Today, the mood around Prime is buoyant. Red Dawn II had launched successfully and was operating nominally. “We’re going to Mars,” people are saying when they pass one another in the corridors. “It’s on.”
“Although Mars is our destination,” Yoshi says in his statement, “perhaps some of our most profound discoveries will be in the journey there and back. When Primitus makes its voyage to the Red Planet, the cameras of our craft will allow all the inhabitants on Earth a chance to join the expedition, to see what we see. Many astronauts speak of the ‘Overview Effect,’ an acute awareness of the preciousness of our planet and also a shift toward seeing ourselves as members of a larger celestial community. The hope is that by extending the Overview Effect to all humanity, a new era of care and consciousness, global goodwill, and desire for peace may begin for all of us.”
This was Prime’s democracy: that everyone should have the Overview Effect.
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BEFORE LUKE had come to Prime he had considered the question of why so much money should be spent on space exploration when the problems of Earth were so desperate. Now he sees that it is the wrong question. Humans were going to go on savaging Earth and savaging one another if no one ever spent another penny on space exploration.
Going to Mars could make us better humans. And we had to be better. “When we eventually colonize Mars,” Boone Cross has said, “we need to do so as an enlightened species moving forward, not as panicked refugees clinging to survival by our fingernails.”
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“I WOULD LIKE to say special thank-you to the Space Food Systems team,” Sergei says now. “For putting the jar of caviar in our freezer. We will celebrate tonight.” A current of anticipation ripples among the Obbers. Luke smiles.
The crew will not be able to eat that caviar. The crew only has about fifteen minutes more, then it all begins.
HELEN
Helen, how are you doing?”
Helen decides to make a joke.
“I am motivated to work as hard as possible on this mission!” she shouts.
I am motivated to work as hard as possible on this mission is true or false statement number twenty-four of their Personal Group Functioning evaluations.
Sergei and Yoshi are only one wedge away in the small pie that is Primitus, but it is necessary to shout. When the Environment Temperature Control System has been functioning today, it has been accompanied by intermittent blasts of a whirring/grinding sound that Yoshi had described earlier as “a cacophony most unpleasant.” Helen thought it likely that “a cacophony most unpleasant” was a quotation, but had lacked the energy in the moment to pursue it.
They can live with constant noise—on the space station the decibel level is comparable to driving down a freeway with the windows rolled down—but unpredictable loud banging is stressful. It is also not a good idea to live in conditions where you cannot hear your crewmate say “Help” or “Don’t touch that” or “That object appears to be heading straight toward us.” More important, the noise is almost certainly indicative of a greater problem.
“That Noise Is Almost Certainly Indicative of a Greater Problem” would be the title of the epic poem of the past twenty days. If Primitus were a song, noises almost certainly indicative of a greater problem would swell the chorus. If a child were to choose Primitus as a Halloween costume, the child should not be dressed as a spacecraft; the child should be dressed as a noise that is almost certainly indicative of a greater problem.
Helen has a quick image of Meeps, age ten, in a Halloween costume she had built herself: a chicken suit with an egg that revolved independently on a wire around her head so that sometimes it was the Meeps as the chicken that came first, and sometimes it was the egg. No other child at her school had come close to anything so witty; it was by far the best costume.
“I feel under pressure to perform well!” Sergei shouts. “But Yoshi says that this mission is giving him opportunities to make meaningful contributions!”
“I feel like my workload is manageable!” Helen shouts over a fresh burst of cacophony most unpleasant.
Perhaps it was wise of Prime to besiege the astronauts with a host of difficulties directly related to their environment right after trans-Mars injection. If one of the goals of Eidolon was to give the astronauts an opportunity to become extremely intimate with Primitus, to poke around her insides, and learn the early signs of sickness, and locate just exactly where on her back she wanted to be scratched, well, then this was the way.
And this was why they had been chosen. They were people who could service a craft. If you were sending twelve people to Mars, you have the luxury of including a physicist and a geologist. If you are sending three: send engineers.
They have what Prime liked to call “the fourth crew member”: RoMeO, a robotic medical officer who can perform both as a physician and extra set of hands. Just now, nobody is employing RoMeO, possibly because he’s another thing that could break.
Helen believes that her workload is manageable. She just hasn’t found the way to manage it yet.