Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space

by Jack Dann

  “Just come on through to the mess hall after you’re dressed,” she said. “Place isn’t big enough to get lost. Not yet.” They planned to more than double the underground living area while we were here.

  I helped Mother out of her suit and she helped me. I needed a shower and some clean clothes. My jumpsuit was wrinkled and damp with old sweat, fear sweat from the landing. I didn’t smell like a petunia myself. But we were all in the same boat.

  Paul and the two other men in Mars suits were rattling down the stairs as we headed for the mess hall. The top half of the corridor was smooth plastic that radiated uniform dim light, like the tubes that had linked the Space Elevator to the Hilton and the John Carter. The bottom half was numbered storage drawers.

  I knew what to expect of the mess hall and the other rooms; the colony was a series of inflated half-cylinders inside a large irregular tunnel, a natural pipe through an ancient lava flow. Someday the whole thing would be closed off and filled with air like the part we’d just left, but for the time being everyone lived and worked in the reinforced balloons.

  It all seemed pretty huge after living in a space ship. I don’t suppose it would be that imposing if you went there directly from a town or a city on Earth.

  The mess hall wasn’t designed for everyone to crowd in there at once. Most of the colonists were standing around at the far end. There were two dining tables with plenty of empty chairs for us new people. We sat down, I guess all of us feeling a little awkward. Everybody sort of staring and nodding. We hadn’t seen a stranger since the Hilton—but then none of these Martians had seen a new person since the last ship, fifteen months before.

  I looked through the crowd and immediately picked out Oz. He gave me a little wave and I returned it.

  The room had two large false windows, like the ones on the ship, looking out onto the desert. I assumed they were real-time. Nothing was moving, but then all the life on the planet was presumably right here.

  You could see our lander sitting at the end of a mile-long plowed groove. I wondered whether Paul had cut it too close, stopping a couple of hundred feet away. He’d said the landing was mostly automatic, but I didn’t see him let go of the joystick.

  There was a carafe of water on the table, and some glasses. I poured half a glass, careful not to spill any, feeling everybody’s eyes on me. Water was precious here, at least for the time being.

  When Paul and the other two came into the room, an older woman stepped forward. Like many of them, men and women, she was wearing a belted robe made of some filmy material. She was pale and bony.

  “Welcome to Mars. Of course I’ve spoken with most of you. I’m Dargo Solingen, current general administrator.

  “The first couple of ares”—Martian days—“you are here, just settle in and get used to your new home. Explore and ask questions. We’ve assigned temporary living and working spaces to everyone, a compromise between the wish list you sent a couple of weeks ago and . . . reality.” She shrugged. “It will be a little tight until the new module is in place. We will start on that as soon as the ship is unloaded.”

  She almost smiled, though it looked like she didn’t have much practice with it. “It is strange to see children. It will be an interesting social experiment.”

  “One you don’t quite approve of?” Dr. Jefferson said.

  “You may as well know that I don’t. But I was not consulted.”

  “Dr. Solingen,” a woman behind her said in a tone of warning. “I guess none of you were,” he said. “It was an Earth decision.”

  Oz stepped forward. “We were polled. Most of us were very much in favor.”

  The woman who had cautioned Solingen joined him. “A hundred percent of the permanent party. Those of us who are not returning to Earth.” She was either pregnant or the only fat person in the room. Looking more carefully, I saw one other woman who appeared to be pregnant.

  You’d think that would have been on the news. Maybe it was, and I missed it, not likely. Mother and I exchanged significant glances. Something was going on.

  3. MOVING IN

  It turned out to be nothing more mysterious than a desire for privacy on the women’s part, and everybody’s desire to keep Earth out of their hair. When the first child was born, the Earth press would be all over them. Until then, there was no need for anyone to know the blessed event was nigh. So they asked that we not mention the pregnancies when writing or talking to home.

  I shared a small room with Elspeth and Kaimei—an air mattress on the floor and a bunk bed. We agreed to rotate, so everyone would have an actual bed two-thirds of the time.

  There was only one desk, with a small screen and a clunky keyboard and an old VR helmet with a big dent on the side. The timing for that worked out okay, since Elspeth had classes seven hours before Eastern time, and Kaimei three hours later. We drew up a chart and taped it to the wall. The only conflict was my physical science class versus Kaimei’s History of Tao and Buddhism. Mine was mostly equations on the board, so I used the screen and let her have the helmet.

  Our lives were pretty regimented the first couple of weeks, because we had to coordinate classes with the work roster here, and leave a little time for eating and sleeping.

  Everybody was impatient to get the new module set up, but it wasn’t just a matter of unloading and inflating it. First there was a light exoskeleton of spindly metal rods that became rigid when they were all pulled together. Then floorboards to bear the weight of the things and people inside. Then the connection to the existing base, through an improvised airlock until they were sure the module wouldn’t leak.

  I enjoyed working on that, at first outdoors, unloading the ship and sorting and pre-assembling some parts; then later, down in the lava cave, attaching the new to the old. I got used to working in the Mars suit and using the “dog,” a wheeled machine about the size of a large dog. It carried backup oxygen and power.

  About half the time, though, my work roster put me inside, helping the younger ones do their lessons and avoid boredom. “Mentoring,” they called it, to make it sound more important than babysitting.

  One day, though, while I was just getting off work detail, Paul came up and asked whether I’d like to go exploring with him. What, skip math? I got fresh oxygen and helped him check out one of the dogs and we went for a walk.

  The surface of Mars might look pretty boring to an outsider, but it’s not at all. It must be the same if you live in a desert on Earth: you pretty much have the space around your home memorized, every little mound and rock—and when you venture out it’s “Wow! A different rock!”

  He took me off to the left of Telegraph Hill, walking at a pretty good pace. The base was below the horizon in less than ten minutes. We were still in radio contact as long as we could see the antenna on top of the hill, and if we wanted to go farther, the dog had a collapsible booster antenna that went up ten meters, which we could leave behind as a relay.

  We didn’t need it for that, but Paul clicked it up into place when we came to the edge of a somewhat deep crater he wanted to climb into.

  “Be really careful,” he said. “We have to leave the dog behind. If we both were to fall and be injured, we’d be in deep shit.”

  I followed him, watching carefully as we picked our way to the top. Once there, he turned around and pointed.

  It’s hard to really say how strange the sight was. We weren’t that high up, but you could see the curvature of the horizon. To the right of Telegraph Hill, the gleam of the greenhouse roof. The dog behind us looked tiny but unnaturally clear, in the near vacuum.

  Paul was carrying a white bag, now a little rust-streaked from the dust. He pulled out a photo-map of the crater, unfolded it, and showed it to me. There were about twenty X’s, starting on the top of the crater rim, where we must have been standing, then down the incline, and across the crater floor to its central peak.

  “Dust collecting,” he said. “How’s your oxygen?”

  I chinned the readout
button. “Three hours forty minutes.”

  “That should be plenty. Now you don’t have to go down if you—”

  “I do! Let’s go!”

  “Okay. Follow me.” I didn’t tell him that my impatience wasn’t all excitement, but partly anxiety at having to talk and pee at the same time. Peeing standing up, into a diaper, trying desperately not to fart. “Funny as a fart in a space suit” probably goes back to the beginning of space flight, but there’s nothing real funny about it in reality. I’d taken two anti-gas tablets before I came out, and they seemed to still be working.

  Keeping your footing was a little harder, going downhill. Paul had the map folded over so it only showed the path down the crater wall; every thirty or forty steps he would fish through the bag and take out a pre-labeled plastic vial, and scrape a sample of dirt into it.

  On the floor of the crater I felt a little shiver of fear at our isolation. Looking back the way we’d come, though, I could see the tip of the dog’s antenna.

  The dust was deeper than I’d seen anyplace else, I guess because the crater walls kept out the wind. Paul took two samples as we walked toward the central peak.

  “You better stay down here, Carmen. I won’t be long.” The peak was steep, and he scrambled up it like a monkey. I wanted to yell “Be careful,” but kept my mouth shut.

  Looking up at him, the sun behind me, I could see Earth gleaming blue in the ochre sky. How long had it been since I thought of Earth, other than “the place where school is”? I guess I hadn’t been here long enough to feel homesickness. Nostalgia for Earth—crowded place with lots of gravity and heat.

  It might be the first time I seriously thought about staying. In five years I’d be twenty-one and Paul would still be under forty. I didn’t feel romantic about him, but I liked him and he was funny. That would put us way ahead of a lot of marriages I’d observed.

  Romance was for movies and books, anyhow. When actual people you know started acting that way, they were so ridiculous.

  But then how did I really feel about Paul? Up there being heroic and competent and, admit it, sexy.

  Turn down the heat, girl. He’s only twelve years younger than your father, Probably sterile from radiation, too. I didn’t think I wanted children, but it would be nice to have the option.

  He collected his samples and tossed the bag down. It drifted slowly, rotating, and landed about ten feet away. I was enough of a Martian to be surprised to hear a click when it landed, the soles of my boots picking the noise up, conducted through the rock of the crater floor.

  He worked his way down slowly, which was a relief. I was holding the sample bag; he took it and I followed him back the way we had come.

  At the top of the crater wall, he stopped and looked back. “Can’t see it from here,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  “What?”

  “My greatest triumph,” he said, and started down. “You’ll be impressed.”

  He didn’t offer any further explanation on the ground. He picked up the dog’s handle and proceeded to walk around to the other side of the crater.

  It was a dumbo, an unpiloted supply vehicle. Its rear end was tilted up, the nose down in a small crater.

  “I brought her in like that. I was not the most popular man on Mars.” As we approached it, I could see the ragged hole someone had cut in the side with a torch or a laser. “Landed it right on the bay door, too.”

  “Wow. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

  He laughed. “It was remote control; I landed it from a console inside the base. Harder than being aboard, actually.” We turned around and headed back to the base.

  “It was a judgment call. There was a lot of variable wind, and it was yawing back and forth.” He made a hand motion like a fish swimming. “I was sort of trying not to hit the base or Telegraph Hill. But I overdid it.”

  “People could understand that.”

  “Understanding isn’t forgiving. Everybody had to stop their science and become pack animals.” I could see the expression on Solingen’s face, having to do labor, and smiled.

  She really had something against me. I had to do twice as much babysitting as Elspeth or Kaimei—and when I suggested that the boys ought to do it, too, she said that “personnel allocation” was her job, thank you. And when my person got allocated to an outside job, it would be something boring and repetitive, like taking inventory of supplies. (That was especially useful, in case there were Martians sneaking in at night to steal nuts and bolts.)

  When we got back, I went straight to the console and found a blinking note from the Dragon herself, noting that I had missed math class, saying she wanted a copy of my homework. Did she monitor anybody else’s VR attendance?

  I’d had the class recorded, of course, the super-exciting chain rule for differentiation. I fell asleep twice, hard to do in VR, and had to start over. Then I had a problem set with fifty chains to differentiate. Wrap me in chains and throw me in the differential dungeon, but I had to sleep. I got the air mattress partly inflated and flopped onto it without undressing.

  Not delivering my homework like a good little girl got me into a special corner of Dargo Hell. I had to turn over my notes and homework in maths every day to Ana Sitral, who obviously didn’t have time for checking it. She must have done something to piss off the Dragon herself.

  Then I had to take on over half of the mentoring hours that Kaimei and Elspeth had been covering, and was not allowed any outside time. I had been selfish, Dargo said, tiring myself out on a silly lark, using up resources that might be needed for real work. So I had the temerity to suggest that part of my real work was getting to know Mars, and she really blew up about that. It was not up to me to make up my own training schedule.

  Okay, part of it was that she didn’t like kids. But part was also that she didn’t like me, and wouldn’t if-I was a hundred years old. She didn’t bother to hide that from anybody. I complained to Mother and she didn’t disagree, but said I had to learn to work with people like that. Especially here, where there wasn’t much choice.

  I didn’t bother complaining to Dad. He would make a Growth Experience out of it. I should try to see the world her way. Sorry, Dad. If I saw the world her way and thought about Carmen Dula, wouldn’t that be self-loathing? That would not be a positive growth experience.

  4. FISH OUT OF WATER

  After a month, I was able to put a Mars suit on again, but I didn’t go up to the surface. There was plenty of work down below, inside the lava tube that protected the base from cosmic and solar radiation.

  There’s plenty of water on Mars, but most of it is in the wrong place. If it was on or near the surface, it had to be at the north or south pole. We couldn’t put bases there, because they were in total darkness a lot of the time, and we needed solar power.

  But there was a huge lake hidden more than a kilometer below the base. It was the easiest one to get to on all of Mars, we learned from some kind of satellite radar, which was why the base was put here. One of the things we’d brought on the John Carter was a drilling system designed to tap it. (The drills that came with the first ship and the third broke, though, the famous Mars Luck.)

  I worked with the team that set the drill up, nothing more challenging than fetch-and-carry, but a lot better than trying to mentor kids when you wanted to slap them instead.

  For a while we could hear the drill, a faint sandpapery sound that was conducted through the rock. Then it was quiet, and most of us forgot about it. A few weeks later, though, it was Sagan 12th, which from then on would be Water Day.

  We put on Mars suits and then walked down between the wall of the lava tube and the base’s exterior wall. It was kind of creepy, just suit lights, less than a meter between the cold rock and the inflated plastic you weren’t supposed to touch.

  Then there was light ahead, and we came out into swirling madness—it was a blizzard! The drill had struck water and sent it up under pressure, several liters a minute. When it hit the cold vacuum it ex
ploded into snow.

  It was ankle-deep in places, but of course it wouldn’t last; the vacuum would evaporate it eventually. But people were already working with lengths of pipe, getting ready to fill the waiting tanks up in the hydroponics farm. One of them had already been dubbed the swimming pool. And that’s how the trouble started.

  I got on the work detail that hooked the water supply up to the new pump. That was to go in two stages: emergency and “maintenance.”

  The emergency stage worked on the reasonable assumption that the pump wasn’t going to last very long. So we wanted to save every drop of water we could, while it still did work.

  This was the “water boy” stage. We had collapsible insulated water containers that held fifty liters each. That’s 110 pounds on Earth, about my own weight, awkward but not too heavy to handle on Mars.

  All ten of the older kids spent a couple of hours on duty, a couple off, doing water boy. We had wheelbarrows, three of them, so it wasn’t too tiring. You fill the thing with water, which takes eight minutes, then turn off the valve and get away fast, so not too much pressure builds up before the next person takes over. Then trundle the wheelbarrow around to the airlock, leave it there, and carry or drag the water bag across the farm to the storage tanks. Dump in the water—a slurry of ice by then—and go back to the pump with your wheelbarrow.

  The work was boring’ as dust, and would drive you insane if you didn’t have music. I started out being virtuous, listening to classical pieces that went along with a book on the history of music. But as the days droned by, I listened to more and more city and even sag.

  You didn’t have to be a math whiz to see that it was going to take three weeks at this rate to fill the first tank, which was two meters tall and eight meters wide, bigger than some backyard pools in Florida.

  The water didn’t stay icy; they warmed it up to above room temperature. We all must have fantasized about diving in there and paddling around. Elspeth and Kaimei and I even planned for it.