Joe Haldeman: Marsbound

Dad, being Dad, ordered the most outrageous thing on the menu: tronquito , bull penis soup, along with goat stew. I refused to look at any of it, and propped a menu up between us so I wouldn’t be able to see his plate. Mother got ceviche, raw fish, which came with popcorn. It actually looked pretty good (I like sushi all right) but, excuse me for being practical, I had visions of thirty-six people waitingin line for that one bathroom. I didn’t want too much adventure on the first day.

(Card ordered a sausage with beans, but only ate the beans. Maybe the sausage looked too much like Dad’s soup. I didn’t want to know.)

Mother asked what we’d done all afternoon. Card had a detailed analysis of the island’s game rooms. Why go to Mars when you can virtual yourself all over the universe, killing aliens and rescuing big-breasted babes? If we run into aliens on Mars we probably won’t have a single ray gun.

I told them I’d met the pilot. “You think he’s only thirty?” Mother asked.

“Well, I haven’t done the math,” I said. “He was in the Space Force for five years? So he was at least twenty-six when he got out. He’s been to Mars three times after that, and probably spent some time on Earth in between. Got a geology degree somewhere.”

“Maybe in space,” Dad said. “Passing the time. He looked thirty-ish, though?”

Dad was still eating, so I didn’t look at him. “He looked zombieish, actually. I guess he could have been older than thirty.”

I explained about the sunblock, but didn’t mention his offer to take me rock-hunting. Dad was being a little too protective of me, where males were concerned, and thirty-some probably didn’t sound old to him.

“It’s pretty impressive,” Mother said evenly, “that he recognized you and remembered your name. I wonder if he knows all twenty-five of the passengers’ faces. Or just the pretty girls.”

“Please.” I hate it when she makes me blush.

“Ooh, my pretty,” Card said in his moron voice, and I kicked him under the table. He flinched but smiled.

“None of us are going to look all that great with no makeup,” I said. Not allowed because of the air recycling. I wanted to get a lipstick tattoo when I heard about that, but neither parent would sign the permission form. It’s not fair—Mother had a cheek tattoo done when she was not much older than me. It’s way out of style now and she hates it, but that doesn’t have anything to do with me. If you get tired of a lipstick tattoo, you can cover it with lipstick, brain.

“Levels the playing field,” Dad said. “You’ll be at an advantage with your beautiful skin.”

“Daddy, don’t.” Mention the word “skin” and all of the acne molecules in my bloodstream get excited and rush to the surface. “I won’t exactly be husband-hunting. Not with only five or six guys to choose from.”

“It won’t be quite that bad,” Mother said.

“No, worse ! Because most of them plan to stay on Mars, and I’m already looking forward to coming back!” I stood up and laid my napkin down, and walked out of the restaurant as fast as dignity would allow. Mother said, “Say excuse me ,” and I sort of did.

I managed not to start crying until I was up in the room. I was angry at myself as much as anything. If I didn’t want to do this, why did I let myself be talked into it?

Part of it might have been the lack of boys where we were headed, but we’d talked that over. We’d also talked over the physical danger and the slight inconvenience of going to college a couple of hundred million miles off campus.

I put in my earplugs and asked for Eroica , the Tad Yang version. That always calmed me.

I stepped out onto the balcony to get some non-air-conditioned air, and was startled to see the Space Elevator, a ruler-straight line of red light that dwindled away to be swallowed by the darkness. Maybe the first two miles of fifty thousand. I hadn’t seen it in the daylight.

The stars and the Milky Way were brighter than we ever saw them at home. I could see two planets but neither of them was Mars, which I knew didn’t rise until morning. Dad had pointed it out to me on the way to the airport, which seemed like a long time ago. Mars was a lot dimmer than these two, and more yellow-orange than red. I guess “the Yellow Planet” didn’t sound as dramatic as the red one.

I darkened the room and listened to the rest of the symphony, then went back down to the restaurant in time to get some ice cream along with a sticky sponge cake full of nuts and fruit. Nobody said anything about my absence. Card had probably been threatened.

Dad treated me his delicate girl-in-her-period way, which I definitely was not. I’d gotten a prescription for Delaze, and wouldn’t ovulate until I wanted to, after we got to Mars. The download for the Space Elevator had described the use of recyclable tampons in way too much detail. I was just as happy I’d never have to use them in zero gee, on the John Carter . Vacuum sterilizes everything, I suppose, so it was silly to be squeamish about it. But you’re allowed to be a little irrational about things that personal. I managed to push it out of my mind for long enough to finish dessert.

Card and I tried TV after dinner, but everything was in Spanish except for CNN and an Australian all-news program. There was a Japanese Game Boy module, but he couldn’t make it work, which didn’t bother me and my book at all.

The room had a little fridge with an interesting design. Every bottle and box was stuck in place with something like a magnet. If you plucked out a Coke or something, the price flashed in the upper right-hand corner of the TV screen, and a note said it had been added to your room bill.

The fridge knew we were underage, and wouldn’t let go of the liquor bottles. But we were evidently old enough for beer—a sign said the age was eighteen, but the fridge wasn’t smart enough to tell whether it was serving me or my brother. So I had two beers, which helped me get to sleep, but Card stayed awake long enough to build a pyramid of his six cans. I guess I could have been a responsible older sister and cut him off, but there wasn’t going to be a lot of beer out on the Martian desert.

Our parents didn’t say anything about the $52 added to our room bill for beer, but I suppose they took one look at Card and decided he had suffered enough. He’d told me he’d had beer “plenty of times” with his sag pals at school. Maybe it was the nonalcoholic variety. This was strong Dutch beer in big cans, and six had left a lasting effect. He was pale and quiet when we left the hotel and seemed to turn slightly green when we got aboard the boat, rocking in the choppy waves.

They didn’t put the Earth end of the Space Elevator on dry land because it had to be moveable in any direction. Typhoons come through once or twice a century, and they need to get it out of the way. The platform it sits on can move more than two hundred miles in twenty-four hours, far enough to dodge the worst part of a storm. Or so they say; it’s never been put to the test.

The ribbon cable that the carrier rides also has to move around in order to avoid trouble at the other end—dodging human-made space debris and the larger meteors, the ones big enough to track. (Small meteor holes are patched automatically by a little robot climber.)

The platform was about forty miles offshore, and the long thin ribbon the elevator rides wasn’t usually visible except for the bright strobe lights that warned fliers away. At just the right angle, the sun’s reflection could blaze like a razor line drawn in fire; I saw that twice in the hour and a half it took us to cover the distance.