The Martian Race by Gregory Benford

element in herself, the unlit cellars of her mind. Women astronauts usually had decided long ago not to have children. They had unbearably complicated careers. Katherine was mid-thirties, her clock ticking loudly. Had it simply swamped her other voices?
    That evening Julia tried to talk to Katherine, more out of curiosity than any impulse to help the mission. But Katherine would not come forth. From that day on, she would not speak to the press or to the Consortium team. For all purposes, she simply vanished from their tracking scope, a fallen flyer.
    A day later she ran into Raoul outside the simulator quad. He glanced at her, away, back. “Julia?”
    “Hey, hi.” She felt awkward and started to walk on.
    “Uh, got a minute?”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “Come in here.”
    Into an alcove for suit-up prep. With all the work suites and suits, there was only room to stand. He turned and his eyes were big, brown pleas.
    They were alone because the techs and support staff were off fixing some sudden glitch in the electronics, a colossal board malf nobody understood. Old boards, not the new top-of-the-line antimonide layers Axelrod was springing for, of course. They were going to Mars first class. Especially if it saved weight.
    She waited and finally realized that he wasn't going to say anything. Couldn't. Maybe shouldn't.
    “So, uh, how'd it go with her?” That was as much as she was going to give him. He had to come some of the distance himself, for Chris-sake.
    “I … we talked. You know, I know, everybody knows that… that she had to know.”
    “You said that.”
    “Yeah.” A sigh of release, head lolling back.
    “And she said … ?”
    “She wouldn't really say, not right out.”
    “Uh huh.” God, other people's relationships.
    “But, I mean, we knew what we were saying.”
    More than I can say, but keep it coming, kid. “She admitted that she got pregnant knowingly? Even though it meant Mars was out?”
    “Like I say, she never said it clear like that. But I got her meaning.” He was opening now, his face less constricted, voice rushing on, tones more earnest yet less fevered. “Way I figure it, she was an astronaut all along, childhood dream and all that, like the rest of us. Only now she's done that. So it's a baby or Mars, and she wants the baby.”
    “Reasonable.”
    “You must've felt the same.”
    “Not actually. I like kids, but other people's are fine. Enough. I can return them afterward.”
    He laughed—a quick, light chuckle, and then the words came out fast again. “So she's getting rattled, too, I think.”
    “Rattled.”
    “I mean, this isn't NASA. Not today's NASA. It's like the NASA of the sixties, doing stuff for the first time, every time. People died then and everybody was sorry, sure, and they just kept going. Not like now. Somebody breaks a leg in the space station, there's people talking about it in Congress.”
    “You think she was scared.”
    He sighed, and to her surprise, lowered his head with a tired sadness. “Yeah, I think.”
    “Afraid of Mars, of the uncertainty.” She was stalling. Plain old fear had not occurred to her.
    “Maybe it got all scrambled up inside her. She's been an astronaut, a damn good one. Now she wants to be a mother. Doesn't need Mars.” His head came up and he drew in a long breath. Something more coming. “And yeah, the way she was holding me at night all these months, the bad dreams and all—yeah, I think she was scared.”
    He was telling her as much as he was ever going to tell anyone. That Katherine had mixed motives—who didn't?—and one was the gut-squeezer nobody in the astronaut corps ever talked about.
    “ I… I see.” Wow, real therapist stuff, here. “I've felt the same way. It is dangerous.”
    Raoul grabbed at this like a life preserver. “We all do, damn right. Only reasonable, I guess. Only with her, it got mingled in with the baby thing.”
    “No shame in that.” She was trying to find a way to back away from this. She