Like that was a good reason to hurry up and finish. I'd almost rather get poked by a needle than squirm under a sheet while she clips my hair and comes dangerously close to clipping my ears. And let's just say her haircuts are not a work of art. She's a scientist, not a stylist. Worse, because we can't waste water under the dome, we're only permitted showers twice a month. The rest of the time we use an evaporating deodorant soap. My next scheduled shower wasn't for another week. If she gave me a haircut tonight, I wouldn't be able to wash the itchy hair off my neck and shoulders until then.
“Haircut?” I hollered. “I just had one!”
“It was three months ago,” she said in an amused voice.
“No way! It's been only six weeks! I sure don't need one this soon.”
Mom walked through the entrance into my room. With hands on her hips, she did her best to look stern. “Don't lie. Three months. I marked it on the calendar because I knew you'd try to get out of it.”
“I wasn't lying,” I protested weakly. It figured as a scientist she'd keep track. “It was six weeks. Mars time.” Here on Mars it took 687 days to circle the sun. Which meant a Mars year was about 1.9 times longer than on Earth. So my six weeks' Mars time and her three months' Earth time were about the same.
“Very funny,” she said, unable to hide a smile.
“Wow,” I said. “You look great.”
“Don't change the subject.” She smiled again.
“It's true,” I said. “You do look great.”
Normally, Mom didn't care much what she looked like, but tonight her hair was done nicely. I could smell perfume, and she wore a dress I hadn't seen her wear since â¦
“I get it,” I said. “Dad's coming home.”
“Exactly. In about four hours. Which is why you're going to clean your room. And after that I'm giving you a haircut.”
I pointed at my computer.
“Yes, yes. Finish what you were writing.”
“Mom ⦔
In my mind, I heard Timothy Neilson's voice as Rawling replayed the audio. “Help! They're chasing me! Dozens of them! Help me! Help me! Helpâ”
“Yes?” Mom asked when I didn't finish my thought.
I really wanted to tell her about the aliens. Rawling had said I could if I wanted, because he trusted her, above all others under the dome, to keep the secret too. But she looked so happy about my father coming home that I didn't want to worry her.
“Nothing,” I said, turning back toward my keyboard. Now I didn't feel like writing in my journal anymore. “Give me a few minutes to clean my room, and I'll be ready for my haircut.” I forced a smile.
Clipped ears, in comparison to alien monsters that chased humans, suddenly didn't seem like such a bad thing.
Four hours later, I was among those waiting outside the dome on the platform buggy to watch the landing. The other platform buggy sat beside us, empty except for the driver. The pilots, crew, and new project members would go back to the dome in that one.
I strained my eyes, looking upward. There was tension among us. While no previous landing had failed, there was always the potential for disaster. If anything went wrong, my father could die. Then the rest of us. Slowly. Because we were in the early stages of the Mars Project, the spaceship was our only lifeline to Earth. It had all the supplies we needed to survive another three years.
I reached down to the pouch hanging from the armrest of my wheelchair and pulled out three red juggling balls. Although it was dark, I began to juggle, keeping all three in the air without even thinking about what I was doing.
After five minutes, people began pointing upward. I let the juggling balls fall back into my lap and stared at the sky through the clear roof of the platform buggy's minidome.
At first, it looked like a star growing brighter among the millions of stars in the Mars night sky. It wasn't a star, though. NASA called it the Habitat Lander.
The whole journey from Earth was complicated. My father and the rest had taken a Crew Transfer Vehicle from Earth, about a six-month trip through space. Waiting for them in orbit around Mars was the Habitat Lander. They hooked up with it and switched ships. Rawling had once explained it to me in Earth terms. It was as if they were crossing an ocean. They came over in a big ship, and once they reached harbor, a little tugboat took them the final distance to shore.
But there was a difference. The journey had to be carefully planned so it occurred when Earth and Mars were nearest each otherâroughly 50 million miles apart. At any other time, their orbits placed the planets up to double or triple the distance apart. And little tugboats on Earth didn't have to deal with the intense heat of Martian atmosphere.
The bright light I now saw was the result of the Habitat Lander moving downward so quickly that, even in the sparse atmosphere of Mars, its bullet-shaped heat shield glowed with friction.
I held my breath as I continued to watch. There was silence around me in the platform buggy as everyone else did the same. We all knew this was not a simple tugboat operation.
Coming in at too steep an angle would fry everyone aboard. Coming in at too shallow an angle would bounce them off the atmosphere toward Jupiter, without enough fuel to allow them to reverse and try again.
Although the Habitat Lander moved quickly, it seemed painfully slow to us down on the Martian surface. This was partly because it was still so far above us and partly because of our fear and worry.
Up there, my father was rolling the Habitat Lander to the right or left as it blazed through the upper atmosphere, steering it like an out-of-control sled careening down the steepest snow-covered mountain. Soonâtoo soonâhe'd have to find a way to stop it.
The Habitat Lander's glowing heat shield, now appearing bigger than the sun, suddenly dropped straight down. I gasped. My eyes followed as it flipped and tumbled, a blaze of fire heading directly toward distant mountain peaks. Then the blaze became shattered jewels of fire as it exploded on contact.
I took another deep breath, reminding myself of what I already knew but so easily forgot because this was only the second landing I'd witnessed. That blaze was only the heat shield, discarded and dropped as part of the landing process. I let out a sigh of relief and searched the dark sky for what needed to happen next.
Retro-rockets.
Somewhere up there, if the Habitat Lander was still fine after dropping the heat shield, parachutes would have been released from the nose of the craft so it could landâfeet-first. Very soon, retro-rockets would kick in to help the braking process.
I found myself holding my breath again. One ⦠two ⦠three â¦
Like a mushroom of flame, the retro-rockets burst into sight, maybe a mile above us. The burst drew our eyes like fireworks, and all of us on the platform buggy focused on it, following it downward.
I had my eyes open, but in my mind I was prayingâtalking with God. Some people might think he wasn't there to listen, but I had faith that he was. It was hard-earned faith too. It came when I thought I'd die during the dome's oxygen crisis. When the crisis was over and I had time to think about it, I realized that when you get pushed to the edge of life and begin to wonder what's on the other side, your heart is really and finally open to believing God is behind this universe. You begin to understand that he's as invisible and as strong as love.
Finally the outline of the Habitat Lander appeared above the brightness. The retro-rockets pushed hard against gravity, and slowly the Habitat Lander settled on the surface of the planet. The parachutes sagged downward, covering the top of the space vehicle.
Cheers and whistles filled the platform buggy. They had made it safely.
Soon I would see my father. For the first time in three years. Because his job was so important to him.
I couldn't help but wonder if he would be just another alien visitor.
As we drove up to the dome, the outer door opened to allow both platform buggies inside the tunnel. When the buggies moved inside, the warm, moist, oxygen-filled air from the tunnel instantly turned into white, ghostly vapor and escaped into the cold Martian atmosphere. The inner door, of course, was still sealed to keep the dome's air from escaping.
As soon as both platform buggies had entered the tunnel side by side, the outer door shut behind us. Only when it was completely sealed against the atmosphere would the inner door be opened.
While we waited, people in our platform buggy waved at the newcomers in the other platform buggy. I tried to pick out my father, but I couldn't. Too many people were standing in front of me. While a wheelchair is great because it always gives you a place to sit, the disadvantage is no different from being seated at a baseball game with everyone standing in front of you to watch a big play.
We had to wait patiently as a demagnetizing process cleared both platform buggies of Martian dust. We had to wait longer until the sealing process of the outer door was complete and both platform buggies had rolled into the dome. Then the inner door began to close and seal behind us, so both doors now protected us from any air leaks to the Martian surface.
I was the first one off the platform buggy, lowered in my wheelchair with ropes by people on the platform.
Mom was waiting for me. She stood beside me as other people poured out from both platform buggies and climbed down the ladders to the surface of the dome.
Finally, among the last people, my father appeared. He climbed down slowly. After the weightlessness of space, even the weak gravity of Mars took some adjustments.
It gave me time to study him. In one way, it was like watching an interesting stranger. In another way, it was like looking at myself. I was growing tall, just like he was. Mom would often point to his photo and comment that I was also beginning to look like him. I had dark blond hair like he did. My nose and jaws and forehead were bigger than I wanted them to be, and I hoped the rest of my face would catch up so I would look more like him. My father was big, like a football player. I would be heavier and bigger too, if my legs didn't weigh next to nothing.
Mom stayed by me, her hand on my shoulder, as we waited.
I knew she was happy to see him. I knew she wanted to run forward. But it was nice she didn't abandon me. Unlike my father always does, I couldn't help but think, by always going off into space.
He turned and scanned the crowd. I could tell the instant he saw my mother. A big grin crossed his face, and he broke into an awkward half-run. He threw his arms around Mom, and they hugged and kissed.
I turned my head. I mean, what kid wants to see his parents smooching?
Then somethingâor rather someoneâcaught my eye as I looked away from my parents' hugging and kissing.
The last person, back toward me, was climbing down the steps of the other platform buggy. Except it wasn't just a person. It looked like a kid about my age. I could hardly believe it. I'd spent my entire life alone around adults. Now there was finally someone my age!
The hugging and kissing continued beside me. My eyes, however, were riveted on the new kid. What would he be like? Would we be friends? Was he hooked on astronomy like I was? Wouldn't it be cool to be able to share the stuff I was doing with a robot body?
I kept staring. The kid had short, black, straight hair. He was kind of skinny in the standard space uniform of a blue jumpsuit.
Finally, the kid reached the ground. He turned toward me.
Except he wasn't a he.
He was a beautiful she. With dark eyes and high cheekbones. Asianâand beautiful. (Had I said that already? The beautiful part?)
And when she smiled and her eyes met mine across the short distance between us, I gulped.
Wow.
Was I ready to pursue aliens?
Yes; so ready that I got up early the next morning, though I usually hated mornings because I had a habit of staying up too late at the dome telescope.
After the arrival of the Habitat Lander, my parents had walked around the dome, talking for hours. I hadn't heard them come in because I was asleep, just like they were now, in the room on the opposite side of the minidome.
In my own room, I was up and restless because of what Director Rawling McTigre had decided yesterday. He intended to delay his announcement about the alien monsters for 48 hours. In that time, he hoped I might be able to find out more details, enough so no one would panic about the situation.
That meant that in about an hour, Rawling would send me back into the experimental bamboo corn to search for the truth about the aliens. It was something I thought might be interesting to add to my journal.
I fired up my computer, rested the keyboard in my lap, and began to describe everything I knew about Timothy Neilson and his run-in with the aliens.
“Tyce? Tyce?”
I'd been so used to hearing my mom's voice interrupting me that it took a second to figure out that the male voice coming from the other side of the minidome was my father's.
I saved my computer file and shut the machine down before I wheeled out into the common living area.
He was standing there in jeans and a T-shirt. He needed a shave. He held a nutri tube in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other. “Did you get a chance to open the present I got you?” he asked.
“The CD with the top 100 rock songs of the 1900s?”
I said. That was his music, not mine. Ancient stuff. “Looks great. Thanks.”
“We can listen to it together,” my father said.
“Yeah. Thanks.” I tapped my fingers on the arm of my wheelchair.
He sipped his coffee. “Anyway, how are you?”
“Fine,” I replied.
“Got time to share some breakfast?” My father made a face. “Not that this artificial stuff comes close to a real breakfast.”
“Wish I could,” I said quickly, “but I've got to go.”