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  Then they all cheered and clapped. Even the teachers stood in awe.

  Emily looked off stage to her husband Cole, who was sitting on the front row alongside a Public Affairs Office specialist and the JSC Center Director. Emily winked to her husband. Then to the children she said, “Okay, who wants to see the DSMU jump?”

  More cheers.

  3

  Sensors were blaring, most of them warning codes, and none of them serious. The system was not happy with the freefall event. Through the portal window above him, Cole could see the Anchor. It seemed to be falling away from him into space (or maybe he was launching away from it—being in space had really messed with his sense of up and down). He turned to look outside the EDLS. 51 Golgotha was getting closer with every second. It was lush and green and full of alien plants. Anna had been gushing about them the entire course of the trip. He had seen holograms from the autonomous devices already exploring the planet. But now they were actually going there.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Imagine the loudest explosions you have ever heard. These were louder. The sound was so intense, Cole could feel the vibrations rattling in his chest and tickling his ribs. They startled the hell out of him.

  The explosions came to a crescendo, and then the shell flew off of the DSMU. The robot lay kneeling in its EDL configuration tethered to the heat shield. An intense orange and red glow was burning all around Cole’s DSMU. He was sure that, from an outside perspective, this looked very much like a giant robot skateboarding through the atmosphere. In the future, assuming he survived the landing, he would assure anyone who asked that it was nothing but terrifying.

  The world was coming up to meet him as he plummeted to the ground at nine Gs. The status screen showed Environmental Controls and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) as nominal. His kph was somewhere around 500. He was 80 kilometers from ground. As his vision tunneled, he focused on the DSMU temperature readout, which was pushing toward peak heat, 1600 degrees Fahrenheit. And then Cole blacked out.

  4

  The elevator opened, and Cole walked onto the ninth floor of JSC’s Building 1. On the other side of a glass door, the executive admin smiled and waved him on.

  “They’re waiting for you, hon,” she said cheerily.

  Suddenly nervous, he checked his watch. “Am I late?”

  “Oh, no. You’re fine.”

  The admin opened the door for Cole. Inside the executive suite sat the Center Director (and former astronaut) Dr. Elaine Ybarra. Across from her, stretched out casually, was Dr. Robert Albright, also a former astronaut. Next to him sat Colonel Mitch Brown, the first black man to walk on an exo-planet. He was now the center’s “Chief Astronaut” and in charge of running JSC’s astronaut corps. In fact, Cole reasoned, he was the only non-astronaut, former or otherwise, in the room. Seated at the table were three people he knew very well, and his wife.

  “Hello, Dr. Ybarra,” Cole said. He shook her hand.

  “Come on in, Cole. You know Robert, Mitch.” He shook their hands.

  “And of course, Expedition 18,” she said. “Dr. Anna Altieri, the medical doctor from Ciudad Juarez; Anchor Commander C.C. Crenshaw; Dr. Mathieu Du Pleises, the EVA specialist and general technology wizard from Paarl, South Africa; C.C. Crenshaw, the geologist from Amarillo; and your wife, planetary commander, also from Amarillo.”

  “What can I do for you all?”

  “Well, first off, I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for us,” Dr. Ybarra said. “For three years now you’ve been working with the mission team to help teach them the language of the Jedik-ikik.”

  “I can’t take all the credit. Dr. Butler and a whole team of linguists deciphered the language and taught it to the crew.”

  Cole could’ve sworn he heard Anna giggle under her breath. He started to glance at her to see what was going on, but then Dr. Ybarra said, “Yes. Leo is a fine linguist. One of the smartest in the world. But after the accident, well, it is going to take at least a year for him to fully recover, if he recovers, and we have a timeline.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s time for you to lose the green stripe, Cole,” C.C. said. “You’re now a civil servant.”

  “What?”

  Dr. Ybarra gave C.C. a sideways glance. “What he means is, three years ago we asked you to apply to the Astronaut Corps.”

  “Right. I was turned down.”

  “You were pulled from the pool of applicants because the government believed you were more useful teaching astronauts. Things have changed. Welcome to Expedition 18, Dr. Musgrove.”

  Behind him, the four other members of Expedition 18 cheered and clapped.

  “Really?” he asked his wife.

  “Yeah. Originally it was just going to be me in the room, but I didn’t want you to think I pulled rank.”

  “Screw that,” Mathieu said. “We all pulled rank. They asked us. You were the only one on the list.”

  Cole smiled. “Thanks, guys. I’ll try to live up to everything you expected of Leo.”

  C.C. said out of the side of his mouth, “Oh, now the hard part begins.”

  5

  Cole came to and said, “Oh my God. We’re still falling?” He checked his distance. Twenty five kilometers from ground.

  What woke him from his blackout was the popping of the parachute. The supersonic chute was made of special materials that could reduce the speed from 500 kph to 300 kph in less than a minute. He checked the heat. It was down to about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, which meant that—

  Wham! The heat shield ejected away from the DSMU. The shield would eventually land sixteen kilometers away, scarring the planet with its collision.

  “Mellifluous,” Cole said. “The worst part is over. Most of the pyros have been blown, and the heat shield is gone.”

  Then the warning light blared. Cole’s DSMU was coming in too fast. He should have already slowed down to 300 kph already, but he was only at about 350. It was a small discrepancy, but a disastrous one. This meant that—

  RIIIIIIP!

  Cole looked up to the last thing an astronaut wants to see during descent. His chute had outlived its testing. He manually released the chute. Twin ribbons of shiny fabric curled up and away from him. Another set of pops followed, and three smaller drones deployed.

  He watched in terror as his computer relayed data to the ground, tracking the landing site, and came to the conclusion that the DSMU would not survive the crash. He tried to suppress the initial pangs of panic and engage his training, which had included parachute fails.

  “I can parachute out,” Cole said. “Eject to safety.”

  Wham! Something large and bulky slammed into his DSMU. The world spun as if on an invisible axis.

  “That never happened in training!”

  Emily’s voice came through his com. “Belay eject. Your fall is too fast.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Don’t worry. I got you.” Out his side window, he could see that Emily’s DSMU was in full mech mode, the one the kids loved. She was attached tighter than a tick to his DSMU.

  “You’ve got me? But who’s got you?”

  “I released my chute when I saw you weren’t with us. I tried hailing you, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I think I blacked out.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve got an idea. I’m going to do a powered descent with the ascent boosters. It’s going to be badass.”

  The ground was coming up very quickly, and he was feeling sick to his stomach from all the spinning. 183 meters. “Do whatever you have to do.”

  He heard her set off the ascent rockets. The burning of the boosters crackled outside his DSMU. Alarm bells went off again. The structure of his mech was breaking down due to the heat. The most intense heat was of course close to his own boosters.

  “Um, hon…”

  “I know. We’re almost down. Brace for impact!”

  “What does that even me
an?”

  And then he heard the cracking of tree limbs followed by the crunching of metal and dirt. The DSMU was rolling on the ground, having slammed through the trees like a bowling ball, and he was spinning inside the cockpit. After the hurricane in his head stopped, Cole looked around. He couldn’t find his wife, so he shouted for her.

  “Emily!” If anything had happened to her…

  “I’m okay,” she said. They both caught their breath, then Emily added: “This chair works amazingly well.”

  Cole turned off the EDL and put his DSMU into transport mode. The DSMU determined up from down. Then arms and legs of the DSMU pushed outward from its central cockpit area. The canopy popped open, and Cole dropped out with all the grace of a newborn hippo.

  Cole steadied himself, then stood and looked up at 20-meter-tall palm trees. A large debris trail showed his crash landing. On the other end of the trail stood Emily and the other astronauts.

  Cole was finally, happily, on the ground.

  Chapter Two: Land of the Dead

  1

  Three kids in overalls and t-shirts walked through an alien landscape. They were flatlanders, not used to the steep walls of Palo Duro Canyon. For them to see a natural formation higher than a gopher’s head was extraordinary. So the walls, which were clearly seven meters of sheer rock and sand, seemed daunting if not impossible. But not to all of them.

  “C’mon, Chris. Let’s go check it out,” Emily said. She punched him in the shoulder to encourage him to go with her and Brian. But Chris was a shy kid, slow to make decisions, and he kept to himself. He was only out here, if he was being honest, because his parents dragged him all the way up from Lubbock to Amarillo.

  “I don’t know. Are there any handholds or footholds in those rocks?”

  “Maybe. If there aren’t, what is the problem? Think about it. We could be the first people to climb these rocks.”

  Brian piped in, scholarly and aloof as a German Shepherd. “I don’t know, Emily. This area was populated by a lot of tribes, and after the tribes were kicked out, Charles Goodnight used the area as a resting place on his cattle drives before eventually buying out the whole place. Not to mention all the outlaws who favored it as a hideout.”

  Instead of glazing over, Emily’s pupils dazzled with possibilities. “Ooh. Think about it. We could be walking in the footsteps of outlaws. Maybe they climbed that rock up there so they could get the one-over on some Texas Rangers who were following them.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” Brian said.

  “What if we stayed down here and appreciated it from a distance?” Chris asked.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Emily shot back. “Unless you’re chicken.”

  “Hey, you stop that!”

  “Chicken Chris! Chicken Chris!” Emily taunted. As Chris ran up to tackle her, she nimbly jumped upward from rock to rock and scampered out of reach.

  “C’mon,” she said. “This is easy. You won’t get hurt. I promise.” She crawled back down the red rock and extended a hand to Chris. He looked at it for a second as if making some grand decision, and then he took it. She helped pull him up onto a small ledge of clay and sand. “Put your foot between the two rocks there. That’s it. Now you’re rocking. Get it? Rocking?”

  “You are not as amusing as you think you are,” Brian said. He grabbed a handhold in the rock and followed Chris and Emily up the stone face.

  The rock face was tough to climb because of how steeply it weaved back and forth through red and white striations. Chris felt like if he leaned back too far, he’d topple all the way down and break his crown like Jack and Jill.

  “I know it seems scary, but everything that’s hard seems scary at first.” Her footing slipped on a sandy embankment. She grabbed the gypsum rocks to catch herself, then kicked a foothold into the sand. “It never seems scary after you’ve done it.”

  Chris turned around and looked at the steep canyonside. He felt dizzy. He hunched down, nearly losing his footing, and screamed. “I want to go back down,” he said.

  “You can’t go back now,” Emily said. “You’re almost to the top. If you turn around now, you’ll only regret it.”

  Chris got real quiet. Brian, standing beneath Chris, scrunched up his nose with frustration.

  “If it makes you feel better,” Brian said, “Emily is probably wrong. Did you see the line of cars at the entrance to the park? So many people vacation here that, statistically speaking, we are probably not even the first thousand park visitors to climb this canyon wall. Look over there.” He pointed to a shoeprint. “See that? Others have been here.”

  “That’s Emily’s,” Chris said.

  “Nuh-uh,” she called back. “I promise. Come on, Chris. You can do this. I believe in you.”

  Chris took a deep breath, then he took another handhold.

  Evening was setting by the time the three reached the top. The canyon was bathed in golden sunlight. Pink and purple clouds puckered in the blue sky. The canyon walls seemed to be on fire, they were so vibrantly red.

  “See?” Emily said. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Her tone changed when she asked her friends about the beauty of the sunset. She was more wistful. “I could stay up here all night.”

  Chris said, “Okay, this was fun. I’m ready to go now. How do I get down?”

  “Oh, Chris.” Emily wrapped her arms around both her friends. “Just enjoy this moment. This is how you start exploring.”

  2

  “This isn’t how you start exploring,” Cole said, looking around at the broken and dented parts of the DSMUs.

  The low gravity of 51 Golgotha made for very tall trees and even taller mountains, as if some god-like being had pulled on the branches and peaks to lengthen them. The branches twisted and wrapped around the trunks of other trees to the point where it was hard to see where one tree ended and the other started. Their roots, too, maneuvered around rocks to get to thin layers of sand and soil. To Cole, it seemed as if the floor was made of snakes.

  C.C., Anna, and Mathieu came to them from their landing site a hundred meters away. They had landed hand-in-hand, which was the plan for all five to reach the planet at the same time, until Cole’s DSMU ran into trouble.

  The five astronauts worked on determining what repairs, if any, needed to be done to the DSMUs. C.C.’s DSMU had sustained minor structural damage from his landing. Emily’s had booster wiring that had come unloose and needed to be reconnected.

  “So this is how we start the historical exploration of a new alien planet: with repairs,” Cole said.

  Anna agreed. “Cole’s right. I want to go exploring. Get a look at these plants and start collecting them.”

  “Simmer down, Anna. You’ll get your chance,” Emily said. “We have protocols to follow.”

  First, Emily called in to the Anchor to relay a message to Mission Data Collection in Houston, a message explaining their situation, which was that the landing did not go as well as hoped and two of the DSMUs were damaged, and another lost 25% of its ascent fuel.

  The message was purely ceremonial at this point. They had long ago stopped having two-way communication with Houston. A weird fact was that according to plan, they would arrive back on Earth before most of their messages returned. The only reason to send them was as a redundancy, should something catastrophic happen to the team. For all intention, they were completely isolated from human civilization, and had been for most of the past seven years of flight.

  JEVS, which operated as their mission control, said, “My survey data shows your landing approximately five kilometers from the Habitation Module. Is this correct, sir?”

  “Yes, JEVS,” Emily said.

  “What do you think, Mathieu?” Emily asked.

  Mathieu was kneeled down at an open console, his laptop connected to the DSMU. “Most of the damage is superficial. Cracks and warped shielding. And since the armor is matrixed to the Hab for maximum redundancy, we can cannibalize some of them if we really want to. I’m more concerne
d with the left leg’s secondary piston. It was damaged in the landing. He’ll still be able to walk, so again, nothing catastrophic. Once we get back to the Hab, I can fix this. It’ll be fun.”

  “There is a spare DSMU ready to deploy if necessary,” JEVS relayed to them from the Anchor.

  “Thank you, but I think we are fine for now. If DSMU 5’s mobility is compromised, we will talk then.”

  “Before we leave,” C.C. said, “we need to take the photo. This is a historic moment.”

  Each DSMU was outfitted with a leg camera for just this reason. They stood arms together for the group shot.

  “Say ‘cheese,’” JEVS said.

  “Screw that,” Cole said. “Everybody say ‘We made it!’”

  The faces weren’t all clear, but the joy was in the arms no longer together, but raised in celebration. A second photo was taken with the interlocking arms, as was decided years ago when the mission was first conceived. Picture taken, C.C. said, “Send to Titan Space for public dissemination.”

  “Now, let’s go find our new home,” Emily said. They climbed back into their DSMUs and began the long march to the Hab module.

  3

  There are few things more important to NASA than medical analysis. All medical analyses are used to better understand the effects of spaceflight on an astronaut’s health, which in turns teaches NASA how to improve the survivability of future missions. To that end, it can be said that NASA’s priorities are 1. Survive, and 2. Document that survival through medical testing.

  So while Day 1 was spent adjusting to life on a terrestrial planet, the astronauts also spent the day peeing in cups and giving seemingly endless bottles of blood. Then there were the breathing tests and peripheral vision tests and balance tests and psychological programs to evaluate their mental flexibility. On the plus side, the astronauts had little in the way of down time, which was a boon because with too much time on their hands, they would get the urge to jump out of the Hab and go explore the Golgothan terrain.