“Just another decade or so, according to your father.” said Pavel. “You’ll see rain on Mars, yet, my love.”
“If I live that long,” groused Jess.
“Curmudgeon,” said Pavel.
The two laughed and leaned together, lost in the contemplation of one another’s eyes until the approach of another person cast a shadow before them.
Jessamyn looked up first.
“Mei Lo,” she said, smiling broadly.
“Crusty and I are making it official,” said the Secretary. “We wanted to know if you and Pavel would stand up with us next week. The Crystal Pavilion is done up to the nines in preparation for next week’s celebration of the Twenty-Five Annums of Concord, so, we thought, why not take advantage of it?”
Jessamyn closed her gaping mouth.
Pavel chuckled. “You’re getting married?”
“About time I made an honest man out of him,” replied the Secretary.
Jess frowned. “Aren’t you a bit … old to be starting a family?” Even at her age, Jess would rather eat Mars dust than endure another pregnancy.
Mei Lo’s mouth turned up on one side, half a smile. “We’re adopting the children of Cooper Station. Well, seven of them.”
Jessamyn inhaled sharply. The Cooper Station mining disaster was fresh in the minds of all Marsians. Dozens of children had been orphaned in a single hour.
“That’s a beautiful idea,” said Pavel. “They couldn’t be welcomed to a better home.”
“There was talk of opening a group home,” said Mei Lo. “A sort of orphanage for the seven with no other family. Crusty and I decided we’d like to make sure they had a family.”
Jessamyn blinked against the burning behind her eyes. She was still too much of an old-school Marsian to cry for joy. “That’s wonderful. The two of you will make such good parents.” She laughed a short laugh. “Better than I was, for sure.”
Mei Lo turned a smiling eye to Jessamyn and Pavel’s grandchildren. “You two did all right. Now, do you think I’d have any takers if I asked your grandkids to be bridal attendants? The Cooper Station kids are tired of being in the spotlight. We agreed we’d spare them having to come to the wedding.”
Jess smiled. “I think I could persuade Brian’s daughters.”
“And Jess and I will be happy to stand up with you,” said Pavel. “It’s an honor to be asked.”
Jessamyn nodded her agreement.
“It’s going to be at dawn, two days from now. Just before the first Terran ships start arriving for the big celebration.”
Mei Lo hugged Jess, hugged Pavel, and took off to whatever her next mission was.
“Well, I’ll be a son of Phobos,” said Jessamyn.
~ ~ ~
Jessamyn missed her brother.
She had kids. Grandkids. She had her parents; she had Pavel. But every annum, she missed Ethan a bit more. She felt it as sort of tug of the strand between them, every year stretching a bit more. And now it had grown too taut. There were days when something reminded her of Ethan—a new city dog, an invention Ethan would have admired—and those days were coming with greater regularity. There was an ache, a hollow inside that was Ethan-shaped, and it wouldn’t go away.
Jess had invited him to come visit. Invited him nearly every annum.
Soon, he would say. Sometime soon.
But sometime didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come.
“He’ll come home when he’s ready,” said Pavel, rubbing circles on Jessamyn’s back. “It would be hard on him, now, after all the years living an unconfined life.”
Jessamyn nodded. The truth was Kazuko didn’t want to visit Mars, and Ethan didn’t want to travel without her.
Come home, Ethan, she wrote him. Mom and Dad aren’t going to live forever.
Earth is home, he wrote back. But I will make a greater effort to visit than I have made heretofore.
Jessamyn laughed. Honestly, he was such an Ethan.
And then one day, shortly after the announcement of the Marsian festivities for the Twenty-Five Annums of Concord, Ethan commed to say he would visit. Kazuko had died unexpectedly, he stated in his unadorned fashion, and he would like to come home.
“Poor Ethan,” said Pavel. “He’ll miss her every hour of every day.”
Jessamyn nodded and tried to feel only sorrow for her lost friend, but she was unable to chase her joy away entirely. Her brother! Coming home at last!
Every new day, she found herself murmuring over something that would astonish him. “He hasn’t seen fields of moss campion, growing in the open air,” or, “Ethan never saw snowfall in New Houston,” or, “He won’t believe what we wear instead of walk-out suits.”
Mars had changed. Changed dramatically. Atmospheric pressure was as high as half a bar in certain places and at certain times. There were methanogenesis chambers and new orbital mirrors and Greenhouse Two and a planetary cat—it was all going to knock Ethan’s mittens off.
Ethan Jaarda, Mars Advocate Emeritus, was finally returning to Mars. Jess knew he might not stay. He probably wouldn’t stay. She didn’t care. The thread that joined his heart to hers was become pliable, elastic, once more, and she glowed, just thinking of hearing his voice again.
He told Jessamyn the day she could expect his arrival, and it turned out to be the day of Mei Lo and Crusty’s wedding.
The Secretary’s wedding had been too hastily scheduled to allow Ethan to make plans to attend, although his ship was scheduled to arrive within minutes of the ceremony’s conclusion.
“You’ll just miss it,” Jess had told him in dismay. “I’m sure they could push it half an hour later, though, for you.”
“Mine is not at present a disposition fitted for nuptial festivities,” he had replied. “I will greet you shortly after the ceremony.”
“I’ll look for the flare of light in the sky,” said Jess.
The sky over New Houston was frequently filled with the bright flashes of ships burning through the ever-thickening atmosphere. Jess would have a perfect view, with the ceremony held in front of the patch-worked wall of glass on the Pavilion’s far side.
As Mei Lo spoke the words of the ceremony, Jessamyn found herself mouthing them, smiling at Pavel.
I’ll stand by you.
And Pavel mouthed the same phrase back to her when Crusty spoke his vow to Mei Lo: I’ll stand by you.
When the newlywed couple kissed one another, Jessamyn’s granddaughters giggled and covered their eyes. Jess just smiled at Pavel, who stood with tears running down his face. He was terribly sentimental, that husband of hers.
A pulse of heat at her wrist.
“Oh,” murmured Jess. She’d set a silent alarm so she wouldn’t forget. Her brother’s ship should be pushing through the atmo any second. Her gaze flew up, up, up to the highest point of the great glass window. Up and just a bit to the left, if the pilot was any good at her job.
There it was! The flash of heat and light.
The wedded couple recessed and Jessamyn, taking Pavel’s arm, whispered to him. “They won’t notice if we take off. I want to greet Ethan out there, on the plain.”
So Jessamyn and Pavel donned their rad-jackets and strapped on oxygen and stepped out into the chill morning air of another beautiful day on Mars.
“The air’s so moist,” said Jessamyn, wriggling her bare fingers. “Can you feel it?”
Pavel nodded.
The two hurried to the landing zone, Jessamyn noting everywhere at her feet new tufts of stubborn purple saxifrage. Ethan was not going to recognize his home world.
“I hear the ship!” Jess cried, looking up to the sky. She ran ahead of Pavel, jumping up and down on her toes as the small craft settled, sending puffs of yellow dust fines billowing.
“Engage your breathing filter,” said Pavel, joining her. He was good at remembering things like that.
“Oh, I wish the sun had come out,” said Jess, wringing her hands as they waited for her brother to emerge. “It
was so beautiful yesterday.” She frowned at the clouds.
Pavel chuckled. “It’s warm, though. Good for guests.”
The two stood side by side once more. Something struck Jessamyn’s head gear with a soft pop. Not a dust storm, too! She scowled at the sky. Didn’t Mars have any sense of the importance of this day?
The hatch of her brother’s craft shuddered open.
He was really here.
Jessamyn felt tears welling over her lower lids.
Ethan, the first passenger to alight, bounded awkwardly forward, unaccustomed to Mars-gravity. Jess could see a smile creasing her brother’s face. Another few pop, pop, pops on her head covering. Another frown at the sky. And then Jessamyn realized what it was, striking her head, her jacket, and the backs of her bare hands. It was impossible. But there it was. Annums ahead of any estimates she’d heard.
Rain.
And now she was running toward Ethan, shouting as loud as she could, “Rain, Eth! It’s raining! It’s a miracle!”
As swiftly as it had come on, the rain stopped, moving on to some other part of the world, perhaps, or maybe that had been all of it there would be for annums to come.
Her brother held his arms out. “Jessamyn,” he said.
And she laughed because it was so … so … Ethan of him to say nothing but her name. Hades, she’d missed him.
“Welcome back to Mars,” she said in reply. “Welcome home.”
THE END
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Acknowledgements
As I write this, Mars is approaching “opposition” where it is closest to Earth. Golden-orange, bright, moving across seven degrees or so of the sky in half an hour: I am utterly enchanted. Finishing this series is a very bittersweet thing. I’m going to miss Mars. And Jess and Pavel and Ethan and Yevgeny and … well, you get the idea. It feels a lot like I’ve just decided to move out of town, leaving all my friends behind. In other words, it sucks.
The part that doesn’t suck, however, is getting to thank those who have made this series possible. A handful of special thanks to some people without whom there would not have been a Saving Mars series. To my family: much gratitude for how you let me get lost in a book day after day after day. Deb Geary, thanks so much for encouraging me to think in terms of a series and not a single, short novel. Nathan Lowell, I’m so grateful for your early encouragement; because of that, I was able to believe I might have a series inside.
Chris, my longsuffering husband, thanks for all the ideas you sparked, the physics you explained (even when my eyes glazed over,) and the criticisms you provided (even when I crossed my arms and walked away.)
I’d also like to thank the good people of @NasaSocial for extending to me the privilege of visiting KSC/Cape Canaveral and watching a rocket blast off to Mars. #GoMaven!
Finally, my dear readers: THANK YOU! I’m so very grateful for every purchase, whether eBook or print. You’ve made it feasible for me to write about Mars full time, and wow, is that a dream come true: making stuff up “for the love of Mars”!
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Author’s Note
Would you like to see humans on Mars? Or journey there yourself? You many find the following organizations of interest:
www.planetary.org
www.nss.org
www.spacefrontier.org
www.marssociety.org
www.nasa.gov
www.spacex.com
mars-one.com
www.penny4nasa.org
Table of Contents
MARS RISING
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Mars Rising (Saving Mars Series 6) Page 25
