“I had no idea you did this.”

Su Ning arched her head up to look down at him. “You may be the Captain, Sir, but with respect you don’t know everything.”

She had spoken in her usual, kind voice.  But something about the choice of her words, possibly her intonation, raised his suspicions. He was, after all, the commanding officer of the first manned mission to Mars. The mission’s most valuable asset was its crew, and their well-being was always his highest priority. The revelation that Su Ning stared out into the depths of space every night wasn’t concerning on its own, save for the fact that the controllers on Earth should have alerted him in his weekly psych report. However, the way in which she’d addressed him did seem a little out of sorts.

He pushed against the sofa and made his way to her, anchoring himself on the rung beside the window and lying down opposite her. He looked into space with her for several moments.  She was right: with the light on, the window was more like a mirror. In it, he saw her worried look.

“Lieutenant, is everything OK?” He pushed away from the window to face her.

She looked away quickly.

The Captain allowed a long, uneasy silence to play out before opening his mouth and drawing breath.  Before the words could come Su Ning continued, speaking quietly as if she did not want anyone to overhear.

“I am not sure if it is an issue, Sir,” she whispered. “I would not worry you with anything unless I was certain.” She took a final look out of the window, before pushing off towards the door. “I am very tired, Sir, please excuse me.”

Montreaux lay confused for several seconds before turning quickly. “Wait, Su Ning!”

He was alone.

Her parting words echoed in his head for minutes, although he decided to let her be. He could easily have reached her pod and confronted her; after all there was no door to close between them. But his experience told him that people, and none more so than astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts cooped up for months on end, sometimes needed their own space.

He launched himself from the wall to finish his inspection of the Clarke.

Chapter 14

Jane sighed and looked towards the small window on the opposite side of the Lounge. Danny Marchenko sat beside her, his bottom lip curled upwards in an amused smile.

“The United States is no longer a superpower, Jane,” he said calmly, enjoying every minute of their debate.

She unclipped herself and launched towards the Lounge’s ceiling. Halfway there she expertly twisted her lower body round so that she was facing him, while at the same time holding her arms outstretched to catch the edges of two metal rungs attached to the wall.  Wedging her arms behind the rungs, she crossed her legs and looked him in the eyes.

“Danny, whilst I am all for the International nature of this mission,” she said sarcastically, “NASA remains the main stakeholder in Clarke.” From where she was now perched, she could see both entrances to the Lounge.  She squirmed as she saw Captain Montreaux enter from the direction of the living quarters.

He glanced up at her and laughed at the look on her face. “Captain Marchenko, are you winding Dr Richardson up again?” he said as he made his way to a small drawer recessed into the opposing wall.

“I know I shouldn’t, but she bites so easily,” Danny laughed.

She scowled at them both before returning her eyes to the darkness of space with a flick of her chin.

“Like it or not, Dr Richardson, this isn’t an American expedition.” He opened the drawer in front of him and removed a writing pad and pen. “This is the twenty-first century, and no matter how much lobbying goes on in Washington, this mission will not be putting the Star Spangled Banner into the soil of another planet.”

Captain Danny Marchenko found himself in the unusual position of being in complete agreement with his American counterpart. “Absolutely,” he made himself say. He had been leading Jane on for a quarter of an hour on the subject, as was their almost-weekly ritual, but while he did it purely for the look on the doctor’s face, he recognised that sometimes things did get out of control. Twice already there had been heated arguments on board the Clarke, arguments that Earth had been quick to reprimand.

Today was one of those days, and Jane was taking the subject particularly badly.

“I don’t see why we can’t put all of our flags on Mars, that way everyone is happy!” she complained without looking away from the stars outside.

Montreaux closed the drawer and pushed himself towards the living quarter’s entrance.  “And can we put a Canadian flag, also?”

“Why not?”

“How about Japanese? I believe that Su Ning’s Grandfather is from Kyoto,” Captain Marchenko added.

“Naturally,” she pursed her lips.

“Oh, wait a minute,” Montreaux said theatrically. “My Grandfather was French, so how about a Tricolore? And a European Union Flag, so as not to upset everyone?”

Jane did not reply.

“Dr Richardson, this is part of our mission brief, and it does not matter how strongly you feel about the matter, the Clarke mission will be planting no flags in the Martian soil.” He waited for a response, but none came. “Furthermore, whilst I happily encourage topical debate, I do believe that we have already covered this subject several times.”

He had reached the door and was about to pull himself through the tunnel to leave the Lounge when Jane shouted out in his general direction. “You’re an idealist, Yves,” she made no attempt to mask her sentiment. “The world you dream of can’t exist, and never will!”

Captain Montreaux stopped himself on the metal hand bar which ran the full circumference of the doorway. He pulled himself round slowly to face her, leaving his notepad and pen floating in the tunnel behind him. What amazed him wasn’t that the topic of flags seemed impossible to put to bed; instead it was that of all the crew, with their military backgrounds and patriotism, it was the only civilian among them who seemed to take it all so personally.

“You are absolutely correct, Dr Richardson: my ideal world cannot exist. Not on Earth,” he said carefully, looking straight into her eyes. “But on Mars, maybe. So why spoil this opportunity by setting off on the wrong foot?”

Danny nodded in sombre agreement as Montreaux pulled himself through the door, grabbing his notepad and pen as he went.  The parting words weighed down on the Lounge for some time, before Jane finally spoke.

“It’s only a flag,” she muttered bitterly under her breath.

Marchenko unclipped his retaining straps and let himself float towards the centre of the room, giving the sofa a brief nudge with his toes as he went.  This caused him to spin slowly as he crossed the Lounge, and as his body turned to face Jane, who was still lodged into the ceiling but was now looking down at him, his face burst into a huge grin, showing his large, perfectly white teeth.

“Exactly, Jane,” he said gleefully as he span, like a child on a fairground ride. “It is only a flag.”

Back in his pod, Montreaux set the notepad down on his desk and let the pen float as he secured himself in his chair.  Grabbing the pen, he pressed down on the end to expose the writing tip and placed it against the paper.

After a brief pause, he lifted the tip again and looked over his shoulder at the door behind him. There was no way of closing it, but the faint noise of the crew’s voices still emanating from the Lounge assured him he would not be disturbed.

Touching the paper with his pen once more, he started writing.

The Clarke was a true technological marvel, and was breaking practically every record in the space exploration book.

It was the biggest and most expensive space craft ever conceived, designed to take its crew of four on a seven-month round trip to Mars, punctuated in the middle by a nine-month sojourn orbiting the Red Planet while its occupants had their shore leave. In total the mission would last nearly a year and a half.