Martians Abroad

The place looked like any engineering workstation on Mars, consoles with screens set into them, slim chairs bolted to the deck, panel after panel of indicator lights, toggle switches, fingertip-size buttons. There were speakers and vents, cabinets painted red and marked with emergency symbols, numbers scrolling on a monitor, thick binder notebooks stuffed full of pages hooked to a shelf with plastic cords. All of it was dimly lit with inset lighting to reduce glare. I’d seen lots of pictures of all kinds of ship bridges, from tiny shuttle cabins to the big cargo cruisers. This was my first time seeing one in person. The big difference between this and a planet-side workstation: the chairs moved. They were set into rockers so they could change orientation when the ship changed heading. This whole thing moved.

The bridge had chairs for six crew members. On the off shift, only one person was here working, probably one of the junior crew set to monitoring the systems. Once the rockets had been fired, taking the ship out of Mars orbit, momentum would carry it straight to Earth. There wouldn’t be much piloting or navigating to do until we approached Earth orbit. I’d love to see that, all six chairs filled, the whole bridge busy. But this was better than nothing. I wasn’t going to complain.

Lieutenant Clancy said, “That’s the command station, where Captain McCaven sits when he’s on duty—”

“It has data feeds from all the other positions on the bridge, and also engineering, communications, and the sensor feeds. The pilot sits there, and those are the thruster controls, right? For coupling with station-docking systems. The navigator sits there, that monitor displays the charts. That’s the radio for short-range communications. That panel monitors M-drive activity, I think.”

Clancy stared at me. “You really are into this.”

“I told you, I’m going to be a pilot someday.”

“Well. Good for you, kid.”

The junior crew member might have chuckled.

I didn’t know how long he’d let me stay here, so I tried to take it all in, to memorize every piece of it. There must have been a million buttons, and I wanted to know what every single one of them did. I took a deep breath. The place had a close, comfortable atmosphere, smelling of work and buzzing with the low hum of cooling fans. It felt like a place where amazing things happened. I was itching to sit in one of those seats … the captain’s seat. That would get me booted out for sure, so I stayed where I was.

I almost wished that something exciting would happen while I watched. Not too exciting, of course, nothing like a hull breach or radiation-shield failure. Maybe a micrometeoroid hit that would set off an alarm and require some kind of damage report. But nothing happened. All the lights that were supposed to glow quietly to themselves kept glowing, and no alarms sounded. The crew member seemed to be reading a book on her handheld.

Finally, Clancy glanced at the panel on the captain’s consol and clicked his tongue. “All right, I think that’s enough. Time to go, Ms. Newton.”

It had only been a couple of minutes. Wasn’t nearly long enough. I thought about arguing—just a few more minutes, I wasn’t hurting anything—then thought better of it. Best be polite. Maybe they’d let me on again before the end of the trip. Maybe they’d let me sit at one of the stations—

I thanked Lieutenant Clancy and let him escort me back to the observation lounge. The room seemed so … ordinary.

“Good luck to you, kid,” he said. “I hope you make it.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it. But, I mean—why wouldn’t I?”

“Oh, you know. You’re headed for Earth, and you’re … Never mind. You’ll do fine.”

He turned back around for the bridge before I could ask what he meant.

I lay back on one of the sofas in the lounge, my eyes closed, and ingrained every detail of the Lilia Litviak’s bridge on my memory, every light and panel and switch, every readout and what it meant. I could have piloted the ship myself if I had to. Well, I couldn’t really, I knew that. But I knew enough to qualify for pilot training. No way anyone could keep me from it. Clancy didn’t need to sound so skeptical.

I cornered Charles at supper. “What’s Earth like, really?”

He glared. “You’ve seen the same brochures I have.”

He’d laugh if I told him about begging to get a look at the bridge, so I didn’t tell him what Clancy said. “Are we going to have trouble there?”

“Oh, probably. We’re from the hinterlands, why shouldn’t they give us trouble?”

“Then why would Mom send us there? Besides to make her look good.”

“Maybe so we’ll get used to it.”

“But if we were never going to leave Mars anyway—”

“It’s a bigger universe than that, Polly.”

I was crazy thinking he’d give me a straight answer.

4

We entered Earth orbit three days later. I entertained fantasies of getting to sit on the bridge to watch the maneuvering sequence that would use Earth’s gravity to help slow the ship and nudge it into orbit around the planet. It was one of those common procedures I’d spent my whole life reading about, seen in countless videos—the kind of thing I’d be doing someday—but I’d never experienced it myself. How amazing, to watch it from the bridge. But all passengers were restricted to their cabins and required to strap into their bunks to brace for the banging and bouncing that happened when a ship changed acceleration and direction.

Even lying flat and belted in, the orbital maneuvering was cool. I turned on the commentary on my bunk-side monitor and got a rundown on the whole process, from the approach, to the calculations that determined the exact angle of approach that would result in an orbit and not skidding off into another trajectory, to the turn of the engines to face the opposite direction to decelerate … Simulated gravity shifted and faded, and my stomach flopped over. My bunk shook and my teeth rattled. When I laughed, my voice vibrated.