Road to Landing-3

Theodora Long clutched the handles on either side of her seat. The straps of her harness dug into her torso with every lurch and thrust of the ferry.

She had never been inside such an untrustworthy vehicle before. The seating was three benches, one on each side and one down the middle of the cab -- standard enough, except that in a former life, this vehicle had evidently been a materials courier. The tiny cab was cramped and close. Theodora’s knees almost touched those of her across-the-way neighbor, a young man with a yellow engineer’s patch on the upper arms of his suit. He was staring at the floor with no expression on his face.

Up front, the compartment that was supposed to separate the pilot from the passengers was missing its door. Theodora watched the scruffy man in coveralls crash the gears and manhandle the steering wheel with slick carelessness, until her heart felt permanently stuck in her throat.

Her mother wrapped her fingers around Theodora’s left wrist and squeezed. “Relax, baby,” she whispered through the rattling of loose siding and the clanking grind of the tires underneath them. Her honey-blonde hair was hidden under the hood of her suit, leaving her already spare-featured face stranded and thin within the dark depths of her unvisored helmet.

“How much longer?” Theodora whispered back.

In answer, her mother just squeezed again and flickered a smile. She didn’t know. They had already been driving for hours, and for all they knew it was a nightmare ride that might go on forever. Strange things happened outside of the Big House -- everyone heard the stories.

That was why people stayed Inside. That was why people like Theodora and her mother, normal people, lived in the Big House and weren’t shipped out to the old, moldering ruins of the Landings. The Commission that led the human colonization of Mars had been reactivating the old sites -- for what, Theodora didn’t know. The letter that had been delivered to them (one month ago, was it only one month?) had only said that the facilities had been deemed reclaimable, that the next stage of Project Landing Grounds was going active, that she and her mother were now crew on Group B-7.

There had been no question of choice. But that didn’t mean Theodora had no questions.

Neither of them were engineers or salvage specialists, occupations that had a use in restoring mothballed facilities.  Theodora hadn’t even achieved her final certification in hydroponics yet. Her mother was a routine maintenance specialist. There was no logic in sending them.

“We have to go,” her mother had said, after they had both read the letter. “We have to go.” She had stared into the air as she said it. Theodora had watched the muscles in her face work. Her mother had stood and gone to the little sink, as if moving just to move, and then just stood there, staring at Theodora’s little herb quadrant above the faucet.

We have to go, her mother said, and she was right, because you had to follow orders or the whole habitat would fall apart. Theodora had lived all her life knowing that discipline and obedience were all that kept the Martian colony alive, all that sustained their bubble of oxygen and light against the red dust. She didn’t want to doubt the Commision. But she had never before felt like this -- like some metal piece in a box, plucked out and forced into a new machine, regardless of what she was really made for.

The ferry bounced over some obstacle. The ungainly cab lurched as if it was going to tip over and Theodora cried out sharply, a stifled scream, sure that they were going to go over, that the careless pilot was going to crash and strand them in the middle of No Man’s Land.

Across from her, the young man lifted his eyes. They met hers, almost by accident, pure reflex; then he blinked and dropped his gaze looking almost embarrassed.

“Twenty minutes,” he said to her without looking back up.

Theodora stared at him, perplexed.

He pointed to the driver -- to his dashboard. “The red numbers,” he explained. “That’s the distance left. At this pace, twenty minutes to Landing-3.”

Theodora looked and saw the little readout by the driver’s right hand. “Oh,” she said. “Twenty minutes. Okay.” She swallowed and her throat felt less tight. Simply knowing that much helped, even if, she reminded herself, she didn’t know what would come after the ferry got to Landing-3.

She wondered how he had known the. She looked at him more carefully now; easier with staring at him since he was now studiously avoiding her eyes. His suit was no longer the pale gray of a factory-fresh model; it was almost brown with a layer of residue. The traction on the rubber fingers of his gloves was rubbed down. There was a scratch on the side of his helmet and a frayed corner on one of his engineer patches.

“Have you been there before?” she asked; out of genuine curiosity, but also trying to distract herself from more anxiety.

“Not to Landing-3,” he replied. He never looked up as he held out one hand and counted on traction-worn fingers. “Landing-7, Landing-6, Landing-5. Six months’ installation at each.”

Six months? That wasn’t long at all, Theodora dared to think. Six months was barely a tour. Six months and she and her mother could be back in their little apartment with her herbs and her mother’s precious heirloom wall-clock…

The woman beside the young man laughed: a strange dry laugh that was equal part amused and angry. “Lucky,” she said to him. “I was stuck in Landing-8 for three years before they ordered me out here.”

Theodora squeezed her eyes shut. Her mother’s hand was still on her wrist. Slowly, she let go of one handle, and turned her hand to take her mother’s.