Marsbound by Joe Haldeman Page B

broke through. It was Sagan 12th, which from then on would be Water Day.
    We put on Mars suits and then walked down between the wall of the lava tube and the base's exterior wall. It was kind of creepy, just suit lights, less than a meter between the cold rock and the inflated plastic you weren't supposed to touch.
    Then there was light ahead, and we came out into swirling madness—it was a blizzard! The drill had struck ice and liquefied it and sent it up under pressure, dozens of liters a minute. When it hit the cold vacuum it exploded into snow.
    It was ankle-deep in places, but of course it wouldn't last; the vacuum would evaporate it eventually. But people were already working with lengths of pipe, getting ready to fill the waiting tanks up in the hydroponics farm. One of them had already been dubbed the swimming pool. That's how the trouble started.
    * * * *
    I got on the work detail that hooked the water supply up to the new pump. That was to go in two stages: emergency and “maintenance."
    The emergency stage worked on the reasonable assumption that the pump wasn't going to last very long. So we wanted to save every drop of water we could, while it still did work.
    This was the “water boy” stage. We had collapsible insulated water containers that held fifty liters each. That's about 110 pounds on Earth, about my own weight, awkward but not too heavy to handle on Mars.
    All ten of the older kids alternated a couple of hours on, a couple off, doing water boy. We had wheelbarrows, three of them, so it wasn't too tiring. You fill the thing with water, which takes eight minutes, then turn off the valve and get away fast, so not too much pressure builds up before the next person takes over. Then trundle the wheelbarrow up a ramp and around to the airlock, leave it there, and carry or drag the water bag inside and across the farm to the storage tanks. Dump in the water—a slurry of ice by then—and go back to the pump with your wheelbarrow and empty bag.
    The work was boring as dust, and would drive you insane if you didn't have music. I started out being virtuous, listening to classical pieces that went along with my textbook on the history of music. But as the days droned by, I listened to more and more city and even sag.
    You didn't have to be a math genius to see that it was going to take three weeks at this rate to fill the first tank, which was two meters tall and eight meters wide, bigger than some backyard pools in Florida.
    The water didn't stay icy; they warmed it up to above room temperature. We all must have fantasized about diving in there and paddling around. Elspeth and Kaimei and I even planned for it.
    There was no sense in asking permission from the Dragon. What we were going to do was coordinate our showers so we'd all be squeaky clean—so nobody could say we were contaminating the water supply—and come in the same time, off shift, and see whether we could get away with a little skinny-dip. Or see how long we could do it before somebody stopped us.
    At two weeks, the engineers sort of forced our hand. They'd been working on a direct link from the pump to this tank and the other two.
    Jordan Westling, Barry's inventor dad, seemed to be in charge of that team. We always got along pretty well. He was old but always had a twinkle in his eye.
    He and I were alone by the tank while he fiddled with some tubing and gauges. I lifted the water bag with a groan and poured it in.
    "This ought to be the last day you have to do that,” he said. “We should be on line in a few hours."
    "Wow.” I stepped up on a box and looked at the water level. It was more than half full, with a little layer of red sediment at the bottom. “Dr. Westling ... what would happen if somebody went swimming in this?"
    He didn't look up from the gauge. “I suppose if somebody washed up first and didn't pee in the pool, nobody would have to know. It's not exactly distilled water. Not that I would endorse such an activity."
    When I