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Authors: Frederik Pohl
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but those things happened every now and then.
But when Earth sneezed, Mars got pneumonia. The break came at a bad time. A new issue of the Bonds was just due out, and in the temporarily queasy market climate they were under subscribed. Earthie cues had always been sparse; now they had all but dried up entirely. Imports were slashed, luxuries disappeared from the Martians' own market—though the Earth colonists still did themselves as well as ever—and that one most valued luxury, the scholarship program, was abolished.
What Dekker was good at—what all Martians were good at, because how else could anyone survive on Mars?—was making the best of what he had and not spending a lot of time grieving over what he didn't.
Losing the hope of the Oort had been a blow, but Dekker had a whole other life to live, and he spent his efforts on living it. By the time he was eleven—nineteen or so, by Earth standards—he not only had a promotion to second pilot, he had a medal. At least as close to a medal as Martians ever gave each other. It was a little green rosette, and it was for courage.
There weren't many medals for courage on Mars, for two reasons. The first was that it took so much courage to get by there that there was hardly any point in making a fuss about a little extra bravery. The other reason was that any time someone was called on to display that little extra bit of courage, it was generally because someone else had done something particularly dangerous and dumb. Such as failing to secure the LH 2 valve on Dekker's dirigible before takeoff. So there they were, sailing along at three thousand meters above the Valles Marineris, with their precious reserve hydrogen bubbling away. Apart from the possible danger to the ship, there was the hydrogen itself: hydrogen was too hard to come by on Mars to waste.
So what else was a third pilot, desirous of making second pilot, to do? It cost him an ear, while he was clinging to the outside of the bag and the damn freezing-cold stuff was seeping out right past his vulnerable head, but the ear could be replaced. It got him the promotion and the rosette—a reasonably good trade.
But the Oort was still far away.
Sometimes on night flights, when the passengers were quiet and the captain was letting another pilot take a turn at the wheel, Dekker would crawl up into the skyside bubble and just look at the comets, the dozens and dozens of comets that had begun to fill the heavens and blur the stars. He didn't feel sorry for himself, he didn't brood about his missed chances; he just looked at the comets and wondered what it would be like to be out there, capturing some prize ones and sending them falling in toward Mars.
There were plenty of comets landing on Mars every week now, sometimes twice a week. There wasn't any real atmosphere on Mars to show for it yet, though the dust storms were certainly denser and a lot more frequent, but every once in a while Dekker's blimp would pass over a recently comet-struck area and he could see the great craters the impacts had gouged out. More than once he was able to persuade himself that, yes, there really was a kind of a faint haze that was visible, or almost visible, at the crater bottoms. The pilots claimed the blimp rode higher these days, too. The worldwide pressure was certainly up a millibar or two.
Then one day, while Dekker was talking to a pretty passenger in the lounge at a little Ulysses Patera deme called Collins, he got the call from his mother. "I need to talk to you," she said. "Come on home."
And would say no more.
So Dekker took a five-day leave and headed for Sagdayev. He hadn't seen his mother very often recently, because she had been stuck with the job of representing Sagdayev in the Commons—dull work, and hard work, too, trying to keep the planet's affairs running smoothly—and that meant she was never home. He hoped she would meet him, but the first person Dekker saw at the passenger lock as he came out was
But when Earth sneezed, Mars got pneumonia. The break came at a bad time. A new issue of the Bonds was just due out, and in the temporarily queasy market climate they were under subscribed. Earthie cues had always been sparse; now they had all but dried up entirely. Imports were slashed, luxuries disappeared from the Martians' own market—though the Earth colonists still did themselves as well as ever—and that one most valued luxury, the scholarship program, was abolished.
What Dekker was good at—what all Martians were good at, because how else could anyone survive on Mars?—was making the best of what he had and not spending a lot of time grieving over what he didn't.
Losing the hope of the Oort had been a blow, but Dekker had a whole other life to live, and he spent his efforts on living it. By the time he was eleven—nineteen or so, by Earth standards—he not only had a promotion to second pilot, he had a medal. At least as close to a medal as Martians ever gave each other. It was a little green rosette, and it was for courage.
There weren't many medals for courage on Mars, for two reasons. The first was that it took so much courage to get by there that there was hardly any point in making a fuss about a little extra bravery. The other reason was that any time someone was called on to display that little extra bit of courage, it was generally because someone else had done something particularly dangerous and dumb. Such as failing to secure the LH 2 valve on Dekker's dirigible before takeoff. So there they were, sailing along at three thousand meters above the Valles Marineris, with their precious reserve hydrogen bubbling away. Apart from the possible danger to the ship, there was the hydrogen itself: hydrogen was too hard to come by on Mars to waste.
So what else was a third pilot, desirous of making second pilot, to do? It cost him an ear, while he was clinging to the outside of the bag and the damn freezing-cold stuff was seeping out right past his vulnerable head, but the ear could be replaced. It got him the promotion and the rosette—a reasonably good trade.
But the Oort was still far away.
Sometimes on night flights, when the passengers were quiet and the captain was letting another pilot take a turn at the wheel, Dekker would crawl up into the skyside bubble and just look at the comets, the dozens and dozens of comets that had begun to fill the heavens and blur the stars. He didn't feel sorry for himself, he didn't brood about his missed chances; he just looked at the comets and wondered what it would be like to be out there, capturing some prize ones and sending them falling in toward Mars.
There were plenty of comets landing on Mars every week now, sometimes twice a week. There wasn't any real atmosphere on Mars to show for it yet, though the dust storms were certainly denser and a lot more frequent, but every once in a while Dekker's blimp would pass over a recently comet-struck area and he could see the great craters the impacts had gouged out. More than once he was able to persuade himself that, yes, there really was a kind of a faint haze that was visible, or almost visible, at the crater bottoms. The pilots claimed the blimp rode higher these days, too. The worldwide pressure was certainly up a millibar or two.
Then one day, while Dekker was talking to a pretty passenger in the lounge at a little Ulysses Patera deme called Collins, he got the call from his mother. "I need to talk to you," she said. "Come on home."
And would say no more.
So Dekker took a five-day leave and headed for Sagdayev. He hadn't seen his mother very often recently, because she had been stuck with the job of representing Sagdayev in the Commons—dull work, and hard work, too, trying to keep the planet's affairs running smoothly—and that meant she was never home. He hoped she would meet him, but the first person Dekker saw at the passenger lock as he came out was
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