Joe Haldeman - Marsbound

“It was a judgment call. There was a lot of variable wind, and it was yawing back and forth.” He made a hand motion like a fish swimming. “I was sort of trying not to hit the base or Telegraph Hill. But I overdid it.”

“People could understand that.”

“Understanding isn’t forgiving. Everybody had to stop their scienceand become pack animals.” I could see the expression on Solingen’s face, having to do labor, and smiled.

She really did have something against me. I had to do twice as much babysitting as Elspeth or Kaimei—and when I suggested that the boys ought to do it, too, she said the “personnel allocation” was her job, thank you. And when my person got allocated to an outside job, it would be something boring and repetitive, like taking inventory of supplies. (That was especially useful, in case there were actual Martians sneaking in at night to steal nuts and bolts.)

When we got back, I went straight to the john and recycled the diaper and used a couple of towelettes from my allotment. No shower for eighteen hours, but I was reasonably fresh, and Paul wouldn’t be that critical.

At the console there was a blinking note from the Dragon herself, noting that I had missed math class, saying she wanted a copy of my homework. Did she monitor anybody else’s VR attendance?

I’d had the class recorded, of course, the superexciting chain rule for differentiation. I fell asleep twice, hard to do in VR, and had to start over. Then I had a problem set with fifty chains to differentiate. Wrap me in chains and throw me in the differential dungeon, but I had to get a nap before going over to Paul’s. I set a beeper for 1530, ninety minutes, then got the air mattress partly inflated and flopped onto it without undressing.

At 1800 I tried to concentrate on a physical science lecture about the conservation of angular momentum. Sexy dancers and skaters spinning around. The lecturer reminded me of Paul. Probably any male would have.

Went to the john and freshened up here and there. Then walked up to 4A—no way to be discreet about it—and tapped quietly on the door. Paul opened it and sort of pulled me in.

We hugged and kissed and undressed each other in a kind of two-person riot. He was extremely erect; I played with it for a minute, but he said that might prove counterproductive, and carried me to the bed and caressed me all over, and with his hands and tongue brought me to orgasm twice, my jaws clenched, trying not to make too much noise.

Then he showed me a picture of a frieze in India, and I copied it, putting my arms around his neck and clasping his hips with my legs while he entered me. Probably a lot easier on Mars than in India. It was a pleasant sensation but odd, since he completely filled me, his penis bumping the top of my vagina with every thrust.

Maybe in the future there will be advertisements: Come to Mars and fuck like an Indian goddess. Maybe not.

I didn’t have a third orgasm in me, but his was plenty for both of us. Then we lay in his narrow bunk, spoon fashion, dozing, until his erection came back and we did it again, in that position. Nicely intimate but not too stimulating, which he took care of afterward with his fingers.

An hour or so of dreamless sleep, and he woke me with a hand on my shoulder. He was fully dressed. “Jerry wouldn’t mind walking in on you like this,” he said, “but you might be startled.”

I dressed quickly and kissed him good night. There was nobody in his corridor, but I did pass a couple on the main way, including Jerry, who gave me an arched eyebrow and a little wave.

I slipped into our temporary room and undressed quietly without turning on the lights.

“So how was our pilot?” Kaimei murmured in the dark. When I didn’t say anything, she continued. “A simple deduction, Sherlock. You don’t exactly smell like you’ve been riding a bicycle.”

“I’m sorry…”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. Sweet dreams.”

In fact, my dream was odd, and disturbing. I was trying to find a party, but every door opened onto an empty room. The last door opened onto the sea.

Not delivering my homework like a good little girl got me into a special corner of Dargo Hell. I had to turn over my notes and homework in math every day to Ana Sitral, who obviously didn’t have time for checking it. She must have done something to piss off the Dragon herself.

Then I had to take on over half of the mentoring hours that Kaimei and Elspeth had been covering, and was not allowed any outside time. The extra babysitting time came out of my ag hours, working on the farm upstairs, which most of us considered a treat, as Dargo well knew.

I had been selfish, she said, tiring myself out on a silly lark, using up resources that might be needed for real work. So I had the temerity to suggest that part of my real work was getting to know Mars, and she really blew up about that. It was not up to me to make up my own training schedule.

Okay, part of it was that she didn’t like young people. But part was also that she didn’t like me , the sex kitten who’d distracted her pilot. She didn’t bother to hide that from anybody. I complained to Mother, and she didn’t disagree, but said I had to learn to work with people like that. Especially here, where there wasn’t much choice.

I didn’t bother complaining to Dad. He would make a Growth Experience out of it. I should try to see the world her way. Sorry, Dad. If I saw the world her way and cast my weary eyes upon Carmen Dula, wouldn’t that be self-loathing? That would not be a positive Growth Experience.

After a month, I was able to put a Mars suit on again, but I didn’t go up to the surface. There was plenty of work down below, inside the lava tube that protected the base from cosmic and solar radiation.

There’s plenty of water on Mars, but most of it is in the wrong place. If it was ice on or near the surface, it had to be at the north or south pole. We couldn’t put bases there because they were in total darkness a lot of the time, and we needed solar power.

But there was a huge lake hidden a few hundred meters below the base. It was the easiest large one to get to on all of Mars, we learned from some kind of satellite radar, which was why the base was put here. One of the things we’d brought on the John Carter was a drilling system designed to tap it. (The drills that came with the first ship and the third broke, though, the famous Mars Luck.)

I worked with the team that set the drill up, nothing more challengingthan fetch-and-carry, but a lot better than trying to mentor kids when you wanted to slap them instead.

For a while we could hear the drill through our boots, a faint sandpapery sound that was conducted through the rock. Then it was quiet, and most of us forgot about it. A few weeks later, though, it broke through. It was Sagan 12th, which from then on would be Water Day.

We put on Mars suits and walked down between the wall of the lava tube and the base’s exterior wall. It was kind of creepy, just suit lights, less than a meter between the cold rock and the inflated plastic you weren’t supposed to touch.

Then there was light ahead, and we came out into swirling madness—it was a blizzard! The drill had struck ice, liquefied it, and sent it up under pressure, dozens of liters a minute. When it hit the cold vacuum it exploded into snow.

It was ankle deep in places, but of course it wouldn’t last; the vacuum would evaporate it eventually. But people were already working with lengths of pipe, getting ready to fill the waiting tanks up in the hydroponics farm. One of them had already been dubbed the swimming pool. That’s how the trouble started.

I got on the work detail that hooked up the water supply to the new pump. That was to go in two stages: emergency and “maintenance.”