One Way Trip

Excerpt

Captain Jay Marcos watched as the view on the screen morphed from blue sky to black night. Soon the ship would breach the exosphere and he’d be on his way home. Not his birth home back in sunny California, but the place he’d come to know as home. Space.
He sat in his Comm chair and rested his feet on the console in front of him. With his hands crossed behind his head, he watched the earth disappear and the stars take form. Once they left the sphere behind, he let out a deep breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
Serena had made it.
She was the only woman that had ever been a real part of Jay’s life—like a mother to him. She was old and badly in need of repairs. She’d been built in the late twenty-first century—a secret project by a coalition of the most powerful world governments, as a part of their clandestine search for other worlds that might be habitable by humans. A project fueled by their knowledge that the Earth was slowly dying and would one day no longer support life.
But international support had waned while he’d been away on the maiden voyage. During the last of several five-year trips from which he’d recently returned, most of the super powers had pulled out of the deal. Now only the United States and Canada were left.
There’d been little money in the budget to spruce Serena up. In fact, her condition was such that she wouldn’t be able to sustain a return voyage. The powers that be had decided to use what little money they had left not to repair Serena but to fund one last expedition. Instead of sending Jay on another trip into the far-flung reaches of outer space, NASA brass had decided his mission should be to search closer to Earth. This time, he would only travel as far as Mars.
Jay knew this was a suicide mission and that Mars, whether or not the planet could sustain human life, would be his final resting place. He agreed to continue as commander of the voyage anyway. His vow to do everything in his power to find a new home for humans was part of the reason for his decision. But it was also because he wanted to meet his maker in space, with Serena by his side. If Mars was a bust, he’d die a hero nevertheless—better than retiring in disgrace and growing old and feeble on Earth. It would be a noble end to a distinguished career—whether the end resulted in victory or death.
Despite her haggard outward appearance, Serena’s engines were strong. He knew she could withstand the one-way trip to Mars.
She had to.
Jay ran his hand through his thick black mane and rose to switch on the inner hull lights. It might be dark in space, but it was officially morning on board. Time for breakfast.
Jay had been with Serena from the beginning, fresh out of the academy and ready to take on the world. Or other worlds, as it turned out. The voyage to find an uninhabited world suitable for terraforming hadn’t been the only they had shared, but certainly the most exciting. Now, they’d be together until the end. Once they landed on Mars, Serena would never get off the ground again.
They’d be home for good.
Freeze-dried eggs rehydrated with stale-tasting water wasn’t Jay’s idea of a meal fit for the potential savior of the human race, but it would do. He needed to make sure he had food in his stomach before putting himself to sleep for the journey. International regulations didn’t require hyper sleep, but it took over two hundred days to get to Mars, and he’d go stir crazy if he tried to stay awake.
He washed the runny yellow mass down with a cup of coffee—the last two spoons of instant left. There wasn’t much he’d miss about Earth, but coffee was one thing he wished he’d brought more of. The bitter liquid burned his throat and sent a chill down his spine.
“Here’s to our new home, Serena.” He lifted the tin cup into air before taking the last swig.
After cleaning the few dishes he’d used and tidying up the makeshift kitchen, he readied the ship. Serena was preprogrammed with the landing coordinates; a vast canyon on the edge of the Hebes Chasma Mountain Range.
Scientists speculated there were once open rivers flowing on the surface of Mars, not that different from the numerous riverways that once wound their way over the Earth. The rivers cut valleys, some probably as large as the Grand Canyon. Or larger. Those valleys were the most likely place to start a settlement. If Mars was suitable for terraforming, Jay would send word to NASA approving Phase II, and a ship of scientists and engineers would be dispatched and arrive about a year after Jay. If not, Jay would send his final message to command informing them to look elsewhere.
Hebes Chasma would be Jay’s new home.
He pushed buttons and flipped switches. He made sure Serena was ready to fly on her own, that he’d be woken in an emergency, and that his sleep unit was functioning correctly.
He took one last look at the Earth, fading into the distance, before switching the view screen toward Mars.
“Goodbye, Earth.”
The vastness of space was all that confronted him. Tiny dots of light that appeared to be close, but were in reality thousands of light years away. Each one a glowing stepping stone. A beacon.
“You ready, old girl?” he asked Serena. She didn’t answer, but he knew she was. “Let’s go home.” And even though he’d never set foot on the alien planet before, as Jay’s final destination, it would be home.
Captain Jay Marcos sent the automated message back to Command that he was entering stasis and went to sleep.
While he slept, he had the dream. The only dream that ever haunted him. The one he’d had every night for the last year, ever since he’d agreed to man this particular mission