Mars Life (8 page)

A young male attendant in a snappy royal blue and silver uniform showed them to their seats in the circular compartment. There were no windows in the curved bulkhead; thick insulation seemed to smother all sounds. It reminded Jamie of walking into a hushed planetarium chamber. He noted that fewer than half of the fifty seats were occupied.

“First class,” Vijay murmured as they clicked their shoulder harnesses into place.

“Dex paid for the tickets out of his personal pocket,” Jamie said. “He claims the Foundation can’t afford any luxuries.”

“That was nice of him.”

Jamie grinned at her. They both knew that Clipperships had two passenger decks but only one class of accommodations. Everybody rode first class. Someday, Jamie thought, when Clippership travel becomes more popular, they’ll start squeezing in more seats and cutting down on the services. Enjoy the first-class treatment while you can.

Each seat had its own foldout display screen that could show entertainment videos, educational documentaries, or real-time views from the cameras mounted on the ship’s exterior. Vijay opted for the outside view of the servicing trucks scurrying around the Clippership’s launch pad. Jamie leaned back in his plush reclinable chair and closed his eyes.

This is going to be tricky, he told himself for the thousandth lime.

Douglas Stavenger was the acknowledged leader of the lunar nation of Selene. He had the influence—if he chose to wield it—to convince Selene’s governing council to take over the task of providing the Mars explorers with the supplies they would need to keep going in spite of the cutoff of funding from the U.S. government.

Jamie had never met Stavenger. To get to him, Jamie had turned to Stavenger’s wife, Edith Elgin. Edith and Jamie had lived together in Houston nearly thirty years earlier, when Jamie was in training for the First Expedition. He had left for Mars and never saw her again; she had climbed up to a top position in the broadcast news industry, covered Selene’s brief war of independence, and stayed on the Moon to marry Stavenger.

Edith had agreed easily enough to setting up a meeting with her husband when Jamie had called her from Albuquerque. He didn’t know whether he should feel surprised, pleased, or alarmed. So instead he worried.

“This is your captain speaking.” The confident male voice coming through the intercom speakers startled Jamie out of his anxiety.

“We’re cleared for liftoff in ninety seconds. You’ll experience eight minutes of acceleration forces; two and a half gees. Then we’ll coast into orbit and rendezvous with Space Station
Wilson.
IAA regulations require that you remain in your seats at all times with your safety harness buckled. You can play around in zero gee once you’re inside the station. For now, please lower your seats back to the full reclining position. Thank you.”

“Too bad we won’t be spending an overnight at the station,” Vijay teased as they cranked their seats down.

Jamie knew she was referring to making love in zero gravity. There was even talk of building a “honeymoon hotel” in orbit.

“On the way back,” he told her. “I’ll change our tickets.”

“We’ll have to wait that long?” She put on a pout.

“Business before pleasure.”

“Five seconds,” the ship’s computer-synthesized voice called out. “Four . . . three . . .”

Jamie gripped Vijay’s hand. The rocket engines roared with the hot breath of a thousand dragons but inside the cabin their bellowing was muted, distant. The heavy hand of acceleration squeezed Jamie down into the cushions of his couch. He could see on Vijay’s display screen the ground hurtling away, then the view was obscured by the smoky exhaust of the rocket engines.

The compartment quivered, but it was nothing like the bone-rattling vibration he remembered from flights into orbit in the older-style rocket boosters. They’ve improved the ride, Jamie said to himself. Too bad there aren’t more paying passengers to enjoy it.

The noise dwindled and then the pressure cut off abruptly. Jamie’s arms floated up off the seatrests, as did Vijay’s. He heard passengers cooing and sighing with delight as all sensation of weight dropped away. They raised their seatbacks and looked around. Then somebody coughed and gagged. There’s always one, Jamie thought as he reached for the air blower control and dialed it to maximum. Sure enough, someone behind them was throwing up noisily. Hope she made it to the retch bag, he said to himself. One vomiting passenger started a chain reaction; soon several of them were heaving loudly and Jamie started to feel nauseous himself.

One of the uniformed flight attendants hurried down the aisle past them as Vijay patted Jamie’s hand and said, “Put in the earplugs. It’s better if you can’t hear ‘em.”

It’d be better if I couldn’t smell them, Jamie thought. He grabbed the plastic bag containing earplugs from the pocket built into the chair’s armrest while bile burned up into his throat.

By the time the Clippership made its rendezvous with the space station fifty-four minutes later, the passengers had calmed down and the stench of vomit had been cleared from the cabin’s air. A female flight attendant ran a short video that advised the debarking passengers not to try any acrobatics in zero gee.

“You will feel a stuffiness in your sinuses as your body fluids adjust to the lack of gravity,” said the cheerful white-smocked woman on the screens. “This is perfectly normal. Your body is adapting to the microgravity environment.”

Vijay and Jamie didn’t see much of the space station. The terminal where the Clippership docked was designed to accommodate arrivals who were not accustomed to the nearly zero gravity of the orbiting station. Passageways were thickly carpeted and narrow enough for passengers to grip the handrails set on both sides of the bulkheads so that they could proceed cautiously, hand by hand, to the reception area.

Jamie’s head felt stuffy as he shuffled along in the slowly moving line. Vijay was just ahead of him, apparently handling the microgee with no trouble at all. A young man several places up the line, wearing the gray coveralls of a technician, laughingly allowed himself to float off the floor and rise until his crewcut hair bumped gently against the overhead.

Several of the older passengers groaned at the sight.

“Please don’t attempt any gymnastics in this confined space,” called the female attendant from the head of the line.

“Get down, Grabowski,” a rougher voice demanded. “Don’t start with your wiseass crap.”

Jamie laughed softly. The temptation to show off was irresistible in some men. Especially if they were young and there were young women present to show off for.

Moving carefully, Jamie and Vijay left the other arrivals and followed the illuminated arrows along the bulkheads that led them lo the docking port where the lunar shuttlecraft would depart for Selene. A pair of smiling attendants were at the port and guided I hem through the open hatch of the shuttlecraft.

The shuttlecraft’s passenger compartment was less than half the size of the Clippership’s, and much more utilitarian. Jamie and Vijay found their seats and strapped in.

“Whew!” Vijay gusted, her expression halfway between a grin and a grimace. “I’d forgotten how snarky zero gee can be when you’re not used to it.”

Keeping a straight face, Jamie replied, “You’re not reneging on our overnight stay on the way back, are you?”

She started to shake her head, but thought better of it. “I don’t know about you, love, but I’m out of training.”

Very seriously, Jamie said, “Might take a few nights to get our sea legs back.”

Vijay smiled impishly. “Well, if you’ve got the time…”

“We’ll see,” he said. “Depends on how things go with Stavenger.”