Seven Against Mars. Martin Berman-Gorvine

she’d never expected to meet her face to face. She only wanted to be her in the daydreams she dignified by writing them down on her battered typewriter, and to be Jack, and Karolla too. If this was her world, a world she had created, why did it hurt so much to live in it?

      Just then Jack surged back into the room, a shiny bundle under his right arm. “Got what you need, girls!” he called triumphantly. “Feast your eyes on this! The height of fashion in Old and New Paree both! You got your scarlet, you got your turquoise, you got your lemon-yellow! You got your blouses, you got your tights, you got your sexy little skirts and Venusian buffalo-hide boots, you got your.… Hey, what’s with all the long faces? Somebody die in here?”

      “Jack!” Katie said, beckoning.

      He looked at her, looked from Anya to Rachel and back again, then pushed himself gently up until he was within whispering distance of the Texian. He listened, nodded gravely, looked sideways at Rachel, glanced at Anya, winked at her, then descended until he was midway between Katie’s bunk and Rachel’s. “Hey Earthies. Wanna see the inside of a real rocket ship?” he said.

      Rachel glanced at Katie, who lay casually back on her bunk and waved them off. “I’m feeling pretty tuckered out from that rumble through the jungle. Think I’ll try on some of them clothes you were kind enough to bring and have myself a nap.”

      That the others were trying to cheer her up was so obvious they might as well have painted it in four-foot-tall letters all over the cabin walls, but the prospect of a guided tour was too tempting for Rachel to turn down. Jack discreetly ducked out of the room while Rachel changed her clothes. The least gaudy choice was a blouse that didn’t have too many sequins on it, and a skirt that barely managed to cover her knees. As she pulled on the “Venusian buffalo-hide” boots, which were a little tight, she realized she hadn’t ever described the inside of an interplanetary spacecraft in anything she’d written so far. Did that mean as soon as they stepped out the cabin door, or anyway moved through it, that they would be surrounded by a gray void?

      Not far from it, as it turned out. Jack took her hand and tugged her through a sliding metal door into a featureless tube, which was so narrow she could stand at any point and stretch her arms out to reach the far side. From end to end, the tube looked not much longer than the distance from Rachel’s old house to the corner where old Witkowski used to have his grocery store. To get her oriented so that the tube would seem like a horizontal hallway rather than a vertical shaft, Jack tugged her through a quarter-turn around its circumference. This was made easier by the handholds installed at ninety-degree angles to each other and spaced at regular intervals along the corridor, allowing passengers and crew to move as they pleased regardless of how the ship was oriented at any given moment. Jack showed her how to use them like the rungs on climbing bars, and after a minute or two of queasiness Rachel began to enjoy herself.

      Once she had the hang of it Jack took her to a miniature cafeteria, which they had to themselves at the moment. This was arranged like the famous New York Automat Abe had written her about, with sliding glass doors over compartments holding a seemingly endless variety of foods. Jack gave her some change and Rachel managed to find some dumplings that looked vaguely like pierogies, a mug of hot cocoa (which she hadn’t had in three years) and a fresh orange (ditto). Jack watched her with amused tolerance.

      “We’re going to have to call you Rachel Wolf, the way you attack your food.”

      “That’s funny,” she said, her mouth full of steaming hot potato dumplings. Now, if only she had some sour cream, she could pretend she was out for Sunday brunch with her parents. Jack looked at her quizzically. “Wolf is my mother’s maiden name,” she explained after swallowing. “My last name is Zilber.”

      “Ah? I once knew a propulsion engineer from Earth called Zilber. Mark, I think his first name was, though we all called him B.O. ’cause he never took a shower. Little short guy, probably about forty Earth years old now. Any relation?”

      “Earth’s a big planet,” Rachel said. Besides which, if he’s any relation he’s probably my great-great-grandnephew or something. She shivered. Jack frowned at her in concern and felt her forehead with the back of his hand, a gesture that made her tear up, it reminded her so much of her parents.

      “You don’t seem to have a fever. Say, are you all right? What’s the matter?”

      “Homesick,” she sighed.

      Jack nodded. “I used to get that way. Then I had a jeweler on Luna make me this locket,” he said, pulling a necklace from under his shirt. She leaned forward and opened the locket, which looked like it was made of silver. Inside was a tiny color snapshot of a family at the beach: a smiling black-haired woman, a gray-haired man with a slight paunch who was trying to hold onto his dignity despite wearing nothing but a pair of bright orange swim trunks, and twin boys about seven (in Earth years), one of whom was holding up his fingers in rabbit ears behind the other’s head. “That’s me,” Jack said, pointing at the mischievous boy. “I must’ve wrecked a million family pictures that way. Jim would always try to slug me afterward, but I was too fast for him.”

      “It’s not your fault,” Rachel said, putting her hand atop Jack’s before blushing and pulling away.

      “Isn’t it? It was always my responsibility to look after him. I’m older—”

      “—by three minutes, yes, I know,” Rachel said.

      “You do? How do you know that? And how do you know he’s alive on Mars?”

      How could she explain? If she kept insisting that this whole world was the product of her imagination, they’d lock her away somewhere. But what was the alternative? Letting Jack think she was some kind of spy? “Um. You know I speak Marpolski. My parents were Earth diplomats stationed on Mars, which is how I learned the language. Well, my dad’s position as cultural attaché was really a cover for intelligence work. That’s how he found out about the Ares dynasty’s kidnapping operation. They’ve been snatching children from other planets for twenty years now. They brainwash them on Mars until they’re in their teens, then send them back to their home worlds to serve as secret agents.”

      Jack frowned. “But I’m twenty-three.”

      Rachel nodded. “Jim was supposed to return to Venus almost three years ago. But he’s never forgotten you or your parents, Jack. His superiors didn’t trust him and they kept him behind, pretending he needed more advanced training. But now they’ve gotten frustrated and put him in a punishment battalion instead. And even that won’t save him for long—we have to get to Mars and rescue him, Jack, or they’ll kill him!”

      “Your father found all that out? Wow, he must be some spy,” Jack said. “I’d love to meet him. Plus he could help us out on Mars.”

      Oops. “No, that won’t work, I’m afraid, Jack. You see, well, uh, his bosses in the Earth Intelligence Services didn’t like that he was upset over the kidnapping program and Ares’ other human rights abuses. They thought it was interfering with his work, so they recalled him and my mother. But I got bitten by the space bug, and I’ve been traveling ever since we got back to Earth.” Smooth, very smooth. Now I just hope he and Anya don’t start comparing notes.

      But Jack seemed to swallow her story without trouble. “Yeah, governments are all like that. And all the Earthside politicians are interested in is trading with Mars and making sure Ares doesn’t get all aggro toward the big blue marble.” He sighed, then smiled and slapped Rachel on the knee, making her blush again. “Sometimes it takes freelancers like us to keep ’em honest, huh?”

      A soft tone reverberated through the ship, and Jack got to his feet, deftly tossing their trash into a receptacle across the room. “That’s the escape-burn warning, Ray. We’d better get back to our cabin now, unless you want to make a vertical climb back under rapid acceleration. Which believe me, you don’t. You’ll have plenty of time to meet the other passengers and crew later.”

      Rachel nodded and followed Jack out of the room, rolling the sound of her new nickname around in her mind. Ray. She liked it.

      Chapter