Defying Mars (The Saving Mars Series) - By Cidney Swanson Page 0,61
she’d made six weeks ago upon Earth’s Isle of Skye. Nor did she have enough to come to a full stop and return to Mars. In fact, assuming the indicator was correct, she might not even have enough to guide the ship back into Mars’s orbital path to wait out the red planet’s arrival.
“Great,” she said aloud. “I’m dead.”
She’d faced death in a cockpit before—most recently just before MCAB had grounded her. But those times, the prospect of death had been immediate. This time she had nearly forty days between her and her probable demise. And this meant she had time to think about death.
And so, day by day, she learned to live alongside the fact that each day brought her closer to the probable conclusion of all her days. She vacillated between utter despair and a sense that everything would work out in the end.
It was a strange way to live.
She continued to receive periodic communications from Mars with demands for her return. These she read and ignored. Then one day a message arrived from her parents, pleading for her to reconsider. Her mom sent a set of calculations showing she’d still have the fuel to return until day forty-seven. Her mom didn’t know about the additional tellurium weight, of course. Jess stopped reading messages after that, and on day forty-eight, they stopped coming. MCC had apparently given up on her.
Jess spent much of her time analyzing the ship’s three hundred Earth-years of data regarding entry, descent, and landing on the Terran world. But this activity, like reading MCC’s messages, served only to fill her with unease. What she saw did not look hopeful. The day after the MCC messages ceased, Jess decided to discontinue analyzing possible landings as well.
“I’ll make it or I won’t,” she said aloud.
But with two weeks to go, she badly wished she’d brought something to read.
And then she laughed aloud. Running down the hall to Crusty’s storage locker, Jess fished inside the small dark space and pulled out a long-forgotten bag, crammed with the items she’d packed her last night at home. She hadn’t intended for it to be her last night, obviously, but now she hugged the bag to her chest in delight.
She pulled out her reading wafer and settled on her bunk to lose herself in a favorite story. And then another. And another. Until she fell asleep reading.
On the seventh day of this new routine, she woke with a massive headache throbbing through her right eye. You’ll ruin your eyes, her mother had told her when Jess used to read for hours on end.
Standing, Jess stumbled to the rations room in search of synthetic feverfew. While this did the trick for the headache, she decided to spend her time in more varied ways.
Searching her brother’s wafer, she found the music of the Cratercoustics, a band popular on Mars, and she cranked the music until it blared throughout the ship. The band was supposed to have played at the planetary celebration, which made her feel a bit sad. But the music was energetic and soon Jess was bouncing down the hall, singing along with lyrics about the girl she’d left behind in Barsoom Station.
It was a good workout. Crusty would have approved, Jessamyn thought with a smile. If she had to spend some part of each day exercising, she might as well enjoy it. Just in case she managed to land the ship after all.
The song finished and the crooning voice of the lead singer switched to a melancholy ballad about wearing his heart on his sleeve and how his girlfriend had stolen his jacket away. The words were silly. Very silly, Jessamyn told herself as she sang along, but the emotion felt raw and pure and she found herself remembering Pavel, his smile, his mouth warm on hers.
Which brought Jess to a new depth of miserable.
It wouldn’t do. Calling out a command for the ship to cut the audio, she marched to the helm. It was time for a rational activity. Like checking her trajectory.
Staring at the readings, her mouth pulled to one side in half a frown. Not because anything was wrong, but because the trajectory looked perfect. Mind-numbingly perfect.
“The Galleon doesn’t need me,” she said to Crusty’s orchid. Fortunately, she’d never once heard the plant respond to anything she had to say.
She looked for something else to do. She supposed she could swab the decks, but cleaning had never been a favorite task of hers.