Podkayne of Mars

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Girdie is about twice my age, which makes her awfully, young in this company; nevertheless it may be that I cause her to look just a bit wrinkled around the eyes. Contrariwise, my somewhat unfinished look may make her more mature contours appear even more Helen-of-Troyish. As may be, it is certain that my presence has relieved the pressure on her by giving the gossips two targets instead of one.

  And gossip they do. I heard one of them say about her: “She’s been in more laps than a napkin!”

  If so, I hope she had fun.

  Those gay ship’s dances in the mammoth ballroom! Like this: they happen every Tuesday and Saturday night, when the ship is spacing. The music starts at 20.30 and the Ladies’ Society for Moral Rectitude is seated around the edge of the floor, as if for a wake. Uncle Tom is there, as a concession to me, and very proudsome and distinguished he looks in evening formal. I am there in a party dress which is not quite as girlish as it was when Mother helped me pick it out, in consequence of some very careful retailoring I have done with my door locked. Even Clark attends because there is nothing else going on and he’s afraid he might miss something—and looking so nice I’m proud of him, because he has to climb into his own monkey suit or he can’t come to the ball.

  Over by the punch bowl are half a dozen of the ship’s junior officers, dressed in mess jacket uniforms and looking faintly uncomfortable.

  The Captain, by some process known only to him, selects one of the widows and asks her to dance. Two husbands dance with their wives. Uncle Tom offers me his arm and leads me to the floor. Two or three of the junior officers follow the Captain’s example. Clark takes advantage of the breathless excitement to raid the punch bowl.

  But nobody asks Girdie to dance.

  This is no accident. The Captain has given the Word (I have this intelligence with utter certainty through My Spies) that no ship’s officer shall dance with Miss Fitz-Snugglie until he has danced at least two dances with other partners—and I am not an “other partner,” because the proscription, since leaving Mars, has been extended to me.

  This should be proof to anyone that a captain of a ship is, in sober fact, the Last of the Absolute Monarchs.

  There are now six or seven couples on the floor and the fun is at its riotous height. The floor will never again be so crowded. Nevertheless nine-tenths of the chairs are still occupied and you could ride a bicycle around the floor without endangering the dancers. The spectators look as if they were knitting at the tumbrels. The proper finishing touch would be a guillotine in the empty space in the middle of the floor.

  The music stops; Uncle Tom takes me back to my chair, then asks Girdie to dance—since he is a Cash Customer, the Captain has not attempted to make him toe the mark. But I am still out of bounds, so I walk over to the punch bowl, take a cup out of Clark’s hands, finish it, and say, “Come on, Clark. I’ll let you practice on me.”

  “Aw, it’s a waltz!” (Or a “flea hop,” or a “chassé,” or “five step”—but whatever it is, it is just too utterly impossible.)

  “Do it—or I’ll tell Madame Grew that you want to dance with her, only you’re too shy to ask her.”

  “You do and I’ll trip her! I’ll stumble and trip her.”

  However, Clark is weakening, so I move in fast. “Look, Bub, you either take me out there and walk on my feet for a while—or I’ll see to it that Girdie doesn’t dance with you at all.”

  That does it. Clark is in the throes of his first case of puppy love, and Girdie is such a gent that she treats him as an equal and accepts his attentions with warm courtesy. So Clark dances with me. Actually he is quite a good dancer, and I have to lead him only a tiny bit. He likes to dance—but he wouldn’t want anyone, especially me, to think that he likes to dance with his sister. We don’t look too badly matched, since I am short. In the meantime Girdie is looking very good indeed with Uncle Tom, which quite an accomplishment, as Uncle Tom dances with great enthusiasm and no rhythm. But Girdie can follow anyone—if her partner broke his leg, she would follow fracturing her own at the same spot. But the crowd is thinning out now; husbands that danced the first dance are too tired for the second and no one has replaced them.

  Oh, we have gay times in the luxury line Tricorn! Truthfully we do have gay times. Starting with the third dance Girdie and I have our pick of the ship’s officers, most of whom are good dancers, or at least have had plenty of practice. About twenty-two o’clock the Captain goes to bed and shortly after that the chaperones start putting away their whetstones and fading, one by one. By midnight there is just Girdie and myself and half a dozen of the younger officers—and the Purser, who has dutifully danced with every woman and now feels that he owes himself the rest of the night. He is quite a good dancer, for an old man.

  Oh, and there is usually Mrs. Grew, too—but she isn’t one of the chaperones and she is always nice to Girdie. She is a fat old woman, full of sin and chuckles. She doesn’t expect anyone to dance with her, but she likes to watch—and the officers who aren’t dancing at the moment like to sit with her; she’s fun.

  About one o’clock Uncle Tom sends Clark to tell me to come to bed or he’ll lock me out. He wouldn’t but I do—my feet are tired.

  Good old Tricorn!

  SIX

  The Captain is slowly increasing the spin of the ship to make the fake gravity match the surface gravitation of Venus, which is 84 percent of one standard gravity or more than twice as much as I have been used to all my life. So, when I am not busy studying astrogation or ship handling, I spend much of my time in the ship’s gymnasium, hardening myself for what is coming, for I have no intention of being at a disadvantage on Venus in either strength or agility.

  If I can adjust to an acceleration of 0.84 gee, the later transition to the full Earth-normal of one gee should be sugar pie with chocolate frosting. So I think.

  I usually have the gymnasium all to myself. Most of the passengers are Earthmen or Venusmen who feel no need to prepare for the heavy gravitation of Venus. Of the dozen-odd Marsmen I am the only one who seems to take seriously the coming burden—and the handful of aliens in the ship we never see; each remains in his specially conditioned stateroom. The ship’s officers do use the gym; some of them are quite fanatic about keeping fit. But they use it mostly at hours when passengers are not likely to use it.

  So, on this day (Ceres thirteenth actually but the Tricorn uses Earth dates and time, which made it March ninth—I don’t mind the strange dates but the short Earth day is costing me a half-hour’s sleep each night)—on Ceres thirteenth I went charging into the gym, so angry I could spit venom and intending to derive a double benefit by working off my mad (at least to the point where I would not be clapped in irons for assault), and by strengthening my muscles, too.

  And found Clark inside, dressed in shorts and with a massy barbell.

  I stopped short and blurted out, “What are you doing here?”

  He grunted, “Weakening my mind.”

  Well, I had asked for it; there is no ship’s regulation forbidding Clark to use the gym. His answer made sense to one schooled in his devious logic, which I certainly should be. I changed the subject, tossed aside my robe, and started limbering exercises to warm up. “How massy?” I asked.

  “Sixty kilos.”

  I glanced at a weight meter on the wall, a loaded spring scale marked to read in fractions of standard gee; it read 52%. I did a fast rough in my mind—fifty-two thirty-sevenths of sixty—or unit sum, plus nine hundred over thirty-seven, so add about a ninth, top and bottom for a thousand over forty, to yield twenty-five—or call it the same as lifting eighty-five kilos back home on Mars. “Then why are you sweating?”

  “I am not sweating!” He put the barbell down. “Let’s see you lift it.”

  “All right.” As he moved I squatted down to raise the barbell—and changed my mind.

  Now, believe me, I work out regularly with ninety kilos at home, and I had been checking that weight meter on the wall each day and loading that same barb
ell to match the weight I use at home, plus a bit extra each day. My objective (hopeless, it is beginning to seem) is eventually to lift as much mass under Venus conditions as I had been accustomed to lifting at home.

  So I was certain I could lift sixty kilos at 52 percent of standard gee.

  But it is a mistake for a girl to beat a male at any test of physical strength . . . even when it’s your brother. Most especially when it’s your brother and he has a fiendish disposition and you’ve suddenly had a glimmering of a way to put his fiendish proclivities to work. As I have said, if you’re in a mood to hate something or somebody, Clark is the perfect partner.

  So I grunted and strained, making a good show, got it up on my chest, started it on up—and squeaked “Help me!”

  Clark gave a one-handed push at the center of the bar and we got it all the way up. Then I said, “Catch for me,” through clenched teeth, and he eased it down. I sighed.

  Gee, Clark, you must be getting awful strong.”

  “Doing all right.”

  It works; Clark was now as mellow as his nature permits. I suggested companion tumbling—if he didn’t mind being the bottom half of the team?—because I wasn’t sure I could hold him, not at point-five-two gee . . . did he mind?

  He didn’t mind at all; it gave him another chance to be muscular and masculine—and I was certain he could lift me; I massed eleven kilos less than the barbell he had just been lifting. When he was smaller, we used to do quite a bit of it, with me lifting him—it was a way to keep him quiet when I was in charge of him. Now that he is as big as I am (and stronger, I fear), we still tumble a little, but taking turns at the ground-and-air parts—back home, I mean.

  But with my weight almost half again what it ought to be I didn’t risk any fancy capers. Presently, when he had me in a simple handstand over his head, I broached the subject on my mind. “Clark, is Mrs. Royer any special friend of yours?”

  “Her?” He snorted and added a rude noise. “Why?”

  “I just wondered. She—Mmm, perhaps I shouldn’t repeat it.”

  He said, “Look, Pod, you want me to leave you standing on the ceiling?”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  “Then don’t start to say something and not finish it.”

  “All right. But steady while I swing my feet down to your shoulders.” He let me do so, then I hopped down to the floor. The worst part about high acceleration is not how much you weigh, though that is bad enough, but how fast you fall—and I suspected that Clark was quite capable of leaving me head downwards high in the air if I annoyed him.

  “What’s this about Mrs. Royer?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing much. She thinks Marsmen are trash, that’s all.”

  “She does, huh? That makes it mutual.”

  “Yes. She thinks it’s disgraceful that the Line allows us to travel first class—and the Captain certainly ought not to allow us to eat in the same mess with decent people.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Nothing to tell. We’re riffraff, that’s all. Convicts. You know.”

  “Interesting. Very, very interesting.”

  “And her friend Mrs. Garcia agrees with her. But I suppose I shouldn’t have repeated it. After all, they are entitled to their own opinions. Aren’t they?”

  Clark didn’t answer, which is a very bad sign. Shortly thereafter he left without a word. In a sudden panic that I might have started more than I intended to, I called after him but he just kept going. Clark is not hard of hearing, but he can be very hard of listening.

  Well, it was too late now. So I put on a weight harness, then loaded myself down all over until I weighed as much as I would on Venus and started trotting on the treadmill until I was covered with sweat and ready for a bath and a change.

  Actually I did not really care what bad luck overtook those two harpies; I simply hoped that Clark’s sleight-of-hand would be up to its usual high standards so that it could not possibly be traced back to him. Nor even guessed at. For I had not told Clark half of what was said.

  Believe you me, I had never guessed, until we were in the Tricorn, that anyone could despise other persons simply over their ancestry or where they lived. Oh, I had encountered tourists from Earth whose manners left something to be desired—but Daddy had told me that all tourists, everywhere, seem obnoxious simply because tourists are strangers who do not know local customs . . . and I believed it, because Daddy is never wrong. Certainly the occasional visiting professor that Daddy brought home for dinner was always charming, which proves that Earthmen do not have to have bad manners.

  I had noticed that the passengers in the Tricorn seemed a little bit stand-offish when we first boarded, but I did not think anything of it. After all, strangers do not run up and kiss you, even on Mars—and we Marsmen are fairly informal, I suppose; we’re still a frontier society. Besides that, most passengers had been in the ship at least from Earth; they had already formed their friendships and cliques. We were like new kids in a strange school.

  But I said “Good morning!” to anyone I met in the passageway, and if I was not answered I just checked it off to hard-of-hearing—so many of them obviously could be hard of hearing. Anyhow, I wasn’t terribly interested in getting chummy with passengers; I wanted to get acquainted with the ship’s officers, pilot officers especially, so that I could get some practical experience to chink in what I already knew from reading. It’s not easy for a girl to get accepted for pilot training; she has to be about four times as good as a male candidate—and every little bit helps.

  I got a wonderful break right away. We were seated at the Captain’s table!

  Uncle Tom, of course. I am not conceited enough to think that “Miss Podkayne Fries, Marsopolis” means anything on a ship’s passenger list (but wait ten years!)—whereas Uncle Tom, even though he is just my pinochle-playing, easygoing oldest relative, is nevertheless senior Senator-at-Large of the Republic, and it is certain that the Marsopolis General Agent for the Triangle Line knows this and no doubt the agent would see to it that the Purser of the Tricorn would know it if he didn’t already.

  As may be—I am not one to scorn gifts from heaven, no matter how they arrive. At our very first meal I started working on Captain Darling. That really is his name, Barrington Babcock Darling—and does his wife call him “Baby Darling”?

  But of course a captain does not have a name aboard ship; he is “the Captain,” “the Master,” “the Skipper,” or even “the Old Man” if it is a member of the ship’s company speaking not in his august presence. But never a name—simply a majestic figure of impersonal authority.

  (I wonder if I will someday be called “the Old Woman” when I am not in earshot? Somehow it doesn’t sound quite the same.)

  But Captain Darling is not too majestic or impersonal with me. I set out to impress him with the idea that I was awfully sweet, even younger than I am, terribly impressed by him and overawed . . . and not too bright. It does not do to let a male of any age know that one has brains, not on first acquaintance; intelligence in a woman is likely to make a man suspicious and uneasy, much like Caesar’s fear of Cassius’ “lean and hungry look.” Get a man solidly on your side first; after that it is fairly safe to let him become gradually aware of your intellect. He may even feel unconsciously that it rubbed off from his own.

  So I set out to make him feel that it was a shame that I was not his daughter. (Fortunately he only has sons.) Before that first meal was over I confided in him my great yearning to take pilot training . . . suppressing, of course, any higher ambition.

  Both Uncle Tom and Clark could see what I was up to. But Uncle Tom would never give me away and Clark just looked bored and contemptuous and said nothing, because Clark would not bother to interfere with Armageddon unless there was ten percent in it for him.

  But I do not mind what my relatives think of my tactics; they work. Captain Darling was obviously amused at my grandiose and “impossible” ambition . . . but he offered to show me the control room
.

  Round one to Poddy, on points.

  I am now the unofficial ship’s mascot, with free run of the control room—and I am almost as privileged in the engineering department. Of course the Captain does not really want to spend hours teaching me the practical side of astrogation. He did show me through the control room and gave me a kindergarten explanation of the work—which I followed with wide-eyed awe—but his interest in me is purely social. He wants to not-quite hold me in his lap (he is much too practical and too discreet to do anything of the sort!), so I not-quite let him and make it a point to keep up my social relations with him, listening with my best astonished-kitten look to his anecdotes while he feeds me liters of tea. I really am a good listener because you never can tell when you will pick up something useful—and all in the world any woman has to do to be considered “charming” by men is to listen while they talk.

  But Captain Darling is not the only astrogator in the ship. He gave me the run of the control room; I did the rest. The second officer, Mr. Savvonavong, thinks it is simply amazing how fast I pick up mathematics. You see, he thinks he taught me differential equations. Well, he did, when it comes to those awfully complicated ones used in correcting the vector of a constant-boost ship, but if I hadn’t worked hard in the supplementary course I was allowed to take last semester, I wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Now he is showing me how to program a ballistic computer.

  The junior third, Mr. Clancy, is still studying for his unlimited license, so he has all the study tapes and reference books I need and is just as helpful. He is near enough my age to develop groping hands . . . but only a very stupid male will make even an indirect pass unless a girl manages to let him know that it won’t be resented, and Mr. Clancy is not stupid and I am very careful to offer neither invitation nor opportunity.

  I may kiss him—two minutes before I leave the ship for the last time. Not sooner.