by Lavie Tidhar
Dancing on the Red Planet
Berit Ellingsen
Berit Ellingsen is a Korean–Norwegian fiction writer and science journalist. Her debut novel, The Empty City, came out in 2011.
“We want to dance when we go out the airlock,” the Belgian said.
“Pardon?” Vasilev, commander of the first manned mission to Mars, said.
“The music will be a speaker check for the atmospheric sound wave experiment,” the Belgian replied.
“Why wasn’t I informed about this earlier?” Vasilev asked.
“It’s such a small thing; why not do it?” the Belgian said. “And it’ll look great on TV.” He smiled. His teeth were small and white, unlike Vasilev’s coffee–stained enamel.
§
“The track is called Opera of Northern Ocean, as if that has anything to do with us,” Vasilev complained to mission control. He needed to talk with someone outside the crew, someone a little impartial. “Okay, maybe the landing site was an ocean once, and is in the northern hemisphere, but that doesn’t make it any more appropriate. They also want to dance as they exit the airlock. Can they even do that?” He put the message on record, and went to water the tomato plants in the greenhouse for the thirty–four minutes it took the message to reach their blue home and for mission control to reply.
“I’m afraid they can,” Petrov at mission control said. “The ramp is large enough for movement. The calcium, super–calbindin and exercise will have kept your bones dance–worthy. The sound experiment was cleared months ago. Could be important to know how sound behaves in the Martian atmosphere if we ever set up a research station there or if you guys need to scream.” Damn Petrov and his macabre sense of humor.
“Why didn’t the Europeans tell me first?” Vasilev said. He disliked wasting talk and time on things it was too late to do anything about, but his colleagues’ omission of the music and dancing irked him. They had had more than seven months to let him know about the experiment–cum–PR stunt. Of course, the Americans were in on it, too.
“Just disallow it then,” Petrov said half an hour later.
§
As commander, Vasilev could do that, but he also knew the demotivating effect it would have on the long journey back. If the Europeans had their dance, maybe they would stop complaining about the food and just eat what they were given. And, like the Belgian had said, it was such a small thing, so why not do it?
“Okay,” Vasilev told the Belgian and the German. “You can have your dance, but do it quickly. And for God’s sake record it, so it really is an experiment.”
“Of course,” said the German. “We’ll film it at the highest resolution possible.”
§
“Moron,” Andreevitsj, mission specialist from remote and Arctic Novaja Zemlya, said when Vasilev told him and Lebedev about the “experiment.” “Do you know what this means?”
“No,” Vasilev said flatly.
“It means we have to dance with them!”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Vasilev replied.
“Yes it does! We can’t just stand there while they dance.”
“Why not?”
“It’ll look stupid, like we don’t know how to dance.”
“We don’t know how to dance,” Vasilev said.
“Speak for yourself,” Andreevitsj said. “I do my part when I go out. But I have enough sense to stay in the crowd so fewer people see me.”
“So?” Vasilev said, still sore about the moron comment, but determined not to show it. “Where are you going with these irrelevant facts?”
“There’s no fucking crowd here!” Andreevitsj said. “We can’t hide.
“Calm down,” Vasilev said. “No one will mind.”
“It’s just a quarter of the planet watching the landing,” Andreevitsj said, voice shrill. ”We’ll look bad next to the Europeans and the Americans.”
“Maybe they can’t dance either?” Vasilev suggested. “They just like the music?” He enjoyed music, too, but not dancing.
“No,” Andreevitsj said. “They’ve grown up with it. They dance every weekend. They fill stadiums and dance all night. When I studied in Holland, all the radio stations and clubs sounded the same, uts–uts–uts–uts–uts! I thought I would go crazy.”
§
They spent the next two exercise sessions trying to learn how to dance from Lebedev, who came from Moscow and was, in his own words, an expert clubber. Strapped to the treadmills, they jumped up and down and waved their arms to Lebedev’s music. Andreevitsj did the twist, rotated his hips and knees in opposite directions while he squatted up and down. Vasilev wasn’t sure how good it looked. He was starting to feel nervous — not about the landing, which he had spent over a year training for, and which was like an old friend to him. Instead, he feared the hours following touchdown and engine stop, and the moment when the airlock opened and they would take the first steps on another planet — dancing.
§
“Music and dance have been used for celebration since humans left the caves,” the American said during dinner the night before they entered the lander. Lebedev and one of the Americans would stay behind in the main module to take care of communication, maintenance and orbital experiments while the rest of them worked on the surface.
“Also, moving one’s bodies together in rhythm increases the feeling of community and strength, like social glue. That’s why so many indigenous peoples dance. It’s highly appropriate that we do it when we arrive on a new planet.”
“But we’re not indigenous peoples,” Vasilev said.
“To Mars, we’re all indigenous peoples from Earth,” the American replied.
“Can I at least hear the song you’ll be playing?” Vasilev asked.
The Belgian shook his head. “No, it’s a surprise. But I can tell you it will be easy to dance to, in the standard one hundred and twenty beats per minute.”
“That’s the heart rate of sexual arousal,” the American informed him.
“Uts–uts–uts–uts–uts,” Andreevitsj said from across the table.
§
But it didn’t end there. The Europeans wanted to fasten long silver–colored streamers to the D–rings on the arms and legs of the EVA suits, once again under the combined auspices of science and showmanship, to “visually track the direction and strength of the Martian wind.” It would also look festive.
“What’s next?” Vasilev muttered. “Glow sticks?” He checked the logistics files to make sure glow sticks were not in the payload.
§
Then the moment arrived. They fell and shook and burned through the Martian atmosphere, not nearly as hard as the re–entry would be on Earth, but generating a respectable amount of fire. The conical heat–shield lasted for as long as necessary and popped off according to plan. The trefoil of parachutes deployed and jolted them back to gravity after seven months in free–fall. Then the lander’s feet extended and the thrusters kicked in, pushing back against Mars’ hold on them. The atmospheric conditions were good, just enough wind to make it interesting, but not enough to make it dangerous. No nasty surprises or malfunctions. Vasilev put the gleaming, teardrop–shaped landing module on the Red Planet as he had trained to do, with plenty of fuel left. It was a safe landing, a glorious landing.
“Touchdown and engine shutdown,” Vasilev said into the microphone. He breathed and imagined the cheering that would erupt in the control room seventeen minutes into the future. He smiled at the thought.
Two hours and six minutes later all the reports from the co–pilots and the rest of the crew were positive. It was time; he couldn’t postpone it any longer.
“Everyone to the airlock and prepare for EVA,” Vasilev said, his voice trembling slightly.
§
They crowded the small metal space, the Belgian closest to the hatch, then the German. Because the landing was Russian, the Europeans and the Americans had the honor of being first outside. Vasilev couldn’t see his crew’s faces behind their
golden visors, but he could hear their breathing, rapid and shallow, over the radio. The silver streamers at their elbows and knees gleamed in the bluish light. It looked odd, like failed Christmas tree decorations.
The German started the internal and external cameras and gave thumbs up. Everything was ready. Vasilev’s palms were moist inside his gloves. His heart beat as hard as it had during the landing.
“Opening the airlock now,” Vasilev said. He pressed the oversized button on the wall and nodded at the Europeans. The Belgian started the track on the hard–drive.
At first, Vasilev didn’t hear anything. Then a beat began, steady but light. It unfolded slowly, as the lander’s ramp had done moments earlier. The music sounded inside their earphones and on the external speakers, the first human sound in the atmosphere on Mars.
§
The hatch opened. They stretched to take in the planet they had landed on. A ruddy–colored desert of coarse sand and pebbles, no boulders in the landing zone. Orange dust kicked up by the thrusters gilded the air. The sky was yellow, the sun small and distant. It was Mars. Mars was looking at them, greeting them. The wind caught the silver streamers on their suits and pulled the ribbons out toward the silent landscape, like a beckoning.
A deep bass started up in the music, then a sound like a human voice exhaling, breathing, overlaid by a warbling synth and the sound of gentle tinkling.
“Quite poetic,” Vasilev thought, against his will. He blamed it on the moment. It felt much more personal than he had expected. There was no press, no busy officials, nor screaming people waiting for them on the Red Planet, just wind and sand and silence.
§
The Belgian lifted his arms as though he were taking all of Mars in, as if the rest of humanity, everyone they knew and loved, were not two hundred million kilometers away in the darkness, but right there with them. He bobbed his helmet up and down, and dance–walked slowly out onto the ramp. The orange sand on his boots and on the metal beneath them, rose and fell, rose and fell, in rhythm with the beat.
The German followed, turning his hips from side to side as much as the suit allowed him, and swayed out of the airlock, the silver streamers flapping and gleaming in the dust–filled Martian day.
The American made whooping sounds, clapped in time with the beat and danced outside. Then the music calmed a little, as if it were waiting for someone.
“Let’s go,” Andreevitsj said, breathed heavily into his microphone and vanished. The music rose in a crescendo, with a yearning, haunting undertone and a sound of increasing wind.
Vasilev drew in his breath, lifted his arms as his colleagues had done, bent his knees and swung his hips with the music, one–two, one–two, one–two. The low gravity made him feel light and unconcerned, not stiff and uncomfortable, as when he danced on Earth. It felt surprisingly good. He followed Andreevitsj into the golden sand–light.
No longer caring who saw or heard him, just enjoying the ease of the motion and the music, Vasilev stomped his feet and waved his arms and grinned broadly, while The Opera of Northern Ocean boomed and warbled and sang into the alien atmosphere, and the orange wind lifted their streamers up and up toward the sky. Through the earphones, he heard the laughter and the breathing and the shouts of his fellow human beings who were dancing next to him on Mars at one hundred and twenty heartbeats per minute.
About the Artist
Sophia Tuska is a Hungarian graphic designer and artist specializing in concept art, photo manipulation, and advertisements. Her love for the arts led her to the study of literature, then subsequently to a degree in art and design. Her work has appeared in exhibitions, books, magazines, albums. You can find an online gallery of her work at aiofa.deviantart.com.
About the Editor
Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama, The Violent Century and the forthcoming A Man Lies Dreaming. His novella Gorel & The Pot–Bellied God won a British Fantasy Award, and he is also the author of graphic novel Adolf Hitler’s “I Dream of Ants!” and forthcoming comics mini–series Adler. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, and spent much of his adult life travelling around the world. You can visit him online at lavietidhar.wordpress.com.
For news about Apex Publications, our latest releases, and special promotional offers, join our newsletter. Your email address will never be shared, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
You can follow Apex Publications on Twitter (@ApexBookCompany) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/apexpublications).
Word–of–mouth is crucial for the success of small publishers like us. If you enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review at Amazon or Goodreads, even if it’s just a line or two. Every little bit helps and is appreciated by both author and publisher.
Amazon
Goodreads
Table of Contents
Copyright
Introduction
Courtship in the Country of Machine–Gods
A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight
Act of Faith
The Foreigner
The City of Silence
Planetfall
Jungle Fever
To Follow the Waves
Ahuizotl
The Rare Earth
Spider’s Nest
Waiting with Mortals
Three Little Children
Brita’s Holiday Village
Regressions
Dancing on the Red Planet
About the Artist
About the Editor
