The Return [Paperback]

But unlike TIBER, which literally spanned time and space in first person narratives, Return follows a more constrained literary approach. Only three narrators are used, childhood friends who have drifted apart and reunite as adults. As a result the overall scope of RETURN is less grand than TIBER, but certainly more readable. Aldrin is at his best with the details of the space exploration business, with the lift capabilities, PR coups, long hours, and exhilaration and exhaustion. Barnes does an outstanding job in taking Aldrin's space strategies and spinning them into the story, around the high cost of machines and the higher costs to men and women as marriages fail and friendships are sacrificed. The authors are unique in their qualifications to comment on the current state of the space program and to speculate with fictional events on what politics or profit-margins will be prophetic.

There have been crises large and small to test the confidence and commitment to an American space program: the Apollo 1 fire, the Apollo 13 "successful failure," the Challenger explosion, the troubles of the Hubble Space Telescope, the problematic space stations Skylab, Mir and ISS, the disappearance of Mars probes. These historical hardships lend credence to the reaction surrounding the untimely tragedy in chapter two of THE RETURN -- the death of basketball superstar MJ on orbit. Our protagonist, former astronaut Scott Blackstone and CEO of ShareSpace, is set up to take the blame. In short order, Scott is fired and sued by MJ's mother for $1 billion, while a nation grieves a slain celebrity and debates the risks of the conquest of space. The "Citizen Observer" program was to bring Americans from all walks of life along on selected shuttle missions, so that schoolteachers, shop mechanics and newscasters who dreamed of flying could go where senators, Saudi princes, and Scott Blackstone have been. There are those who do not want it to succeed for a variety of reasons: some sinister, some short-sighted. When no legal eagles will mount a defense for Scott, his older brother Nick pulls strings at aerospace company Republic Wright to dig deeper lest the well get poisoned for any rocket builder. This brings Nick back into contact his childhood clique of Eddie Killeret, now at competitor Curtiss Aerospace, and Scott's ex-wife, attorney Thalia "Thally" Pendergast. Scott, Nick, Thally and Eddie are preteen pals who dubbed themselves the Mars Four, vowing to get to the red planet by the year 2019. Nick hires Thalia to represent Scott and works surreptitiously to re-unite the couple as a family with their 10-year-old son, Amos. But the family's safety is threatened by anonymous threats, mourners, sabotage and security breaches. When a preliminary NASA report would acquit Scott, a cover-up begins that culminates with a communist Chinese conspiracy detonating a proton bomb. The bomb unleashes enough hard radiation to fry every satellite in low-earth orbit, including the International Space Station. A daring rescue mission by the Mars Four would not only save the ISS astronauts, but also an aggressive space program, and American idealism itself. THE RETURN concludes on a note of hope for a return to Apollo-era fervor space exploration.