Rocket Woman

Outside of the domed canopy of glass the martian dusk was gray and bleak, almost as gray and bleak as Mrs. Johnston felt, lying on a bed in Intensive Care, waiting to die. Earlier in the day a 4.5 magnitude marsquake had rattled the base camp, leaving one bathroom module destroyed and her room out of power, save for the backup oxygen filtration system, exhaling life into the room with a cool, watery hiss. She was reminded of her dead husband, the father of the martian O2 Filtration System. 

Her latter years had been a trial beyond description. Forty years prior, she had spent her last week on earth moving her family from the doomed coastal city they called home to a rocket launch site in the South of the country, where the government was preparing a ship that would rocket her and her prodigy untold miles into the cold, merciless dark of space, bound for a wind-blasted patch of dirt on a small, reddish planet known as mars. The United States Space Agency sent those with means to the red planet, or those with the required expertise–architects, botanists, biologists, engineers. Mrs. Johnston had neither. So she spent her childbearing years in a world that was degrading all around her. A world that, to her, was no different than a condemned home–man-high grass growing in the front lawn, the paint peeling, the roof liable to cave in at any moment. 

From the time she was twelve, Mrs. Johnston knew she wanted to go to mars. She studied picture books of mars, then moved on to textbooks, lingering over the diagrams as one gazes at a lover. She loved the coppery sand, the snow-capped peaks with their imprisoned moisture waiting to issue forth, to give life. Her books were her friends, the only things that promised to give her what she wanted. Walking through the halls of her highschool, she held her books close to her chest, and kept boy’s at arm’s length. She was almost driven off course, too. During her senior year, a gale of affection swept her from her desk into the arms of a slight, bespectacled boy named Clark–a boy with a ready smile and curly hair and brown eyes that seemed to glow when she was entrained in his stare. Clark made her feel something she had never felt before, welling up inside her like an embryo, a foreshadowing of what was to be the next great propulsive force in her life–her family. 

***

The wind whipped mutely against the scarred glass, tossing powdery, burnt-orange sand against it in fitful waves, like a hedgehog throwing up dirt. The setting sun was a blue-rimmed star sinking toward the dunes that made up her horizon. The honeycombed glass erased all sound except for the watery hiss of the ventilator, which filtered out carbon dioxide, combined the .16 percent of atmospheric oxygen with evaporated water, then released the mixture through a ventilation shaft above the automatic sliding door. Her husband was still giving her life now, even after what she’d done to him. The sound of the ventilator was like the steamy passage of a clothing iron–a sound of heat and moisture and condensation. On mars, the sound of life. Her mind was carried back to her mornings on earth when she would run the iron, hissing and sputtering, over a stubborn wrinkle in her husband’s slacks–he liked the creases knife-sharp. 

The sound of the ventilator lulled her into a fitful sleep. Some time later, she felt a hand touch hers. Startled at first, she relaxed as her eyes focused on her daughter standing by her bedside, her face–fresh and bright-eyed and pale from lack of sunlight–framed by shoulder-length brown hair that ended in a jaunty curl. How could she lie to such a being, her Jane, the one who trusted her now as faithfully as she did when she was too young to have an opinion of her own. She squeezed her fair, well-formed hand in her own gnarled one, and smiled faintly. Her daughter’s lips followed the path of her mother’s, and her eyes watered.

The sliding door opened and closed with a suck and a thump and someone else stepped in. It was her husband, David. He was twelve years old when she arrived on mars–two years her senior–an engineer’s apprentice and the son of doctor parents. Everyone in the colony was selected for their genome and academic performance, and he was no exception. Nothing was done by lottery–all was preordained. Except for her family. That was not preordained. 

Tim took his place beside his wife and rubbed her back. Jane let her head fall against his chest and her shoulders shook in a silent sob. Mrs. Johnston slipped back into her reverie.

Two years before Jane was born, Clark began interning at a research program that was well-known for sending rovers into space–the Space Robotics Research Institute. Clark’s boss at the Institute was connected to the eggheads at the Space Program, which was busy formulating plans for the first martian colony in human history. Meanwhile, Mrs. Johnston married Clark, bore his children, and dropped out of college. Gone were the days where visions of a crumbling earth would haunt her dreams, nights when she would snap awake in a cold sweat and, unable to go back to sleep, read another chapter on martian weather patterns. But she had not forgotten her mission.

The world was at a new stage of crisis. Mrs. Johnston remembered pushing Jane’s stroller through smog until she finally bought a cloth mask for her and her daughter. The roads were twelve lanes across and jammed with self-driving trucks and cars. The city was a fiefdom of parking lots. Sidewalks fell into disrepair, crumbling and weed-eaten. Street lights blazed at all hours, compensating for the 24/7 gloom–the cloud of pollutants released into the air in an attempt to block the UV rays penetrating the ozone layer. It was a failed experiment in weather-control that enshrouded her city in a forever-dusk. To walk outside was to feel the twilight of humankind, when time’s streams would empty into a great sea in which time itself would lose its forward motion. So Mrs. Johnston would walk in darkness, pushing Jane in her stroller or crossing the twelve-lane road to get to the superstore on the other side.

***

A third person walked through the sliding glass doors. Her only son, Jim. He wore a plaid wool shirt and blue jeans. His hair was combed neatly across his brow and made a shiny black roof over his head. His jaw tightened on entering the room. Mrs. Johnston held out her hand, the matriarch extending a final blessing to her son. He took it and brought it to his heart. If only they could understand why I did it, she thought, then I could die in peace. 

But peace, she knew, was never her lot. Time had continued to pass on the speck of blue she called home, a home riddled with crime and bureaucratic bloat and pollution and institutionalized idleness and anomie and wars of attrition raging across the globe like slow-burning forest fires, leaving black acres in their wake from which nothing would grow again. She knew she had to make her move soon. She asked Clark whether he could get them and their children on a rocket to mars. Just pull a few strings, she told him. He was adamant that he couldn’t leave. Besides being impossible–there was a strict screening process, and Jane and Jim’s test scores simply weren’t high enough–leaving would be a betrayal of his aging parents, his work for humanity.

One month later, on a broiling Saturday evening during the summer of 2090, her husband did not return home from work. Mrs. Johnston called the police, filed a report in frantic tones as the operator told her to calm down. She broke the news to her children. The only trace of him was his car in the company lot, parked in the same spot he’d pulled into every morning for the past ten years–that, and the briefcase on his nightstand. 

For years, he had added to a collection of notes that filled up a triple-latched briefcase he kept locked in a filing cabinet next to his work desk. The day before his disappearance, Mrs. Johnston had asked him to show it to her. The briefcase made her so very curious, she told him. She knew he hid it to prevent young strivers from stealing his work, a sure breakthrough in the field of aerospace. That night, they had a pillow talk. It was his private project, he told her–him flushed and sweaty in the post-coital peace, her giving him a look of wanton affection–but it was connected to the mission of the institute: the blueprints for an air filtration system that would convert the toxic atmosphere of mars (which was 95 percent carbon dioxide, he reminded her) into breathable air, and do so for as long and with as little maintenance as possible. His bosses knew the briefcase was important, he told her, but to keep him from defecting to another lab, they let him maintain his secrecy, trusting that they would have full access to his prodigious mind when the time was ripe. So they thought. 

After his disappearance, the Institute made a visit to the Johnston home. She was watching the hologram, washcloth in her lap, staring unblinkingly at images of forest fires and tent cities and refugees stumbling in a haze of concrete dust from an explosion. She switched to the local news and saw the dark cloud of pollutants hanging over her city like the plague of gnats over Egypt. The knock came in three quick raps. 

The man standing at the door was dressed in a dark suit, his white undershirt bisected by a black pencil tie. He wore the lines of experience and age, weathered into his face like glacier-made fissures, and there was a hardness to his eyes that chilled her. “I’m Doctor Wallace, representing the Research Institute.” He smiled and his eyes wandered over her shoulder. “May I come inside?” 

She said yes, of course he could, and asked if he wouldn’t like something to drink. He declined with a quick head-shake and smile, seating himself on one of the couches and smoothing his tie as he did so. Mrs. Johnston’s heart was pounding. The man opened by saying how sorry he was about her husband’s disappearance, and that the Institute was pursuing every possible lead in cooperation with law enforcement. She must know that he was very dear to the company, not only as a lead researcher but as a human being. “He was especially fond of his family,” he said with something resembling warmth, and he took her hand in his. Strong, meaty hands, she thought. Hands that could kill. 

“But now,” he went on delicately, “we need something from you Mrs. Johnston.” 

Again, his eyes flickered over her shoulder in the same time it would take her to blink. “Mrs. Johnston, you and I know how very important your husband was to the company. He was one of our best researchers–our best brain, as I liked to say,” he said with a faint chuckle, patting her hand. “But there was some research he kept to himself, that he was planning to share with us when he thought it was ready. Ever the perfectionist, he stayed true to his word and–” 

“You can’t have the briefcase.” 

“The man’s grip tightened for a moment and some of the hardness came back into his eyes. They were gray, like sand-blasted concrete. “Excuse me?” 

She withdrew her hand from his tightening grip. “I appreciate you coming over, she said. “I really do, but you can’t have access to my husband’s notes.” 

“Excuse me Mrs. Johnston, but that would be against your husband’s wishes–”

“Unless–” she continued, stammering– “Unless you can guarantee me and my family safe passage to mars on the Destiny V.” 

“Ma’am, you know very well I can’t give you a free spot on that rocket–” 

“Then you can leave this house and never come back, because you’re not getting my husband’s blueprints for the machine that’s going to keep your people alive!” 

She stood up, chest heaving, eyes wide with fear and euphoria. The man’s gaze hardened and he rose from the couch, eyes drifting over her shoulder again. He took a small step toward her. 

“Andrew, call 9-1-1,” she said, trembling. 

A synthetic male voice spoke to her from a wall-mounted screen: “Calling 9-1-1.” 

The man chuckled to himself and shook his head. He was done trying to cage this cat. Before she could do anything else, he shot her a look of unbridled disdain and left the house, closing the door behind him. Mrs. Johnston crumpled to the ground, and sat there for a long time. 

The next day she received a call. Provided she would give them her husband’s notes, the Institute would give Mrs. Johnston and her family a free ride to mars. They would consider it her husband’s severance pay, but her children would be inducted into the Martian Academy of Science upon arrival. Every breath they breathed on the red planet would be in service to the colony.

On launch day, her alarm woke her at 4:30. She roused her children, set the tea boiling on the stove, knifed a square of butter into a warming pan, and took eggs out of the fridge for breakfast. She, Jane and Jim were packed and ready to leave the house by 5:50. The children knew they were going to mars, and that seemed a sufficient distraction from the reality of their father’s disappearance. The detectives assigned to the case found nothing in his workplace or home to suggest foul play, save for the strong smell of antiseptic coming from the master bathroom. Mrs. Johnston told them she cleaned the bathtub before he went missing. They seemed to accept her explanation, but her mind knew the truth. Every night she woke up screaming for him to leave her alone. His kind, bespectacled, blood-spattered face seemed to hover in the darkened doorway of the room they had shared, a ghostly afterimage in the grainy darkness. 

She spent her last few nights on earth sleeping on the living-room couch. 

***

“Oh, if you could just forgive me, I could die in peace.” 

Jane’s eyes quivered, then spilled their tears. “What? Mom? What do you mean forgive you, you saved us." She took her hand again, holding it tight. Jim followed suit, never taking his eyes off her. “It’s only because of you that we’re here,” she said.

“It’s your father–he’s why you’re here,” she choked. The tears flowed freely now, the dam finally broken under years of boiling floodwaters. Rivers coursed silently down her pale, papery cheeks. Her mouth widened in a rictus of pain. 

“Mom!” Jane grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and thrust it into her mother’s trembling fist. “Mom, don’t cry.” 

“Oh, Jane,” Mrs. Johnston warbled, “Your father–your father is dead because of me.”

Her daughter's hand went limp. 

***

Launch day unfolded with all the coiled anticipation of birth and death put together. 

Every moment was a crescendo building to the next. Mrs. Johnston and her children rode the bus to the launch station, the morning black outside the wall-to-wall windows. She blinked away her tears before the children could see. Every minute, she got closer to the red rock 140 million miles away, her constant companion through years of death and decay. Sitting there, her old life coming undone with each passing mile, she tried to imagine a place where the temperature dipped to 100 degrees below zero and sandstorms swirled in cyclones the diameter of cities. A place of endless black and orange sand the consistency of baby powder and dunes dusted with snow. A place where her death would mean a new birth, where her husband’s death would not be in vain. 

***

The attendants strapped them into seats in the passenger compartment of the rocket, an hulking scythe of laser-cut aluminum and solar panels sitting at the bottom of an underground silo that would catapult them into the stratosphere at a speed of 30,000 miles per hour. The silo was so deep the sky appeared as a quarter-sized circle of pink-tinged cloud outside the starboard porthole, their world reduced to the bare glimpse afforded by a keyhole, a gap in a fence. Mrs. Johnston looked on, exhausted and numb. The attendant pressed a button on the side of her helmet and the fiberglass visor sealed her in a world of silence, save for whatever came through the built-in headset.

The voice of the pilots and mission control crackled in her ears. 

“Okay, align wingtips.”

“Roger.” 

“S-1 pre-press.” 

“Roger.” 

“Thirty seconds.” 

“GDC is good.” 

“Twenty seconds and counting.” 

“Roger.” 

“Ok. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”

Mrs. Johnston glanced sideways at her children, harnessed to their chairs and scanning the computerized walls of the rocket, the myriad buttons and touchscreen surfaces. Jane was glued to a monitor showing live footage of the earth at ground level–a patchwork of green farmland as far as the eye could see. Sunswept ranges of cumulonimbus clouds. A rare beauty. The rocket shook, and she and her brother looked at their mother. As the thrusters boiled beneath them, as the rocket shuddered into the air and everything was overcome white light, Mrs. Johnston wondered if she had made the right decision.