Spacemen

But because of the heat, the round of golf is a joke. The trash-talking that separated the spacemen and pointed to a showdown on the course dissipates like so much water in the scorching sun, which pushes the air temperature to more than 110 degrees.

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They're fairly evenly matched, each a garden-variety amateur capable of scoring rounds in the mid-80s to mid-90s. They finish the first nine holes dead even, but their enthusiasm for the competition is withering in the furnace. Smith places a handful of ice in a towel, plops it on top of his head and secures his golf hat over the towel. Water drips down his face and neck, drenching his shirt. Rutan steers the golf cart down the fairway, wearing the arctic hat, doffing it only to get out of the cart, walk over to his ball and hit a shot. He then returns to the cart and straps on the hat again.

Oh, the spacemen attempt to stay on their game. But the day is wearing them down, especially Rutan. He's not only a few years older than Smith, but he's still recovering from major surgery. Last fall, Rutan had developed a heart problem, and as he underwent testing, doctors recommended he be put on a transplant list as a precaution. He was convinced he was going to die. At the time, he didn't attribute his illness to stress, a position he has since changed. A few months before his heart had gone on the fritz, Rutan experienced the greatest shock of his professional life when an engine test at his company's Mojave headquarters went terribly wrong. The explosion, on July 26, 2007, killed three employees of Scaled and seriously injured three others. The accident sent Rutan into a downward emotional spiral, the psychological trauma ultimately giving way to his failing health.

Doctors at L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center finally diagnosed the problem in January: The sac around his heart, the pericardium, had thickened and hardened. It was restricting his heart from pumping normally, literally strangling the life out of him. After radical, emergency surgery, Rutan began a steady recovery. His major goal, after regaining his ability to walk, was to play golf. And today, he sees the operation -- and his recovery -- as a chance to improve his golf game. "I was lying in bed after surgery, thinking: 'This is my opportunity to start over. I can go see a really good teaching professional and build my swing from the ground up.' Before, I was loath to make radical changes to my swing. But now, I can. I stared death in the face, and today, less than a year later, I'm playing golf."

On the 17th green, Rutan two strokes up, Smith's iPhone rings. He plucks it off his belt, puts it to his ear and groans loudly. "But that's simply not true!" he protests, speaking to a member of his Mars mission team whom he doesn't identify. "I didn't speak to anyone at the White House, that's for sure ... Well, then, who did? Awww, Christ. Leave it to 'Aviation Leak' to make up a story like this. All right, all right. Let's not worry about it. Why should we? The story is wrong. Oh, it's possible someone talked to a member of the White House staff. That, we'll have to deal with; NASA will be kicking and screaming about protocol ... Okay, let's talk later ... Keep me informed."

He straps his phone to his belt. "Can you believe this?" he says to Rutan. "Aviation Leak [Smith's nickname for Aviation Week] has a story saying that a member of my team, or 'sources' on the Phoenix project, debriefed the White House, saying we'd discovered life on Mars. It's absurd! But, man, I've got a [expletive]-storm on my hands."

Rutan smiles wryly at this, saying, "Well, that's what you get for conducting a successful mission!"

It is 1:30 a.m. back at Rutan's Golf Shack. Tonya and Burt have retired, and Smith is soaking in the backyard pool. He has a glass of white wine in his hand. "Oh, man," he says, "does it get any better than this?

"I really enjoyed the golf today," he says. "I mean, really enjoyed it. Man, that course is tough. But I loved the whole scene. The fact that you can see the coral line in the cliffs around the course -- there was an ocean there thousands of years ago! It was like playing golf in a geological museum."

He crosses his arms over his chest and rubs his shoulders. It looks like he's giving himself a reassuring hug. "Yeah, the golf was hard, and the heat was oppressive. But I got to know Burt Rutan the man, not Burt Rutan, the legend. He's a fascinating guy with a big heart."

The word "heart" causes Smith to wince, no doubt bringing to mind Rutan's illness. Smith is earnest bordering on maudlin -- you can feel the revelation coming.

"You know how Burt talked about facing his mortality?" Smith asks. "I know exactly what he means."

In March 2007 -- with the Phoenix project in full swing and just a few months from launching the robot that would collect samples from the surface of Mars -- Smith was diagnosed with an illness he asks me not to specify. "I will say, though, that there were life-threatening issues; my recovery wasn't a certainty."

He had to undergo an operation that summer. "It was surreal for me," Smith says, gliding his arms back and forth across the surface of the water. "Saying good-bye to Dana as I went into the operating room was a poignant moment. After they gave me the drugs, of course, I didn't know from anything. But it was so odd. Here I was, being operated on robotically, and in just a few weeks, I would be [sending] a robot to scoop up samples on Mars. The doctor was doing to me what I was going to do to Mars."

He lowers his chin into the water until it rises up to a point just below his lips. He blows bubbles in the water.

"Anyway," he says, his voice trailing off, "a little more than two weeks after the operation, I was in Florida for the launch of the Phoenix. Obviously, I had to be there -- if something went wrong, it was on me. This is my mission."

He describes the beauty of the liftoff, the powerful thrust of the rocket, its arc into the sky. "We were ecstatic," he says. "And then the strangest thing happened. The craft disappeared ... and the vapor trails began swirling around and taking shape. I looked up and couldn't believe it. I said to Dana, 'Do you see that?' And she said, 'Yes, I do.' The clouds were exactly in the shape of a bird spreading its wings -- the phoenix."

Eighteen holes of golf were not enough for Rutan. At about 9:30 the next morning, we are back in the golf carts, the arctic hat is secured to Rutan's head, and we are hurtling toward the first tee of the famous Stadium Course at PGA West. The course design and topography are dramatic, sharply pitched and sculptural, appearing almost hallucinatory in the heat, a blast furnace just like the day before.

We race through nine holes, and then, surrendering to the rising temperature, we agree to head back to the Golf Shack. But wait! Rutan wants Smith to experience the sand bunker to the left of the 16th green. It's nearly 20 feet below the green's surface, as severe and inhospitable as a crater on Mars.

Smith's phone rings again. He puts it to his ear, his eyes narrow, and his expression grows serious.

"Oh, I see," he says. "They're going with the story?"

Rutan trudges toward the green, leaving Smith to deal with what appears to be another crisis. "C'mon, let's keep moving," Rutan says, a devilish grin curling the corner of his mouth. "Peter's dealing with a little matter regarding life on Mars."

Smith hangs up, straps his phone back on his belt, Rutan circles back in his golf cart. Smith is clearly distressed, deflated by the phone call, but Rutan insists that he play out of the cavernous bunker. "It's outstanding," Rutan declares.

"Uh-huh," Smith says weakly. "Outstanding."

Smith descends into the sandy bunker, closely followed by Rutan. They toss down a few balls, and Smith begins flailing away, swinging his sand wedge with maximum force but zero precision. Six horrible hacks later, he says, "I give up."

"Well, I'm glad you got to experience it," Rutan says. "It's a beast of a sand trap."

"You're right about that, Burt," says Smith.

Rutan begins his ascent from the hole, looking back to check on Smith, whose progress is glacial.

Reaching the top of the steep bank, Rutan turns and extends a golf club to Smith, who grabs the lifeline gratefully.

"Thanks, friend," Smith says. "I was beginning to think I'd never get out of there."

"We couldn't let that happen," says Rutan, flashing that wry smile once more. "You're way too important to our future understanding of space. There's no way we were going to leave you behind."

Joe Bargmann is a freelance journalist who livesin New York. He can be reached at jbargmann@gmail.com.