Joe Haldeman - Marsbound

“If you…” I almost said something I would regret. “If you say so. But once we’re on Mars?”

“Things will be different. People will get to know you, and accept you as an adult.”

“Eventually. Guess I’ll be one of the kids from Earth for a while.”

“Not for long, I hope.” He brightened. “Privacy isn’t such an issue there, either, finding a time and place. My roommate wouldn’t mind getting lost for a couple of hours, and you’ll pick one you can trust.”

Kaimei or Elspeth, for sure. “Unless they stick me with Card.”

“They wouldn’t be that cruel.” He stood and hugged me and gave me a long kiss. “I’d better move along. You’ll be okay?”

“Sure. I’m sorry. But I can wait.” I didn’t start crying until he was gone.

Someday, I thought, maybe before I’m dead, Mars will have its own space elevator, but until then people have to get down there the old-fashioned way, in space-shuttle mode. It’s like the difference between taking an elevator from the top floor of a building or jumping off with an umbrella and a prayer. Fast and terrifying.

We’d lived with the lander as part of our home for weeks, then as a mysterious kind of threatening presence, airless and waiting. Most of us weren’t eager to go into it.

Before we’d made our second orbit of Mars, Paul opened the inner door, prepared to crack the air lock, and said, “Let’s go.”

We’d been warned, so we were bundled up against the sudden temperature drop when the air lock opened, and were not surprised that our ears popped painfully. It warmed up for an hour, and then we had to take our little metal suitcases and float through the air lock to go strap into our assigned seats, and try not to shit while we dropped like a rock to our doom.

From my studies I knew that the lander loses velocity by essentially trading speed for heat—hitting the thin Martian atmosphere at a drastic angle so the ship heats up to cherry red. What the diagrams in the physical science book don’t show is the tooth-rattling vibration, the bucking and gut-wrenching wobble. If I’m never that scared again in my life, I’ll be really happy.

All of the violence stopped abruptly when the lander decided to become a glider, I guess a few hundred miles from the landing strip. I wished we had windows like a regular airplane, but then realized that might be asking for a heart attack. It was scary enough just to squint at Paul’s two-foot-wide screen as the ground rose up to meet us, too steep and fast to believe.

We landed on skis, grating and rumbling along the rocky ground. They’d moved all the big rocks out of our way, but we felt every one of the small ones. Paul had warned us to keep our tongues away from our teeth, which was a good thing. It could be awkward, starting out life on a new planet unable to speak because you’ve bitten off the tip of your tongue.

We hadn’t put on the Mars suits for the flight down; they were too bulky to fit in the close-ranked seats—and I guess there wasn’t any disaster scenario where we would still be alive and need them. So the first order of the day was to get dressed for our new planet.

We’d tested them several times, but Paul wanted to be supercautious the first time they were actually exposed to the Martian near vacuum. The air lock would only hold two people at once, so we went out one at a time, with Paul observing us, ready to toss us back inside if trouble developed.

We unpacked the suits from storage under the deck and sorted them out. One for each person and two blobby general-purpose ones.

We were to leave in reverse alphabetical order, which was no fun, since it made our family dead last. The lander had never felt particularly claustrophobic before, but now it was like a tiny tin can, the sardines slowly exiting one by one.

At least we could see out, via the pilot’s screen. He’d set the camera on the base, where all seventy-five people had gathered to watch us land, or crash. That led to some morbid speculation on Card’s part. What if we’d crash-landed into them? I guess we’d be just as likely to crash into the base behind them. I’d rather be standing outside with a space suit on, too.

We’d seen pictures of the base a million times, not to mention endless diagrams and descriptions of how everything worked, but it was kind of exciting to see it in real time, to actually be here. The farm part looked bigger than I’d pictured it, I guess because the people standing around gave it scale. Of course the people lived underneath, because of radiation.

It was interesting to have actual gravity. I said it felt different, and Mom agreed, with a scientific explanation. Residual centripetal blah-blah-blah. I’ll just call it real gravity, as opposed to the manufactured kind. Organic gravity.

A lot of people undressed on the spot and got into their Mars suits. I didn’t see any point in standing around for an hour in the thing. I’m also a little shy, in a selective way. Paul had touched me all over, but he’d never seen me without a top. I waited until he was on the other side of the air lock before I revealed my unvoluptuous figure and barely necessary bra. Which I’d have to take off anyhow, for the skinsuit part of the Mars suit.

That part was like a lightweight body stocking. It fastened up the front with a gecko strip, then you pushed a button on your wrist and something electrical happened and it clasped your body like a big rubber glove. It could be sexy-looking if your body was.

The outer part of the Mars suit was more like lightweight armor, kind of loose and clanky when you put it on, but it also did an electrical thing when you zipped up, and fit more closely. Then clumsy boots and gloves and a helmet, all airtight. The joints would sigh when you moved your arms or legs or bent at the waist.

Card’s suit had a place for an extension at the waist, since he could grow as much as a foot taller while we were here. Mine didn’t have any such refinement, though there was room to put on a little weight if I loved Mars cooking.

Since we did follow strict anti-alphabetical order, Card got the distinction of being the last one out, and I was next to last. I got in the air lock with Paul, and he checked my oxygen tanks and the seals on my helmet, gloves, and boots. Then he pumped most of the air out, watching the clock, and asked me to count even numbers backward from thirty. (I asked him whether he had an obsession with backward lists.) He smiled at me through the helmet and kept his hand on my shoulder as the rest of the air pumped out and the door silently swung open.

The sky was brighter than I’d expected, and the ground darker.

“Welcome to Mars,” Paul said on the suit radio, sounding clear but far away.

We walked down a metal ramp to the sandy rock-strewn ground. I stepped onto another planet.

How many people had ever done that?

Everything was suddenly different. This was the most real thing I’d ever done.

They could talk until they were blue in the face about how special this was, brave new frontier, leaving the cradle of Earth, whatever, and it’s finally just words. When I felt the crunch of Martian soil under my boot it was suddenly all very plain and wonderful. I remembered an old cube—a movie—of one of the first guys on the Moon, jumping around like a little kid, and I jumped myself, and again, way high.

“Careful!” came Paul’s voice over the radio. “Get used to it first.”

“Okay, okay.” While I walked, feather light, toward the other air lock, I tried to figure out how many people had actually done it, set foot on another world. A little more than a hundred, in all of history. And me one of them, now.

There were six of them waiting at the air-lock door; everyone else had gone inside. I looked around at the rusty desert and stifled the urge to run off and explore—I mean, for more than six months we hadn’t been able to go more than a few dozen feet in any direction, and here was a whole new world. But there would be time. Soon!