50 in 50

On the final day, he removed the recording tapes from the instruments and carried the instruments away from the ship where they couldn't be caught in the takeoff blast. Next to the instruments he piled all the extra supplies, machinery and unneeded equipment. Shuffling through the rusty sand for the last time, he gave Morley's grave an ironical salute as he passed. There was nothing to do in the ship and not as much as a pamphlet left to read. Tony passed the two remaining hours on his bunk counting the rivets in the ceiling.

A sharp click from the control clock broke the silence and behind the thick partition he could hear the engines begin the warm-up cycle. At the same time, the padded arms slipped across his bunk, pinning him down securely. He watched the panel slip back in the wall next to him and the hypo arm slide through, moving erratically like a snake as its metal fingers sought him out. They touched his ankle and the serpent's tooth of the needle snapped free. The last thing he saw was the needle slipping into his vein, then the drug blacked him out.

As soon as he was under, a hatch opened in the rear bulkhead and two — orderlies brought in a stretcher. They wore neither suits nor masks and the blue sky of Earth was visible behind them.

Coming to was the same as it always had been. The gentle glow from the stimulants that brought him up out of it, the first sight of the white ceiling of the operating room on Earth.

Only this time the ceiling wasn't visible, it was obscured by the red face and thundercloud brow of Colonel Stregham. Tony tried to remember if you saluted while in bed, then decided that the best thing to do was lie quietly.

"Damn it, Bannerman," the colonel growled, "welcome back on Earth. And why did you bother coming back? With Morley dead the expedition has to be counted a failure — and that means not one completely successful expedition to date."

"The team in number two, sir, how did they do. .?" Tony tried to sound cheerful.

"Terrible. If anything, worse than your team. Both dead on the second day after landing. A meteor puncture in their oxygen tank and they were too busy discovering a new flora to bother looking at any meters.

"Anyway, that's not why I'm here. Get on some clothes and come into my office."

He slammed out and Tony scrambled off the bed, ignoring the touch of dizziness from the drugs. When colonels speak lieutenants hurry to obey.

Colonel Stregham was scowling out of his window when Tony came in. He returned the salute and proved that he had a shard of humanity left in his military soul by offering Tony one of his cigars. Only when they had both lit up did he wave Tony's attention to the field outside the window.

"Do you see that? Know what it is?"

"Yes, sir, the Mars rocket."

"It's going to be the Mars rocket. Right now, it's only a half-completed hull. The motors and instruments are being assembled in plants all over the country. Working on a crash basis the earliest estimate of completion is six months from now.

"The ship will be ready — only we aren't going to have any men to go in her. At the present rate of washout there won't be a single man qualified. Yourself included.”

Tony shifted uncomfortably under his gaze as the colonel continued.

"This training program has always been my baby. I dreamed it up and kept after the Pentagon until it was adopted. We knew we could build a ship that would get to Mars and back, operated by automatic controls that would fly her under any degree of gravity or free fall. But we needed men who could walk out on the surface of the planet and explore it — or the whole thing would be so much wasted effort.

"The ship and the robot pilot could be tested under simulated flight condition, and the bugs worked out. It was my suggestion, which was adopted, that the men who were to go in the ship should be shaken down in the same way. Two pressure chambers were built, simulated trainers that duplicated Mars in every detail we could imagine. We have been running two-men teams through these chambers for eighteen months now, trying to shake down and train them to man the real ship out there.

"I'm not going to tell you how many men we started with, or how many have been casualties because of the necessary realism of the chambers. I'll tell you this much though — we haven't had one successful simulated expedition in all that time. And every man who has broken down or 'died,' like your partner Morley, has been eliminated.

"There are only four possible men left, yourself included. If we don't get one successful two-man team out of you four, the entire program is a washout."

Tony sat frozen, the dead cigar between his fingers. He knew that the pressure had been on for some months now, that Colonel Stregham had been growling around like a gut-shot bear. The colonel's voice cut through his thoughts.