Martians Abroad

  “I … told you,” I answered. “I’m not.”

  “I want to see … forests,” he said. “I’ve … seen pictures. Millions of trees … they go on for … kilometers.”

  “We have … trees … on Mars,” I said. “In the atrium domes.”

  “But millions of them?” he said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “That’s just it,” he said, laughing. And how could he laugh without any air in his lungs? “It’s got to be different. I want to see it.”

  “Overrated,” I muttered.

  “There’s got to be something you want to see,” he said.

  Nothing on Earth could possibly be worth this. “Less … less talking … please,” I gasped.

  * * *

  I wrote a careful message to Captain McCaven, asking for a chance to see the bridge. I tried to sound intelligent and professional, eager but not too eager. I didn’t have a number or address to send it directly to him, so I sent it to the ship’s passenger-liaison office. I could sort of understand why they didn’t publicize the captain’s personal address. But it wasn’t like I was going to be rude and send him a million messages.

  All I got was an automatic response: “Thank you for your interest. We appreciate comments from our passengers.” Whatever. I couldn’t be sure anyone had even read my request. So I sent it again. And got the same automated response.

  Maybe Charles was right about e-messages. So I tried a different strategy.

  I tried to get into Charles’s storage bin in our cabin, but he’d locked it with a thumbprint code. I briefly thought about waiting until he was asleep and trying to ease his hand over to activate the lock. But if I did that, he’d most likely wake up, and I’d have to explain. No way was I getting in there.

  I found the note he’d written to me and tore a blank strip off the bottom of it. It didn’t give me a lot of room, and the edges were rough and torn, unlike the nice clean square the page had started out as. For a pencil I had to use a stylus for a handheld terminal, dipping it in a brown sauce from the galley to use as ink. The result was rather horrible and would pretty much rot away in a couple of days. But it didn’t have to look pretty, it just had to get noticed. This would get noticed.

  Dear Captain McCaven:

  My name is Polly Newton, and I’m traveling from Mars with my brother Charles in cabin C32. I hope someday to be a ship pilot. I got top grades in astronautics in school. I would very much like to see the bridge of the Lilia Litviak during the trip to Earth, and I promise to be quiet and respectful and not get in the way. If such a thing can be managed, I would be very grateful.

  Sincerely,

  Polly Newton

  My writing was very tiny. He probably wouldn’t even be able to read it. As long as he made out “Polly Newton,” which I was sure to make legible, I ought to at least get attention from it. Maybe the kind of attention that would get me confined to quarters, but still.

  Back in the observation lounge, I shoved a corner of the note into the NO ADMITTANCE sign that was bolted to the wall. The captain couldn’t possibly miss it.

  * * *

  I was late to dinner and ended up sitting by myself in the corner. Until Charles brought his tray over and sat across from me. I’d have preferred sitting alone.

  “What have you found out about Achebe?” he asked. Before hello, even.

  “Who?” I said.

  “Ethan Achebe, the Zeus Mining heir.”

  “I don’t know. What am I supposed to be finding out about him?”

  “Why’s he going to Earth—and to Galileo? Is anyone traveling with him? Is anyone else in his family already there? Does he have a job with the company?”

  “I thought you said you hacked into the passenger files. I’d have thought you’d have found out all this stuff already.”

  “The files don’t say how he feels about any of it. So, how does he feel about going to Earth?”

  “I’m not going to be your spy, Charles. Ask him yourself.”

  “He’s more likely to talk to you.”

  I put down the fork and glared. “All right. What if I did ask him? What makes you think I’d tell you what he said?”

  “You’re being difficult to spite me.”

  “Yes, I am! Can you blame me?”

  “Just remember, we’re in this together.”

  I didn’t even know what that meant. I scraped up the last of my protein and gravy and stomped off to put my tray in the chute.

  * * *

  Charles had some kind of plan going on. Clearly he did. Even if I could read his mind I probably wouldn’t be able to figure out what it was. Jogging while angry actually felt good. I even did twenty minutes without Ethan.

  So after jogging, I read about Galileo Academy and tried to figure out why Mom wanted us to go there.

  Galileo Academy had been founded some thirty years ago by some of Earth’s elite families. The stated goal was to create a “revolutionary new academic environment” in which the next generation of leaders “could be trained to confront and conquer the unique challenges of pan-solar system human expansion.” Like it was building some kind of rampaging army. The rhetoric sounded like a sales brochure. Sales brochures were most of what I could find in my research. The school quickly established a reputation as cutting-edge, and its graduates had founded and run important companies, sponsored solar system–wide expansion projects, and held all kinds of political offices. A lot of very wealthy, very prominent families happily sent their kids to school there. The place was a status symbol, a way for rich and powerful families of Earth and beyond to keep showing off how rich and powerful they were, which didn’t seem entirely fair to me. How was anyone else supposed to break in to that world? Maybe that was the point.

  No Martian students had ever been enrolled at Galileo Academy, because Mars didn’t really have rich and powerful families. Just a few thousand people trying to make sure the planet didn’t kill them while developing hydroponics and mining industries. Charles and I would be the first.

  That clinched it. This wasn’t about what was best for me and Charles. This was about making my mother look good. She wanted her children to be the first Martians to attend Galileo. She would have been able to use her influence as Colony One’s director of operations to make it happen. And now she’d get to brag about it. I wondered how she’d managed it. Mars was independent, with its own government and sovereignty exactly because its founders wanted to cut themselves off from Earth’s established systems. We didn’t even use money, exactly—not that we had all that much to buy. You earned credits by working and traded them for what you needed from colony stores. Nobody starved. Everyone had a place to live—because where else would they go? I wondered what kind of strings Mom had pulled, and how many favors she’d called in, to get us into Galileo.

  I was suddenly glad Charles was here, so at least I didn’t have to go through all this by myself. The assurance that I probably would have an easier time getting into a good piloting program—assuming I graduated with good enough scores—didn’t make me feel all that better. Even that part of it was as much for Mom’s benefit as it was for ours.

  I started working out a plan where I could ditch at the transfer station in orbit around Earth and stow away on the next ship heading back to Mars. Or maybe earn my way on to a crew like some old-time Earth sailor.

  A new message pinged on my handheld account: “Passenger Newton, please report to observation lounge at 2100 ship time.”

  An hour from now. I raced. I wasn’t going to miss this chance. The note had worked. I was right. Captain McCaven couldn’t ignore me.

  * * *

  The person who came through the corridor wasn’t Captain McCaven but his bearded companion from the other day. His second in command.

  “You must be Polly Newton,” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Clancy.”

  “Hi, yes, I know, I read everything on the public manifest,” I blurted, staring. “Did the captain—”

>   He shook his head. “The captain wouldn’t approve of this. He’s off duty right now, so we can sneak in for just a minute, as long as you’re quiet about it.”

  I nodded quickly. “Absolutely. Dead quiet.”

  He led me through that authorized personnel only door into restricted territory.

  Crew country, they called it, the opposite of passenger country, and I could tell the difference right away. The corridor was just as padded and marked with safety warnings as the rest of the ship, which surprised me. But the corridor and doors had lots of other markings, utilitarian rather than friendly. Not at all dressed up. We passed a couple of people who wore uniforms, and all the doors had serious labels, like ENGINEERING and QUARTERMASTER. It was beautiful. At last, we reached a wide gray door at the end of the corridor, and Clancy pressed a button on a keypad. The door opened, and I was on the bridge. I’d made it.

  He pointed to the bulkhead right next to the door. “Stay here. Don’t move.”

  I’d have stopped breathing if I could.

  The place looked like any engineering workstation on Mars, consoles with screens set into them, slim chairs bolted to the deck, panel after panel of indicator lights, toggle switches, fingertip-size buttons. There were speakers and vents, cabinets painted red and marked with emergency symbols, numbers scrolling on a monitor, thick binder notebooks stuffed full of pages hooked to a shelf with plastic cords. All of it was dimly lit with inset lighting to reduce glare. I’d seen lots of pictures of all kinds of ship bridges, from tiny shuttle cabins to the big cargo cruisers. This was my first time seeing one in person. The big difference between this and a planet-side workstation: the chairs moved. They were set into rockers so they could change orientation when the ship changed heading. This whole thing moved.

  The bridge had chairs for six crew members. On the off shift, only one person was here working, probably one of the junior crew set to monitoring the systems. Once the rockets had been fired, taking the ship out of Mars orbit, momentum would carry it straight to Earth. There wouldn’t be much piloting or navigating to do until we approached Earth orbit. I’d love to see that, all six chairs filled, the whole bridge busy. But this was better than nothing. I wasn’t going to complain.

  Lieutenant Clancy said, “That’s the command station, where Captain McCaven sits when he’s on duty—”

  “It has data feeds from all the other positions on the bridge, and also engineering, communications, and the sensor feeds. The pilot sits there, and those are the thruster controls, right? For coupling with station-docking systems. The navigator sits there, that monitor displays the charts. That’s the radio for short-range communications. That panel monitors M-drive activity, I think.”

  Clancy stared at me. “You really are into this.”

  “I told you, I’m going to be a pilot someday.”

  “Well. Good for you, kid.”

  The junior crew member might have chuckled.

  I didn’t know how long he’d let me stay here, so I tried to take it all in, to memorize every piece of it. There must have been a million buttons, and I wanted to know what every single one of them did. I took a deep breath. The place had a close, comfortable atmosphere, smelling of work and buzzing with the low hum of cooling fans. It felt like a place where amazing things happened. I was itching to sit in one of those seats … the captain’s seat. That would get me booted out for sure, so I stayed where I was.

  I almost wished that something exciting would happen while I watched. Not too exciting, of course, nothing like a hull breach or radiation-shield failure. Maybe a micrometeoroid hit that would set off an alarm and require some kind of damage report. But nothing happened. All the lights that were supposed to glow quietly to themselves kept glowing, and no alarms sounded. The crew member seemed to be reading a book on her handheld.

  Finally, Clancy glanced at the panel on the captain’s consol and clicked his tongue. “All right, I think that’s enough. Time to go, Ms. Newton.”

  It had only been a couple of minutes. Wasn’t nearly long enough. I thought about arguing—just a few more minutes, I wasn’t hurting anything—then thought better of it. Best be polite. Maybe they’d let me on again before the end of the trip. Maybe they’d let me sit at one of the stations—

  I thanked Lieutenant Clancy and let him escort me back to the observation lounge. The room seemed so … ordinary.

  “Good luck to you, kid,” he said. “I hope you make it.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it. But, I mean—why wouldn’t I?”

  “Oh, you know. You’re headed for Earth, and you’re … Never mind. You’ll do fine.”

  He turned back around for the bridge before I could ask what he meant.

  I lay back on one of the sofas in the lounge, my eyes closed, and ingrained every detail of the Lilia Litviak’s bridge on my memory, every light and panel and switch, every readout and what it meant. I could have piloted the ship myself if I had to. Well, I couldn’t really, I knew that. But I knew enough to qualify for pilot training. No way anyone could keep me from it. Clancy didn’t need to sound so skeptical.

  I cornered Charles at supper. “What’s Earth like, really?”

  He glared. “You’ve seen the same brochures I have.”

  He’d laugh if I told him about begging to get a look at the bridge, so I didn’t tell him what Clancy said. “Are we going to have trouble there?”

  “Oh, probably. We’re from the hinterlands, why shouldn’t they give us trouble?”

  “Then why would Mom send us there? Besides to make her look good.”

  “Maybe so we’ll get used to it.”

  “But if we were never going to leave Mars anyway—”

  “It’s a bigger universe than that, Polly.”

  I was crazy thinking he’d give me a straight answer.

  4

  We entered Earth orbit three days later. I entertained fantasies of getting to sit on the bridge to watch the maneuvering sequence that would use Earth’s gravity to help slow the ship and nudge it into orbit around the planet. It was one of those common procedures I’d spent my whole life reading about, seen in countless videos—the kind of thing I’d be doing someday—but I’d never experienced it myself. How amazing, to watch it from the bridge. But all passengers were restricted to their cabins and required to strap into their bunks to brace for the banging and bouncing that happened when a ship changed acceleration and direction.

  Even lying flat and belted in, the orbital maneuvering was cool. I turned on the commentary on my bunk-side monitor and got a rundown on the whole process, from the approach, to the calculations that determined the exact angle of approach that would result in an orbit and not skidding off into another trajectory, to the turn of the engines to face the opposite direction to decelerate … Simulated gravity shifted and faded, and my stomach flopped over. My bunk shook and my teeth rattled. When I laughed, my voice vibrated.

  “Will you shut up?” Charles moaned from the bunk under mine.

  I wiggled to the edge of the bunk so I could look down at Charles. His eyes were clamped shut and he was gripping the strap across his chest so hard I thought his knuckles were going to pop. Was he actually getting motion sickness?

  “You going to be okay?” I called down. “Want me to get you a barf bag or something?”

  “Shut. Up.” I could barely hear him around his rigid jaw.

  It really would suck if he got sick. I’d still mock him for it until the end of our days.

  The topsy-turvy bouncing lasted ten minutes or so, until the Lilia Litviak settled into orbit. We’d arrived. It took another day to match orbit and spin with Ride Station, where we’d be meeting the shuttle that would take us to Earth. Once again, I had to follow along with the tourist commentary on the monitor in the cabin. They wouldn’t even let us watch from the observation lounge. They didn’t want untrained passengers bouncing around the corridors for some reason.

  Before the maneuvering started, I complained about it to Charle
s, who suggested, “It’s because if something goes horribly wrong they don’t want us to see it coming.” He was probably right.

  Ride Station was a kind of giant cylinder made of connected corridors, rings, pods, and docking sections held together by a steel framework. The whole thing spun to create simulated gravity in the outer levels. It was mainly a transfer station—ships coming in from Mars and the outer system could dock here; short-range shuttles from Earth delivered supplies and passengers. The place was busy, ships coming and going, passengers arriving and leaving. The space around it was filled with blinking lights and silver hulls reflecting sunlight and then falling into shadow. The closer we got, the more the hull and framework of the station filled the monitors until I couldn’t see anything else.

  Then we docked. I expected to feel something, a big clanging ringing through the hull, a hum as the ship powered down, a vibration as thrusting engines guided us to the docking ring. But I didn’t feeling anything—until the ship’s gravity was taken up by the station’s spin, and then what I felt was tired. Heavy. My steps moved slowly, and my breath dragged out of my lungs. The gravity was spun up higher here. Two-thirds of Earth gravity, double what it was on Mars. I was going to feel this heavy for the foreseeable future. No, I was going to feel worse—this wasn’t even full Earth gravity. How did people on Earth live like this?

  We got ready to leave the ship. My bag felt massive, and I hadn’t even packed much. But that five kilos on Mars would be fifteen kilos on Earth. I wanted to go home. I never thought I would miss the ship, its cramped quarters, its mind-numbing routine. But at least I could breathe there. Bags over our shoulders, Ethan, Charles, and I gathered at the mouth of the boarding tube, the passageway that linked the ship to the station. Charles didn’t look like he was having too much trouble, but he was probably just hiding it really well—don’t show weakness, after all. Ethan walked with his shoulders slumped and didn’t seem to be doing any better than I was.

  I didn’t bother hiding anything. I huffed my way through the tube and dropped my bag as soon as we reached the docking bay on the station.