Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [26]
'And who's Ralph Cornish?'
'He was the head of the British Space Programme at the time of the first Mars Missions,' Eve Waugh supplied.
'He didn't recognise me from back then,' the Doctor said sadly.
'We he wouldn't,' Benny reminded him gently. Eve was watching them carefully, presumably wondering what the Doctor had been doing at Space Centre in his mid-teens.
The countdown had reached ten minutes.
'If I could have your attention,' a young man was cal ing, 'the Mars Lander has finished its preparations and is nearly ready. If you could all take your seats.'
'See you later,' Eve called, hurrying away.
The pitch of the conversation became more excited, and the guests began shuffling into their designated places.
Benny hoped that there were more chairs than guests. She squeezed her way past the Spice Girls to take an empty chair. Somehow the Doctor was already in the next seat, sharing a joke with Jeremy Paxman.
26
'The Mars Orbiter,' a bearded scientist at the podium began explaining, 'has been orbiting Mars for the last two days. In that time, instruments have been mapping the surface and taking measurements of the thin Martian atmosphere. The crew have also deployed a couple of unmanned vehicles, released weather balloons and launched a couple of satellites that will stay in orbit long after this mission has come home. All that information is being collected and collated at the Space Centre at Devesham. Meanwhile, they have also been preparing the Mars Lander.'
The video screen flickered into life, showing a CGI representation of the Mars craft. As the scientist continued to explain, Benny quickly established that the new Mars Probe was the same sort of arrangement as the old Apollo missions: a command module would stay in orbit while a four-man Lander would detach itself and drop down to the surface. The Mars 97 was about the size of the old Apol o rocket, but nothing was jettisoned: instead of liquid fuel, the three hundred metre length of the spacecraft was given over to the atomic engine. The eight-man crew huddled together in the compartment in the nosecone of the vessel during the four-month journey to Mars - the new atomic motors meant that the vessel was twice as fast as the old Mars Probes.
'They'l stay on the Martian surface for a month,' the scientist continued. 'The aim of the mission is to conduct a full geological survey of the Mare Sirenum.'
'Been there, done that,' Benny said softly to the Doctor. She expected him to beam back, but instead he scowled, and made a show of straining to hear the lecture.
'We have the aim of having a full, working colony on Mars in the next ten years. The Mars 97 Mission will conduct a full feasibility study into this. If the Mars colony is not possible, then all is not lost: IIF are planning to build a nuclear-waste storage facility on the Moon in the next two years, the first manned flight to Jupiter is planned for two years after that. To tel us all how this has been possible, we have an honoured guest here this morning: Mr David Staines, the Home Secretary.'
A thin, bespectacled man made his way forward. The applause rippled around him and the world's television cameras followed his progress. The autocue was waiting at the podium.
'Today, after over twenty years, the human race returns to Mars. This would be a cause for celebration regardless of which nation had got there. But it isn't, I am sure, jingoism to suggest that we are all particularly glad that it is the United Kingdom that got there first.' - applause - 'Twenty years ago, the British space programme was a clear demonstration that our country still had the know-how to be a world-beater. I was a young man when Grosvenor and Guest planted the Union Flag at the foot of mighty Olympus Mons. My heart still swells to think of it: British astronauts staring up at the mightiest feature of the solar system, a mountain almost three times the size of Everest. And remember just who it was that reached the summit of that