“That’s because you’re a girl,” her brother snorted. “I wouldn’t be nervous. Not at all.”
Jim chuckled. He was very nervous, himself. But he didn’t want to say that in from of Ned and Edna. “Come on,” he said to Sally. “We’re not supposed to stay out late tonight, remember?”
So they said good-by to Chipper, and were told for the fiftieth time by Ned and Edna how lucky they were to be going to Mars, and then they hurried back home. When they came in their father was on the phone, as usual. It seemed he was on the phone all the time, talking to important people, making arrangements.
Everything was packed. The house looked as it did just before a vacation, with everything put away and tidied up and the furniture covered. There was nothing more to do but wait until morning.
Jim and Sally went into the living room. Their mother was there, checking a list. “Cancel visiphone service . . . stop the milk delivery . . . turn off the electricity . . . that’s about it, I guess.” She looked up. “Oh, there you are! Is Chipper happy in his new home?”
“Not very,” Sally said. “But he’ll get used to it.”
“I feel like a traitor, taking him down the block and just leaving him there,” Jim said.
Mrs. Chambers smiled. “But you told him we were coming back, didn’t you? After all, you claim he understands what you say to him!”
“I know, Mom, but still—” Jim shrugged. “Well, nothing to do but wait, now.”
“It’s going to seem like ages till blast-off,” Sally put in. “And only seventeen hours from now we’ll be on our way!”
“And this is such a terribly important trip for your father,” Mrs. Chambers said quietly. “It can mean so much to his career.”
“Nobody’s really told us what he’s going there to study, Mom,” Jim said.
“All we know is that he’ll be studying Martian life,” Sally added.
“Well,” Mrs. Chambers explained, “he’s been planning this trip for years. Naturally we couldn’t afford it ourselves, but Dad’s been applying for research grants, seeing people, making contacts. It took him almost a year of steady arguing before he was given enough money to make the trip. You know that no native life bigger than a rabbit has ever been found on Mars.”
“That’s right,” Jim agreed. “All that the colonists have discovered is small animals and plants and bacteria and little things like that.”
Mrs. Chambers nodded. “Your father is officially going to study the biology of Mars—how life can exist on a planet that has practically no water. But he’d rather study the was large animals live in the Martian desert than the way small ones live.”
“There are all sorts of rumors that the Old Martians are still alive, hidden in the desert,” Sally said.
“Sure,” said Jim, “but no one’s ever seen one. All we have is their bones and their ruined cities. The Old Martians have been extinct for thousands of years.”
“Maybe not!” Mrs. Chambers suggested. “What your father hopes, anyway, is that while he’s there the surviving Old Martians will be found. He has a theory about them, and how they lived, but he needs to find them alive to prove it. And if he does, not only will we know a good deal more than we do know about why Mars is so dry, but we may discover some clues on how to change it’s climate to make it more comfortable for humans.”
Jim frowned. “I don’t get that. How—”
“Dad thinks that Mars was once a planet with as much water as Earth has today. But over the centuries something happened to make it dry up, and the people adapted to the new conditions. We don’t know how. If we could only get hold of some Old Martians and examine them—at least, that’s what Dad hopes.”
“Suppose he doesn’t find them?” Sally asked.
Mrs. Chambers shrugged her shoulders. “In that case he isn’t going to have very interesting results to show the government in return for all the money they’ve given him to make this trip.
The government science agency is going to be unhappy about that.”
“And the next time Dad wants a research grant,” Jim said, “they’ll think twice before they give it to him. Is that the story?”
“That’s about the way it is.”
“So he’s go a year to find what he’s looking for, or else,” Sally said. “Golly! I hope he does!”
“So do I,” their mother answered softly. “So do I.”
Bedtime came early that night, but neither Jim nor Sally got much rest. Jim tossed and turned sleeplessly, his mid wide awake and active. He was thinking about what it was like to travel in a spaceship, about what life in the Mars Colony was going to be like—and whether his father was going to succeed in finding the Old Martians. Thoughts whirled half the night in Jim’s head. He got out of bed finally—the clock near his bed said it was past once in the morning -
and walked to his window, looking out into the night.
There was Mars, glowing dull red against the black velvet backdrop of the sky. Jim felt chills run down his backbone. Tomorrow at this time he would be in a tiny metal cylinder, coursing through the heavens toward that red planet.
He heard someone moving around across the hall in Sally’s room. Tiptoeing over, Jim peered in.
Sally, too, was out of bed, staring at the sky.
“It’s after one!” Jim whispered.
“I know. I can’t fall asleep.”
“Neither can I. I’m too keyed-up about tomorrow.”
“We better get back into bed,” Sally said. “Otherwise we may fall asleep at the spaceport.”
There wasn’t much chance of that, Jim thought. But he returned to his bedroom, climbed back into bed, and screwed his eyes tight shut. Finally, sleep came.
The alarm went off very early the next morning. Although blast-off was at noon, they had to be at the spaceport by nine, and that meant getting up before seven. All four of them were strangely hushed and untalkative as they went through their morning routine. No one seemed to have much of an appetite for breakfast, either. Mrs. Chambers made no complaint at all, even though Jim left nearly half his bacon and eggs on the plate, and Sally ate even less.
The ride to Long Island Spaceport was made in virtual silence, too. They went by helicab, which was the quickest way; the cab picked them up at the cabport a few blocks from their house just after eight, and deposited them at the arrival-and-departure building of the spaceport fifty minutes later after a smooth flight through light morning traffic.
The spaceport was more than a dozen years old, but it still had a raw, unfinished look to it.
There was not much commercial space traveling yet. One ship left every three days for Moonport, and one ship every month for Mars. There was also the monthly excursion trip that was very popular in the billionaire set—it traveled from Venus to Saturn, taking a whole year, circling each planet and giving the passengers a look.
That was all—a total of twelve ships leaving the spaceport each month. Later on, of course, the number would grow much greater. There were plans to build Mars-type colonies on Venus and several of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, such as Titan, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Although it was exactly sixty years since Sputnik had begun the Age of Space, space travel was still very much in its infancy.
The passengers for the Mars ship were clustered together in the arrival-and-departure depot when the Chambers family entered. A smiling man in the uniform of the Space Corps told them,
“Take your baggage over to the weighing counter to check in.”
At the weighing counter, the Chambers luggage was put in the scale to make sure the family quota of two hundred and eighty pounds was not exceeded. When all of the baggage had been weighed the man said, “All right. Now you get on the scales, one at a time.”