We walked. The packed-dirt trail went through the edge of some woods, winding around trees and rocks. Every now and then, the forest opened up to places where the hillside was bare rock with fallen boulders strewn through the trees. Active geology at work. Even I recognized the signs, and the familiarity with formations I’d seen on Mars was comforting. The trees lined a meadow in a valley, and across the open grass, the steep wall of a cliff rose up. Just like a cliff on Mars. Except for all the trees, of course. Something kept whistling in the branches above us. Tiny little birds, hopping around, zipping between branches. I only caught glimpses of them.
“How can they expect us to sleep outside?” Ladhi said. She kept glancing up, like she expected the sky, or trees, or rock, or anything, to fall down on us. “That’s inhumane. Isn’t there some kind of law about that? About cruel and unusual punishment?”
“Technically, by enrolling in Galileo we agreed to any Galileo-related activities. Including this,” Charles observed. “The courts would consider it consensual.”
“What would happen if we refused to play along?” Boris wondered. Dripping sweat cut stripes through the dust on his face and neck.
“Black marks on your record,” Tenzig said. “They could probably even boot you out.” The station kid was making a good show of pretending the exertion in heavy gravity didn’t bother him, but he was sweating as much as the rest of us, and his steps weren’t any faster.
Ethan sighed, slapping his arm. “Ow. What was that? Oh hell, was that alive?” He was staring at a tiny red smear on his palm.
“Bugs,” Tenzig said.
“Insects,” Charles added. “Parasitic. They feed on human blood.”
Flinching, Ethan made a retching noise and scrubbed his hand off on his pants.
“Oh, gross!” Ladhi said. “I thought that instructor said nothing out here would attack us!”
“He probably didn’t think insects were worth mentioning,” Charles said.
I’d seen clouds of the little freaks—a hundred black specks that hovered off the trail, like antigravity dust. Life—this planet was swarming with it and I wasn’t sure I liked it. It made everything so grubby. On Mars, we knew exactly where the life was and could be confident that it would swarm only in petri dishes.
“They don’t really eat blood, do they?” Ladhi said, checking her arms, patting her shirt, eyes wide and horrified.
“It’s probably best not to think about it too much,” I said. That was what I was doing—not thinking about it. I just had to remember that people had been living on this planet for tens of thousands of years, and humanity had somehow been able to survive bloodsucking insects during that time. Mostly. Charles had wisely not mentioned the diseases they might be carrying, which was something else I’d read about and was trying to ignore. Sure, space would kill you given half a chance, but nobody talked about the millions of ways Earth was constantly trying to kill people.
We’d been given lotion to spread over our skin to protect against UV radiation. This shouldn’t have been too scary, since on Mars we had to wear entire environmental suits to protect against radiation. But it was a reminder that as much as people liked to think it, Earth wasn’t totally safe. It was just a different kind of dangerous.
“I’m really sorry, guys, but I need to take a break,” Ethan said, sinking onto a rock in a small clearing.
None of us argued. The trouble with stopping was how hard it was to get started again. My legs ached, from my feet rubbing in my boots to the burn in my muscles. It was easy enough to fold up and sit on the ground, right where I stopped.
We sat on rocks and dirt, too tired to talk, taking sips from our canteens. The air felt so hot I had trouble breathing. I didn’t think air could get this hot without killing us all. And yet here we were, miserable and alive.
Ethan splashed water from his canteen onto his face, which seemed like a great idea.
But Charles said, “Careful with that. We have to make the water last until tomorrow.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” Ethan put the cap on his canteen, which he put back in its slot on his pack.
This wasn’t a test of cooperation or a confidence-building exercise. It was a test of sheer endurance. How long could we last before screaming for someone to come and take us back home?
“Maybe we could just sit here until tomorrow,” Ladhi said. “How would they know?”
“They’re tracking us,” Tenzig said. “I bet they come check on us if they see our GPS unit stops for more than a few minutes before we get to the camp.”
“And how many black marks would that get you?” Charles said. Tenzig scowled.
The sense that this was all a game increased when we reached our destination. The narrow trail curved around a hill, and the forest opened into a wide, flat space cleared of rocks and debris. It looked like it had been prepared for us.
“According to the GPS, this is it,” Tenzig announced, which we’d all pretty much figured out for ourselves.
We’d gotten here just in time. The sun was setting, the shadows darkening. Being in a valley with mountains around us, we were losing light quickly. We had flashlights, but it would be best if we could get everything set up before the sky got completely dark.
We were too tired to argue about how to set up. Ethan and Ladhi got the stove up and running. Tenzig, Marie, and I managed to put up our shelter, a sheet of lightweight fabric held up with poles and ropes. Charles and Boris sorted the food and arranged something resembling dinner. Each of us laid out our own bedroll. Charles discovered a container of insect repellant in our mini first-aid kit. We used just about all of it on ourselves and around the perimeter of the site. It had a sharp, mediciney stink to it, but I figured that was a good thing—if it stank, surely the bugs would stay away.
The food was some raw stuff—fruit, nuts, chocolate—and some freeze-dried stew stuff that we added water to and cooked over the stove. I didn’t taste it so much as feel it—the hot food felt incredibly good after the long, sweaty day, warming my stomach, then my whole insides. We nibbled for a while, cleaned up, put everything away, and turned the setting on the stove from cook to heat. As hot and sweaty as we’d been during the day, the air had turned chilly after dark. We were glad for the blankets.