Joe Haldeman - Marsbound

We held our breath for a minute. Then another minute. We didn’t know what to expect.

After twenty minutes or so, people started drifting away, back to their quarters or down to the mess, or just to wander.

For some reason I kept staring at the moon, maybe wishing I was there in Hawaii, maybe not thinking anything much—whatever, I was one of the few people actually watching when it happened.

At first there was just a faint glow surrounding the moon, as if a wispy cloud had moved in front of it. Then it was suddenly dramatic.

People who have seen total solar eclipses say it was like that, but more so. A brilliant nimbus of pearly light spread across half the sky, the full moon suddenly a black circle in the middle, dark by contrast.

A crackle of static and a human voice. “Holy shit. That was close.” Paul!

It was Red who had suggested the plan, which was probably not something a sane space pilot would have come up with.

After touchdown, when he was careening along on skis trying not to live up to his nickname, he should look for an area that was locally “uphill.” Try to stop with the lander pointed at least slightly skyward. Then Red would get off, stand clear, and Paul could hit full throttle—get over the horizon, and try to make orbit. When he disappeared from sight, Red would measure off ten minutes, then open his suit and die. That would give Paul time to make orbit. But not so much time that he would go completely around and be over Red when he died.

The supposition that Red’s death would trigger the explosion turned out to be a good guess.

It was a combination of luck and skill. He could steer to a certain extent with the skis, and so when he had almost slowed to nothing, he aimed for the slope of some small nameless crater. When he slid to a stop, he was pointing about fifteen degrees uphill, with nothing in the way.

Red was already wearing his gauzy suit. He cycled through the air lock and picked his way down the crater side. As soon as he signaled he was clear, Paul goosed it. Once over the horizon, he tweaked the attitude, so he got into a low-lunar orbit, and waited.

When it blew, he was almost blinded by sparkles in his eyes, gamma rays rushing through, and he had a sudden feverish heat all over his body. Behind him, he could see the glow of vaporized lunar material being blasted into the sky.

That little crater that saved him really earned the right to a name. But it had boiled completely away, along with everything else for hundreds of kilometers, and in its place was a perfectly circular hole bigger than Tsiolkovski, previously the largest crater.

I thought they should name it Crash.

So every January 1st we present a petition for lifting the quarantine, and every year our case is not strong enough. But now there’s a Space Elevator on Mars, so there’s a lot of pretty cheap travel back and forth within the quarantine. After five years on Little Mars we went back, and it was good to have a planet beneath your feet—and over your head as well.

Oz invented a Church of Holy Rational Weirdness so that he could marry me with Paul and not offend any of our sensibilities. I was going to have twins and thought there were already too many bastards on Mars.

We named the girl Nadia, for “hope.” Her middle name is Mayfly, and I hope she lives forever. The boy has the same middle name.

People who don’t know us might wonder why a kid with jet-black hair would be named Red.

WORLDSAPART

DEALING IN FUTURES

FOREVER PEACE

FOREVER FREE

THE COMING

GUARDIAN

CAMOUFLAGE

OLD TWENTIETH

A SEPARATE WAR AND OTHER STORIES

THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE

MARSBOUND

BODY ARMOR: 2000

NEBULA AWARDS STORIES SEVENTEEN

SPACE FIGHTERS

THERE ISNO DARKNESS

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This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2008 by Joe Haldeman.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

eISBN : 978-1-4406-3327-0

1. Mars (Planet) —Fiction. 2. Space colonies—Fiction. 3. Angels—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3558.A353M37 2008

813’.54—dc22 2008019356

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