roger said. "Our daughter is an astronaut on her way to Mars. One of six people in this whole world."

"I know," Lynn said. "And she took whatever heart I had left with her."

### CHAPTER 11

DANCING WITH THE STARS

September 22, 2022 — Launch Day

Thousands of feet and climbing above the Atlantic Ocean

Nikki felt like she was one of a half-dozen eggs, shaking and shimmying in a curvy, oval-windowed Crew Dragon carton, just waiting for the rollercoaster to crest and free-fall, sending them back to Earth sunny-side up and over easy.

But this time, there was no "Scheisse!" — no rocket engine malfunction, no ejection and no drop.

"We've passed Max Q," Nikki heard Xander tell SpaceX mission control, referring to the point at which the rocket faces the most resistance while attempting to leave Earth's atmosphere. "Preparing for first-stage separation."

Sunny squeezed gloved hands with Nikki as they looked up at Xander and Jo monitoring the liftoff trajectory on their digital screens. Eddy and Pluto gazed outward more than inward because they had the window seats on the left and right, respectively.

"We're doing this!" Nikki heard Pluto shout at Jo above the din of the Raptor engines below.

"Damn right," Jo yelled back. "Almost time to shed some weight and fire up those second-stage engines!"

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero... first-stage separation complete," Xander announced.

"Second-stage engine burn successful," Jo added a moment later.

"Boosters re-orientating for the return to Earth," SpaceX mission control interjected.

"Starship now burning toward low Earth orbit," Xander declared in his South African accent to the delight and cheers of his American crew mates.

Nikki exchanged jubilant smiles with Sunny and started to believe space was within her reach.

"Big Fucking Super Heavy Ass Rocket, where have you been all my life?" Nikki quipped, cracking up Sunny.

Later, after Starship leveled off and began cruising in low Earth orbit, Elon Musk's smiling face appeared on the middle screen above Xander and Jo.

"Congratulations, SHS crew, on an epic liftoff and start to this mission," he said. "You must now kill some time acclimating and partying in zero gravity while you burn off the rest of your initial fuel."

The six astronauts reveled with applause and fist pumps.

"Docking with the tanker ship is scheduled for 13-hundred hours tomorrow," Elon continued. "In the meantime, you've reached a comfortable cruising altitude of 540 miles above Earth, so Commander Xander can turn off the fasten-seatbelt sign and turn you all loose to celebrate."

"Thanks Elon," Xander replied as they all cheered and detached themselves from their acceleration chairs.

Jo tapped the right screen with her glove and then scrolled through a musical playlist.

Soon David Bowie's "Life on Mars?" was blaring through Crew Dragon's surround-sound speaker system, and Nikki followed the lead of Sunny, Eddy and Pluto in taking off their helmets and floating around. They all laughed as Nikki and Sunny's long hair shot upward and stayed there.

Short-haired Eddy pointed at them and shouted, "Punk rockers forever!"

The women hugged and whipped around their new space hairdos while Pluto smiled, rubbed his bald head and quipped, "I guess I'll be smooth jazz forever," cracking up his crew mates.

Xander, still in his commander's chair, then pushed a manual button on his console and announced, "The dance floor is now open!"

The oval door leading to the rest of Starship disappeared into the walls and off they went, Nikki and the crew, tumbling and dancing their way through a zero-gravity joy ride, the stuff of dreams suddenly real.

The large common area of the ship left plenty of room for floating around, as well as workout equipment along the sides, a galley in the far right corner and more oval windows with stunning views. Beyond the common area was a corridor leading to the crew cabins and bathrooms, and beyond that, a sealed, windowless shelter for the crew to hide during dangerous, radiation-producing solar flares.

Sunny helped flip an upside-down Nikki like they were in a school-girl acrobatics class together, and then pulled her toward an oval window along the left side of the ship. Down they gazed upon the spinning planet, still so close they felt like they could touch it through the thick bubble of glass.

"There's where I was born!" Sunny shouted as she pointed toward partially cloud-covered Asia, and more specifically China, below.

"So cool!" Nikki gasped as they embraced. "Jo, play 'China Girl' if you have it," she then yelled in her direction.

Jo smiled, nodded and gave her a thumb's up, happily switching gears from pilot to space DJ. "More Bowie coming up!"

Moments later, Xander, Eddy and Jo clapped joyously while watching an oversized Pluto twirl a smaller, graceful Sunny into an orbit of pirouettes.

Nikki, now wearing a GoPro strapped to her head, laughed as she videotaped and even directed the beaming performers from an angle not possible in Earth's gravity.

"Work it, work it!" she shouted. "You're on 'Dancing with the Stars, Starship Edition!'"

### CHAPTER 12

SPACE HIGH

September 22-23, 2022

Low Earth orbit

Nikki spent much of her first day in space floating around, getting familiar with the ship and gazing out oval windows, watching the sun rise over Earth's glowing curves about every 90 minutes.

"This helps make up for some of the sunrises I missed at South Pole Station," she told Jo.

"I'm jealous you got to see Antarctica," the pilot replied.

"You'll have to settle for the Martian South Pole, I guess."

Jo smiled and tumbled upside down. "Doesn't this all seem like a dream?"

Nikki nodded and joined her in inverted mode. "Beyond any dream actually. There's really no up or down, or side to side in here. It's like four dimensions at all times."

"Have you tried the treadmill yet?" Jo asked.

"No."

"You have to."

The astronauts were required to do at least two hours of exercise per day to protect their bodies from the atrophy of weightlessness.

The treadmill lay flat on a side wall of the workout area, facing down toward Earth. Nikki grinned, shook her head and tied her hair into a ponytail.

"It's all downhill from here," Jo joked as she helped Nikki strap on a harness attached to the base of the treadmill to keep her from floating away. Then she clipped two bungee cords to the harness to add a load simulating Earth's gravity and tapped some buttons on the digital screen on the floor of the ship, where Nikki would be running toward during her workout.

"Ready?" Jo asked with a smirk.

"Am I? I have no idea," Nikki laughed and shrugged.

"Just get those legs moving and that heart pumping, girl!" Jo barked like a track coach.

"Sir, yes sir!" Nikki shouted.

"What? This ain't the Marines!" Jo shot back, cracking them both up. "I'm Air Force."

"You are the Air Force," Nikki repeated distractedly as the treadmill rolled faster and she began jogging down toward Mother Earth. "Holy shit, this is weird."

"A bit of a mind-fuck, isn't it?" Jo asked alongside her.

"Just one more in a long line of them," Nikki replied as she quickened her pace to match the machine.

Soon, Sunny and Eddy floated over to watch.

"How does it feel?" Eddy asked.

"Bizarre," Nikki said.

"I'll do check-ups on everybody before dinner," Sunny announced.

"Yes doctor with the crazy hair," Jo said with a little salute.

"Can we just call you Bones?" Eddy asked Sunny.

"Never. Don't get all 'Star Trek' cheesy on me, Eddy."

He saluted her, too. "Doctor's orders are doctor's orders. What's for dinner anyway? Our first dinner in space needs to be memorable."

Sunny pointed diagonally across the common area. "Pluto is in the galley plotting something."

They all looked over, even Nikki from her crazy position. The big guy was floating and flipping through large blue folders filled with zip-locked meats and MRE pouches of dehydrated side dishes.

"What are you making us tonight, Chef Pluto?" Eddy yelled.

He looked up and grinned. "I was hoping for Taco Thursday, but all we've got is tortillas and fancy meats."

"Close enough," Eddy replied with a thumb's up. "Tortilla Thursday it is."

Turning his attention back to the three women and deliberately acting like he was hitting on them with the charm of a weight-room muscle head, Eddy asked, "You ladies got any plans this weekend?"

They all laughed.

"Sorry. They're both taken," Jo said, squeezing Sunny by the shoulder with one hand and Nikki's bouncing arm with her other.

The women laughed and Eddy tumbled in mock despair over the rejection.

"I travel all this way to get Jo-blocked," he whined.

"All this way? We've barely gone anywhere yet, but I hear there are some lonely rovers looking for love on Mars," Sunny chimed in to the ladies' delight.

Eddy waved them off and began to float toward the open door deeper into the ship. "Time to christen the bathroom," he shouted back to them.

"No, Eddy... already?" Jo pleaded. "We haven't even had our tortillas yet."

"Just don't miss the hole!" Sunny yelled. "I don't want to bump into any of your floating ass-teroids!"

Nikki laughed so hard she stumbled on the treadmill. "You're fucking up my workout, Doc!"

"Should I have Xander fire this quack?" Jo asked her, sending them all into hysterics.

Nikki was certain they were all experiencing some kind of "space high" not possible from any drug found on Earth.

She didn't have to be a doctor to arrive at that diagnosis.

***

Nikki slept in a cabin the size of a walk-in closet. A sleeping bag harnessed to the floor kept her from flying away as she mostly dozed on and off. She was unable to dream at all, and perhaps that would've been underwhelming compared to her new reality.

Yet other parts of that reality weren't so fun.

She had to urinate into a yellow funnel in the small community bathroom after pulling the accordion-like door shut for rudimentary privacy. Then, just to brush her teeth, she had to juggle a tooth brush, tooth paste and water bag between her hands and some velcro strips to keep them all from drifting away.

Later, she joined Jo in the galley for a breakfast of yogurt, power bar and flat bread heated in a side-wall warmer that looked more like a briefcase than a toaster.

After breakfast, the full crew was summoned to the common area for an interview with "CBS This Morning." The astronauts all floated around a combo camera monitor and flat-screen TV mounted on a wall over a rack of dumbbells in the workout area.

"Good morning, Starship," TV host Norah O'Donnell greeted them. "How's the weather up there?"

"Off-and-on sun with a chance of space dust," Xander joked to chuckles on both ends of the satellite feed.

"I'm sure the whole world enjoyed watching that breathtaking liftoff yesterday from Kennedy Space Center. Did it feel as perfect to you guys as it looked to us from down here?" O'Donnell asked.

"It went perfectly, just like we trained for it," Jo replied with a big smile.

"Good vibrations," Pluto added, "and now we're enjoying a smooth orbit at zero gravity."

"Does it seem real yet?" host Gayle King asked.

"Yes and no," Sunny said. "It's a whole new routine and environment to get used to so it's very exciting for us."

"What's your favorite part of the space experience so far?" host John Dickerson asked the crew.

"The upside-down dirty dancing and goofing around," Eddy said with a grin. "Just don't tell Elon."

They all cracked up.

"Nikki, your wild hair looks even wilder up in space," Norah pointed out.

"Thanks," she blushed.

"Shouldn't we just call her Ziggy Stardust?" Eddy wondered.

"She certainly stands out, just like David Bowie, who no doubt would've loved to be alive to see this mission unfold. But as the only twenty-something on board and a very late addition to the crew, what's your experience been like so far, Nikki?" Norah asked.

Nikki air-swam closer to the camera and smiled.

"Utterly amazing. I had a feeling this rocket would get us to space and it did, and I'm just so thankful to be part of such a fun and talented crew," she said.

"Awww," her comrades cooed as Pluto tried to further mess up Nikki's hair.

"I'm told you guys have a very busy day ahead," Gayle said.

"Yes, we dock with our fuel tanker in less than two hours, fill 'er up and get strapped back into our acceleration chairs for the big burn to Mars this evening," Xander replied.

"Are any of you scared to put Earth in your rear-view mirror and travel so far away?" Norah asked.

"I am," Nikki said, "but I wouldn't be human if I weren't, so you embrace that fear and blast right past it to a place no human has been."

"I feel like a conquistador, myself," Eddy boasted to laughs all around. Then he grabbed his larger friend. "Pluto Parker, here, is disappointed we're stopping at Mars and not going to his home planet... ice-ball dwarf, whatever it is."

Pluto erupted as only he can, and the hysterical laughter proved contagious on Earth as well as low Earth orbit.

"At least you guys are bringing a sense of humor along with you to that quiet, lonely Red Planet," John Dickerson said. "From all of us here at CBS and planet Earth, we wish you a safe, smooth journey and look forward to chatting with you again, even if it's on tape delay due to the signal gap."

"Thank you," Xander said.

"Hi, mom and dad," Nikki snuck in with a wave, and the others quickly followed suit to their parents before the interview concluded.

"That was fun," Jo said while doing an air flip.

"You guys are such hams, especially Eddy," Sunny observed.

Eddy nodded, grinned and then pointed at the monitor. "Oh no, it's the boss."

They all looked up as Elon's smiling face appeared on the screen.

"I heard what you said, Eddy."

They all laughed.

"No more dancing and goofing around on the job," Musk said, failing in his attempt to sound serious while still visibly exultant over the flawless launch the day before. "It's almost time to get lined up with the tanker and send you crazy people to Mars where you belong."

The astronauts all cheered for the real journey to begin.

***

Ten hours later, after a successful docking with the SpaceX tanker and the lengthy fuel transfer, Xander and Jo were back in their command chairs, surrounded by busy screens and idle, anxious crew members.

Starship had released the tanker back into orbit 45 minutes ago, and now the ship was ready to shoot flames from its rear Raptor engines, near the three landing fins.

Nikki and Sunny held gloved hands once again, hoping to replicate Thursday morning's good luck and clear this critical hurdle on Friday night.

"T-minus 10 seconds," SpaceX mission control declared.

"Internal guidance is a go," Xander said.

"Engine ignition successful," Jo added.

Nikki sensed the Raptors' power building, but this time she felt the surge at her back instead of far below her. The pushing force was so strong, so earthquake-like it scared her into believing her body might not withstand it and break apart.

"9, 8, 7..."

She didn't look over at Sunny this time because she knew her own face was too ashen.

"6, 5, 4..."

Nikki suddenly gave in to claustrophobia and the fear of imminent death, and stopped breathing.

"3, 2, 1, zero!"

"Mars burn successful!"

Nikki barely heard Jo shout as the roaring engines jettisoned Starship violently, relentlessly out of the safety of low Earth orbit and into the perilous unknown of deep space.

When Nikki regained her ability to breathe, she also reclaimed her smile and immediately showed it to Sunny.

"Mars or bust!" Nikki Red screamed to the cheers of her crew. "God, this is such a high!"

### PART 2

CHAPTER 13: BLACK ACES

May 19, 2023

One month until scheduled Mars landing

Xander finished a set of twelve reps on bench press as Eddy spotted him and Nikki floated above them, her GoPro trained downward. Both men wore weighted tethers around their waists to keep from drifting up to where Nikki hovered.

After his set, Xander sat up on the bench and exhaled.

"What else do your students want to know?" the commander asked Nikki.

"Where are you from?"

"I'm originally from Cape Town, South Africa, but before I left for Mars, I was living in Las Vegas, then California, Texas and Florida for training," Xander replied with a grin.

"Which place did you like best?"

"Vegas."

"Why?"

"People come there from all over the world and I like the excitement of occasionally gambling at the casinos."

"Don't forget the cheap buffets," Eddy pointed out, his hand shoveling an imaginary fork toward his smiling mouth. "I could go for one of those right about now, though a buffet would be hard to manage in zero-g. Too many side dishes flying around at the same time."

Nikki laughed and zoomed from Eddy back to Xander.

"And now Commander, you're leading a mission to a place with no people other than your crew, and no casinos and no cheap buffets," she said.

"Hey, you five are from all over — well at least you've trained all over the world — the food is free, and attempting to land and live on Mars is the ultimate gamble, so this is right where I want to be," Xander said, his blue eyes earnest for the camera.

"One of the students from my former high school in New Hampshire wanted me to ask you what our chances of survival on Mars are," Nikki told him.

Xander exhaled again and smiled.

"That _is_ the question we are all facing and, after we enter Mars orbit in a little over three weeks, we'll begin to get our answer," he said. "If the landing goes well, I like our chances. If it doesn't, I don't. But even if the landing is perfect, the odds of us _all_ surviving for any significant amount of time on Mars are not good."

"Why risk it then?"

"It's a little late if you're asking that question, Red."

"I know that," she said, "but for the teenagers who might want to join us on the Red Planet some day — why should they risk their lives to go to some virtually uninhabited place with no shopping malls or colleges or concert arenas?"

Xander shook his head.

"It's definitely not suited for everyone, but let me say this... I just found out my mother has dementia back in Cape Town," he said, biting his lower lip.

Nikki gasped. "Oh no. I'm so sorry to hear that."

Eddy nodded like he already knew.

"She had 72 good years," the commander continued, "and now she's facing a very tough road ahead without me there to help her. Fortunately, my sisters are there for her like they've always been. Me... I've missed a lot of family time to train for this..."

Xander fought tears but soldiered on with his answer.

"We all make choices and sacrifices in life, and no matter how young and invincible you think you are, the only guarantee is death at some point. So why not live life to the fullest and push the boundaries of what's possible while we can? That's what Elon Musk is all about and that's what this crew is all about. We're going to set foot on Mars or die trying, and I can't wait. I want my mother to see it on TV and realize her son did that, even for a moment."

Nikki turned off the camera and pushed herself down to give her commander a hug.

"I'm speechless," she said.

"Good," Xander replied, wiping away a tear. "Now give me your GoPro and I'll film you bench-pressing for all your YouTube and Instagram fans back home."

***

A few hours later, Nikki floated past Eddy's cabin and noticed he was reading a hardcover book he had brought with him, "Brief Answers to the Big Questions," by the late Stephen Hawking.

They nodded at each other as Nikki held onto a side rail. Eddy seemed more pensive than usual after Xander's revelation about his mother's illness.

"We're lucky to have a commander who's so strong and laser-focused despite what's going on back home. Never underestimate the human spirit," he said, shaking the book in his hand. "Just like this guy, Hawking. Confined to a wheelchair, but he spent his whole career traveling through the universe in his mind, attempting to solve its riddles. I bet he would've killed to be physically traveling with us to Mars right now."

Nikki nodded. "Floating in zero-g... yeah, that would've been so freeing for a guy like that."

"An experience like this puts years back on your life," Eddy said. "I feel like a kid again. For real. I've been to space before on the ISS, but this trip is just blowing all of that away. And now we're bearing down on Mars. We're so fucking lucky to be here right now."

Nikki grinned. "You're telling me this? I still can't believe I'm on this ship.... So, what do you think the landing is gonna be like?"

"That is _the biggest question_ for us right now, isn't it?" Eddy replied, smiling and shaking the book in his hand. "And the brief answer is, _unknown_."

They stared silently at each other for a long moment.

"The cargo ship landed just fine," Nikki finally pointed out.

Eddy half-smiled and looked down.

"But Red, we've got a ton more riding on this landing, don't we?" he asked her, looking up again. "No matter how it goes, just _live it_... and embrace the rush."

***

Pluto reached down into the 3-D printer's output bin and flashed a big smile for videographer Nikki as he held up a black, thin nail-like object.

"Another graphene drill-bit prong — one sharp object closer to drinking Martian water," the strapping man in the white SpaceX jumpsuit declared to the tiny camera lens. "Mmm, mmm. Can't wait to taste that frosty, salty, sub-polar pop!"

Nikki laughed.

"It's not gonna be soda, Pluto."

"How do you know? You ain't tasted it yet. It could be a 12-mile-long reservoir of Dr Pepper. And it's pop, not soda," he noted.

"Here we go again," Nikki eye-rolled.

"That's right. Midwest vs. East Coast. Pop vs. soda. Drinking fountain vs. bubbler. Milwaukee vs. New Yorkshire..."

"What?" Nikki gasped. "I'm from New _Hampshire_ — a real place, not some fictional realm you've made up in that geographically challenged bald head of yours."

"Just playin' with y'all," Pluto assured her as they floated toward a work station between the sleep cabins.

"You're such a ham for the camera," Nikki said.

"I prefer bacon," he deadpanned.

"OK Mr. Bacon, please tell everyone where you went to college to learn all your valuable engineering skills?"

Pluto smiled and looked right into the lens on Nikki's head.

"Kids, if you want to be cool and multitalented in zero-g like me, just go to Marquette University in Milwaukee for your undergrad degree and Purdue University in 'Boilermakerville,' Indiana, for postgrad."

Nikki turned off the camera and smiled. "You really are a natural."

"I know. The camera loves me. What movie am I starring in today?"

"I'll include this clip in my next v-mail blast to a bunch of schools, including my old high school English teacher's class. Mr. Richardson was my favorite..."

A shrill alarm cut Nikki off.

"Solar storm," Xander's measured voice announced over the intercom. "Everyone to the rear shelter."

The commander already had opened the oval door to the storm shelter with a control button from the Crew Dragon capsule, and Pluto and Nikki were the first to float through it, followed by Jo, Eddy, Sunny and Xander.

They all strapped themselves into bolted chairs around an anchored circular table for six, and Xander used a voice command, "Close portal," to seal them inside. The shelter's walls were hidden by shelves full of books, magazines, DVDs and MREs to kill time and stay nourished for as long as the sun belched out dangerous blasts of radiation in the ship's direction. So far on the journey to Mars, the storms had ranged in duration from fifteen minutes to seven hours, so there was a small restroom with a curtain for "privacy" in one corner of the fairly cramped shelter.

Jo grabbed a deck of cards off a velcro strip on the table, shuffled them and dealt them out by handing them facedown to her comrades. Eddy let one float from his hand up to his mouth and snared it with his teeth.

Jo slapped his hand. "No bite marks. I've had this deck since I hustled my high school friends in Colorado Springs."

"What'll it be, Top Gun?" Xander asked the dealer.

"Texas hold 'em, of course."

"Again? I was hoping for six-way war," Sunny sighed.

"You're so simple for a doctor, Sun," Jo said, placing the five community cards down on the table and attaching them to velcro pads with clips so they wouldn't float to the ceiling.

"What are we playing for?" Nikki asked.

"Strip poker," Eddy suggested.

"Gross... we've been traveling together so long now we've become like brothers and sisters," Jo said.

"I'd still go there, Jo," Pluto insisted with a big grin.

"Zero-g hasn't fucked up my orientation yet, Plutes," she replied with a snicker and a blown kiss.

He caught the kiss and slapped it on his large ass.

"Get a room, you two," Nikki said.

"There's the VIP room, right over there," Eddy pointed at the curtain.

They all laughed.

"I couldn't make love to myself in _that_ ," Sunny piped up, adding to the laughs.

"Are we ever gonna start the game?" Jo yelled.

"I've got shit cards, so no," Eddy replied.

"See, biting that card brought you bad luck," Sunny shook her finger at him as Jo nodded.

"What, are you my dentist now, too?" Eddy asked.

"Yes, actually I am, and you're all overdue for a cleaning."

Eddy's reply was drowned out by the all-clear siren.

"Dammit... we didn't even get to play one hand because you all talk too much!" Jo snapped.

"Don't worry, Jo. There'll be other storms," Xander assured her as he handed her back his cards face-up.

Her eyes popped open as she looked at them.

"Black aces?!" she shouted.

The others glanced at the cards to confirm as they floated past Jo and followed Xander back out the oval door.

"Now that's a commander's hand," Pluto observed with a respectful nod, deliberately ignoring that it also was halfway to a "dead man's hand" of black aces and eights.

"What did you have, Sunny?" Nikki asked.

"Six of spades and a suicide king of clubs," she replied. "Kind of morbid, right?"

Nikki shrugged as she handed Jo her queen of hearts and deuce of diamonds.

"The hand was never played, so don't worry about it."

### CHAPTER 14

SONG INSIDE A LETTER BOX

June 14, 2023

Five days until scheduled Mars landing

Nikki could barely pull herself away from the spinning alien beauty in the window, but Elon Musk was on the big screen with a drink in his hand.

"Congratulations, Starship, on entering Martian orbit," he said, smiling and raising his flute of champagne from the now very distant Florida peninsula. "Cheers to the six of you, and best wishes for a safe and stellar landing on Monday."

"Cheers, Elon," Nikki and her comrades toasted back as if there were no delay in the signal from Earth. They sipped from little travel bottles of Jim Beam like they were partying in some floating space motel.

Sunny hugged Nikki, their eyes both overflowing with emotion.

"Can you believe this is actually happening?" the doctor asked.

Nikki shook her head. "Definitely not. Mars is right outside our windows, but it still feels like a dream. I'm so afraid someone is about to scream in my ear that it's time to wake up."

"I'm sure it will feel frighteningly real as we make our descent," Sunny said.

"If _you_ are drinking, then we should be frightened," Nikki noted before taking another sip.

"I never handled turbulence on airplanes all that well, yet here I am bracing for a violent rollercoaster that will end on Mars one way or the other."

"Now I respect your bravery even more," Nikki said, clinking mini bottles with Sunny.

"I know so many people are rooting for us back home and that boosts my courage a lot," the doctor said. "We've come so ridiculously far to get to this point. I just hope we can finish the job."

"I've stared death in the face before and lived," Nikki said. "My gut tells me we'll make it."

Sunny exhaled and forced a smile.

"I'll trust your gut over mine then."

***

Nikki's brain replayed Sunny's sobering words as she floated through the ship.

_Was she really prepared to die... at age 26?_ The answer was no, so she tried to push away the negative thoughts.

A welcome video reply from Mr. Paul Richardson and his class of high school seniors definitely helped. They had responded to Nikki's earlier v-mail. Back in her sleep cabin and scrolling through her "sat-top," or satellite laptop, Nikki clicked the play button and melted at the sight of her favorite teacher. He was totally gray now but flashed that same unwavering sparkle in his blue eyes. He always cared; maybe that's what it was.

"Nikki, thank you so much for taking the time to shoot and send that wonderful video, and for educating my students and me about your mission, your spaceship, and how you and your crew are preparing for Mars," Mr. Richardson said, his students gathered around him in one of the same Lakeview Regional High School classrooms where Nikki once sat. "It appears your red hair isn't the only colorful aspect of your entertaining and informative crew. Pluto, in particular, is a crowd favorite here.

"But as I was telling these young students, there was a time back in 2014 when you were a high school senior here just like them. You wore streaks of blue in your hair back then; and asked tough questions about my lessons; and befriended a troubled classmate named Adam Upton; and put your life on the line to save our school from what could've been the deadliest massacre in history..."

Nikki exhaled and felt the tears well up in her eyes.

"You got shot and nearly died," her teacher continued. "I read your poem, 'Streaks of Blue,' to those gathered at Our Lady of the Mountain Church as they prayed for your recovery. You wrote about blazing a new trail then, no matter the cost, to save lost souls like Adam. Well I saw Adam the other day and he's doing fine; back living in Middlebrook and overcoming his injury from training with you down in Antarctica. I also saw his new roommate, Thomas Harvey, the young man who once shot you. He trained with you at South Pole Station, too, and now calls you a friend.

"I guess what I'm trying to say, Nikki, is _thank you_... for being you and for making this world a better place while you were here. You are an inspiration to teacher and student alike.... Now we'd like to wish you a safe and smooth landing. Go blaze some trails on Mars, and we know that world will be a better place, too, with you on it.

"Before we sign off, I once told you when you were my student — instead of the other way around — that the simplest songs with the most heartfelt messages move us the most. Well, my class and I would like to sing one of those for you now... though we did have the audacity to alter lyrics written by two guys named Lennon and McCartney in your honor. If Paul ever gets wind of this, I'll gladly take the rap for it."

Nikki smiled, and then quickly melted into tears, as Mr. Richardson and the teenage boys and girls from her hometown serenaded her:

" _Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes_

That call me on and on across the universe

Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box

They tumble blindly as they make their way

Across the universe

Jai guru deva om

Nikki's gone and changed our world

Nikki's gone and changed our world

Nikki's gone and changed our world

Nikki's gone and changed our world

Sounds of laughter, shaded of Earth are ringing

Through my open views inciting and inviting me

Limitless undying love which shines around me  
like a million suns,

It calls me on and on

Across the universe

Jai guru deva om

Nikki's gone and changed our world

Nikki's gone and changed our world

Nikki's gone and changed our world

Nikki's gone and changed our world"

### CHAPTER 15

HAZED

June 19, 2023

Mars landing day

"Initiate landing sequence," Xander calmly instructed Jo, who reached up to tap a button on her digital console.

"Landing sequence is a go," the pilot declared, her voice strong and confident through the intercom in Nikki's ear bud.

They were all suited up and strapped into the Crew Dragon capsule for the harrowing six-minute descent that would either establish humanity as a two-planet species or end in disaster. In poker betting terms, they were _all in_. Six lives were on the table. How would Mars respond?

Nikki and Sunny locked gloves as they had for every life-or-death moment on the mission, and the junior crew member once again had to remind herself to breathe. She felt the point-of-no-return thrust of Starship's engines at her back and the level floor give way at the same time, inducing an instant jolt of queasiness. The ship's nose pitched downward enough to eradicate the darkness in the side windows and replace it with the blood-orange glow of Mars.

Nikki's jaw dropped without exhale.

Starship accelerated its descent as programmed by the onboard computers, and Xander and Jo studied their digital screens closely to monitor their course toward Planum Australe, near the southern polar cap.

"Maintaining current course," Jo said.

"Accelerate descent to 7.5 kilometers per second," Xander directed.

"That's a go," Jo replied, the engines roaring now and sending Starship into a virtual nose-down free fall toward the heavily cratered surface.

Twenty seconds into that top-of-the-rollercoaster plunge, the ship's internal lights and digital screens all flickered off and back on in a split-second.

"Electrical malfunction," Jo reported, pointing to a flashing button on her console. "We're on backup."

Nikki and Sunny exchanged alarmed looks and gripped gloves even tighter.

"What the hell happened?" Nikki heard Eddy ask.

"Damage sensor flashing to the rear of the ship," Xander announced, still amazingly calm.

"Heat shield issue?" Jo theorized.

"Too soon for that," the commander replied. "How's our course?"

"Good."

"Speed?"

"Good."

"Then I'm guessing a plasma surge from micrometeorites," Xander said.

"Dammit!" Jo shouted.

"Too fucking small and fast to detect... we might've been sandblasted with our ass sticking up," the commander guessed, his voice far more animated now.

"Welcome to Mars, Earthlings," Jo said with a gallows tone. "We just got hazed."

"How long 'til we go diagonal?" Xander asked.

"35 seconds."

"Course?"

"Good."

"Speed?"

"Good."

A pregnant pause unnerved Nikki, whose heart now raced in time with the hurtling, rattling ship.

"Proceed," Xander finally said.

"Reorientation sequence is a go," Jo announced after another tap of her screen.

Nikki's body suddenly ached all over from the g-forces as the ship steadily pitched upward, preparing itself for the upright landing to come.

"Heat shield deterioration?" Xander asked.

"1.5 percent," Jo replied.

"Already?"

"Abort?"

"Too late. We're landing this thing."

"That's _my_ commander, right there!" Pluto yelled.

Nikki and Sunny couldn't hide their frightened eyes from each other as the ship's nose approached vertical. Then Nikki had to look away, blink a few times and clear her throat to distract herself from the feeling she was on the verge of passing out.

"Course?" the commander asked again, his voice now urgent in her ear.

"A little off," Jo replied, her less confident tone only adding to Nikki's fear.

"Fire thrusters," Xander instructed.

"That's a go," Jo said, tapping her screen.

"You've got 10 seconds to course-correct," Xander quickly added.

"So close."

"7, 6, 5..."

"Closer."

"4, 3, 2..."

"Closer."

"That'll have to do," Xander said. "Initiate supersonic retro."

"Landing burn is a _go!!!_ " Jo shouted, as if to personally challenge Mars, the god of war.

The falling ship was now upright over the Martian South Pole and firing its rocket engines downward to slow and control its landing on a desolate landscape of mesas, plateaus, craters, red dirt and clear, carbon-dioxide ice.

Inside Crew Dragon, Nikki felt like she was riding an unevenly plummeting elevator that rumbled beneath her and could explode at any moment.

Terrifying to the end.

### CHAPTER 16

WHAT NOW GENIUS?

June 19, 2023

Charlotte, North Carolina

Roger stood, hands on hips, analyzing Elon Musk's smooth face for any ripples of trouble.

The massive TV screen in Roger's living room allowed him to study every little twitch and jump to his own conclusions about the fate of his daughter. He had been watching ever since the Mars descent began, and the TV camera had latched onto Musk's face in the middle of the SpaceX control room virtually the entire time.

"They call it the 'six minutes of terror,' but until now that had always been applied to robotic landings," the news anchor's voice said. "This time, the stakes are exponentially higher..."

"For my daughter and me, not you, asshole," Roger barked at the screen.

The fire captain certainly noticed Musk's face was more grim than usual. No signs of that smug smile now. That could be written off as appropriate for such a big life-or-death moment, but Roger sensed Elon knew something was wrong and the clueless media still had no idea. The signal delay from Mars to Earth thwarted real-time information, only ratcheting up the tension in the control room and for the billions of viewers around the world.

The TV camera then focused on a dark-haired woman with glasses who wore a headset. She was seated near the standing Musk and the audio went live with her voice.

"The pilot has reported an electrical malfunction during the first phase of the descent, but the backup power is working," the woman said.

Elon's face remained grim.

Roger cursed and then his phone buzzed in his pocket as he began pacing in front of the TV. He knew who it was before he answered it.

"What?"

"The ship's already having problems and they've just started the landing?!" his hysterical ex-wife, Lynn, shouted.

"Let's give it a chance, Lynn, and try to stay positive for Nikki, OK?"

"That ship is a _lemon_. I _knew_ this was all _way too soon!_ "

"It did get them there, now they just have to land the damn thing," Roger pointed out. "Can I watch this now, without your negative-fucking-waves commentary?"

"Oh, go ahead!" Lynn shot back, hanging up.

Roger tossed the phone onto the sofa behind him, exhaled and resumed pacing. A career dealing with emergencies simply had not prepared him for his daughter's attempted landing on Mars.

"The commander reports that he believes Starship was struck by micrometeorites, causing an electric plasma surge and possible damage to the rear of the ship," the woman with the headset announced.

Elon hung his head a little and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"What now genius?!" Roger shouted at his image on the screen.

"What are the ramifications of that?" the news anchor asked some space expert while the camera remained fixed on Musk in the control room.

"These modern spaceships are built to withstand most encounters with space debris, but this is an unfortunate turn of events," the expert replied. "In 1967, a bombardment of high-velocity micrometeorites ended the three-year Mariner 4 mission. The solar system is full of space rocks. Larger ones — 10 centimeters plus in diameter — are certainly a threat, but the real concern are the more than 166 million objects that range from 1 millimeter to 1 centimeter. Those can reach speeds between 30,000 and 150,000 miles per hour. The really small ones are impossible to track with our current technology, and the higher the velocity, the more potential damage on impact. There's also a greater likelihood of electrical anomalies on board the ship."

Roger's phone buzzed again, but he ignored it this time and covered his eyes with his hands for a moment.

"The pilot reports they've initiated reorientation of the ship for the second phase of descent," the woman with the headset announced.

Musk was now staring up at the huge screens in front of him with his hands on his hips.

Roger decided to sit down on the sofa and exhale. Then he reached over to an end table and grabbed his favorite framed photo of Nikki.

"You've got to survive this, Nik," he told the young woman smiling next to him in her cap and gown after graduating from Boston University four years earlier. "You've... _we've_ been through too much for you to die now."

### CHAPTER 17

12-STORY HORROR

June 19, 2023

Planum Australe, Mars

The ruddy Martian sky appeared still and peaceful outside the oval window to her left, but Nikki could not see the jagged ground that was getting blasted with retro-propulsive smoke beneath the slowly descending ship.

"100 meters," Jo announced without masking her excitement.

_So close to history_ , Nikki mused, while squeezing Sunny's glove again, cramped left hand be damned.

"Not as smooth a landing area as our original target, but still within 10 kilometers of our cargo ship," Xander noted while eyeballing a camera image of the landing zone on his digital screen.

"50 meters," Jo said.

"Prepare for touchdown," Xander instructed.

The ship's wobbly vibrations intensified.

"10 meters."

"Kill the engines," Xander ordered.

Jo pressed a manual button on her console and the roar began to abate just as Nikki felt Starship's three landing fins impact Mars.

"Touchdown!" Xander shouted.

But just as Nikki and her comrades started cheering, the ship suddenly jerked violently to the right and fell that way.

Nikki and Sunny screamed at each other through their helmets and lost their grip as the 180-foot ship failed to stick the landing, buckling from a damaged right fin on a less-than-ideal, icy surface.

"Landing failure! Hold on!" Xander declared before Eddy's restraint snapped and he screamed while flying past his commander.

Eddy collided with the still-restrained Pluto, and then crashed into the sidewall, while the equivalent of a 12-story building toppled on its side.

Nikki watched in horror as Xander got flung out of his commander's seat. Then she felt the jarring kick of his boot to her helmet before her worlds went black.

### CHAPTER 18

NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION

June 19, 2023

Charlotte, North Carolina

"We should get word any moment now on the landing of Elon Musk's Starship," the news anchor's voice blared on Roger's TV.

Musk's face, pale and devoid of his typically all-knowing dimpled grin, remained the focus of the cameras in the control room.

"Whatever happened has already happened," the anchor continued. "We're just waiting for the signal from Mars..."

"Will you just shut the fuck up and tell us already!" Roger snapped at the screen.

He was standing again but too riveted to pace like before.

"100 meters to the Martian surface," the woman in the headset finally reported as some cheers went up. Others in the control room silently pumped their fists, but Elon remained stoic and stiff.

"50 meters."

Louder cheers.

"10 meters and bracing for touchdown."

Control room people now began hugging.

"Commander reports touchdown on Mars!" the smiling headset woman declared as a frenzy of gleeful celebrating erupted all around Musk, who finally smiled, giving in to the relentless jostle of people hugging him and messing with his hair.

Roger stood in his living room with a stunned smile, full of pride for Nikki.

"History is made on this 19th day of June, 2023...," the news anchor began, but he quickly got cut off by the overriding and ominous audio from the woman in the headset. She was no longer smiling.

"Commander reports _landing failure_ ," she announced, halting the revelry in mid-scream.

Elon's jaw fell on live TV and Roger ripped at what little hair he still had on his head.

"What does that mean?!" Nikki's dad yelled as his phone went off again.

He ignored it and the woman in the headset opened her mouth.

"What is it now, you grim reaper!" Roger screamed at the screen.

"The commander told the crew to 'hold on'... no further communication to this point."

The audible gasps in the SpaceX control room seared through Roger's soul. He knew there was no fleet of emergency vehicles standing by on Mars to come to his daughter's rescue.

Nearly as bad, her fire captain father was stuck here on Earth with Elon Musk's perspiring face haunting his TV, two ex-wives now blasting his phone and no escape route from his feelings of total helplessness.

### CHAPTER 19

IS MATT DAMON HERE?

June 19, 2023

Planum Australe, Mars

When Nikki's eyes fluttered open to a strange and horribly inverted position, her head ached and her ears stung from shrill alarms blaring all around her.

The Crew Dragon capsule and its oval windows somehow were still intact, but Nikki no longer faced upward.

"I'm still strapped in," she mumbled, though the heavenly freedom of zero-g had been replaced by the heavy drag of gravity, pulling her toward the oval window that was down and to her right.

When her eyes slowly regained sharper focus and she managed to torque her body within its restraints, she observed no other movement in the capsule. Lifeless astronauts occupied three of the chairs, but two were empty. No Eddy. No Xander. Sunny now loomed above Nikki for a few frozen seconds, but then her restraint suddenly gave way, sending her crashing on top of Nikki like she had fallen through a bunk bed.

"Owww!!!" Nikki screamed. "Sunny, wake up!!!"

They were nearly helmet to helmet now, but the doctor's eyes remained closed. To make matters worse, Nikki's left arm was pinned under Sunny, and her right arm felt heavy and useless. She began flexing the gloved fingers on her right hand and slowly got her right arm to move. Then she attempted to slap Sunny's helmet.

"Sunny, it's Nikki! We're on fucking Mars! Don't leave me on this planet to die alone! I don't want to play _Matt Fucking Damon_ in 'The Martian!'"

Sunny didn't make a noise, but Nikki swore she heard a gurgle or a giggle between alarms from someone in front of her to the right.

"Is Matt Damon here?" Pluto's sluggish, confused voice broke through like a priceless gift from somewhere in the jumbled mess that used to be Crew Dragon.

"Oh my God, Pluto! You're alive!!" Nikki shouted.

"Yessss," he slurred, clearly still out of it. "What... happened?"

"Apparently we crashed on Mars. Happens to people all the time," she deadpanned, amazed she found a sense of humor while still having no clue about the location of her mission commander, a rather important person to have on an uninhabited planet.

Pluto didn't respond, but Nikki heard him moving more limbs than she could, so that was a good sign. Then she saw him free of his restraints and maneuvering himself to check on Jo, who was limp in her chair.

"Jo, we made it! You flew us to Mars! Wake up, Top Gun!!"

Nikki's laugh shivved through her lower right ribs, and her mood quickly changed when Pluto's eyes met hers for one second of smiling euphoria only to turn grave at the sight of something Nikki could not see directly behind her — two crumpled bodies tangled up together near the closed door to the rest of the ship. Pluto glanced up at the empty seats and Nikki had her answer.

"Xander and Eddy don't look good from here," Pluto told her.

"Oh no," Nikki trembled.

Then Jo's glove reached out and grabbed Pluto's arm.

"Jo!" he screamed. "Good morning and welcome to Mars!"

Nikki smiled through her tears and tapped on Sunny's helmet again, hoping for a similar happy result.

"Sunny, Jo is waking up! That's three we've got. Now it's your turn!"

When Sunny groaned and shifted her weight, Nikki was able to free her own left arm just enough to give her a quasi-hug.

"Pluto, Sunny's coming back to us!" she declared gleefully. "First hug on Mars, Sunny! No matter how much it hurts right now, _you are with us!_ "

Pluto looked up and smiled at Nikki as he worked to free Jo from her restraints.

"I'll be your doctor, Sunny," Nikki continued.

Sunny groaned and moved again.

"That's right. I'm completely unqualified. I'm a quack and I was hoping that would motivate you!" Nikki gently squeezed her.

"I'm gonna free Nikki next, Doc, so if you don't want her to stick needles in you, you better speak now," Pluto said while helping the groggy pilot turn and face Nikki.

"Jo is here, too, Sunny," Nikki told her. "Lift up your head and look at the Top Gun who got us to Mars!"

Slowly, Sunny's bubble helmet rose off Nikki's left side. It was easier for her to look straight ahead and see Jo and Pluto than to turn her whiplashed neck and gaze up at Nikki.

"We got knocked down, Doc," Jo barked. "But we're the first MMA fighters on Mars. We'll get up again."

Then the pilot's strong voice cracked.

"Sun, we really need you to help guide us... so we can help Commander and Eddy."

### CHAPTER 20

THIS IS MARS

June 19, 2023

Charlotte, North Carolina

Roger had dozed off while waiting for a SpaceX press conference that already had been pushed back three times.

Lynn buzzed his phone again, waking him to the ongoing nightmare of not knowing whether his daughter was alive or dead. After the woman with the headset had reported "no further communication" from the crew, that held true for several hours.

Until now.

"Yeah, I'm watching," Roger groggily told Nikki's mother as he sat up and took a swig from a nearly empty beer bottle on the coffee table. "Now I'm hanging up so I can listen. Go take a Midol."

The TV camera zoomed in on Musk, who was standing alone at a podium in the SpaceX media room. He looked like he had aged a year or two on what was supposed to be a triumphant, historic day.

"Good afternoon," he began. "I want to begin by apologizing for the delays, but we have the fate of six brave astronauts to consider and all of their loved ones, so we wanted to take the time to gather all the information we could before we addressed the media here and those watching around the world.

"The good news is we have received audio and video contact from the crew."

Some cheers erupted and Musk nodded, but his demeanor appeared guarded at best. Roger's dimmed hopes grew nonetheless. At least the crew made contact. Nikki could still be _alive_. _On Mars._

"The bad news," Musk continued, "is Starship suffered a considerable mishap on landing, tipping over instead of landing vertically."

Elon paused for the gasps and groans before continuing.

"Specialist Eddy Etergino from Buffalo, New York, has died from his injuries."

Musk paused again and bowed his head during a louder, longer round of gasps and groans.

"Eddy's bravery will never be forgotten. He gave his life for this mission. We here at SpaceX all loved Eddy, and fed off his sense of humor and enthusiasm to make humanity a multi-planet species. Thanks to Eddy, we did that today. But first, I want to express my deepest condolences to Eddy's family and friends. We will never forget his ultimate sacrifice for this mission. I'd like to take a moment of silence now for Eddy."

Cameras flashed as Elon, his eyes now watery and puffy, bowed his head again.

"This is terrible," Roger lamented to himself. "Now what about my daughter?"

Then Musk raised his grim face and continued.

"Commander Xander Vermilyea from Cape Town, South Africa, is in critical condition with serious injuries. So far he has not regained consciousness and the crew fears he is unlikely to survive."

Roger doubled over in front of the TV. _Even if Nikki were alive, what chance did she have now? With no commander?_

"No matter what happens, Xander is a hero," Elon declared. "Faced with an extraordinary amount of bad luck that I will explain later, he got Starship to the Martian surface, and the other four crew members are conscious and communicating."

Roger righted himself, exhaled and clapped. Then he smiled and cried and laughed all at the same time.

"She's alive!" he shouted. "What a survivor my girl is!"

Both ex-wives, Lynn and Jamie, now blew up his phone, but Roger just waved them off. He wanted to hear more from Elon now that he hadn't killed off his daughter.

"In fact, Specialist Nicole Janicek sent us this video from the Crew Dragon capsule with her satellite laptop, or sat-top, as we call it."

Roger jumped up and clapped again, reaching out toward the TV as the camera shifted from Musk at the podium to a giant screen above him.

"There she is," Elon said as Nikki's face and streaks of red hair filled the screen. Her eyes were red, too, no doubt from crying, but at least she was alive. Her helmet was off, so apparently the oxygen system aboard Starship had not been compromised, but she was sitting on what used to be the ceiling of the toppled cockpit.

"Hello from Mars, good people of Earth," Nikki began, drawing tears from Roger and cheers from those assembled in the media room. "I wanted to let you know what happened as soon as possible because I know if I were in your shoes, I'd be ripping my hair out. The truth is our descent to Mars started off badly and only got worse, but Commander Xander Vermilyea and Pilot Jo Giguere remained calm and heroic through it all. Without them, I would not be talking to you right now.... We lost our Eddy today," she said, breaking down and wiping away tears. "And we're all gonna miss him so much."

Roger could barely breathe watching his daughter, but his pride swelled with every word she spoke.

"Please pray for our commander," Nikki continued. "If anyone can survive this, he can. Our doctor, Susan 'Sunny' Wilkes, has a bad concussion and our pilot, Jo, is watching over her right now in the main part of the ship. None of us are allowed to sleep for the time being because we are all dealing with some concussion symptoms. Engineer Ulysses 'Pluto' Parker is our all-star astronaut right now. He's been checking the interior of the ship for damage and getting most of our systems up and running.

"The rest of our mission will be dedicated to Eddy Etergino and his family and friends back home, and when we're up to it, we can't wait to set foot outside and begin exploring Mars. Our greatest hope is Commander Xander will be the one to take that first step. He deserves it and we'll wait for him now.... The bottom line is this: Elon and your team, you built an amazing spaceship that got us all the way to Mars. This big steel can sure got bent and fell over, but she did not break."

Roger beamed as applause erupted from SpaceX personnel in the back of the media room, and the camera cut back to Elon, who managed his first grin in a long time.

"I do pay her to say that," the CEO quipped before turning more serious. "Here's what we think we know at this preliminary stage. The ship was damaged by micrometeorites not long after it transitioned from orbit to descent. We don't know the extent of that damage, but it was to the rear of the ship and possibly to one, two or all of the three landing fins. The ship also landed about 10 kilometers off course, in an area that was less optimal for success. It is possible that one factor or both played a role in the crash landing. We may know more once the crew gets outside and looks at the fins. But right now, the focus is on letting the crew recover, adjust to Mars' gravity and tend to the injured inside the ship. I'll now take a few questions."

Roger's phone was blowing up with calls and texts from fellow firefighters congratulating him on his daughter's survival and historic video contact, but he had to sit back on the sofa and savor the moment.

Nikki is alive and shooting off videos from Mars?!!

There was a time not so long ago when he had blasted a verbal firehose at her space dreams with his harsh words, but she had proved him wrong.

"What a girl I... have," Roger told himself, his tears returning because he couldn't hug her anymore.

Alive, yet gone.

"I'd call it the equivalent of a bird strike damaging a jet plane," Roger watched Musk answer a reporter's question. "Bad luck, but one of the many possible hazards you have to deal with in space flight. The plane that landed safely on the Hudson had Captain Sully. Our crew today had no river to splash into, but we had Commander Xander and Pilot Jo. Maybe on Earth everybody survives, but this is Mars."

### CHAPTER 21

BACKFLIP AND CARTWHEEL

June 20, 2023 — Sol 2

Planum Australe, Mars

As if getting to Mars weren't challenging enough, now the still-standing crew of four astronauts had to figure out how to exit their toppled Starship, and what to do about Xander and Eddy.

The middle and rear exit doors on the right side of the ship were blocked by the dry ice and frozen dirt crust of the polar plain. The two viable exits now opened toward the dim and murky Martian sky of early spring.

There would be no easy first step onto the Red Planet.

A giant 30-foot leap from what had become the roof of the ship would be the hurdle to the astronauts' historic moment.

For now, Eddy's body lay in less-than-ceremonial repose in a black body bag inside the ship's freezer.

Xander, who had regained partial consciousness but remained in critical condition with brain damage, wore his helmet and spacesuit as he lay in a Stokes basket waiting to be hoisted up the ladder Pluto had rigged up inside the air lock.

Nikki and her comrades sensed their commander wasn't long for this new world, but they were determined to let him set his boots on the Martian surface first.

Once all of their spacesuit sensors confirmed proper pressurization and functional heating status via a voice prompt in their ear buds, Jo pushed a manual button inside the air lock that opened the door to Mars. From the crew's vantage point, it was like a big hole opening on the ceiling.

"Roof's open," the pilot announced. "Jump day is here."

Jo started climbing the ladder with a coil of rope in tow around her neck and torso. She eventually secured it around part of the ship's infrastructure and dropped the line down the ladder to Pluto, who tied it to Xander's basket.

All of the astronauts, even Xander, had GoPros clipped to the top of their helmets to film humanity's Martian milestone. Nikki's camera caught the flutter of Xander's eyes as she helped Pluto lift the basket. The big guy then carried Xander up the ladder as Jo provided extra pull on the rope from up above.

A few moments later, Xander gazed up into the Martian clouds from the top side of the ship while his crew toiled like ants in a sand hole, yanking up a long line of TurtleSkin landing bags — the same kind of balloons used to cushion rover landings on previous unmanned NASA missions.

With Xander flat on his back a few feet away, Pluto stood and launched the landing bags down to the Martian surface. They landed with a crusty crunch on carbon-dioxide frost that had built up over the six-month winter and the 192-sol fall before that.

Nikki felt dizzy from all of the exertion, moving up and down the ladder in a balloon relay between Sunny below and Jo above. But her adrenaline for Mars kept her focused on the task at hand. She also knew Sunny was in rougher shape, only able to scale and descend a few rungs at a time, so she doubled her efforts to pick up the slack.

"Thanks, Nik," Sunny wheezed at one point.

"Happy to do it," she replied, receiving a round bag from her banged-up doctor and preparing to climb. "We're moments away from being real Martians!"

Sunny's smile amid her brain fog gave Nikki hope and added to her energy level.

Fifteen minutes later, Nikki helped push Sunny up the top rung of the ladder and out onto the stainless-steel surface of the ship that had blasted off from Florida last September and somehow landed on Mars the following June.

Then Nikki grabbed Pluto's extended gloved hand and emerged into the thin Martian atmosphere for the first time. She took a few deep, Darth Vader breaths and smiled while scanning the horizons from atop the ship, which had beached itself on what looked like an endless, grassless, treeless golf course full of bunkers. The hazy outline of some ridges in the distance reminded her of her home state of New Hampshire for a moment, but this place truly appeared alien and frigid — 180-below zero to be exact, far more brutal than the 100-below she had experienced at Earth's South Pole. And upon closer visual inspection under overcast skies, the reddish-dirty-hued surface glazed from mesa to chasm with a layer of dry, translucent frost.

"Who wants to slide first?" Pluto asked the group, sweeping his hand toward the airplane-like evacuation slide that led from the exit door down to the pile of landing bags below.

"Well I helped crash this thing, so I might as well finish the job," Jo declared.

Nikki chuckled and carefully positioned herself to film Jo's dismount.

The pilot did her best flight attendant impression, palms crossed against her chest, and plunged down the orange slide into the generous area of landing cushions.

"I'd give that a 7," Sunny quipped to Nikki, who laughed and delighted at the recovery of her sense of humor.

"Go do better then," Nikki replied, "but don't bang your head."

"You got this, Sunny girl," Pluto added.

Down she went, sliding and tumbling into the balloons.

"Just another day at Chuck E. Cheese, right?" Pluto cracked while pulling all the slack from Xander's basket rope together for the commander's descent.

"Your turn, X man," Pluto said, patting him on the shoulder. "Balloons first, then your real big step."

Xander managed a thumb's up despite his basket restraints and his addled brain. Pluto secured a rope to himself that Nikki tied around the ship's exit steps, which stuck up in the air from this angle, and then began lowering Xander in the basket down toward Jo and Sunny. Soon, the commander was staring up at Pluto and Nikki as they prepared to come down the chute.

"You're next and I'm filming for two worlds, so make it dramatic... but don't get hurt," Nikki told Pluto, who was now untethered and beaming behind his helmet.

"Well in that case..."

Pluto suddenly spun around and did a backflip through the Martian air before crashing down the slide and into the bag pile.

"Holy shit!" Nikki shouted down at him.

"Did you see that, Commander?!" Jo screamed, squeezing Xander's glove in hers.

He managed a grin as Nikki laughed on high and Sunny doubled over in glee next to where Pluto rolled to a stop.

The doctor low-fived him and yelled, "First flip on Mars! I give that an 11!"

"Unscripted and spontaneous!" Pluto reveled before slowly standing up and encouraging Nikki.

"Top that, Red!" he cheered.

"I don't do backflips!" Nikki yelled down before suddenly cartwheeling off Starship and careening down the slide into a welcoming committee of howling astronauts.

They all hugged each other and rubbed Xander's chest, and got pumped for the big step off the landing bags and onto Mars itself.

But then Pluto smacked his helmet with his glove.

"Oh shit. I forgot the flags!"

"Well, back up you go, Specialist Parker!" Jo ordered him with a finger pointing upward.

Pluto saluted her, untied the rope from Xander's basket and used it to climb back up the slide at a quick tempo.

"He's definitely the SpaceX employee of the month," Sunny deadpanned as they all watched him.

Nikki laughed and hugged her. Then she stepped back and shifted into video interview mode.

"Here we are, Doc. Literally one step away from boots on Mars. We've dreamed about this moment for so long. We're just waiting for Pluto to retrieve the flags from our knocked-over spaceship. Tell everyone back home how this feels."

Sunny exhaled and smiled.

"We're banged up, but we made it," she said. "I really can't believe this is real right now."

Then Sunny teared up inside her protective bubble.

"I just wish Eddy was standing here with us," she added.

Nikki nodded. "He would've really loved Pluto's backflip... and probably would've failed trying to top it."

"Definitely," Sunny agreed. "And definitely, this is a bittersweet arrival."

### CHAPTER 22

NO INTERPLANETARY SEXTING

June 20, 2023

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Adam's attention was torn between the red-streaked woman who rocketed away to TV stardom and the raven-haired one to his right.

"I can't believe you know someone on Mars... what are the odds of that?" Valentina mused as Adam watched a panel of talking heads on TV in the moments before history would be made.

"And I can't believe we didn't see any sharks today. I'm so disappointed," Adam lamented.

"At least we got to swim. Do you want to lose your other foot, too?" his smiling new girlfriend asked, pinching him in the shoulder as they sat up in bed in a Cape Cod beach hotel room. "So what was she like?"

Adam exhaled. "Frustrating."

"I thought you liked her."

"I did, but she friend-zoned me from the start and never gave me a chance, year after year."

"Poor Adam," Valentina said, holding his hand. "At least she was consistent and didn't lead you on like my ex did."

"I know... and look at her now," he said, pointing at the screen, which showed Nikki's photo along with the other five astronauts.

Valentina squeezed his hand until he looked at her young, suntanned face.

"Hey, you're going places, too," she said. "You're taking electrician classes in the fall. You've got an amazing new girlfriend."

Adam smiled looking at her and thinking about their easy conversations in the food court at the Middlebrook mall, where he was a security guard and she worked at Forever 21. He knew he had won her over when, despite his prosthetic foot, he'd done his best to keep up with her seductive dance moves at the Latin nightclub.

He kissed her and nodded. "I'm glad you're here."

"And I'm glad she's on Mars," Valentina said, nodding toward the TV. "My competition is a planet away. Muchas gracias, Elon Musk."

Adam laughed.

Then the TV showed another loop of one astronaut doing a backflip off Starship and down the emergency slide, followed by Nikki's POV cartwheel cam.

"The ones who survived sure seem to be having fun at least," Valentina pointed out.

"That's one thing about Nikki — she's a survivor," Adam said.

"So are you. Six months of dark winter at the South Pole? Wow."

Adam grinned with pride for himself and then for Nikki as the TV flashed the latest video from Mars: Nikki giving a gloved thumb's up in the foreground while her comrades helped injured Commander Xander Vermilyea stand up and take the first step off the landing balloons and onto the Martian surface.

"How cool is that?" Adam asked.

"The human race is now officially a two-planet species," the TV announcer declared. "Elon Musk and the brave crew he sent to Mars have done it. June 20, 2023, marks another profound milestone in human history."

Nikki and her crew mates soon joined Xander with emphatic stomps of their boots on the frosty ground, and then quickly enveloped one another with hugs and high-fives before gently setting the commander down in a lawn chair of all things.

"Not much of a lawn so far on Mars," the TV announcer quipped, "but at least they've got the chair just in case."

"Elon wants to terraform the place," another announcer observed, "but the Martian South Pole is a tough place to grow grass with temperature swings of 100-below to 240-below."

"Holy shit," Valentina said. "How cold did it get at our South Pole?"

"Well, a bunch of us ran naked from a 200-degree sauna inside South Pole Station out to the South Pole barbershop pole on a 100-below night..."

"What?!

"Yeah, the 300 Club they call it down there. It was in June, too, just like now."

"And _Nikki_ was naked? _You_ were naked?" Valentina pressed.

"Yup. Except for our boots," Adam confirmed proudly. "That was back when I still had both my feet."

"No wonder you're still hung up on her."

Adam shrugged. "Nah, I've let her go now."

"Have you?"

"She's on Mars. I'm on Earth."

"Isn't that a book?"

"That's something about men on Mars, women on Venus. I didn't read that one in prison."

Valentina, who already knew about _that_ long story, shook her head and gazed into Adam's eyes.

"Nobody can say you've lived a dull life," she said.

"That's true, but I think Nikki's got us all beat now."

The TV now showed an American flag rippling in the Martian breeze, sticking up out of one of two astronaut boots placed on the ice in tribute to the late Eddy Etergino. The flags for South Africa and China, in honor of Xander and Sunny's native lands, already had been staked into the ice on either side of the American flag.

"We beat Russia there at least," Adam noted.

"They need a Puerto Rican flag. We're part of the U.S., too," Valentina said.

"I agree," Adam said, kissing her. "I'll yell at Nikki the next time I v-mail her."

"What?!"

"What?" Adam echoed.

"You're still in contact with her?"

"Me and Thomas exchanged v-mails with her a couple of months ago. Is that a problem?

Valentina smirked, rearranging her dimples in an irresistible way.

"No. Just my natural insecurities kicking in."

Adam smiled.

"Pretty cute," he told her.

"But no interplanetary sexting!" she demanded, pointing at him with a hint of flirtation at the same time.

"Never," he agreed dutifully.

"Especially now that I know you've seen each other naked."

"Never," Adam repeated.

For the first time in his life, jealousy never felt so good.

### CHAPTER 23

UPS AND DOWNS

June 20, 2023 — Sol 2

Planum Australe, Mars

Nikki savored every crunch of her boots into the frosted ground as she walked away from the ship and the crew for a moment, and stepped down into a shallow, wide, circular depression. She knew from the many photos of the Martian South Pole she had gazed at over the past year that the surface looked like Swiss cheese from high up.

Now she was the first human ever to stroll through this particular cheese hole.

And as she gazed back at her fellow astronauts joyfully treading on their own virgin territory, Nikki laughed inside her heated bubble, ecstatic that for the first time in billions of years, if not ever, life actually existed on the surface of Mars.

Better yet, _her life_ existed on Mars.

Nikki and her comrades soon reunited back near the ship, doing dosey-doe country dance moves with one another. They also made sure to hug Xander in his chair.

"You got us here, Commander," Nikki told him, leaning down to lock eyes with him. "Your mother and sisters are watching us right now! No one will ever forget these moments because we're all filming this and preserving it forever!"

Nikki's enthusiasm lifted Xander's soul and spurred his body to surge forward. Nikki welcomed his momentum and pulled him toward her with both gloves until he was standing again. Pluto and Jo were quick to flank him, but he broke free of Nikki's grip and waved them all away.

Commander Xander was standing under his own power on Mars.

"You rock, X man!" Pluto cheered.

Nikki and Sunny both clapped, and Jo did some kind of celebratory martial arts kick that caused her to lose her footing on the landing and fall on her ass.

When Xander found the strength to force his gloves together for a standing ovation, Jo blew him a kiss from her low, crumpled position and screamed, "What now, boss? You run this planet!"

***

The giddy start of operations to transfer equipment out of the beached spaceship and onto the Martian surface via ladder, slide, pulley and other feats of human ingenuity came to a crashing halt less than five hours later.

Nikki had survived a bullet wound in her hometown and nearly freezing to death in Antarctica, but nothing could prepare her for watching the life and color and heroism drain out of her commander's face.

He had rallied with his crew all around him and he expired the same way, despite Sunny's relentless efforts to revive him from the brain aneurysm he suffered while lying down inside the ship.

The tears and sobs and hugs that had accompanied Eddy's death just one sol earlier multiplied in intensity for Xander, who had given them all hope, only to remind them that reaching Mars came with a cost no billionaire CEO could match.

Nikki hated herself in that moment. She believed her words had pushed her commander to stand up on Mars before he was anywhere near physically ready. Had she really done that to give Xander's senile mother a TV moment to remember, or was it a thoughtless stunt to boost the morale of herself and her comrades in the face of the mission's interminably deadly odds?

Her thoughts spun around her, and then she fell in the direction of her tears, fainting toward the ceiling of the overturned ship.

Pluto broke her fall just in time, but the youngest crew member would not be well enough soon enough to join the other three astronauts for their urgent and tragic video message to Elon Musk.

### CHAPTER 24

AGATHA F. CHRISTIE

June 21, 2023

Charlotte, North Carolina

Roger had just returned to the fire station from helping extinguish a morning car fire when he checked his phone and saw the forward from his second ex-wife, Jamie.

He tapped the link to the New York Post story and read the headline: **AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR: Mars Colony Agatha mourns commander.**

"What the fuck?!" Roger shouted, drawing two of his junior firefighters to his side. "Nikki's commander dying ain't bad enough, but then the Post has to get cute with the fucking headline and turn the mission into an Agatha Fucking Christie novel!"

"Sorry, Cap," one of Roger's men said, shaking his head.

"The media sucks," the other agreed.

A third firefighter stuck his head out of the lounge.

"Cap, your favorite CEO is on," he said, thumbing backward.

Roger scowled, trudged into the lounge and then stood face to face with Musk, who was looking tired, drawn and defeated again on the giant TV screen. Apparently he'd already announced the brutal news and now was taking questions from the hastily assembled press corps at Kennedy Space Center.

"What does this mean for the mission?" a reporter asked Musk, who didn't hide his instant annoyance at the query.

"I guess we pack up, turn around and head home," he bristled, then shrugged his shoulders for effect as his answer hung in the air.

"What an asshole," Roger huffed.

"As I have explained many times in the years and months and days leading up to this mission," Elon continued, "death is a virtual certainty on this first manned trip to Mars. Well, now death is real. OK? We've lost Eddy Etergino. We've lost Commander Vermilyea. The four remaining crew members are dealing with various concussion symptoms from the landing on top of the many hazards of trying to get a base set up on Mars. They've planted the flags, they've celebrated and they've just begun the process of attempting to build an ice dome. They'll have to do that with four instead of six. It was already a hard and deadly job. It just got harder. I still believe in them... they'll get it done and find a way to survive."

Elon pinched the inner corners of his eyes, exhaled and then pointed to another reporter.

"You mentioned only three astronauts appeared in the video message about Commander Vermilyea. Who was absent?"

"Specialist Janicek," Musk replied, his curt, matter-of-fact tone a sucker-punch to Roger's gut.

"What now?" the fire captain asked, throwing up his hands.

"She just wasn't feeling well," Elon replied. "Nothing serious."

Roger punched one fist into the palm of his other hand. "You better be telling the truth!" he shouted, pointing at Musk's image.

Another reporter asked, "Do you have any reaction to the newspaper headline this morning that's calling Mars Colony A 'Mars Colony Agatha,' as in Agatha Christie?"

Elon grimaced.

"We've got brave, heroic people — and their grieving families — to honor for their ultimate sacrifice; for attempting to do what no other human beings have ever attempted in the 4.5 billion-year history of this planet, and you're going to ask me to comment on what some jerk-off from the New York Post wrote?"

Musk let his withering stare linger on the reporter for a long, awkward moment before continuing.

"I'm sure there are some people out there just rooting for our epic failure, rooting for the headline to say, 'And Then There Were None'... but I'm betting on my crew to outlive every one of them. Soon Mars will be full of human life, and no clever little media cowards will be part of that."

### CHAPTER 25

THE FIRST CEMETERY

June 22, 2023 — Sol 3

Planum Australe, Mars

There were no caskets on Starship, only black body bags adorned with the SpaceX logo and seals bearing the American and South Africa flags.

Exhausted and depressed but recovered enough for the double funeral, Nikki now stared down at the two body bags, placed side by side in a 4-foot-deep hollow under a craggy overhang that appeared to have the profile of a laughing donkey.

"Eddy always liked to laugh his ass off... now the laughing ass marks his grave," Jo observed, her voice devoid of any humor.

Nikki forced a half-grin and nodded, her eyes now looking back toward the wounded Starship about 100 yards away. None of this seemed real. The dream had descended into a nightmare so fast. The bipolar feelings of elation and sorrow — all paint-smeared together on a barren, concussion-loopy, alien canvas — forced Nikki down to one knee.

Sunny and Pluto reached for her, but she resisted.

"Let me just process this for a few minutes," Nikki said.

"We all need to," the doctor agreed, joining her on one knee.

Soon all four astronauts were kneeling and locking gloved hands above their partially buried comrades.

"What do you say?" Pluto asked, shaking his bowed head. "Gone too fucking fast, man."

"I don't know," Jo replied, "but I'm in no mood for religion right now."

"We say, 'Thank you, Xander. Thank you, Eddy,'" Sunny said. "We couldn't have made it here without your skill and bravery and friendship... and sense of humor."

"Well said," Jo nodded, her helmet straight down. The tough pilot didn't want to show anyone that her tears were defeating her.

She forced her words to overpower the cracks in her voice anyway.

"We need to honor them by kicking ass with this base from this sol forward. No feeling sorry for ourselves. We're here. We're lucky to be alive.... Now we've got to do our jobs and..."

"Make Mars our bitch!" Pluto shouted toward the silent, distant, murky mesas.

The three women looked up and stared at the only surviving man on Mars, willing him to keep it together.

"Inappropriate?" he backtracked. "Yeah, probably," he answered himself. "I'm terrible at funerals. Earth. Mars. Doesn't matter where."

"Maybe instead of talking, Pluto, you could sing something for them... for us," Jo suggested.

"Yes," Sunny quickly seconded that motion. "I've heard you sing lots of times. I know you can."

"Nah, that was just bad karaoke in zero g," Pluto resisted.

"Please... for your comrades," Jo persisted, more as an order than a request, while gesturing toward the fallen men in their humbly marked, double grave.

Pluto bit his lips in a rare show of grief and then slowly stood up until he towered over the first cemetery on Mars.

Then he made the three women cry with his own heartfelt rendition of "See You Again," by Charlie Puth and Wiz Khalifa:

" _It's been a long day without you, my friends_

And I'll tell you about it when I see you again

We've come a long way from where we began

Oh I'll tell you about it when I see you again

When I see you again

First you both go out your way

And the vibe is feeling strong

And what's small turns to a friendship

And a friendship turns into a bond

And that bond will never be broken

And the love will never get lost...

It's been a long day without you, my friends

And I'll tell you about it when I see you again

We've come a long way from where we began

Oh I'll tell you about it when I see you again

When I see you again."

Pluto somehow held strong throughout his song, but when it was done, he broke down into the swarming embrace of Nikki, Jo and Sunny.

"That was so perfectly beautiful," Nikki told him. "Now we're ready to get to work."

### CHAPTER 26

DOME OF THE RISING SUN

July 3, 2023 — Sol 14

Planum Australe, Mars

After toiling in a depressing Martian soup of thick clouds and frosty fog for more than a week, the four astronauts rejoiced when the sun finally showed up, dazzling them from a 20-degree angle above the southeastern horizon.

"Good morning, Martian sun!" Jo shouted while driving a black Tesla "Blade Runner" pickup truck — two tires in the front, four supporting the rear bay, with sleek, aerodynamic lines that converged toward the front like the nose of a jet.

The pilot looked positively giddy as she bounced the space truck over uneven ground from Starship to the ice dome construction site, some 80 feet to the west.

The cargo ship, which had stuck its landing in June 2021, stood about six miles to the east. The true South Pole lay 15 miles west of this important polar plain, which, according to satellites orbiting the planet, hid a 12-mile lake of salty water 0.9 mile below the surface.

Nikki watched Jo drive past the pop-up, ground-based satellite dish they had set up on Sol 5 to improve communications with Earth. She was ferrying the final part for the airlock they were assembling on the Starship-facing side of the dome.

They'd come a long way in a week and a half, and fittingly the space truck itself had been the very first project. It was too bulky and heavy to lift out of the exit-challenged ship in one piece, so Pluto led them in disassembling it inside, lugging the parts outside and reassembling the vehicle on the surface it would soon roam.

That took the better part of three sols, plus they had to set up the truck's electric charging station. The solar panels on its roof had been useless until now.

"I love driving in the sun!" Jo declared out her driver-side window while weaving around a small crater and coming to a stop in front of her crew.

"I thought we'd never see it," Sunny said.

"Until now, you were the only Sun we had here," Jo said, closing the door and getting out as Nikki and Pluto climbed into the truck's open bay and worked together to slide the airlock's 8-foot prefab roof off the truck and onto the airlock's walls.

"I guess now we're a binary star system," Pluto quipped while using the truck as a ladder and drilling the roof into place on one side. Then he jumped into the driver's seat and moved the vehicle to repeat the task on the other side.

The airlock was now enclosed and could be tested. It looked like a huge white refrigerator that had been knocked on its side compared to the massive dome to which it was attached.

The rest of the previous week and a half had been spent attaching the prefab pieces of the hab — the astronauts' two-level, inner-dome living quarters — and then fitting together long, arching aluminum support pieces for the much larger exterior ice dome. The outer structure spanned 60 feet long by 40 feet wide so the crew could have room for a recreation yard and hydroponic garden outside the hab. Spacesuits and helmets would not be needed inside the pressurized dome — a huge morale boost that Nikki and her comrades eagerly anticipated.

Constructing the outer dome's support structure had only been part of the job. Then they had to unpack, unload, haul and unfurl the inflatable canvas that now covered the dome. The next step involved connecting long, heated hoses from Starship's internal water tanks to the dome's battery-powered pumping unit. When Jo flipped on the pump, water coursed through the hoses and surged into the inflatable material. Thanks to the 165-below temperature, all of that water froze rapidly, creating the translucent ice dome that now glistened in the morning sun. The hydrogen molecules in that water ice would do what Mars' thin atmosphere could not — protect Nikki and her crew from dangerous, cancer-causing solar radiation.

The bad news was they'd used about 80 percent of Starship's remaining water reserves to fill the ice dome. Because they'd landed off course, 12-mile-roundtrip water runs to the cargo ship would now be necessary. The good news was that ship contained about a two-year supply of potable water for six astronauts. With the crew already down by a third, they would have plenty of time to drill for water beneath the surface before running dry.

After entering the airlock, testing the seals and checking the pressure levels with a wand gauge, Pluto smiled and waved his wand at the three women from a little square window on one wall. Jo stepped up the small ramp, pushed a button on the door and it slid open.

Once the airlock shut tight behind them, the four astronauts laughed and embraced as the pressure changed to a human-friendly level and they prepared to enter their new home on Mars.

"Hey, our real estate agent never showed up!" Sunny cracked.

"Yeah, no lawyers either for the closing," Jo added.

"A planet without lawyers," Nikki pondered. "What a delightfully alien concept."

Five seconds later, the airlock's inner door opened automatically and they charged ahead like schoolchildren released for recess.

With inadequate solar power thus far and the nuclear-powered heat field not yet erected, three of the astronauts were wise enough to keep their warm helmets on while celebrating.

But Pluto couldn't help himself.

He reveled in what they had set up despite being down two men. He pointed toward the sun shining through the diamond-ice dome, popped off his helmet and sang with gusto:

" _There is... a dome... on Mars_

They call The Rising Sun..."

The extreme temperature quickly turned Pluto's bluesy vocals into blue lips, so he restored his helmet and rejoined the ladies as they planted their gloves into the frosty ground, and spun into some light-gravity, light-hearted cartwheels.

Concussion syndrome be damned.

It was move-in day on Mars.

### CHAPTER 27

BADGE

July 4, 2023 — Sol 15

Planum Australe, Mars

Appearing on the sat-top which illuminated a makeshift bunk inside an overturned ship on an alien planet, her dad's face was a welcome sight. Roger surprised Nikki even more when he waved her identical twin half-sisters, Kelly and Karla, into the picture.

Strawberry-blonde and freckle-faced, the 10-year-old girls leaned into their father on either side and seemed a little camera shy.

"Hi Nikki," Roger began, his voice cheery and his face possibly flushed from a holiday beer or two. "I made sure to include a couple of your young admirers in this video reply to your message.

"We're so happy and relieved to hear that you and your crew have persisted despite the rough landing and the other challenges," he added, clearly avoiding talk of Xander and Eddy's demise in front of the girls. "Glad to hear that you're transitioning from the ship to living in the dome. Please remember that we're thinking about you all the time and rooting for you here in the old world.

"For extra motivation, you and your crew should know that some detractors — mostly the media, doom-and-gloom talking heads, etc. — have dubbed you guys 'Mars Colony Agatha,' as in Agatha Christie. I'm sure you can figure that out."

Nikki rocked back from the computer screen as she pieced together that bit of news. "Assholes!" she vented.

Her outburst drew the attention of Jo, who had just finished her MRE and was walking past Nikki's cramped sleeping quarters.

"What?" she asked.

"My dad says they're calling us 'Mars Colony Agatha,' as in Agatha Christie... like, 'And Then There Were None.'"

Jo scowled. "Heartless douche bags. Who?"

"Media. Talking heads."

"No respect for the dead or for us," Jo seethed. "If I wasn't a planet away, I'd go hunt them down and kick their asses personally."

Nikki nodded and shushed Jo at the same time.

"Sorry," Jo bit her tongue as they listened to young Karla speak to the camera.

"We were worried about you, Nikki, when Mr. Musk said on the TV that you weren't feeling well."

"Aww," Jo cooed. "Mr. Musk?"

"So formal," Nikki agreed with a grin.

"Like, all my classmates think, like, it's so randomly cool that I know you," Kelly chimed in as Roger smiled and raised his eyebrows next to her. "It seems, like, all the girls in my class, you know, want to be astronauts now."

"What about you, Kel?" Roger asked her.

Kelly appeared hesitant to respond, cracking up Nikki and Jo.

"I think I still want to be a teacher," she finally responded.

Roger nodded on one planet while Jo said, "Good for her," on the other.

"Probably a little safer choice," Roger said, though Nikki — even with the tragedies that already had befallen the crew — wondered if that were true. Thoughts of the Sandy Hook shooting, which claimed the lives of a principal and five teachers along with 20 first-graders, and her own near-fatal experience in high school didn't just exit her brain forever upon her departure from Earth.

"What about you, Karla?" Roger asked the other twin. "Do you know what you want to be?"

"I totally have no idea, dad," she quickly replied. "My father is a brave fire captain and my big sister is a heroic astronaut who made it to Mars. How am I gonna top that?"

Roger laughed as the girl shrugged. Nikki and Jo chuckled, too.

"So cute," Jo whispered while Nikki nodded.

"Before we sign off, we wanted to do a little something special for you and your crew out in the backyard, so follow me," Roger said with a wave of his hand.

Then he grabbed the phone camera and its little tripod, taking Nikki and Jo for a stroll down a hallway, through a screen door and out onto a patio. He placed the tripod on a table and aimed the camera at a telescope that was pointing up toward the clear, dusky Carolina sky.

The girls stood nearby as Roger lined up the telescope and looked through it.

"I'm staring up at you right now, Nikki," her dad said. "The reddest thing in the sky. The color of your crazy hair."

"Very cool," Jo said, putting a hand on Nikki's shoulder.

Nikki smiled with watery eyes.

"Have a look, girls," Roger told the twins.

As they took their turns, Roger picked up his phone and gradually zoomed in on a little red dot of light.

"We're talking with Earth and seeing an image of the planet we're on — how beautifully amazing is that?" Jo mused, her hand over her heart.

Nikki exhaled and tried not to lose it entirely.

"One last Fourth of July surprise for you and the crew, Nik," Roger said, placing the phone camera in its tripod on another table at the edge of the patio, overlooking a lush, sprawling lawn.

"Green grass," Nikki whispered. "I miss grass."

"I miss green of any kind," Jo nodded.

A moment later, the computer screen burst with fireworks on high and the girls' sparklers in the foreground. Nikki and Jo gasped and embraced as they watched.

The colors, sounds and smiles made Nikki feel like a child again, too, back when she was on Earth and her dad was just _her_ dad — and no one else's. Now he was a much better dad, but she had to share him with two girls she barely knew who could sit right next to him, when visitation allowed.

After the fireworks faded and Roger's video message ended with perhaps his first blown kiss to her ever, Nikki suddenly felt lost in the smoke of her jumbled emotions.

Jo eyed her and then crouched beside her. "Are you OK, Red?"

Nikki shrugged. "Sometimes I ask myself, 'how did I end up here?'"

"Ya know, I ask myself that sometimes, too," the pilot replied, struggling to make her voice sound soft. "Sitting in a wrecked-up spaceship waiting for a big lug named Pluto to get the god-damned nuclear heating system to work so we can move into a cramped hab inside an ice bubble on the frozen ass of Mars? With a population of 4? Really?"

Nikki couldn't help but crack a grin at that run-on response.

"Your question is a fair one," Jo continued. "But how we got here doesn't matter anymore. What matters is that _we live_. We owe it to those who sent us here and especially the two guys who no longer have that choice.

"Some people back home are looking up to us and others are literally counting us down to zero. So let's wear that name Agatha _like a badge_ and write our own story."

### CHAPTER 28

### THROWBACK GIRL

**July 7, 2023 — Sol 18**

Planum Australe, Mars

The sun wasn't high enough or reliable enough yet, so getting the mini nuclear fission power system running took priority over setting up a solar array.

A gift from NASA to SpaceX, the unit was portable and had tested well on Earth. But so far on Mars, Pluto and Sunny had struggled to get it fully functional. Three sols and several video exchanges with the Earth geeks later, Pluto scowled from within his helmet at what looked like four flat-headed beach umbrellas sprouting from the Martian surface. They were connected to each other by pipes that funneled into a single pipe, which flowed into a rectangular unit that would send power toward the dome and hab via another single pipe. The system was designed to provide the astronauts with heat and electricity for 10 years, supposedly without threat of a nuclear meltdown and radiation.

"If this turns out to be a NASA prank on Musk, _I'm_ gonna go Chernobyl!" Pluto vowed, referring to the infamous Russian nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986.

"Give it another shot, Jo!" Sunny yelled. "Hopefully it'll complete its self-test this time without shutting itself off."

Jo punched a couple of buttons on the gray central unit and the familiar humming sound resumed. Nikki hoped the hum would last the full 24 hours this time so they could all get on with their lives, fully move out of the discombobulated Starship and into the ice dome/hab for real.

"Nikki, let's get the hell out of here!" Pluto stalked off with a wave. "Maybe if we don't stand here obsessing over it, the damn broke-ass thing will decide to work this time."

Nikki's heart raced as she jogged to catch up with Pluto on his way to the truck. Overhead, the sun hid behind a thick layer of carbon-dioxide clouds.

"Have a safe trip," Nikki heard Jo shout.

Pluto half-rotated on his thick axis and gave her a thumb's up. Then he turned back toward Nikki.

"Are you pumped for this or what?"

"A six-mile spin on Mars? Nah," she deadpanned.

"It'll be nice to see a ship actually upright on this planet for a change," Pluto said as he opened the driver-side door. "And it's a _12-mile_ trip... unless you plan on staying the night."

"Good point," Nikki said while strapping herself in on the passenger side and closing the heavy door. Her eyes scanned the fancy digital dashboard.

When Pluto pushed the green ignition button, the electric/solar-powered space truck barely made a sound. Then he grabbed the wheel and said, "Drive."

And so it did. Pluto quickly spun the truck around to head past the ship and travel east, over mostly smoother terrain than where Starship had landed.

"Are you gonna need a driver's test before you wheel your own off that cargo ship?" Pluto asked Nikki with a big grin.

"I drove quads during training in the Dry Valleys," she replied, referring to a Mars-like place in Antarctica. "What's two more wheels? No driver's licenses here anyway."

"No cops either."

"What can this thing do?" Nikki asked.

"Elon told us to keep it to 25 max on this shitty surface until we build a real road."

"When will that be?"

"You'll be well into your 30s by then, no doubt," Pluto chuckled. "Probably married with children, too."

Nikki scoffed at that with a smile. "Who's gonna marry me? You? The only man in the world?"

Pluto laughed and looked at her too long from behind his bubble.

"Keep your eyes on the road," she said, pointing as a mesa grew larger 30 feet ahead of them. Pluto veered to the left of it and the truck bounced over the lip of a shallow crater.

"Was that a proposal?" he ribbed her.

"Certainly not.... How old are you again?"

"38."

She nodded.

"Not a deal-breaker?" he asked.

"I dated someone about that age," she replied, suddenly wondering what author Bill Oz was up to back on Earth.

"Really? How did that work out?"

The Bridge gala where she and Bill met back in the fall of 2018 flashed through Nikki's brain. Bill sang and played piano. They danced and made out in the ladies' room. Did actress Lena Headey, Queen Cersei of "Game of Thrones," really make a cameo that night or was she really that drunk?

"It was exciting... and crazy... and my mother hated the age gap so she never stopped lecturing me," Nikki said. "I've talked about this guy before... oh, that was with Sunny, before we blasted off."

Then she remembered Hurricane Felicia in Miami, and getting badly injured, and thinking Bill was dead, only to be reunited with him half a world away, in Cape Town.

"I will never have another relationship like _that_ ," she concluded while replaying their breakup at South Pole Station in her mind, which inevitably prompted her to think of the cause: Sam "Snowbow" Archambeau.

"I choose safe relationships now," Nikki added, a bit startled she said that out loud in mixed company.

"Oh... the work-only, astronaut-only, friendship-only type, right?" Pluto asked, more sincere than playful now.

"No... there's definitely a guy I like," she said, enjoying the befuddled look on his face.

"Huh? Where's he at?" Pluto asked, sweeping his glove at the barren landscape outside the vehicle's windshield.

"At the other South Pole," Nikki replied, hooking her thumb backward for effect. In truth, she had no idea which direction Earth was at the moment.

"No shit? Does he know this?"

"He should. I wrote him a letter and told him."

"A letter? Snail mail? From a _millennial?_ Are you some kind of throwback girl?"

"Pluto, I'm on Mars. How can I be a throwback girl?"

He shrugged. "Did he write you an old-fashioned letter back? With a quill and all?"

Nikki laughed. "The postal service doesn't deliver here yet, does it?"

Pluto's eyes bugged out. "Hold up. You sent that poor dude the letter right before you got on the rocket, didn't you?"

Nikki exhaled as Pluto drove them over the crest of a small hill. The standing cargo ship stared back at them — a glinting tower of steel looming over a drab valley.

"There she is," Pluto marveled.

"Amazing," Nikki agreed.

"Now back to my question," the animated driver said.

"OK, yes I did," she acknowledged. "How's that for a safe relationship?"

"Wow. Toss him a love letter and split for Mars. I'm pretty sure that's never been done before in the _history_ of relationships... unless Sunny and Jo did that, too, and they ain't telling me."

"Sam's my favorite person on Earth and I just wanted to let him know that before I left," Nikki said.

Pluto made a raspberry with his lips. "But he never video-messaged you, or you him, since we blasted off last year?"

"No."

"I mean, that would've been one helluva long-distance, star-crossed thang, but..."

"Exactly. The longest-distanced relationship in human history.... I chose Mars, I've stayed focused on Mars... and now I get to ride all over him," Nikki quipped, nodding toward the cargo ship gleaming back at her through the truck's cockpit-style window. Her space truck was in there somewhere.

Pluto smiled as they rolled to a stop. "That's funny. And hot. And sort of ice cold. I think Mars might be the perfect place for you, Red."

"You're so happy I get my own truck, aren't you?" she asked with a grin. "Now you can drive back in peace."

He laughed. "Hey, we gotta charge that thing first and roll it down the ramp. At least the door is where it should be on this one. Then we gotta fill up both trucks with whatever water supplies we can jam in.

"And remember, when you're out here riding all over your new boyfriend, don't tailgate me. We don't wanna go down in history as the first fools to have a fender bender on Mars."

"Got it," Nikki said. "But wait. Before we begin, a question."

"What?"

"Do _you_ want to get married and have children, Pluto?"

He smiled, shook his head and made another raspberry.

"Well let's see. You've got the hots for Mars and Jo likes women, so that leaves Doc as my only option... _if_ Jo doesn't convert her first. Turns out it ain't easy being the only man in the world."

### CHAPTER 29

SPACE TRUCKIN'

July 7, 2023 — Sol 18

Planum Australe, Mars

Unloading the upright cargo ship proved to be a breeze compared to Starship. The freight elevator was intact and had a purpose, for one, and the door at the base of the vessel gave birth to a ramp, both of which were just wide enough to roll the fully assembled truck right onto the Martian surface. It was the same Tesla model pickup but with neon-purple paint this time, drawing cheers from Nikki.

After a few hours hooked up to a portable charging station — time Pluto and Nikki spent conducting an inventory of the ship's reserves, and loading water tanks and other supplies into the bays of the two vehicles — Nikki's head-turning, electric space truck was ready to rumble.

"Elon paints everything else black and white, but the reserve truck is _purple_?" Pluto wondered aloud with arms up in the air.

"You're just jealous. I love it," Nikki said as they both opened their driver doors.

"Hey, black suits me just fine... obviously," Pluto countered, first pointing at himself and then at her. "Remember, no distracted driving and keep it under 25 at all times."

"Yes, dad," Nikki replied.

"I ain't that old," he grimaced.

"You sound old."

Nikki climbed into the truck's beige interior and wished she could get a whiff through her helmet of whatever "new car smell" might be left after a space voyage and a year on Mars. Then she fastened her safety belt, grabbed the smaller-than-average steering wheel, pushed the green ignition button and said, "Drive."

Slowly she bounced westward, the cargo ship retreating in her rearview mirror and Pluto's truck an overly safe 30 feet in front of her. The digital dashboard featured neon green lights, showing her she was driving just 21 mph through the Martian polar dust kicked up by Pluto's tires. Her truck had 184 miles on it, obviously all from testing runs on Earth. Now it was finally doing the job it was designed for, millions of miles away.

"Doesn't this thing play any music?" Nikki wondered out loud.

"Yes it does," a voice answered her, causing her to scream and jump in her seat at the same time. She didn't breathe as she quickly figured out that the voice had sounded an awful lot like Elon Musk.

"Elon?"

"My name is Nole, the palindrome of Elon," the voice replied from the surround-sound speakers.

"O... K," Nikki marveled.

"What is your name?" Nole asked.

"Nikki."

"Nice to meet you, Nikki."

"Strange to meet you, Nole... only on Mars, of course. So this is a talking vehicle?"

"AI."

"Artificial intelligence?"

"Correct."

"Pluto's truck didn't talk."

"A human question is needed to initiate the AI function on this class of vehicles," Nole said. "Also, Pluto is not human. Pluto is a space object in our solar system formerly classified as a planet."

Nikki shook her head in disbelief as she conversed with a computer-voice clone of Elon Musk.

"True, but in this case, it's a tongue-in-cheek nickname for a large human whose real name is Ulysses 'Pluto' Parker. He's our trusty engineer and one of four astronauts currently on Mars."

"Congratulations on reaching your destination, Nikki, and finding me in the cargo ship," the voice said.

"Thank you... I feel like I just let a genie out of the bottle."

Elon's voice laughed, startling Nikki even more.

"You understand jokes?" she asked. "If you can call that one."

"I understand voice inflections that typically articulate humor."

"Oh. You really are... futuristic."

"The year is 2023. Correct?"

"Yes," Nikki confirmed. "Now Nole, can you play me some music because this is a slow and mostly boring ride, except for you."

"Yes I can. Which song would you like to hear?"

"What are my options?"

"Every song ever recorded on Earth," Nole replied.

"Wow. Impressive."

"No songs have been recorded on Mars yet."

"True, though we should really record Pluto's version of 'See You There.' That was... special," Nikki said, struggling to say that last word.

"Why are you sad?"

"How... oh... voice inflection. Got it.... Two of our crew members died because we crash-landed... Commander Xander Vermilyea and Specialist Eddy Etergino. Eddy died on impact and Xander died just hours after we got him to stand up on Mars. He'd suffered brain damage in the crash and we think he died of an aneurysm."

"Thank you for updating me on the status of your crew," Nole said. "My condolences to you and the remaining astronauts."

Nikki nodded quickly, wanting to change the subject.

"Thank you. Music please."

"Which song?"

"I don't know. You choose, Nole. Something upbeat. Something for this very special occasion — my first drive in a space truck on Mars."

"Searching," Nole said. "I found the perfect song."

"You're wicked fast, Nole."

The vehicle's speakers soon erupted with the thick, crunchy guitars of the 1972 classic "Space Truckin'" by the rock band Deep Purple:

" _We had a lot of luck on Venus_

We always had a ball on Mars

We're meeting all the groovy people

We've rocked the Milky Way so far

We danced around with Borealice

We're space truckin' round the stars

Come on Come on Come on

let's go Space Truckin'

Come on Come on Come on

Space Truckin'

Remember when we did the moonshot

And Pony Trekker led the way

We'd move to the Canaveral moon stop

And every naut would dance and sway

We got music in our solar system

We're space truckin' round the stars

Come on Come on Come on

Let's go Space Truckin'

Come on Come on Come on

Space Truckin'

The fireball that we rode was moving

But now we've got a new machine

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah the freaks said

Man those cats can really swing

They got music in their solar system

They've rocked around the Milky Way

They dance around the Borealice

They're Space Truckin' every day

Come on Come on Come on

Let's go Space Truckin'

Come on Come on Come on

Space Truckin'

Nikki approached base with her truck rocking more from the music than the uneven terrain and parked next to Pluto's vehicle. The bug-eyed, drop-jaw looks from Jo and Sunny, and then Pluto, as they surrounded her truck would be something she'd treasure for the rest of her life.

"Park," Nikki told the truck, and then she opened the door.

Just as the guitars were fading, Nikki shouted, "Play that one again, Nole!"

When the song revved up for another go, Nikki laughed and banged her helmet head like she was at a live concert. Her comrades laughed and stared at her in wonder.

"How did you get it to play music? Mine doesn't!" Pluto whined.

Nikki stopped head-banging for a moment and said, "I just asked the truck if it played music and it started talking back to me... in Elon's voice!"

"What?!!" they all screamed as the music blared.

"It's an AI vehicle named Nole — that's Elon spelled backward!" the giddy junior crew member explained.

"Holy shit!" Sunny shook her. "So cool! Take me for a ride in that thing!"

"Let's go!" Nikki shouted as Sunny dashed over to ride shotgun.

"Don't go screwing around like a couple of teenagers and crash it!" Jo warned.

"Yes mom," a grinning Nikki had to say before closing the door, backing up and heading east again.

"She's such a smart ass," Jo said.

"Yeah, she called me 'dad' when I told her to keep it under 25," Pluto scoffed.

"Milennials," Jo snarled before cracking up.

After watching Nikki and Sunny drive off and take the loud music with them, Pluto was relieved to hear the hum of the heating system.

"Still working. Good."

"Yup," Jo confirmed.

"Do you want to see if this one has a Nole in it, too?" Pluto asked, nodding toward the black truck.

"Yup," she echoed with a smile.

"Get in," he said as they both did. "So much for getting any work done."

"All work and no play makes Pluto a dull boy," Jo pointed out.

"Well then Miss 'Shining'... ask it a question," the engineer told Jo after ordering the truck to drive again.

"Can you play us a song?" the pilot asked, full of hope.

"Yes I can," the voice replied to claps from an eager Jo.

Pluto realized it wasn't Elon's voice, however.

"You're not Elon... er... Nole," he said.

"No. My name is Lrac, the palindrome for Carl," the sort-of-familiar voice said.

"Hey, I think I know that voice," Jo nodded with a grin. "Can you say 'billions and billions of stars' for me?"

Pluto laughed. "No shit?"

"Billions and billions of stars," announced the voice of the late astronomer Carl Sagan, who gained fame with his TV show, "Cosmos," back in 1980.

Jo screamed with joy and Pluto applauded, risking no hands on the wheel, even as they bounced over some rocks.

"How bad-ass is that? I'm so glad we got _this_ truck," Jo said. "Those younger girls probably don't even know who Carl Sagan is!"

"Stop making me feel old," Pluto chided her with a big grin. "Let's get Carl... er the mighty Lrac... to play us a tune already!... I've got just the request."

A moment later, they were bopping along on Mars while cosmic-master DJ Carl Sagan — back from the dead and working in space where he always belonged — spun the 1994 gangster-funk classic, "Gin and Juice," by Snoop Doggy Dogg.

It only took a few hooky beats for Pluto to feel young again.

### CHAPTER 30

SUCKER PUNCH

August 14, 2023 — Sol 56

Planum Australe, Mars

With three upstairs bedroom units in the hab and only four astronauts, Jo and Pluto snagged their own rooms, while Nikki and Sunny bunked together.

The hygiene unit — bathroom and shower — also was upstairs. One flight of stairs led to the lower level, which featured a kitchen, common room and library/video room. The arched, white interior walls of all outer rooms offered window views of the dome yard, where the crew could exercise, play 2-on-2 soccer and tend to the 12-by-10-foot hydroponic garden. Edible greens and herbs fed by nutrient-rich water pods — rather than the useless Martian crust — slowly unfurled in the rays of the rising sun.

This small beachhead of life on Mars continued to grow, if only in the tiniest of increments.

After a breakfast of egg tortillas and high-nutrient shakes, Nikki and Sunny got geared up, exited the hab's front door, let the dome airlock do its thing and jumped into the purple space truck. It was their turn to drive out to the valley four miles east and oversee Drill Sergeant's downward joust for liquid water.

The robot did all the work, but one human was needed to turn it on and off, monitor its progress and shut it down in the event of mechanical failure to prevent damage to sensitive and ridiculously expensive parts. The second human was needed because Rule No. 1 among the crew, as handed down by Elon himself, was no astronaut could travel off base alone. Ever.

Though this crew of four liked to clown around, it was one commandment they took seriously.

"Good morning, Nole," Nikki greeted their AI companion as she reversed the truck and steered it toward the east.

"Good morning, Nikki and Sunny," the computer's voice and facial recognition features kicked in.

"Optimal route is displayed," Nole continued, not even drawing a glance from Nikki or Sunny toward the Mars GPS map on the digital screen. They knew the route quite well by now. "The temperature is minus 142 degrees Fahrenheit under partly sunny skies with 20- to 25-mph winds out of the southwest."

"Lovely," Sunny replied.

"There is a 3.2-percent chance of a sandstorm in the late afternoon, according to European Space Agency satellite data," Nole noted.

"I'm kind of surprised we haven't had one yet, aren't you, Nole?" Nikki asked.

"Yes," Elon's voice responded. "However, the threat will grow as we head toward summer. Always remain vigilant."

"Will do, Nole," Nikki said. "I love when you say, 'Always remain vigilant.'"

"Thank you," the voice replied.

"God, are you two _dating_ now?" Sunny asked, more annoyed than her usual playful self.

"What's wrong?" Nikki immediately asked.

"Nothing."

"It's either date Elon's voice or Pluto. Those are my choices on this planet."

Sunny tried to soften her previous tone. "Or Jo."

"I'm still not a lesbian," Nikki said, her eyes more on Sunny now than the road ahead. "And I can tell something is wrong. Just tell me."

"I'll tell you when we get there. I don't trust this thing," Sunny said, referring to Nole. "He'll tell his creator."

Nikki nodded and grew more worried about her doctor's news with each passing bump.

After skirting past a second umbrella-shaped heating system — which had worked better from the start than the one at base — and parking outside the mini ice dome the crew had erected in late July, Nikki and Sunny transitioned through the two-person airlock. Then they took off their helmets and gloves, and sat in a pair of lawn chairs next to Drill Sergeant. Its name coined by Pluto, the robot looked like a mini oil drill, all black and fully automated, with a heated jack-hammering arm that pummeled through layers of permafrost, dirt and rock. At the same time, it delivered a spinning, multi-pronged drill bit of carbon graphene — the strongest, lightest material humans have ever produced.

Drilling eight hours per sol for 24 sols, with only two stoppages to repair or replace parts, Drill Sergeant had managed to penetrate 63 feet into Mars so far. The salty lake was less than 5,000 feet below the whirring drill now, if ESA satellites were to be believed.

But as Nikki punched the orange button next to Drill Sergeant's small digital screen to warm him up for his next shift, her focus was not on some future milestone achievement. Instead, she studied her roommate's fretful face.

"Sunny, please talk to me before I hit the green button on this thing and we have to shout."

Sunny's dark-brown eyes rose to meet Nikki's.

"This is between you and me for now, OK?"

"I swear," Nikki said.

"I've got a lump in my left armpit..."

Nikki's eyes popped open.

"I've been losing weight..."

"Well, the food ain't great."

"Please let me finish," Sunny said, putting up her hand.

Nikki nodded fearfully.

"I'm tired. A lot. That could be the concussion, but the other symptoms definitely mean something else. I mean... night sweats? I never have those normally."

"What are you saying?" Nikki asked.

Sunny gazed up to the ice dome ceiling before locking eyes with her friend again.

"I have Hodgkin's lymphoma," the doctor diagnosed herself.

"What?" Nikki gasped.

"It's true. I confirmed it in the Starship lab two sols ago."

" _That's_ why I couldn't find you that day. Oh Sunny. I'm so sorry," Nikki said as they leaned toward each other for a long embrace. "We'll all be here to take care of you. You'll beat this."

"Thanks," the doctor said, releasing Nikki. "The good news is it's about a 90-percent survival rate."

"Good!" Nikki clapped, trying to keep herself upbeat just as much as the doctor/patient.

"The bad news is I'll have to put myself through chemo..."

"Then I'll cut off my hair to match you," Nikki immediately offered.

"No, I love your hair," Sunny protested. "Jo can cut hers. She keeps it so short already no one will know the difference."

"Dammit. Why does our beautiful, amazing doctor have to get this?" Nikki huffed with arms raised.

"I have no idea. Having been adopted, I don't know if my birth parents in China ever had cancer or not. The risk is higher if it runs in your family."

"Could it be the trip here? The solar radiation?" Nikki theorized.

"It's possible. Who knows?"

"Do we have what you need here to treat it?"

"Of course," Sunny said. "We planned for cancer. It's part of the risk of space travel. I just hope the chemo works. I can't really perform surgery on myself."

Nikki gasped.

"Relax. Jo has some basic medical training from her time in the military," Sunny assured her.

"Surgery?"

"Probably not."

Nikki bit her lower lip and stared at Drill Sergeant's flashing green button, just below the orange button, which was no longer lit.

"When are you going to tell the others?"

"Tonight I suppose," Sunny replied with a sluggish nod.

Nikki hit the flashing button on the robot and soon felt like punching something in rhythm with every loud, downward stroke.

The small digital screen said, "Drill function optimal."

But Nikki didn't like the word _optimal_ right about now.

What if Sunny's condition impaired her ability to treat herself?

What if the cancer spread from her lymphatic system into other parts of her body?

What if Sunny ended up in the other 10 percent?

What if the crew lost its doctor on top of its commander and best mechanic?

Her father's Fourth of July video message suddenly looped through her brain — in particular, the part about the Agatha Christie headline. The words "And Then There Were None" taunted her until she couldn't stare at the word _optimal_ any longer.

Nikki punched Drill Sergeant right in the screen, cracking the plastic shield.

A startled Sunny shifted in her chair.

"Holy shit!" she shouted over the robot, which kept drilling for water as if nothing had happened.

"Sorry," Nikki told her.

"Don't apologize. Maybe I'd do the same thing if you had told me what I just told you."

"I just hate it when bad things happen to good people... and clearly I have some anger issues leftover from Earth.... That's not the first screen I've punched in my life," Nikki declared with an embarrassed look, referring to a tense Skype session with an incarcerated Thomas that caused her to smack a computer a few years back.

"I think I believe that!" the doctor yelled. "Mixed-Martial Jo would be impressed and horrified at the same time. Now apologize to Drill Sergeant. It's not his fault our human weaknesses have followed us to this planet."

Sunny's slight grin meant the world to Nikki at that moment. She wasn't sure she could survive on Mars without her friend's sense of humor.

"Sorry I sucker-punched you, Drill Sergeant," Nikki shouted, adding a salute for effect. "Keep up the optimal fucking work!"

Sunny laughed and repeated that profane praise even louder.

### CHAPTER 31

FOR MARTIANS ONLY

September 22, 2023 — Sol 95

Planum Australe, Mars

They bounced west, two space trucks weaving and wobbling up rough terrain until they parked side by side atop a broad and exposed mesa. Down below, a sea of geysers spouted salty, brackish sand in spider-web patterns all over the glazed polar cap.

This was the true South Pole, shedding more of its white with each passing sol as the late-spring sun climbed in the Martian sky and warmed the CO2 gas until it erupted through vents in the surface, creating thousands of sand sprinklers across the panorama.

Scientists on Earth were aware of them, observed their dark deposits against the ice in blurry satellite images, wrote articles about them and conjured up illustrations from their overactive imaginations.

But Nikki, Sunny, Jo and Pluto just had to step out of their trucks, crunch their black boots to the edge of the overlook and stare west.

This show was reserved for Martians only.

Sunny, bald inside her helmet from chemo but smiling, hugged her crew leader.

"We should come up with a beautiful name for this first national park on Mars," she said.

"Yellowstone on Steroids," deadpanned Jo, bald in solidarity with her ailing doctor.

Pluto, bald from being bald, shook his head.

"It's already called the South Pole."

"Doesn't mean we can't have our own special name for it," Sunny said. "Eddy and Xander are here in spirit on this special first anniversary of our blastoff, so what would they name it?"

"Eddy would look at this and probably call it, 'Assblaster National Park,'" Jo pointed out to nods and chuckles all around.

"Commander 'My Man' Xander — he'd probably go with 'Throttle Up the CO2 National Park,'" Pluto said. "Or maybe, 'Carbon, You Copy National Park.'"

"Nice," Jo said, slapping Pluto on the back. "What about you, Red? You're usually good with words."

Nikki, her long locks restrained in a bun inside her bubble, just shrugged.

"I don't know. These geysers only shoot off in the spring. Maybe we need to do something more permanent to honor Xander and Eddy," she said.

"You're right, Red," Pluto hopped. "I think we need to achieve another of Elon's dreams and establish the first bar on Mars. We can set it up right in the dome yard and name it after our fallen heroes."

"Perfect," Jo agreed.

"I'm all for it," Sunny gave the thumb's up. "Just remember to stay hydrated after any alcoholic consumption. Doctor's orders."

Jo saluted her and Nikki cracked a smile.

"It's about bleeping time this planet had a bar," Nikki said. "My twenties are wasting away here."

"Awww," Jo led the huddle of exaggerated hugs and overdone sympathy for the youngest crew member. Nikki failed to push them away and gave in to laughter.

"Well that settles it, then," Pluto said. "The South Pole stays the South Pole with all of its big, bad, beautiful blowholes, and we're gonna drive back and have our gin and juice tonight at a brand new club called Xander & Eddy's."

"Cheers to that!" Jo shouted, pounding gloves with Pluto, who took a moment to admire his all-female company.

Then he added with a smile, "And for the foreseeable future, every night shall be _ladies_ night."

The applause and shouts of "Oh what a night!" erupted like the geysers all around them.

### PART 3

### ONE YEAR LATER

" _The world weighs on my shoulders_

But what am I to do?

You sometimes drive me crazy

But I worry about you

I know it makes no difference

To what you're going through

But I see the tip of the iceberg

And I worry about you"

— "Distant Early Warning," Rush

### CHAPTER 32

DISTANT EARLY WARNING

September 22, 2024

New York City

Thomas had never been to Times Square before, its jam-packed, horn-blowing, digital-neon sensory overload the polar opposite of his experience beside Nikki in Antarctica.

But now Leslie, his girlfriend of four months, walked alongside him, holding his hand tightly as they slowly cattle-shuffled on 7th Avenue toward 46th Street.

Then Thomas spotted the news crawl on a gigantic screen dwarfed by a huge hotel across the sprawling square. He squeezed Leslie's hand and yanked her sideways, out of the human traffic jam and onto the curb so he could read the full news bulletin.

"Dammit!" Thomas snapped, his eyes still on the screen, hoping it would come around again.

"What are you doing?" asked his shorter girlfriend, her long, fine brown hair blowing around on a gray and blustery early fall day.

"I saw a news flash on that screen over there," he nodded in that direction. "I have to wait and make sure I saw what I think I saw."

Leslie's response was interrupted by people shoving to get into one of the million yellow taxi cabs streaming past them.

A minute or so later, Thomas pointed up.

"There it is... holy shit!"

**FELON PRESUMED ON BOARD SECOND ROCKET TO MARS AFTER BRAZEN HELICOPTER PRISON ESCAPE**.

Leslie read the same words, but her confused face quickly turned back toward Thomas, who now scrolled through his iPhone for the rest of the story. His thumb stopped at the mug shot of a handsome-looking man with perfect hair graying at the sides.

"That's a felon?" Leslie asked over the honking horns.

Rather than answer, Thomas pulled her through the crowd and into a diner, where they found a booth.

"Do you mind?" he asked her.

"Not at all... I need a cup of coffee anyway to keep up with this Manhattan pace and your crazy intrigue," Leslie said with a smirk.

"I'm sorry... it's just... you know I've talked about Nikki and training for Mars with her and all that."

"Oh yes... the one that got away and flew off to Mars."

"Just stop."

"Just kidding," Leslie grinned.

"Well this guy," Thomas continued, pointing to the mug shot on the phone, "he's a fucking piece of shit..."

"Looks sort of hot to me," she interjected with a ball-busting tone.

"Keep it up and you're paying for the coffee," Thomas warned, though there was no waitress near them yet in the long, narrow, semi-filled shop.

"Fine. Go ahead."

"It says here, Dr. Peter van Wooten..."

"Wait. He's a doctor?"

"Should I hook him up with you?"

"Sure," Leslie deadpanned.

"Too late. He's on his way to Mars."

"Damn."

"He's an evil doctor..."

"What is this? James Bond?"

"Might as well be. A helicopter plucks his jump-suited ass off the roof of a South African prison in the middle of the night and then The Bridge rocket blasts off for Mars a few hours later, like, a month before the scheduled liftoff date."

"That sounds better than any Bond movie."

"This is _fucking real_ ," Thomas said. "This actually happened, like earlier today, on the other side of the world."

"I can tell you're all fired up about it, but why?"

"I need to video Nikki and warn her this psycho is on his way to Mars."

Leslie rolled her hazel eyes.

"I'm serious," Thomas insisted.

"So are you asking for my approval to reach out to your ex on another planet?"

Thomas threw his hands up as the waitress finally arrived.

"She's _not my ex_ ," he quickly added with an agitated whisper while leaning across the table.

"Need more time?" the waitress asked with a Jamaican accent.

"No, two coffees," Thomas replied.

"And the apple pie with whipped cream, please," Leslie added. "Looks like we might be here a while."

Thomas grinned and Leslie out-grinned him in return as the waitress departed. They had met on Tinder, but she was different from the rest — not easy in any way. And ever since Dr. Peter had kicked Thomas' ass in that men's room in Hermanus, South Africa, and forced him to rescue Nikki from the shark-infested waters off Dyer Island to reunite former high school shooter with former victim in the most fucked-up of ways, Thomas had gravitated toward a challenge in every facet of his life.

"Continue," Leslie waved him on.

"I just want to warn her."

"That's cool," she suddenly relented. "But why?"

Thomas exhaled.

"Because The Bridge mission is going where Nikki is, where the European rocket is going, where Elon's next ship is going — the lake near the Martian South Pole. It's all about the water, man. And if the evil doctor is on that rocket and they make it there, he's gonna want revenge on Nikki."

"Like... kill her?"

"Maybe."

"Why?"

"We kind of teamed up to get him thrown in prison."

Leslie's face seemed skeptical.

"Are you becoming extra dramatic because we're in New York City, and Broadway is right over there and you're trying to impress me or something?"

Thomas bit his tongue as the waitress delivered the coffees and pie. Leslie smiled at the waitress, who nodded and left again.

"No," Thomas finally replied. "Don't flatter yourself."

Leslie faux-gasped and added cream to her coffee.

Thomas was ready to give her something to gasp about. He lowered his voice.

"We were basically prisoners of The Bridge, OK? They had me jack off into a cup and Dr. van Wooten was planning to IVF-rape Nikki with my kid as a sick fucking science experiment on the trip to Mars. Is that dramatic enough?"

Leslie's eyes popped open mid-sip and stayed that way.

"You're serious?" she asked.

"Dead serious."

"And what am I supposed to do with that way-too-much-information?"

"Nothing. I'm just telling you the truth. I was supposed to go to Mars with Nikki on that Bridge rocket and those psychos thought I hated her enough not to tell her their plans, but I did the right thing. I told her the truth and she stabbed this guy," he said, pointing to the mug shot on his phone again, "right in the ear... _with a shiv I made for her._ She got his phone — they never let us near a phone or a computer the whole time we trained — and then she called the cops. Off he went to prison, him and that other asshole, David. That delayed their Mars mission until now. Originally they were supposed to be first — before SpaceX, even before our Red One rocket went down."

Leslie shook her head and forked into her apple pie, but delayed bringing it to her lips. Thomas watched her attempt to process all of that. Her eyes met his and softened in synch with her lower tone.

"Thomas, you've been honest with me from the start about your crazy life — the high school plot, your time in prison, for God sakes. One reason I trust you is most men I've known were far lest honest with me about far less serious things. I'm glad I've gotten to know you now, not before, and if you want to let Nikki know about the psycho doctor, you should. She's lucky to still have a friend on Earth like you."

***

Nikki's video reply to Thomas' message that night came faster than he expected — within three Earth hours.

Leslie joined him on the bed in their "no sleep 'til Brooklyn" hotel room as he clicked the play button on his phone. Nikki appeared tired but happy to have heard from Thomas despite the news. She sat at a table with a curved white hab wall behind her.

"Thanks for the v-mail, Thomas, and it's so great to hear you've got such a cool girlfriend," Nikki said. "I've known since before we blasted off that this was a possibility. Elon told me in our first conversation after the Red One splashdown. The Bridge never gives up. Willem is so rich and connected, of course he bribed some guards to put his son on the roof and spring him from jail in time for their _real_ launch date. There's still plenty that can go wrong, as our crew knows only too well, but I'm sure Dr. Peter will get here. When he does, I'll do my best to avoid him and hide behind my big buddy, Pluto Parker. What else can I do? Apparently I can't leave all my Earthly baggage behind forever.

"Thanks for having my back and letting me know — both in South Africa and now," she continued with a smile. "You are a true friend, which I still find amazing considering all we've been through. It's almost dark winter here now, just like what we went through at South Pole Station, only much colder. But we're getting by on nuclear heat and stored-up solar power and the occasional drink at our new dome bar.... It's all worth it. In a few months, if all goes well with our drilling robot, we're gonna strike liquid water — a 12-mile reservoir. Our doctor is in remission from cancer, so that's picked up our spirits, too. Then in the spring, we've got two more ships arriving here, not just The Bridge. So I'll focus on the positives and try to forget about you-know-who. Say hi to Leslie for me and I wish you all the best."

Leslie nodded and smiled at Thomas.

"You really are pen pals with a Martian," she said. "Now I'm impressed."

### SIX-AND-A-HALF MONTHS LATER

### CHAPTER 33

WATER AND WINE

April 5, 2025 — Sol 656

Planum Australe, Mars

The normal two-person rotation doubled to four as Drill Sergeant, better late than never, chewed through the final feet of its 0.93-mile marathon.

There had been a total of 37 stoppages for mechanical reasons in the 20-plus months of drilling, most due to drill and heat system failures in the past few months of dark winter, when temperatures plunged to 200 below or worse.

The universe all around them wasn't quite as clear and crisp as it had been for months because the first hint of dawn dulled the darkness. The only nearby illumination of any significance were the four small helmet lights on the astronauts, four headlights on the two space trucks facing toward the mini dome, and Drill Sergeant's Nikki-beaten digital screen.

When "liquid water detected" suddenly flashed on that screen in green letters, Jo was the first to jump and howl in triumph.

"About fucking time!" she screamed.

"Way to go, my mother-fucking Drill Sergeant!" Pluto yelled, pumping his fist and high-fiving the robot's torso — its only limb was still busy boring into the briny lake far below, preserved in a liquid state due to its extremely high salt content.

Nikki and Sunny, both tired and relieved that the endless drilling operation had finally succeeded, simply hugged to mark the moment. They had grown bored of cussing at Drill Sergeant over the weeks, and months, and months. They didn't feel like swearing in victory, too.

"I can't believe it," Nikki said. "Now what?"

"After we celebrate this glorious moment with Earth and each other, we use the pump and tube line from the cargo ship — not our ship — and start bringing this ugly water to the surface," Pluto declared. "Then we run her through the desalination/purifier system and make her taste pretty."

"You sure know how to talk to the ladies, Parker," Jo quipped.

He laughed. "Because I get so much practice here on Mars."

Nikki then pointed to the GoPro fastened to the top of her head, just above her head lamp. The astronauts had shed their helmets, gloves and spacesuits inside the bubble.

"By the way, you do realize that back home they're gonna have to bleep out you and Jo swearing at the top of your lungs at the magical moment we struck water," she told Pluto, who suddenly covered his mouth.

"Oh shit," Jo replied, before biting her tongue. "Oops, I did it again."

"Hey, do they want reality TV or what?" Pluto fired back with a grin. "This shit was a long-ass time coming."

Sunny nodded, almost robotically, with unblinking eyes.

"Fuck yeah it was," she deadpanned.

Nikki laughed and they all crashed into their doctor for a long, celebratory group hug.

They had struck water. Now it was time to pour the wine.

***

Pluto and Jo had plundered more than enough plywood and lumber from the two ships to cobble together a bar and four high stools in the northwestern corner of the ice dome yard, just a stone's throw from the hab. The astronauts had erected a post, made of four 8-foot pieces of lumber nailed together, and adorned it with photos of Xander and Eddy. The surviving crew members each wrote a tribute to their fallen friends in black Sharpies directly on the wood, and Nikki's string of LED holiday lights — which she had packed for the trip to take out each Christmas — now wrapped the post year-round.

The rustic tavern featured no kegs or taps, just nips of liquor and cans of beer the crew had stashed in Starship — essentially a BYOB bar on Mars, but the first and only of its kind for millions of miles. Fortunately, their limited booze reserves were supplemented by a treasure trove of quality South African red wines Elon had stocked in the cargo ship for his first Martians to find.

The bottle the four of them were sharing on this fine evening, a bold and fruity 2017 blend from the fertile Stellenbosch region, reminded Nikki of the glass she had while dining with Dr. Peter van Wooten in Cape Town in 2019. She had rejected his attempt to turn the coerced meeting into a date and likely much more. Things had only soured from that point and now he was on his way to Mars, robbing Nikki of her ability to fully enjoy her glass of wine and this special moment watching Elon talk on Jo's sat-top, atop the bar, surrounded by her crew.

"Congratulations to the four of you... actually the six of you — thank you, Xander and Eddy — for making this historic day possible," Musk began. "Tapping into an underground reservoir of liquid water on Mars has been a dream of mine and so many others for decades. Today, April 5th, 2025, you and Drill Sergeant have made that dream a reality. And because of it, we now have the opportunity to expand our foothold in Planum Australe and even plan future colonies in more hospitable regions north of the polar cap. The crew of Starship 2, still on target for its August landing, also is celebrating your amazing accomplishment and can't wait to 'drink the water.' So thank you for your persistence, skill and determination to get this important goal of the mission completed.

"Also, thank you for the entertaining and profanity-filled video that you sent back to Earth. We will do our best to soften it for our many G-rated viewers who look up to you guys," he added with a big, dimpled grin.

Pluto led the round of laughter and cheerfully refilled everyone's glasses with Elon's wine.

"Cheers," a smiling Nikki said as she clinked her glass with Sunny, who sat next to her and glowed in the soft, multicolored lights. Her fine, dark hair had grown back to shoulder length.

"We did it," the doctor replied.

"Before I sign off," Elon continued, "we here at SpaceX just wanted each of you to take a moment and tell us what this epic achievement means to you. We look forward to viewing your response. Cheers and stay safe."

Jo closed the sat-top and laughed. "Does he really want us to answer that while we're drinking his wine at Xander & Eddy's?"

"What better time?" Pluto replied.

"Truth serum," Sunny raised her glass.

"Then I'll film it and we'll make sure to play it back in the morn...," Nikki caught herself.

"The spring?" Jo jumped.

"You know what I mean," Nikki sighed as she strapped the GoPro to her head. "You're gonna want to double-check it before we send it."

"Check ourselves before we wreck ourselves, you mean," Pluto chimed in.

"Exactly," Nikki said. "I think you're already wrecked, Pluto."

He snorted. "Girl, I can handle my wine. Can you?"

"No... I really can't," she admitted. "Especially on a different planet with an endless night and less gravity. It's very easy to lose count and fall flat on your face."

Sunny clapped. "You'd make a great medical assistant, Nik."

"Nah," Pluto objected. "Red, you should've said, 'Especially with Pluto pouring.'"

They all chuckled.

Nikki stood behind the bar now, her lens trained on Jo.

"Go ahead, fearless leader," she said. "Answer Mr. Musk's question."

Jo smirked at her, took a sip of wine and cleared her throat.

"We found _actual liquid water_ on Mars and can now use it here at Colony Agatha," she began. "It means life — life can spread here. We can begin to transform this planet. It feels amazing to be part of the team, including our water-warrior bot Drill Sergeant, that got this done.... It's another successful milestone on a hard, deadly and beautiful mission to Mars. This was a big reason why we came here, especially to one of the most frigid places on the planet. The ESA told us there was a lake here and after a whole lot of drilling, and fits and starts, we found that son of a bitch."

Jo maintained her serious face for a full beat before cracking up. Everyone else howled with laughter.

"Awesome... to end with son of a bitch like that," Sunny cheered.

"I really thought she was gonna make it without cussing for a second there," Nikki said, laughing and coughing. "Dropped the bomb right at the end."

"That's why we love her," Pluto said, leaning over to wrap Jo in a bear hug on her stool.

"Your turn, Pluto," a smiling Jo ordered him right in his ear.

"OK, OK," he replied, reaching back to the bar for a gulp of wine. "Gotta refuel first though."

"Of course," Nikki said while lining him up with her lens. "Proceed when you're ready."

Pluto sat back down, rubbed his bald head, nodded and grinned.

"Finding water means I'm finally done fixing the damn robot," he said, making them all laugh. "Now we just gotta figure out how to pump that water up to the surface and filter it. Then we gotta harness it."

"So practical, Mr. Engineer," Nikki interjected. "I think the people back home are looking for a more philosophical, big-picture kind of answer."

Pluto shrugged. "Oh... well my mind doesn't really work like that," he replied to more chuckles. "Hmm... finding water means all the other ships coming here are gonna have to pay us to use our water, right? So we need to start working on a Martian currency... and none of that phantom bitcoin shit, either."

"Just... cut," Nikki said as the others laughed. "Have some more wine."

"Thanks, I think I shall," Pluto countered with a bow.

"Next," Nikki said, eyeing Sunny, who smiled and fixed her hair.

"Finding water means we won't be so alone here for much longer," she said. "I love the four of us and it has been special, but the isolation is tough, especially in dark winter. So I'm looking forward to sunlight, of course, and more humanity in this mostly barren place. I'm also eager to hose some of that Martian water into our hydroponic garden soon."

The rest of them nodded and clapped.

"Well said, Doc," Jo noted before going behind the bar to take the GoPro from Nikki and strap it to her own head.

"Go grab a stool, Red. Your turn."

The junior crew member, nearly 28 years old now, took a sip of wine, sat down and cleared her throat.

"Finding water on Mars — wow," she said. "It's surreal, but it is _real_ at the same time. We've lived it. The seasons are twice as long here as Earth, so everything drags on and it's a grind. Drilling for water took 20 months, but the last few felt like forever because of the mechanical problems and the dark and the extreme cold. I just hope now that we've found this life-sustaining resource, that we manage it wisely and figure out how to share it. I don't want this water to become the source of conflict between us and other ships of people still to come. If it does, then all of this will have been a waste. Personally, I don't want Mars to become Earth 2.0."

"Cut... and cheers to that," Jo saluted her with a raised glass.

They all clinked glasses and drank.

"She does have a beautiful mind," Pluto said of Nikki. "Why can't I think like that?"

"Because you're a _doer_ , Pluto," Nikki said, moving over to hug him. "You're exactly what this planet needs and what we need, so thank you."

"Aww, hail Pluto," Sunny toasted.

"Hail Pluto," the other women seconded.

He beamed while they all just stared at him silently for a moment.

"What's the matter?" Pluto asked. "Never seen a black man blush before?"

They all got a hearty laugh out of that one.

Xander and Eddy smiled, too, from their post nearby.

### A MONTH-AND-A-HALF LATER

### CHAPTER 34

FULL MEDICAL DISCLOSURE

May 20, 2025 — Sol 701

Planum Australe, Mars

Nikki and Jo returned to base, their space trucks loaded with jugs of Martian water pumped, desalted and purified at the new pumping station the crew had installed next to Drill Sergeant inside the mini dome. Their speakers were pumping, too, with tunes spun by DJs Nole and Lrac, respectively.

They rolled to a stop near Sunny, dwarfed by the ice dome behind her as she stared off toward the southeast in the seemingly never-ending dawn of late winter. Her gloves remained glued to her space-suited hips in a weirdly defiant pose. Both women slowly emerged from their trucks sensing something wasn't quite right with their doctor.

"Willing the sun to return?" Jo asked her.

Sunny didn't even turn to face her leader.

"What's wrong?" Nikki came right out with it.

Sunny suddenly kicked at the frosty ground and announced, "It's back."

Nikki and Jo both knew what she meant. Cancer. A second time.

"Oh Sunny," Nikki said, offering her a hug.

"I'm fine," she lied, struggling to return the embrace.

Jo continued to give Sunny some space.

"Where?" she asked.

"Both breasts. One medium-sized tumor, one small."

"Fuck!" Jo vented.

"You beat it once, you'll beat it again," Nikki assured her.

Sunny nodded, but her friends weren't convinced she believed that.

"Not so simple as just chemo this time," the doctor said. "I need major surgery. Top and bottom. All of it. Out. Soon."

Jo's jaw dropped, knowing that was way beyond her basic medical abilities.

Nikki's heart stopped at the thought of death — and the only possible way to prevent it; a dilemma likely worse than death. "How fast do you need the surgery?" she asked.

"Yesterday," Sunny quickly replied. "I procrastinated testing the tumors... because I... _suck as a patient_. I can't be both. I'm a _doctor_. My whole purpose is to treat others, not myself."

Nikki exhaled, trying to compartmentalize her jumbled thoughts and emotions.

"I am quite certain a surgeon is on The Bridge ship that is supposed to be here next month," she told Sunny as her guts twisted. "But I _have_ to be honest with you. I know him. He's a capable surgeon, but...," Nikki hesitated, biting her tongue at the words "prison escapee."

"He's not a good person," she finally settled on.

"Why would you tell her that?!" Jo snapped. "She needs hope, not a bucket of shit poured on her right now."

"I know that," Nikki shot back, "but I'm not going to sugar-coat this guy. He's awful. Dr. Peter van Wooten is not to be trusted. You have to start chemo and hold out for the surgeon on the ESA ship in July," she told Sunny.

"What do you mean by awful and how the hell do you know him?" Jo asked Nikki.

"Because I was supposed to be on _his_ rocket... before Red One, before Starship. The Bridge trained me in Antarctica. I don't want to get into all of the gory details, but... he's manipulative at best. At worst, he's held people against their will... and likes to play god."

"What does that mean?" Jo pressed.

Nikki punched one glove into her other, re-enacting her surprise attack — the shiv into Dr. Peter's ear as he lowered his head to examine her while she was in the stirrups.

"He... had planned to impregnate me," she finally revealed.

"What? Rape you?" Jo asked.

"Scientifically... with another crew member's you-know-what."

"Sick!" Jo stomped her boot. "Fuck!"

Sunny threw up her arms and just started walking back toward the dome.

"I'm sorry," Nikki yelled at her back, then started to follow, but Jo held her in place.

"Let her go," she said. "You were right. You had to tell her _that_. Of all the twisted fucking luck — the next surgeon coming here has to be that asshole?"

"It's the most unfair situation possible," Nikki said, fighting tears. "She doesn't deserve this. What are we gonna do?"

"She'll have to train me to do the surgery..."

" _Surgeries_ ," Nikki corrected her.

"You know I'm a fast learner."

"Yes, but it takes people years and years to become surgeons, and you're gonna learn in a couple of sols? A week?... What if she dies? Do you want to live with that for the rest of your life?"

Jo weighed Nikki's questions for a long, agonizing moment.

"And if I do nothing," she said, "I won't be able to live with myself either."

### CHAPTER 35

LIFESAVER

May 21, 2025 — Sol 702

Planum Australe, Mars

Nikki heard the hab door's thud, saw the empty bunk and hoped virtually no time had passed between the two, but she couldn't be certain. She had had trouble getting to sleep and felt disoriented waking up.

But her gut told her to find Sunny _now_.

She suited up as fast as she could, raced across the yard and entered the ice dome's airlock shortly after its exit had resealed. Nikki cursed at the depressurization process to speed up as she secured her helmet. The green light illuminated and the door slid open, revealing a bright, icy fog broken only by something dark, low and to the left.

Nikki lurched in that direction, stumbled over uneven ground and then recoiled for one horrifying second: the dark spot was Sunny's hair, on the ground, unprotected by a helmet. Warning lights flashed on the small digital screens embedded in her spacesuit.

Nikki screamed "Sunny!" while picking her up and dragging her back toward the airlock. Once inside, Nikki laid her friend down as pressurization began. Sunny's face had a grave complexion of pale blue, so Nikki prematurely whipped off her own helmet and began mouth-to-mouth CPR and chest compressions. She sat up for a second to gasp for air, pounded on an alarm button to alert Jo and Pluto in the hab, and resumed CPR.

By the time the inner door to the dome yard opened, Jo and Pluto were galloping toward them holding their helmets and suits.

"What happened?!" Jo shouted.

Nikki pulled Sunny into the yard and laid her down, but then quickly doubled over to catch her own breath.

"She just tried... to kill herself," Nikki managed to cough out.

"Holy shit!" Jo erupted before tossing her equipment to the ground and resuming the CPR efforts Nikki had started.

"I'll get the O2 mask!" Pluto yelled, then took off running back to the hab.

Three minutes later, Sunny's eyes were open, her face was sucking oxygen through the mask and her frozen, seized-up lungs slowly started working again.

Nikki clutched Sunny's icy, ungloved hand and refused to let go.

"You're alive, there's no more dying here," she told her doctor.

"Not on my watch, Susan," Jo agreed, checking a digital body scan device for Sunny's vitals.

Tears formed in the corners of Sunny's eyes as she struggled to make her lips form a word.

"Don't speak," Nikki told her. "We know you didn't mean to do this. We know you're pissed off about the cancer and the lack of quality medical care in this part of the Solar System."

Pluto suddenly choked back a laugh at Nikki's weirdly timed humor, but mostly he seemed in shock. Nikki and Jo had told him everything. He knew why she had tried to take her own life, but it still shook him to the core. He struggled to say anything.

"We're with you, Doc," was all he could manage. "We're with you."

Jo, on the other hand, had plenty to say. "Quitting is too easy, Doc. This is a hard place for hard people. We're gonna heal you the hard way, and you _will_ live to return the favor and be the doctor we all need. Do you understand me?"

Sunny gazed up at her crew leader and nodded, her face a slowly warming mix of shame and regret.

"You're starting chemo today and you'll hold out for the doctor on the Seven Seas. Those are my orders," Jo said, pointing down at her for full effect.

Sunny nodded again, removed the O2 mask with her own hand and managed a raspy, "Sorry."

Her lips trembling, Jo failed to contain her tears at that point.

"You are... forgiven... _barely_ ," she ruled, choking back the sobs the best she could.

Pluto hugged Nikki, who couldn't stifle her own sobs any longer.

"You just saved her life, Red," he whispered in her ear. "I think she just might make it now."

Nikki had to find a way to believe that, too.

### ONE MONTH LATER

### CHAPTER 36

DON'T CALL ME BETTY

June 21, 2025 — Sol 733

Planum Australe, Mars

Jo and Pluto had spied The Bridge rocket's perfect retro-propulsive landing from their perch atop an eastward-facing mesa overlooking the polar plain. The white ship, not as tall as Starship but upright at least, bore navy blue letters, THE BRIDGE, with a sleek logo of navy blue lines: a flat one moving to the right, a second line ascending diagonally to the right and another horizontal line to the right.

The sun finally had cleared the southeastern horizon, adding to the dazzling glare coming off the spaceship now that the landing smoke had been carried off by a gusty Martian wind.

"Should we start driving over there?" Pluto asked Jo, who continued to watch the ship through binoculars in the passenger seat of the black space truck.

"Let them come out and have their moment first," she replied. "They don't need a 30-foot slide like we did, so it shouldn't take too long. I bet they didn't get blasted with one speck of space shit — look how white that ship is. Now they're right on top of the lake and closer to our pumping station than we are."

"Still want to butter 'em up with gifts?" Pluto asked.

"Got no choice. We have to suck up to them to get their doctor to look at Sunny. The chemo ain't working this time. It's making her tired and weak, that's about it."

"Nikki doesn't even want to look that guy in the face and we're gonna ask him to do the surgery?"

"I'll do whatever I have to do to get Sunny cured, OK? If I have to give that doctor a blowjob, I'll do it," Jo told him.

Pluto gagged on his laugh when he saw no sign of humor in her face.

" _No one else_ in my crew is dying," she quickly added.

He nodded silently for a moment. But then he just had to know.

"Have you ever..."

"Of course. Just because I like women doesn't mean I've never given a blowjob. I was a _woman_ in the _Air Force_ for Christ sake... _way before_ the #MeToo movement."

Pluto let it go at that.

"Here they come," Jo declared, looking through the binoculars again. "Door just slid open and the steps are out. _The way it's supposed to be_."

"We had more fun though... with the flips and all," Pluto pointed out.

Jo lowered her binoculars and wasn't amused.

"Wasn't a whole lotta fun for Xander and Eddy though, was it?"

Pluto bit down hard on his tongue before it did any more damage and picked up his own binoculars to have a look. A moment later, the fashion show disaster began — six astronauts of very extreme sizes emerged wearing navy blue spacesuits and neon-orange helmets.

Jo and Pluto both laughed as The Bridge crew set foot on Mars and danced around in celebration.

"One of the butt-ugliest color clashes I've ever seen," Jo cackled.

"Let's put that on Instagram," Pluto howled. "What is this, Halloween? They're clearly trying to scare us away... just hideous and ridiculous."

"Now we have to go meet these foreign loons... and somehow not make fun of them to their faces," Jo said. "Drive."

"OK, but we might have to drop the visors when we get close," Pluto quipped as he backed up the truck and spun its six tires toward a rendezvous with six strangers.

The population on Mars had just jumped from four to ten, but Jo's mind agonized over the very real chance that it may not stay at double digits for long if this next encounter didn't go well.

***

The six gleeful Bridge crew members were shooting video and planting the Dutch, German and South African flags in triangular formation within 30 feet of their ship when Pluto and Jo rolled to a stop nearby.

The Americans emerged from their space truck bearing planet-warming gifts — a crate toting six large bottles of treated Martian water in Pluto's gloved hands and a basket of hydroponically grown potatoes, vegetables and herbs cradled in Jo's suited arms.

"Welcome to Mars," Jo declared as the six blue-and-orange life forms soon swarmed around them.

"Thank you and hello," the tallest man said with a South African accent.

"Well, it's great to be here finally," added the slightly shorter, older man next to him.

"We brought you some locally harvested Martian water and produce to help get you started," Pluto told them with a big grin as he and Jo placed the gifts next to the three flags and began shaking their gloved hands.

"Oh danka," a German-sounding man replied.

"Freshly pumped water from the lake a mile below your feet and filtered at our station less than a mile from here," Pluto noted, pointing further east and realizing too late he probably should've converted those measurements into kilometers for the foreigners. "Tastes better than Florida water at least."

Jo and Pluto then introduced themselves and learned The Bridge crew was comprised of four men and two women: Bern, the German mission commander; Anders, the Dutch pilot; Peter van Wooten, the South African doctor who acted more like the real leader of the group; Carice, a South African woman whose role was unclear; Willem van Wooten, Peter's elderly father, and Ina van Wooten, Peter's elderly mother, who seemed about a foot shorter than the rest of the taller-than-average group.

Jo, who had the stocky Ina by a few inches, marveled that two people clearly in their 70s had made the long voyage.

"You and Willem must be in great shape," she told Ina.

"Ja," the German-born woman replied in a gruff voice. "We had the most years to train for this so we better be."

Jo and Pluto laughed.

"Where is the rest of your crew?" Willem asked, sounding more Dutch than German.

"Nikki is back at our base looking after Susan, our doctor," Jo replied. "She is not doing well. And I'm sure you've heard we lost our other two crew members two years ago."

"Yes, our sincere condolences for those men," Peter said. "But now your doctor is ill?"

"Yes," Pluto said.

"She has cancer," Jo added. "For the second time... and it's worse."

"How are you treating her?" the doctor asked, visibly concerned.

"Chemotherapy... but she really needs surgery to remove a tumor in each breast," Jo said.

"Well I'm a surgeon and I'd be happy to examine her if you'll drive me to your base in your fancy truck there," Peter said with a nod.

"Are you sure you don't want to celebrate some more or get your hab set up first?" Jo asked.

"We'll start setting up later.... Carice is a nurse," he said, gesturing toward the tall South African woman, "so she and I will come, and the other four can keep having fun."

"That would be huge, thanks," Jo said with a smile.

"You three can squeeze in the front and I'll bump along in the back," Pluto told them.

"We'll catch up with the rest of you later then, and congratulations Colony Bridge... you're all invited to our fancy ice dome — it's heated inside with plenty of room to take off your gear and move around," Jo declared before climbing into the driver's seat.

"It even has a bar!" Pluto added, winning applause from the smiling foreigners.

Moments later, Lrac was spinning tunes and impressing the new Martians as Jo ferried them west toward Colony Agatha.

***

When Peter and Carice removed their helmets inside the dome yard, Jo and Pluto exchanged loaded glances — the South African Ken and Barbie had just invaded Mars.

"Anyone ever tell you that you look like Charlize Theron," Jo gushed at Carice as they strolled toward the hab.

She laughed. "I get that a lot, but at the prison where I used to work I always tried to go more with her scary, no-makeup look from the movie, 'Monster.'"

"I saw that film," Pluto chimed in. "She teamed up with that girl from 'The Addams Family.'"

"Yes... Christina Ricci," Jo added. "Loved it. But _you_ worked in a _prison_?"

"I did," Carice said, her blue eyes gazing down at least half a foot at Jo. "Have you heard much about our infamous mission yet?"

They all halted outside the front door of the hab now to address the elephant in the dome.

"Some," Jo sandbagged.

Carice deferred to Peter for further explanation.

"I had some trouble with the law back on Earth," the doctor acknowledged, his tone a weird blend of charm and pride given the topic. "Spent some time in prison, but that's where I met this wonderful prison nurse."

Carice grinned and Pluto's eyes popped open.

"She aided me in my escape — though my father did arrange the helicopter — and in return we gave her a lift to Mars," Peter said with a sparkle in his eye.

"Wow," Jo nodded with raised eyebrows.

Pluto was still processing.

"I was ready for a change," Carice said. "I certainly haven't been disappointed so far."

Peter winked at her. "A wonderful new start indeed... but we just wanted to be forthright with you about our background before we have a look at your doctor."

Jo nodded, wondering how Nikki was going to handle this.

Pluto opened the front door and said, "We appreciate that. If you can help Dr. Wilkes, we'll definitely be positive character witnesses for you if the fuzz ever catches up with you here."

Peter smiled and Carice repeated his words, "the fuzz," with a chuckle.

"We'll do everything we can to get her back to health," Peter said, stepping into the hab and glancing around. "Cozy place you've got here."

"Thanks.... she's upstairs and to the right," Jo said loudly, as if to warn Nikki, who was sitting bunk-side to the bedridden Sunny.

Nikki's ears burned with the sound of Peter's voice and her stomach churned as she watched Sunny sleep. She had thought she was done with Peter forever not so long ago, but not even Mars was far away enough anymore.

Jo and Peter appeared first at the entrance to Nikki and Sunny's room. Pluto and a strange, beautiful woman stood behind them. This was going to be one crowded encounter, and Nikki felt trapped, claustrophobic and uncomfortable as Peter, dressed in a navy-blue spacesuit with the stupid Star Trek knockoff logo on his chest, stared at her — the woman who had helped put him behind bars.

"Nikki," he said. "Good to see you again."

She struggled to meet his gaze because if he flashed her that creepy trademark wink of his, she knew she'd blitz across the room and punch him, destroying any chance of healing Sunny.

"She needs your help," Nikki managed to tell him through gritted teeth. "I'll let you be the doctor she _needs_."

Peter nodded as Nikki stood up, whispered an aside to Jo — "Will you stay?" — and quickly exited the room without making further eye contact with anyone.

Pluto followed her downstairs and out into the yard.

"I just _can't_... be around that _creep_ ," she vented, walking toward the garden as the sun filtered through the lowest, roundest level of the dome.

"He seems like he's willing to help," Pluto said.

"For a price to be named later, I'm sure."

"Hey, if he can heal Doc, what's that worth?" he countered, slowing Nikki down.

"I have no choice but to agree," she said, turning to face him. "This is about Sunny. Not me. I've gotta get over my history with him. I get it."

"We won't let him be alone with you," Pluto assured her.

"Good," she said, finally exhaling. "What's with blondie?"

Pluto couldn't fight his grin but remained silent.

"What? Is she his wife?" Nikki persisted.

"Prison nurse," he replied, letting his smile spread fully now.

"That's funny?"

"Sorry, but you can't even make this shit up. She helped Peter bounce from prison in return for a lift to Mars.... But I'm pretty-ass sure from the vibe I'm picking up between them that the whole thang comes with benefits, too. A real interplanetary prison love song."

Nikki made a gagging sound while choking herself.

"Did you meet the rest of their crew?" she asked, scowling. "Please tell me there was no one named _David_ or _Virgil_ ," she added, referring to two other Bridge nemeses from her past.

"No... they're all foreigners, but two of them are really old... yeah, Peter's parents actually," Pluto said.

Nikki gasped. "Are you shitting me?! Willem and Sea Hag got on that rocket and flew here, too?!!"

Pluto snorted. "Sea Hag?!"

"Yes, have you seen her without a helmet yet?"

"Not yet."

"Just wait for it then and you'll turn to stone."

"That's Medusa."

"Sea Hag's worse. She pushed me off a moving boat into shark-infested waters once and laughed about it," Nikki fumed. "And Willem is the rich patriarch of their whole fucked-up operation. He trained us at South Pole Station, but before that, at McMurdo, he handed a loaded gun to Thomas — the kid I told you about — and gave him the option to blow us both away."

Pluto shook his head. "Well, I'm glad he didn't.... The life you've lived, girl."

"And now I've survived all of that, _plus two years on Mars_ , only to have to deal with Peter, Willem and Sea Hag all over again?! What did I ever do to deserve this bullshit?" Nikki ranted, wringing her hands toward the dome ceiling.

"I feel you," Pluto said, "I really do."

"Now I actually have to root for Peter to succeed with Sunny and then owe him, right?"

"Yup," Pluto nodded.

"I don't even want to think about what that would involve," she said. "Not to mention he already owes me something for getting him thrown in prison. I'm not sure I can ever be around him... or Ina... or Willem. They all probably want to stab my spacesuit full of holes."

Pluto didn't know what to say, but a lyric suddenly popped into his head.

"Just say, 'If you'll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal," he began to sing.

"You're gonna sing at a time like this?" Nikki asked incredulously.

"What else can you do when things are this fucked up?" Pluto retorted before resuming the song. "I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me, you can call me Al..."

"I'm in no mood for a Paul Simon song, or any song, right now."

"I know, but I will be your bodyguard if that's what you need, girl," Pluto told her.

She looked up at him and felt grateful he had her back.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," he replied, extending his arms to offer her a hug. "You look like you could use one... _Betty_."

She frowned but returned the hug. "Don't call me Betty, _Al_."

"Never again," he whispered in her ear. "I don't think they make Bettys with two-toned hair anyway."

### CHAPTER 37

SEA HAG'S SECRET

June 24, 2025 — Sol 736

Planum Australe, Mars

Dr. Peter and his accomplice/nurse performed the necessary surgeries to remove Sunny's tumors and improve her chances of survival. They did the operations in the medical lab aboard The Bridge ship with Jo and Pluto taking shifts to observe per Nikki's insistence.

Peter called the surgeries a success, but cautioned that chemo would still be necessary and only time would tell regarding Sunny's fate.

Jo and Pluto thanked Peter, Carice and their crew for their efforts, and offered full use of the water station, help setting up their hab and a "gathering of gratitude" that evening at Xander and Eddy's.

The Bridge crew accepted while Nikki gnashed her teeth in her bunk. She simply could not smile and play along with all of this inter-crew cooperation without having a clearing-the-air sit-down with Peter, Willem and the Sea Hag.

Pluto, who seemed to hit it off quite well with Sea Hag in particular over the last couple of sols, set up the meeting for that afternoon, in the dome yard, on four bar stools near the garden. Pluto acted as chaperone/referee/bouncer.

Peter and his parents filed in from the air lock, shed their garish helmets and suits, and took their places on the stools wearing powder-blue jumpsuits. Sea Hag's grizzled face evinced a mixture of annoyance and wise-ass per usual. Peter and Willem both seemed more amused by the whole intervention.

"Thank you for coming to our lair," Pluto said. "I know it's early, but if any of you need a drink, I can open the bar early."

"Thank you," Willem said. "We might, but let's see how it goes."

"Indeed. Thanks, Pluto," Peter added while eyeing Nikki, who seemed visibly frazzled and initially reluctant to make eye contact with any of them, until her and Ina exchanged nasty looks and held them for an uncomfortable moment.

"Please say what is on your mind, Ina," Nikki began, gesturing toward the 74-year-old woman. "My hope is we can leave our Earthly baggage behind today and move on, so no one has to look over their shoulders."

Ina scowled. "Easy for you to say, ja?"

Nikki paused to let her expound on that.

"You called the po-leece on my son," she charged.

"I did."

"After all we did to train you for this..."

"I appreciate the fact that I would not be here without The Bridge recruiting me and training me," Nikki said, now studying Ina, Peter and Willem in turn. "What I don't appreciate is the fact that you and your organization have lied, manipulated, abducted and nearly impregnated people, including myself, to get what you want."

Peter raised his hand to slow her down. Nikki nodded toward him.

"I've always liked you, Nikki... that's why I endorsed your selection for our Mars program in the first place," he said.

"You liked me a little _too much_ ," she countered.

"OK, perhaps I crossed the line forcing the reconnection between you and Thomas, _the boy who shot you_ ," Peter said, the last five words in creepy mode, causing Nikki to roll her eyes and shake her head.

"Who gave you the right to play god?" she asked. "You even call the top level of your Bridge centers the God Complex — just so sick and brazen about all of it.... So yes, damn right I fought back and did what I had to do to get you thrown in prison, _where you still belong_."

"This _former_ prisoner probably just saved your doctor's life," Willem pointed out.

"I know that," Nikki snapped. "I hate you and I thank you at the same time — another impossible situation sponsored by The Bridge. Thomas and I are friends now. I hated you for bringing us back to together near Dyer Island, but now I'm thankful for how far we've come. Feel free to blame Thomas for your time in prison, too. He was the one who told me all about your grand plan for us."

"Have I blamed anyone for my time in prison?" Peter countered, glancing all around with his surgical hands in the air. "This is the first time we've talked since my arrest..."

"Your mother just blamed me," Nikki pointed out.

"As any mother would do in defense of her son," he said. "My point is I have no regrets about prison. No, I didn't like it at first, but then I met a wonderful woman there..."

"Who committed a crime to help spring you out. You _are_ a perfect couple. Congratulations," Nikki said with a fake smile.

"Just for all of this sass, ya, I'm not gonna tell you sum-tin that I know!" Sea Hag barked, pointing a pudgy finger at her.

Nikki just stared back at her for a moment.

"OK...," she shrugged, trying to decipher the old woman's almost playful look, which definitely did not match her words or her tone. _Strange, even for Sea Hag_ , Nikki thought. "I already know you know how to ambush a woman from behind and push her off a moving boat... after you ladled fish guts into the ocean to draw sharks. Pretty hard to top that."

"Uh, she's just so nasty," Ina scowled at her grinning son now. "How could you ever like _her?_ "

"We were a little rough on her, ma," the doctor acknowledged.

Nikki nearly fell off her stool at the quasi-admission. "Just a _little_ ," she coughed.

"But don't forget, all of that helped prepare you for what my father had in store for you in Antarctica," Peter told Nikki.

Willem smirked and shook his head.

"Eh, she was weak when I got her, but I made her into something — she's here, isn't she?" the old man observed with a self-congratulatory nod.

Nikki gasped. "You people really are unbelievable.... Pluto, I've only survived for two years on Mars because of these heroes right here," she yelled to him as he paced near the memorial post to Xander and Eddy.

Pluto looked a little confused, but smiled and stepped closer to them.

"Well thank y'all for that," he told the foreigners.

"I was being _facetious_ ," Nikki chided him.

"Oh, my bad... and just when I thought y'all were making progress in your peace talks," Pluto said.

"What on Mars gave you that idea?" Nikki asked.

"Well, Ina had a little smile on her face for a second there."

"That's because she was reminiscing about watching me swim for the boat while they pulled away," Nikki said.

"Nope, that wasn't it," Pluto replied, putting a hand on her shoulder now.

Nikki couldn't read his face and was thrown by his certain tone.

"What?" she asked Pluto.

"No, no, I'm not gonna tell her now," Ina informed Pluto. "She's just awful and not good enough for him."

Now Nikki threw her hands up. "What the hell are you people talking about? Good enough for who?"

Then it was cranky old Willem van Wooten, of all people, who provided Nikki with the most pleasantly shocking revelation of her life.

"Snowbow is coming to Mars," he said of his former jack-of-all-trades "winter polie" at South Pole Station.

Sea Hag smacked her husband's arm for revealing the secret and Pluto clapped as Nikki's jaw dropped. Her heart quickly melted the ice bubble above her head and soared into the thin Martian air.

"I guess he got your snail-mail letter after all," Pluto declared while shaking his stunned comrade by her shoulders. "Boy meets girl, girl rockets off to Mars, boy be trippin' there, too. Now that's a space odyssey love story _for the ages_ , girl. And if that boy ever drops down to one knee in the Martian frost, you know you better say yes!"

Nikki barely heard anything Pluto blathered on about, but everyone was smiling, including her, and that was decidedly _not_ how she expected this mega-awkward summit would end up.

Only Sam "Snowbow" Archambeau could have pulled off that feat — and he hadn't even set foot on Mars yet.

### CHAPTER 38

PRESCRIPTION LAUGHTER

July 15, 2025 — Sol 757

Planum Australe, Mars

Sunny had become strong enough now to sit up in her bunk and refuse any more painkillers, but looking Nikki and Jo in the eyes still proved too tough.

"I'm ashamed I was ready to quit on you," she admitted, running her right hand over her bald head. "I wasn't thinking straight and..."

"Sun, please don't apologize," Jo cut her off.

Nikki quickly added, "I had just given you no hope when I told you what I knew about the only doctor who could save you."

"Well, _you_ saved me first, Nikki, so... thank you."

Nikki held Sunny's hand. "You're welcome. You would've done the same for me if the roles were reversed."

"I'm not so sure... I'm a heavy sleeper compared to you," she said with a grin. "I do have to say Dr. Peter has been nothing but professional... even nice to me."

Sunny finally looked up and made eye contact with Nikki, who smiled and shook her head at the same time.

"I know. He _can_ be charming," Nikki said. "He also can be a snake. Maybe he's nicer to fellow doctors. Maybe he achieved his goal of reaching Mars and doesn't need to be a manipulative asshole as much anymore."

"Maybe his hot girlfriend cured him," Jo theorized with a gleam in her eyes.

Sunny made eye contact with her crew leader now. _More progress_.

"Maybe you like her, too," she deadpanned as Nikki cracked up and Jo gasped.

_Huge progress_ , Nikki thought as she squeezed Sunny's hand now. She so missed her friend's sense of humor.

"I'll admit it. I've thought about trying to steal her away from him," Jo said with one eyebrow raised, riling up Nikki and Sunny further. "But I don't want to compromise the medical care you've been getting from Dr. Peter."

"How thoughtful of you," Nikki said with a grin.

"Yes, please wait another three sols, at least until the Seven Seas arrives," Sunny requested while noticing Nikki's smile become permanent. "Look at you," she told her. "I've never seen you in love before. It's adorable."

"Just stop," Nikki blushed. "Let him land safely and actually show up first before you start on me. Knowing these Bridge people, they're just pulling an evil prank on me that he's coming here."

"They really know him?" Jo asked.

"Yes. Willem and Sea Hag..."

"Does she know you call her that?" Sunny asked.

"Probably. She deserves it. Anyway, they kind of ran things down at South Pole Station and Sam..."

"Say 'Snowbow'... I like that better," Jo said.

"Fine. _Snowbow_ did a lot of the dirty work down there," Nikki said. "He used to winter-over at the South Pole every year. I assume he's been training with the ESA crew since I left. Maybe Willem put in a good word for him with all of his National Science Foundation contacts.... Oh my God, and Sea Hag used to cut Snowbow's hair while he sat outside, _in a lawn chair_ , right next to the barbershop pole they have at the actual South Pole."

Sunny and Jo laughed.

"Wow. He does sound like a character," Sunny said.

"Yes, he's the life of the party wherever he goes," Nikki said. "He gets along with everybody... even Sea Hag."

"Seems like you still have strong feelings for him, even after all this time... _and space_ ," Sunny noted with a little mischief on her face for the first time in eons.

Nikki relished that while exhaling and pondering a potential love life she thought was long dead.

"I've definitely missed his presence," she said. "I'm looking forward to seeing him... but who knows how it will go until he gets here?"

"You're really doing your best to downplay this, aren't you?" Jo teased her with a grin.

Nikki smirked. "Maybe I am."

"Well one thing's for sure, your best options for bridesmaids are right here in this room," Sunny quipped.

Nikki gasped and shook her head. "Not if you keep this up!" she playfully snapped with a quick pinch of Sunny's arm. "I'll just go with Sea Hag and Prison Barbie _if I must._ "

The spasms of loud laughter were painful for Sunny's stitched-up wounds, but the doctor decided she needed to prescribe herself much more of it going forward.

### CHAPTER 39

THE PERFECT SANDSTORM

July 18, 2025 — Sol 760

Planum Australe, Mars

Unlike The Bridge ship's arrival, Nikki made sure to drive east for the Seven Seas landing.

The "Seven Seas" was just a fancy variation of the European Space Agency's intended theme of The Seven Cs, as in the seven continents of Earth. One crew member hailed from each of five continents and Sam filled the dual role of representing America, because he was a native of Colorado, and Antarctica, where he spent nearly a dozen of his 36 years working at South Pole Station. No one was a native of Antarctica, but he certainly could claim being one of the closest people to it.

The ESA's orbiting satellite was the first to discover the lake beneath Planum Australe in 2018, and seven years later, the ESA became the bronze medalist to reach Mars. All that remained was to stick the landing, the most dangerous part, as Nikki knew only too well.

Her heart raced as her brain replayed jarring flashbacks of Starship's violent plunge from orbit to catastrophe.

Nikki gazed skyward into the reddish haze, and prayed for a kinder fate for Snowbow and his crew. _Did he really come all this way for her?_ He had such an adventurous spirit that she couldn't be totally sure. None of that mattered in this moment. A safe landing was everything.

The Seven Seas roared overhead, its retro-burn flame growing larger by the minute. Nikki and Sunny stared from in front of the purple truck, and Jo and Pluto leaned against the black truck on a prominent mesa. The planned landing zone was northeast of Colony Agatha and north of Colony Bridge. If the ship hit its target, it too would be on top of the lake bed, leaving only Starship off the mark.

Two minutes later, the towering white ship — with SEVEN SEAS painted vertically in ocean-blue letters trailing down toward colorful flags of numerous nations ringing the circumference just above the landing fins — slowed and steadied itself, smoking Mars until its surface disappeared outward in every direction.

Would the Seven Seas find a smooth spot to gain purchase or topple into the thickening smoke, leaving Nikki's heart to crash and explode with it?

Despite her limited stamina, Sunny found the strength to remain standing next to Nikki and hugged her tightly. Nikki embraced Sunny as if she were trying to prevent the Seven Seas from tipping over at the same time. Jo and Pluto kept glancing back and forth between the descending ship and Nikki's reaction.

The landing seemed right on target, the ship was perfectly vertical, and seconds later, its downward motion came to an abrupt and rigid stop. Nikki's heart stopped with it, bracing for the worst, but that didn't happen. The smoke began to clear and her friends began to cheer.

_Snowbow is here!_ Nikki gushed, and smiled, and jumped into the space truck as Sunny clapped, Pluto yelled and Jo teased.

Nikki didn't hear a thing but her memories of the sound of Sam's voice, singing "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles and "Rainbow in the Dark" by Dio as they celebrated the first ember of sunrise together at South Pole Station after six months of darkness.

She ordered Nole to play that unlikely combo of tunes on a drive to the landing zone that threatened to exceed the Elon-imposed speed limit.

Nikki no longer seemed afraid of the dangers that love could hurtle her way.

***

Ten astronauts watched the closed door of the Seven Seas like they were waiting for relatives at an airport, but Nikki stood furthest away, leaning against her space truck and trying to act cool. All that was missing was a boom box stereo blasting Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" a la John Cusack in the 1989 movie, "Say Anything."

When the door finally slid open and the six crew members shuffled down the steps — dressed in sensible white spacesuits with blue trim and blue helmets — Nikki had no trouble figuring out which one was Sam.

He, of course, attempted a cartwheel in his first contact with Martian soil — a bad one, partially due to a clunkier suit design than the Space X version — but Nikki knew in her heart Snowbow must've watched video of her cartwheel off Starship and down the slide, so this clearly was his tip-of-the-boots tribute to her.

She smiled and remained frozen to the space truck, just taking it all in, waiting patiently for that one ray of sunshine to find her on this cloudy, murky early spring day.

A moment of immeasurable time passed before they locked helmets amid the chaotic celebrating, hugging and back slapping, but she was too far away to see his eyes, to read his expression.

Then Sam started running toward her and she opened her arms wide.

"There's my Nikki!" he shouted before he reached her.

Finally she stepped forward and met his embrace — a beautiful collision that sent her spinning in his arms until Mars disappeared and Earth returned. Past, present and future, time and space, love and loss, life and death — all of it erupted and contracted in that instant.

"You found me, Sam," she told him as her boots returned to Mars and their eyes held each other in a paralysis of infinite wonder. "Get in the truck," she heard herself say.

He smiled through his bubble helmet like he had just arrived home despite a million-mile journey into the unknown.

A moment later, Nikki abducted Sam from his crew, from his Martian celebration, in a truck with six tires, spinning away from the Seven Seas.

Nikki gripped the wheel with her left hand and Sam's gloved hand even tighter with her right. Then she asked him, "Are you thirsty?"

"Yes," he laughed. "Thirsty to see you out of that bubble so I can kiss you."

"Good," she said, her eyes fixed on his. "I've got just the place."

***

After they passed through the airlock attached to the water station dome, Snowbow marveled at a yard about half the size of the one at Colony Agatha, but it seemed big to him because he hadn't seen that one yet. There was a primary water-pumping robot with tubes connected to two large white holding tanks, and another several feet of tubes feeding a desalination robot that dumped potable water into a rectangular tub. Parallel to that system was a smaller backup version of the same thing, but only half of it was constructed. Parts, pieces and boxes lay nearby.

Nikki walked around all of that and patted her favorite robot at the far end of the dome.

"This is Drill Sergeant," she told Sam before they both removed their helmets and smiled lustily at each other. "He took his sweet old time, but he finally struck water."

"Nice to meet you, Drill Sergeant," Sam said with a bow before beginning to remove his spacesuit.

Nikki matched him.

When they were both down to their jumpsuits, Sam pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket, slowly unfolded it and cleared his throat.

"Shall I read this?" he asked, grinning at her.

"Not really necessary," Nikki blushed while sizing him up. He definitely looked more handsome a few years older, and even better without the marginally kept beard he had in Antarctica.

"Let me be frank..."

"No, I don't like Frank," she cut him off. "I like _Sam_."

He squinted, his face over-the-top bewildered, making her laugh.

" _Like_ Sam?" he scoffed. "That's not what it says here," he added, pointing to the letter and pouncing like a prosecutor.

"What's the date on that thing?" she asked, hands on hips.

"September 8th, 2022," he read.

"Wow," she replied, tilting her head. "That's a really long time ago."

"Well, it took considerable time to find a ride and come all the way to Mars to call your bluff, Nicole Janicek."

"So formal.... So call my bluff, Sam Archambeau."

"Do you really _love_ me or is this the cruelest prank in the history of the human race... quite likely the history of the universe?" he asked.

"Kiss me and see if I slap you," she challenged him.

"One last test, eh?"

"Stop talking!"

Finally, he did.

Then they took all the time they needed to close space and connect on Mars like they had never done on Earth.

After that critical thirst was quenched and they celebrated with a cupful of Martian water from the big tub, Nikki finally pulled her eyes away from Sam's and noticed the quickly dimming sky enveloping the ice dome. A sensor suddenly started beeping on the spacesuit she had tossed in a heap next to Drill Sergeant.

"Are we in trouble?" Sam asked, still naked.

Nikki ignored the question and stooped down to check the small screen on her suit. "It's the space truck alerting me that there's a sandstorm approaching."

"No shit?"

"Good thing you guys landed when you did," she said, standing back up.

"Do you know how long the storm is expected to last?" he asked.

"Yes... long enough."

Nikki held her mischievous stare and loaded smile long enough, too, that Sam didn't need to be told to stop talking a second time.

***

After the storm passed and they had geared back up, Nikki drove Sam west to the true South Pole, where the jets of CO2 gas burst through the ice by the thousands under a spring sun unobscured by sand and clouds.

They held gloved hands while gazing down from an overlook about 50 feet above one of the plumes. Some of its jettisoned fragments pelted the undercarriage of the rock upon which they stood.

"Yeah, this is a postcard," Snowbow said with a big smile.

"I thought you might like it," Nikki said, looking up at him through her bubble helmet, through his bubble helmet. She already missed the more intimate confines of the water station. "I always enjoy remembering when you showed me the sastrugi at the South Pole on Earth. All those layers of snow and ice carved into amazing patterns, like sculptures that no human could possibly create."

"So unforgettably unique... just like this," Sam said, sweeping his glove toward the blasts going off as far as the eye could see. "It's like Mars is the whale. We've traveled all this way through time and space, and we've done it — we've jumped the shark, landed on the whale and here are the blowholes."

Nikki laughed. "Your sense of poetry could use some work."

Sam nodded and happily met her stare. "I've always been better with my hands than my mind."

"I'll certainly vouch for that," she said, smiling. "So what now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you called my bluff, found me on Mars, saw it wasn't all some big cruel prank..."

He grinned. "Yes, after all those boring months on the Seven Seas — when even the fun of zero-g wears off after _that long_ — actually finding you here and finding out this is still real between us... _amazing_. I'd do it all again, but I'm so glad I don't have to... because you're right here with me, Nikki."

"I don't know. I've been thinking about catching a ship to Titan," she smirked.

"Saturn's moon? Does Elon have plans?"

"Probably. Long after we're dead and buried right here. Together."

He laughed. "This is the spot then? How romantic."

"Aren't I?" Nikki asked, pressing into him for a hug. "Aren't _we?_ I shipped here. You shipped here after me. We didn't die. We have the rest of our lives in this refreshingly pure new world."

Sam pondered that for a long moment. Then he decided it was the right time to answer her original question.

### CHAPTER 40

FOURTH ROCK FROM THE SUN

July 25, 2025 — Sol 767

Planum Australe, Mars

The setup of the dome and hab at Colony C, aka the Colony of the Continents, took less than a week with help from the crews of Colonies Agatha and Bridge.

Soon it would be time to celebrate the tri-colony milestone at Xander & Eddy's, and Snowbow turned to his favorite hairstylist for a trim of his longer-than-usual wavy brown locks.

"Hook me up, Ger-mama Mama," he told Ina, echoing what he used to call her at South Pole Station, as he sat in a lawn chair inside the Agatha dome yard. The sun glistened through the ice bubble on a remarkably clear afternoon for Mars.

"Same cut, different South Pole, ja," the gruff old woman nodded with scissors in hand. "A lot easier with heated dome than out in cold like you used to make me do... crazy fools."

"Still crazy fools, just a whole different planet... it's hard to cut hair through a bubble helmet, eh?"

Ina nodded, working the scissors through his hair.

Pluto and Sunny exited the hab and walked over to watch the haircut in progress.

"Sharp-looking dude," Pluto said.

"Thanks Pluto... too bad you don't have any hair or I'd recommend Ina here," Sam said.

"I can see why, but yeah, this Pluto here has been blessed with a nice, smooth surface," he said, rubbing his head and smiling.

Sunny caressed her stubbly head and grinned, too.

"Well my hair is just starting to come back, so I'll check back with you in a couple of months, Ina," she said.

The old woman stopped cutting for a second and smiled at her.

"This is good to hear," she said. "You getting better."

"Your son is a good doctor," Sunny told her. "He's given me another chance at life and I'm very grateful."

Ina nodded, resumed cutting Sam's hair and suddenly flashed her wise-ass face.

"Maybe _you_ marry him then, ja?" she asked a stunned Sunny as Sam and Pluto laughed loudly. "I don't really like that _Ca-rice_ vo-man."

Pluto quickly put his arm around Sunny.

"Say yes, Doc! Two doctors, how perfect is that?"

Sunny struggled to form a word, but pointed toward the hydroponic garden, broke free of Pluto and quickly walked that way.

"Oh, you've got some gardening to do and you'll think about it, very good," Pluto happily answered for her as Sam squirmed with laughter and Ina smacked him to sit still in the chair.

Just then Nikki emerged from the hab's front door and sauntered over, hands in her jumpsuit pockets.

"What's all the laughing about?" she asked.

"Ina just proposed to Sunny on behalf of Dr. Peter," Sam told her.

"Because she doesn't like Carice," Pluto added with a chuckle.

"Let's not turn Mars into a soap opera now," Nikki said with a smirk.

"You should talk, Red," Pluto said. "Look at you and lover-boy Snowbow here — sneaking around in sandstorms together and acting all cool-in-love."

"We _are_ cool," Snowbow insisted.

"And we're _more_ than in love," Nikki added, whipping her left hand out of her pocket, a princess-cut diamond ring hypnotizing Pluto's bugged-out eyes. "We're engaged!"

Pluto was rendered speechless for at least a second. Then he shouted, "Oh my God! Congratulations, Nikki!" as he picked her up and swung her around.

Ina smacked Sam again, much harder this time, as he laughed and turned his head to watch the celebrating. Sunny had dropped a garden tool like it was hot and sprinted over to practically tackle Nikki.

"You're such a _fool!_ " Sea Hag scolded Snowbow.

"A fool in _love_ ," he corrected her, smiling. "Always bring a rock from the previous planet with you to the next, just in case."

Sea Hag scowled like only she could.

"You already had a rock," she told him. "The one I'm cutting the hair off of right now!"

Sam laughed almost as loud as Sunny's hysterical screams.

It was time to plan the first wedding on Mars:

### The pleasure of your company is requested at the wedding of

### Nicole "Red" Janicek of Colony Agatha

### to

### Sam "Snowbow" Archambeau of Colony of the Continents

### on Sol 865 — Oct. 31, 2025

### The theme is "Halloween on a Martian Summer's Eve"

### Costumes are strongly recommended.

### Please RSVP by Sol 835

### CHAPTER 41

CAPTAIN URANUS

July 26, 2025

Charlotte, North Carolina

Roger clicked play on the video from his daughter and smiled at her glowing face.

She was flanked by a black man on one side, whom Roger recognized as Pluto Parker, and a white man on the other, who looked familiar, too, for some reason. Had Nikki shown him a photo of this guy before? And what was he doing on Mars?

"Hi Dad," Nikki began. "I hope you are well... _and sitting down_."

"Oh boy," Roger said, taking his iPhone over to the sofa. "What now, Nik?"

He hated that he couldn't ask her questions in real time.

"I have a little news about me and my friend, Sam, here," she said, grabbing the white guy by the arm.

The comet trail from the diamond on her finger as she moved, combined with the giddy mood of all three of them, was blowing their big surprise, but Roger held his breath as his daughter confirmed the news.

"We're getting married and I wanted you to be the first person on Earth to know!" Nikki declared.

"This is crazy," Roger said, shaking his head and smiling at the same time. "Typical Nikki."

"Sam and I met at South Pole Station awhile back and I think I told you about him.... Well, he surprised me by arriving here on the Seven Seas recently... with the love letter I wrote to him before I left Earth and this diamond ring," she said, flashing her rock proudly toward the camera now.

"I proposed to your daughter, sir, right after a Martian sandstorm," Snowbow pointed out with a big grin. "We're so in love, I barely remember the storm."

"Um... let's not be going into too many details," Nikki cautioned him like a wife-in-training, Roger mused. "I didn't say yes right away. I took a few sols to think about it... and then I said yes."

"A few sols, wow," Roger shook his head. "Real thorough vetting process."

"The wedding will be on Halloween, which is summer here this year, and I've asked Pluto to 'walk me down the aisle' in your place," Nikki continued, clutching Pluto by the arm now, "even though there really is no aisle per se in an ice dome."

"It's a huge honor, Captain Janicek," Pluto beamed into the camera. "I'll do my best to try to fill your shoes."

"Your daughter is one of a kind, as I'm sure you know, Captain Janicek," Snowbow added. "I've missed her very much ever since she left Antarctica and she's the reason I trained so hard to join a mission to come to Mars. I'm a lucky man and I'll be the best husband in the world."

Nikki and Pluto both laughed at that. Roger didn't.

"In _both_ worlds then," Sam added with a toothy grin. "I know. There aren't too many guys here yet."

"We'll be sure to send lots of videos and photos from the wedding, singing and dancing," Nikki assured. "Sam here brought a _karaoke machine_ from Earth!"

"What crazy people," Roger muttered to himself.

"And if you're really hating my decision right now," Nikki said, "just remember two things: one, your marital track record ain't that great..."

"Ouch!" Pluto interjected as Sam shook his head.

"And two," Nikki continued, "there are no judges or laws here yet, so this wedding won't truly be real in the legal, Earthly sense.... So please relax, Dad, and trust that your _favorite_ daughter is making an excellent decision."

Nikki smiled and flashed her ring again, kissed Sam on the lips and then blew Roger a kiss from Mars.

"Bye, Dad. I love you and wish you were here," she said, signing off.

Roger turned off his phone and sighed.

"My daughter's getting married on Mars and I've been replaced by a black man named Pluto," he mumbled to himself. "The joke's on me, I guess. Just call me 'Captain Uranus.'"

### THREE MONTHS LATER

### CHAPTER 42

DEARLY BELOVED

October 31, 2025 — Sol 865

Planum Australe, Mars

Scarred with zombie makeup, Jo stood under the center of the ice dome ready to officiate.

Flanked to her right, a perma-grinning Snowbow rocked a brown Carhartt jacket and tie, doing his own spin on portraying Ron Burgundy in the movie "Anchor Man." Next to him was his best man and best friend from the Seven Seas crew, John "Frosty Rosty" Roszkowski — a gentle giant of a guy who was born in Poland, had spent time in America and now spiked up his blonde hair like British rocker Billy Idol. To Jo's left, maid of honor Sunny had dolled herself up as David Bowie's "China Girl."

Most of the guests from Colony B, C and D — aka, Double-A, the Starship 2 crew that had arrived safely and on target in August — dressed in makeshift togas or dyed a shock of their hair with Nikki's extensive collection of colors to become space rock stars. Even Sea Hag, with considerable begging and bribery from Snowbow, had given in and allowed some of her hair dyed black and makeup turned gothic to become rocker Ozzy Osbourne. Of all the costumes, Sea Hag really nailed the look. Her husband, Willem, however, went as himself and shook his head next to her in disgust. Standing behind them, Dr. Peter and Carice got in the spirit as two very tall members of the Walking Dead.

With everyone now assembled on a bright, sunny Martian summer day, all that remained was for Nikki and Pluto to walk through the hab door, arm in arm.

And when they did, the laughs soon drowned out the oohs at the sight of Pluto wearing an afro wig he had packed for Mars just in case he got tired of being bald on Halloween or any other sol.

Then he surprised everyone by launching into an a cappella version of the ballad, "Adore," so apparently he was the late rocker Prince. He escorted the smiling Nikki Stardust, her own take on David Bowie's alter ego Ziggy Stardust — wearing a cream-colored dress borrowed from Sunny; her hair dyed with streaks of both red and blue, and caked-on blue eye shadow. Fittingly, she marched forward in her black space boots, parting the small sea of revelers, who seemed impressed by Pluto's vocals:

" _Baby yes_

Until the end of time

I'll be there for you

You own my heart and mind

I truly adore you

If God one day stroke me blind

Your beauty I'd still see

Love is weak to define

Just what you mean to me"

When Pluto stopped singing and released Nikki to stand opposite Sam, the guests clapped and "Anchor Man" quickly made the bride crack up with a couple of his hammed-up Ron Burgundy faces. Zombie Jo flashed a wicked smile and couldn't resist beginning with another famous Prince song starter: "Dearly beloved..."

Pluto laughed the loudest and then shut himself up, gesturing for the zombie to continue.

"We are gathered here today, in this ice bubble on Mars, to celebrate a love so strong that it survived a journey from Earth's South Pole, where it began, to Mars' South Pole, where it shall continue and hopefully become even stronger. This marriage of Nicole 'Multicolored' Janicek," Jo said, pausing for the laughs, "to Sam 'Snowbow' Archambeau only reminds us why we humans risked everything to come here. We've done it for love, for life and to make adorable little Martian babies," drawing a blushful gasp out of Nikki and a laugh out of Sam, among others. " _This_ is what a two-planet species is all about.

"Regrettably, Nikki thought she was going to be a cat lady for the rest of her life on Mars, even though there are no cats," Jo said, cracking up the congregation. "She doesn't have a ring to offer Sam.... Sam, meanwhile, arrived with a beautiful engagement ring, but forgot to bring a wedding band. There are no jewelry stores or precious-metal mining operations yet on Mars, so we'll just have to wing it. Sam, please remove the engagement ring from Nikki's finger for a moment, say your own prepared vows and then place the ring back on Nikki's finger when you are ready."

Sam smiled, nodded and gently removed the ring from Nikki's finger. She struggled to keep her hand from shaking. Sam kissed her hand, held the ring up to her and turned it until the diamond faced down. Nikki squinted through her blue eye shadow, wondering what he was up to.

"I spent many dark winters at the South Pole on Earth, doing my many jobs and looking in wonder at the beauty of unspoiled nature all around me," Sam began. "Then one day, not so long ago, this beautiful woman showed up, all full of color and spirit, and challenged my world of black and white. She was not that impressed that I was a legend at the South Pole on Earth for all of my consecutive winter-overs because she had much bigger dreams — to explore space and come here to Mars. She took pity on me and befriended me anyway," Sam said in full Ron Burgundy mode now, cracking up his bride and nearly everyone else. "On a September morning, we watched the sun peek over the horizon together after a dark winter of fun times, challenges and near-death experiences, and it made me happy and sad at the same time... because I knew she was special and I knew she would be leaving soon. That was our only sunrise together on Earth."

Nikki felt the tears streaking through her makeup.

"Your bride is going to look like Alice Cooper soon," she warned him with a tremble-lipped grin, setting off another round of laughter.

"Oh no... I better get to my point," Sam continued, his own eyes watery now as he cleared his throat. "Well this beautiful woman — this _diamond_ who found me on the bottom of the Earth," he said, pointing to the inverted ring in his hand, "stunned me with a letter she sent before she blasted off for Mars. I won't go into details, but her words _moved me_ , in so many ways, and literally pushed me to think beyond my world and follow her to this one. I'm so glad I found you again, Nikki, and that's why I proposed to you on the first sol I got here."

The bride beamed as Sam slid the ring back onto her finger and said, "Nikki, I love you and I never want to miss another sunrise with you — we've missed too many already. Will you be my amazing Martian wife forever and ever?"

"Yes!" Nikki couldn't get her response out fast enough or loud enough. Then she kissed him, drawing some cheers, before adding, "I love you so much, Sam."

The Zombie cleared her throat.

"Hey, I never said you could kiss him yet," she said, drawing laughter all around. "You've still got work to do, _Miss_ Stardust."

Nikki was half laughing, half crying — a hot, colorful mess — but she released Sam, nodded, exhaled and tried to pull herself together.

"Like the Zombie said, I didn't come prepared with a ring because I didn't expect to get married on this planet," Nikki said. "I knew I had met my soul mate at South Pole Station on Earth and, though I didn't compromise my dream of space exploration and Mars, I knew in my heart I would find no one else in the universe like you, Sam. That's why I wrote you that letter. I thought I'd never see you again, but I wanted you to know how special you are to me regardless, especially because there was a good chance I wouldn't even survive the _missions_ as it turned out. Well, I have been lucky enough to survive.... I survived a high school shooter who is now my friend, who ended up saving my life in South Africa and Antarctica. I also survived a failed Red One launch and a crash landing on Mars that took the lives of our commander, Xander, and specialist, Eddy.

"Now somehow, here I am, and I still can't believe you are standing here, Sam, much less asking me to be your wife....

"I want to thank all of you," Nikki continued, pausing to turn and sweep her hand toward the guests — "even those who I've had some rough times with," she added, glancing at Peter, Willem and Ina — "for helping to make the stars and planets align for Sam and me today."

Then she held Sam's hands and eyes in hers.

"I will cherish _every_ sunrise and sunset with you, Sam," she said, tears rolling down her cheeks again. "I love you so much. Will you be my amazing Martian husband forever and ever?"

"Yes!" Sam shouted through his own tears of joy, hugging Nikki and lifting her boots off the ground. "I love you, Nikki."

" _Now_ you may kiss the groom!" Jo declared.

Sam quickly dipped Nikki, and then they kissed long and sexy while most of the guests cheered. Willem and "Ozzy" abstained.

"May I present for the first time on any planet, Mr. and Mrs. Janicek-Archambeau!" the Zombie shouted.

Pluto and Sunny mobbed them first, and then the celebrating really began — with a reception that featured mediocre food, better libations, and over-the-top karaoke singing and dancing at Xander & Eddy's, just a pebble's throw away.

Highlights included Frosty's fist-pumping rendition of Billy Idol's "White Wedding," and Snowbow dragging Sea Hag out for a brief duo of Ozzy Osbourne's "Mama, I'm Coming Home." Then Nikki, Sunny and Jo teamed up for David Bowie's "Life on Mars?" before Pluto got nearly everybody dancing with Prince's fast-moving hit "Let's Go Crazy":

" _Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today_

to get through this thing called life

Electric word life

it means forever and that's a mighty long time

But I'm here to tell you there's something else

Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down?

Oh no, let's go crazy

I said let's go crazy

Let's go, let's go

Go let's go"

Snowbow, a former bartender at the only bar at South Pole Station, did his share of drink making on his wedding day, too, but then Jo intercepted one of the drinks he made his bride because she seemed far too sober compared to the rest of them.

"Hey, there's nothing in this," Jo challenged him suspiciously. "What is it? A virgin daiquiri?

When Ron Burgundy bit his tongue and smiled extra weirdly, the Zombie walked over to corner Nikki Stardust and China Girl. Prince also watched with interest.

"You're _avoiding_ alcohol at your own wedding, aren't you?" Jo charged. "Very suspicious!"

Nikki smirked and shrugged. Jo then studied Sunny's forced-stoic face until her smile erupted.

"Nikki, you're _pregnant_ , aren't you?!" Jo pounced. "Your doctor just gave you away!"

Nikki slowly nodded and grinned as Pluto screamed and wrapped her up, somewhat delicately.

"Careful with her!" Dr. Wilkes ordered.

"So you're telling me I just officiated a shotgun wedding on Mars," Jo concluded, still visibly stunned that Colony A would be expanding. Her smile grew with each passing second.

Sensing the news was out, Snowbow strolled over, accompanied by Frosty, and hugged his new bride.

"Frosty here didn't sing 'Hey little sister shotgun' for nothing," Sam pointed out with a huge smile on his face.

Frosty recreated his Billy Idol scowl and fist pump for effect, and they all laughed.

"Congratulations on the wedding and the baby, Nikki," Frosty said with a raised glass, his real voice much softer than Billy Idol's.

"Thanks Frosty," Nikki replied. "I guess everyone made the wedding except Santa and Rudolph."

"Bah, those _soft_ North Pole types could never make it to Mars," Snowbow snickered as the laughs and partying continued.

And when it was over, and everyone had donned their spacesuits and taken their turns through the air lock, Nikki and Sam jumped into the purple space truck and drove east — past the American, South African and Chinese flags that marked Starship's historic landing, and toward the pumping station for their honeymoon — leaving the revelers in their wake, waving at the "Just Married" sign above a bumper-full of streamers fluttering in the Martian breeze.

### SIX MONTHS LATER

### CHAPTER 43

POPULATION TWENTY-THREE

April 27, 2026 — Sol 1,043

Planum Australe, Mars

Per Nikki's request, only Sam and Sunny were with her through six-plus hours of labor in the Starship 2 medical lab.

Fully in remission from cancer for the second time, Sunny's hair was long enough again to be pulled back into a ponytail as she coached Nikki through the birthing process.

"Keep pushing, Nik, you've got this!" the doctor yelled many times during the critical moments.

The younger woman had saved her life once outside the airlock, and now Sunny felt amped up to return the favor in a completely different and exciting way. She got to put on the white coat and be a doctor again — not a patient — and help usher Nikki's child into the new world.

Earlier, Sunny had told Nikki she was so looking forward to becoming the first pediatrician on Mars.

There would be many more firsts to come, but for now, Sam continued to absorb the relentless squeeze of Nikki's right hand. He knew it was nothing compared to the pain his wife was experiencing, so he cheered, "You're an unstoppable Martian warrior queen!"

"Shut the hell up!" Nikki shot back at him somewhere between a push and a groan.

The baby's first cry at 9:10 p.m. Martian time hushed them all for one beautiful moment.

Then emotions flowed like a symphony.

Mars' population ticked up from 22 to 23, and this time, no perilous journey had been required.

Only the time-and-space-defying love between an Earth-born woman and an Earth-born man had created the first true Martian.

### CHAPTER 44

AGGY

April 28, 2026

Hawthorne, California

Elon Musk and his personal assistant, Jane Rushmore, couldn't stop smiling at each other in his sprawling office suite at SpaceX headquarters on the West Coast.

After having watched the video three times, they were stoked to share it with the world — the old world.

Elon's itch to travel to the new world on one of his Starships would not ease up, especially now.

"When will you go?" Jane asked him.

He folded his arms across his chest and pondered that.

"Probably before the end of this decade — if my kids want to come, too," Musk replied. "I can't leave without them. But I definitely want to go. Why should my astronauts have all the fun?"

Jane nodded.

"Will you come?" he asked.

"No... my husband is more of an Earth person.... I guess you could ask Nikki to be your personal assistant on Mars."

Elon shrugged. "Maybe. I'll probably just go with a robot instead. Much more efficient."

Jane gasped.

"Just kidding," he grinned.

"No... you're not.... And speaking of inefficient. It's time. They're all assembled."

"I know. I like to keep them waiting."

Five minutes later, Elon stood at the podium in front of scores of media people, SpaceX employees, cameras and hot lights. The smile on his face seemed permanent, like a proud grandfather. His graying temples and circular glasses only accentuated the look.

"Good morning," he began. "Thanks for coming on this amazingly special day. We have a wonderful announcement from Mars, and I'd prefer to let our colonists share it with you in their own words and pictures. Enjoy," he said, gesturing toward the massive video screen above and behind him.

Gasps and applause erupted immediately at the sight of Nikki cradling her baby in a bed, flanked by proud father Sam and crew leader Jo on one side, and Dr. Wilkes and Pluto on the other. They all faced the camera with huge smiles and the 1-day-old baby slept peacefully, swaddled in Nikki's arms, blissfully unaware of the reaction back on Earth.

"Greetings from Mars," Jo began in a strong and giddy voice. "We are delighted to share with Earth, our mother planet, the news of our first birth on Mars. As you can see, mother Nikki and her baby are both healthy and doing well after six hours of labor here on Starship 2. It looks like we're going to need those junior-sized spacesuits you stashed on this ship after all, Elon.... Now I'll let Nikki and Sam give you the rest of the happy details that I'm sure you're all dying to know."

"Thanks Jo," Nikki said, sounding strong and relaxed with a smile only a new mother could have. "It's a girl!"

The media room buzzed again, clapping along with Elon and everyone on the video screen except the new mom, who had her hands full.

"She's a solid 7.3 pounds, 20 inches long and I couldn't have done it without the skill of my amazing doctor, crew mate and friend, Susan 'Sunny' Wilkes," Nikki said, holding her hand for a moment. "I also couldn't have done it without the obnoxious cheering and love of my wonderful husband, Sam 'Snowbow' Archambeau of Colony C," she added, accepting a kiss on the forehead from the over-the-moon Sam.

"As for a name, we really didn't have to think too long about that," Nikki continued, with a mischievous tone. "So many people rooted for us on our mission to Mars, but when we lost two of our beloved crew members within the first few days of our arrival here, the doubters really circled and took shots at Elon, at us and our mission. They called us 'Colony Agatha.'... 'And then there were none,' they predicted.

"Well, we decided to wear that like a badge and write our _own_ story," Nikki said, smiling at Jo as she echoed her crew leader's words from long ago. "And here we still are: Colony Agatha, paving the way for Colony B, C, D and many others to follow — not just here in Planum Australe, but all over Mars, where the weather is much warmer.

"And this doctor right here who delivered our baby," she declared, putting a hand on Sunny's arm, "she's beaten cancer here twice, hopefully for good this time.... We _are_ survivors, and we've done it with Commander Xander Vermilyea and Specialist Eddy Etergino in our hearts every step of the way.

"So because of all of this, we've decided to name our beautiful baby girl Agatha. If she doesn't end up liking that, we'd definitely understand, so we've given her the middle name Marisol — like a sunny day on Mars."

"And if she doesn't like that," Sam interjected, "she can just change her name at any time, any age, because there really are no laws here yet."

"It's the wild, wild South y'all," Pluto chimed in cheerfully.

"Anyway, that's the news from our Martian family here," a beaming Nikki concluded, gently rocking her daughter in her arms. "Aggy sends her love to you all."

### THE END

### OTHER BOOKS BY JACK CHAUCER

Revenge to the Tennth Power, 2018

Nikki White: Polar Extremes (Nikki #3), 2017

The Password Is Wishpers, 2017

Nikki Blue: Source of Trouble (Nikki #2), 2015

Streaks of Blue (Nikki #1), 2013

Queens are Wild, 2012

Freeway and the Vin Numbers, 2010

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jack Chaucer lives in Litchfield, Connecticut, with his wife and twin 8-year-olds. He is a 1991 journalism graduate of Marquette University and has worked in the newspaper industry for 28 years. His previous novels are available in paperback at Amazon  
and in e-book formats at major online retailers.

Photo by Christopher Massa

### Connect with Jack Chaucer online at his blog:

queensarewild.wordpress.com

On Facebook:

facebook.com/jackchaucerbooks

On Goodreads:

goodreads.com/author/show/6445477.Jack_Chaucer

On Twitter:

@JackChaucer

On Instagram:

instagram.com/chaucersaucer22

