The captain got up and welcomed us, and then introduced other officers until I began to wonder who was piloting at the moment. One of the things he told us, though, was that the operation of the ship was largely automatic, and that the crew didn’t have much to do until it came time to establish the orbit around Mars, except in case of emergency. It was certainly true that we saw a good deal of the officers all through the trip. People said, jokingly, that one reason they had so many of them on a spaceliner was so that the passengers would always have men and women in elegant uniforms to socialize with.
After everyone had finished eating, the flight attendants broke us up into small groups, by cabin numbers, for the Grand Tour. I wasn’t in the same group as Dad, but since Janet was with me I didn’t feel lonesome. And I didn’t notice at all what a wet blanket Janet was. If I’d made that first tour with Alex, maybe I would have loved Susie from the start.
Do you know what life on a spaceliner is more like than anything else? Summer camp! I know that sounds ridiculous, because on the surface there don’t seem to be many similarities. More adults than kids. (Though there are lots of kids, too, since practically all of the homesteaders have them.) No contact with nature at all.
But underneath there’s a very close analogy. It’s organized like camp. I didn’t spot this at first, of course, but looking back I can see it. I only went to camp once, the summer I was fourteen, but it made a lasting impression on me, and some of the things that went on in the Susie were just the same.
To begin with, both in camp and aboard a spaceliner you’re completely isolated from the outside. There you are, thrown with the same people day in and day out, with nobody coming or going; and a big camp’s got just about the same number of people as the Susie, too. Naturally, on a ship you’re a great deal more isolated than at camp, because you can’t leave and you’re millions of miles away from any other source of air, water, and food. That isolation, though, is precisely what makes adults willing to act like campers.
Next, there’s the matter of obeying regulations. In camp those are enforced by the director, and on a spaceliner it’s by the captain. He isn’t like a military captain; he’s aware that people are there because they’ve chosen to be, and that they expect to be given a chance to enjoy themselves. But in the last analysis, what he says goes. No arguments. No democratic votes. His decisions are all for the passengers’ good, not his; but he doesn’t stop to explain them.
If you have a problem, though, you don’t try to see the captain about it. You talk to your flight attendant. And in some ways a flight attendant acts very much like a camp counselor. Don’t think that she isn’t there to supervise as well as to entertain; she is. If anyone needs supervising, she’ll do it! She’s responsible to the captain.
Some of the older people who were used to hotels and ocean cruises had to be straightened out about flight attendants; they thought they were supposed to tip them. That’s not done, any more than it is on an airliner, even though you’re aboard for weeks. (As a matter of fact, there’s no tipping at all on Mars, and no Colonial appreciates a tip being offered.)
Anyway, as our tour guide started telling us what to expect aboard Susie, she was awfully reminiscent of a camp counselor with her little flock of charges and her list of points to be covered in first-day orientation. “Don’t enter such-and-such an area without permission,” “If you aren’t feeling well report to the nurse,” and so on. In both cases it’s a separate little world whose smooth functioning—not to mention safety—depends on obedience to certain rules, and you have to be shown the ropes.
Another way in which a spaceliner’s like camp is the way you get along without the comforts you have at home. For instance, our guide began by explaining about the drinking water; we’d be given a limited number of tokens a day for the automatic dispensing machines. Then she went on to describe the bath arrangements. There were the plastic-wrapped moistened towelettes for ordinary hands-and-face washing—much more sanitary than plain water anyway, she assured us—plus two sponge baths a week, for which we’d get tickets. Well, it’s not that there’s any shortage of water at camp (there, it could be something else basic, like electric lights), but the principle’s the same. You find out that you don’t need it as much as you thought you did.
The main thing that brought the summer camp idea into my mind, however, was the similarity of mealtime arrangements. In the first place, meals were stretched out to occupy as much time as possible. (There were four a day, following the British custom: afternoon tea as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner.) Everyone ate together and waited until the last table was through, simply because it took longer that way. There were no regularly assigned tables; people were encouraged to mix differently each time, and the ship’s officers tried to spread themselves around. Since the dining room was the only place in the ship big enough to accommodate everybody at once, all announcements were made at meals. But besides that, dinner was usually followed by community singing, just as if we were in the dining hall back at good old Camp Twin Firs! In the evening there’d often be a movie, or someone (usually a properly enthusiastic flight attendant) would organize impromptu skits. You wouldn’t think that grown men and women, many of them scientists, would enter into that sort of thing. But they did, and I think most of them enjoyed it. It goes to show how customs really are the result of environment. Put people in the right situation, and they’ll suspend all their old ideas about what’s appropriate.
There weren’t many organized activities during the daytime. Between meals, we could use the dining room to play cards, or just sit and talk, if the lounge was full. The lounge itself was small and was really meant for reading, music, and more or less private conversation. Most of it was broken up into small library cubicles, each with its own computer terminal. During the tour our flight attendant demonstrated how to enter the request for the book, recording, or game you wanted and download it to your handheld computer if you felt like taking it to your cabin; it was a standard setup except that it was based on physical media instead of being connected to the Net. That was startling, till we realized that interplanetary data channels have to be kept free for vital messages and even private mail is transmitted through official communications centers. Mars has its own Net, of course, but it’s limited to local material and texts that have been physically imported.
The only other place to go in the Susie, aside from the children’s playroom, was the gym. That was at the center of the passenger sphere, which meant that it was kept under zero gravity. The flight attendant explained that each morning there would be classes in zero-g acrobatics and asked how many of us were interested. I thought of how Alex had said this was fun and was about to volunteer, but I whispered to Janet first, “Are you going to?”
“Heavens, no!” she laughed. “Me? I’ll keep my feet on the floor where they belong, thank you. Besides, I have studying to do.”
I decided that probably she was right, it wouldn’t be sensible. And hadn’t I told Dad that I was going to start reading up on my basic college subjects during the trip? It would be foolish to waste such a good opportunity. So I didn’t put up my hand.
At one end of the cylindrical gym was the observation bubble. There, at the axis of the ship, stars seemed to circle in the hazeless black sky, although actually it was the ship itself that was rotating. For the passengers’ benefit Susie had been positioned to place the crescent Earth at the bubble’s center. Ice blue and cloud-flecked, it waned as the ship spiraled outward from the sun.
We could pause only briefly since other tour groups were crowding up behind. The flight attendant shepherded us back through the gym, weightless, hand over hand along the guide rail. But I wanted a better look. “Let’s come back later by ourselves, Janet,” I suggested.
“It’s hardly worth the trouble,” she said. “We’ve seen plenty of pictures that were more effective. Earth will be smaller by then, and thinner.”
As it happened, though, I did get back to the o
bservation deck before Earth became a mere point of light, inestimably distant. I went that same evening, with Alex.
I didn’t see Alex until dinner time. Janet and I were settling ourselves at a table near the door when suddenly he appeared beside me. “Hello, Melinda,” he said. “How does Susie impress you so far?”
“Well, better than the original Susan Constant, anyway,” I replied lightly. But as I said it, it suddenly struck me as being true. People who crossed the Atlantic in seventeenth-century sailing ships had a hard time of it. Usually they lived for weeks on end all jammed together in the hold, with no proper food or sanitation or anything; lots of them got sick and died.
“At least our ship’s fairly sure to reach its destination,” Alex said, smiling. “Theirs wasn’t, not by any means.”
That was true, too. It was taking us a shorter time to cross all these millions of miles than it had taken them to get from England to Virginia. And we even knew the exact day, hour, and minute that we’d arrive! “They had some unpredictable winds to contend with,” I agreed.
“Not to mention a potential for being sunk.”
“I don’t know anything about any other Susan Constant,” Janet said. “But if you’re trying to say that it’s guaranteed to be all fun and games on this one, I won’t buy it.”
Alex shook his head. “I wasn’t saying that,” he said soberly. “We all know better. But there’s a certain parallel that’s valid, I think. A certain indication that progress has been made since the sailing ship era.”
“Progress for what, though?” I asked. “We may able to go to Mars in comparative safety and comfort, but who needs to?”
“Progress for science,” Janet stated firmly. “That’s the real value of the base on Mars. All this colonization business is one giant boondoggle, as far as I’m concerned.”
Alex scowled at her. “I’ve heard that opinion before, of course; I spent a year on Earth.” He hesitated, deciding how best to make his point. “You’re both missing something. The settlement of Mars is the most important step forward the human race has ever made. But the scientific knowledge gained in the process is only incidental.”
“Incidental?” sputtered Janet. “How can you say that? How else can you justify—”
“Please, let’s not argue about it now,” I begged, sorry that I’d ever raised the question. “Let’s enjoy our dinner.” I knew that Alex’s upbringing had affected his way of looking at things, and I didn’t want to get back to the point where he was objecting to my natural assumptions again. I toyed nervously with my food, wishing that I’d chosen to eat with Dad.
But after the meal, when Alex asked me to walk to the observation deck with him, I didn’t refuse. I couldn’t, somehow. It was more than my wanting to look at Earth again; after all, if Janet wouldn’t go with me, I probably could have prevailed upon Dad. I could have gone by myself, even. But the idea of going with Alex drew me; I couldn’t help liking his company. Sometimes when I was talking to him my ideas seemed unsettled, inadequate, not at all well-organized the way they had been back at school. And I hated that feeling! But in spite of it there was something exciting—volatile, like weightlessness. A hint of something that I didn’t quite want to ignore.
“I should have brought you your book,” I said to him as we made our way through the gym toward the observation bubble.
“Read it first. I’m in no hurry.” He turned to me, his gray eyes twinkling. “Or don’t you like thrilling adventures?”
“Sure I do,” I told him, though I didn’t, especially. “At any rate, I enjoy reading about them.”
“But not participating?” He laughed. “I shouldn’t kid you. Here we are out in space, between planets; that would be more than enough adventure for lots of people. I don’t know why I’m fascinated by wild tales of interstellar expeditions, and there’s no reason why you should be.”
We stood in silence for several minutes when we reached the viewport. Earth had shrunk to less than half the size it had been in the morning. The stars were brilliant, far more brilliant than I’d ever seen them at home. Over at one side of the bubble, shielded by darkened glass, were the fiery fringes of the sun.
“You look solemn again,” Alex said finally. “Why, Melinda?”
“I was just thinking . . . fifty million miles.”
He touched my arm. “More than that. Much more. We don’t make a beeline, you know, even in a rush orbit. And if Mars were around on the other side of the sun—”
“It’s not, is it?”
“Not at the moment. But don’t think of interplanetary distances in miles if that bothers you. Think in terms of time. It’s about the time from Spain to San Salvador, the year Columbus sailed.”
“Doesn’t it bother you at all? Do you enjoy looking out at it like this?”
“At the view? I never get tired of it; not after all the times I’ve seen stars from outside Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Janet Crane is very blasé about it.”
“Janet is very blasé, period, from what little I’ve seen of her. You mustn’t take her too seriously, Melinda.”
“She isn’t making any secret of the fact that she doesn’t have a favorable opinion of the Colonies,” I said. “But it’s funny, I’d have thought she’d be a typical space enthusiast, as scientifically oriented as she is.”
“There’s not much connection.”
“Isn’t there? I’ve always thought a person would have to be completely wrapped up in science to leave Earth voluntarily.”
“You don’t know us Colonials very well, then. Lots of the people on Mars don’t have any sort of scientific education. Take me, for example. I never had much aptitude for technical stuff, and I’d have made a pretty bad engineer. Besides, New Terrans aren’t as single-minded as your roommate; we’re primarily interested in living.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, “Then why did you pick Mars to live on?” but I didn’t. Instead I asked, “What did you enjoy most on Earth?”
Alex grinned at me. “Swimming, I think. Shower baths. And steak!”
That night as we were getting ready for bed Janet told me, “Well, anyway, I’m glad I’m rooming with you instead of one of those homesteaders! Honestly, Melinda, have you talked to any of them? They’re absolutely out of their minds. Why the government wastes its money transporting those people to Mars to live, when it could be setting up more research centers, increasing scientific grants—”
“I’m sure the Colonies must be of some benefit.”
“I’m not. What possible use is colonization? Any first-year biology student can tell you that terrestrial life-forms can never adapt to Mars. The environment is just too hostile.”
“They seem to be doing all right. Alex Preston, the man who sat with us at dinner, is a second-generation Martian, and it seems—well, almost normal to him,”
“Is that who you spent the evening with?” she asked curiously.
“Yes. I think he’s nice.”
“Nice enough, I guess. But after all, he’s a Colonial.” Giving me a sisterly look, she added sharply, “Melinda, I do hope you aren’t interested in him.”
“Of course I’m not,” I told her. “Not that way.” Because her tone had left no doubt as to which way she meant. It hadn’t even occurred to me, and I was shocked. I realized that perhaps I had better try to avoid Alex, when I could. He was a Colonial, and he and I couldn’t really have anything in common.
More than that, I didn’t want anything in common with anyone except Ross. Certainly not a shipboard romance!
I lay back on my narrow bunk, closed my eyes, and tried to concentrate on a picture of the green fir tree towering outside my bedroom window at Gran’s. The atmosphere of the Susie was suddenly stifling; I would gladly have jumped out into the vacuum of space if it could have gotten me back to the cool, free air of Maple Beach. At that moment, I was sure that the coming ten weeks were going to be the longest that I had ever spent.
Chapter 7
My pattern at school had been to do everything with my roommates when I wasn’t out with Ross, and so aboard Susie I expected to go around with Janet. I admired her immensely; she was so cool, so smart, so sure of herself! And out of all the people on the ship with whom she might have made friends, she seemed to prefer my companionship. She liked me, I think, because I agreed with her. Anyway, I thought I agreed with her, and if there were things in Janet’s way of thinking that disturbed me at all, I never gave them any consideration.
Our feelings toward Mars were not popular. The others on the ship were homesteaders who had given up everything else in their lives in order to emigrate, or else they were men and women who’d won out over a lot of competition in order to be sent to the Colonies to work. They did not understand anyone who didn’t think Mars was the greatest planet in the universe! Such a lack of understanding was by no means one-sided, for Janet and I had no comprehension at all of their viewpoint. Janet was very frank in expressing her opinions. I wasn’t, because of my shyness, though as time went on I followed her lead with less and less reluctance.
However, Janet and I saw each other mainly in our stateroom, for she spent much of her time in study. She’d brought plenty of e-files dealing with extraterrestrial biology to supplement those the ship’s library had, and so from after breakfast until bedtime I was often left at loose ends.
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