Saving Mars (32 page)
Authors: Cidney Swanson
Brian Wallace laughed softly.
“What is it?” asked Pavel.
“There’s no tracking beacon of any sort on this ship.” His fingers flew across a small screen. “It’s meant to fly without leaving a trace.”
Pavel grunted. “Sounds like my aunt.”
“We’ll bring her down right there,” called Wallace. “On the north side of that wee stone croft.”
Pavel observed a small building constructed of rock that had been white-washed many years ago, but now stood neglected, blending with the island’s ashen-greys.
“You think her brother came all the way here?” asked Pavel, puzzled.
“Nay, but we’ve a need to keep this vehicle out of sight. This is as close as we dare approach me cottage, lad. And Elsa likes to slumber here, the great slacker.”
“Elsa?” asked Pavel.
“Aye, me dog. Elsa. She’ll find the lad faster than ye or I can ever do.”
Saying this, Brian Wallace punched open the door hatch and leapt out of the craft, Pavel on his heels. Wallace withdrew a silver cylinder upon a chain from his shirt. It was no bigger than his little finger. He blew into it, but nothing happened.
“Will your dog—will
Elsa
hear that thing?”
“Aye,” said Wallace. “More importantly, those men in red armor
won’t
hear it any more than ye could have just now.”
“I hear barking,” said Pavel.
“This way,” said Wallace, grabbing a hovercart that leaned against the stone hut.
The two leapt upon the cart, Wallace urging it as fast as it could go, toward the sound of Elsa’s bark.
“She’s nae coming to me,” muttered Wallace, after blowing into the dog whistle a second time.
“Try again!”
“She’s a stubborn lass, Elsa. As like to run if it suits her.”
Pavel’s lips pinched thin as he calculated how likely it was his aunt had awakened already.
Wallace brought the silver whistle to his lips once more. Elsa barked in response and the cart sped toward the sound. She barked again and again.
“Perhaps she’s found him already, then,” murmured Wallace. “She took to the lad uncommon fast, the other day.” He blew into the whistle once more.
Elsa barked in reply, sounding nearer than last time. The hovercart glided over a low hillock to reveal a deep, grassy hollow just below them. The wind shifted.
Pavel saw him first. In the quivering grass lay a man, old, bereft of legs, and about his head curled a black and white dog. The man’s one good arm lay buried in the dog’s soft coat.
Wallace slowed and Pavel leapt from the cart, sweeping Ethan into his arms. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to be touched. Your sister told me.”
Ethan looked in confusion at Pavel, but seeing Wallace jump from the cart, he calmed.
Pavel lifted Ethan onto the small transport. Another cart, spilled at an odd angle beside where Ethan had lain, told his story—he had fallen off and been unable to hoist himself back on. The dog whined anxiously, darting between legs, herding the three until all were settled upon the cart.
“Jessamyn,” Ethan said in a whispered hush. He raised a palsied hand, pointing to the sky. “Jessamyn,” he said again. His rheumy eyes met Wallace’s. “Did she make it?”
“She’s on her way to Mars,” said Pavel. “You’re a very lucky man, having a sister like that.”
Ethan closed his eyes, a sad smile upon his lips.
Wallace pulled to a halt beside the Chancellor’s ship and the cart jolted. Both men reached for Ethan, grabbing him to prevent his falling off. Pavel murmured another apology, hurriedly carrying Ethan inside his aunt’s craft.
Ethan laughed softly. “It would appear that this body, despite its several faults, is not strongly affected by touch. What a pleasant thing to awaken to.” As the ship departed for the safety of the skies, Ethan laughed to himself again and sank a gnarled hand into Elsa’s thick fur.
EPILOGUE
Dear Pavel,
You may wonder why I am writing to you.
No, I guess not.
You won’t wonder because I have no way to send this message. But as I watch Earth shrink farther and farther behind us each day, it seems sometimes like none of it was real. Not pizza or that silly orange dress or even you. So I’m writing because I need to remind myself it was real. You are real.
The wisest person I know once told me that I need to accustom myself to the harmonies of minds unlike my own. (Her words, not mine.) I can think of a few who qualify in that regard. Kipper. The dean at my flight school. Your aunt. But I think I need to start with someone I don’t feel active hostility toward.
So I thought of you. Well, to be honest, I was already thinking of you. It’s something I do often. I imagine you finding and rescuing my brother. I see you standing up to your aunt. I picture you becoming a great leader some day.
I’ll be home soon, and I’ll try to see my world with your eyes. I think that’s part of what Harpreet meant with all that harmony language. I hope, as I look at Mars through your eyes, that you will love my planet.
Please tell my brother that I miss him. No. Tell him that I wish he’d invent a switch I could flip so that I would not think of him because it hurts so badly when I do. That might make him laugh. Then you can tell him never mind, because by the time I see him again I won’t need the stupid switch anymore.
I will return for him, Pavel. Tell him that. I will return with my memory full of how Mars appeared through your eyes: what you thought of the shadows of the Valles Marineris at sunset; how you smiled to see Zhinü and Niulong set in a veil of stars a thousand times more numerous than what you can see from Budapest; how sweet a morning wet ration can taste when drunk with those who love you.
Farewell for now.
Your friend,
Jessamyn
End of Book One
Acknowledgements
Very special thanks to Toby and Isabel, who have been listening to this book morph for over two years, passing from one voice to another, one tense to another, and reinventing itself way too many times. For help with key plot problems, thanks to Chris, Jacob, and Toby. Also, for when the physics started making my brain hurt, an extra helping of
merci
to Chris. Jacob and Nathan convinced me that the ending had taken a wrong turn at a critical moment. Thumbs up, guys!
To NASA and
Star Trek
, I owe incalculable debts for the formation of my young imagination.
And to you, dear reader, I am grateful beyond what words can convey. To be able to sit and imagine my days away beats anything I know, including pizza of pepperoni.
For information on new releases by Cidney Swanson:
Author’s Note
I am no astrophysicist. I’m just a writer who talks with her imaginary friends all day. I’ve done my best to keep the (meager) science in
SAVING MARS
at least somewhat accurate, but there are many points where I felt free to get quite speculative, and I’m sure there are numerous out-and-out errors as well. These errors are wholly my own.
If you are curious whether humans could live on Mars someday, or whether “terraforming” is real, I suggest Robert Zubrin’s fascinating book
The Case for Mars.
(He has another title, fictional and hilarious, called
How to Live On Mars,
which I highly recommend as well, although we might disagree on how we feel toward NASA.)
Would you like to see humans on Mars? Or journey there yourself? You many find the following organizations helpful as you explore the possibilities!
Find a sneak peek of Cidney Swanson’s newest release DEFYING MARS below.
1
HAUNTED
An image haunted Jessamyn Jaarda as she journeyed home to Mars. She saw her hand, pressed flat against the viewing portal while Earth rocketed from view: first a blur of cloud and ash, then a convex globe of land and water, and finally a child’s bauble, inky-blue swirled through with white.
Mars called her homeward, but in her bones she felt the pull of Earth. It was not gravity which tugged at her as she fled. Rather, she woke nightly from nightmares where those she’d left behind called out to her:
First Officer, turn the ship about; come back, daughter; sister, where are you?
From these dark dreams she woke shouting aloud, her heart pounding in the darkness of her small quarters, no Harpreet to ask from the bunk below if she were well.
No Harpreet. No Ethan. No captain. No survivors at all from their sister ship, the
Red Dawn
.
Of the ten Mars Raiders who’d departed Mars less than a Terran month earlier, only two raced homeward in the
Red Galleon
with the ration bars that would keep the human settlement on Mars Colonial from starving.
Only two
. Jessamyn heard the words as if they were repeated by unseen whisperers while she sat alone on her bunk.
She unclenched a frozen jaw, relaxed taut fists, and rose, making her way to the bridge. There would be no more sleep after the dream. There never was.
Seating herself at the ship’s helm, she gazed upon the ice-cold beauty of a million stars. They murmured to her of infinities. They brought to mind her own small size and the vastness of the universe. That she could travel millions of kilometers while the stars remained much the same was mocking proof of how close the two worlds lay and how desperately small Jess and her craft were. Jessamyn felt sometimes as if her ship hovered in space—caught between the pull of Earth and the pull of Mars, neither advancing nor receding.
A comfortless parallel to the tug-of-war that raged within her.
She shivered and pulled up a navigational reading, which told her the watery Terran world lay nine million kilometers behind her already. Seventy-four million to go. Somewhere, upon that alien planet, Pavel Brezhnaya-Bouchard wandered with her brother. She had to believe her Terran friend Pavel had found Ethan, as he’d vowed to do. She considered writing to Pavel, a practice she’d begun their second day out from Earth, but she had nothing to say that she hadn’t already written half a dozen times over.
Are you well? Are you safe? Take care of my brother. Tell him I will return.
The letters were foolish—she had no way of delivering them. No, her only task now was to get the ration bars home.
Jess forced herself to focus on the ship’s navigational controls. Her heading was true, her speed excellent. In another few days, she might need to make a small burn to correct their course, but the ship needed nothing from her today. The screen appeared exactly as it had since their departure: Earth behind the
Galleon
, Mars before her.
Mars.
Jessamyn took in a shaky breath, her heart throbbing with dull pain as she thought of home. She yearned for it. Longed for her mother’s arms around her, her father’s soft voice telling her everything would be alright. But how could things ever be right again? How could home be home without her brother there? Her breath hitched.
Think about the
Galleon, she told herself.
Calculate something.
She pulled up the time remaining for her journey. No surprise there: sixteen and a half days until her craft intersected the path of the Red Planet. Sixteen and a half days until she could begin the process of petitioning for a mission aimed at the rescue of her brother, Harpreet, and the captain.
“I just want things to be the way they were,” she murmured to the ship. “That’s all.” Involuntarily, her head turned to Ethan’s station beside hers. Where was he now? How was he adjusting to his re-body? Was he afraid? Anxious? Humming in the monotone that indicated a retreat into the dark corners of his mind?
A shuffling noise in the hall behind her told Jessamyn that Crusty was approaching, and she pulled her gaze from her brother’s empty chair.
“You’re up early, kid,” said the mechanic.
Jess shrugged. She hadn’t admitted to Crusty that sleep came with difficulty if it came at all. “It’s a big day,” she said.
That much was true. Today she and Crusty would transmit to Mars Colonial Command the message that Mars would not starve. That while the ship’s captain, negotiator, and communications expert had been lost, the ration bars were on their way, safe in the
Galleon
’s hold.
Ethan would have been able to transmit the message visually or at least via audio. But Crusty and Jess knew only how to key in written messages. Personally, Jess was relieved that she wouldn’t have to smile or look solemn or whatever would have been appropriate. Crusty had insisted she compose the communication, as she was now the ship’s commanding officer. So she’d written and rewritten the message, never completely satisfied with the lifeless words; so cold upon the screen, so incapable of communicating the enormity of joy and despair she felt as she returned home.
Crusty seated himself at the communications station. He seemed to be feeling something as well. Jess watched as his large hands hovered over the panel, closing and opening several times as if he were contemplating performing a difficult surgery instead of merely transmitting a message.