Marsbound by Joe Haldeman Page A

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    I didn't have a third orgasm in me, but his was plenty for both of us. Then we lay in his narrow bunk, spoon fashion, dozing, until his erection came back and we did it again, in that position. Nicely intimate but not too stimulating, which he took care of afterwards with his fingers.
    An hour or so of dreamless sleep and he woke me with a hand on my shoulder. He was fully dressed. “Jerry wouldn't mind walking in on you like this,” he said, “but you might be startled."
    I dressed quickly and kissed him good-night. There was nobody in his corridor, but I did pass a couple on the main way, including Jerry, who gave me an arched eyebrow and a little wave.
    I slipped into our temporary room and undressed quietly without turning on the lights.
    "So how was our pilot?” Kaimei murmured in the dark. When I didn't say anything, she continued. “A simple deduction, Sherlock. You don't exactly smell like you've been riding a bicycle."
    "I'm sorry..."
    "I didn't say I didn't like it. Sweet dreams."
    In fact, my dream was odd and disturbing. I was trying to find a party, but every door opened onto an empty room. The last door opened onto the sea.
    * * * *
    Not delivering my homework like a good little girl got me into a special corner of Dargo Hell. I had to turn over my notes and homework in maths every day to Ana Sitral, who obviously didn't have time for checking it. She must have done something to piss off the Dragon herself.
    Then I had to take on over half of the mentoring hours that Kaimei and Elspeth had been covering, and was not allowed any outside time. The extra babysitting time came out of my ag hours, working on the farm upstairs, which most of us considered a treat, as Dargo well knew.
    I had been selfish, she said, tiring myself out on a silly lark, using up resources that might be needed for real work. So I had the temerity to suggest that part of my real work was getting to know Mars, and she really blew up about that. It was not up to me to make up my own training schedule.
    Okay, part of it was that she didn't like young people. But part was also that she didn't like me, the sex kitten who'd distracted her pilot. She didn't bother to hide that from anybody. I complained to Mother and she didn't disagree, but said I had to learn to work with people like that. Especially here, where there wasn't much choice.
    I didn't bother complaining to Dad. He would make a Growth Experience out of it. I should try to see the world her way. Sorry, Dad. If I saw the world her way and cast my weary eyes upon Carmen Dula, wouldn't that be self-loathing? That would not be a positive growth experience.
    * * * *
    19. Fish out of water
    After a month, I was able to put a Mars suit on again, but I didn't go up to the surface. There was plenty of work down below, inside the lava tube that protected the base from cosmic and solar radiation.
    There's plenty of water on Mars, but most of it is in the wrong place. If it was ice on or near the surface, it had to be at the north or south pole. We couldn't put bases there, because they were in total darkness a lot of the time, and we needed solar power.
    But there was a huge lake hidden a few hundred meters below the base. It was the easiest large one to get to on all of Mars, we learned from some kind of satellite radar, which was why the base was put here. One of the things we'd brought on the John Carter was a drilling system designed to tap it. (The drills that came with the first ship and the third broke, though, the famous Mars Luck.)
    I worked with the team that set the drill up, nothing more challenging than fetch-and-carry, but a lot better than trying to mentor kids when you wanted to slap them instead.
    For a while we could hear the drill through our boots, a faint sandpapery sound that was conducted through the rock. Then it was quiet, and most of us forgot about it. A few weeks later, though, it