Another Girl, Another Planet Read online

  And that’s how we parted.

  * * *

  After a few “spins around the Number Three Ball,” as one of the pilots called it—I later learned that was a nod to billiards—we went in for a vertical landing at the space port, which was close to the colony, at a sunken installation in a nearby graben that provided protection in case of an accident or explosion.

  As we lined up to exit, I saw the three female Mormon missionaries. They waved and I waved back. I mouthed “Good Luck!” and Mignonette replied with a thumbs up gesture and a big smile.

  As I walked into customs, I picked up a bounce in my step. It felt good to feel solid “Mars” beneath my feet.

  My ears popped as soon as I was inside the building. I realized the air pressure was a lot lower here—or maybe it was just high inside the space ship. In any case, the “pop” was strong enough that I smiled as I imagined a bystander seeing dust shooting out the sides of my head.

  My smile and whatever fleeting positive feelings I had upon arriving and getting solid ground under my feet were quickly dissipated when I saw that East Germans manned customs. They loved to put “Amis” through the wringer. They all had a congenital scowl and a dubious attitude.

  I was a bit startled as I walked up to smell cigarette smoke, although I could not see anyone smoking.

  “Who needs to see my papers?” I asked in what I thought was a normal tone.

  I looked around a bit in confusion. My words seemed faint and distant.

  One of the East Germans cracked a sardonic smile at my obvious look of confusion.

  “After spending months inside a tin can, you need to raise your voice,” he said. “The wide open spaces swallow your words.”

  I cleared my throat. “Okay, very well, then,” I said, louder this time.

  “That is better,” he said. “You will get your voice back.” He jerked a thumb toward a counter. “That way, mein herr.”

  When the first customs inspector looked at my passport, he gestured to a middle-aged man in the back, who came forward and took my passport from him as a second man with a much friendlier smile took away my travel bag.

  The man in the shiny Eastern Bloc suit came up to me. “Welcome to Mars, Mister Shuster,” he said, in flawless, albeit British-accented, English. “I see this is your first time here.”

  He reeked of cigarette smoke, and his teeth were atrocious, but his smile seemed genuine.

  “Yes, thank you,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it. And my new posting.”

  He clapped his hands once and smiled even wider.

  “Yes, congratulations. I always make it a point to greet members of our allied governments as they arrive and depart,” he said as he extended his hand. “I am Gunter Lielischkies, the senior administrator of the base’s customs bureau.”

  I noticed his fingertips were brown with nicotine stains. I thought he must have some considerable clout to be able to get a supply of cigarettes here, and to smoke them in such a controlled environment.

  I shook his hand. “Can you notify Governor Wilder I’ve arrived?”

  A scowl instantly crossed his face and he winced. “That’s why I especially wanted to greet you in person.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Governor Wilder died last night. He had a heart attack in bed.”

  “Oh, shit,” I blurted out. Lielischkies raised his eyebrows at my exclamation.

  Lielischkies had a thin, long nose and eyebrows that nearly met and made him look like he was always squinting. When he raised his eyebrows he looked surprised.

  Or maybe he was surprised.

  He seemed to be crafty enough to know what instantly ran through my mind. The lieutenant governor was gone, and now there was no governor. I was stepping into a power vacuum.

  I’d been told, by a few people in the few days after I made the decision to take the Mars posting, that the Eastern Europeans were much more crafty and reserved than the NATO people in the space service. It was a good place for aspiring spies to prove their worth and hone their skills in a relatively harmless environment.

  I think Lielischkies was startled because I was so unaffected. Truth was, I was still very wet behind the ears, and it showed. I was badly startled by the news. I was blinking rapidly and I had set my mouth tight.

  “Mister Shuster—may I call you Dave?”

  “Yes, please, let’s not stand on formalities.”

  “Dave, you’re young and this is your first posting. I believe this is not pleasant news. There are many people here, in both NATO and WarPac, who have an interest in the smooth operation of the colony. Feel free to ask for advice, especially when you’re stumped and people in your own office can’t answer a question because of protocol,” Lielischkies said as he laid a hand on my sleeve.

  He was probably trying to ingratiate himself with me to use me somewhere down the line, but right then, it wasn’t a bad suggestion.

  “Thank you, Gunter,” I said. My voice shook a little. “I may be young, but I pride myself on my problem-solving skills. I’ll get through this.”

  “Great American bravado,” he said with a smile as he tossed his head back. “It can’t hurt.”

  The second inspector came up behind him, my bag in hand. Lielischkies gestured for him to give it to me.

  “No search,” he said. “We extend diplomatic courtesy, even though you are not a diplomat.”

  That was reassuring, and I started to regain my composure. “All you’ll find is dirty underwear and a half-eaten sandwich.”

  Lielischkies smiled, and the inspector chuckled. He was tall and big, with strawberry blonde hair.

  “My name is Ivan Iglyztin,” he said as he stepped forward and put me in a bear hug, patting me soundly on the back.

  I popped loose from Ivan’s clasp. “Thanks, Hoss,” I said, thinking of Dan Blocker in “Bonanza”, whom he reminded me of a bit.“I’m glad to be here, too.”

  Lielischkies nodded toward the exit. “Your office manager, Miss Canning, is waiting for you,” he said.

  I thanked them and headed off. Ivan went back to the check-in. Lielischkies went back to his desk, and smiled in a rather fixed way at me.

  That bouncy positive feeling I had when I walked in from the ship was gone. My shoes didn’t make a sound because of the thick rubber matting as I walked down the hallway toward the exit like a prisoner going down that last mile.

  I gave myself a reassuring internal pep talk. “Hey, I’m a Columbia grad, I’m a hard worker and sharp, and I listen well. I can get through this.

  The doors from customs opened automatically, and I could feel another change in air pressure. I walked through so fast, looking straight ahead, that it took me a second to see the small, dark-haired young lady not even five feet tall standing in front of me. I stopped in my tracks because if I got any closer I would loom over her.

  She stopped pacing and wrinkled her brow as she looked up at me.

  “Mister Shuster?” she asked.

  “You must be Miss Canning.”

  “Yes, Sherry Canning,” she said quickly. “Did you get the bad news?”

  “Yes, Governor Wilder had a heart attack.”

  “He was found dead in his bed this morning,” she said. “Who told you?”

  “Gunter Lielischkies, back there.”

  “Crafty old spy always knows everything first,” she said.

  Sherry Canning wore a dark professional-style suit, with a nice gold necklace that looked like a torque. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and her make-up was subdued. Her eyes were dark and lively and were very animated when she talked. She struck me immediately as someone who tried not to let whomever she was talking to know she was probably smarter than them.

  “Well, he’s just as good a person to tell me as anyone,” I said. “What happened?”

  “The governor was 68. His heart wasn’t in the best condition. Still, it’s a terrible shock—and it’s going to be rough.” She fixed her gaze in the dist
ance. “He’s been our first and only civilian governor these past seven years.”

  She turned toward me. “There is a moving roadway that connects the spaceport with Dome One. We can take the moving sidewalk next to it, to the transport station.”

  There were no windows in the spaceport customs area because it was close enough to the launch pad that it got slammed by the exhaust and sand thrown up by the ships, but there were rows of Plexiglas windows along the long above-ground “tunnel” that held the moving roadway and sidewalk. As I stepped on the moving sidewalk, I reached for my hair—it felt like someone had touched my head. Then I realized it was the ventilation system, something I had missed on the ship.

  That was the first time I set eyes on the Martian landscape.

  I turned, and with my hand still on my head, I looked at the alien, reddish orange Martian landscape. I think I actually gasped.

  Sherry noticed where I was looking. “Ever been to Arizona? Some people say the color reminds them of sandstone canyons.”

  I looked across the dark reddish orange hills and slopes of the canyon’s walls in the distance. “It looks more like Cyndi Lauper’s hair.”

  She laughed so hard she had to steady herself on the railing of the moving sidewalk. “Wow, you are going to be a breath of fresh air,” she said with a big smile.

  The moving sidewalk had a metal mesh surface, and I scraped my shoes just to hear the sound and to convince myself it was all real.

  “Speaking of fresh air, the air here does seem a lot fresher than on the ship.”

  She pointed toward a window. “See those large standpipes sticking out of the sand there? Those are our atmospheric intakes.” She crossed her arms. “Mars does not have much oxygen, but we make the best use of what we have.”

  “It’s a lot fresher. I didn’t realize how stale the recirculated air on the ship had become,” I said. “Like a stale bureaucracy.”

  “You have a quick and friendly wit.”

  “Humor is a great way to deal with stress.”

  “Well, welcome to a laugh riot then,” she said. “We were already stressed out. Mark Davis-Seale, the man you’re replacing, left on very short notice. He’s been gone a month, and just as we thought things were going to ease up because of your arriving, Wilder dies on us. It will take at least half a year to pick his replacement.”

  The walkway took us along. “So who’s officially in charge?” I asked.

  “We are. There’s no lieutenant governor. The last one left in the summer. Like I said, it takes at least a half-year to replace an administrative position out here. I’m the head of the support staff, and you’re low man on the totem pole for the administrative staff.”

  “Great, you’d think they would pay more attention to this place,” I said. “I mean, look at it.”

  Multiple domes rose abruptly from the reddish-orange dunes, each with its own set of communication towers. After spending months in the ship, the sight of the small futuristic city appearing in the distance was impressive.

  “Although we’re officially a joint venture, the Soviets are not that interested in the day-to-day operations,” she said. “They are paying a lot more attention to current operations on the Moon, since they have the administration there now on rotation.”

  “Yes, we built it up for them, hopefully they won’t mess it up in 20 years,” I said.

  “Now you sound like a Reaganite,” she said.

  “I’m not anti-Soviet; I’m a cynic,” I said. “Bureaucracy knows no ideology.”

  She smiled. “You’re a smart boy. You pick up on things quickly. That’s why they sent Wilder out here to be governor. There wasn’t much to do, and he didn’t do it.” She stared ahead. “He spent most of his time drinking, and …”

  She stopped.

  “Let me guess, he was an older version of Gary Hart?”

  Sherry turned slowly and looked at me in amazement. “You’re much too sharp to get stuck in this sand trap,” she finally said.

  “I’m here, and I’m going to do the job I asked for,” I said. “Let’s make the best of it. I come from a long line of stubborn Italians.”

  “You’re Italian? Shuster doesn’t sound like an Italian name.”

  I held forth as the walkway carried up forward, a steady hum under our feet.

  “It’s not. When my Italian grandfather arrived at Ellis Island and was asked his name, he told them it was Cascacieri. He arrived in the Lower East Side with papers that said ‘Shuster.’ I suppose that was the closest some Irish immigration official could make out of what he said.”

  The moving sidewalk turned into an escalator as the tunnel rose out of the depressed graben toward the nearest dome, which loomed over us. The buildings above us grew in size as we moved upward toward them, and I thought I felt a slight change in air pressure. I yawned in case my ears needed popping.

  Sherry looked at me. “Would you like a piece of gum?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. So who is on staff here, then?” I asked.

  She held up a hand as she began to count off.

  “The support staff is made up of a half dozen people. Bill Bauer does the graphic arts and composition. Melanie Whitcher is the head of copying and reproduction. Richard ‘Doc’ Thompson is the in-house legal counselor and advisor. Bill Ledbetter is the engineer who reviews all plans. Jim Ellis is the head of housekeeping, and Glinda ‘Ma’ Boozer is our in-house rocket scientist.”

  “Sounds like a small but skilled staff. I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

  “It’s all we need with the size of the colony. I’m a certified professional administrator myself.”

  The colony dome above us now seemed very large. A few people passed us on the opposite side of the escalator on the way down. They all looked preoccupied.

  “Did you say someone is named Mabuse?” I asked.

  “Yes, Glinda Boozer’s nickname is ‘Ma.’”

  “Is she maternal?”

  “No, not in the least. She’s the closest thing we have to a mad scientist on staff. I’m told the nickname is a joke, a pun on a mad scientist from an old silent movie.”

  “Yes, I know the movie. Dr. Mabuse was a villain in a movie made by Fritz Lang. Shit, I hope she’s nothing like her namesake.”

  “Oh, she’s nuts, but the most useful person on the staff. She can figure out or fix anything.”

  We came to a stop in front of an airlock portal that led to one of the colony’s domes.

  “This is where our office is, Dome One,” she said as she slipped a card in a reader, and the door opened.

  “Obviously,” I said, stepping across the threshold. The air was full of muffled sounds and voices, and there was a steady rush of ventilation.

  I remember that was the first time I heard the ubiquitous creepy chirping sound an automatic door makes when it slides sideways on a rubber track. As many of those airtight doors as there are in the Mars colony and in all the domes, everyone else got used to the sound, I guess, but for some reason I never did.

  I always thought it sounded like some kind of alien creature scuttling across the floor. It was a totally artificial sound, yet it sounded somehow organic—a result, I think, of its irregularity.

  Horror movies by then had moved into space, as a result of 1979’s Alien, starring Meg Foster. Before then, any horror movies with aliens were set on Earth, with the bug-eyed monsters coming to torment us. But after space colonization began, those movies stopped, as people saw there were no aliens on the Moon or Mars. Space didn’t seem as potentially threatening.

  Then Ridley Scott leapfrogged us into the future, and into deep space, and suddenly we had science fiction space horror movies again. Thanks, dude.

  We walked inside. “This is where all the government offices are.”

  “Where are the corporations headquartered?” I asked.

  “Generally in Dome Three, though some are in Dome Six—for the manufacturing firms.”

  I don’t know why, but I asked,
“Who’s the biggest manufacturer?”

  “That’s Tesla, an East German company, but it’s headed by an American citizen, Gerry Kurland.”

  I frowned and shook my head. “Never heard of him.”

  “You will. He’s got his finger in every pie here. Tesla makes all the robots and androids. That’s what keeps the manufacturing and construction moving.”

  We walked inside. “He also tends to pay close attention to Mars affairs. All the other corporations are based on Earth. But with robotic technology banned there and on the Moon, he has all his eggs in our one basket.”

  We went down a short hallway and into a lobby with a bank of elevators. We got into one. “And he keeps a close eye on that basket,” she said as the doors closed.

  When it opened, we exited into a reception area that flowed into the outer main administration area. The centerpiece of the outer office sat on a raised platform in this reception area. I’d heard of it before.

  Despite Mars being the smaller of the two space colonies, we had Admiral Heinlein’s cannon—the ceremonial small cannon he had transported to the Moon in 1955 when the colony was set up there. He had it moved to Mars when it became the outermost colony 20 years later. He joked when he sent it out on the first construction ship that left Earth, “It’s just to remind everyone to be willing to fight anybody that gets in our way.”

  By 1985 Admiral Heinlein was very old and not in good health; his running buddy, Admiral Rickover, was just as decrepit. The founding generation of the space service was dying out. But Rickover had brought up a bright Annapolis grad through the ranks alongside him, who’d actually majored in nuclear engineering and was 20 years younger. Although he sounded like a hick with his thick Georgia drawl, Commander James Earl “Jimmy” Carter was sharp as a tack and had always kept a keen grasp of the situation at his fingertips. I’d heard through the grapevine that he was really running the show.

  At that point, Rickover had been in the Navy over 60 years, and it was continuous service; Heinlein had served from 1929 to 1934, and then was mustered out because he contracted tuberculosis. He worked as an engineer at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard during World War II, after having spent the intervening years, strangely enough, writing pulp science fiction. He must have learned something about science while writing science fiction, because it was his memo to President Wallace in the fall of 1945 that kick-started the joint space program. Just as the memo from Professor Einstein led to the start of the Manhattan Project, it was Heinlein’s memo, after it was passed along by Admiral Rickover, that convinced President Wallace that nuclear development and proliferation was impossible to stop after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it would be safer for both sides to cooperate in turning that new-found source of energy toward a peaceful joint effort to colonize space.