Saving Mars

by Cidney Swanson

  Jessamyn brought the craft in slowly, nearly silent. She spun the ship, aligning the prongs to the receiving outlets. And that was when she saw the blur.

  “What the …?” Jess took an infrared reading. “No, no, no!”

  She pulled the craft out of the landing pattern, causing the Secretary to cry out, “Holy Ares!” just as Jess shouted, “Hold on tight!”

  Jessamyn had, in fact, decided to do something very stupid and most likely career-killing. But she knew she could never face her brother again if she landed on top of the planetary dog.

  To her credit, Jessamyn attempted to land the craft such that it wouldn’t tip sideways. But the uneven Marsian surface was set against her and within seconds of touching down, the ship wobbled, tilted, and collapsed, tumbling down on its side.

  In the silence that followed the crash, the Secretary spoke.

  “What in the name of Hades happened there, Pilot?”

  Jess licked dry lips. “I wrecked your Cloud Runner, Madam Secretary.”

  “Yes, I did notice that,” the Secretary remarked dryly.

  Another moment’s silence. This is going to be so, so bad, thought Jessamyn.

  “Would you care to tell me why?” asked the CEO of Mars Colonial.

  Jess wanted to reply, Because your idiot dog was about to get ground into dog-burger. But she held her temper. Anger wasn’t going to make this mess any better. “Your dog was bouncing around down there in its …” Jess struggled to remember the word. “Inside its hamster-ball. It was trying to bite the landing lights or something. If I’d attempted to take us back up again for another pass, I would have cooked your dog with the heat from the thrusters. I chose to land the craft … unconventionally.”

  “You made a split-second decision to kill my Cloud Runner instead of my dog.”

  It sounded idiotic to Jess’s ears when the Secretary put it like that.

  “I’m afraid so, Ma’am.” All the fight whooshed out of her and suddenly she felt very, very young. She was an idiot. She’d destroyed her career just as surely as she’d wrecked the Cloud Runner.

  The Secretary shook her head slowly and began sealing up her walk-out suit.

  “Suit up, Pilot. You won’t be taking this thing anywhere else.”

  Jess swallowed against the lump in her throat, wondering why the Secretary wasn’t shouting and cursing. Perhaps the planetary CEO had moved past mere anger and into quiet rage.

  Jess hoped the door allowing them to exit remained functional. She pushed the release locks and breathed a sigh of relief as the door opened outward, allowing them to crawl free. The planetary dog rolled his habitat to the Secretary’s side and the three of them walked into the Executive Dwelling.

  Once she’d stripped out of her walk-out suit, the Secretary focused her attention on the dog instead of Jess, freeing him from the globe-shaped unit that allowed him access to the outdoors.

  “Come over here, you! Someone is trying to lose his nose! Oh, look at you. If that’s frostbite—oh, come here, come here. Goo-ood boy. Oh you are such a naughty dog! Goo-ood boy.”

  Jess stood awkwardly to one side, watching the interaction between the two. When, at last, the Secretary stood and turned to look at her, Jessamyn had calmed enough to be able to speak rationally.

  “I acted on impulse. I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

  The Secretary tilted her head to one side. “Sorry? Are you apologizing to me for saving the life of the planetary dog?”

  “It was inexcusable of me, Ma’am.”

  “Pilot?”

  “Yes, Madam Secretary?” You are so dead, said a voice in Jess’s head.

  “Thank you for sparing the life of Mars’s most iconic and best-beloved inhabitant. Our planet has never been more in need of good cheer than we are at this moment.” Mei Lo smiled. “And frankly, even on a cost basis, activating a new canine embryo is more expensive than replacing my ship. Not that Rover could ever be replaced.”

  Hearing his name, Rover thumped his tail twice.

  Jessamyn stared, at a loss for words. She’d done something right by doing something wrong.

  “May I?” The Secretary extended her diminutive arms as if for a hug.

  Jess gave half a nod and then felt the arms of her planet’s leader encircling her.

  Pulling back out of the hug, Jess asked, “So, does this mean I still have a job?”

  The Secretary threw her head back and shouted to the ceiling, “Do you still have a job?” She bent down to scratch her dog’s head. “Does the nice pilot still have a job, huh, Rover?” The Secretary stood again, recovering herself from laughter. “You’ve got any job you want, kid, saving Rover’s life like that! Ares! If I had a son, I’d make him marry you right now!” Mei Lo’s eyes danced. “My job’s a very lonely one at times. You’ve saved me from … from …” She blinked several times. “You’ve made my life immeasurably better by not barbecuing my dog. Thank you, Jessamyn.”

  Embarrassed, Jess didn’t know where to look and found her eyes resting on the dog. It sat, head cocked to one side, eyes fixed on the Secretary.

  “Would you like to say hi to Rover?” asked Mei Lo.

  Jess wondered if the Secretary would be offended if she declined. She’d never wanted to meet the dog before, and she didn’t feel particularly interested in meeting it now. Then she thought of her brother.

  “Sure …” she said. It came out sounding almost like a question.

  The Secretary smiled. “Rover, come. Meet Jessamyn.”

  The dog stood and quickly closed the few feet between himself and Jess.

  Jessamyn lowered herself to one knee as she’d seen countless children do when she’d been young enough to be taken for her birthday visit. Remembering the other celebrants making fools of themselves with the planetary dog, she decided it would be best to get it over with quickly.

  But something happened when Jess’s eyes connected with Rover’s. His eyes, light-blue like Ethan’s, caught her at once with their intelligence. Who are you? the dog seemed to be asking. He tilted his head from side to side, never loosing her from his gaze except to blink.

  “The blinking is one of the ways he’s acknowledging you as being ahead of him in the pack,” said the Secretary.

  “Huh,” said Jessamyn. She wasn’t really paying attention, though. She felt a rush as something swept through her. A something that reminded her of taking her craft toward breaking day or of watching Phobos as the swift moon zipped across the night sky. The dog was … wondrous. A shiver ran along her spine. “Hi,” she said to the gentle-eyed creature before her.

  Rover leaned in and licked her.

  “He gave up water—to me, a total stranger,” gasped Jess.

  “It’s a shock the first time,” said Mei Lo. “Think of the proverb, though, and it all makes sense.”

  “Be as generous as a dog,” murmured Jessamyn.

  “Exactly,” agreed Mei Lo. “Put your hand out where he can get a good sniff. Dogs learn from their noses as much as from their eyes. Maybe more.”

  Jess extended one hand. Rover leaned in snuffling, blowing, and, incredibly, licking her once again. She giggled this time. Looking at Rover’s black, tan, and white coat, Jess grew curious. What does it feel like? She plunged one hand into his thick fur. It reminded her for a moment of her granddad’s bristle-y mustache. But underneath she found a softer silken layer.

  “Incredible,” she murmured, pulling her hand back and forth through his fur.

  Rover’s muzzle darted toward Jess’s chin and he licked her again.

  “Unreal,” she said.

  “He reminds me to act with generosity,” said the Secretary. “It’s hard to have a water-grubbing attitude with Rover giving up moisture ten times a day.”

  Jess didn’t want to stop pulling her hand through the soft furry layers. Incredibly, she realized she was petting the creature. No wonder Ethan liked the planetary dog so much. No wonder Mei Lo was so grateful. Why don’t I see these things coming? Jess aske
d herself. Of course saving the dog had been the right thing to do. Of course the Secretary would be grateful and not angry. Harpreet’s words of the other day floated through Jessamyn’s mind: You must learn to see things from more than one perspective. But how was that even possible when she was stuck inside her own mind? Jess sighed in the quiet room.

  Then, with a kind of shiver, Jess realized this was the moment she’d been waiting for: she had the Secretary’s undivided attention right now. Like she might never have it again. It made her a bit dizzy, like coming in too hot on a fast ship.

  But Jessamyn found, as she considered this waited-for moment, that she did not wish to take unfair advantage of the Secretary’s current state of gratitude.

  “Listen, Madam Secretary, there’s something you should know. I wasn’t thinking about you just now when I saved Rover’s life. Or about Mars,” she added. “I saved your dog’s life because I don’t think I could’ve faced my brother otherwise. He’s crazy about your dog.”

  “Mars’s dog,” corrected the Secretary.

  “Yeah, well, Ethan’s the reason I did what I did. I don’t want you having any false ideas about how I was trying to be all noble for the citizenry of Mars or whatever. ‘Cause I wasn’t.” She noticed her fingers gripping tightly to a handful of fur and forced herself to relax. Rover didn’t seem to mind. She spoke again, quietly. “It was all for my brother’s sake.”

  “All right,” said Mei Lo, nodding, narrowing her eyes as she examined Jess. “I can still be grateful for the end result, you know, regardless of your motives.”

  Jess swallowed and continued before she had a chance to get scared and freeze up. “Listen, I know you want Ethan for some secret assignment, but it won’t work. Eth won’t make it to Earth. You put him in that ship for three weeks, and by the time he comes out the other side, his mind will be destroyed. He’s claustrophobic. Severely claustrophobic. And that’s only one of his peculiarities that I can put a name to. He’s got other … habits and preferences and quirks that don’t have names. But I can guarantee none of it will look good aboard the Red Galleon.”

  “I’ve noticed he is … different,” said the Secretary. “But he seems strongly committed.”

  Jess released Rover and straightened up so that she could look the Secretary in the eye. “Let me ask you something. Can you afford for him to fail at … whatever this is?”

  The Secretary turned sharply. “Has he told you what I’m asking him to do?”

  “No,” said Jess. “And you can bet he never will.”

  Rover shook his coat and wandered off to a pillow that had his name on it.

  Frowning, the Secretary crossed her arms and looked at Jess. “Why do you ask whether or not I can afford for him to fail?”

  “I know my brother. I understand that whatever you want him to do, he’s convinced that only he can do it, and he believes it ought to be attempted. But he’s not sure of himself. Asking my brother to climb inside a small, enclosed space with no escaping for three weeks is like …” Jess struggled to come up with something the Secretary might be able to understand. She saw Rover. “It’s like your dog wanting to be outside. Sure, Rover can survive in his hamster-ball for a short time, but if you left him in the cold for three weeks, what would you find when you went back to collect him?”

  “He’d die,” said the Secretary.

  “Yes,” said Jess. “Even though your dog wants to go outside, it isn’t an environment he can survive in for long.”

  “You’re saying your brother can’t survive three weeks in the environment of the Red Galleon.”

  Jess pinched her lips together then spoke. “Maybe if he had a couple of annums to prepare for it, he might make it. As he stands now? No.”

  The Secretary stood as still as one of the ice carvings from the Festival.

  Jess felt the long pause that followed as if it were a physical thing pressing down upon her.

  “Would you bet the future of Mars on that certainty?” The Secretary’s face blanched as she whispered the question.

  “The future of Mars?”

  The Secretary nodded.

  Jess hesitated. She remembered trips with her brother that ended with him rocking back and forth, eyes closed, making a steady humming noise at the same pitch for hours on end. She remembered other times she’d worked hard with him, sitting beside him and feeding him distractions, telling him stories, keeping him protected as best she could from the deleterious effects of an enclosed space.

  She looked up and met the Secretary’s eyes. “He can make it if he has me with him. But otherwise, no, Madam Secretary. My brother’s mind wouldn’t be the same by the time he reached Earth. If you need him in his right mind, send me with him.”

  The Secretary was quiet for several minutes. Jess stared into the black expanse beyond the large windows. Ethan would like it here, she thought. She saw the small moon Deimos and wondered if Earth had risen yet. Beside the window, Rover rested his chin on his paws, lying on his pillow. His eyes darted from the Secretary to Jess, back and forth in clear acknowledgement of the tension in the room.

  At last, the Secretary, who’d been staring out the window as well, spoke. “You could have lied to me about your motivation for saving Rover’s life. But you didn’t. Just like the day I hired you: you told me the truth instead of what I wanted to hear. I abhor lying and dissembling, Jess. I’ve seen plenty of both as CEO of this planet.” She turned so as to face Jessamyn directly. “As I’m sure you are aware, raiding parties are formed with five team members.”

  Jess nodded, recalling the pang of jealousy she’d felt when she’d heard that a young woman only two orbits her senior had been named captain of the mission.

  Mei Lo continued. “What I have not yet announced is that we will be sending two teams of raiders this time—two teams with two separate missions.”

  Jessamyn’s heart beat faster, clattering in her chest like storm-tossed pebbles upon a window.

  “I need your brother to accomplish a task that I believe only he can complete as a special mission. At present, the board of directors is locked in disagreement about the choice of a pilot for this mission. Obviously we need someone capable of guiding a ship past the Terran satellite lasers in high orbit around Mars.” She smiled softly at Jessamyn. “As you already know, I don’t believe in coincidence. I have the final authority to decide this assignment, but the awarded duty comes with a caveat.”

  “I’ll do it,” whispered Jess.

  “You haven’t heard me out,” replied the Secretary, her face now sober. “I am sending your brother to hack the control codes of the satellite array, placing them under our direction. That is the top-secret task that falls to the second crew. There is a very real chance he may fail and that some or all of you could be captured with no hope of rescue.”

  Jessamyn thought of her granddad’s tales of body-swapping and shuddered.

  “The Terrans would certainly re-body you or kill you.” The Secretary paused. “This is a far more dangerous assignment than merely retrieving ration bars.”

  Jess nodded. “Send me.”

  Chapter Seven

  SENSATION OF WEIGHT

  Two days later, Jessamyn officially received the assignment as pilot and first officer of the Red Galleon. She wasn’t permitted to divulge the true mission, so her parents, along with the rest of Mars, assumed Jess would be on an ordinary raid with the second crew acting as a safety-net and possibly obtaining additional food.

  Lillian glowed with excitement, certain if MCC had ordered double shipments, then the Secretary General was making a commitment to develop a domestic food-source within forty orbits.

  “This is everything we’ve worked for,” Jess’s mother said, hugging her daughter.

  “We’re deeply proud of you both,” Jess’s father said to the siblings.

  At the words of praise, worry creased Lillian’s red-dry face.

  “They’ll be fine,” said Jess’s father. “MCC doesn’t make mistakes
when they choose a crew.”

  Ethan walked back to his room, returning a moment later.

  “Here,” he said, handing Jess what appeared to be a piece of clear plastic half the size of his palm.

  Jess took the object.

  “It is from my collection,” he said.

  She looked closely at the clear card and discovered a thin hair enclosed between two layers. “What is it?”

  “I obtained a strand of Rover’s hair. Now that you have met, I would like you to have it. For luck.” Ethan smiled.

  Jess shook her head. “What about you? Don’t you need good luck?”

  Ethan shrugged. “I will have Jessamyn.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Jess’s congratulations from the Secretary General were mixed.

  “Having you at the helm of the Galleon gives me great peace,” said Mei Lo as Jess flew her home one last time from a meeting in New Tokyo. “But it also means I’m losing the best chauffeur I’ve ever had.”

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” said Jess. “I could ask for another couple of days, to get you settled with someone else.”

  “Holy Hermes, no!” replied the Secretary. “You’ve got a job to do, Pilot Jaarda. I hereby order you to forget my self-indulgent complaint.”

  Jess smiled.

  “Between you and me, they’re going to ride you extra hard the next four weeks because of the suspension on your record. You may feel less enthusiastic about this assignment before long.”

  Jess glanced over at the Secretary, who chewed on her lower lip as she gazed at Mars spinning past below them.

  “I’ve thought long and hard over the resolution to destroy Earth’s hold on our planet by seizing control of the satellite array,” Mei Lo said softly. “Ares, I hope I’ve made the right decision.”

  “I won’t fail you,” said Jess.

  The Secretary nodded and then seemed to lose herself in dark contemplation of the red-brown planitia for the remainder of the journey.

  Jess piloted the Secretary’s ship into MCC for the last time strictly according to standard protocol, landing with a textbook precision the Academy dean would have been proud of.