“You’re sure?” Lewis asked. “You can turn it off?”

“Shouldn’t be hard,” Johanssen said. “It’s an emergency feature, not a security program. It isn’t protected against malicious code.”

“Malicious code?” Beck smiled. “So… you’ll be a hacker?”

“Yeah.” Johanssen smiled back. “I guess I will.”

“All right,” Lewis said. “Looks like we can do it. But I don’t want peer pressure forcing anyone into it. We’ll wait for twenty-four hours. During that time, anyone can change their mind. Just talk to me in private or send me an e-mail. I’ll call it off and never tell anyone who it was.”

Lewis stayed behind as the rest filed out. Watching them leave, she saw they were smiling. All four of them. For the first time since leaving Mars, they were back to their old selves. She knew right then no one’s mind would change.

They were going back to Mars.

• • •

EVERYONE KNEW Brendan Hutch would be running missions soon.

He’d risen through NASA’s ranks as fast as one could in the large, inertia-bound organization. He was known as a diligent worker, and his skill and leadership qualities were plain to all his subordinates.

Brendan was in charge of Mission Control from one a. m. to nine a. m. every night. Continued excellent performance in this role would certainly net him a promotion. It had already been announced he’d be backup flight controller for Ares 4, and he had a good shot at the top job for Ares 5.

“Flight, CAPCOM,” a voice said through his headset.

“Go, CAPCOM,” Brendan responded. Though they were in the same room, radio protocol was observed at all times.

“Unscheduled status update from Hermes.”

With Hermes ninety light-seconds away, back-and-forth voice communication was impractical. Other than media relations, Hermes would communicate via text until they were much closer.

“Roger,” Brendan said. “Read it out.”

“I… I don’t get it, Flight,” came the confused reply. “No real status, just a single sentence.”

“What’s it say?”

“Message reads: ‘Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man.’”

“What?” Brendan asked. “Who the hell is Rich Purnell?”

“Flight, Telemetry,” another voice said.

“Go, Telemetry,” Brendan said.

“Hermes is off course.”

“CAPCOM, advise Hermes they’re drifting. Telemetry, get a correction vector ready—”

“Negative, Flight,” Telemetry interrupted. “It’s not drift. They adjusted course. Instrumentation uplink shows a deliberate 27.812- degree rotation.”

“What the hell?” Brendan stammered. “CAPCOM, ask them what the hell.”

“Roger, Flight… message sent. Minimum reply time three minutes, four seconds.”

“Telemetry, any chance this is instrumentation failure?”

“Negative, Flight. We’re tracking them with SatCon. Observed position is consistent with the course change.”

“CAPCOM, read your logs and see what the previous shift did. See if a massive course change was ordered and somehow nobody told us.”

“Roger, Flight.”

“Guidance, Flight,” Brendan said.

“Go, Flight,” was the reply from the guidance controller.

“Work out how long they can stay on this course before it’s irreversible. At what point will they no longer be able to intercept Earth?”