“They’re around somewhere.” My tone could’ve frozen Lake Michigan in midsummer.
“Sorry, it’s just you’re so—”
“Small?” I almost regretted my response when I saw him flinch.
“I was going to say petite, but I guess you get that a lot.”
He looked so mortified, I just couldn’t stay mad at him. Besides, I wanted to see him smile again. “Today’s my eighteenth.”
Whatever he saw in my face must have reassured him, because his smile returned. “If there’s room for one more at the party, I’d love to help you celebrate.”
The meeting dragged through a score of introductions and boring minutia related to scheduling: meals, work and training shifts, educational modules for those of us still in school. We all perked up when Captain Larkin stepped to the podium. He was shorter than I’d expected: well under a hundred and ninety centimeters. Rather than remaining behind the metal stand, he walked to the middle of the semicircle and allowed his gaze to wander over the crowd as he spoke.
Like everyone else, I gave him my undivided attention. This was the man who controlled our lives for the next year—longer if the colony was not prepared for self-governance when we arrived on Mars. My parents considered us lucky to be under his command. Not only was he reputed to be the best, he was bringing along his own kids whose lives were as much at risk as ours.
“The three colonies scheduled for the first wave will enter lockdown at 1600 hours tomorrow,” he said. “The next launch window for Mars is four months away. The minimum time necessary to achieve transfer to our ship is twenty-one days. Any breach of lockdown will trigger an automatic reset with a two-week penalty.” He paused a few seconds to let us all do the math. “If we miss this window, we’ll be bumped to the end of the line and won’t be eligible for launch until the spring of 2054. And that is not an option.”
As we all had worked hard to be among the first colonists scheduled for transport, nobody liked the idea of waiting four more years for our next opportunity.
“Once the airlock is sealed, it will not be breached until the ninety-day period has ended. Not for any reason.”
Whispers echoed around the room. The man who’d been introduced earlier as Chief of Med-Surg rose. “We were told the lockdown was a trial period … to insure we are all compatible as a group.”
“If this colony intends to be among the first wave, the time for trials has passed,” the captain answered.
“Shouldn’t that be a decision we make together?”
“This isn’t a democracy, Doctor.” Captain Larkin advanced a couple of steps. “You’re on my ship, Doctor Samuels. Until the colony is fully established on Mars and elects its first Board of Governors, the decisions to make are mine, and mine alone.” The doctor sank into his seat and Larkin continued.
“You have the next twenty-four hours to make your decision. Do not allow a false sense of responsibility to guide your choice. For every position filled by someone inside this room, there are at least three people waiting on the outside for the chance to join this colony. Each of them passed the same rigorous training each of you experienced and is every bit as qualified as each of you. Don’t put your fellow colonists at risk by staying if you are not prepared to abide by my rules.”
Three people on the second row stood in unison at his gesture. “Med-Psych will be available for consultation. We’ll meet back here at 1600 hours tomorrow.”
I wasn’t the only one who benefited from my new adulthood. Barry and my parents now shared a three-bedroom unit. As I walked into their quarters, I saw a paper banner hanging from the ceiling in the common area. A cake with eighteen candles rested on a plate of my mom’s best china. I cringed at the thought of how much of her weight allowance she’d used to bring it along.
In deference to the occasion, my dad opened the family meeting with a toast of sparkling wine, but after Captain Larkin’s speech, none of us was in a celebratory mood.
“I don’t see how this changes anything,” I said. “Before MarsCorp decided to require the trial period, we were prepared to board the ship in a couple of months.”
“What’s changed is the timing of our final decision.”
“I’ve made my decision.” My parents exchanged looks that left no doubt as to what the next topic would be. I spoke before either of them could broach the matter. “Dr. Grant told me.” Without waiting for my parents to respond, I said, “How long have you known that you needed my participation?”
Mom spoke first. “Most of the last two years.” She was a teacher, a natural nurturer. She took the lead when sensitivity was required. “I know it feels like a betrayal, Celia, but we didn’t want our wishes to influence your decision.”
The door chime interrupted further discussion. Marta and Alex burst in bearing jugs emblazoned with the logo of their favorite beer. From the looks of it, they probably blew their entire alcohol allowance for the month in celebration of my adulthood. They accepted glasses of wine and echoed my parents’ toast: Live Long and Prosper. We were all inveterate sci-fi fans.
Devon’s arrival a few minutes later pleased me more than I wanted to show. Not really sure if he intended to join the celebration, I hadn’t mentioned him to my parents. The look that passed between them triggered my newly acquired paranoia. Was there something else they’d kept to themselves?
He handed my mom a box while I made the round of introductions. Silence descended all around as my mom opened the lid, and we all stared at the contents.
“What?” he said, his smile dimming as his gaze swept our faces, finally settling on mine. “Don’t tell me you’re all vegetarians.”
“How did you know pepperoni and olives was my favorite?” I asked.
“I thought that’s how everyone ate pizza.”
We laughed at his joke, but as the night wore on, I realized he’d been sincere. For an adult—albeit a young one—he demonstrated an amazing level of naiveté regarding a wide range of subjects. He seemed surprised, too, when my parents included Barry in the conversation. And more than once, he looked puzzled at something Marta or Alex said. He was the only one, except for Barry, who didn’t partake of the liquid refreshment that flowed liberally throughout the evening. Even my parents drank way more than I’d ever seen them consume in one sitting.
It was well after midnight when the party broke up. Devon insisted on accompanying me to my berth, and I was in no condition to argue. I was already regretting the last two cups of beer. It took three tries to get my eye lined up properly for the security scan. If Devon hadn’t been holding my arm, I would’ve fallen on my face when the door opened. “Whoa, better help me lie down.”
He guided me toward the sofa, but I pulled us toward the bedroom door instead. “Bed please, closer to the toilet.”
It wasn’t until I was sitting on the bed tugging at my pants that I realized how uneasy he looked. “I’ll be fine. You don’t need to hang around.”
“It’s just—” He gave a little shrug. “I’ve never been alone in a room with a woman before.”
Strangers occupied the seats assigned to my family: a couple in their mid-thirties and a preteen girl. Of course, I’d known long before the meeting that my mother and father and Barry wouldn’t be here. We’d said our goodbyes earlier in the day.
The physical misery brought on by a hangover paled in comparison to the heartache I felt at their absence. Recent job offers, combined with the guilt my mom felt at subjecting Barry to the considerable danger we would face as first landers, along with the captain’s ultimatum, tipped the scales in their decision to remain on Earth. I don’t know whether having more time to get used to the idea of going alone would have been better or worse, but I’d always been more of a rip-the-bandage-off kind of person.
Devon sank slowly into his seat, watching me out of the corner of his eye. “Marta told me about your family.”
I’d spent most of the afternoon crying on her shoulder. Marta was trained as a med-tech and was st
udying organizational psychology and process management. Like my mom, she was a natural caregiver. It wasn’t the first time she’d nursed me through a crisis. Times like this made me wonder what she got out of our friendship.
“I never dreamed they’d back out.”
“How about you? No second thoughts?” Devon asked. After he’d fled my bedroom the night before, I’d worried that we’d feel awkward with one another, but he didn’t seem aware that his departure had been anything out of the ordinary.
“It hurts like hell knowing I’ll never see them again, and I feel guilty for leaving them. But now I wonder whether Mars hasn’t always been more my dream than theirs.”
Over the next few weeks, our threesome became a foursome with only minor changes in group dynamics. It was as if Devon became the missing piece we’d been waiting for. Most nights we ate dinner together, rotating the role of host.
Although Marta and Alex had long been a couple, they’d scrupulously avoided any overt sexual contact in my presence, other than hand-holding and the occasional peck on the check. With Devon’s addition, they felt freer to stretch the boundaries. In spite of attempts to hide his feelings, we all noticed Devon’s discomfort. It was Alex who finally brought the matter out into the open.
“Man, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were raised in a monastery.”
“Alex!” Marta jabbed an elbow into his ribs.
“It’s OK. That’s not too far off the truth.” Devon lowered his cup to the table, but didn’t release his grip. “I was born in the Montana Enclave. My parents named me Devotion. I didn’t even know there were Unbelievers until I was twelve.”
Alex was the only one who wasn’t staring at Devon like he’d suddenly sprouted an extra limb. “What’s an enclave?” he asked.
The look on Devon’s face made me come to his rescue. “The Enclaves are self-sufficient communities established by fundamentalist Christian groups in the ’20s. Members aren’t allowed any contact with the outside world.”
“I didn’t think anyone ever left those places. How did you escape?” Marta’s expression mirrored the horror I felt.
Devon’s laugh was genuine and popped the bubble of tension that enveloped the table. “Believe me, no one is held against their will.”
“So, members of the Enclave can choose to leave at any time?” From our previous discussions, I knew he’d spent a year studying extra-terrestrial geology at Harvard before joining the Mars colony.
His amusement vanished. “It’s more a matter of being allowed to stay. Unbelievers threaten the integrity of the group. Inquiry is discouraged, and the Enclaves don’t tolerate dissent. Young people who express doubt are sequestered for more intense education.”
“That sounds like brainwashing,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe, but in my case, it didn’t work.”
“So you were forced to leave?” I was treading into personal territory, but sensed a barrier we needed to breach.
“The Enclave placed me with a Christian family in Boston where I fostered until my eighteenth.”
“How old were you when they sent you away?”
His expression conveyed a loss that was more distant in time, but no less wrenching, than my own. “Thirteen.”
I found the shortcut to the hydroponic gardens by accident. Lingering over a second cup of coffee with Marta at breakfast left no time to stop by my berth for a bathroom break before reporting to work. The toilet was located mid-corridor, adjacent to the lift. I was washing my hands when I noticed light shining through a crevice in the access panel beside the sink. Intrigued, I pried at the metal covering. It popped open easily. The cover on the opposite side of the plumbing chase was ajar and even easier to remove. I stuck my head through the meter-wide opening into a toilet room, the mirror image of the one I occupied. A notice posted on the door confirmed my suspicion: the room was located within steps of the hydroponic gardens. Even with the time it took to secure the chase, I strolled into work with ten minutes to spare.
When I reported my find at dinner, Devon and Marta were polite, but largely unimpressed. Alex whipped out his compad and sketched the configuration of the corridors with deft strokes. Training as an environmental engineer, he’d been privy to the habitat’s schematics.
He tapped his finger on the locations of the plumbing and electrical chases. “You can see how it’d be possible to use them as shortcuts.”
“Was that part of the design?” Devon said.
“Not that I was told.”
“You think that’s why the cover was loose?” At the time, I’d assumed one of the workers had been careless in securing the panel.
Alex traced a path with his finger from his compartment to the dining hall. “I’ll check out some of the other chases. See what turns up.”
Life inside the habitat proved remarkably calm. That’s not to say there weren’t disagreements, a few of which progressed to heated arguments. But the combination of rigorous screening and intense training seemed to have paid off. With the lockdown due to end in a month’s time, nothing had occurred that remotely jeopardized the success of the mission.
Marta was late for dinner, and it was Devon’s night to play host. He commandeered Alex to help ferry our dinner to his berth, which left me to investigate her absence. Something for which I will always be thankful.
She didn’t answer her comlink and wasn’t in her berth. The Med-Tech on duty at the infirmary confirmed she’d left at the end of her shift. By then, I was more than a little miffed, but was reluctant to tell Alex I couldn’t find her.
I traced the path from her place to Devon’s without success. No one I spoke to had seen her. Next, I tried the route she would’ve taken from the infirmary to her berth. Thinking back, I’m not sure what made me decide to check the toilet. I’d passed two others without giving them a second glance.
Marta sat propped up against the far wall, her head slumped forward on her chest. The braid she kept pinned up in a bun while on duty hung over her left shoulder. At first I didn’t notice the blood that soaked into her scrub suit turning the ocean blue to a deep purple. Or the knife. Both were partially obscured by her fingers. I was told later that I didn’t scream, but only yelled for help. Maybe so, but it didn’t feel that way.
A crewmember I recognized from our trip through the airlock was the first to arrive. She pushed through the door, took one look at Marta, and summoned help with her comlink. I remember walking, squatting, and reaching for Marta’s hand. The rest was a blur of voices, hands, and faces as I was restrained and forcibly, but not unkindly, removed to an office in the crew section of the habitat.
I’d already told my story several times before Captain Larkin arrived. His presence caused the room to feel even more claustrophobic. A shuffling of bodies ensued while he took the chair behind the desk. He spoke with far more sympathy than I expected. “We all feel the loss of a member of our community, but I understand Marta Jefferies was a close friend of yours.”
I nodded, tears filling my eyes.
“Tell me how you came to find her.”
It was an order—not a request—but his demeanor erased any reluctance to comply. Feeling surreal, I described my search for Marta, half expecting the ending of the story to change for the better now that he had taken charge. The shock of his words disabused me of that conceit.
“Vids from the hallway confirm your account. The timing of your entry into the room makes it clear you weren’t involved in Ms. Jefferies’s death. Are you aware of any reason she might have wished to take her own life?”
Shocked, I didn’t bother to conceal my fury. “Marta didn’t commit suicide.”
A staring match ensued over the next few moments. I wasn’t the one who lost. “No one went into the room between the time Ms. Jefferies entered and your arrival fifty minutes later.”
“That’s impossible.” This time I was the one who looked away first.
“The hallways are monitored, but due to privacy concern
s, there are no cameras in the toilet. This leaves us with the obvious conclusion.”
Devon and I spent the night with Alex. Sometime around two in the morning I fell asleep on the sofa, listening to the quiet murmur of their voices. The dream that awakened me several hours later was not so much a nightmare as a communing with the dead. Marta hadn’t killed herself—of that, I was certain. I knew how her murder had been accomplished. The questions were: who wielded the knife, and why? Those were the mysteries I was determined to solve.
The next morning we gathered at the table with cups of coffee. “It’s obvious her killer entered and left through the access panel,” I said. “Where does that chase connect?”
Alex pointed to a rectangle on the habitat schematics. “The maintenance facility on J Corridor.”
As well as providing storage for cleaning equipment, it served as the main laundry for the colony. The news could be worse, but not by much. “Dozens of people are in and out of there all day long.”
“The time frame is pretty narrow though,” Devon said. “We need to get them to look at the vids.”
“And then what?” Alex said. “We can’t accuse someone of murder just because they were in the room.”
“No, but it’s a start.” Alex’s arm felt clammy under my fingers. “We’re going to find the person who killed her. Now help me figure out why.”
Getting past the guardians of the gate proved harder than I imagined. By the time I gained access to Captain Larkin’s office, I was well aware my intrusion was unwelcome. It seemed that colony leaders had closed ranks with senior crew in supporting a verdict of suicide. Without interruption, the captain let me finish the story of how I’d found the connecting panels as well as my theory of Marta’s murder. My admiration for the man further increased when he asked the obvious question.
Mission Mars Page 2
