The Martian Race Read Online Free

looking for water and, of course, fossils or life. Samples returned from Mars would be immensely valuable: a full range of specimens weighing three hundred kilograms would be turned over to the Accords Board in exchange for the $30 billion. Anything over and above that was for the investors.
    On the surface, the Mars Accords were international treaty obligations to open Mars for a global effort. Actually it was grudging support for NASA, whom everyone expected to eventually claim the prize. Julia and the other astronauts had been in training under this initiative.
    But not now. Nobody else had taken up the challenge, and NASA had been slowly assembling an effort to fly at the minimum-energy planetary orbital window in 2016.
    A week after the blowup, a day after the big state funeral, President Feinstein announced that the U.S. would “redirect its energies to near-Earth projects.” Like building another wing on the space station, a notorious pork barrel beloved of Congress.
    Mars seemed dead. All the astronauts were dejected, their years of training wasted. A few took sudden leaves. One went skydiving. Some started hanging out in bars, not part of the approved health regimen.
    Julia tried to wear her Doris Day mask through the whole thing, but it kept slipping. She consoled Marc and Raoul, men who ditched good careers to train for Mars. Even then, she kept quiet about being romantically involved with Viktor. In the tight little world of astronaut politics, nobody knew what would happen next. Conceivably, just having kept it secret might knock them out of space station missions—the only game left.
    Then a slim, beautifully dressed man walked in on the Mars astronaut team at Johnson Space Center.
    He came with a trailing wedge of suited, alert men and women who formed a bow shock wave for him, enabling a dramatic entrance. He shook a few hands, traded short sallies, and worked the room almost like a politician. Julia knew she had seen him somewhere before. His gaze swept the NASA staff like a searching though affable spotlight. The whole room seemed to focus around him as people talking to the side stopped to watch.
    His swift gaze found the dozen astronauts. He paused for effect, then asked, “Who still wants to go to Mars—on the cheap?”
    John Axelrod. Ready smile, tanned good looks, darting blue eyes that gleamed with wary assessment. She had felt an uneasy fascination with him from the first moment.
    His money originally came from Genesmart, a biotech firm he helped start, that brought to market Tourex, an antibacterial to combat Montezuma's revenge. It had become the indispensable traveling companion for tourists and business travelers worldwide. When he took Genesmart public, he was an overnight multibillionaire. But from his early years he had been the kind of man who would bet on whose bag came off the baggage claim carousel first. His interest in Mars ran back to childhood. He had been a washout in early astronaut training, but had kept a keen interest and had some insider, good ol’ boy contacts at NASA.
    He knew NASA's unmanned return ship, the ERV, had launched for Mars over a year ago. It had landed in Gusev Crater and refueled, using the Martian atmosphere, and was ready even now to fly a crew back to Earth. And he didn't want to see the Mars mission die.
    “Plus,” he had said to the astronauts, “there's money to be made.”
    In just a few wheeler-dealer days, Axelrod had put together a consortium of big corporations to win the $30 billion Mars Prize.
    “But we estimated sixty billion dollars to go,” one astronaut interrupted.
    “That's with bureaucrats and paperwork.” Axelrod grinned, white teeth against tanned skin. He looked to be in his forties, fit and bristling with peppery energy. “That, I'll cut.”
    He had a risky but inexpensive method for a red planet mission first suggested in the early 1990s. Instead of using NASA's costly orbiting return module, the Consortium crew would return