Marsbound m-1, Page 3

  Three exercise machines, for rowing, stair-stepping, and biking, were grouped together where the ladder led up to the second level.

  The woman who was our attendant, Dr. Porter, stood on the second rung of the ladder and talked softly into a lapel mic. “We have about sixty minutes till liftoff. Please find your area and be seated by then, strapped in, by one o’clock. That’s 1300, for you scientists. I’ll be upstairs if anyone has questions.” She scampered lightly up the ladder.

  I have a question, I didn’t say. Could I just jump off and swim for it?

  My information packet said I was 21A. I found the seat and sat down, half-reclining. Card was next to me in 20A; Mother and Dad were upstairs in the B section.

  Card took a vial out of his packet and looked at the five pills in it. “You nervous?” he said.

  “Yeah. Thought I’d save the pills for later, though.” They were doses of a sedative. The orientation show admitted that some people have trouble falling asleep at first. Can you imagine?

  “Prob’ly smart.” He looked pretty much like I felt.

  The control console for the window came up out of the armrest and clicked into place over your lap. On one side it had a keyboard and various command buttons, but you could rotate it around, and it was like an airplane tray table with a fuzzy gecko surface.

  Card tapped away at the keyboard, which caused a ghostly message to cascade down the window in several languages: MONITOR LOCKED UNTIL AFTER LAUNCH. I touched one key on mine and got the same message, dim letters floating down in front of the fake seascape.

  “They’re just trying to make us feel comfortable,” I said, but it was kind of disappointing. The window would normally be a clever illusion—you could play a game or read a book or whatever, but nobody could see what was on your monitor unless they were right in line with it. Sitting on your lap. From any other angle, it would look just like a window looking outside. It had something to do with polarization; the screen was actually showing two images, but you could only see one or the other.

  With an hour to kill, I wasn’t going to just sit and look through a fake window. I joined Barry and Elspeth in trying out the exercise machines, which were mainly for those of us going on to Mars. The others were just tourists going to the Hilton; they weren’t going to be in space long enough for zero gee to turn their bones to dry sticks and their muscles to mush.

  Then we went upstairs and took a look at the zero-gee toilet. We’d sort of trained on it in Denver, in the Vomit Comet, the big ancient plane that gave us fifty seconds of zero gee at a time—up and down, up and down, all day long. I was able to get my feet into the footholds and lower my butt into place, but that was it. I’d learn about the rest soon enough.

  But not too soon. There was a regular toilet next to it, with a sign saying FOR USE UNTIL 0.25 G. So we had a few days.

  The “personal hygiene” closet looked claustrophobic. Once a day you got a plastic bag with two washcloths wetted with something like rubbing alcohol. Get as clean as you can, then put the same clothes back on. It would be a little better on the John Carter, better but weirder—zip yourself up in a plastic bag?

  The galley was on the opposite side of the room, just a microwaveand a surprisingly small refrigerator, and a bunch of drawers of food and utensils. A fold-down worktable.

  In the middle of both rooms, both levels, was a round table with eight seat-belted chairs, I guessed for socializing. Wouldn’t it be smarter to have smaller, separate tables? Just in case there turned out to be somebody you couldn’t stand the sight of?

  After six months, that might be everybody, though, including the mirror.

  Mustn’t think negative thoughts, as Dad says. Only two weeks in this one, then a change of scenery for six months. Then a new planet.

  “It’s funny,” I said quietly to Card, “on the boat over, I thought I could pretty well tell who were the rich people and who were the neo-Martians.”

  “Fancy clothes?”

  “Or careful down-dressing. An ironed tee shirt—that’s a dead giveaway. With clean old jean shorts?”

  “But here—”

  “Yeah, and it’s not just clothes. No makeup or jewelry. That has to rag them. It’s going to be interesting.”

  “Some of the Martians are rich, too,” Card said. “Barry’s dad’s an inventor, and he has all kinds of patents. They came out in their own plane.”

  “Couldn’t afford a ticket?”

  “Sure, right. He’s got two planes, two motorcycles, two cars, just in case one breaks down. They live on the lake in Disney.”

  Billionaires, but still. It seemed kind of wasteful to have two of everything, even if money’s not an issue. But I didn’t say anything. “Barry seems like a nice enough guy.”

  Card shrugged. “Sure. I think he’s a little scared of his dad.”

  “I wonder if his dad eats bull-dick soup. That’s scary.” Card started giggling, and so did I. Mother gave us a warning look, and that made it worse. We climbed back downstairs, snorting, and managed not to break any bones.

  8

  STOP

  I guess there’s something to be said for launching the old way, riding three thousand tons of high explosive on a tower of fire. Dangerous but dramatic. When we took off, it was sort of like an elevator ride.

  We were all strapped into our seats, probably just to keep us from wandering around. The tug above us made a whiny little noise, and there was a slight bump, and the platform below us slowly fell away. In a few seconds, you could see the big energy farm. I strained at the seat belt, but couldn’t get close enough to the “window” to see the laser and the mirror—dumb of me. It wasn’t really a window; if the camera wasn’t pointed at the laser, I wouldn’t see it.

  The noise stopped, and there was another bump. “Switching over,” Dr. Porter said over the intercom. A woman of few words.

  The main motors were much smoother. There was a slight press of acceleration and a low hum, and in a couple of minutes we were up to our cruising speed, about 250 miles per hour.

  After a couple minutes more of going straight up, we were higher than most airplanes, and you could easily see the curvature of the Earth as the Galápagos came into sight. My ears started to pop and crackle with the air pressure dropping. Upstairs, a couple of the younger kids were crying. Ears or fears?

  It wasn’t really anything new; we’d sat through a twelve-hour test of it at the Denver orientation, thin air with beefed-up oxygen, and everybody managed to live with it. We’ll be breathing something like this for the next five years. (The high oxygen content was why we couldn’t bring regular clothes—everything has to be absolutely nonflammable. And smokers have to quit.)

  Little numbers in the corner of the window showed how high we were and what the gravity was. At seven or eight miles, the edge of South America was coming into view. The sky was getting darker and darker blue, and by twenty-five miles it was almost black. You could see a few stars, at least on this side. I craned my neck to see the windows behind me; the ones facing the afternoon sun were dimmed.

  Soon the sky was inky black, and I shivered involuntarily. For all practical purposes, we were in outer space. Outside the elevator, you wouldn’t live a minute.

  That would be true in an airplane, too. I told myself not to panic. I considered taking one of the pills, but instead just closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths.

  When I opened my eyes, the gravity had fallen to 0.99. I’d lost a pound already, on the Space Elevator Diet. (Money-back guarantee—in one week, your weight problem will be gone!)

  That was one advantage we had over the old astronauts. They went straight from one gee to nothing, and about half of them got sick. We had a week to get used to it gradually. But we did have barf bags, too.

  That made me glance down to the pocket on the side of the chair. I did not count the number of bags in the stack, but rather pulled out the magazines.

  We didn’t get paper magazines at home, except for occasional
catalogs. These felt funny, kind of heavy and slippery. I guess that was like the clothes, nonflammable paper.

  One was the Space Elevator News, with a sticker on it that said, “Take this copy home with you.” Not to Mars, I think. The others were the weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune, which I’d read back at the hotel (for the comics), Time, International Photography, and Seventeen.

  “God, you’re reading a magazine?” Card said. “Look, South America!”

  “I saw it miles ago,” I said. But Earth really was starting to look like a planet, and we were only thirty miles up. I’d thought it would take a lot longer than that.

  “You’re free to unbelt now and walk around the carrier,” Dr. Porter said. “Sometime before 6:00, check off your dinner preference, and I’ll call for you when it’s ready.” Doctor, chef, and waitress all in one, impressive. Though I suspected there wouldn’t be much chef-ing involved, and I was right.

  Once you got over the novelty of seeing the Earth out there, it was kind of like watching grass grow. I mean, it wasn’t like Low Earth Orbit, where the real estate rolls along underneath you, constantlychanging. I figured I could check it out once an hour, and tried the keyboard.

  It worked pretty much like the console at home. Bigger picture and more detail. Out of curiosity I typed in a request for porn, and got an alphabetical menu that was a little daunting. I knew that Card would get ACCESS DENIED, which made me feel mature and privileged. (He’d probably devise a work-around in a couple of hours, but he could have it. I don’t really get porn. After the first couple of times, it sort of looks like biology.)

  There were a couple of thousand video and virtual channels, but unlike home, the console didn’t know what I liked; there was no SUGGEST button. But I could goowiki anything.

  The word “menu” started blinking in the corner of the screen, so I clicked on it. There were twelve standard choices for dinner, mostly American and Italian, with one Chinese and one Indian. Then there were ten “premium” meals, with wine, which had surcharges from $40 to $250. Some of them were French things I’d never heard of.

  I clicked on beef stew, safe enough, and wondered whether Dad was going to rack up a huge bill ordering French stuff made of unspeakable parts of various animals. Mother would probably rein him in, but they both liked wine. There goes the family fortune.

  You could toggle and zoom the window. I put the crosshairs on Puerto Villamil, and cranked it up to 250X, the maximum. The image wobbled and vibrated, but then cleared up. I could see our hotel, and people walking around, the size of ants. With careful toggling, I found the rocky beach where I’d spent my last time actually alone.

  “Hey,” said a voice behind me, “that’s where we met?” It was the pilot, of course, Paul Collins, crouching down so he could see what was on my screen. Was that impolite?

  “Yeah, where you nailed that iguana with a rock. Or am I imagining things?”

  “No, your memory is perfect. I wondered if you wanted to play some cards. We’re getting a game together before anyone else claims the table upstairs.”

  I was flattered and a little nervous that he had come down to find me. “Sure, if I know the game.”

  “Poker. Just for pennies.”

  “Okay. I could do that.” The kids in high school had stopped playing poker with me because I always won, and they couldn’t figure out how I was cheating. I wouldn’t tell them my secret, which was no secret: fold unless you have something good. Most of the other kids just stayed in the game, trusting their luck, hoping to improve their hands at the last minute. That’s idiotic, my uncle Bert taught me; only one person is going to win. Make it be you, or be gone.

  I got my purse out of the little suitcase and glanced at Card. He was wrapped up in a game or something, virtual headset on. Mental note: that way nobody can sneak up behind you and see what you’re doing.

  Upstairs, there were five people at the table, including Dad. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Might as well just give her the money.”

  “Come on, Dad. I don’t always win.”

  He laughed. “Just when I’m in the game.” He actually was a pretty bad poker player, not too logical for an engineer. But he played for fun, not money.

  We spent a pleasant couple of hours playing Texas Hold-’em and seven-card stud. I dealt five-card stud a couple of times, the purest game, but that wasn’t enough action for most of them.

  Dad was way ahead when I left, which was both satisfying and annoying. I learned that pilot Paul plays pretty much like me, close to the chest. If he stayed in, he had something—or he bluffed so well no one found out.

  I went in with ten dollars and left with twenty. That’s another thing Uncle Bert taught me: decide before you sit down how much you’re going to win or lose, and stop playing at that point, no matter how long you’ve been in the game. You may not make any friends if you win the first two hands and leave. But poker’s not about making friends, he said.

  The gravity was down to 0.95 when I went back to my chair, and I could almost tell the difference. It was a funny feeling, like “Where did I leave my purse?”

  I could just see North America coming up over the edge of the world. Zoomed in on Mexico City, a huge sprawl of places you probably wouldn’t like to visit without an armed guard.

  Card was still in virtual, doing something with aliens or busty blondes. I put on the helmet myself and chinned through some of the menu. Nothing that really fascinated me. Curious, I spent a few minutes in “Roman Games: Caligula,” but it was loud and gory beyond belief. Settled into “midnight warm ocean calm,” and set the timer for six, then watched the southern sky, the beautiful Cross and Magellanic Clouds, roll left and right as the small boat bobbed in the current. I fell asleep for what seemed like about one second, and the chime went off.

  I unlocked the helmet and instantly wished I was back on the calm sea. Someone had heard the dinner bell and puked. They couldn’t wait for zero gee? There went my appetite.

  After a few minutes there was a double chime from the monitor and a little food icon, a plate with wavy lines of steam, started blinking in the corner. I went upstairs to get it, hoping I could eat up there.

  I was the second person up the ladder, and there was a short line forming behind me. They said they would call ten people at a time for dinner, I guess at random.

  There were ten white plastic boxes on the galley table, with our seat numbers. I grabbed mine and snagged a place at the center table, across from the rich kid, Barry.

  He had the same thing I did, a plate with depressions for beef stew with a hard biscuit, a stack of small cooked carrots, and a pile of peas, all under plastic. Everything was hot in the middle and cool on the outside.

  “I guess we can say good-bye to normal food,” he said, and I wondered what dinner normally was to him. Linen and crystal, sumptuous gourmet food dished out by servants? “Water boils at 170 degrees, at this pressure,” he continued. “It doesn’t get hot enough to cook things properly.”

  “Yeah, I read about coffee and tea.” All instant and tepid. The stew was kind of chewy and dry. The carrots glowed radioactively, and the peas were a lurid bright green and tasted half-raw.

  Funny, the peas started to roll around on their own. A couple jumped off the plate. There was a low moan that seemed to come from everywhere.

  “What the hell?” Barry said, and started to stand up.

  “Please remain seated,” Dr. Porter shouted over the sound. The floor and walls were vibrating. “If you’re not in your assigned seat, don’t return to it until the climber stops.”

  “Stops?” he said. “What are we stopping for?”

  “Probably not to pick up new passengers,” I said, but my voice cracked with fear.

  Dr. Porter was standing with her feet in stirrup-like restraints, her head inside a VR helmet, her hands on controls.

  “There isn’t any danger,” her muffled voice said. “The climber will stop for a short time while the ribbon-repair vehic
le separates to repair a micrometeorite hole.” That was the squat machine on top of the climber. It separated with a clang and a lurch; we swayed a little.

  I swallowed hard. So we were stuck here until that thing stitched up the hole in the tape. If it broke, we’d shortly become a meteorite ourselves. Or a meteor, technically, if we burned up before we hit the ground.

  “I heard it happens about every third or fourth flight,” Barry said.

  I’d read that, too, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it would be scary. Stop, repair the track, move on. I swallowed again and shook my head hard. Two children were crying, and someone was retching.

  “Are you all right?” Barry asked, a quaver in his voice.

  “Will be,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “How about them Gators?”

  “What? Are you insane?”

  “You said you live in Gainesville,” he said defensively.

  “Don’t follow football.” An admission that could get me burned at the stake in some quarters.

  “Me, neither.” He paused. “You win at poker?”

  “A thousand,” I said. “I mean ten bucks. A thousand pennies.”

  “Might as well be dollars. Nothing to spend it on.”

  Interesting thing for him to say. “You could buy stuff when we stop at the Hilton.”

  “Yeah, but you couldn’t carry it with you. Unless you have less than ten kilograms.”

  Maybe I should’ve saved a few ounces, bring back an Orbit Hilton tee shirt. Be the only one on the block.

  The pilot Collins sat down next to Barry. “Thrills and chills,” he said.

  “Routine stuff, right?” Barry said.

  He paused a moment, and said, “Sure.”

  “You’ve seen this happen before?” I said.

  “In fact, no. But I haven’t ridden the elevator that many times.” He looked past me, to where Dr. Porter was doing mysterious things with the controls.

  “Paul… you’re more scared than I am.”

  He settled back into the chair, as if trying to look relaxed. “I’m just not used to not being in control. This is routine,” he said to Barry. “It’s just not my routine. I’m sure Porter has everything under control.”