And then, too quickly, we were in lunar orbit and docking with a shuttle that would take us to Collins City. I let out a happy sigh.
“Thank you very much, Captain. I really appreciate it,” I said when Stanton arrived to steer me back to the others.
“Still want to command a ship of your own? It’s pretty boring.”
“No,” I said. “It’s wonderful.”
She got this glint in her eye, like she understood.
22
Collins City was even more like home than Cochran Station. It was partially underground, with all the expected support systems and rubber-matted corridors and hissing vents. But the gravity was scant. We had no trouble standing upright, anchored to the floor, but take a step too quickly or too hard, and you’d fling your body forward into a wall or the floor or someone else.
I could look out a view port here to an expanse of ground reaching to a horizon. But the landscape was gray, harshly lit by unfiltered sunlight, and the sky was black. Fiercely black. My homesickness got even worse. I wanted to see Mars so badly I almost cried. But I couldn’t. Like Charles said, just put your head down and get through it.
I couldn’t tell if he was feeling the same deep longing, the frustration that things were familiar but just off enough to be flat-out wrong. He kept his serious expression to the world, and I was sure that if I asked, he’d say he wasn’t feeling anything at all. You didn’t win the game by feeling.
We had to sit through another orientation and safety video, a lot like the one we had to sit through on Cochran. I imagined Mars had a video new arrivals were made to watch, about what doors you were allowed to go through and what buttons you really shouldn’t push, and about how the dust was so bad that if you went on EVA you had to be very sure you got thoroughly vacuumed in the air lock. I’d never seen that video, because why would I? We had a different set of videos we’d watched since we were babies, for people who lived there. I’d never thought about it before. This was all second nature. It would be easy to blow it off, not pay attention. But it was the little tiny differences between Collins and Colony One that would get me in trouble, so I paid attention.
Weirdly, everybody was paying close attention. Well, almost everybody. Me, Charles, Ethan, Ladhi, Angelyn, Elzabeth, George—the group of us who thought Stanton was up to something. Would she sabotage the life-support system? Cause an air lock to fail? Hard to believe she’d do something that life-or-death, something that had a good chance of getting someone killed. But that was the trouble with not being on Earth—if something went wrong here, there was a good chance someone would get killed.
Out here, so much could go wrong. Stanton had many opportunities to rig something, to test how we’d react in an emergency. The more attention we paid, the more we knew about the colony and its systems, the more likely we were to figure out what disaster she was going to throw at us. Ethan leaned forward, chin in his hand,
staring at the screen like he was memorizing every image. Charles sat back in his chair, scowling.
After that, we were sent to the dorm area we’d been assigned. We shared rooms, which were clustered around a common area where we’d eat meals and hang out between coursework and tours.
We had this first day to rest and acclimate, but I was so mixed up about what time it was supposed to be, I didn’t really care about resting. We were all wired, wandering around the dorm area, complaining, staring out observation windows at the fascinating bleakness. The only one who was really happy with the gravity and the constant sensation that our bellies were crawling up our rib cages was Boris, who’d grown up here. A couple of the Earth kids had to be medicated so they could keep food down.
I had to write that essay about observing flight operations for Stanton, so I barricaded myself in the dorm room while the others burned off energy and excitement. Pretty soon, though, I heard shouting. Two voices, male, muffled through the door. One of them was Ethan’s. Ethan never yelled at anybody. I slid open the door a crack and peered out to the sofas and chairs where people had gathered. Angelyn, George, and Ladhi were sitting, cringing and watching with wide eyes. Ethan stood off to the side, arms crossed, staring down at Tenzig, who was pointing at him.
“That’s messed up. You’re messed up. I’m not spying on Stanton for you.”
“We’re just asking for everyone to keep an eye out, to watch out for each other—”
“I’m looking out for myself! You all should be looking out for yourselves. You’re just too stupid to realize it, too stupid to not go begging everyone else for help.”
Ethan sighed. “Looking out for yourself—that’s you all over.”
“You know what? I’m telling Stanton that you all think she’s out to kill you.” He took in the whole room, and his eyes were lit up, like he was on the hunt.
Ethan just smiled. “You’re so into being her little stooge, you go right ahead.”
“I’m not a stooge, I’m just better than you, you nutcase!”
“You don’t get to decide that, stooge.”
Tenzig lost it, then, and slammed into Ethan.
He probably just meant to smack Ethan on the chest, the finger-jabbing bullying kind of thing that would make Tenzig all smug and that Ethan never would respond to, normally. But Tenzig was angry. He was moving with force, and he wasn’t completely acclimated to the low gravity, so instead of just stepping forward and jabbing Ethan, he launched himself, his whole body plowing into him, sending Ethan stumbling back. Ethan tried to shove him to his feet, but he, too, overcompensated against the gravity. It would have been funny, but they still managed to pummel each other in the face, even if it was mostly by accident.
More chaos ensued when everyone else jumped up and tried to move chairs out of the way to keep the guys from tripping over them. But again, the low gravity was almost worse than being weightless, because it didn’t make everything float, it just made everything slow. Which meant when Tenzig and Ethan fell, stumbling over each other, they didn’t fall all that hard, and they didn’t seem hurt.
Enough. “Stop it!” I yelled, and took a couple of jumping steps toward them. I was thinking hard about the gravity so I didn’t end up smashing my face on the floor like a couple of the others had done. I grabbed Ethan because he was closer, wrapping my fists into the shoulder of his jumpsuit, ducking while he swung back at Tenzig, who was driving him backward. Thanks to the low gravity, I could actually haul the very tall and solid Ethan out of the way. I just made sure I was braced extra well.
With Ethan out of the way, Tenzig stumbled, but he didn’t fall, because across the space Boris had grabbed him to steady him. Here, he was the most the stable of all of us. I nodded a thanks to him.
The two guys were fought out, so they didn’t struggle against us very hard.