John Varley - Red Thunder

Kelly isn’t sure yet. For that matter, neither am I. Elizabeth would be thirteen, Ramon would be eleven. Do we want to bring them up in a pioneer society with an alien sun in the sky, or on nice, safe, familiar Mars? There’s plenty of time to decide.

Sometimes I think back, and I’m impressed how much of our lives are determined by chance.

What if we’d run over and killed Travis, that night on the beach? Our lives would have been very different. What if we’d missed seeing [411] him entirely, just drove off into the night and the tide took him or he woke up in a sand dune with a hangover? I’m sure that every day opportunities pass us by and we never even know they were there.

Then again, we can see a chance, take it, and watch it all go sour. My father saw a chance, took it, and ended up with a bullet in his gut.

We of the Red Thunder had incredible luck, but we worked very hard to take advantage of it. Did we “deserve” to be the first on Mars? I’m sure there were worthier people, but the chance fell to us.

MY GOODNESS.THE stories we’ll have to tell. I see Kelly and me, 110 years old, sitting in rocking chairs on a planet with two suns during the day and six moons at night, telling our great-great-grandchildren stories they probably won’t believe.

How perilous it was to go just to Mars in those days.

How alien this new planet thirty light-years from home looked to us.

Alien? they will say. This is home, it’s not alien. What’s perilous about traveling to another star? And here they go again, about how they were the first. So what?

Yes, I know, it doesn’t really mean anything. But the fact remains…

We were the first!