You're Going to Mars!

by Rob Dircks

  “Everyone thumbs up? Ready? Okay, Martha, let’s see you flex those biceps.”

  “Certainly, Zach.” Instantly a tremendous door opens up on the side of High Heaven, revealing Mars’ great outdoors in its red, rocky glory, and a rush of outside air almost floors us. A gigantic arm unfolds and extends from the ceiling of the storage bay, and on the way to the opening, picks up a metal cage, with room for one. There are more cameras clamped onto this cage than anyone would ever need, even in an historic moment like this, it looks like it’s being attacked by a swarm of black plastic eyes. Martha’s arm extends the cage just outside the opening, hanging out over the Martian surface. Its door clinks open.

  “Zach. Mars awaits.”

  Zach Larson has been waiting for this moment for a loooonnng time. His excitement, always bubbling right up to the surface, is overflowing. He’s jumping up and down in his spacesuit, like a kid, little yelps escaping his mouth, high-fiving us, pumping his fists. He bounds forward, impatient, putting his hand on the door to the cage.

  And he stops.

  Turning around, with a twinkle in his eye, he clears his throat. “You know, it’s been over a hundred years. Things have changed. This time let’s make it one small step for a man and a woman. I think I’ve got room in here for one of you.”

  He’s looking at Aurora and I.

  “No, no, no, Zach. This is your thing. Remember. Billions of dollars. A decade of planning. Don’t get sappy. You don’t have to do the gender equality thing right now. We understand. Really. This is your trip.”

  “I won’t hear of it. I’ve already made up my mind. But I can’t bear to decide which one of you should come. You’ll have to decide yourselves.”

  Aurora turns to me, and I can see that complicated look she always gets wash over her, like she can’t stand being second in anything, it’s worse than death, but I’m like her surrogate sister, so she’s torn, but there really is no right or wrong in this situation, so why shouldn’t it be her? She grins at me. “There’s only one way to do this: Rock, Paper, Scissors.”

  I smile back and say, “Okay. Shoot.”

  She juts out her hand, in the shape of Rock, knowing, of course, that my hand would form Paper. I whisper, “Paper covers Rock.”

  She winks at me. “I know.” Then pats me on the back, maybe a bit too enthusiastically. “Now don’t go doing something stupid like falling out of that cage on your ass. You’ll embarrass humankind for all eternity.”

  “It’s one step.”

  “I know.”

  So I squeeze into the one-man cage with Larson, and he’s all smiles and tail wagging and he can’t wait to get down to the surface. As soon as the door locks, he lowers the arm’s cable as fast as possible, ten feet per second, making me dizzy.

  “Paper, I haven’t felt this exhilarated since… I’ve never felt this exhilarated!” He’s taking in deep breaths, like he’s breathing the fresh spring air of Mars, viewing in the full panorama afforded us in this little cage. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Even more than I imagined.”

  Psssshhhhh. The cage stops.

  We’re here.

  About to take perhaps the biggest step any human has ever taken. Another planet! A future home!

  Larson unlocks the door and swings it open. “I would say ladies first, but honestly that would be pushing it. Let’s do this together, shall we? Three, two, one, go…”

  The doorway is meant for one, but we’re both pretty lean, so I’m thinking we can make it out together. At the same time, though, my foot is reaching out, and it’s thinking we’re about eight inches from the surface, when in reality we’re about twelve inches from the surface. So in order not to fall, I instinctively turn my body, grabbing Larson, whose surprised look almost makes me laugh, almost, and we tumble out of the cage.

  And the very first human imprints on another planet are Larson’s shoulder and my ass.

  “Oops.”

  “Well. That was graceful.”

  Larson gets to his feet, dusts himself off, and lifts me.

  I look up, the three hundred or so feet to the High Heaven’s open door, and hear Aurora in my com:

  “Didn’t I just say not to do that?”

  69

  The Prodigal Daughter

  There was never any doubt, really, that I would feel at home here. I’ve been visualizing it for so long, so many years, seen so much rover footage, that I recognize the ground under my feet, the yellowish-brownish-blueish sky, the Columbia Hills outside this Gusev crater. This rock I’m holding. The glare of the sun in my helmet. It’s like coming home.

  No, wait.

  It’s familiar.

  But not like coming home at all.

  There’s another feeling, if I’m being completely honest, that I didn’t expect. After the thrill and joy of our first steps on Mars (I’m officially calling them steps from now on if that’s okay), after the rush of unloading all the gear that will become permanent fixtures here, I find myself remembering a story for the first time in a long time, the story of the prodigal son, who set out to get away from it all, to make the world his own, but lost it all, and found that only by coming home did he own anything, and finally know where he belonged. And who he really was.

  I smile, at the irony, knowing that I had to come this far, 140 million miles, to realize that I’ll only truly become who I am by going home. That’s where I belong. It makes me laugh. I can’t stop laughing. Images of Nana, kissing my hand, and Dad sticking out his pot belly, and Rock and Scissors throwing a deck of cards into the air and laughing, and Jane, looking over and winking at me with a blue tube sticking out of her nose, and Voomvoom caressing the Red Scarab with a little smile on his face, and Angel, sweet Angel, looking deep into my eyes with his puppy-love grin. I remember the photo, the one they slipped me in my armoire coffin, the one Aurora used to reveal me to the world, and I take it out of my suit’s zip pocket, tracing the faces with my gloved finger. Look at them all, and Duggie, staring off into space. And Bradline, beet red, annoying as always, but about to save my life. These people, these crazy people, are my home. Who I am. I’m bending over laughing, I can’t stop.

  Aurora kicks my boot. “What’s with you? Space dementia setting in already?”

  “No. I think I just grew up.”

  “Ewww. You threw up? In your helmet?”

  “No. I grew up.”

  “Oh. Let me know how that works out. Maybe I’ll give it a go at some point.” She hands me a solar panel. “Until then, stop daydreaming and connect this. And the twelve-thousand other ones we have to get done before lunch.”

  70

  Drill

  Remarkably, a day on Mars is roughly the equivalent of a day on Earth – as opposed to Mercury, for example, whose days are almost 59 Earth days long – so we can use familiar language to mark our progress, like “yesterday we finished setting up the power cabling” and “tomorrow we’ll take one of the rovers out to the ridge,” and we can enjoy the relative normalcy of eating together at dusk, and sleeping at night.

  Today, Day Seven, marks the day the dome should be completed. Funny. Seven days of creation. I’m pretty sure Larson didn’t do that on purpose, but if you accused him of playing God, he wouldn’t totally disagree, and he’d chuckle at the comparison. Although unlike God, Larson wouldn’t let us rest on the seventh day. There’s solid month of work to do. No weekends, slackers.

  We watch, Larson and I, as the printing unit rolls in a hundred yard circle, painting the air with the PPMM. It rises with the nearly complete domed wall, inch by inch, sucked onto its surface with Van der Waals forces and computerized magic. Meanwhile, we’ve completed setting up the mining drill, as it doesn’t need its own dome, just battery power for the moment. It’s made up of three parts: the actual drill, the excavator-feeder – that’s the part poor Jayden got his arm eaten by – and the sample analyzer. The drill’s been boring into this little patch of soil and rock seventy-five yards away from t
he dome, humming efficiently. It’s already at thirty feet, deeper than any of the rover drills ever on Mars.

  Larson smiles at the glistening dome and points to his com. “By tomorrow, we’ll be standing on the surface of Mars without these helmets on, talking to each other like native Martians. How about that?”

  “Darn. I was just getting to enjoy continuously re-breathing my own body odor.”

  Aurora snickers over the com, “Great. Tomorrow we’ll all be able to smell you.”

  I keep forgetting that everyone can hear everyone else, most of the time anyway, through our shared helmet coms. I peer over from the drill to see where they are. Daniels isn’t in sight, he must be on the ship. Aurora’s still over at the power production facility, a huge field of eight hundred solar panels, patiently connecting about a million miles of dust blowers. She appears to be waving at me, so I wave back, but then I realize she’s giving me the finger.

  Skylar and Drew are in a rover, still scouting the perfect spot for fuel production. I can see the teeny vehicle off in the distance, speeding along and kicking up the limitless dust this planet seems to produce. There are plenty of adequate sites for fuel production, closer by, but since we’re not scheduled to start production until next week anyway, they’ve decided to spend a little extra time, as our little home here is, at least theoretically, scheduled to become a permanent facility. For a moment I consider that this “perfect spot” search is really just a ruse to get some alone time. Hmmm.

  “Skylar. Drew. You guys there?”

  No answer. They’ve gone to private coms. Am I smart or what? Those two!

  “Couldn’t they have just sent out the heli-drones?”

  Larson looks down at me and grins.

  “God, why does everyone within a five-hundred-yard radius of you get so amorous?”

  “It’s people, Paper. I just put people together. The rest simply happens.”

  “It’s funny though. You never got married.”

  “I’ve had my loves. Someday I’ll tell you all about the- step back, Paper!”

  I look down. There’s moisture on the drill. The brown, viscous lubricant is bubbling up from the surface, approaching my boot. “Damn, the lubricant’s leaking! Stop the drill!”

  Larson taps the control panel and the humming stops. Taps a few more times. “Diagnostics running, and… Huh. All looks good. Martha, are you reading this?”

  “Yes, Zach. All subsystems appear to be working correctly. No leaks.”

  “Huh.”

  “You may proceed at will.”

  Larson looks down then up at me. “Must’ve gotten some extra lubricant onto the bit when we were setting it up. Paper, I’m going to start it up again.” He turns on the drill, and almost immediately more of the lubricant starts bubbling out, then, psssshhhh!

  “We’ve hit a gas pocket. I’m going to back it out.”

  The drill rises out quickly, and we both gape at the hole.

  Because it’s not a hole anymore. It’s a puddle.

  The hole is filled with liquid.

  “That is not lubricant.”

  I lean down to get a closer look. “Water? Some kind of methane mixture? I can’t smell with the helmet on.”

  Larson hands me down a flask. “Water’s my guess. Amazing! Here, fill this. We’ll have Martha do a test.” I submerge the flask into the substance. It’s thicker than just water, more like a thin oil, and hand it back to him. He taps a little out into a small covered tray on the top of the sample analyzer, and pushes a button to activate the combination of mass spectrometer, gas chromatograph, and laser spectrometer. Puts the flask into his zip pocket. We wait. “Martha. You get that?”

  “Zach, can you clear out the tray and put in another sample?”

  “Uh, sure.” He wipes out the tray, taps in another. We wait again.

  “Martha. You get that? Come dear, what’s going on?”

  “Sorry, this sample took longer than expected. Carbon, hydrogen, methane, as expected, but there is an anomaly.”

  We whip our heads around and stare at each other. “Did she say anomaly?”

  “Yes, Paper. There is no record of an element with this particular mass and profile. It’s an anomaly.”

  I fall to my knees and whisper: “Mom. You were right.”

  Another strange feeling washes over me, looking down at this puddle of something that wasn’t supposed to exist, something my mother was willing to risk her life for. Suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle, everything I’ve gone through since Nana found the Red Scarab, click into place in a single moment.

  I weep.

  Larson kneels next to me, a hand on my shoulder. “I was wrong. Your mother wasn’t crazy.”

  “No, she’s definitely crazy.” I laugh. “Just not about this.”

  Yes, Jane was right all along: the Gitanos and WasteWay, for decades, have killed and corrupted our government to cover up the existence of this element. They tried to sabotage this mission. They coerced the senators and congressmen they owned to enact the Off-World Biocontamination Act. They nearly blew us into little red spatter in space. But… why? What made this substance something that WasteWay would want to bury?

  Martha, as if reading my mind, answers into my com. “Zach and Paper. Based on preliminary computations, that substance is analogous to methane, but a highly-concentrated variant. With some hardware modifications, I believe that flask could power our trip home.”

  Larson stands up, hitting his head on a corner of the sample analyzer, falling back to the ground, on his ass, laughing. “The flask? It’s eight ounces! Are you serious, Martha?”

  “I am always serious, Zach.”

  He turns over, now on his belly, his helmet inches from the little pool of the substance, and I join him, staring it at it like a well full of gold. He’s giggling. “Paper! Do you have any idea what this means?”

  “It’s practically free energy!” I dip my glove tip in and pull it out, a few drops on my finger. “This much could heat a home for a year. It would put WasteWay out of business. No wonder they never wanted it found.” I rub it into the soil and hang my head. “I want Jane to know. I want them all to know. But our radio’s blacked out, and God knows if we’ll even be allowed to land back on Earth.”

  He pats my hand. “Fear not, young Paper. We’ll be home in no time, safely on Earth before you know it. Martha dear, in light of this discovery, I’d like to accelerate our departure. Eliminate the terraforming and farm experiments, halt the mining tests, and recalculate our departure date.”

  Silence.

  “Martha? Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “Hmm. I guess-” and Larson lets out a groan. Before I can even look over to him, I feel the blade rip through my spacesuit and enter the flesh near my lower back, sending a white hot bolt of pain through my body. I don’t even have to look to know blood is spurting out of me.

  The weight of another person. On me.

  Trying to kill me.

  Aurora?

  Was my mother right about her, too?

  I had entertained the idea, here and there, but I never really thought she had it in her, or had the motivation to destroy something so completely, just to claim herself a victor. Was she crazy, in a much more dangerous and destructive way than my mother? Had she been hiding something dark and twisted from me this whole time, like I had hidden my true self from her? Was all the talk about sisterhood, all the affection, all the laughs, a lie? Could Aurora possibly be an unhinged lunatic, trying to kill me?

  I turn against the power of her body on mine. I must see her face before I die. To know the truth, once and for all. My body is almost too weak, already losing oxygen and blood, but I turn my head enough, and against the glare of the sun in my helmet, I can see the silhouette of a hand with a knife, about to strike again, and I can just make out the face in the helmet above me.

  “You?”

  71

  You?

  “DanDan?”

  He puts hi
s full weight on me again, pinning my arms with his legs. He’s wailing, tears obscuring his faceplate, full of rage and sadness, like a man watching his own funeral. “You should have left it in the ground! You should have left it in the ground! You should have left it in the grou-”

  Something hits him sharp across the helmet, cutting short his tirade, knocking him unconscious immediately. He falls off me.

  A new silhouette replaces Daniels, standing against the bright sun, holding a dented solar panel.

  Aurora.

  I hear her voice in my com. “I never liked him.”

  I wheeze back, “…the tape…”

  “Oh, right.” She grabs the roll of PPMM tape, tears off a couple of inches, and pushes her hand through the opening in my suit, pressing the tape against my wound. Immediately, the nano circuitry goes to work, sealing the gash and stopping the bleeding. I’ll find out later whether I still have a working liver, or kidney, or whatever organ is currently screaming inside me. Without hesitating, Aurora places another patch of tape across the tear in my suit, and within moments, my gasping turns back to something like breathing.

  Aurora’s hovering over Larson now. “Damn. He’s got multiple wounds. His suit is shredded!”

  “Get him in the bag!”

  I can stand, though I almost pass out, and hand her the bag, an instant-inflate lifesaving device that every work position has. She quickly rolls it out, shoves Larson on top, throws a roll of tape on him, and pulls the cord. The bag inflates, seals, and pumps oxygen in. We can’t even tell if Larson is still alive, there’s so much blood. Aurora jams her hands in the emergency arm holes in the bag and starts covering him with tape, anywhere she thinks he might have been cut. “God, he’s so pale.”

  “Let’s get them both back to the ship. Martha, get the crane ready.”

  Silence.

  “Martha!” Nothing. “Damn. Daniels must’ve cut her off. I hope he didn’t do anything crazy.”