The Martian Race by Gregory Benford Read Free Book Online Page A

had barely known them—all became suitable targets for microphone-in-face journalism.
    NASA had created plenty of opportunities for the press to, well, press against the astronauts. Axelrod killed that attitude immediately. “Thing is,” he explained to the four, “you are a commodity now. Don't want to oversell you.”
    Katherine said straightforwardly, “I'm not a commodity.”
    “Partners, then,” Axelrod said smoothly. “Partners in the Consortium.”
    Raoul supported his wife's objection. “We have rights to our own stories, I believe.”
    “So you do.” Axelrod nodded vigorously. He was sitting on his mahogany desk, and the four of them were alone with him, a rarity. He had ordered champagne brought in to celebrate the “consolidation,” as he termed it, of the team.
    Raoul said, “Then we should manage our own relationships with the media.”
    “You shall—when you can reap the benefits. Right now, you train.”
    Viktor said, “Good. No speaking to those fellows.”
    Axelrod smiled coolly. “Not entirely. But we'll orchestrate the press conferences. You keep your stories to yourselves, and our legal department will handle your separate contracts.”
    Viktor asked, “Contracts?”
    “Your memoirs, interviews, so on.” Axelrod beamed. “You are planning on coming back and telling your story, aren't you?”
    They were officially media figures now. The world was steadily going Mars-mad and the four of them were at the center of it all.
    First they were invited to all the big social events in Houston, thrown by people they didn't know. Later they received invitations from all over the country. Wannabe “megabillionaires”—a media misnomer—offered to send private jets to whisk them to posh mansions. Cost was no object. Your party was an instant success if one or more of the Marsnauts attended.
    “Another big do,” Julia said one morning, looking at the latest round of invitations. “This one's in New York. Wanna go?”
    “To big doo-doo? I think not. Too much caviar is bad for astronaut training.” He put a hand over his liver with a pained expression on his face.
    It was a game they played. Julia would read Viktor the most outrageous of the invitations, and he would pretend to take them seriously.
    It was their way of dealing with the craziness of it all. As astronauts, they had been faces in the crowd, lost among one hundred others. No one had recognized them in the street, wanted autographs, or invited them anywhere. Now suddenly they were hyperstars, megacelebs, their every move outside JSC stalked by crowds of paparazzi. Axelrod's security guards moved them between the training center and their secluded living compound.
    Somehow she hadn't anticipated this roller-coaster life. At least the recent nasty talk in some of the down-market media had gone away, once their marriage was announced. Amazing, what a piece of legal paper could silence. Still, she felt that a lot of this had fallen upon her while she was busy doing something else. Like her job, for instance.
    “I'd feel better about it if we weren't getting all this attention before we'd done anything.”
    “Yes. But maybe no time after.”
    A good way to put it, she thought sourly. Maybe what we'll be remembered for will be our deaths.
    July 4, 2015. An Axelrod irony, “getting hitched” on Independence Day.
    The wedding took place on Axelrod's private island off the coast of North Carolina, six weeks later.
    “Just a simple garden wedding,” he said to Julia and Viktor. “Leave all the arrangements to me. You concentrate on Mars.”
    And that was just fine with Julia. She didn't like weddings, had no interest in organizing one. She'd always thought vaguely that if she ever did marry, it would be in a judge's office with a couple of friends.
    But here she was, in a long white dress, looking like someone from a bride's magazine. Her short brunette bob had been meticulously arranged; she was wearing a veil and had a bouquet of