Joe Haldeman - Marsbound

It was getting close to what we’d live with on the way to Mars. We wore gecko slippers that lightly stuck to the floor surface, and there were gray spots on the wall where they would also adhere.

The zero-gee toilet wasn’t bad once you got used to it. It uses flowing air instead of water, and you have to pee into a kind of funnel, which is different. The crapper is only four inches in diameter, and it uses a little camera to make sure you’re centered. A little less attractive than my yearbook picture.

I hope Dr. Porter gets paid really well. Some of the little ones didn’t climb the learning curve too swiftly, and she had to clean up after them.

It didn’t help the flavor of the food any to know where the water came from. Get used to the idea or starve, though. I found three meals on the menu I could eat without shuddering.

I mostly hung around with Elspeth and Barry and Kaimei, a Chinese girl a year younger than me. She was born in China but grew up, bilingual and sort of bicultural, in San Francisco. She was a dancer there, small and muscular, and you could tell by the way she moved in low gravity that she was going to love zero gee.

The smaller kids were going detroit with the light gravity. Dr. Porter set hours for playtime and tried to enforce them by restraining offenders in their seats. Then, of course, they’d have to go to the bathroom, and wouldn’t go quietly. She looked like she was going to be glad to send them on to Mars or leave them at the Hilton.

I would, too, in her place. Instead, I got to go along with them, at least the ones who were ten and older. After we left the tourists at the Hilton, we wouldn’t have anybody under ten aboard—if there were any small children in the Mars colony, they’d have to be born there.

Luckily, the two worst offenders were brother brats who were getting off at the Hilton. Eighty grand seems like more than they were worth, and you’d think their parents would have had a better time without them. Maybe they couldn’t find a babysitter for a few weeks. (Hell, I’d do it for less than eighty grand. But only if they let me use handcuffs and gags.)

We weren’t supposed to play any throwing and catching games, for obvious reasons, but Card had a rubber ball, and out of boredom we patted it back and forth in the short space between us. Of course it went in almost ruler-straight lines, how exciting, even when he tried to put English on it—he needed speed and a floor or wall to bounce off, and a little bit of space for the thing to bounce around in. But even he was smart enough not to try anything that would provoke Dr. Frankenstein’s wrath.

Elspeth and I signed up for the exercise machines at the same time, and chatted and panted together. I was in slightly better shape, from fencing team and swimming three times a week. No swimming pools on Mars, this century. Probably no swords to fence with, either. (The John Carter fictional character the ship was named after used a sword, I guess when his ray gun ran out of batteries. Maybe we could start the solar system’s first low-gravity fencing team. Then if the Martians did show up, we could fight them with something sharper than our wits.)

Actually, Elspeth was better than me on the stair-step machine, since in our flat Florida city you almost never encounter stairs. Ten minutes on that machine gave me pains in muscles I didn’t know I owned. But I could pedal or row all day.

Then we took turns in the “privacy module,” which they ought to just call a closet, next to the toilet, for our daily dry shower. Moist, actually; you had two throwaway towelettes moistened with something like rubbing alcohol—one of them for the “pits and naughty bits,” as Elspeth said, and the other for your face and the rest of your body. Then a small reusable towel for rubdown. Meanwhile, your jumpsuit is rolling around in a waterless washing machine, getting refreshed by hot air, ultrasound, and ultraviolet light. It comes out warm and soft and only smelling slightly of sweat. Not all of it your own, though that could be my imagination.

I fantasized about diving into the deep end of the city pool and holding my breath for as long as I could.

Six hours before we were due at the Hilton, we were asked to stick our heads into the helmets for “orientation,” which was more of a sales job than anything else. Why? They already had everybody’s money.

The Hilton had a large central area that stayed zero gee, the “Space Room,” with padded walls and a kind of oversized jungle gym. A pair of trampolines on opposite walls, so you could bounce back and forth, spinning, which looked like fun.

People didn’t stay there, though; the actual rooms were in two doughnut-shaped structures that spun, for artificial gravity, around the zero-gee area. The two levels were 0.3g and 0.7g.

The orientation didn’t mention it, but I knew that about half of the low-gee rooms housed permanent residents, rich old people whose hearts couldn’t take Earth gravity anymore. All of the people in the presentation were young and energetic, and vaguely rich-looking in their tailored Hilton jumpsuits, I guess no different from ours except for the tailoring and choice of colors.

We would stop there for four hours and could explore the hotel for two of them. We were all looking forward to the change of scenery.

“Don’t use the Hilton bathrooms unless you absolutely have to,” Dr. Porter said. “We want to keep that water in our system. Feel free to drink all of theirs you can hold.”

The four hours went by pretty quickly. Basically seeing how rich folks live without too much gravity. Most of them looked pretty awful, cadaverous with bright smiles. We looked at the prices at Conrad’s Café, and could see why they might not want to eat too much.

We did play around a bit in the weightless-gym area. Elspeth and I played catch with her little sister Davina, who obediently curled into a ball. Spinning her gave us all the giggles, but we had to stop before she got totally dizzy. She looked a little green as she unfolded, but I think was happy for the small adventure and the attention.

I did a few bounces on the pair of trampolines, managing four before I got off target and hit the wall. Card was good at it, but quit after eight or so rather than hog it. I suppose two people could use it at once if they were really good. Only once if they weren’t. Ouch.

The interesting thing about the jungle gym was gliding through it, rather than climbing on it. Launch yourself from the wall and try to wriggle your way through without touching the bars. The trick is starting slow and planning ahead—a demanding skill that will be oh-so-useful if I ever find myself having to thread through a jungle gym, running from Martians.

Dr. Porter had found a whistle somewhere. She called us to the corridor opening and counted noses, then told us to stay put while she went off in search of a missing couple. They were probably in Conrad’s Café guzzling hundred-dollar martinis.

I mentioned that to Card and said there wouldn’t be any vodka or gin on Mars—and he bet me a hundred bucks there would be. I decided not to take the bet. Seventy-five engineers would find a way.

The missing duo appeared in the elevator, and we crawled back home to wait in line for the john. The carrier seemed cramped.

The John Carter would be about three times as big, but nothing like the Hilton. After that, though, a whole planet to ourselves.

The trip from the Hilton out to the end of the tether was more subdued than the first leg. Only twenty-seven of us and all headed for Mars, except Dr. Porter. We did the gravity thing in reverse, slowly weighing more until we would (temporarily) have full Earth weight at the end of the tether.