Martians Abroad Read online

  “That bad?” Ethan said. He was smiling, gazing around with his eyes lit up.

  “You’re just going to have to pick it back up,” Charles observed, and I sneered at him.

  The ship had docked on the station’s outer hull. Inside, a broad corridor curved in both directions. At the next docking bay, fifty meters along, crates were being loaded on a ship, some kind of cargo from Earth bound for the outer system. Pipes and cables made up the ceiling, and across from us a door led to a passageway and the station’s inner corridors. It was all painted a pale, inoffensive beige, same as the ship, same as half the rooms at Colony One. The least aggravating color imaginable, which made it weirdly maddening.

  This could have been the garage by the air lock back home—most wide metal rooms looked the same at some level. But this one was crowded, busy, worn. The rubber matting on the floor had a scuffed trail where hundreds of footsteps had passed. Noise echoed, and a regular current of people passed along the corridor in front of us, some of them carrying satchels, pushing carts, wearing hard hats, or talking with companions. I’d seen this many people on Mars in meeting rooms or in the atrium for concerts or plays. But these were all just living and working here. I wondered if we’d have time to explore.

  “There.” Charles nodded.

  A slim woman in a steel gray uniform, trousers, and a jacket with a pale shirt underneath, stood to the side of the bay. Her hair was short, slicked against her head, giving her a severe military look. She was staring at us like she knew us.

  “Is she from Galileo?” I said. “Are we all going to have to dress like that?”

  “It’s not so bad,” Ethan said, a little breathlessly—from the higher gravity or because he had a thing for uniforms?

  She approached us, her stride predictably clipped and official. Stopping, she looked each of us up and down, slowly and appraisingly, and didn’t seem particularly happy with what she saw. I felt like a diagnostic monitor and squirmed.

  She donned a perfunctory, official smile. “Charles and Polly Newton? Ethan Achebe? I’m Elinor Ann Stanton, dean of students at Galileo Academy. Welcome to Ride Station. You’re the last group to arrive, and we’re on a tight schedule, so I hope you’ll understand my hurry. If you’ll come with me?”

  What would happen if I said no? What if I wanted to see more of the station first? The others were already following her, and it was easier to just do what she said than to argue. Although if I ran in the other direction, how long would it take her to find me again …

  Who was I kidding? Run? I could hardly walk in this gravity. I thought we’d get at least a day to acclimate. But no. We were headed straight to Earth. I wished I’d spent more time on the treadmill.

  I hauled my twice-as-heavy bag over my shoulder and set off behind her and the others.

  We followed her along the corridor, past other docking bays. The floor gently curved up ahead of us around the cylinder of the station. It almost looked like we were walking uphill, but it didn’t feel like it. The station’s spin was pressing us into the floor. The optical illusion was kind of fun.

  Stanton wasn’t much for conversation. Ethan asked her a couple of questions about how many ships were docked at the station and how many other students were waiting to go to Galileo, and her answers were clipped and vague.

  We passed five more docking bays. A couple seemed empty, the doors sealed shut, docking tubes stowed, carts empty, and monitors shut down. A couple more were busy, lit up, doorways open, people moving back and forth. I tried to sneak looks down the tubes or at the monitors to see what kind of ships were there, whether they carried passengers or cargo or both. Stanton walked too quickly for me to get a good look of any of them.

  She stopped at the sixth bay.

  Five kids in the loose, functional jumpsuits typically worn by people who lived on ships or stations were sitting on a steel bench against the wall across from the docking-tube doorway. They stood when Stanton stopped in front of them.

  With an authority that didn’t invite argument, she said, “All right, students. Gather your things and let’s get on board.” She turned to the docking tube.

  “But we just got here,” I blurted. “Don’t we even get a chance to look around?” My own accent sounded round and hard compared to hers, even compared to Ethan’s. I hadn’t realized I had an accent before.

  Her smile faltered for a second and she glared lasers at me. The other kids, who’d been picking up the bags slumped on the floor at their feet, froze. There were a lot of shocked gazes looking at me. Charles’s thinned lips seemed to be transmitting a message to shut up. But I couldn’t.

  “There has to be some kind of observation deck,” I went on. “We only got a quick look at Earth on the monitors when the ship was docking. If I’m going to be spending the next couple of years on the place, can’t I at least see it?”

  “You’ll be able to see it on the shuttle monitors, Ms. Newton.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  She managed to keep up the polite, official façade, but I could imagine her filing away this conversation for later. “Ms. Newton, you’re delaying the journey for the others,” she said softly, pointedly.

  Yeah, I probably should have kept quiet. I wasn’t even at the school yet, and I had ruffled feathers of the person in charge. Real smart there. Charles wouldn’t even look at me now.

  “Why don’t we take a look at this shuttle of theirs?” Ethan said good-naturedly. He inched toward the docking tube, gesturing for me to follow. Like I had a choice.

  I kept looking at Charles, wanting him to say something clever and derisive, like he always seemed to do when he was talking to me. But he was silent, observant. I fumed.

  We joined the others and followed Stanton to the docking tube. I noticed most of the others didn’t slouch under the weight of their packs when they slung them over their shoulders. So they were probably station kids, used to the gravity. However, one of them, a willowy guy with black hair and big blue eyes, seemed a little red in the face, and huffing. So he was from low gravity. I took comfort in that. And tried not to slouch. Don’t show weakness. Charles might be on to something there.

  Right. I could tough this out.

  The tube opened into an air lock, which in turn opened into the passenger cabin, which had two dozen padded seats set in reclining positions. This ship wasn’t an interplanetary long-hauler or any kind of passenger cruiser. It was an orbital shuttle, designed for hops to and from the planet surface. Functional rather than fancy. Nobody would be on it for more than a couple of hours at a time, after all.

  No windows to speak of. Each seat had a monitor on an adjustable arm. That would have to do.

  Stanton moved to the back of the cabin and watched us file in, stow bags in cupboards under our seats, and strap in. I hung back, waiting until everyone else was between her and me. One of the crew was stationed near the door, supervising boarding, and I wanted to talk to him.

  “Welcome aboard!” he said when I made eye contact. I couldn’t tell if he was really that friendly or pretending because it was his job.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to smile in a way that seemed harmless. “I was wondering, do you think I could maybe get a look at the crew cabin? Just a quick look. You won’t even know I’m there. You see, I’m going to be a pilot someday, and I’m really interested—”

  His smile inverted into a gee-whiz apologetic frown. “I’m afraid not, the crew cabin is strictly off-limits to anyone but crew.”

  “I know, but if I promised that I wouldn’t be any trouble at all—”

  “If it was up to me, I’d say yes, but it’s not up to me. I’m sorry.” The smile wasn’t sincere at all.

  “Ms. Newton, is there a problem?” Stanton asked from the back of the cabin with a smile that was looking increasingly fake.

  I sighed.

  Ethan had left a seat open next to him. Charles also had a seat next to him available. He was in back, where he could spy on everyone. I sat next to
Ethan, after stuffing my bag into its cupboard. The effort left me breathless. I fell into the recliner and let my body go limp.

  Ethan was grinning. “Isn’t this exciting? Europa was nothing like this. I can’t wait.”

  I could.

  I might not have gotten a proper observation lounge, but a set of tiny view ports through the front of the cabin gave me a glimpse—my first real, unfiltered glimpse—of Earth. I thought I had known what to expect, and I prepared myself to be blasé about it. I’d seen planets from orbit before. Well, I’d seen Mars, its vast surface and array of shading like paint spilled on a floor. You could see wind storms from orbit, swirling clouds of awe-inspiring chaos. Earth was just a bigger Mars with a few extra colors splashed over it.

  But I wasn’t ready for the way it glowed.

  It came from the clouds. I knew intellectually that the sheets and flowing wisps of white painted over the planet’s surface were clouds of water vapor that reflected a great deal of sunlight. If I looked obliquely toward the curved edge of the planet, it seemed to have an aura. The atmosphere here was thick enough to see, almost like it was giving off its own light. I had to focus to look past the astonishing cloud layer to the land underneath it. Land and water, a blobby tangle of continents against a deep blue backdrop. The sections of land at least seemed familiar, like maps of Mars, with ridges, valleys, channels, and other rocky features. No visible craters, which made the surface seem awfully smooth. On the other hand, I couldn’t picture all that blue being water. I’d seen inside the Colony One storage aquifers, containing more liquid water pressed together than anywhere else on Mars. But this—it covered most of the planet. I tried to put myself in the middle of one of those wide blue swathes, and I couldn’t do it. I imagined standing on a smooth, blue plain. Not in the middle of a tank of water.

  Then the ship turned, and the view outside the port turned dark. So that was Earth. I thought strange and exotic when I saw it. But I didn’t think home. I thought I’d know what it was like to be on Earth, to stand there and be outside, breathing without a mask in a thick atmosphere. It would be like standing in the Colony One atrium, but bigger, right? I wasn’t so sure now.

  “What do you think?” Ethan asked. He was smiling wide, bright. He had enough enthusiasm about this whole enterprise for both of us. For the whole shuttle.

  I shook my head and didn’t answer. He was used to looking out view ports and seeing Jupiter. That was big enough that nothing else would ever impress him, probably. He could afford to be happy.

  Me, on the other hand—I was sure I was going to be in over my head as soon as the shuttle touched down.

  5

  We landed at a rural shuttle port on the night side of the planet. Again, we didn’t have time to look around; Stanton herded us from the shuttle to a waiting ground bus. We hardly spent any time outside. I might never have left the station. I could have been back on at the colony, sealed up in another metal can.

  Except for how tired I was.

  Not that I would ever admit it, or show it, or do anything that might hint that I was weak, or scared, even though my heart raced with the work of simply moving my limbs. At least the days here were about the same length they were on Mars. That was something. Maybe I’d actually be able to sleep a normal night’s sleep.

  I stuck close to Charles. “How are you doing?” I asked him.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Really? Aren’t you feeling it at all?”

  He looked at me. “Save your energy. Stop talking.”

  Well, then. Nice to see he was coping.

  I fell asleep on the bus ride to the school. Kind of embarrassing. I was supposed to stay awake, waiting for the ambush. When the vehicle came to a stop, I startled awake, rubbed my face, and pretended I’d been awake the whole time, but I shouldn’t have worried. Everyone else was waking up, too. Except Charles, who was gazing around, cool and collected, like he was in charge.

  The bus had parked in a spacious garage, and from there a corridor led straight to the dorms. The lights were dimmed, but I had stopped wishing for a better look around. I just wanted to sleep. A good look could wait for morning.

  At an intersection in the hallway, a pair of officials in slick gray uniforms just like Stanton’s met us. These were residence hall supervisors, and they broke us up into groups to guide us to our rooms spread throughout the residential wing. Charles was in a different group from me. It hadn’t occurred to me that Charles and I would be separated. But of course we would, we weren’t at home anymore. When his adviser, along with Stanton and the others, walked on without me, I stood rooted in place, staring back at Charles. He glanced over his shoulder, lips pursed, but if he was trying to tell me something, I couldn’t guess what. If twins were really supposed to have some kind of psychic link, this proved we weren’t real twins. Just a couple of kids who’d happened to be born at the same time.

  “Ms. Newton, this way, please,” the second adviser called to me.

  I slogged after the others toward our corridor.

  * * *

  I learned that this building housed only first-year students. Second-and third-years had their own buildings. We’d spend all three years with the same group of students, so we’d better learn to get along was the implication.

  Our rooms on Colony One were small, but they were ours. Here, I’d be sharing with two others, based on the number of beds. Beside each bed was a nightstand and a closet. We had a bathroom with actual running water—the adviser had to show us how to use everything, because we were all from off-Earth. I wondered if all the rooms were split up Earth kids and non-Earth kids? The far wall had windows, but coverings were drawn over them. I still hadn’t really seen what Earth’s sky looked like. The nightstands had reading lamps, turned on and focused on the beds, and small terminal screens for announcements and wake-up calls. At least I basically recognized everything. Except for the running water. On Mars and on the ship we used dry soap and vacuums.

  The terminal screens were all lit up with the overly smiling face of a middle-aged man with brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair in yet another gray uniform. He was standing in a garden in front of a row of very neatly trimmed shrubs. It was like the garden in the Colony One atrium times a thousand. A label called the man Vincent Juno Edgars, the president of the school, and he looked like he was hiding something. When we touched the screens, a message scrolled up welcoming us to Galileo Academy, the finest school in the universe, where we would embark on “the great adventure that will be the rest of your lives.”

  The closets had our names on them, and the correct luggage was set on the floor next to them. Everything was just so, all in order. It made me itch, thinking of the way everything had been all planned out.

  So, here we were. The adviser for this wing, a woman named Janson with blond hair tied back in a bun, told us to get to bed and get some sleep, because we had an early start in the morning.

  “How early?” I’d asked.

  She glared. “You’ll be awakened.”

  That sounded ominous.

  She left the three of us staring at each other, the sparsely furnished room, and the door, which Janson had shut behind her. These two had been on the shuttle with us from Ride Station. We hadn’t had a chance to talk, between traveling and sleeping and Stanton riding herd on us.

  “So,” I muttered at the others. “Some party. Um. I’m Polly. And you’re…” Charles would have remembered their names right off. He’d probably hacked a copy of the files of everybody at the school weeks ago.

  “Marie,” said the one with her hair in a braid, who kept her gaze down. She was already unpacking.

  “Ladhi,” said the shorter girl with glossy black hair cut shoulder length. “Are you really from Mars?”

  She made it sound amazing. “Yeah. And you’re…”

  “Moore Station. Out on the Belt. I’ve never even been on a planet before. I’m kind of flipping out a little.” Her eyes were wide; her hands wrung each other. �
��But you—this must be just normal for you.”

  “Not really. Mars isn’t exactly habitable. You can’t leave the colony buildings without life support. And the gravity’s way off.”

  “Oh, the gravity. I already hate it.”

  “They tell me it gets better.”

  She sat on her bed, letting out a deflating sigh. “I sure hope so.”

  I sat on my bed, next to hers. I could start unpacking, or I could just collapse and let the gravity pull me into sleep.

  From the other side of the room Marie said, “That other guy with the brown hair—he’s your brother, right?”

  “Yes. Charles,” I muttered. I hoped she got that I didn’t want to talk about him. Marie nodded thoughtfully.

  Ladhi leaned forward. “And the other guy you were with, Ethan. He’s really cute.”

  “Almost as cute as Tenzig,” Marie observed, smiling for the first time.

  “That’s the other guy from Ride Station?” I said. “The tall one?”

  “With those blue eyes,” Ladhi said with a sigh. “Tenzig Jones. His family runs Aurora Shipping. He’s going to be a pilot someday.” Her voice got all dreamy.

  “I’m going to be a pilot someday,” I said. “Besides, I’m not really interested. I have a boyfriend back on Mars, actually.”

  “Oh. And he’s okay with this? Being so far away and all.”

  “Yeah. I mean, we talked it over. It’s just the way things are.” Actually, I was feeling guilty at how little I’d thought of Beau over the last couple of days. I was sure it was just the trauma of finally getting to Earth. I ought to write him a note telling him I was here, what it was like, and how it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  Ladhi kept talking, manic with exhaustion like I was. My ears were buzzing. “My mom really doesn’t like it, me being so far away, not seeing me for years maybe. But who could pass up a chance like this?”

  I raised my hand. “I’d have been happy to stay on Mars.”

  “Oh, no,” Ladhi said, breathless with awe. “This is the best school anywhere. If you can get through here, you’ll be set for life.”