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Falling Mars
It was a laborious business; hence, she always put it off as long as she could stand to. Dragging insulation-lined boots over bulky leggings; wriggling her fingers into stiff, unwelcoming gloves; and worst of all, donning the claustrophobia-inducing helmet. The atmosphere suits, like so many other things about the settlement, were not everything the ads had promised they'd be. But she couldn't stand the crowds any more. Life in a dusty uranium-mining Earthern town had been cramped, to be sure, but at least one could count on finding a little solitude on the apartment roofs. Here, living space was so limited that every complex roof doubled as a yard or parking facility, and there were no cold or windy nights to drive others inside and leave the streets safely deserted, silent retreats for those who valued them. Here, there was only Outside. She stole a glance out the depressurization chamber's viewport as she tightened helmet valves and checked her oxygen pressure, turning that concept over in her mind. Her flesh was of the dust of another world, and the red-stained soil of this one would always be alien to her. Here, Outside meant a hostile landscape shrouded in such a pitifully thin atmosphere that, without protection, blood would boil and asphyxiation ensue. Still, its very hostility meant quiet and reflection for those who thought them worth struggling into a suit for. She wiggled her fingers experimentally, adjusting to their newly limited dexterity, and activated the panel. Her inner ear complained briefly as atmosphere sucked out of the chamber to be replaced by thin Martian air when the hatch slid open. She made her way slowly up the hills behind the settlement dome, mindful of the dangers of overexertion. Weak gravity made the trek less strenuous than a comparable walk on Earth, but it also implied that Mars loved the settlers less than Earth had -- for Mars did not cling to them so tightly, nor did he weigh their ships down in protest when they left. She was tired by the time she reached the rocky peak, but more from introspection than from walking. Ruddy dust had settled into every suit crack and wrinkle; much of it would find its way back into the settlement, adding to the ever-expanding "dust deltas" creeping inward from every access hatch -- constant reminders that Mars, not Earth, lay outside. She checked for sharp rocks before seating herself as comfortably as the bulky suit would allow. The settlement gleamed dully below, incongruous under the reddish sky. The recruitment posters always showed a crystal dome under dazzling stars, but dust storms fogged the transparent exterior so often that the settlers had given up on keeping in clean; hence, no one could see the sky, even when the weather was good. Laborers were supposed to clean the dome periodically, but they didn't like squeezing into their suits any more than she did. With money to be made in the mines and life-sustaining maintenance to keep up with inside, window-washing just didn't seem to be that important. She agreed in theory, but it did seem too bad that they had to put up with a second "red sky" under the first one; a constant reminder that, even when the alien air was serene, they would never be able to breathe it. A movement caught her eye, and she stifled a groan -- which no one would have heard anyway. The air was too thin to carry much sound, even if it did manage to get past the helmet. A quarter-mile from the settlement and nigh one hundred yards above it, and she still couldn't get any privacy or peace. The other figure gestured, the movement registering as familiar. "Relax, Ange. It's me." She jumped at the voice in her ear and felt her cheeks heat. Smart of her, that; not checking whether the radio was on. At least it hadn't been set to a community channel, or she would have been hearing chatter all the way up the hill. Ironic, that she needed a radio to converse with someone just a few feet away; that they need tote their own life-support systems instead of moving freely within one. "Hey, Romi. You needed air too?" "Like we'll get any here," he said wryly. "If I'd known you were going to suit up, I would have come with you." She scooted over to make room for him on the boulder. "I thought you were stuck working aeroponics." "So?" The merry tone of his answer hinted at the smile hidden under his helmet. She could see it flashing unbidden in her mind's eye. "I skipped." "Rom!" She was genuinely shocked. "We need that food! We can't just walk outside and pick more if we run out, you know!" "Oh, not the maintenance," he assured her. "Just the endless lecture afterwards about how important this is for the community and how we're building a better future by mopping dust and brewing scum." "Ah." She laced her hands behind her helmet and leaned back to look upwards, placated. "Nothing we haven't all heard before." "Before or after the voyage?" Romi flicked a pebble at the settlement below. It drifted lazily, curving back to ground well short of its intended target. "The rhetoric does sound a little hollow now, doesn't it?" she murmured. "Mining long enough to allow for company profits plus our own; that's one thing. But to tout this place as a paradise --" "Which it isn't." "--which it isn't," she agreed. "I mean, it's not horrible; it's not a slave camp. But it does make one feel, well -- a little cheated, I guess." "Yeah." He wrapped his arms around his knees. "Just a little." They were quiet then, allowing each other the comfortable solitude they both craved. Conversations could be continued inside, if they didn't mind the lack of privacy; here, words chipped away at both tranquility and oxygen. The tanks were good for a couple hours each, not counting the emergency reserves, but after that they would have to head home. Home. She searched the heavens above, looking for a special point of light. She saw a faint streak or two that might have been falling stars... in this thin atmosphere, the brilliant trails she'd grown up with were just another Earthern memory. "It's not entirely the company's fault, you know," Romi murmured, interrupting her search. "Hmm?" she queried, trying to catch up with his train of thought "It's not all their fault," he clarified, waving vaguely at the settlement below them. "The paradise stuff, that was just marketing hype. They didn't know -- there was no way they could have foreseen -- this." His gesture rounded to include the two of them; a pair of Earth-children in atmosphere suits sitting on an alien rock, searching the skies for just one glimpse of home. "Earthsickness." His point made, Romi let his arm drop. "Yeah." That was it, really, wasn't it; that was the heart of the matter. It wasn't just the lack of privacy, the hostile environment or the cramped and difficult working conditions. They were children out of sorts with each other because their mother was gone; or, in this case, because they'd gone away from their mother. "Remember trees?" she whispered. "Lakes?" "Hummingbirds?" "Falling stars?" They were silent again, each running through a long mental list of the things they missed most. Terran winds wet and dry; living landscapes; untarnished sunlight. Mountain peaks covered in precious ice water, worth its weight in gold here on Mars; blooms and insects and birds -- "I see it," he said suddenly, sitting up straight. "Where?" Romi pointed, and Ange leaned closer to sight along his arm. There. It was rising now, hanging just over the dome like a beacon of hope. She caught her breath, fighting a sudden rush of tears. They had searched the sky from here many times together, scanning through collapsible telescopes until their home planet's path was etched deep into memory. She didn't need to see oceans and continents to know it was Earth. She didn't need to see the moon and clouds to know it was home. They watched their planet rise together, quickened with a fierce homing instinct that flew in the face of contracts and profits. The sphere revolving in the heavens above them was more than a place to set one's feet; more than a giver of food and water. Their flesh was her dust, their tears of her salt; their very instincts so attuned to her that they could re-adjust to her gravity in a fraction of the time required to adjust to Mars'. "Someday, Ange," Romi murmured, speaking for both of them. "Just a few more months now..." Yes. Just a little while longer; raising algae, filling quotas, hauling ore, maintaining drills. A few more months of rubbing shoulders with all and sundry -- four to a room, one dozen per kitchen. A little bit longer of sneaking outside when the crush became unbearable, hiking uphill to pine for a point of light. "Yes," she agreed softly. "Someday, you and I are going home." -The End Falling Mars @ Tripleguess 2005. Readers may freely reproduce and archive copies for noncommercial use.
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