The Lion of Mars

by Jennifer L. Holm

  * * *

  It was wonderful to catch up with all my friends, although Captain Laurent wasn’t there. She had gone to the Chinese settlement to help with something.

  At first, it seemed like two different parties: the kids on one side of the room and the grown-ups on the other. While we chatted and laughed, the grown-ups stood around awkwardly.

  But after the cake and presents, the teens turned up the music and started dancing. That’s when the party really got going. Seeing all the kids dancing seemed to melt the invisible ice. The next thing I knew, Salty Bill was slapping the French chef on the back and Meems was hugging an older woman. Eliana and Darby chatted with some grown-ups from the Chinese settlement; they’d worked together on the lunar colony. It was like a reunion. Everyone was happy.

  Except for Sai.

  He sat stiffly on the side of the room, back rigid, as if he wished he was anywhere but there.

  Soft yellow light bled from the fake window on our bedroom wall. It was morning and the room was quiet. With Trey in the bed across from mine, there was no snoring. I could actually hear when Leo padded across the floor now.

  I stared up at our map spanning the wall. In our imaginings, we had forgotten the most important thing for a successful world: other people. All the beautiful buildings and rovers and monorails weren’t much good if you didn’t have anyone to share them with.

  The morning bell chimed in the distance. It was time to get up. But Trey just pulled the pillow over his head. He was probably still tired—he’d gotten home late from the Chinese settlement, where the older teenagers had had a digi-reel marathon of Earth musicals.

  “Time to get up,” I said.

  He groaned. “Ugh.”

  “It’s rover day!”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, and jumped out of bed.

  Today Eliana was teaching us—and kids from any of the other settlements who were interested—some of the basics of fixing a rover. She’d said that since we were so good at breaking rovers, we might as well learn how to repair them.

  Life was different since Vera’s surprise birthday party. We went back and forth to the other settlements for everything from playing Ping-Pong to borrowing a spare part to taking lessons. Flossy and Vera joined kids at the French settlement in the afternoon to learn French. Albie rotated around the settlements, eager to learn different styles of cooking. Trey had begun apprenticing with someone from the Russian settlement. As for me, I was learning Finnish.

  The mess hall was bustling when Trey and I walked in for breakfast. We grabbed our plates and stood in line.

  “What’s for breakfast?” I asked Salty Bill.

  “Scrambled eggs and toast,” he said, and I swear he almost smiled.

  Eggs were another bonus. The Chinese delivered a basket to any settlement that wanted them.

  Trey and I sat down with our plates and dug in.

  “Bell,” Meems said, “can you take a plate of food to Sai? I don’t think he’s had breakfast.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  This was another thing that had changed since the birthday party. Sai was always in his workroom during meals these days. He claimed to be busy fixing things, but I was starting to wonder if he was what was broken. Vera said that the grown-ups had taken a vote about whether to continue to see the other settlements. Everyone had voted yes except for Sai.

  I made up a plate of food and headed to his workshop. He was sitting at his desk, staring at the 3D printer.

  “I brought you breakfast,” I said, handing him the plate.

  “Thank you,” he said, but he didn’t move to eat the food. He just stared at it.

  “Don’t you like scrambled eggs?” I asked him.

  He looked at me. “I love them.”

  “What are you working on?” I asked him.

  “A part for the new printer,” he said. “I’ve tried again and again, but I can’t seem to get it right.”

  “Why don’t you ask if any of the other settlements have one?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not a good idea to rely on others.”

  “How come?”

  Sai looked at me. “Because they’ll just disappoint you.”

  * * *

  Eliana’s rover lesson was a big hit. Afterward, Salty Bill put out cookies in the mess hall for us.

  I sat with Amélie and nibbled on a cookie.

  “Commander Laurent said we can have a sleepover,” she told me. “Taavi and Wei are coming.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s when you get to stay at my settlement overnight, and we watch digi-reels and eat popcorn.”

  That sounded fun to me.

  “What if we have the sleepover here?” I asked Amélie.

  “Here?”

  “I’ve already stayed at your settlement, but you’ve never stayed at mine!” Leo brushed up against my leg. “And we have Leo!”

  “Taavi will love that,” Amélie said.

  “I’ll ask Meems!” I said.

  * * *

  Meems agreed that I could have the other kids sleep over, although she did mutter something under her breath about how no one would actually be getting any sleep.

  So a few days later, I waited by the door to the train tunnel for my guests. Amélie was the first to arrive. Commander Laurent had brought her, and someone else as well: a man with dark, sad eyes.

  “Bonjour!” I said to them.

  Commander Laurent smiled at me. “Bonjour, Bell. Are you excited for your sleepover?”

  “Oui!” I said.

  “Before I go, I need to speak to Meems.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Everyone followed me to the mess hall. Meems was sitting at the table with a cup of tea. When she saw us, she gasped.

  “Sylvie!” she said. “And Petyr!”

  This was Petyr? The one who was with Lissa during the accident?

  Meems rushed over to Commander Laurent, and they clasped hands.

  “Why, Sylvie, you look exactly the same,” Meems told her with a smile.

  Commander Laurent laughed, a light, happy sound. “Your eyes must be failing, because I am quite certain I did not have all this gray hair the last time you saw me.”

  Then Meems walked over to Petyr. “How have you been?” she asked him.

  “As well as can be expected living underground on a freezing-cold planet,” he said.

  “The same old sense of humor, I see,” she teased.

  “Meems,” Commander Laurent said. “We’d like to talk to Sai.”

  “Good luck,” Meems said. “He’s in his workroom.”

  “I remember the way well,” Commander Laurent said.

  After the two of them left the mess hall, Meems shook her head. “That was enough excitement for me. Have a fun sleepover.”

  Then she was gone.

  “I can’t believe that just happened,” I said.

  “What?” Amélie asked.

  “That man! That’s Petyr!”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I know.”

  “Oh, just come on!” I told her, and grabbed her hand and ran down the corridor.

  We slowed when we heard raised voices. I put a finger to my lips, and Amélie nodded. We peeked out from around a corner and could see Commander Laurent and Petyr talking to Sai.

  “How could you leave her, Petyr?” Sai asked.

  “You don’t understand, Sai!” Commander Laurent said.

  “Commander Laurent was badly injured,” Petyr said. “I had to get her help! She was bleeding heavily from her head and was unconscious.”

  “But what about Lissa?” Sai asked in an agonized voice. “She was hurt, too!”

  “Her leg was broken,” Petyr said, “but Lissa assured me she could wait. I could only car
ry one person. We both knew that Commander Laurent didn’t have much time. I would return for Lissa.”

  “But you didn’t go back,” Sai said.

  “Because I ran out of oxygen and fainted just outside the French settlement,” Petyr explained. “Luckily, Armand was in the communications room and saw me fall with Commander Laurent.”

  Sai shook his head. “I didn’t know any of this.”

  “I sent many transmissions explaining the situation afterward,” Commander Laurent said gently.

  Sai looked ashamed. “I never opened them. I deleted them all.”

  “But why? I don’t understand, Sai.”

  “We received the alert about the rover being lost,” Sai said. “When we found it, Lissa was the only one there. I—I thought you’d left her there to die.”

  “How could you believe such a thing?” Commander Laurent asked, shocked.

  Sai looked miserable. “I don’t know.”

  “How did she die?” Petyr asked anxiously. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard! She’d only had a broken leg.”

  “Meems suspects it was a blood clot from the broken leg,” Sai said.

  “I was going to go back for her, I swear!” Petyr said.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Petyr,” Sai said in a pained voice. “I’m so sorry for thinking the worst. Please forgive me.”

  “Forgive you?” Petyr asked. “I was the one who wasn’t strong enough to save her!”

  Sai shook his head. “Neither of us could have saved her. But I was the one who let my grief and anger tear apart everything we’d built together.”

  Petyr looked stunned.

  Sai gave him a quick, hard hug.

  “Thank you for looking after Lissa when I couldn’t,” he said in a husky voice.

  Petyr nodded. “I’ll meet you back at the train,” he said to Commander Laurent.

  Then he turned and walked along the corridor toward us. I pulled Amélie down behind a stack of plastic boxes.

  Now it was just Sai and Commander Laurent.

  “If I’d been conscious, Sai, I would have made him take her,” Commander Laurent told him.

  Sai gently traced the jagged scar on her forehead.

  “All these years, and I didn’t even know you’d been hurt. Can you ever forgive me?” Sai asked brokenly.

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said.

  He held her hand to his cheek. “My sweet Larry. I’ve missed you so much.”

  Larry? This was Larry?

  “I’ve missed you, too, Sai,” Commander Laurent said.

  Then Sai leaned in and kissed her.

  And kept kissing her.

  Amélie’s mouth fell open in shock.

  Mine did, too.

  “Bisou bisou,” Amélie whispered, making a face.

  Honestly, grown-ups were worse than teenagers.

  It was a beautiful morning. The sky was pink as far as the eye could see, the red surface welcoming. Mars was radiant like a smile.

  This day had been planned for a while. We put on our environmental suits and went to the graveyard. Commander Laurent and Petyr placed bouquets of flowers on the graves of Lissa and Phinneus. I knew Phinneus would have liked it.

  After that, we piled into rovers and headed to the French settlement. It was the site of the first-ever Mars Ping-Pong Tournament. It had been my and Amélie’s idea.

  As we drove along in the Yellow Submarine, Commander Laurent pointed to an enormous crater in the ground.

  “That’s where the meteorite struck,” she said.

  Trey looked at me with an excited expression on his face.

  “Can we see it?” Trey asked.

  “Please?” I asked.

  “I suppose so,” Sai said.

  Eliana parked the rover, and we all got out to look. The crater was enormous.

  “It’s got to be over eighteen meters wide,” Albie said with a low whistle.

  “Too bad it wasn’t an alien ship,” Trey said.

  “Maybe they’ll come next time,” Amélie said, and grinned at me. “They can eat the poopy baby.”

  The meteorite—just a rock—wasn’t very large. It was probably only a few centimeters bigger than me.

  “How could a rock that size make such a big crater?” I asked.

  Sai looked down at me.

  “Something doesn’t need to be big to have an impact,” he said, and smiled. “Kind of like you.”

  * * *

  The recreation room of the French settlement was packed with Ping-Pong tables. Kids from every country had been invited. There was food and music and laughter. It was perfect.

  Then we started playing. It was even fun to watch. Taavi had a way of adding spin to the ball that gave him fast shots.

  After a while, Amélie challenged the adults to a round.

  “Grown-ups versus kids,” she proposed with a sly look.

  “I don’t think…,” Sai began.

  “Come on, Commander,” Commander Laurent said, and looped her arm through his. “Let’s show them what we’ve got.”

  Sai and Commander Laurent were a pretty good team. But not as good as me and Amélie. Kids are just better at some things. Like knowing that friends are important.

  We played game after game of Ping-Pong, to the cheers of the whole planet. It didn’t matter what the score was in the end. Because we had all won.

  We were the pride of Mars.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Though this book was written before Covid-19, the copyediting and final production happened during the pandemic. I could never have imagined how eerily relevant and poignant this fictional virus on Mars would become.

  The inspiration for this futuristic book actually came from the past, though. My father was raised on a dairy farm during the Great Depression. Even though it was a terrible time—for both his family and the country—neighbors pitched in and helped one another. After my father grew up, he became a fighter pilot and served in the Korean War, and eventually he became a pediatrician. (He was no slouch!)

  My flyboy father is in his flight suit. (I still have the helmet.)

  After he passed away, I was eager to learn more about him. I had always been interested in space. So I was excited to learn that many of the early astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and John Glenn, had been pilots in the Korean War, too. They were just like my dad. It made the idea of going to space seem possible to me.

  So I began to wonder: What would it would be like to grow up on Mars? Not a high-tech terraformed Mars, but a small, family farm version. What would daily life be like? Where would you play? What would you eat? Would there be chores? Who would be your neighbors? Most of all, what would a child growing up on Mars think of Earth—a place they had never visited but only heard about? Then I imagined Bell: a curious, cat-loving, bighearted eleven-year-old living on the Red Planet. And I was off and running.

  Many of the things mentioned in this book are grounded in science. Using underground lava tubes—the large tunnel-like spaces left behind by flowing lava—has been proposed by scientists and engineers. The tubes could prove to be a practical habitat that would provide a natural barrier for humans from radiation, dust, and freezing temperatures.

  Global dust storms on Mars are indeed a big deal. Occurring every few years, they can block light from the sun and last for weeks. During the global dust storm of 2018, NASA’s solar-powered rover Opportunity went offline permanently.

  Artist’s rendering of NASA Mars Exploration Rover on the surface of Mars

  As in the book, traveling to Mars has always been a complicated matter. Mars’s orbit brings the planet closest to Earth once every twenty-six months. This is known as a Mars close approach and is the reason that missions to Mars are timed to take advantage of
this situation.

  Both NASA and the European Space Agency have suggested algae (specifically, spirulina) as a food source. Algae could also potentially supply oxygen. An algae-powered bioreactor that converts carbon dioxide to oxygen has been tested on the International Space Station.

  Finally, the enduring friendship of America and France has always been an inspiration to me. I think there’s a little bit of Lafayette in Bell.

  “No obstacle, no disappointment, no sorrow distracts me from the unique goal of my life, the well-being of all and freedom everywhere.”

  —Marquis de Lafayette, beloved “son” of America

  My first visit to SpaceX in California

  The dream of humans going to Mars has been kept alive by countless people, from astronauts to scientists to entrepreneurs. I firmly believe we will overcome the many obstacles to a journey to the Red Planet. But what happens when we finally get there will prove far more difficult than the technical challenges. It’s my hope that a future Mars will be a place where neighbors help one another and play Ping-Pong together. Ultimately, what this society looks like will depend on all of us.

  (And maybe even the cats.)

  ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

  TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION

  WEBSITES

  All About Algae

  allaboutalgae.com/​algae-basics

  The Mars Society

  marssociety.org

  NASA Mars Exploration Program

  mars.nasa.gov

  BOOKS

  Aldrin, Buzz, and Marianne Dyson. Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet. New York: National Geographic Children’s Books, 2015.

  Turner, Pamela S. Life on Earth—and Beyond: An Astrobiologist’s Quest. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2008.

  Zubrin, Robert. The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must. New York: Free Press, 2011.