The crowd was silent, eyes hunting across the sky’s vast blue expanse, until a finger shot up, and a woman’s shriek announced the arrival. Hao strained to see the vessel in vain, following the frantic gestures to stubbornly blank patches of sky. More and more voices called out, together with calls of “Awesome!” and frequent appeals to divinity, while Hao grew more and more anxious.

Then suddenly it appeared before him, and his stomach lurched at the sight. The black dot fell lazily, though it seemed to Hao it was aiming right for him, and for a moment he was seized by the terrible urge to run.

“Wait for it, wait for it!” called a young man, his girlfriend glancing at him with exhilaration. A pair of sonic booms exploded like thunderclaps from the serene sky, prompting a fresh wave of whooping and cheering. Presently the distant shape resolved into the familiar structure of the interplanetary spacecraft: stubby wings holding the fat, torpedo shaped body steady in its ‘belly flop’ maneuver.

“That’s completely absurd.” announced someone in the crowd. “Like a whale thought it could fly.”

As the ship descended, Hao fought off a sense of vertigo. He almost wanted to look away, so powerful was the shaking in his legs, but he refused. This was after all the greatest achievement in spaceflight—and his future. A spacecraft the size of a building was falling to earth over their heads, with only a delicate ballet of cutting-edge engineering to save it from smashing into the ground.

Praying to the Creator, he watched as the engines ignited soundlessly with a bright flash, and the nose tipped violently up. The vessel swung around, leaning almost too far in the opposite direction before settling into an upright attitude. Flames billowed out from the engines, and all that was left was for the huge craft to descend gracefully to the pad, touching down to an explosion of cheering that almost drowned out the delayed roar of the engines.

“Tu Nguyen Hao?” a man with a clipboard and ID badge accosted him.

“Yes, that’s me. Good pronunciation.” he smiled.

“Oh, thank you” the man grinned. “And may I compliment you on your excellent English?”

Hao bowed gratefully.

“I’m Martell and I’ll be taking you through the onboarding process. How did you like the landing?”

“Absolutely incredible. You know I thought I knew what to expect from the videos, but really nothing prepares you for it.”

“Yeah, I still get chills every time. When I think my wife has already been onboard one of those things… well you know what, it’s hard to think about.”

“Your wife is an astronaut?”

“Rho Harris—your project manager, and Martian colonist as we speak.”

“Oh—fantastic! What a pleasure to meet you.” Hao pumped Martell’s hand as hard as could be respectable. “Isn’t it hard to be separated for so long?”

“It’s difficult certainly, but I’m just counting down the days until my own transit—that’ll be a few weeks after yours. Why don’t we take a trip through the visitor center while I go over the journey to Mars gateway?”

Hao cheerfully agreed, and they walked across the neatly trimmed grounds of Boca Chica Space center to a large gleaming building—usually filled with tourists but now empty—as the sun approached the horizon. As the orb settled against the distant sand dunes, Hao caught sight of the blood-drenched sky reflecting off a nearby lake, while east Texan wild grass shivered in the evening breeze. The sight of it distracted him from his briefing, and for a moment he felt such a feeling of warmth and oneness with the world, that the thought of leaving it became appalling.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Martell’s voice interrupted his reverie, and Hao apologized profusely.

“I love to work in environments like this.” Martell continued. “It just reminds me how precious life is, and how vulnerable. That’s why I believe that everything we’re doing, all the sacrifices we make—it’s all so necessary, because the planet won’t last forever. It’s what has helped me get through the years without Rho.”

Unbidden thoughts rose to the surface of Hao’s mind, and though he thought he might respond, the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he allowed the silence of contemplation to continue.

“Well, as I was saying,” Martell continued eventually, “tomorrow we will fit you for the MCP suit, and you can spend a bit of time getting used to it. It’s not really comfortable, but you get used to it, so I’m told.”

“The uh… MCP?”

“Mechanical Counter-Pressure.”

“Yes?”

They moved inside the tourist center, and Hao struggled to keep his attention on the briefing, as a treasure trove of space race artefacts passed unappreciated.

“You see, one of the big problems of interplanetary space travel is maintaining bone structure, muscle tone and even blood pressure in the weightless environment.” Martell explained. “So, the Human Systems team developed the MCP suit. In the first place it weakly restricts areas of blood flow around your body, forcing your heart to pump harder and simulating the daily stress life under gravity would normally subject you to. Secondly, there are elastic strips inlaid across the suit that provide constant force against your limbs.”

“What do you mean?”

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“It wants to force you into the fetal position—a subtle effect that requires effort to overcome.”

“Oh, that’s fascinating!” Hao beamed, his earlier trepidation forgotten. “And presumably you combine that with a constant workout routine onboard?”

“Absolutely, and I see you’ll have no problems in that regard.”

Hao smiled – “Yes, I’m something of a fitness fanatic.”

“However,” the other man frowned, “this does pose a logistical problem.”

“Oh, I know I will lose most of my muscle mass, I’ve made peace with that.”

“Well, yes, but then any suit we fit you with will ultimately become useless. We can give you a slimmer suit for later, but it won’t be well fitted.”

Hao’s face fell; he hadn’t thought of that.

“With other astronauts it’s easier to calculate, but in your case… oh well I suppose we’ll figure it out. That’s what we do here.” he beamed.

“Speaking of which I wanted to propose a solution for the bone density problem.”

“Sure, I’m all ears.”

“Well, I wondered if it would be a good idea to add a reinforced padded chamber in the spacecraft – something a person could throw themselves around in?”

Martell stopped, an amused expression on his face. “Throw themselves around?”

“Yes, I mean bounce off the walls. I can only imagine the fun you would have in zero g.” He chuckled at the thought, but seeing his soon-to-be colleague’s expression growing more skeptical, he explained further. “Bone suffers micro fractures during collisions, and under stress that prompt the osseous tissue to reform itself more rigidly. You can’t recreate the constant micro-shocks that come from walking around without gravity, so you need to provide it some other way.”

“I see, but wouldn’t there be a risk of injury?”

“Unfortunately that’s not really avoidable when it comes to exercise.”

“Hmm. I can imagine bouncing around would certainly help vent some of the frustration that comes with long term space travel—of course I’m not a flight doctor. Then there would be some difficult structural challenges to overcome. But I’ll be sure to pass it along.” He smiled and made a short note on the clipboard.

“Just trying to help.”

Eventually the briefing turned to the subject of safety.

“Obviously your performance in training will be heavily reviewed and if we see any issues suggesting an unsafe attitude or lack of respect for protocols that will be grounds for termination of your contract.” Martell explained.

Hao found his tone to be strangely light, as though they were discussing a business venture. He seemed to be more concerned with keeping the conversation friendly, but Hao didn’t understand why the problem of safety would demand anything less than an aggressive discipline. Perhaps it was the American way, he thought, suppressing his annoyance.

“I am relieved to hear that you take attitude and discipline seriously.” he said. “These have been fundamental to my personal growth throughout my career.”

Martell smiled and the conversation turned back to the training schedule, and what would be required of him once he arrived on Mars.

“I understand that, as a drilling engineer, you’ll be helping Rho out with the extraction of water ice.”

“Yes—I helped develop most of the techniques she’s already using. The challenge now will be to scale up, so we can supply the growing demands of the colony”

“That’s great. And were you always interested in space travel?”

Hao looked away, trying to hide the cold expression that had broken free of his usually well-trained restraint.

“Uh – I… yes of course. Space is the future.”

It was such a half-hearted response that Martell blushed and seemed lost for words.

“What’s that? One of the first capsules? How fascinating!” Hao quickly pointed and wandered over to a large glass booth, but when he looked back to the other man he went cold. Martell’s expression told him he had made a dreadful error.

“That is the Ghidorah Seven manned capsule.” Martell explained sadly. “We keep it here together with pieces of the Challenger and Colombia space shuttles. Shortly after reaching orbit, it was struck by untracked debris—a bolt from an old communication satellite. Astronauts Leith Joss, and Grisha Vasiliy were killed in the subsequent decompression.”

“Yes of course, I should have known. My sincere apologies.” Hao had been aware of the incident, but at the time had filed it away with the rest of the world’s forgettable tragedies.

“In this organization, with all our successes, it can be easy to get comfortable. After we recovered the capsule, the decision was made to keep it in the visitor center as a permanent reminder. Sometimes you can do everything right, but the universe just doesn’t care.”

Hao shivered. Looking back at the capsule he saw the tiny puncture mark, where the chunk of metal had punched through the steel wall at a dozen times the speed of sound. A wave of nausea and dread enveloped him as the reality of where he was and what he was doing hit home—but he shoved the feelings back down inside, mentally cursing himself for the weakness. He turned back to Martell with a blank expression.

“Shall we continue?”