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October 8th, 2000
The
first time I ever met an Earthling was when my cousin, Trip,
came to Mars three weeks ago. I had heard lots of horror
stories about Earthlings before Trip arrived, so I wasn't
all that eager to meet him. But he was my cousin after all.
Whatever.
What had I heard about Earthlings? Well I've seen some video and they all look really fat and stupid to me. Lots of them wear funny plastic and metal spectacles and some of them put tubes of burning tobacco in their mouths. And all they care about is money. It's too bad, cause there are lots of interesting things to do besides smoke, get fat, and buy things. But that seems to be the obsession of the Earthlings.
As for myself, my name is Kelly. I'll be a sophomore at New Houston University in the fall. (That's near Nirgal Vallis, where water was first discovered here.) I'm a normal looking kid, blonde hair always in a pony tail, but some Earthlings would consider me a little skinny. But I like my 183 cm. body, even if I do only have a mass-weight of 50 kilos, That's what eating right and growing up in the Martian gravity, one third of Earth's, will do for you.
So Trip moved here with his dad, my dad's brother, when he was offered a job as a metallurgical engineer with NuMars Construction. We're building a pretty neat pipeline, if you can call it that, from city to city, and high-speed pods can move thousands of people per hour between New Houston and the outlying areas.
Anyway, I knew it might be a bit trying when Dad and I picked Trip up at the spaceport. As dad and I sat in the gate area, I watched all these over weight Earthlings waddle down the ramp. Lucky for them, they were in one-third standard gravity, or some might have keeled over just carrying all that luggage. When dad saw his brother, we walked over, and they started hugging and talking. I looked around and finally saw what appeared to be Trip skipping down the ramp. Just when he got to the gate area, he tried to put on the brakes, but he misjudged the friction he could get in this gravity and tripped over the metal interface strip on the carpet. Tumbling, rolling and grabbing out for anything he could find, he finally came to rest, with all his carry-on stuff, in a big pile at my feet.
"You must be Trip," I said hardly hiding my disgust. "Looks like they named you well." I folded my arms and squinted at him. He looked up at me with big,brown eyes, brushed his long dish-water blonde hair away from his eyes, and smiled.
"Yep. That'd be me," he said as he reached out his hand so I could pull him up. He looked pretty heavy, so I just turned and walked away. Over my shoulder, I said "You can pick up your stuff and follow us."
We caught the shuttle back to our home in New Houston. The shuttle is just a big, tracked vehicle with big windows for the tourists. As I sat down next to Trip, he was fumbling with his carry-on stuff when he looked up at me. "You know, I've never seen a girl as skinny as you ... no offense."
Clearly, Trip was doing his miserable best to make a good first impression. "Really? I've never met anyone as stupid as you. No offense."
Trip said, "Huh?" and looked a little confused. Evidently, in addition to being an Earthling, clumsy and a little stupid, he also seemed to lack some basic conversational skills. That said, I thought it would be a good idea to check him out. Even though he's only going to be a freshman in the fall, he ought to know something.
"So. Ever heard of Kaluza-Klein?"
"Um. Sure. They make jeans. Why?"
"Of course they do. So how's your Riemannian geometry?"
"I never heard of Romanian geometry."
"Of course you haven't. You're from Earth."
"Hey," he objected. "What's all this attitude about people from Earth? All you Martians think you're so damn superior. Well, if you're so smart, how come you you had to bring my dad a billion miles to help you out, miss smartass?"
"Eighty-one million miles," I said quietly, "on a Hohmann transfer orbit." Trip had nothiing to say to that, so he turned his head towards the glass. I gazed up through the transparent roof. Phobos was overhead, pale and rocky against the pink sky. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Trip looking at nothing as the dunes slid by, biting his lip.
"It must be that damn red sky. Makes you all crazy," he said under his breath. He continued to stare out the window and didn't look at me the rest of the way home. Whatever.
I have a summer job delivering equipment to the radio observatory, about 10 kilometers from the university. (Summer in the sense that it's during the Martian summer, but the job doesn't last 171 days. I wish it did!) We use a tracked rover, smaller than the shuttles, since there's no pipeline to the observatory.
About a week after Sluggo arrived, (that's what I started calling Trip), dad spilled the beans to him that I make regular runs out to the observatory. Oh, wonderful. The boy wonder just had to go along for a ride according to dad -- he thought it would be a good way to introduce Trip to Mars. For the past week, I had used every trick I knew to avoid seeing Sluggo again. I suggested to dad that this was a very bad idea. I pleaded. I tried logic. I tried to invoke University policy (there was none) prohibiting civilians in the cab with me. Finally, I tried crying a little. That usually works with dad.
It didn't work.
So, on Monday morning when I showed up at the University warehouse to start loading supplies who should walk in but Sluggo, looking all bright and chipper, like an Irish Setter, eager to help.
"I hear you're gonna take me for a ride to the observatory," he said.
"It wasn't my idea."
"Can I ride up front?" He walked along the side of the rover, brushing his hand along the tracks. "Not too many windows back here in the cargo bay."
"You can ride up front if you sit on your hands and touch nothing."
"Swell!"
Swell? Swell? The man's a virtuoso conversationalist. I sighed. "See those boxes over there?" I pointed. "You might as well load them into the back. And be careful. That's delicate electronic equipment. RF devices. Tie them down with the bungee cords."
"Yes ma'am!"
"Whatever."
After Sluggo got the boxes loaded, I closed the hatch, and we climbed into the cab. I started the pressure check as I rolled the rover towards the double doors. As the first airlock door slid upwards, and I moved us into the airlock, the boy wonder started touching himself all over.
"Now what?" I asked.
"I can't get a signal," he said visibly annoyed.
I should mention here that most Earthlings wear their personal computers in their clothing. Wireless signals go out to their eyeglasses and wrist watches. But they have to be tied into the Earth-Mars Net to be fully linked up.
"We're not on the Net outside the complex, " I said. Hearing that, Sluggo furrowed his eyebrows and folded his arms. "I'm not used to being off the Net," he pouted.
"Do you want to see Mars, or do you want to watch adverts? Let me know, cause I'm gonna cycle the airlock."
"All right. Let's go." But he kept his arms folded and acted real weird. Must have been sensory deprivation.
About ten minutes out, I could hear the cargo shifting. Even in one-third gravity, it's easy for boxes to slide around in the rover if they're not secured well. I didn't want to arrive at the observatory with broken equipment, so I stopped the rover.
"Stay put Don't move. I'm going into the back to check the cargo."
"Swell."
Mister swell hadn't done a real good job lashing the boxes, so I secured them with more bungee cords and crawled back to the cab. When I got there, the boy wonder had moved over to the driver's seat. He'd turned the electric motors back on and had the vehicle in gear. I screamed at him. "What the frell are you doing?! Stop!"
It was too late. The vehicle lurched forward, much faster than was smart on this kind of terrain, and I was thrown back through the hatch as we accelerated wildly. Sluggo was hooting, "Yesserie! I can do this!" By the time I was able to pull myself through again, I could see that the wiz kid was headed straight towards a 20 m crater at 40 kph. I yelled "STOP!", but the master mind hadn't exactly passed his driver's exam. He didn't have a clue where the brakes were.
The last thing I saw, we careened forward into the crater and started rolling to the right in the soft sand. The idiot was gonna roll my rover! Boxes slid towards me, and all I could hear was the sound of metal crunching and electric motors reving as we slid down the crater wall, upside down. We hit bottom with a terrible crunching sound, and that was when something hit my head, and I blacked out.
When I came to, the cabin was dark and quiet. Boxes were on top of me. All I could hear was a gentle hiss -- air was leaking out of the rover. I started to push a box off me with my foot, then realized, as pain shot through my foot, that my ankle was very likely broken.
Just one word came to mind as I lay there ... swell.
Copyright 2000 by
John Martellaro, All rights reserved.
About the Author
John Martellaro lives in Colorado at 2,800 meters above sea level with a Ph.D. wife and two cats, Nikki and Data. He holds a B.S. in Astrophysics and an M.S. in Physics. His hobbies, include amateur astronomy, downhill skiing, bicycling, and listening to piano solos. His personal Macs are a B&W G3/400 with a flat screen Studio Display and a blueberry iBook.
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