He said he wasn’t playing any games. Lori shuddered. Of course he would say that. And then he’d kissed her right in front of the cameras. His aunt had prepped him well.
If April had turned the fitness center cameras off, Lori could stride forward, give them both a piece of her mind, and not have to worry about her tirade airing worldwide. For the space of three breaths, she fantasized about calling out the two people she’d trusted, the people she’d thought were her friends, the ones who’d betrayed her. She could yell and cry and make a proper scene.
Instead, Lori stepped back, quietly. She couldn’t blame them, not really. Multiple alliances was the smart move. If more than one strategic partnership proved successful, the involved parties would work out a solution for the interplanetary flight and beyond. The Blocks would love it.
Lori turned quickly toward the door and collided with a stair machine. The contents of her thermos spilled down the front of her jumpsuit, and she yelped as hot tea soaked through to her skin.
Mark was on his feet and headed her way.
“No, no, no,” Lori muttered as she discovered that her left hip pocket had gotten snagged on one of the stair machine’s height adjustment knobs. Lori tried to yank herself free, but she was stuck.
Mark’s smile was full of pleasant laughter as he reached her. “You get a little hung up?”
She scowled at him. The man had no shame. He didn’t bother looking guilty or even try to apologize to her, and it was infuriating.
“I don’t want to talk to you!” Lori tugged and jerked and struggled to free herself from the climber. “I saw what you were doing, and I think it’s just despicable that you would lie about it.”
Mark’s face tightened into a confused frown. He glanced over his shoulder at April, now headed toward Lori as well.
“I know this is a contest, but how could you? And with her?” Every part of Lori’s body stung with the humiliation of how easily she’d fallen for his earnest façade. She forgot about the cameras and how ridiculous she’d look when this spat was aired for the world’s entertainment. All thoughts of composure and fair play flew out of her head.
“I don’t know what you think you saw, Lori, but it was a private conversation.” Mark reached out to help release her from the climbing machine, but she smacked his hand away.
Lori laughed, her voice sharp. “Private? In a dome full of cameras?” Lori shot a hard look at April, who skirted by with a meek shrug. “You’re playing the same game she is, aren’t you? Sneaking into dark corners to do your own research?”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Mark’s frown grew angry, and his voice contained a note of warning. “I will not justify myself by betraying a confidence, not to satisfy you or anyone else. Think of me what you will.” He slid his hands into his pockets.
“Oh, don’t you worry, buddy. I certainly will.” Lori made a face when she realized her retort didn’t make much sense.
She focused instead on liberating herself and, with the squeal of plastic against metal, she finally wrenched away from the climber. She was impressed that the fabric of her jumpsuit remained intact, while the climber knob rested in her pocket. The climber’s left support post sagged.
Mark laughed. “Can we talk about this reasonably now?”
Lori grabbed the knob out of her pocket and threw it at Mark’s feet, then picked up her thermos and stormed out of the fitness room.
10
It was early morning. Lori wasn’t quite sure what time it was. They were on Martian time inside the Mars Ho Candidate Habitat, and she was still getting used to the extra 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds tacked onto every passing sol. She guessed the sun was up, but there weren’t any windows.
Like the time delay in sending and receiving messages, it was all part of getting used to the new reality of Mars.
Lori hunched over her bowl of oatmeal. Trevor had kept working the food printer challenge until he was able to make nearly two dozen passable meals, and his oatmeal wasn’t bad at all. It tasted of oats and butter and salt, and she chose not to think about what was really in the mix.
The rest of the candidates came filing into the kitchen. There hadn’t been any announcements about what was in store for them that day, and Lori wasn’t about to ask April if she’d found out anything.
Lori made small talk with Trent and Jacki as they poured coffee and sampled Trevor’s berry-flavored and cinnamon oatmeals. She tolerated Cecilia’s prattle about the latest Joan Ainsley novel and which movies on the servers she was looking forward to watching. Lori laughed at Leah’s joke about what Gary Nelson might be up to back at The Ranch—a vigorous schedule of teeth whitening and botulinum injections. And she made an effort to catch Guillermo’s eye.
In fact, Lori made an effort to catch the eye of every man who walked into the kitchen. Because that’s how she was supposed to play the game, right?
She’d lain awake all night, staring up at the bottom of Cecilia’s bunk and trying not to think about Mark’s kiss, or about seeing Mark with April. Twice now she’d followed her heart and had gotten burned for it.
So she thought about the brilliance of April’s spreadsheet. April had started the competition with her strategy already in place, and she’d invited Lori to play along.
So Lori sat with her oatmeal and coffee, fighting her fatigue and chatting with her fellows, all the while forcing herself to think of them as game pieces to be moved around the board. Until the game was over, they were competitors first. Friends would come later.
There would be plenty of time to sort out bruised feelings once they were safely on Mars and out of reach of airlock eliminations.
Lori touched Yoshiko’s wrist when she chuckled at his observation about the complexities of figuring out birthdays on another planet. She maintained steady eye contact with Govind when she asked about his family’s hobby shop business, and she was eager to support Trevor’s suggestion of an annual Martian holiday commemorating the first colonial landing.
She also ignored April and Mark, despite their attempts to get her attention. Mark in particular was making a pest of himself, asking how she’d slept or wanting her opinion on who should be in charge of inflight entertainment on the trip to Mars. Now he was telling a story about being lost in the Canadian wilderness when he was a boy. Lori turned her back to him.
The kitchen’s wall-mounted screen turned itself on and showed the manufactured splendor of the Mars Ho host.
“Good morning, Mars Ho!” Gary sang out. Instead of the rousing cheer he might have expected in response, there was a lingering chorus of muffled groans as most of the candidates lowered their heads over their bowls of counterfeit breakfast.
“I was really hoping for a break today,” Leah muttered into her coffee.
“Don’t worry, future Martians!” Gary announced with an overly jovial voice that likely would have gotten him shot anywhere else at such an hour. “You might be happy to hear that you’ve gotten your wish: a day of rest in the midst of intense competition.”
The camera zoomed out to show Gary surrounded, per usual, by a selection of experts in white lab coats. They looked even more alike now and more uniformly dour. How many of them had applied to the Mars Ho contest themselves? The white lab coat might be the nearest they’d come to an orange jumpsuit.
“And for one candidate, this day marks a moment of celebration and welcome relief.” Gary’s wide smile persisted in sharp contrast to the dull faces behind him. “As you know, each Mars colonist must possess a combination of key skills to support the new colony, with sufficient overlap and redundancies among the team.”
“In case anyone gets killed.” Leah spooned a large portion of oatmeal into her mouth and shrugged. The candidates were still being recorded as they crowded around the kitchen’s large aluminum table—the show would need footage for reaction shots.
“But they don’t want to say that, not on TV,” Leah said around her mouthful of food before she swallowed.
&
nbsp; Gary appeared unfazed. “This means that when a Mars Ho candidate is the last person inside the biodome to possess a mission-critical skill, that candidate is guaranteed a seat on the first colony flight from Earth to Mars.”
All conversation inside the kitchen came to an abrupt halt.
“I’m happy to announce that we’ve identified our first Mars Ho finalist!” Gary paused for dramatic effect and then gestured toward the screen as though offering in-person congratulations. “April Chennells, as the last remaining candidate with an electrical engineering background, you are our first official Mars colonist!”
Gary’s announcement was met with stunned silence inside. Beaming, April sat up straight in her chair but didn’t look especially surprised.
“She’s an electrical engineer?” Govind asked quietly. “I thought she was just a professional flirt.”
April knew this was coming, just as she’d known Lori was in danger at the last elimination. Maybe that’s why April had been holding Lori’s hand as Gary announced those last departures. With Lewis gone—or maybe Chrissy had been her nearest rival—April was a finalist by default.
Lori wasn’t angry. She was impressed. April had played the game and won. Lori would do well to follow her example.
Mark cleared his throat and started clapping, and the applause slowly caught on like ripples in a pond. April tried to wave the praise away. She had to know the congratulations were of questionable sincerity, but she didn’t seem to mind.
On the screen, Gary continued. “April, you will remain inside the Mars Ho Candidate Habitat with the remaining colonist hopefuls.”
Dina snickered. “You mean, someone else might get to wear the Ho crown?”
April chuckled but Lori caught the quick glance April threw Mark’s way and the knowing, shrugging smile he offered in response. Lori felt the familiar sting of tears but swallowed them down hard. She would not cry anymore over Mark Lauren, especially not with cameras trained on her face.
“And so we’ve come to the end of our scheduled competitive challenges,” Gary said. “You will continue to be evaluated on your interpersonal skills and coping strategies, and there will be more eliminations. April, congratulations to you from all of us in the Mars Ho family, and from your fellow human beings across the globe.”
With a wide smile of perfectly aligned, sparkling teeth, Gary lifted one fist in the air. “Mars Ho!”
A second later, the screen went dark.
Govind stared blankly at the empty screen. “So, is that our new cheer? Do we have to start greeting each other like that?”
Guillermo thrust his own fist into the air. “Mars Ho!” he cried, and was instantly imitated by Trent, Leah, and Yoshiko.
Lori looked across the table and caught April’s eye. “Congratulations. I know you deserve it.”
April graciously dipped her chin as the others started clearing away their breakfast dishes.
Lori watched Mark scrape the remains of his oatmeal into the food recycler. She chewed on her lip and tried to think. Who were the remaining contestants with overlapping skill sets? Not just the challengers to Lori’s position, but Mark’s as well?
They weren’t supposed to talk about their particular areas of expertise. Lori still didn’t know what kind of doctor Mark might be, and Jacki had been chastised two days earlier for sharing too much detail about her own experience in public relations.
So Trevor had failed the food printer challenge, but then had just made them all breakfast. Was he a food scientist? Seema knew about geology, and the Blocks had some kind of sex therapy internet show. April was an electrical engineer. Other than that, Lori had few ideas.
Were the experts considering things as far back as the sewing class Lori took in high school, or that she’d volunteered once with her father for a river clean-up when she was twelve? But surely that didn’t make her a water scientist.
Leah was good at yoga and snarky comments. Trent was geeky and funny. Melissa could talk a blue streak in the bathroom but shut up as soon as she was in range of the cameras. Guillermo was sweet and shy.
Lori wondered about asking April for a peek at her spreadsheet.
Trevor approached the food recycler and checked the machine’s gauges. “So,” he said to Mark. “If this marks the end of the ‘scheduled competitive challenges,’ I can’t wait to see the unscheduled stuff they’ll throw at us.”
Mark grunted something Lori couldn’t make out. Then he stepped out of the kitchen and disappeared down the corridor.
Watching him go, Lori felt the prick of tears and again forced them back. She was frustrated about feeling hurt and angry and—with the announcement of April’s success—maybe even a little petulant. Holding grudges wouldn’t help her advance. Even as she evaluated the men as potential mates—and potential stepping stones to Mars—she had to find a way to play nice, and to mean it.
“Mars!” April shouted as she whizzed past Mark on her third celebratory lap around the biodome. She was practically skipping as she sped down the curving hallway, though she was panting this time around. Mark imagined her next stop would be the kitchen, where Trevor was working up some congratulatory “Mars juice” with the combination coffee machine and soda fountain.
The Blocks were holding an impromptu class in the fitness center on the finer arts of tantra in microgravity, though what Mark had heard in passing quickly convinced him that they had little idea what they were talking about. But that didn’t discourage Trent, Govind, and Lindsay from asking questions.
Mark was on his way back to his bunk room after a visit to one of the confessional booths. He hadn’t checked his messages or recorded any footage for the producers, even though they were complaining about his infrequent video entries. So far, he’d recorded a single “confession,” and even that had been more of a report about the wear patterns on his Tempe Sportswear socks.
Today, he’d simply enjoyed the darkness and quiet solitude offered by the booth. The cameras would have captured little more than Mark sitting in the shadows with his eyes closed. He may as well have been asleep, as far as entertainment value went.
But he’d been feeling happy for April. Pondering his own chances as the candidate numbers continued to dwindle. And puzzling over what to make of Lori’s tantrum in the fitness room and her chilliness toward him since.
It wasn’t difficult to make out what she was upset about. Mark wasn’t a complete idiot. He had to admit he’d have come to a similar conclusion if their positions were reversed. It would be a simple thing to set the record straight. But that would mean betraying April’s confidence, and that was something he couldn’t do. Not even for Lori.
So he’d sat in the dark, going around and around in his thoughts until he’d finally given up and left the confessional booth. There had to be another way to mend this rift. He just hoped she had an idea of how to do that.
It was a stroke of luck, he thought, that she found him first.
“Mark Lauren!” Lori called in a pleasant voice from behind him in the corridor. Given how she hadn’t so much as looked at him in the kitchen just an hour earlier, Mark was suspicious of her improved mood.
“Hello, Ms. Ridgway.” He felt his heart lift in his chest when he met her dark brown gaze. “I wish I could explain about earlier. Not every situation is as it appears to be. Besides, it’s not my secret to tell, and I hope you can understand that.”
Lori sauntered toward him and threaded her arm through his. “I wanted to congratulate you, actually.”
They walked together along the corridor. He liked the easiness of their matched stride, her fingers light on his wrist while she pressed close against him. Mark wasn’t sure if her attitude was in deference to the cameras or if this marked a change in the nature of their relationship—a relationship he hadn’t been able to define himself.
“Congratulate me?”
“Mmm.” Lori nodded as she kept pace with him. Or was he keeping pace with her? “I hadn’t seen it at first, and that j
ust goes to show how very clever you are. You have my respect for that.”
“Seen what, exactly?”
“Your strategy, of course.” Lori’s voice was even and strong, but Mark heard the sour note beneath the geniality. “It’s an excellent one. Declaring that you’re not playing games, when you actually played me rather nicely.”
Mark stopped short. “Lori, I told you in all honesty that—”
Lori grabbed him by the front of his jumpsuit and tugged him toward her. She pressed her mouth against his with an aggression he found both exciting and a little frightening. She held him firmly against her as a tiny moan—of pleasure or anger, he didn’t know—escaped her. But the heat between them was real. He skimmed the tip of his tongue over her lips and started to wrap his arm around her waist. But she thrust him away, and he staggered backward against the wall.
“Lori, what the hell?” He didn’t understand the cool distance in her eyes, not while his lips were still tingling.
“I’ll just have to work harder to keep up with you.” Lori glanced at a not-so-hidden camera. Then she smiled at Mark. “Thanks for the lesson.” She turned and headed toward the kitchen, just a few meters away.
“Lori? Lori, wait!”
She raised her hand and fluttered her fingers at him over her shoulder. She simpered past April, who stood in the kitchen doorway.
“What was that?” April stared at Mark, her hands on her hips.
Mark spread his hands in front of him and shook his head. No words could come.
The next few sols passed quickly, if uncomfortably.
First, there was the “unscheduled laundry challenge”: discovery that the detergent containers were suddenly empty, requiring the remaining candidates to figure out new ways to keep their clothing clean. The kitchen’s healthy supply of baking soda provided an easy fix. No one’s jumpsuit looked any the worse for wear, and there were no eliminations.
Then came the trouble with obscured exterior cameras. The solution was to have half the biodome’s crew suit up and head outside with cleaning supplies while the others directed their work from the MHCH control center—a modest-sized computer room that lay behind a previously locked door. The pair of workstations gave access to real-time performance stats of the MHCH’s systems, but little else.
Mars Ho! (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 1) Page 13