We start with a short story prequel, The Fourth Patient, in which a man who is an average Joe does something extraordinary when he thought he was just going to a doctor's appointment, and gets pulled into a wormhole in the center of San Francisco. What he discovers both amazes and frightens him. Will he be trapped somewhere else in space and time? Once we know the man, we are now ready for the mission, fifteen years later, in our novella Martian Time, where as head of Mission Control Joe leads the first manned mission to Mars, with a crew including Captain Dave Whitney, his wife Kate as his first mate, and their teenage daughters Kristy and Brandy, the youngest ever space travelers. Their journey will test their relationships and their endurance. But when the crew vanishes on their descent to Mars, does the evidence point to a connection to Joe's wormhole in San Francisco? What's even more puzzling is when they reappear.