Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 2!

 It was time to post my actual weekend post, and I'm punting with the one thing I had ready, a second installment of the Marx Space Guys adventure!

Jason was still staring at the apparition when Jackson and the Englishwoman came up behind him. “Well?” the figure said. “Ah, of course…” He holstered the pistol he held. “Lieutenant Andy Moxon, Chief Personnel Officer. You could call me head of security, but it’s really just directing traffic. I do a bit of target practice here.”

Jason looked around uneasily. They were in a cargo area in the midst of a drive nacelle, surrounded by tanks and fuel lines. There was indeed a plate at the other end with a target pattern spread across it, marked with a spread that would have been considered poor marksmanship except that none had hit the bullseye as simple chance would have dictated. A plate to one side had a poster of Sparky the Space Squirrel, blinded and mutilated with indisputable precision. Moxon gave a laugh, or an attempt at one, that came out as a sharp, hoarse bark. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s so much shielding in here, you’d need 6 hours with a mining laser to bore a way out. What’s your name, kid?” He belatedly offered a handshake.

Jason warily took the extended hand. “I’m Jason Freeman,” he said. “This is my friend Jackson Lightower and Dr. Lana Cahill. We’re from Mars.”

“Which sector?” Moxon said, evidently curious. “Amazon? Elysium Mons? Hellas?”

“New Dakotas,” Jason said. “It’s in the Hellas basin, a ways west of Port Eris. There’s 12 families now. There’s going to be a lot more once we get a pipeline in.”

Moxon nodded. “Yes, I’m familiar with it,” he said as he shook hands with the others in turn. “I was stationed on Luna myself, when Janus sailed. Before that, I was in the UN Airborne Crisis Response Corps. They said space was going to be an easy job.”

 

“They say there’s going to be almost a hundred crew aboard,” Jason said. “It must be hard to keep track of everyone. Anyone, really…”

“Not as much as you might think,” Moxon said. “Even Janus is a pretty tight space. Sooner or later, you run into everybody even if you aren’t trying.  Actually, it happens even if you’re trying not to. Keep that in mind before you try to get a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, if that’s your thing.”

“I was wondering,” Jason said, “do you know anything about who’s on the shuttle that just docked at the main bay? I think it’s why we had to dock back there…”

“You mean the lady?” Moxon said with his evidently characteristic half-smile. “I checked myself. Don’t worry about any of them. They’re higher-ups from the Federation side. Way over your head, or mine. If you run into them, just keep your head down.” He laughed again, no differently than before.

They followed the personnel officer down corridors made from two partially-connected rings of the crew habitat and the long, thin intersecting nacelles at supported them. The three drive nacelles alternated with more gracile living modules, laid out in the form of two crosses with a shared arm between them.  Their form made Jason think of the worn-out pipes he and Jax and their brothers had played with at home, especially the junctions that were prized and sometimes fought over. He mused that they could have built a model of the ship from the same pipes, but they had always preferred building desperately stylized animals like horses and giraffes and the Brontosaurus from King Kong.

What really stood out, however, was the spacious layout, which to him was luxury bordering on extravagant waste. In a Martian dome house where a space or object with only one function was no better than space left entirely empty, the very idea of privacy had been alien, and the spacecraft he had flown were even more cramped. Here, the space was subdivided into actual cabins, arranged either lengthwise on the main corridor or turned at right angles in cross-passages that extended to either side. All were the same size, almost 3 meters long and nearly half as wide, though only the ones on the main corridor appeared configured for sole occupancy; it was of some concern that even they had standardized 1.8 meter beds. Most amazingly, sections of the forward modules were given over not just to kitchen and lavatory spaces, but to recreation areas with tables, recreational screens and even gaming cabinets.

“In our current configuration, we have 60 cabins for 96 crew,” the officer said, seeing his curiosity.  “The primary life support pods have 15 standard cabins each, with some extra space for officer quarters and mixed use up front. We’re still working out sleeping arrangements. Actually, a girlfriend wouldn’t be a bad idea at that.”

Jason fidgeted through another awkward silence. “You know,” he said, “the living quarters are big compared to what we’re used to, but the beds are a bit small…”

“I noticed,” Moxon said. “You’re a tall boy, even for a Martian.” Jason was exactly 2 meters tall. “A solo cabin could hold you, but most of the assignments are already in. We can talk to the captain about that.”

“We’re going to meet the captain?” Jason said. It was closer to an exclamation than a question.

“Oh, yes,” Moxon said. “Our captain insists on meeting every new arrival.”

 There another silence, this time merciful. It lasted until Jackson gaped at the sight of a bathroom with a toilet and an oddly shaped tub in a drive nacelle’s rear escape pod. Jason flinched in surprise when Moxon spoke up again. “Funny story about that,” he said. “A company wanted a paid sponsorship to put one of their prefab bathroom sets on the ship. Command said Hell no. Then the company agreed to pay for the whole thing and the fuel to carry it, on top of what they offered for the sponsorship. It’s not so bad, at that. We might get more use out of that tub than anything else.”

After a pause, he continued to talk. “You know, there’s stories going around, about what it’s really like on Mars,” he said. “I wouldn’t pry into such things myself, but you’re going to have people ask… especially about your women.”

He managed a shrug. “There’s not much to tell,” he said. “There’s more women than men, leastways in the surface settlements. Not by a lot, maybe 6 to 5. The men who get out this far are the kind who want to keep going. The women are the ones willing to settle down. It’s not like you’d think, though. Most of them are just scientists. Older women, I mean. A lot of them were mothers back on Earth, even widows. Not that we have a problem with them, of course, they just… aren’t like us.”

“You mean not the kind a young man like you would marry,” the officer said. “Nothing wrong with saying it. And say, what about marriages?”

“Okay,” Jax blurted, “if you’re thinking of those two girls in Port Eris, that’s a Federation settlement, and it only happened once!”

“Actually, I meant your marriage,” Moxon said. “The file showed you had a wife.”

“Well, I got married a year ago,” Jax said. “She’s preacher man Mosey’s granddaughter. We met over the wires, then her family paid for her to come down. Mosey married us. We were talking about having a baby when I was called up.”

“So she’s a Negro?” Moxon said, not as a question. The Martians just looked confused. The officer spoke like an adult instructing small children. “Mosey is Moses Williams, isn’t he? I’ve met him. He’s a Negro, like the natives in the jungle movies. His daughters married before they left Earth. So your girl is like him, isn’t she?”

“Sure,” Jax said. “What, is that something people still talk about back on Terra?”

Jason stepped in. “We call them morenos, when it comes up,” he said. “In the Union settlements about a third of us are like that. The older folks say coming here was the `forty acres and a mule’ plan. I don’t get it.”

“You wouldn’t,” the officer said, for the first time in a tone that Jason judged not unkind. “No need to worry about it, anyway. Things have changed.” He laughed again, which unsettled Jason more than before.

“You know, there’s another story,” Moxon said, bare moments later.

“No,” Jason said. “That never happened.”

“I didn’t say what it was,” the officer mused.

“You didn’t have to,” Jason said. “If it had happened, we would know.”

“You’re sure?” the other man said. “You never heard anything about it?”

“Yes,” he answered irritably. “The only people who talk about it are out of towners.”

“I don’t know,” Jax said. “I suppose there’s people who wouldn’t talk, if it happened at all. But then, why wouldn’t we have heard about it?”

“I suppose you’re right,” the officer said. “Ah, and here we are…”

They came now to a space that was configured differently from the others. Here, the partitions of two cabins had been opened up to expand the already generous common area. There was a whole kitchen with a glass sphere to dispense coffee, cabinets for foodstuffs, and a pair of gaming cabinets. A long, narrow couch ran the length of most of the other side, which Jason correctly guessed could be used as a bed. In fact, it was the first he had seen that could definitely hold him. A space at the end that in other modules had held a kitchen and lavatory instead held more amenities, including a flight simulator. Beyond that was a small dining booth that likewise could clearly convert into a bed. Jason froze at what he saw.

One side of the booth was occupied by a man with a face that radiated kindness, complete with plump cheeks and a thick beard just beginning to go to gray. It made him think of strange stories from Earth about a fat man who brought children toys. Across from him were a man who was clearly some kind of scientist and a woman, still dressed in spacer fatigues. Her head was turned, but he staired at her deep black hair. He literally lurched back as she turned her head. He immediately recognized her face as the same one that had entranced him seen from a passing porthole. He belatedly realized that there was something familiar about it. He almost fled as she smiled at him and said, “Hi, Jason. I was just asking about you…”