Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) - Kim Stanley Robinson Page 0,22

again. They had been part of a group, up late talking, and she had sat next to him, and afterward he had clearly gotten the wrong impression, and walked with her around Torus D to the bathrooms, talking in the charming and affable way he had at this stage of things. Maya was vexed with herself; she didn’t want to seem completely fickle, although at this point either way she went it would probably look that way. So she went along with him, just because it was easier, and because there was a part of her that wanted to make love. And so she did, upset with herself and resolved that this should be the last time, a sort of final gift that would hopefully make the whole incident a good memory for him. She found herself becoming more passionate than ever before, she really wanted to please him. And then, just before orgasm, she looked up at his face, and it was like looking in the windows of an empty house. That was the last time.

Δv for velocity, delta for change. In space, this is the measure of the change in velocity required to get from one place to another—thus, a measure of the energy required to do it.

Everything is moving already. But to get something from the (moving) surface of the Earth into orbit around it, requires a minimum Δv of ten kilometers per second; to leave Earth’s orbit and fly to Mars requires a minimum Δv of 3.6 kilometers per second; and to orbit Mars and land on it requires a Δv of about one kilometer per second. The hardest part is leaving Earth behind, for that is by far the deepest gravity well involved. Climbing up that steep curve of spacetime takes tremendous force, shifting the direction of an enormous inertia.

History too has an inertia. In the four dimensions of spacetime, particles (or events) have directionality; mathematicians, trying to show this, draw what they call “world lines” on graphs. In human affairs, individual world lines form a thick tangle, curling out of the darkness of prehistory and stretching through time: a cable the size of Earth itself, spiraling round the sun on a long curved course. That cable of tangled world lines is history. Seeing where it has been, it is clear where it is going—it is a matter of simple extrapolation. For what kind of Δv would it take to escape history, to escape an inertia that powerful, and carve a new course?

The hardest part is leaving Earth behind.

The form of the Ares gave a structure to reality; the vacuum between Earth and Mars began to seem to Maya like a long series of cylinders, bent up at their joints at forty-five-degree angles. There was a runner’s course, a kind of steeplechase, around Torus C, and at each joint she slowed down in her run and tensed her legs for the increased pressure of the two 22.5-degree bends, and suddenly she could see up the length of the next cylinder. It was beginning to seem a rather narrow world.

Perhaps in compensation, the people inside began to get somehow larger. The process of shedding their Antarctic masks continued, and every time someone displayed some new and hitherto unknown characteristic, it made all who noticed it feel that much freer; and this feeling caused more hidden traits to be revealed. One Sunday morning the Christians aboard, numbering a dozen or so, celebrated Easter in the bubble dome. It was April back home, though the Ares’ season was midsummer. After their service they came down to the D dining hall for brunch among them Yuri, Rya, Edvard and Mary. Maya, Frank, John, Arkady, and Sax were at a table, drinking cups of coffee and tea. The conversations among them and with other tables were densely interwoven, and at first only Maya and Frank heard what John was saying to Phyllis Boyle, the geologist who had conducted the Easter service.

“I understand the idea of the universe as a superbeing, and all its energy being the thoughts of this being. It’s a nice concept. But the Christ story …” John shook his head.

“Do you really know the story?” Phyllis asked.

“I was brought up Lutheran in Minnesota,” John replied shortly. “I went to confirmation class, had the whole thing drilled into me.”

Which, Maya thought, was probably why he bothered to get into discussions like this. He had a displeased expression that Maya had never seen before, and she leaned forward a