To Mars By Atom Bomb, 1996

Ed Grissom gazed down at the dusty surface of Mars. It seemed miraculous that he had ended up there, but since a mystical experience on the way back from the moon, Ed had not been in the best sense of the word an admirer of the derivatively rational. He was here; it was a miracle; miracles happened; this was normal. Behind him, Friendship Ten shone under the sky, which was a mixture of grey and pink. A pink sky; just what the communists had ordered.

The communists, as he moved his head and looked down, were filming like tourists, or rather, Sergei Mihailovich was. Much of Ed’s long career with the International Space Agency had been spent on the joint American and Soviet missions that Kennedy and Khruschev had started in 1965, but it never failed to amuse him that—that heavy, dancing joyous, Springy thing that was the Slavic soul.

He corrected himself. Dust storms had been predicted, and his visor was buzzing a little. The low hum suggested to him a level of ambient radiation that he had not expected, and which was at odds with the ice that his scraper had uncovered beneath the red dust. Mars was such an enigma, though it was fairly clear that it was one of the four or five places in the solar system that held life.

At least, unlike those who finally uncovered that truth, he wasn’t going to have to explain that he knew it after seeing a frozen shrimp from a Saturn moon thrown up by a water volcano outside the window. The banality of that announcement and the shocking implications, even though we had all expected it by 1987, still thrilled him.

Grissom sighed, unable to explain even to himself what he was experiencing. They’d practiced in Nevada and on the Tatooine sands of Tunisia, of course. The sands had even given him the idea for a space movie, though these were fairly common now that the Vietnam special effects studios were churning them out. But it had been emphasized time and again; don’t spend too much time out there. The Shelter will protect you. The Sun is warming the whole solar system. Avoid the cosmic rays on a planet with no magnetic shield. We wouldn’t want the Presidents upset.

Politicians. Grissom felt himself to be at odds with the general regard for such people. The New Romans, Americans were calling themselves now, vast majorities reading about Cicero and other lawyers and imagining a world federation. Grissom played, as he worked—he couldn’t, somehow, near the end of this trip, just enjoy Mars—with ideas.

He thought about what would have happened had Project Orion not been pursued. Space would have been some euphemism for an insane competition to kill fewer people with chemical rockets than the other side. Maybe people would even have got bored with it by now, or run out of money. Instead, huge Orion boosters had lifted parts and materiel into space from Star City in Kazakhstan with even bigger parts in their payloads for years. Success had bred success, and humanity had moved easily--too easily, Grissom sometimes thought--out into space.

To Mars by atom bomb; what a mad idea that had been. Dr Dyson, the English head of the International Space Agency, always chuckled about it, and it appealed to his ironic side, Grissom guessed. Dyson was a brilliant man, after all, he was allowed his impracticalities. He’d never have made it into a purely national effort, but when President Kennedy, having dodged those bullets at Dallas, reached out to Khruschev for détente in 1964, a new era had begun.

No more Nazis and no more fireworks; this was the big time in space shots. There was a serious surfeit of bombs, and a fear of storing them near populated areas; it seemed straightforward, really, to pick up an idea Dyson had had to throw them beneath a spacecraft plate and slip the bonds of earth.

Actually, the idea had rolled on, which is how Grissom had come to be where he was. His sample was easily collected, in this light gravity. Rising, but not too quickly from his bend—he didn’t want his slightly weary headiness to be accompanied by real blood pressure—he took one last look around and, grains of soil trickling from his glove, headed inside.

Friendship Ten was not just a spacecraft. It carried with it an unfolding geodesic dome, which, with the aid of a little insulation, was proof against all but the worst dust storm. It was feminine, inviting, warm. At the centre of it, a pogo-plane style rocket, with odd rotors extending from the top, stood like a dumpy but attractive matron; a sort of odd, strained version of Queen Victoria. Every time he saw it, Grissom thought of the Mexican art Sergei loved. Sometimes, he expected Frida Kahlo to pop up from behind it, her body madly dissonant with the surroundings and her eyebrows somehow tethered to the moons.

Inside, behind the airlock, and the shower, Winnie McNess, the third member of the team was pottering about. It was difficult to tell if she was making dinner or analyzing samples. They’d had one of Winnie’s Rhodesian Bredies, made with tomato paste and Martian water and a meat fungus Grissom didn’t want to identify the night before.

Grissom wondered about the ethics of shitting on Mars. The toilets were chemical, and recycled waste brilliantly, but there was residue, if dried. On the Soyuz Spirit of ’76 that was orbiting above, it would have gone straight out the back just before the next atomic blast was thrown out, but down here, especially since the old lady had to return upstairs, it went onto Mars. Hello planet, we are human. Have a sample. Terrible.

More importantly, there was clearly water down there, and from what Grissom had seen from above, Mars had enough caves that it could be liquid at some point. It wasn’t that his excrement was especially alive with bacteria and microbes and the things their shared food had cleared out of their gut, but, well, life was tenacious.

Were they seeding Mars, bio-colonising the inhabitants, tiny as they might be, without even a thought? Ed Grissom, Conquistador and colon-izer. He shuddered. Even the Egyptians myth of a world born of bodily fluid was, well, more life affirming.

From somewhere, Blue Moon was playing. Ah, strange fortune. One day, he would see that again. He smiled. ‘Hi, Winnie, what’s up m’frien?’ He drawled. Winnie didn’t answer. She seemed frozen to the spot. That was unlike her.

The look on her face, though…Grissom wouldn’t forget it. He recalled the thoughts that went through his mind. Radiation? Space sickness? Had the confines sent her stir crazy?

Then he turned around. It was the corner of his eye that acted first, then the head at an angle, then the torso, then a pirouette on the leg. Mindlessly. In front of him. Barely as high as the table. Everything strange around it, and it looking so normal. A big, three foot tall, spindle legged white-brown big headed black eyed it. Like finding a mouse in a kitchen. When he mouthed the name of his saviour, he could hear himself speaking as Winnie gasped in place of a scream; but everything else had frozen.

How banal thoughts are at these moments. Grissom would always recall his. That thing...did it want...a lift?