Thursday, December 10, 2009
fyi
I'm now archiving the old posts as drafts, just to hopefully prevent any theft of my story. Not that I really think that would happen, but just to be safe. So when you see the old posts disappearing, don't worry! :)
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
It's all over except for the editing
Well, there we go! The story's done: I hit 200,000 words about 45 minutes before the deadline last night. I'm glad that the story is done. I enjoyed it a lot--it was a lot of fun to write. But now the story is over. After several months of being by my side, telling me her story, directing the flow of the plot, and opening herself up to examination, Dejah is happy but tired, and has left to go live in her lovely house with Nathan.
I will miss her.
I will miss her.
Nano post 72
the next morning, the two made their way from the public transport to a large hangar at the launch pad. “I booked a private shuttle,” Nathan explained as they got closer. “I forgot to mention, I took flying lessons while you were gone. Needed to find a way to pass the time. Anyway, I'm fully certified for surface flights. Not very practical for traveling between Domes, but perfect for this trip.”
“It's not another Dome, then?” Dejah asked. Nathan loaded their bags into a small shuttle, and grinned, but didn't answer. He helped Dejah up into the small cockpit of the shuttle before climbing aboard himself.
“Buckle up. We're not going all that far, but I'd rather have us gett there in one piece.”
Dejah snapped her harness into place, and looked out the viewpane as Nathan began a cautious taxi out to the runway. In a few minutes, they were airborne, and passed through the airlock with no trouble.
The sky was a clear salmon color, and Dejah felt her spirits rise as the Dome fell behind them, shrinking into the distance. Nathan seemed fully in control of the small craft, and she leaned over to look down at the ground below. The surface of the plain was rough and pitted with craters, but from this height looked like a child's model, the textures of the dust and stones smoothed away by distance. She could see a few dust devils whirling away across the dust, leaving their distinct spiral trails, and smiled as she remembered coming across their paths in the northern deserts.
Then the craft started to descend, and Dejah looked ahead for any sign of their destination. “I don't think there's any where to land a craft like this this far out from the city,” she observed. “Are you sure you have the right place?”
“Absolutely positive,” he smiled, keeping his eyes on the instrument panel.
The shuttle came lower and lower, and Dejah began to feel a twinge of nervousness. Then she saw it. A tiny Dome, no more than one hundred meters across, sitting on the floor of the red dusty plains like a delicate bowl upended on the ground. There was a small landing strip just outside it, and Nathan put the shuttle on a course to land on it. In another moment, then had touched down and were slowing rapidly.
An airlock tube was set into the Dome, and it connected to one end of the landing strip. Nathan punched in a remote key, and the outer door of the lock opened to let them in, and closed securely before opening the inner door.
They taxied into a small hangar inside the Dome, and Dejah couldn't see what else the small area held. “Nathan, where are we?”
He shook his head. “Just wait.”
They climbed out of the shuttle, and Dejah waited for Nathan as he made sure the shuttled was secured to the floor of the hangar. Then he smiled and took her hand, and opened the hangar door.
In the center of the land protected by the dome sat a small house. It was sturdy and solid, and had two stories. The upper story had huge glass windows, opening on every direction to provide what must be a spectacular view of the red horizon. The doorways were highly arched, and Dejah recognized Nathan's distinct design.
On the far side of the house, Dejah could see that the land had been left largely undisturbed, a wide expanse of dusty soil, rough rocks, and rugged landscape. Nearer the hanger, the ground had been plowed, rolled, and flattened into an even plain; rocks had been arranged in swirling patterns, and the whole thing had the feel of a garden, though no plants could grow there.
“Nathan...” Dejah breathed. “this is amazing. Is this what you were designing for your client? I can't imagine being able to afford a private hab like this.”
Nathan put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Dejah, you're the client for this one.”
she was stunned into silence. “wha...what?”
“You're the one I designed this for. It's ours. If you like it, this can be our home. The shuttle is ours too, I bought it at the beginning of the week. I can use it to hop into Spirit City to check on sites. You can work for anyone you want to from here, or not work at all, if you want, and never have to see one of the big Domes again.”
Dejah felt as though her heart had stopped beating. It was so beautiful, the red brick house with the windows that would glow at sunrise and sunset, the rock garden, and the wide lawn of natural Aresian soil. “Nathan, we can't afford this. The materials alone, not to mention the labor it must have cost...”
He laughed. “It did. It did cost a fortune.”
“But we can't afford..”
he kissed her, and smiled again. “you remember my cathedral, the one I was so determined to make sure that they built right?”
She nodded. “The Phoenix Cathedral. It's exquisite.”
“I sold the designs.”
“You what? Did they finally sign the creative consultant clause?”
Nathan shook his head. “No, I sold it without the clause.”
Dejah protested, “But the cathedral has to be perfect! That design is gorgeous, you can't let someone mess it up just to bring the building in a couple thousand dollars under budget.”
“Yes, I can. Dejah, you're more important to me than any building. I realized, when you left to check out Shackleton Hab, how incredibly important you are to me. And I thought I'd lost you then. I didn't know what to do. I called all the agents I could, trying to see who would give me the best price for the designs—I don't know what I was doing, I didn't know if you would ever come back. But I wanted to do something to show you how much you meant to me, even if I never saw you again.”
He grabbed her shoulders, and spun her around to face the house again. The morning sun was warm on the red bricks, and the windows caught the light and sparkled like gems. Dejah felt her throat constrict as she looked at the house. “can...Can I see what it looks like from upstairs?”
Nathan silently pulled a key on a chain from around his neck and handed it to her.
She folded her hand around it, feeling the warmth it had picked up from his body. With a shaking hand, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The floor was a dark red wood, expertly laid, and she wondered how much he had paid for real wood. It was expensive to ship across the solar system, since it was bulky and took up a lot of space. But the floors gleamed in the light, and she moved into the living room.
It was a round space, and reminded her of the common rooms at the University; the chairs were upholstered in vibrant warm colors, and thick rugs covered the floor. Imitation oil lamps were set into sconces on the walls, and several windows filtered in the daylight.
The kitchen was of polished Aresian rock tiles, and Dejah ran a hand over the uneven surface of one of the stones. It felt smooth, but almost soft, like suede.
“go see the bedroom,” Nathan whispered, standing in the doorway. In a daze, Dejah got to her feet, and walked down the carpeted hallway on the other side of the living room. The hallway turned a sharp corner, and the mustard yellow walls were hung with photographs of Aresian landscapes.
She opened the door to the bedroom, and her face broke into a wide smile of delight. There was a large bed in the center of the room, two large closets set into the wall, and a bathroom in one corner, with a large stone bathtub built into the floor. The carpet was thick and a deep chocolate color; the walls of the room were a warm buttery color, with a band of burgundy around the top of the walls. “Beautiful,” Dejah whispered.
“Check behind that door,” Nathan prompted, nodded to the door that appeared to lead outside. Dejah turned the knob, and stepped out into the sunlight.
A tunnel of clear material surrounded her, and she found herself at the foot of a curved metal staircase leading to the second story. As she climbed, she looked out over the plains toward the horizons. No sign of the Spirit City dome, though she knew it was only a few minutes away.
She reached the top of the stairwell, and pushed open the door to the second story. It was all one large room, rounded to allow a three hundred and sixty degree view of the landscape. A circular bench was built into the wall, transforming every window into a window seat. The floor was the same deep red wood, covered with rugs and pillows. Across the room was a work desk, and several painted screens were set up, on which work could be pinned and hung.
Dejah found herself sinking to the floor, and leaned against the bench, letting her eyes roam over the landscape outside. She heard Nathan come up the stairs and looked up as he knelt beside her.
“I don't know what to say.”
He put his arms around her, and they both turned to look out across the red plains. “Don't say anything, then. Just be here with me. Live here with me.”
She nodded. “It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen.”
“you gave up freedom for me, Dej. Don't think I didn't figure it out. I know how badly you wanted to stay at Shackleton. I saw your face when you got home. I couldn't stand to see you hurting like that. You need the freedom, the wide open spaces. You need the wildness that Mars has in abundance, once you get away from the Domes. I couldn't deny you that. More than anything, I want to see you happy.”
“I gave it up for you,” she whispered, letting her fingers trail across his face. “I couldn't bear the thought of breaking my promise, to always come back. I thought you wanted to be safe, to hold on to everything we had. And you gave it all up for this.”
Nathan looked at Dejah's face, her profile lit by the early morning sun. the lines of tension that he'd seen around her eyes and mouth for so long were gone, and there was a light in her eyes that he had once thought he would never see again.
She stood slowly, eyes still fixed on the huge red world outside the windows. The morning sun beat against the dust and rocks, and the land looked hot, like bricks baking in an oven. On the western edge of the land, outside the small dome, Dejah could see a thin line, like a canyon, breaking the plain. She pointed it out to Nathan.
“Yes,” he commented, “it is a small canyon, I forgot to mention it. The site scouts I talked to said that it's not big, but there are some really wonderful updrafts there, if you get familiar with the winds. I think it should be more than enough to fly the Valkyrie by.”
His words were cut off as Dejah launched herself at him, knocking the breath from his lungs as she embraced him, laughing like a school girl. “I can fly the Valkyrie here? I can really fly again?”
“As long as you promise to avoid face planting into Mars again. The medical centers of Spirit City may be only a few minutes away by shuttle, but I'd rather not have to take advantage of that.”
Dejah was hardly listenign; she could feel her heart pounding, and felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her back. She leaped into the air, whooping wildly, and tried to turn a cartwheel, but slipped and tumbled to the floor.
“Ha!” she laughed, scrambling to her feet again. “Ouch! I guess I should get into practice again before trying that.” She turned back to Nathan. “How soon can we move in?”
He grinned, and held up his comm. “I commed the movers as soon as you set foot on the staircase. They're going to pack our stuff up and have it out here tomorrow. You never have to set foot inside a Dome again, Dej, if you don't want to.”
She hiccuped, caught between a sob of joy and a laugh, and coughed for a minute, then laughed. “I don't even know how to respond.” she walked over to his side again, and wrapped her arms around him.
“I love you, Dej,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “More than anything on this world. And it's alright if you love Mars more than you love me—I can live with that. As long as we can both live with it, live here.”
She let her head fall forward, resting against his chest. “Thank you.” She let herself rest there for a moment, feeling a whirl of emotions that all ended up in joy.
They turned back again toward the windows. The sun was still rising, pulling itself up across the salmon colored sky. Dejah watched it for a minute, then turned away. “i want to go outside again, I need to be in the sunlight for a little while.” They quickly descended the stairs, and threaded their way through the house before coming back out to the stone garden.
Dejah knelt, running her hands through the dusty soil, relishing the feel of the tiny stones in the sand scraping against her skin. The dust coated her arms up to the elbows, and she laughed to see how much of it stuck to her. Brushing it off, she turned to the garden, casting an eye over the perfectly arranged stones. One section had been curled to form an intricate labyrinth, with a path that wound around and doubled back on itself until it formed a stylized flower in the middle.
The shadow of house stretched wide and black across the ground, shrinking gradually as the sun rose. Dejah walked around the house, examining it from all sides, shivering slightly as she passed into the shadow and out on the other side. She could hardly wait to see it at twilight, with the light purple all around, and the lights shining out of the upper windows. It would be like a lighthouse, she thought, visible to anyone in the area for miles around, a beacon for wanderers.
She heard the hum of the air filtration systems, and finally spotted the filters and compressors hidden behind an artistic pile of stones by the wall. She grinned, knowing that unless one knew where to look, the mechanism would be completely hidden. Nathan had spared no effort in creating the illusion of living unsupported on the barren red surface of Mars.
She walked around the rest of the house, and found Nathan still standing in the front of the house, watching her with a beaming smile. She joined him again, and turned toward the clear wall od the dome. The world was open before her feet, Dejah felt, and she turned her face toward the light to meet it unafraid.
THE END
“It's not another Dome, then?” Dejah asked. Nathan loaded their bags into a small shuttle, and grinned, but didn't answer. He helped Dejah up into the small cockpit of the shuttle before climbing aboard himself.
“Buckle up. We're not going all that far, but I'd rather have us gett there in one piece.”
Dejah snapped her harness into place, and looked out the viewpane as Nathan began a cautious taxi out to the runway. In a few minutes, they were airborne, and passed through the airlock with no trouble.
The sky was a clear salmon color, and Dejah felt her spirits rise as the Dome fell behind them, shrinking into the distance. Nathan seemed fully in control of the small craft, and she leaned over to look down at the ground below. The surface of the plain was rough and pitted with craters, but from this height looked like a child's model, the textures of the dust and stones smoothed away by distance. She could see a few dust devils whirling away across the dust, leaving their distinct spiral trails, and smiled as she remembered coming across their paths in the northern deserts.
Then the craft started to descend, and Dejah looked ahead for any sign of their destination. “I don't think there's any where to land a craft like this this far out from the city,” she observed. “Are you sure you have the right place?”
“Absolutely positive,” he smiled, keeping his eyes on the instrument panel.
The shuttle came lower and lower, and Dejah began to feel a twinge of nervousness. Then she saw it. A tiny Dome, no more than one hundred meters across, sitting on the floor of the red dusty plains like a delicate bowl upended on the ground. There was a small landing strip just outside it, and Nathan put the shuttle on a course to land on it. In another moment, then had touched down and were slowing rapidly.
An airlock tube was set into the Dome, and it connected to one end of the landing strip. Nathan punched in a remote key, and the outer door of the lock opened to let them in, and closed securely before opening the inner door.
They taxied into a small hangar inside the Dome, and Dejah couldn't see what else the small area held. “Nathan, where are we?”
He shook his head. “Just wait.”
They climbed out of the shuttle, and Dejah waited for Nathan as he made sure the shuttled was secured to the floor of the hangar. Then he smiled and took her hand, and opened the hangar door.
In the center of the land protected by the dome sat a small house. It was sturdy and solid, and had two stories. The upper story had huge glass windows, opening on every direction to provide what must be a spectacular view of the red horizon. The doorways were highly arched, and Dejah recognized Nathan's distinct design.
On the far side of the house, Dejah could see that the land had been left largely undisturbed, a wide expanse of dusty soil, rough rocks, and rugged landscape. Nearer the hanger, the ground had been plowed, rolled, and flattened into an even plain; rocks had been arranged in swirling patterns, and the whole thing had the feel of a garden, though no plants could grow there.
“Nathan...” Dejah breathed. “this is amazing. Is this what you were designing for your client? I can't imagine being able to afford a private hab like this.”
Nathan put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Dejah, you're the client for this one.”
she was stunned into silence. “wha...what?”
“You're the one I designed this for. It's ours. If you like it, this can be our home. The shuttle is ours too, I bought it at the beginning of the week. I can use it to hop into Spirit City to check on sites. You can work for anyone you want to from here, or not work at all, if you want, and never have to see one of the big Domes again.”
Dejah felt as though her heart had stopped beating. It was so beautiful, the red brick house with the windows that would glow at sunrise and sunset, the rock garden, and the wide lawn of natural Aresian soil. “Nathan, we can't afford this. The materials alone, not to mention the labor it must have cost...”
He laughed. “It did. It did cost a fortune.”
“But we can't afford..”
he kissed her, and smiled again. “you remember my cathedral, the one I was so determined to make sure that they built right?”
She nodded. “The Phoenix Cathedral. It's exquisite.”
“I sold the designs.”
“You what? Did they finally sign the creative consultant clause?”
Nathan shook his head. “No, I sold it without the clause.”
Dejah protested, “But the cathedral has to be perfect! That design is gorgeous, you can't let someone mess it up just to bring the building in a couple thousand dollars under budget.”
“Yes, I can. Dejah, you're more important to me than any building. I realized, when you left to check out Shackleton Hab, how incredibly important you are to me. And I thought I'd lost you then. I didn't know what to do. I called all the agents I could, trying to see who would give me the best price for the designs—I don't know what I was doing, I didn't know if you would ever come back. But I wanted to do something to show you how much you meant to me, even if I never saw you again.”
He grabbed her shoulders, and spun her around to face the house again. The morning sun was warm on the red bricks, and the windows caught the light and sparkled like gems. Dejah felt her throat constrict as she looked at the house. “can...Can I see what it looks like from upstairs?”
Nathan silently pulled a key on a chain from around his neck and handed it to her.
She folded her hand around it, feeling the warmth it had picked up from his body. With a shaking hand, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The floor was a dark red wood, expertly laid, and she wondered how much he had paid for real wood. It was expensive to ship across the solar system, since it was bulky and took up a lot of space. But the floors gleamed in the light, and she moved into the living room.
It was a round space, and reminded her of the common rooms at the University; the chairs were upholstered in vibrant warm colors, and thick rugs covered the floor. Imitation oil lamps were set into sconces on the walls, and several windows filtered in the daylight.
The kitchen was of polished Aresian rock tiles, and Dejah ran a hand over the uneven surface of one of the stones. It felt smooth, but almost soft, like suede.
“go see the bedroom,” Nathan whispered, standing in the doorway. In a daze, Dejah got to her feet, and walked down the carpeted hallway on the other side of the living room. The hallway turned a sharp corner, and the mustard yellow walls were hung with photographs of Aresian landscapes.
She opened the door to the bedroom, and her face broke into a wide smile of delight. There was a large bed in the center of the room, two large closets set into the wall, and a bathroom in one corner, with a large stone bathtub built into the floor. The carpet was thick and a deep chocolate color; the walls of the room were a warm buttery color, with a band of burgundy around the top of the walls. “Beautiful,” Dejah whispered.
“Check behind that door,” Nathan prompted, nodded to the door that appeared to lead outside. Dejah turned the knob, and stepped out into the sunlight.
A tunnel of clear material surrounded her, and she found herself at the foot of a curved metal staircase leading to the second story. As she climbed, she looked out over the plains toward the horizons. No sign of the Spirit City dome, though she knew it was only a few minutes away.
She reached the top of the stairwell, and pushed open the door to the second story. It was all one large room, rounded to allow a three hundred and sixty degree view of the landscape. A circular bench was built into the wall, transforming every window into a window seat. The floor was the same deep red wood, covered with rugs and pillows. Across the room was a work desk, and several painted screens were set up, on which work could be pinned and hung.
Dejah found herself sinking to the floor, and leaned against the bench, letting her eyes roam over the landscape outside. She heard Nathan come up the stairs and looked up as he knelt beside her.
“I don't know what to say.”
He put his arms around her, and they both turned to look out across the red plains. “Don't say anything, then. Just be here with me. Live here with me.”
She nodded. “It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen.”
“you gave up freedom for me, Dej. Don't think I didn't figure it out. I know how badly you wanted to stay at Shackleton. I saw your face when you got home. I couldn't stand to see you hurting like that. You need the freedom, the wide open spaces. You need the wildness that Mars has in abundance, once you get away from the Domes. I couldn't deny you that. More than anything, I want to see you happy.”
“I gave it up for you,” she whispered, letting her fingers trail across his face. “I couldn't bear the thought of breaking my promise, to always come back. I thought you wanted to be safe, to hold on to everything we had. And you gave it all up for this.”
Nathan looked at Dejah's face, her profile lit by the early morning sun. the lines of tension that he'd seen around her eyes and mouth for so long were gone, and there was a light in her eyes that he had once thought he would never see again.
She stood slowly, eyes still fixed on the huge red world outside the windows. The morning sun beat against the dust and rocks, and the land looked hot, like bricks baking in an oven. On the western edge of the land, outside the small dome, Dejah could see a thin line, like a canyon, breaking the plain. She pointed it out to Nathan.
“Yes,” he commented, “it is a small canyon, I forgot to mention it. The site scouts I talked to said that it's not big, but there are some really wonderful updrafts there, if you get familiar with the winds. I think it should be more than enough to fly the Valkyrie by.”
His words were cut off as Dejah launched herself at him, knocking the breath from his lungs as she embraced him, laughing like a school girl. “I can fly the Valkyrie here? I can really fly again?”
“As long as you promise to avoid face planting into Mars again. The medical centers of Spirit City may be only a few minutes away by shuttle, but I'd rather not have to take advantage of that.”
Dejah was hardly listenign; she could feel her heart pounding, and felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her back. She leaped into the air, whooping wildly, and tried to turn a cartwheel, but slipped and tumbled to the floor.
“Ha!” she laughed, scrambling to her feet again. “Ouch! I guess I should get into practice again before trying that.” She turned back to Nathan. “How soon can we move in?”
He grinned, and held up his comm. “I commed the movers as soon as you set foot on the staircase. They're going to pack our stuff up and have it out here tomorrow. You never have to set foot inside a Dome again, Dej, if you don't want to.”
She hiccuped, caught between a sob of joy and a laugh, and coughed for a minute, then laughed. “I don't even know how to respond.” she walked over to his side again, and wrapped her arms around him.
“I love you, Dej,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “More than anything on this world. And it's alright if you love Mars more than you love me—I can live with that. As long as we can both live with it, live here.”
She let her head fall forward, resting against his chest. “Thank you.” She let herself rest there for a moment, feeling a whirl of emotions that all ended up in joy.
They turned back again toward the windows. The sun was still rising, pulling itself up across the salmon colored sky. Dejah watched it for a minute, then turned away. “i want to go outside again, I need to be in the sunlight for a little while.” They quickly descended the stairs, and threaded their way through the house before coming back out to the stone garden.
Dejah knelt, running her hands through the dusty soil, relishing the feel of the tiny stones in the sand scraping against her skin. The dust coated her arms up to the elbows, and she laughed to see how much of it stuck to her. Brushing it off, she turned to the garden, casting an eye over the perfectly arranged stones. One section had been curled to form an intricate labyrinth, with a path that wound around and doubled back on itself until it formed a stylized flower in the middle.
The shadow of house stretched wide and black across the ground, shrinking gradually as the sun rose. Dejah walked around the house, examining it from all sides, shivering slightly as she passed into the shadow and out on the other side. She could hardly wait to see it at twilight, with the light purple all around, and the lights shining out of the upper windows. It would be like a lighthouse, she thought, visible to anyone in the area for miles around, a beacon for wanderers.
She heard the hum of the air filtration systems, and finally spotted the filters and compressors hidden behind an artistic pile of stones by the wall. She grinned, knowing that unless one knew where to look, the mechanism would be completely hidden. Nathan had spared no effort in creating the illusion of living unsupported on the barren red surface of Mars.
She walked around the rest of the house, and found Nathan still standing in the front of the house, watching her with a beaming smile. She joined him again, and turned toward the clear wall od the dome. The world was open before her feet, Dejah felt, and she turned her face toward the light to meet it unafraid.
THE END
Nano Post 71
PART FOUR: “Behold, I make all things new.”
“Dej, I have something I need to do, and I'll be gone for a couple of days,” Nathan said, a few months later. “Will you be ok by yourself for a while?”
She looked up from the cup of tea she was preparing. “Where are you going? I thought you were done with site scoutings for the month.”
He nodded, trying to chew the bite of bagel that he'd just stuffed into his mouth. Swallowing hard, he cleared his throat and replied, “ahem! Yeah, I thought so to, but this one's just come up. It's for my most important client, and I can't risk getting one wrong. There's too much riding on it.”
He walked across the kitchen and hugged her tightly. “I'm sorry for being away so much, I know it's hard. I promise, after this trip, things will be much easier, and we'll be able to spend more time together. Will you forgive me?”
Dejah smiled quietly, and nodded. “Yeah, I forgive you. Just hurry home, alright?” He nodded, and went back into their bedroom to pack a bag. She watched him go down the hall, then leaned against the counter and closed her eyes.
It's still so hard, she thought wearily. It's still so hard to be here like this, day in and day out, going to work, planning missions for others to complete, and coming back home to tea and bagels. I just want to be out there on the surface again, she cried inwardly, just to be out there where it's wild and dangerous and amazing.
Nathan emerged again, bag in hand, and she pushed the thoughts away. “Have a good trip,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Comm me when you get there so I know you landed safe, ok?”
“As always.” he kissed her on the mouth, embracing her tightly. “I'm going to miss you.”
she nodded, and he sighed, moving toward the door. “If you feel lonely, you should go visit Shelle. She's been kind of lonely since Brian started school and the others are in kindergarten. I'm not sure what her schedule at Parsec's is, but she'd love to see you.”
“That's a good idea, I should go do that,” Dejah agreed. “I'll try to stop by today. Now hurry, you don't want to keep anyone waiting for you.”
he nodded, and closed the door. Dejah moved to the window and watched him cross the lawn and head up the street to catch a public transport on the larger cross street.
When he was out of sight, she relaxed, and let herself slump into the couch. It was a Saturday, and there was no need for her to go to the Dandelion offices; the weekend stretched before her, long and empty.
She went into her work space and tried to work a little bit on the project for Mars Heritage; she had a stack of images from the Phoenix site that Charles had sent to her, and she looked at the image on top, trying to remember what it had felt like to look across that plain and see her solitary trail of footprints leading over the horizon and out of sight. She tapped out a few sentences on the keyboard, reread them, and erased them with a sigh. Too cliché, and not really reflective of her actual emotions.
She tried working on the other images in the project for a while, then sighed and got up from the chair.
Dejah grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door and quickly pulled it on before stepping outside and locking the door. The day was bright and sunny, like most days when the dust storms weren't blowing, and she turned her face upward to catch the light of the sun for a few moments before walking down the street.
In twenty minutes, she pushed open the door at 12 Parsecs. It was mostly quiet, except for the ever present gaggle of pilots from the Academy seated around one of the large round tables in the corner, and she slipped into a seat at a small table in a patch of sunlight.
Shelle saw her, and walked over. “Hey Dej! What brings you out here today?”
“Nathan's off on a last minute site check,” she responded, “and he's going to be gone for the whole weekend. I didn't feel much like cooking so I thought I'd drop by for some lunch and see if you needed some company yourself while Max is gone.”
Shelle smiled, her freckles showing golden agaisnt her skin. “Actually, yeah, that would be nice! The house feels pretty empty when the kids are gone to school. I guess I'll hve to get used to it, since Max's schedule is always going to have him gone a lot, and the kids are all in school now. But company would be nice today. I get off in about two hours, is that ok? I can give you a comm when I'm headed home.”
Dejah shook her head, and smiled. “That's ok, I think I'll just grab a bite to eat and wander around the area for a little while. I haven't seen Marcus since I got back from Spirit City, and Nathan mentioned that he's been asking about me, so I'll probably stop in and say hi to him.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Shelle laughed. “So what do you want to eat today, I'll go get it started!”
Thirty minutes later, Dejah was strolling along what had once been the main street of the area, and was now simply an interesting side street, one of many to offer odd shops and restaurants. Marcus' shop looked as dark and dingy from the outside as it always had, but Dejah saw the Open sign in the window, and pushed the door open.
The familiar bell chimed rustily, and she heard Marcus' gruff voice from the rear of the shop. “Hang on a minute, hang on a minute, I'm coming,” followed by indistinguishable muttering.
“Don't trip over anything, Marcus,” she called with a grin. “I'd hate to see you trip over the piles of junk you insist on keeping around.”
There was silence for a moment, then she heard footsteps hurring between the shelves, and Marcus dashed into the front of the store, greying hair in disarray.
“Well, what do you know, it's Ms. Dejah Sorenson, back from the dead to hear some talk about it!”
She laughed, and reached out to shake his hand. “good to see you, too, Marcus. How's business been?”
He shrugged. “Oh, not so great for the store, little better for the printing press. And fantastic for stories about you. Do you have any idea how many crazy reporters came by here while you were in the hospital, trying to get any sort of scoop over the others?” He barked out a half laugh. “I was sorely tempted to just start making up a different wild story for each one of them, but once I heard that you were going to pull through, I knew that you'd pay me back for any of that kind of foolishness. They were pretty frustrated when I told them that you were neither a wild woman, nor the quiet loner type, nor a religious fanatic. They just weren't quite sure how to write about a real Aresian hero any more. I offered to send them to journalism school, but they didn't seem to appreciate that.”
Dejah rolled her eyes. “Marcus, you are incorrigible. Oh, I have something here that you might like to see.” she pulled the chain of her necklace over her head, and grabbed the pendants that hung from it. One was the meteorite pendant that Nathan had given her years ago; the other was the fragment of solar panel.
Marcus peered at her jewelry. “I regonize the one, of course, but I'm not even sure what the other one is made of. Synthetic, I take it?”
She nodded. “It's a little fragment of a solar panel from the Phoenix Lander. One of my crew who did the extrication managed to snag it, and the other helped make it into a necklace. But it's a real part of the Phoenix, something that traveled millions of miles just to give us the chance to get here.”
Marcus touched it lightly, and Dejah tipped the necklace into his hand. “Here, go ahead and take a good look at it. It doesn't look like much, but when you consider where it's been...”
The older man held the pendant delicately, turning it over in his palm. “Seems to grow warm to the touch. That's quite some souvenir you have there.” He handed the necklace back, and she hung it over her neck again, slipping th pendants inside her shirt.
“All joking aside, that really was quite a journey you made,” he commented, leaning on the front counter. “Never seen anything like it, but damned if it wasn't the sort of thign I always wanted to see. Forget being a role model for the young ones coming up, you've made some old men who just wanted to see some spirit very happy indeed.” He looked at her over the tops of his glasses. “But I hear you've been grounded, got to stay inside the dome now. Was it worth it?”
Dejah swallowed, a ssudden lump appearing in her throat. She had a sudden flash of rememberance: purple hills under a sky filled with stars, a line of footprints fading off over the horizon for miles, a few glints of metal shining proudly in the dust.
She smiled, blinking back a tear, and nodded. “Yes. It was worth it. It might not be for everyone but...it was worth it.”
“Glad to hear it,” marcus said quietly. “Very glad to hear it.”
Dejah bid goodbye to Marcus, and headed back down the street toward the restaurant. Shelle would be getting off work in twenty minutes, and it was no use trying to go anywhere else in that short of a time.
When she walked back into the restaurant, it was empty, and Shelle sat at a table in the sun, feet propped on the chair across from her, and a cup of coffee steaming in her hand. She looked at towards the door as Dejah walked in and waved. “Hey! Come join me over here, I'm just waiting for my relief to get here. It's pretty dead today.”
Dejah sat down in the chair across from Shelle as the waitress put her feet on the floor. “isn't that a little weird for a Saturday?”
Shelle shrugged. “It's hard to tell how the weekends are going to go actually. Sometimes we're absolultely slammed, other times it's so dead we'd do better to close up early for the afternoon.”
The two women chatted about work for a few minutes, until Shelle's replacement arrived, then they donned their jackets and headed back out to the sunny street. Max and Shelle lived close to the downtown area, and it was only a five minute walk to their home.
Shelle unlocked the door, and held it open for Dejah, who thanked her.
The house was warm and welcoming, but Dejah could detect a few expensive things that she was sure Max's inheritance had paid for. Shelle waved Dejah over to a comfortable chair, and sat down in a rocking chair nearby.
“So I hear that you and Nathan decided to stay in Spirit City,” shelle noted with a smile. “I'm really glad to hear that, I'd hate to see you leave. Seems like everyone is spreading out these days; it's hard to make friends before they just up and move to some other dome across the planet. The kids keep losing playmates, and it's been pretty discouraging for Sally. She's so sensitive and quiet, she doesn't make friends that easily.”
Dejah nodded, pulling her feet up under her. “Yeah, we're both going to stay. Nathan's work is here, and it just worked out better that way. Besides, I can be a free agent now—I'm still working for Dandelion, but there's a lot of opportunities for other stuff for mars Heritage and some others.” She shrugged. “Not ideal, but I've learned that the ideal isn't always possible.”
the late Sunday evening was beginning to get cold when Nathan opened the door of their home. “Dej?” he called. “Dej, I'm home!”
Dejah walked out of the work room and greeted him with a kiss. “Hey! Welcome back. How did it go?”
Nathan smiled, and Dejah thought she saw an odd look in his eye. “Oh, it's perfect. Everything is as good as I could hope for, or better. I just have to wait for the client to see it and approve it, but I think they're going to be very happy. It's some of my best work.”
“Sound great,” Dejah replied, only half listening. She punched the power button on the electric kettle and waited for it to boil. Nathan walked up behind her in the kitchen, and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Dejah, honey, we haven't been away together in years. I've got some vacation time coming up, and I have to use it before the end of the year. What do you say we take the next few days and just get away for a while?”
“Oh, I don't know,” she responded, carefully pouring the now boiling water into a cup. “You just got back, it seems awfully soon to be heading out again. You don't have to hurry for my sake, I've been fine.” She dropped a tea bag into the cup to steep.
Nathan grabbed her hands, and bent down to look her in the eyes. “Dejah, this is important to me, too. I know that you don't like being stuck in the Dome, and I really want to take you out of here for a little while. Please, just...just trust me, this one time.”
The look in his eyes made her pause. He didn't look angry, or frustrated, or even tired. Just sad and...something else. A little hopeful, she wondered.
“alright. I can pack some stuff and be ready to go tomorrow morning, I just need to let a few people know that i'll be away from my projects for a few days.”
Nathan smiled in relief, and gave her a hug. “You won't regret it, Dej, I promise.”
“Dej, I have something I need to do, and I'll be gone for a couple of days,” Nathan said, a few months later. “Will you be ok by yourself for a while?”
She looked up from the cup of tea she was preparing. “Where are you going? I thought you were done with site scoutings for the month.”
He nodded, trying to chew the bite of bagel that he'd just stuffed into his mouth. Swallowing hard, he cleared his throat and replied, “ahem! Yeah, I thought so to, but this one's just come up. It's for my most important client, and I can't risk getting one wrong. There's too much riding on it.”
He walked across the kitchen and hugged her tightly. “I'm sorry for being away so much, I know it's hard. I promise, after this trip, things will be much easier, and we'll be able to spend more time together. Will you forgive me?”
Dejah smiled quietly, and nodded. “Yeah, I forgive you. Just hurry home, alright?” He nodded, and went back into their bedroom to pack a bag. She watched him go down the hall, then leaned against the counter and closed her eyes.
It's still so hard, she thought wearily. It's still so hard to be here like this, day in and day out, going to work, planning missions for others to complete, and coming back home to tea and bagels. I just want to be out there on the surface again, she cried inwardly, just to be out there where it's wild and dangerous and amazing.
Nathan emerged again, bag in hand, and she pushed the thoughts away. “Have a good trip,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Comm me when you get there so I know you landed safe, ok?”
“As always.” he kissed her on the mouth, embracing her tightly. “I'm going to miss you.”
she nodded, and he sighed, moving toward the door. “If you feel lonely, you should go visit Shelle. She's been kind of lonely since Brian started school and the others are in kindergarten. I'm not sure what her schedule at Parsec's is, but she'd love to see you.”
“That's a good idea, I should go do that,” Dejah agreed. “I'll try to stop by today. Now hurry, you don't want to keep anyone waiting for you.”
he nodded, and closed the door. Dejah moved to the window and watched him cross the lawn and head up the street to catch a public transport on the larger cross street.
When he was out of sight, she relaxed, and let herself slump into the couch. It was a Saturday, and there was no need for her to go to the Dandelion offices; the weekend stretched before her, long and empty.
She went into her work space and tried to work a little bit on the project for Mars Heritage; she had a stack of images from the Phoenix site that Charles had sent to her, and she looked at the image on top, trying to remember what it had felt like to look across that plain and see her solitary trail of footprints leading over the horizon and out of sight. She tapped out a few sentences on the keyboard, reread them, and erased them with a sigh. Too cliché, and not really reflective of her actual emotions.
She tried working on the other images in the project for a while, then sighed and got up from the chair.
Dejah grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door and quickly pulled it on before stepping outside and locking the door. The day was bright and sunny, like most days when the dust storms weren't blowing, and she turned her face upward to catch the light of the sun for a few moments before walking down the street.
In twenty minutes, she pushed open the door at 12 Parsecs. It was mostly quiet, except for the ever present gaggle of pilots from the Academy seated around one of the large round tables in the corner, and she slipped into a seat at a small table in a patch of sunlight.
Shelle saw her, and walked over. “Hey Dej! What brings you out here today?”
“Nathan's off on a last minute site check,” she responded, “and he's going to be gone for the whole weekend. I didn't feel much like cooking so I thought I'd drop by for some lunch and see if you needed some company yourself while Max is gone.”
Shelle smiled, her freckles showing golden agaisnt her skin. “Actually, yeah, that would be nice! The house feels pretty empty when the kids are gone to school. I guess I'll hve to get used to it, since Max's schedule is always going to have him gone a lot, and the kids are all in school now. But company would be nice today. I get off in about two hours, is that ok? I can give you a comm when I'm headed home.”
Dejah shook her head, and smiled. “That's ok, I think I'll just grab a bite to eat and wander around the area for a little while. I haven't seen Marcus since I got back from Spirit City, and Nathan mentioned that he's been asking about me, so I'll probably stop in and say hi to him.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Shelle laughed. “So what do you want to eat today, I'll go get it started!”
Thirty minutes later, Dejah was strolling along what had once been the main street of the area, and was now simply an interesting side street, one of many to offer odd shops and restaurants. Marcus' shop looked as dark and dingy from the outside as it always had, but Dejah saw the Open sign in the window, and pushed the door open.
The familiar bell chimed rustily, and she heard Marcus' gruff voice from the rear of the shop. “Hang on a minute, hang on a minute, I'm coming,” followed by indistinguishable muttering.
“Don't trip over anything, Marcus,” she called with a grin. “I'd hate to see you trip over the piles of junk you insist on keeping around.”
There was silence for a moment, then she heard footsteps hurring between the shelves, and Marcus dashed into the front of the store, greying hair in disarray.
“Well, what do you know, it's Ms. Dejah Sorenson, back from the dead to hear some talk about it!”
She laughed, and reached out to shake his hand. “good to see you, too, Marcus. How's business been?”
He shrugged. “Oh, not so great for the store, little better for the printing press. And fantastic for stories about you. Do you have any idea how many crazy reporters came by here while you were in the hospital, trying to get any sort of scoop over the others?” He barked out a half laugh. “I was sorely tempted to just start making up a different wild story for each one of them, but once I heard that you were going to pull through, I knew that you'd pay me back for any of that kind of foolishness. They were pretty frustrated when I told them that you were neither a wild woman, nor the quiet loner type, nor a religious fanatic. They just weren't quite sure how to write about a real Aresian hero any more. I offered to send them to journalism school, but they didn't seem to appreciate that.”
Dejah rolled her eyes. “Marcus, you are incorrigible. Oh, I have something here that you might like to see.” she pulled the chain of her necklace over her head, and grabbed the pendants that hung from it. One was the meteorite pendant that Nathan had given her years ago; the other was the fragment of solar panel.
Marcus peered at her jewelry. “I regonize the one, of course, but I'm not even sure what the other one is made of. Synthetic, I take it?”
She nodded. “It's a little fragment of a solar panel from the Phoenix Lander. One of my crew who did the extrication managed to snag it, and the other helped make it into a necklace. But it's a real part of the Phoenix, something that traveled millions of miles just to give us the chance to get here.”
Marcus touched it lightly, and Dejah tipped the necklace into his hand. “Here, go ahead and take a good look at it. It doesn't look like much, but when you consider where it's been...”
The older man held the pendant delicately, turning it over in his palm. “Seems to grow warm to the touch. That's quite some souvenir you have there.” He handed the necklace back, and she hung it over her neck again, slipping th pendants inside her shirt.
“All joking aside, that really was quite a journey you made,” he commented, leaning on the front counter. “Never seen anything like it, but damned if it wasn't the sort of thign I always wanted to see. Forget being a role model for the young ones coming up, you've made some old men who just wanted to see some spirit very happy indeed.” He looked at her over the tops of his glasses. “But I hear you've been grounded, got to stay inside the dome now. Was it worth it?”
Dejah swallowed, a ssudden lump appearing in her throat. She had a sudden flash of rememberance: purple hills under a sky filled with stars, a line of footprints fading off over the horizon for miles, a few glints of metal shining proudly in the dust.
She smiled, blinking back a tear, and nodded. “Yes. It was worth it. It might not be for everyone but...it was worth it.”
“Glad to hear it,” marcus said quietly. “Very glad to hear it.”
Dejah bid goodbye to Marcus, and headed back down the street toward the restaurant. Shelle would be getting off work in twenty minutes, and it was no use trying to go anywhere else in that short of a time.
When she walked back into the restaurant, it was empty, and Shelle sat at a table in the sun, feet propped on the chair across from her, and a cup of coffee steaming in her hand. She looked at towards the door as Dejah walked in and waved. “Hey! Come join me over here, I'm just waiting for my relief to get here. It's pretty dead today.”
Dejah sat down in the chair across from Shelle as the waitress put her feet on the floor. “isn't that a little weird for a Saturday?”
Shelle shrugged. “It's hard to tell how the weekends are going to go actually. Sometimes we're absolultely slammed, other times it's so dead we'd do better to close up early for the afternoon.”
The two women chatted about work for a few minutes, until Shelle's replacement arrived, then they donned their jackets and headed back out to the sunny street. Max and Shelle lived close to the downtown area, and it was only a five minute walk to their home.
Shelle unlocked the door, and held it open for Dejah, who thanked her.
The house was warm and welcoming, but Dejah could detect a few expensive things that she was sure Max's inheritance had paid for. Shelle waved Dejah over to a comfortable chair, and sat down in a rocking chair nearby.
“So I hear that you and Nathan decided to stay in Spirit City,” shelle noted with a smile. “I'm really glad to hear that, I'd hate to see you leave. Seems like everyone is spreading out these days; it's hard to make friends before they just up and move to some other dome across the planet. The kids keep losing playmates, and it's been pretty discouraging for Sally. She's so sensitive and quiet, she doesn't make friends that easily.”
Dejah nodded, pulling her feet up under her. “Yeah, we're both going to stay. Nathan's work is here, and it just worked out better that way. Besides, I can be a free agent now—I'm still working for Dandelion, but there's a lot of opportunities for other stuff for mars Heritage and some others.” She shrugged. “Not ideal, but I've learned that the ideal isn't always possible.”
the late Sunday evening was beginning to get cold when Nathan opened the door of their home. “Dej?” he called. “Dej, I'm home!”
Dejah walked out of the work room and greeted him with a kiss. “Hey! Welcome back. How did it go?”
Nathan smiled, and Dejah thought she saw an odd look in his eye. “Oh, it's perfect. Everything is as good as I could hope for, or better. I just have to wait for the client to see it and approve it, but I think they're going to be very happy. It's some of my best work.”
“Sound great,” Dejah replied, only half listening. She punched the power button on the electric kettle and waited for it to boil. Nathan walked up behind her in the kitchen, and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Dejah, honey, we haven't been away together in years. I've got some vacation time coming up, and I have to use it before the end of the year. What do you say we take the next few days and just get away for a while?”
“Oh, I don't know,” she responded, carefully pouring the now boiling water into a cup. “You just got back, it seems awfully soon to be heading out again. You don't have to hurry for my sake, I've been fine.” She dropped a tea bag into the cup to steep.
Nathan grabbed her hands, and bent down to look her in the eyes. “Dejah, this is important to me, too. I know that you don't like being stuck in the Dome, and I really want to take you out of here for a little while. Please, just...just trust me, this one time.”
The look in his eyes made her pause. He didn't look angry, or frustrated, or even tired. Just sad and...something else. A little hopeful, she wondered.
“alright. I can pack some stuff and be ready to go tomorrow morning, I just need to let a few people know that i'll be away from my projects for a few days.”
Nathan smiled in relief, and gave her a hug. “You won't regret it, Dej, I promise.”
Nano Post 70
Dejah lay in her bed, in a room loaned to her by one of the other Shackleford residents. The room was small but clean and sturdy, and she looked out of the window. In the distance, she could see the horizon, lit by starlight. It seemed so close, she thought sleepily, as if she could get out of bed and simply walk there in a few minutes.
She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling; there were too many things going through her mind for her to sleep. Everything at Shackleford felt exciting and new, like the University had felt, and Bradbury Dome during the two years she had spent in the intense training there.
She exhaled sharply and sat up. “I can’t sleep like this,” she muttered. She slipped out of the bed, and walked over to the window. Half of the small town lay between her and the edge of the wall, and the rough plastered roofs looked like rows of miniature hills in the starlight. Several windows were still lit, and the yellow light bounced off of a few brick walls, casting odd pools of warm light in the cold chill of the night.
Dejah breathed in deeply. It wasn't that the air here felt any different than in any other Dome, she mused, but somehow this tiny hab had far more room to breathe.
“down there,” she pointed out a small mound to herself. “that's where I'd live. A nice little set of rooms, in this fantastic brick. And as many windows as I can get without losing too much heat from the building, windows that would look out directly on the Dome so I could see all the way through to the horizon. East facing, so I could see the sun rise every morning. And there might even be enough of a draft in that gully to get the Valkyrie airborne again.”
She was swept up in memories of flying high, soaring over the Aresian landscape, and closed her eyes. If she really thought about it, she could recall the way the wind rippled over her suit and swept bits of dust across her helmet. The wonderful sound of the thin atmosphere filling the wings with a sudden whoosh when she banked hard for a turn, and the sudden shock to her legs when the ground came up just a little too fast during a landing.
Unbidden, the image of Nathan's face rose up in her mind, and she frowned. She tried to push the thought away, and recapture the memory of flight, but the moment had passed.
Dejah sighed and opened her eyes. “Can't I dream, just for a few minutes?” The silent city gave her no answer.
She settled into a chair, and sat, still facing the window. “Nathan really is a good man,” she whispered to the sleeping town, as if the buildings could answer her. “It's not like I'd be leaving him for someone else. I don't have any interest in anyone else. I just...” she paused, searching for the words. “he was right, after all. I love Mars more than I love him, more than I could ever love him. But he just doesn't understand, I can't live without this red dust, without that beautiful orange sky. I'd rather rip open my suit myself out on the plains than live for another forty years in that stifling Dome.”
The stars passed quietly over the town as she struggled to make her decision. She wished that Max was there to talk it over with, but he had been offered a room across town, near the hangar, and she wasn't quite sure which building it was. “And anyway,” she muttered, “I don't think his hosts would be particular happy to answer the door at three in the morning.”
she glanced over her shoulder at the mirror that hung over the simple dresser. Her face looked odd in the cold light; the dim illumination that lit the scene came from the window behind her, and her face was shadowed, though her mussed hair created a glowing aureole around her head. One cheekbone caught the light, turning her face half purple. She didn't look tired, she mused, so much as desperate and confused.
“You shouldn't be confused,” she told the face in the mirror. “This should be simple. It's the answer to all of your problems. You can let Nathan go find some nice girl who's happy to stay in the Dome, and he'll be happier. You can go back to doing the kind of work you love—surely there's a med center here that's robust enough to take care of any injuries that might happen. And this Dome's so small, it would feel almost like living on the bare surface, and you could be closer to the surface than ever.”
But the face in the mirror refused to relax, and she turned away, irritated. “Why isn't it enough,” she muttered. “It really would be easier.”
“But since when did you take the easy way?” she answered herself, getting out of the chair and pacing the room, as she always did when frustrated or confused.
“It's not like life here would be easy, in and of itself. It'd probably be a lot harder, and I'll die a lot younger than I would in the Dome. But...” she groaned with irritation and ran her hands through her hair, mussing it further. “It would be too easy just to leave. I've never backed down from anything I said I would do.”
The room grew colder as the night progressed, but Dejah didn't notice, pacing until her legs were sore. Finally, exhausted, she dropped into the bed just as the sun was beginning to rise. Shivering, she pulled the covers over herself as she fell into an uneasy sleep.
A few hours later, a knock sounded at her door. “Ms. Sorenson? We're sorry to wake you, but it's getting rather late, and your friend is here to fly you home. Are you alright?”
Dejah sat up, head muddled and thoughts still whirling. “Yes, I'm fine. Thank you for checking—please tell Max that i'll be down in a few minutes.”
She lay back in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then exhaled and rolled off the bed.
“Hey, there's the sleepyhead!” Max called as she came downstairs, holding her overnight bag in one hand and brushing her hair with the other.
“ha ha, very funny. Says the man who never woke up on time for school a day in his life.” She grinned, and set the bag down at the foot of the stairs to pull her hair back into her customary ponytail.
Her hosts bid her farewell after she turned down their offer of breakfast, and she and Max made their way back to the hangar. The Silver Hammer was quickly loaded, and Max waited until Dejah fastened her harness to start the engines. They slowly taxied through the airlock, then Max pushed the spacecraft forward, and they launched into the sky with a roar.
Dejah looked into the rear view pane, watching the city dwindle quickly in the distance, until it looked like no more than a soap bubble that had landed on the red sands for a moment before bursting.
They flew in silence for a few moments after leaving the Shackleford airlock. Then Max checked the instrument panel and asked, “so, what did you think? Gonna make it home any time soon?”
she didn't reply for a moment, looking down at the dusty plains as they passed below the ship.
“Dej? You ok?”
“Yeah, sorry, just didn't get much sleep last night. Spent a lot of time thinking. If you'd asked me that question last night, I probably would have asked how quickly you could fly all of my stuff out here. I mean, it really is perfect for me, isn't it? I wish it had been an option after school. Seems awfully cruel to have gotten married when I just can't be what Nathan really wants. Maybe we shouldn't have married; he was right when he accused me of loving Mars more than I love him. Can't really help that now; it is what it is. But I got to thinking last night.” she paused, trying to clear her head and get her thoughts in order.
“Max, you've known me since I was ten years old. Have you ever known me to give up on anything once I put my mind to it?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No, I have not. I would, in fact, say that sheer pig headedness is one of your most distinct traits, for better or worse.”
“That's pretty much the conclusion I came to last night. If I came here, Nathan wouldn't want to come, even if he could. This place would drive him crazy, at least as crazy as Spirit City drives me. That's not fair.”
“Pretty sticky situation, Dej. You always did have a knack for getting tangled up in things and needing my expertise for getting you out.”
She leaned back against the seat, letting her head rest against the cushion, and closed her eyes with weariness. “Yes, it is. But I should have known better. I should have seen this coming. But I wanted Nathan so much that I ignored any of the problems. And I made a promise. I've never gone back on anything before, and I don't intend to do it now.”
Max kept his eyes fixed on the view out of the front window, but she could tell that his attention was on her. “So you're not going to take their offer?”
Dejah shook her head. “No. It would just be a kind of running away, and I'm not going to resort to that sort of thing. I'd never be able to look at my face in the mirror again, knowing that I'd run out on something I had been determined to do.”
“does Nathan know yet? Did you talk to him on the comm this morning?”
“No, I figured that it was the sort of thing that I should probably tell him in person. If he still wants out, I'll let him. I don't want him to feel trapped in the marriage. But I really do want to make it work, if possible. Maybe I can just take a vacation to a small hab once a year or something.”
Max turned and studied Dejah for a moment, noting how tired she looked. “You really think that will be enough for you, Dej?”
She laughed bitterly. “Of course it won't be enough! But, there's more to life than just being happy. If I stay with Nathan, maybe I let myself down, let go of my dreams. Whatever. If I moved to Shackleford Dome, I'd let down Nathan and myself, by refusing to honor my promise. This is the only choice. And I think you knew that before I did.”
He nodded. “I thought it might be the case. You made me pretty nervous back there, though. I thought I might have been wrong, that you would actually throw everything away and start over there.”
“would you have thought less of me if I had done it?” she asked.
“Yes. You would still have been one of my closest and dearest friends, but yes, I would have thought less of you.” He looked her in the eyes, and she saw the depth of feeling in his gaze. “You truly are an incredible woman, Dejah. All of your new fans out there will never know just how amazing you really are.”
dejah was asleep when the Silver Hammer landed, and Max carefully shook her shoulder until she woke up. She groaned and stretched before loosening her harness. “Argh, I hate falling asleep on those long flights! I'm always so stiff when I wake up later.” She hopped off the ship, and caught the bag that Max tossed to her. “Hey, watch it, do you handle all of your passenger's luggage like that? Premium shipping, like hell.”
He grinned. “Oh, bugger off, you crazy Aresian. Get some actual sleep tonight, will you?”
She nodded, and turned to go home. The sky was dark, and the stars swung overhead; Jupiter shone brightly down on the city.
The door creaked slightly as she opened it. She winced, and closed it quickly, hoping that it hadn't disturbed Nathan's sleep. She tiptoed into the living room, planning to sleep on the couch so as not to wake her husband.
But to her surprise, the light over the kitchen table was still on, and the table was covered with colorful designs in brilliant red, orange, and yellows. She recognized the phoenix colors of Nathan's cathedral design.
Nathan himself was slumped over the table, half covering the drawings, and Dejah couldn't help smiling at the sight of the thin line of drool that escaped from the corner of his mouth. The silence of the house was occasionally broken by a soft snore.
She laid a hand on his shoulder, and shook him slightly. “Nathan, dear, you can't sleep here, you'll throw out your back. Come on, wake up and let's get you into bed.”
“Huh?” he muttered as he woke up slowly, looking around in confusion. “Dej! You're home!” He quickly began gatehring up the scattered papers and stacking them on one of the kitchen chairs. “I thought you'd stay for a few days, see what life was like over there.” he paused, setting down the stack of papers in his hands. “but...are you staying? Or are you going to go?”
she sighed, and grabbed his hand. “Here, let's go sit on the couch, where it's comfortable, and I'll tell you more.”
Nathan sat down heavily on the couch, and Dejah lowered herself onto the cushions beside him, curling her legs underneath her and leaning on the back of the couch so she could look him in the eye.
“Nathan, I've made my decision.”
He looks scared, she thought with a pang, scared that I'm going to say something to hurt him. She quickly continued, “I'm not going to take the job. I want to stay here with you and try to make this work.”
He let out a breath quickly, and exclaimed “really? You're really going to stay?”
she nodded. The next moment she found herself wrapped in his arms, with his face buried in her neck. “I missed you so much,” he said, “I missed you so much!”
Dejah woke again in the middle of the night. Nathan's arms were around her waist, and she carefully disentangled herself and went to look out of the window.
Phobos was passing overhead, on its journey down to the horizon, and it added a pale white light to the city, turning the shadows more blue than purple. The streetlights outside dimmed the moonshadow, but she could still see the faint shadows that moved across the ground as the moon sailed by.
It's still beautiful here sometimes, she thought sadly, but you have to know where to look for it.
She stared out of the window until the moon had dropped out of sight, and her skin was cold from the night air. Shivering, she climbed back into the bed, and turned her back on the window.
She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling; there were too many things going through her mind for her to sleep. Everything at Shackleford felt exciting and new, like the University had felt, and Bradbury Dome during the two years she had spent in the intense training there.
She exhaled sharply and sat up. “I can’t sleep like this,” she muttered. She slipped out of the bed, and walked over to the window. Half of the small town lay between her and the edge of the wall, and the rough plastered roofs looked like rows of miniature hills in the starlight. Several windows were still lit, and the yellow light bounced off of a few brick walls, casting odd pools of warm light in the cold chill of the night.
Dejah breathed in deeply. It wasn't that the air here felt any different than in any other Dome, she mused, but somehow this tiny hab had far more room to breathe.
“down there,” she pointed out a small mound to herself. “that's where I'd live. A nice little set of rooms, in this fantastic brick. And as many windows as I can get without losing too much heat from the building, windows that would look out directly on the Dome so I could see all the way through to the horizon. East facing, so I could see the sun rise every morning. And there might even be enough of a draft in that gully to get the Valkyrie airborne again.”
She was swept up in memories of flying high, soaring over the Aresian landscape, and closed her eyes. If she really thought about it, she could recall the way the wind rippled over her suit and swept bits of dust across her helmet. The wonderful sound of the thin atmosphere filling the wings with a sudden whoosh when she banked hard for a turn, and the sudden shock to her legs when the ground came up just a little too fast during a landing.
Unbidden, the image of Nathan's face rose up in her mind, and she frowned. She tried to push the thought away, and recapture the memory of flight, but the moment had passed.
Dejah sighed and opened her eyes. “Can't I dream, just for a few minutes?” The silent city gave her no answer.
She settled into a chair, and sat, still facing the window. “Nathan really is a good man,” she whispered to the sleeping town, as if the buildings could answer her. “It's not like I'd be leaving him for someone else. I don't have any interest in anyone else. I just...” she paused, searching for the words. “he was right, after all. I love Mars more than I love him, more than I could ever love him. But he just doesn't understand, I can't live without this red dust, without that beautiful orange sky. I'd rather rip open my suit myself out on the plains than live for another forty years in that stifling Dome.”
The stars passed quietly over the town as she struggled to make her decision. She wished that Max was there to talk it over with, but he had been offered a room across town, near the hangar, and she wasn't quite sure which building it was. “And anyway,” she muttered, “I don't think his hosts would be particular happy to answer the door at three in the morning.”
she glanced over her shoulder at the mirror that hung over the simple dresser. Her face looked odd in the cold light; the dim illumination that lit the scene came from the window behind her, and her face was shadowed, though her mussed hair created a glowing aureole around her head. One cheekbone caught the light, turning her face half purple. She didn't look tired, she mused, so much as desperate and confused.
“You shouldn't be confused,” she told the face in the mirror. “This should be simple. It's the answer to all of your problems. You can let Nathan go find some nice girl who's happy to stay in the Dome, and he'll be happier. You can go back to doing the kind of work you love—surely there's a med center here that's robust enough to take care of any injuries that might happen. And this Dome's so small, it would feel almost like living on the bare surface, and you could be closer to the surface than ever.”
But the face in the mirror refused to relax, and she turned away, irritated. “Why isn't it enough,” she muttered. “It really would be easier.”
“But since when did you take the easy way?” she answered herself, getting out of the chair and pacing the room, as she always did when frustrated or confused.
“It's not like life here would be easy, in and of itself. It'd probably be a lot harder, and I'll die a lot younger than I would in the Dome. But...” she groaned with irritation and ran her hands through her hair, mussing it further. “It would be too easy just to leave. I've never backed down from anything I said I would do.”
The room grew colder as the night progressed, but Dejah didn't notice, pacing until her legs were sore. Finally, exhausted, she dropped into the bed just as the sun was beginning to rise. Shivering, she pulled the covers over herself as she fell into an uneasy sleep.
A few hours later, a knock sounded at her door. “Ms. Sorenson? We're sorry to wake you, but it's getting rather late, and your friend is here to fly you home. Are you alright?”
Dejah sat up, head muddled and thoughts still whirling. “Yes, I'm fine. Thank you for checking—please tell Max that i'll be down in a few minutes.”
She lay back in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then exhaled and rolled off the bed.
“Hey, there's the sleepyhead!” Max called as she came downstairs, holding her overnight bag in one hand and brushing her hair with the other.
“ha ha, very funny. Says the man who never woke up on time for school a day in his life.” She grinned, and set the bag down at the foot of the stairs to pull her hair back into her customary ponytail.
Her hosts bid her farewell after she turned down their offer of breakfast, and she and Max made their way back to the hangar. The Silver Hammer was quickly loaded, and Max waited until Dejah fastened her harness to start the engines. They slowly taxied through the airlock, then Max pushed the spacecraft forward, and they launched into the sky with a roar.
Dejah looked into the rear view pane, watching the city dwindle quickly in the distance, until it looked like no more than a soap bubble that had landed on the red sands for a moment before bursting.
They flew in silence for a few moments after leaving the Shackleford airlock. Then Max checked the instrument panel and asked, “so, what did you think? Gonna make it home any time soon?”
she didn't reply for a moment, looking down at the dusty plains as they passed below the ship.
“Dej? You ok?”
“Yeah, sorry, just didn't get much sleep last night. Spent a lot of time thinking. If you'd asked me that question last night, I probably would have asked how quickly you could fly all of my stuff out here. I mean, it really is perfect for me, isn't it? I wish it had been an option after school. Seems awfully cruel to have gotten married when I just can't be what Nathan really wants. Maybe we shouldn't have married; he was right when he accused me of loving Mars more than I love him. Can't really help that now; it is what it is. But I got to thinking last night.” she paused, trying to clear her head and get her thoughts in order.
“Max, you've known me since I was ten years old. Have you ever known me to give up on anything once I put my mind to it?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No, I have not. I would, in fact, say that sheer pig headedness is one of your most distinct traits, for better or worse.”
“That's pretty much the conclusion I came to last night. If I came here, Nathan wouldn't want to come, even if he could. This place would drive him crazy, at least as crazy as Spirit City drives me. That's not fair.”
“Pretty sticky situation, Dej. You always did have a knack for getting tangled up in things and needing my expertise for getting you out.”
She leaned back against the seat, letting her head rest against the cushion, and closed her eyes with weariness. “Yes, it is. But I should have known better. I should have seen this coming. But I wanted Nathan so much that I ignored any of the problems. And I made a promise. I've never gone back on anything before, and I don't intend to do it now.”
Max kept his eyes fixed on the view out of the front window, but she could tell that his attention was on her. “So you're not going to take their offer?”
Dejah shook her head. “No. It would just be a kind of running away, and I'm not going to resort to that sort of thing. I'd never be able to look at my face in the mirror again, knowing that I'd run out on something I had been determined to do.”
“does Nathan know yet? Did you talk to him on the comm this morning?”
“No, I figured that it was the sort of thing that I should probably tell him in person. If he still wants out, I'll let him. I don't want him to feel trapped in the marriage. But I really do want to make it work, if possible. Maybe I can just take a vacation to a small hab once a year or something.”
Max turned and studied Dejah for a moment, noting how tired she looked. “You really think that will be enough for you, Dej?”
She laughed bitterly. “Of course it won't be enough! But, there's more to life than just being happy. If I stay with Nathan, maybe I let myself down, let go of my dreams. Whatever. If I moved to Shackleford Dome, I'd let down Nathan and myself, by refusing to honor my promise. This is the only choice. And I think you knew that before I did.”
He nodded. “I thought it might be the case. You made me pretty nervous back there, though. I thought I might have been wrong, that you would actually throw everything away and start over there.”
“would you have thought less of me if I had done it?” she asked.
“Yes. You would still have been one of my closest and dearest friends, but yes, I would have thought less of you.” He looked her in the eyes, and she saw the depth of feeling in his gaze. “You truly are an incredible woman, Dejah. All of your new fans out there will never know just how amazing you really are.”
dejah was asleep when the Silver Hammer landed, and Max carefully shook her shoulder until she woke up. She groaned and stretched before loosening her harness. “Argh, I hate falling asleep on those long flights! I'm always so stiff when I wake up later.” She hopped off the ship, and caught the bag that Max tossed to her. “Hey, watch it, do you handle all of your passenger's luggage like that? Premium shipping, like hell.”
He grinned. “Oh, bugger off, you crazy Aresian. Get some actual sleep tonight, will you?”
She nodded, and turned to go home. The sky was dark, and the stars swung overhead; Jupiter shone brightly down on the city.
The door creaked slightly as she opened it. She winced, and closed it quickly, hoping that it hadn't disturbed Nathan's sleep. She tiptoed into the living room, planning to sleep on the couch so as not to wake her husband.
But to her surprise, the light over the kitchen table was still on, and the table was covered with colorful designs in brilliant red, orange, and yellows. She recognized the phoenix colors of Nathan's cathedral design.
Nathan himself was slumped over the table, half covering the drawings, and Dejah couldn't help smiling at the sight of the thin line of drool that escaped from the corner of his mouth. The silence of the house was occasionally broken by a soft snore.
She laid a hand on his shoulder, and shook him slightly. “Nathan, dear, you can't sleep here, you'll throw out your back. Come on, wake up and let's get you into bed.”
“Huh?” he muttered as he woke up slowly, looking around in confusion. “Dej! You're home!” He quickly began gatehring up the scattered papers and stacking them on one of the kitchen chairs. “I thought you'd stay for a few days, see what life was like over there.” he paused, setting down the stack of papers in his hands. “but...are you staying? Or are you going to go?”
she sighed, and grabbed his hand. “Here, let's go sit on the couch, where it's comfortable, and I'll tell you more.”
Nathan sat down heavily on the couch, and Dejah lowered herself onto the cushions beside him, curling her legs underneath her and leaning on the back of the couch so she could look him in the eye.
“Nathan, I've made my decision.”
He looks scared, she thought with a pang, scared that I'm going to say something to hurt him. She quickly continued, “I'm not going to take the job. I want to stay here with you and try to make this work.”
He let out a breath quickly, and exclaimed “really? You're really going to stay?”
she nodded. The next moment she found herself wrapped in his arms, with his face buried in her neck. “I missed you so much,” he said, “I missed you so much!”
Dejah woke again in the middle of the night. Nathan's arms were around her waist, and she carefully disentangled herself and went to look out of the window.
Phobos was passing overhead, on its journey down to the horizon, and it added a pale white light to the city, turning the shadows more blue than purple. The streetlights outside dimmed the moonshadow, but she could still see the faint shadows that moved across the ground as the moon sailed by.
It's still beautiful here sometimes, she thought sadly, but you have to know where to look for it.
She stared out of the window until the moon had dropped out of sight, and her skin was cold from the night air. Shivering, she climbed back into the bed, and turned her back on the window.
nano post 69
Dejah lay in her bed, in a room loaned to her by one of the other Shackleford residents. The room was small but clean and sturdy, and she looked out of the window. In the distance, she could see the horizon, lit by starlight. It seemed so close, she thought sleepily, as if she could get out of bed and simply walk there in a few minutes.
She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling; there were too many things going through her mind for her to sleep. Everything at Shackleford felt exciting and new, like the University had felt, and Bradbury Dome during the two years she had spent in the intense training there.
She exhaled sharply and sat up. “I can’t sleep like this,” she muttered. She slipped out of the bed, and walked over to the window. Half of the small town lay between her and the edge of the wall, and the rough plastered roofs looked like rows of miniature hills in the starlight. Several windows were still lit, and the yellow light bounced off of a few brick walls, casting odd pools of warm light in the cold chill of the night.
Dejah breathed in deeply. It wasn't that the air here felt any different than in any other Dome, she mused, but somehow this tiny hab had far more room to breathe.
“down there,” she pointed out a small mound to herself. “that's where I'd live. A nice little set of rooms, in this fantastic brick. And as many windows as I can get without losing too much heat from the building, windows that would look out directly on the Dome so I could see all the way through to the horizon. East facing, so I could see the sun rise every morning. And there might even be enough of a draft in that gully to get the Valkyrie airborne again.”
She was swept up in memories of flying high, soaring over the Aresian landscape, and closed her eyes. If she really thought about it, she could recall the way the wind rippled over her suit and swept bits of dust across her helmet. The wonderful sound of the thin atmosphere filling the wings with a sudden whoosh when she banked hard for a turn, and the sudden shock to her legs when the ground came up just a little too fast during a landing.
Unbidden, the image of Nathan's face rose up in her mind, and she frowned. She tried to push the thought away, and recapture the memory of flight, but the moment had passed.
Dejah sighed and opened her eyes. “Can't I dream, just for a few minutes?” The silent city gave her no answer.
She settled into a chair, and sat, still facing the window. “Nathan really is a good man,” she whispered to the sleeping town, as if the buildings could answer her. “It's not like I'd be leaving him for someone else. I don't have any interest in anyone else. I just...” she paused, searching for the words. “he was right, after all. I love Mars more than I love him, more than I could ever love him. But he just doesn't understand, I can't live without this red dust, without that beautiful orange sky. I'd rather rip open my suit myself out on the plains than live for another forty years in that stifling Dome.”
The stars passed quietly over the town as she struggled to make her decision. She wished that Max was there to talk it over with, but he had been offered a room across town, near the hangar, and she wasn't quite sure which building it was. “And anyway,” she muttered, “I don't think his hosts would be particular happy to answer the door at three in the morning.”
she glanced over her shoulder at the mirror that hung over the simple dresser. Her face looked odd in the cold light; the dim illumination that lit the scene came from the window behind her, and her face was shadowed, though her mussed hair created a glowing aureole around her head. One cheekbone caught the light, turning her face half purple. She didn't look tired, she mused, so much as desperate and confused.
“You shouldn't be confused,” she told the face in the mirror. “This should be simple. It's the answer to all of your problems. You can let Nathan go find some nice girl who's happy to stay in the Dome, and he'll be happier. You can go back to doing the kind of work you love—surely there's a med center here that's robust enough to take care of any injuries that might happen. And this Dome's so small, it would feel almost like living on the bare surface, and you could be closer to the surface than ever.”
But the face in the mirror refused to relax, and she turned away, irritated. “Why isn't it enough,” she muttered. “It really would be easier.”
“But since when did you take the easy way?” she answered herself, getting out of the chair and pacing the room, as she always did when frustrated or confused.
“It's not like life here would be easy, in and of itself. It'd probably be a lot harder, and I'll die a lot younger than I would in the Dome. But...” she groaned with irritation and ran her hands through her hair, mussing it further. “It would be too easy just to leave. I've never backed down from anything I said I would do.”
The room grew colder as the night progressed, but Dejah didn't notice, pacing until her legs were sore. Finally, exhausted, she dropped into the bed just as the sun was beginning to rise. Shivering, she pulled the covers over herself as she fell into an uneasy sleep.
A few hours later, a knock sounded at her door. “Ms. Sorenson? We're sorry to wake you, but it's getting rather late, and your friend is here to fly you home. Are you alright?”
Dejah sat up, head muddled and thoughts still whirling. “Yes, I'm fine. Thank you for checking—please tell Max that i'll be down in a few minutes.”
She lay back in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then exhaled and rolled off the bed.
“Hey, there's the sleepyhead!” Max called as she came downstairs, holding her overnight bag in one hand and brushing her hair with the other.
“ha ha, very funny. Says the man who never woke up on time for school a day in his life.” She grinned, and set the bag down at the foot of the stairs to pull her hair back into her customary ponytail.
Her hosts bid her farewell after she turned down their offer of breakfast, and she and Max made their way back to the hangar. The Silver Hammer was quickly loaded, and Max waited until Dejah fastened her harness to start the engines. They slowly taxied through the airlock, then Max pushed the spacecraft forward, and they launched into the sky with a roar.
Dejah looked into the rear view pane, watching the city dwindle quickly in the distance, until it looked like no more than a soap bubble that had landed on the red sands for a moment before bursting.
They flew in silence for a few moments after leaving the Shackleford airlock. Then Max checked the instrument panel and asked, “so, what did you think? Gonna make it home any time soon?”
she didn't reply for a moment, looking down at the dusty plains as they passed below the ship.
“Dej? You ok?”
“Yeah, sorry, just didn't get much sleep last night. Spent a lot of time thinking. If you'd asked me that question last night, I probably would have asked how quickly you could fly all of my stuff out here. I mean, it really is perfect for me, isn't it? I wish it had been an option after school. Seems awfully cruel to have gotten married when I just can't be what Nathan really wants. Maybe we shouldn't have married; he was right when he accused me of loving Mars more than I love him. Can't really help that now; it is what it is. But I got to thinking last night.” she paused, trying to clear her head and get her thoughts in order.
“Max, you've known me since I was ten years old. Have you ever known me to give up on anything once I put my mind to it?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No, I have not. I would, in fact, say that sheer pig headedness is one of your most distinct traits, for better or worse.”
“That's pretty much the conclusion I came to last night. If I came here, Nathan wouldn't want to come, even if he could. This place would drive him crazy, at least as crazy as Spirit City drives me. That's not fair.”
“Pretty sticky situation, Dej. You always did have a knack for getting tangled up in things and needing my expertise for getting you out.”
She leaned back against the seat, letting her head rest against the cushion, and closed her eyes with weariness. “Yes, it is. But I should have known better. I should have seen this coming. But I wanted Nathan so much that I ignored any of the problems. And I made a promise. I've never gone back on anything before, and I don't intend to do it now.”
Max kept his eyes fixed on the view out of the front window, but she could tell that his attention was on her. “So you're not going to take their offer?”
Dejah shook her head. “No. It would just be a kind of running away, and I'm not going to resort to that sort of thing. I'd never be able to look at my face in the mirror again, knowing that I'd run out on something I had been determined to do.”
“does Nathan know yet? Did you talk to him on the comm this morning?”
“No, I figured that it was the sort of thing that I should probably tell him in person. If he still wants out, I'll let him. I don't want him to feel trapped in the marriage. But I really do want to make it work, if possible. Maybe I can just take a vacation to a small hab once a year or something.”
Max turned and studied Dejah for a moment, noting how tired she looked. “You really think that will be enough for you, Dej?”
She laughed bitterly. “Of course it won't be enough! But, there's more to life than just being happy. If I stay with Nathan, maybe I let myself down, let go of my dreams. Whatever. If I moved to Shackleford Dome, I'd let down Nathan and myself, by refusing to honor my promise. This is the only choice. And I think you knew that before I did.”
He nodded. “I thought it might be the case. You made me pretty nervous back there, though. I thought I might have been wrong, that you would actually throw everything away and start over there.”
“would you have thought less of me if I had done it?” she asked.
“Yes. You would still have been one of my closest and dearest friends, but yes, I would have thought less of you.” He looked her in the eyes, and she saw the depth of feeling in his gaze. “You truly are an incredible woman, Dejah. All of your new fans out there will never know just how amazing you really are.”
dejah was asleep when the Silver Hammer landed, and Max carefully shook her shoulder until she woke up. She groaned and stretched before loosening her harness. “Argh, I hate falling asleep on those long flights! I'm always so stiff when I wake up later.” She hopped off the ship, and caught the bag that Max tossed to her. “Hey, watch it, do you handle all of your passenger's luggage like that? Premium shipping, like hell.”
He grinned. “Oh, bugger off, you crazy Aresian. Get some actual sleep tonight, will you?”
She nodded, and turned to go home. The sky was dark, and the stars swung overhead; Jupiter shone brightly down on the city.
The door creaked slightly as she opened it. She winced, and closed it quickly, hoping that it hadn't disturbed Nathan's sleep. She tiptoed into the living room, planning to sleep on the couch so as not to wake her husband.
But to her surprise, the light over the kitchen table was still on, and the table was covered with colorful designs in brilliant red, orange, and yellows. She recognized the phoenix colors of Nathan's cathedral design.
Nathan himself was slumped over the table, half covering the drawings, and Dejah couldn't help smiling at the sight of the thin line of drool that escaped from the corner of his mouth. The silence of the house was occasionally broken by a soft snore.
She laid a hand on his shoulder, and shook him slightly. “Nathan, dear, you can't sleep here, you'll throw out your back. Come on, wake up and let's get you into bed.”
“Huh?” he muttered as he woke up slowly, looking around in confusion. “Dej! You're home!” He quickly began gatehring up the scattered papers and stacking them on one of the kitchen chairs. “I thought you'd stay for a few days, see what life was like over there.” he paused, setting down the stack of papers in his hands. “but...are you staying? Or are you going to go?”
she sighed, and grabbed his hand. “Here, let's go sit on the couch, where it's comfortable, and I'll tell you more.”
Nathan sat down heavily on the couch, and Dejah lowered herself onto the cushions beside him, curling her legs underneath her and leaning on the back of the couch so she could look him in the eye.
“Nathan, I've made my decision.”
He looks scared, she thought with a pang, scared that I'm going to say something to hurt him. She quickly continued, “I'm not going to take the job. I want to stay here with you and try to make this work.”
He let out a breath quickly, and exclaimed “really? You're really going to stay?”
she nodded. The next moment she found herself wrapped in his arms, with his face buried in her neck. “I missed you so much,” he said, “I missed you so much!”
Dejah woke again in the middle of the night. Nathan's arms were around her waist, and she carefully disentangled herself and went to look out of the window.
Phobos was passing overhead, on its journey down to the horizon, and it added a pale white light to the city, turning the shadows more blue than purple. The streetlights outside dimmed the moonshadow, but she could still see the faint shadows that moved across the ground as the moon sailed by.
It's still beautiful here sometimes, she thought sadly, but you have to know where to look for it.
She stared out of the window until the moon had dropped out of sight, and her skin was cold from the night air. Shivering, she climbed back into the bed, and turned her back on the window.
She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling; there were too many things going through her mind for her to sleep. Everything at Shackleford felt exciting and new, like the University had felt, and Bradbury Dome during the two years she had spent in the intense training there.
She exhaled sharply and sat up. “I can’t sleep like this,” she muttered. She slipped out of the bed, and walked over to the window. Half of the small town lay between her and the edge of the wall, and the rough plastered roofs looked like rows of miniature hills in the starlight. Several windows were still lit, and the yellow light bounced off of a few brick walls, casting odd pools of warm light in the cold chill of the night.
Dejah breathed in deeply. It wasn't that the air here felt any different than in any other Dome, she mused, but somehow this tiny hab had far more room to breathe.
“down there,” she pointed out a small mound to herself. “that's where I'd live. A nice little set of rooms, in this fantastic brick. And as many windows as I can get without losing too much heat from the building, windows that would look out directly on the Dome so I could see all the way through to the horizon. East facing, so I could see the sun rise every morning. And there might even be enough of a draft in that gully to get the Valkyrie airborne again.”
She was swept up in memories of flying high, soaring over the Aresian landscape, and closed her eyes. If she really thought about it, she could recall the way the wind rippled over her suit and swept bits of dust across her helmet. The wonderful sound of the thin atmosphere filling the wings with a sudden whoosh when she banked hard for a turn, and the sudden shock to her legs when the ground came up just a little too fast during a landing.
Unbidden, the image of Nathan's face rose up in her mind, and she frowned. She tried to push the thought away, and recapture the memory of flight, but the moment had passed.
Dejah sighed and opened her eyes. “Can't I dream, just for a few minutes?” The silent city gave her no answer.
She settled into a chair, and sat, still facing the window. “Nathan really is a good man,” she whispered to the sleeping town, as if the buildings could answer her. “It's not like I'd be leaving him for someone else. I don't have any interest in anyone else. I just...” she paused, searching for the words. “he was right, after all. I love Mars more than I love him, more than I could ever love him. But he just doesn't understand, I can't live without this red dust, without that beautiful orange sky. I'd rather rip open my suit myself out on the plains than live for another forty years in that stifling Dome.”
The stars passed quietly over the town as she struggled to make her decision. She wished that Max was there to talk it over with, but he had been offered a room across town, near the hangar, and she wasn't quite sure which building it was. “And anyway,” she muttered, “I don't think his hosts would be particular happy to answer the door at three in the morning.”
she glanced over her shoulder at the mirror that hung over the simple dresser. Her face looked odd in the cold light; the dim illumination that lit the scene came from the window behind her, and her face was shadowed, though her mussed hair created a glowing aureole around her head. One cheekbone caught the light, turning her face half purple. She didn't look tired, she mused, so much as desperate and confused.
“You shouldn't be confused,” she told the face in the mirror. “This should be simple. It's the answer to all of your problems. You can let Nathan go find some nice girl who's happy to stay in the Dome, and he'll be happier. You can go back to doing the kind of work you love—surely there's a med center here that's robust enough to take care of any injuries that might happen. And this Dome's so small, it would feel almost like living on the bare surface, and you could be closer to the surface than ever.”
But the face in the mirror refused to relax, and she turned away, irritated. “Why isn't it enough,” she muttered. “It really would be easier.”
“But since when did you take the easy way?” she answered herself, getting out of the chair and pacing the room, as she always did when frustrated or confused.
“It's not like life here would be easy, in and of itself. It'd probably be a lot harder, and I'll die a lot younger than I would in the Dome. But...” she groaned with irritation and ran her hands through her hair, mussing it further. “It would be too easy just to leave. I've never backed down from anything I said I would do.”
The room grew colder as the night progressed, but Dejah didn't notice, pacing until her legs were sore. Finally, exhausted, she dropped into the bed just as the sun was beginning to rise. Shivering, she pulled the covers over herself as she fell into an uneasy sleep.
A few hours later, a knock sounded at her door. “Ms. Sorenson? We're sorry to wake you, but it's getting rather late, and your friend is here to fly you home. Are you alright?”
Dejah sat up, head muddled and thoughts still whirling. “Yes, I'm fine. Thank you for checking—please tell Max that i'll be down in a few minutes.”
She lay back in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then exhaled and rolled off the bed.
“Hey, there's the sleepyhead!” Max called as she came downstairs, holding her overnight bag in one hand and brushing her hair with the other.
“ha ha, very funny. Says the man who never woke up on time for school a day in his life.” She grinned, and set the bag down at the foot of the stairs to pull her hair back into her customary ponytail.
Her hosts bid her farewell after she turned down their offer of breakfast, and she and Max made their way back to the hangar. The Silver Hammer was quickly loaded, and Max waited until Dejah fastened her harness to start the engines. They slowly taxied through the airlock, then Max pushed the spacecraft forward, and they launched into the sky with a roar.
Dejah looked into the rear view pane, watching the city dwindle quickly in the distance, until it looked like no more than a soap bubble that had landed on the red sands for a moment before bursting.
They flew in silence for a few moments after leaving the Shackleford airlock. Then Max checked the instrument panel and asked, “so, what did you think? Gonna make it home any time soon?”
she didn't reply for a moment, looking down at the dusty plains as they passed below the ship.
“Dej? You ok?”
“Yeah, sorry, just didn't get much sleep last night. Spent a lot of time thinking. If you'd asked me that question last night, I probably would have asked how quickly you could fly all of my stuff out here. I mean, it really is perfect for me, isn't it? I wish it had been an option after school. Seems awfully cruel to have gotten married when I just can't be what Nathan really wants. Maybe we shouldn't have married; he was right when he accused me of loving Mars more than I love him. Can't really help that now; it is what it is. But I got to thinking last night.” she paused, trying to clear her head and get her thoughts in order.
“Max, you've known me since I was ten years old. Have you ever known me to give up on anything once I put my mind to it?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No, I have not. I would, in fact, say that sheer pig headedness is one of your most distinct traits, for better or worse.”
“That's pretty much the conclusion I came to last night. If I came here, Nathan wouldn't want to come, even if he could. This place would drive him crazy, at least as crazy as Spirit City drives me. That's not fair.”
“Pretty sticky situation, Dej. You always did have a knack for getting tangled up in things and needing my expertise for getting you out.”
She leaned back against the seat, letting her head rest against the cushion, and closed her eyes with weariness. “Yes, it is. But I should have known better. I should have seen this coming. But I wanted Nathan so much that I ignored any of the problems. And I made a promise. I've never gone back on anything before, and I don't intend to do it now.”
Max kept his eyes fixed on the view out of the front window, but she could tell that his attention was on her. “So you're not going to take their offer?”
Dejah shook her head. “No. It would just be a kind of running away, and I'm not going to resort to that sort of thing. I'd never be able to look at my face in the mirror again, knowing that I'd run out on something I had been determined to do.”
“does Nathan know yet? Did you talk to him on the comm this morning?”
“No, I figured that it was the sort of thing that I should probably tell him in person. If he still wants out, I'll let him. I don't want him to feel trapped in the marriage. But I really do want to make it work, if possible. Maybe I can just take a vacation to a small hab once a year or something.”
Max turned and studied Dejah for a moment, noting how tired she looked. “You really think that will be enough for you, Dej?”
She laughed bitterly. “Of course it won't be enough! But, there's more to life than just being happy. If I stay with Nathan, maybe I let myself down, let go of my dreams. Whatever. If I moved to Shackleford Dome, I'd let down Nathan and myself, by refusing to honor my promise. This is the only choice. And I think you knew that before I did.”
He nodded. “I thought it might be the case. You made me pretty nervous back there, though. I thought I might have been wrong, that you would actually throw everything away and start over there.”
“would you have thought less of me if I had done it?” she asked.
“Yes. You would still have been one of my closest and dearest friends, but yes, I would have thought less of you.” He looked her in the eyes, and she saw the depth of feeling in his gaze. “You truly are an incredible woman, Dejah. All of your new fans out there will never know just how amazing you really are.”
dejah was asleep when the Silver Hammer landed, and Max carefully shook her shoulder until she woke up. She groaned and stretched before loosening her harness. “Argh, I hate falling asleep on those long flights! I'm always so stiff when I wake up later.” She hopped off the ship, and caught the bag that Max tossed to her. “Hey, watch it, do you handle all of your passenger's luggage like that? Premium shipping, like hell.”
He grinned. “Oh, bugger off, you crazy Aresian. Get some actual sleep tonight, will you?”
She nodded, and turned to go home. The sky was dark, and the stars swung overhead; Jupiter shone brightly down on the city.
The door creaked slightly as she opened it. She winced, and closed it quickly, hoping that it hadn't disturbed Nathan's sleep. She tiptoed into the living room, planning to sleep on the couch so as not to wake her husband.
But to her surprise, the light over the kitchen table was still on, and the table was covered with colorful designs in brilliant red, orange, and yellows. She recognized the phoenix colors of Nathan's cathedral design.
Nathan himself was slumped over the table, half covering the drawings, and Dejah couldn't help smiling at the sight of the thin line of drool that escaped from the corner of his mouth. The silence of the house was occasionally broken by a soft snore.
She laid a hand on his shoulder, and shook him slightly. “Nathan, dear, you can't sleep here, you'll throw out your back. Come on, wake up and let's get you into bed.”
“Huh?” he muttered as he woke up slowly, looking around in confusion. “Dej! You're home!” He quickly began gatehring up the scattered papers and stacking them on one of the kitchen chairs. “I thought you'd stay for a few days, see what life was like over there.” he paused, setting down the stack of papers in his hands. “but...are you staying? Or are you going to go?”
she sighed, and grabbed his hand. “Here, let's go sit on the couch, where it's comfortable, and I'll tell you more.”
Nathan sat down heavily on the couch, and Dejah lowered herself onto the cushions beside him, curling her legs underneath her and leaning on the back of the couch so she could look him in the eye.
“Nathan, I've made my decision.”
He looks scared, she thought with a pang, scared that I'm going to say something to hurt him. She quickly continued, “I'm not going to take the job. I want to stay here with you and try to make this work.”
He let out a breath quickly, and exclaimed “really? You're really going to stay?”
she nodded. The next moment she found herself wrapped in his arms, with his face buried in her neck. “I missed you so much,” he said, “I missed you so much!”
Dejah woke again in the middle of the night. Nathan's arms were around her waist, and she carefully disentangled herself and went to look out of the window.
Phobos was passing overhead, on its journey down to the horizon, and it added a pale white light to the city, turning the shadows more blue than purple. The streetlights outside dimmed the moonshadow, but she could still see the faint shadows that moved across the ground as the moon sailed by.
It's still beautiful here sometimes, she thought sadly, but you have to know where to look for it.
She stared out of the window until the moon had dropped out of sight, and her skin was cold from the night air. Shivering, she climbed back into the bed, and turned her back on the window.
Nano post 68
Dejah sat listlessly in front of her computer, paging through messages that had piled up over the last few days. There were many emails from well wishers, fans, and friends, as well as a slew of offers from various corporations, offering her jobs as a spokesperson, or advocate, or representative.
She scrolled through the offers, hardly seeing them. She was about to turn away from the computer when a final message caught her eye; the subject line read, “An opportunity from SurfaceTech.”
Dejah hesitated, torn between opening the message and reading about yet another job that was now closed to her, and deleting the message unread and wondering forever about what she might have missed. With a sigh, she selected the message and opened it.
“Ms. Sorenson,” the message began, “I hope that you will excuse me for contacting you so soon after your return to Spirit City, but I trust that you will be interested in this opportunity. SurfaceTech is a select group of scientists, engineers, geologists, and other Aresians, who are dedicated to discovering new ways to take advantage of the natural resources of our world. We spend our time working very close to the surface in a small hab in the northern hemisphere, developing and testing new technologies that will help facilitate the progression of human life on Mars. We would like to offer you a permanent position as exploration consultant for SurfaceTech. This would involve moving to our hab and working directly with the engineers and scientists who create our technology, as well as soon testing of the equipment. I have attached a folder of pictures from our hab and some of our recent equipment tests. We would like to extend an invitation to you to come visit us here, and see for yourself what we are doing. Please get in touch with me if you are interested. Yours, Richard Jordan, SurfaceTech Industries.”
Intrigued, she opened the folder of photos and began paging through them. The hab was obviously very small, perhaps only a quarter of a kilometer across, and there were only a hundred or so people living there. The buildings were small and rough, and much of the life of the community seemed to focus around the laboratory and manufacturing facility in the middle of the town. Several of the photographs showed various teams in exploration suits on the Martian surface outside the hab, testing equipment and checking data.
As she paged through the pictures, she felt a faint tug of hope. Perhaps there was still a place for her on Mars, after all.
“So they want you to move there?” Nathan asked, and Dejah could hear a hint of nervousness in his voice. She sat at the table, flipping through a printout of the message and photos.
“If I took the job, yeah, it’d be a permanent thing. I mean, I guess I could go back and forth, particularly if Max gets that shipping company going.” She watched him move around the kitchen, chopping vegetables and tossing them into a small pan. He didn’t look happy, but seemed to be trying to keep his emotions in check.
“You know I couldn’t move there, Dej,” he said quietly. “I need to be in a larger Dome to visit the sites for the clients. Besides, in a small focused community like that, there’s no room for someone who is just along for the ride. Everyone has to give everything they have, and I couldn’t do that there.”
Dejah nodded, turning her eyes back to the photographs. “I know.”
Nathan stood by the stove, and watched her for a minute. She sat quietly at the table, paging through the information on the hab, with no expression on her face. He put a lid over the sautéing vegetables and turned off the heat under the pan, then pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from her.
“Dejah, I wonder sometimes if we did the right thing, getting married.”
She looked up, but didn’t respond.
“I’m sure you already know that I don’t want you to leave. I’ve always loved you, and always will. But do you know what I want even more than to see you stay?” He reached out and put his hand on hers. “I want to see you happy again, to see you excited and passionate and ready to risk everything. If the only way for that to happen is for you to leave, then you should go. I won’t fight it.”
Dejah squeezed his hand, and gave him a smile. “I don’t know yet. I just want to go look, that’s all.”
Max landed the Silver Hammer on the runway outside the hab, and quickly let it roll through the airlock and into the small hangar just inside the dome.
“These runway airlocks always make me nervous,” he muttered as they slowed to a halt. Dejah stepped out of the ship, and turned to see a young man walking toward her, hand extended.
“Ms. Sorenson! I’m so glad you could come, I’m Richard.” He shook her hand, and smiled. “Welcome to Shackleford Hab.”
“Thanks for inviting me. This is Maxwell Hamm, my old friend; he’s one of the best pilots in the business. Do you mind if he sees the hab, too?” Dejah asked.
“Oh, not at all! We love having people come and see what we’re doing here—we just don’t have the space to have most of them live here. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
They followed Richard out of the hangar, and out into the town. Dejah looked up, and smiled as she saw the roof of the dome, so much closer than any other she had ever seen. The walls of the dome were visible from any place in the town, and no effort had been made to hide them.
“This dome tends to make some visitors a little nervous,” Richard commented. “Most people aren’t used to seeing the walls of the dome, and the smallness of it makes them nervous. They say it makes them feel like it could collapse at any moment. Most of us actually prefer it that way, it doesn’t get in the way of the landscape so much.”
Dejah nodded, still smiling, and took a deep breath. “I like it, too.”
“We’re so honored that you considered our offer,” he continued. “When we heard about the incredible risks you took, it was the talk of the entire community. We want to find ways to make even greater things possible, and your help would mean so much to that effort.” He grinned. “Besides, you seemed like the sort of person who would be just crazy enough to move to a tiny habitat in the middle of nowhere on the off chance that you might find something interesting. Our sort of person.”
The town, though small, seemed to hum with activity, and it reminded Dejah of the buzz of Bradbury Dome. The buildings were mostly low one story constructs, with a few exceptions. The residential buildings were built from bricks fired from the red sand in the area, and Richard explained that the bricks helped lock in a lot of the sun’s heat.
He opened a door into one of the few two story buildings in the main complex at the center of the town. “This is our main area of activity; we have some exercise grounds, obstacle courses, and testing areas outside the dome, but this is where the labs are, along with our main construction and manufacturing lines. Of course, once we patent a design, we send it off to one of the larger Domes for mass production, but we make the prototypes here for testing. Gives us great flexibility in the design, more control over the whole process, and of course, a much faster turnaround time between different versions.”
In sharp contrast to the rough warm brick of the exterior, the inside of the building was clean and bright, with an almost surgical feel. A line of windows gave a view from the hallway into a large room that occupied half of the building. Inside, several people in clean coveralls worked at a variety of machines; sparks flew from a welding torch in one corner of the room, and Dejah could hear the high pitched whine of a metal saw.
“Right now, they’re working on a new kind of breather—we hope that incorporating our design into a helmet will make it not only more efficient, but a lot lighter and easier to wear,” Richard explained.
They wound through the building, Richard explaining things as they went. As they came out on the far side of the building, he turned to Dejah. “I know it’s a lot to take in at once, and really, there’s no way to fully grasp what life is like here without actually living here, day in and day out. We haven’t got much time left before the sun goes down, so would you like to take a quick tour of the area around the hab?”
Dejah grinned. “You have no idea how much I want to see this place from the outside.”
The trio headed back to the airlock, and Richard showed Max and Dejah were the exploration suits and helmets were kept. In a few minutes, they had suited up, and Richard started the engine on a large four seater rover and pulled into the airlock. “Helmets on, check your seals every one!” He pressed a remote to shut the inner door of the airlock, and Dejah heard the familiar sound of air being siphoned from the lock. Then the outer door opened, and the rover roared out into the thin air of Mars.
Dejah felt her spirits rise as the rover exited the airlock tube, and she ran her eyes along the ragged red horizon.
“There’s something that I’d like you to see here,” Richard said over the comm. “There’s some magnificent formations down here in the gully. We found them when we were doing some preliminary geological exploration, and it’s since become a favorite place for many of us to go.”
The road slowly wound through the landscape, and Dejah noticed that the path was sinking into the red dust, and small hills and cliffs were rising on either side of them. After a few minutes, the road had become the bottom of a gully, and the dusty hills sloped up around them, cutting off the horizon. At a sharp curve in the path, Richard pulled the rover to a halt.
There was a single dirt mountain rising from the inside curve of the gully, and the peak was dramatically silhouetted against the sky. A few meters away, the face of the cliff was broken by a tall narrow opening, like a keyhole leading back into the hills.
“It’s kind of narrow back in here, but you can make it. The walls are smooth so you don’t have any risk of snagging your suits.” He lead them back into the opening in the cliff.
Dejah took a step into the narrow passageway and was surprised to find that it twisted to the side almost at once. The thin opening was difficult to navigate in the thick exploration suit, but she pressed forward. She could hear Max behind her as he stumbled over an outcropping of rock, and swore quietly. The daylight was quickly blocked out by the numerous twists of the passage. They wound their way back into the cliff; after about ten meters, Dejah felt the walls peel back, and stepped into a wide open space.
“Richard?” she called tentatively. “Max?”
“I’m here, Dej,” she heard Max say as he stepped into the chamber.
“Just lean up against the wall for a minute,” Richard replied. “Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust, and then I’ll turn on a light.”
The silence in the cave was thick, and Dejah could feel a layer of extremely fine dust covering the floor of the cavern.
“Now try waving a hand in front of your face,” Richard said quietly.
Dejah lifted her hand and waved it, and let out a gasp. “I can see my fingers now!” She wiggled her gloved fingers, seeing faint black shapes moving against the background
“Hey, Dejah, look up there!” Max shouted, and Dejah looked up. Twenty five meters above her head was a faint oval of light.
“A skylight?” she asked.
“Yes,” Richard replied. “It’s a few meters off to the side, so we only see the reflected light, but it’s enough to give some light here inside the cavern. In the middle of the day, it gets light enough in here to see each other by.”
“Spectacular,” Max pronounced, and Dejah could hear the wonder in his voice.
“Most of these hills are hollow,” Richard explained, and Dejah could dimly see him walking around the far wall of the cavern. “We think it’s due to water ice subliming and leaving spaces behind that then get worn down from the wind, but we’re not entirely sure. This whole area is just hard packed dirt, not rock, and so it erodes relatively easily. Over the years, you can see subtle changes in here as the wind and ice wear away the dust. There’s a cavern near here that’s collapsed into a sort of slot canyon, and there’s another one that’s just beginning to open up. Another couple of decades, and we can probably even crawl through that one.”
They edged back out through the narrow path into the cavern, and came back into the open gully, blinking in the dim purple twilight.
She scrolled through the offers, hardly seeing them. She was about to turn away from the computer when a final message caught her eye; the subject line read, “An opportunity from SurfaceTech.”
Dejah hesitated, torn between opening the message and reading about yet another job that was now closed to her, and deleting the message unread and wondering forever about what she might have missed. With a sigh, she selected the message and opened it.
“Ms. Sorenson,” the message began, “I hope that you will excuse me for contacting you so soon after your return to Spirit City, but I trust that you will be interested in this opportunity. SurfaceTech is a select group of scientists, engineers, geologists, and other Aresians, who are dedicated to discovering new ways to take advantage of the natural resources of our world. We spend our time working very close to the surface in a small hab in the northern hemisphere, developing and testing new technologies that will help facilitate the progression of human life on Mars. We would like to offer you a permanent position as exploration consultant for SurfaceTech. This would involve moving to our hab and working directly with the engineers and scientists who create our technology, as well as soon testing of the equipment. I have attached a folder of pictures from our hab and some of our recent equipment tests. We would like to extend an invitation to you to come visit us here, and see for yourself what we are doing. Please get in touch with me if you are interested. Yours, Richard Jordan, SurfaceTech Industries.”
Intrigued, she opened the folder of photos and began paging through them. The hab was obviously very small, perhaps only a quarter of a kilometer across, and there were only a hundred or so people living there. The buildings were small and rough, and much of the life of the community seemed to focus around the laboratory and manufacturing facility in the middle of the town. Several of the photographs showed various teams in exploration suits on the Martian surface outside the hab, testing equipment and checking data.
As she paged through the pictures, she felt a faint tug of hope. Perhaps there was still a place for her on Mars, after all.
“So they want you to move there?” Nathan asked, and Dejah could hear a hint of nervousness in his voice. She sat at the table, flipping through a printout of the message and photos.
“If I took the job, yeah, it’d be a permanent thing. I mean, I guess I could go back and forth, particularly if Max gets that shipping company going.” She watched him move around the kitchen, chopping vegetables and tossing them into a small pan. He didn’t look happy, but seemed to be trying to keep his emotions in check.
“You know I couldn’t move there, Dej,” he said quietly. “I need to be in a larger Dome to visit the sites for the clients. Besides, in a small focused community like that, there’s no room for someone who is just along for the ride. Everyone has to give everything they have, and I couldn’t do that there.”
Dejah nodded, turning her eyes back to the photographs. “I know.”
Nathan stood by the stove, and watched her for a minute. She sat quietly at the table, paging through the information on the hab, with no expression on her face. He put a lid over the sautéing vegetables and turned off the heat under the pan, then pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from her.
“Dejah, I wonder sometimes if we did the right thing, getting married.”
She looked up, but didn’t respond.
“I’m sure you already know that I don’t want you to leave. I’ve always loved you, and always will. But do you know what I want even more than to see you stay?” He reached out and put his hand on hers. “I want to see you happy again, to see you excited and passionate and ready to risk everything. If the only way for that to happen is for you to leave, then you should go. I won’t fight it.”
Dejah squeezed his hand, and gave him a smile. “I don’t know yet. I just want to go look, that’s all.”
Max landed the Silver Hammer on the runway outside the hab, and quickly let it roll through the airlock and into the small hangar just inside the dome.
“These runway airlocks always make me nervous,” he muttered as they slowed to a halt. Dejah stepped out of the ship, and turned to see a young man walking toward her, hand extended.
“Ms. Sorenson! I’m so glad you could come, I’m Richard.” He shook her hand, and smiled. “Welcome to Shackleford Hab.”
“Thanks for inviting me. This is Maxwell Hamm, my old friend; he’s one of the best pilots in the business. Do you mind if he sees the hab, too?” Dejah asked.
“Oh, not at all! We love having people come and see what we’re doing here—we just don’t have the space to have most of them live here. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
They followed Richard out of the hangar, and out into the town. Dejah looked up, and smiled as she saw the roof of the dome, so much closer than any other she had ever seen. The walls of the dome were visible from any place in the town, and no effort had been made to hide them.
“This dome tends to make some visitors a little nervous,” Richard commented. “Most people aren’t used to seeing the walls of the dome, and the smallness of it makes them nervous. They say it makes them feel like it could collapse at any moment. Most of us actually prefer it that way, it doesn’t get in the way of the landscape so much.”
Dejah nodded, still smiling, and took a deep breath. “I like it, too.”
“We’re so honored that you considered our offer,” he continued. “When we heard about the incredible risks you took, it was the talk of the entire community. We want to find ways to make even greater things possible, and your help would mean so much to that effort.” He grinned. “Besides, you seemed like the sort of person who would be just crazy enough to move to a tiny habitat in the middle of nowhere on the off chance that you might find something interesting. Our sort of person.”
The town, though small, seemed to hum with activity, and it reminded Dejah of the buzz of Bradbury Dome. The buildings were mostly low one story constructs, with a few exceptions. The residential buildings were built from bricks fired from the red sand in the area, and Richard explained that the bricks helped lock in a lot of the sun’s heat.
He opened a door into one of the few two story buildings in the main complex at the center of the town. “This is our main area of activity; we have some exercise grounds, obstacle courses, and testing areas outside the dome, but this is where the labs are, along with our main construction and manufacturing lines. Of course, once we patent a design, we send it off to one of the larger Domes for mass production, but we make the prototypes here for testing. Gives us great flexibility in the design, more control over the whole process, and of course, a much faster turnaround time between different versions.”
In sharp contrast to the rough warm brick of the exterior, the inside of the building was clean and bright, with an almost surgical feel. A line of windows gave a view from the hallway into a large room that occupied half of the building. Inside, several people in clean coveralls worked at a variety of machines; sparks flew from a welding torch in one corner of the room, and Dejah could hear the high pitched whine of a metal saw.
“Right now, they’re working on a new kind of breather—we hope that incorporating our design into a helmet will make it not only more efficient, but a lot lighter and easier to wear,” Richard explained.
They wound through the building, Richard explaining things as they went. As they came out on the far side of the building, he turned to Dejah. “I know it’s a lot to take in at once, and really, there’s no way to fully grasp what life is like here without actually living here, day in and day out. We haven’t got much time left before the sun goes down, so would you like to take a quick tour of the area around the hab?”
Dejah grinned. “You have no idea how much I want to see this place from the outside.”
The trio headed back to the airlock, and Richard showed Max and Dejah were the exploration suits and helmets were kept. In a few minutes, they had suited up, and Richard started the engine on a large four seater rover and pulled into the airlock. “Helmets on, check your seals every one!” He pressed a remote to shut the inner door of the airlock, and Dejah heard the familiar sound of air being siphoned from the lock. Then the outer door opened, and the rover roared out into the thin air of Mars.
Dejah felt her spirits rise as the rover exited the airlock tube, and she ran her eyes along the ragged red horizon.
“There’s something that I’d like you to see here,” Richard said over the comm. “There’s some magnificent formations down here in the gully. We found them when we were doing some preliminary geological exploration, and it’s since become a favorite place for many of us to go.”
The road slowly wound through the landscape, and Dejah noticed that the path was sinking into the red dust, and small hills and cliffs were rising on either side of them. After a few minutes, the road had become the bottom of a gully, and the dusty hills sloped up around them, cutting off the horizon. At a sharp curve in the path, Richard pulled the rover to a halt.
There was a single dirt mountain rising from the inside curve of the gully, and the peak was dramatically silhouetted against the sky. A few meters away, the face of the cliff was broken by a tall narrow opening, like a keyhole leading back into the hills.
“It’s kind of narrow back in here, but you can make it. The walls are smooth so you don’t have any risk of snagging your suits.” He lead them back into the opening in the cliff.
Dejah took a step into the narrow passageway and was surprised to find that it twisted to the side almost at once. The thin opening was difficult to navigate in the thick exploration suit, but she pressed forward. She could hear Max behind her as he stumbled over an outcropping of rock, and swore quietly. The daylight was quickly blocked out by the numerous twists of the passage. They wound their way back into the cliff; after about ten meters, Dejah felt the walls peel back, and stepped into a wide open space.
“Richard?” she called tentatively. “Max?”
“I’m here, Dej,” she heard Max say as he stepped into the chamber.
“Just lean up against the wall for a minute,” Richard replied. “Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust, and then I’ll turn on a light.”
The silence in the cave was thick, and Dejah could feel a layer of extremely fine dust covering the floor of the cavern.
“Now try waving a hand in front of your face,” Richard said quietly.
Dejah lifted her hand and waved it, and let out a gasp. “I can see my fingers now!” She wiggled her gloved fingers, seeing faint black shapes moving against the background
“Hey, Dejah, look up there!” Max shouted, and Dejah looked up. Twenty five meters above her head was a faint oval of light.
“A skylight?” she asked.
“Yes,” Richard replied. “It’s a few meters off to the side, so we only see the reflected light, but it’s enough to give some light here inside the cavern. In the middle of the day, it gets light enough in here to see each other by.”
“Spectacular,” Max pronounced, and Dejah could hear the wonder in his voice.
“Most of these hills are hollow,” Richard explained, and Dejah could dimly see him walking around the far wall of the cavern. “We think it’s due to water ice subliming and leaving spaces behind that then get worn down from the wind, but we’re not entirely sure. This whole area is just hard packed dirt, not rock, and so it erodes relatively easily. Over the years, you can see subtle changes in here as the wind and ice wear away the dust. There’s a cavern near here that’s collapsed into a sort of slot canyon, and there’s another one that’s just beginning to open up. Another couple of decades, and we can probably even crawl through that one.”
They edged back out through the narrow path into the cavern, and came back into the open gully, blinking in the dim purple twilight.
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