Spencer beamed. “Now, that is paranoid! I thought I had it bad, but—”
“Just kidding,” Julia said, a little too quickly. “This is actionable, Spencer. I believe we are justified in taking everything we just heard at face value. Which means I am comfortable giving good news to the Martians. Are they ready?”
“Yes, they’ve been waiting,” Spencer said, and thumbed out a text message to summon them.
The Martians all had to come via the same hamster tube, so it took a few moments for the core members of the first human expedition to the Red Planet to filter in: Dr. Katherine Quine, whose professional role was obvious; Ravi Kumar, who would be the expedition’s commander; Li Jianyu, who would act as a general science officer; and Paul Freel, an American MIV expert, the head engineer. They, as well as a score of other Arkies waiting in the wings, had sworn an oath that they’d not spend the rest of their lives sealed up in tin cans, but would walk on the surface of Mars or die in the attempt. In their wake came several other members of Julia’s “staff.”
Julia opened the meeting with a few words of greeting and a solemn announcement to the effect that the Mars mission was a go. Once the ensuing round of zero-gee high fives and embraces had trailed off into an awkward silence, she singled out Paul Freel. “Paul, no doubt you’ve briefed these others on the very latest while you were so patiently cooling your heels, but might I know what has been going on with the MIV?”
“Of course, Madam President. As you know, they’re trying to stabilize Ymir with—”
“A Rube Goldberg scheme in the form of an ice sculpture. Yes, I know about that.”
Paul chuckled, showing a lot of gum. “Not surprisingly, the powers that be are a little nervous about that and so word came down from on high that we ought to be preparing a backup plan, so we can go pull Ymir’s fat from the fire if need be. Well. That couldn’t be better, from a Martian point of view! As you know, we have been planning this mission for years. After Zero, I kept it going as a side project all through the development of the MIV program, and we managed to grease it in as one of the use cases.”
“Use cases?”
“One of the hypothetical uses to which the MIV kit might eventually be put,” Spencer explained.
“Basically it just gave us an excuse to include a few components, like throttleable landing engines and aeroshield material, that might not have made it in otherwise,” Paul went on. “So, stabilizing Red Rover’s design has been a piece of cake.”
“Red Rover?”
“Yeah, that’s what we’re calling her.”
“I would like to propose something a little more suggestive of a higher purpose,” Julia said. “Spearhead or some such thing.”
This led to an uneasy silence terminated by Camila, who said, “I’ll draw up a list of options and submit it to you right away, Madam President.”
“Thank you, Camila. You understand, Paul, that this mission will have symbolic as well as scientific value, and we want to send the right message to the other Arkies so that they will feel inspired to follow in her wake.”
“Of course! Consider it a working title only,” Paul said. “A code name.”
“It’s not even good as a code name,” Spencer pointed out, “because anyone can—”
“Let’s move on,” Julia said. “You were talking, Paul, about the design.”
“Done. It took, like, a man-day. We just had to make a few tweaks to a preexisting use case to reflect the materials and supplies we actually had on hand.”
“Excellent.”
“But a design is not a ship, of course,” Paul continued, “and until a couple of days ago it would’ve been pretty darn hard to put the actual propulsion system together without bringing down the wrath of Ivy!”
“That is not a phrase calculated to strike fear into the heart of anyone except those most worshipful of her authority,” Julia remarked, speaking with the gravity that could only be summoned by one who had recently used nuclear weapons on live targets.
Paul cackled. “You know what I’m saying, though—everything happens in a fishbowl here! So, you can imagine the grin on my face when we got the order to begin assembling the Ymir rescue MIV.”
“Are the specifications similar?”
“Similar enough. They can both use the same main engine. The thruster packages, the control systems, life support—all of that stuff is completely standardized; it doesn’t change from one use case to another, it’s just a matter of punching different parameters into the code. It’s just a config file!”
Seeing that Julia didn’t necessarily know what a config file was, Spencer put in, “They can essentially download the DNA, if you will, of Red Rover, or whatever we end up calling it, into the Ymir rescue vehicle with a few keystrokes.”