Return to Mars Read Online Free PDF

thousands of dollars per pound to hundreds. Masterson Corporation and the other big aerospace firms had donated dozens of flights into Earth orbit to the Mars expedition; it was good public relations for them and their new Clipperships.
    And Dex’s father had indeed spearheaded the drive that raised the money for the expedition. The elder Trumball had personally donated nearly half a billion dollars of his own wealth, then shivvied, cajoled, or shamed fellow billionaires into contributing to the cause.
    But the real reason for the lower cost was that this second expedition was going to live off the land. Instead of carrying every gram of water, oxygen and fuel all the way from Earth, they had sent automated equipment ahead of them to land on Mars and start producing water, oxygen and fuel from the planet’s atmosphere and soil. Dex Trumball dubbed the procedure “Plan Z,” after the engineer who had pioneered the concept decades earlier, Robert Zubrin.
    Still, even with Plan Z, the expedition ran into problems before its first module took off from Earth.
    Nuclear rockets would cut the travel time between Earth and Mars almost in half. But there was still so much controversy in the United States and Europe over using nuclear propulsion that the expedition planners moved the main launch site to the island nation of Kiribati, out in the middle of the Pacific. There the nuclear engines were launched into orbit on Clipperships, to he mated with the living and equipment modules launched from the United States and Russia. Anti-nuclear demonstrators were not allowed within two hundred miles of the island launch site.
    Kiribati’s price for being so obliging was to have the expedition’s mission control center established at their capital, Tarawa. Pete Connors, astronaut veteran of the first expedition, and the other controllers did not at all mind moving to the balmy atoll. And Kiribati got global attention for its fine hotels and tourist facilities. And security.
    The biggest problem had been selection of the personnel to go to Mars. Two biologists and two geologists would be the entire scientific staff, and the competition among eager, intense young scientists was ferocious. Dex sometimes asked himself if he would have been selected as one of the geologists even if his father had not been so munificent. Doesn’t matter, he always answered himself. I’m on the team and the rest of them can torque themselves inside out for all I care.
    Trumball grimaced as he checked out the VR electronics with his head-up display. The diagnostic display flickered across his visor. Everything operational except the damned gloves. Their icon blinked red at him.
    The first law of engineering: when something doesn’t work, kick it. As he jiggered the hair-thin optical fiber wires that connected the gloves to the transmitter on his backpack, Trumball told himself once again that he was the only man on the team who understood the economics of this mission. And the economics determined what could or could not be accomplished.
    Waterman and the rest of the scientists always have their heads in the clouds, he thought. They’re here to do science. They want to convert their curiosity into Nobel Prizes. Yeah, but unless somebody foots the frigging bills they’d still be back on some campus on Earth spending their nights chatting about Mars over the Internet.
    Hell, I want to do good science, too. But the thing is, somebody’s got to pay for all this. They look down on me because I’m the only realist in the crowd.
    The glove icon at last flicked to green in his HUD. He was ready to start the virtual reality tour.
    Trumball cleared the display from his visor, then tapped his wrist keypad for the radio frequency back to mission control at Tarawa. It would be twenty-eight minutes before his signal reached Earth and their confirmation and go-ahead returned to him. He spent the time plotting out the route he would follow through this little