With an authority that didn’t invite argument, she said, “All right, students. Gather your things and let’s get on board.” She turned to the docking tube.
“But we just got here,” I blurted. “Don’t we even get a chance to look around?” My own accent sounded round and hard compared to hers, even compared to Ethan’s. I hadn’t realized I had an accent before.
Her smile faltered for a second and she glared lasers at me. The other kids, who’d been picking up the bags slumped on the floor at their feet, froze. There were a lot of shocked gazes looking at me. Charles’s thinned lips seemed to be transmitting a message to shut up. But I couldn’t.
“There has to be some kind of observation deck,” I went on. “We only got a quick look at Earth on the monitors when the ship was docking. If I’m going to be spending the next couple of years on the place, can’t I at least see it?”
“You’ll be able to see it on the shuttle monitors, Ms. Newton.”
“It’s not the same.”
She managed to keep up the polite, official façade, but I could imagine her filing away this conversation for later. “Ms. Newton, you’re delaying the journey for the others,” she said softly, pointedly.
Yeah, I probably should have kept quiet. I wasn’t even at the school yet, and I had ruffled feathers of the person in charge. Real smart there. Charles wouldn’t even look at me now.
“Why don’t we take a look at this shuttle of theirs?” Ethan said good-naturedly. He inched toward the docking tube, gesturing for me to follow. Like I had a choice.
I kept looking at Charles, wanting him to say something clever and derisive, like he always seemed to do when he was talking to me. But he was silent, observant. I fumed.
We joined the others and followed Stanton to the docking tube. I noticed most of the others didn’t slouch under the weight of their packs when they slung them over their shoulders. So they were probably station kids, used to the gravity. However, one of them, a willowy guy with black hair and big blue eyes, seemed a little red in the face, and huffing. So he was from low gravity. I took comfort in that. And tried not to slouch. Don’t show weakness. Charles might be on to something there.
Right. I could tough this out.
The tube opened into an air lock, which in turn opened into the passenger cabin, which had two dozen padded seats set in reclining positions. This ship wasn’t an interplanetary long-hauler or any kind of passenger cruiser. It was an orbital shuttle, designed for hops to and from the planet surface. Functional rather than fancy. Nobody would be on it for more than a couple of hours at a time, after all.
No windows to speak of. Each seat had a monitor on an adjustable arm. That would have to do.
Stanton moved to the back of the cabin and watched us file in, stow bags in cupboards under our seats, and strap in. I hung back, waiting until everyone else was between her and me. One of the crew was stationed near the door, supervising boarding, and I wanted to talk to him.
“Welcome aboard!” he said when I made eye contact. I couldn’t tell if he was really that friendly or pretending because it was his job.
“Hi,” I said, trying to smile in a way that seemed harmless. “I was wondering, do you think I could maybe get a look at the crew cabin? Just a quick look. You won’t even know I’m there. You see, I’m going to be a pilot someday, and I’m really interested—”
His smile inverted into a gee-whiz apologetic frown. “I’m afraid not, the crew cabin is strictly off-limits to anyone but crew.”
“I know, but if I promised that I wouldn’t be any trouble at all—”
“If it was up to me, I’d say yes, but it’s not up to me. I’m sorry.” The smile wasn’t sincere at all.
“Ms. Newton, is there a problem?” Stanton asked from the back of the cabin with a smile that was looking increasingly fake.
I sighed.
Ethan had left a seat open next to him. Charles also had a seat next to him available. He was in back, where he could spy on everyone. I sat next to
Ethan, after stuffing my bag into its cupboard. The effort left me breathless. I fell into the recliner and let my body go limp.
Ethan was grinning. “Isn’t this exciting? Europa was nothing like this. I can’t wait.”
I could.
I might not have gotten a proper observation lounge, but a set of tiny view ports through the front of the cabin gave me a glimpse—my first real, unfiltered glimpse—of Earth. I thought I had known what to expect, and I prepared myself to be blasé about it. I’d seen planets from orbit before. Well, I’d seen Mars, its vast surface and array of shading like paint spilled on a floor. You could see wind storms from orbit, swirling clouds of awe-inspiring chaos. Earth was just a bigger Mars with a few extra colors splashed over it.
But I wasn’t ready for the way it glowed.
It came from the clouds. I knew intellectually that the sheets and flowing wisps of white painted over the planet’s surface were clouds of water vapor that reflected a great deal of sunlight. If I looked obliquely toward the curved edge of the planet, it seemed to have an aura. The atmosphere here was thick enough to see, almost like it was giving off its own light. I had to focus to look past the astonishing cloud layer to the land underneath it. Land and water, a blobby tangle of continents against a deep blue backdrop. The sections of land at least seemed familiar, like maps of Mars, with ridges, valleys, channels, and other rocky features. No visible craters, which made the surface seem awfully smooth. On the other hand, I couldn’t picture all that blue being water. I’d seen inside the Colony One storage aquifers, containing more liquid water pressed together than anywhere else on Mars. But this—it covered most of the planet. I tried to put myself in the middle of one of those wide blue swathes, and I couldn’t do it. I imagined standing on a smooth, blue plain. Not in the middle of a tank of water.
Then the ship turned, and the view outside the port turned dark. So that was Earth. I thought strange and exotic when I saw it. But I didn’t think home. I thought I’d know what it was like to be on Earth, to stand there and be outside, breathing without a mask in a thick atmosphere. It would be like standing in the Colony One atrium, but bigger, right? I wasn’t so sure now.