Joe Haldeman SF Gateway Omnibus: Marsbound, Starbound, Earthbound Read Online Free PDF

for you scientists.
    "I'll be upstairs if anyone has questions." She scampered lightly up the ladder.
    I have a question, I didn't say. Could I just jump off and swim for it?
    My information packet said I was 21A. I found the seat and sat down, half reclining. Card was next to me in 20A; Mother and Dad were upstairs in the B section.
    Card took a vial out of his packet and looked at the five pills in it. "You nervous?" he said.
    "Yeah. Thought I'd save the pills for later, though." They were doses of a sedative. The orientation show admitted that some people have trouble falling asleep at first. Can you imagine?
    "Prob'ly smart." He looked pretty much like I felt.
    The control console for the window came up out of the armrest and clicked into place over your lap. On one side it had a keyboard and various command buttons, but you could rotate it around and it was like an airplane tray table with a fuzzy gecko surface.
    Card tapped away at the keyboard, which caused a ghostly message to cascade down the window in several languages: MONITOR LOCKED UNTIL AFTER LAUNCH. I touched one key on mine and got the same message, dim letters floating down in front of the fake seascape.
    "They're just trying to make us feel comfortable," I said, but it was kind of disappointing. The window would normally be a clever illusion—you could play a game or read a book or whatever, but nobody could see what was on your monitor unless they were right in line with it. Sitting on your lap. From any other angle, it would look just like a window looking outside. It had something to do with polarization; the screen was actually showing two images, but you could only see one or the other.
    With an hour to kill, I wasn't going to just sit and look through a fake window. I joined Barry and Elspeth in trying out the exercise machines, which were mainly for those of us going on to Mars. The others were just tourists going to the Hilton; they weren't going to be in space long enough for zero-gee to turn their bones to dry sticks and their muscles to mush.
    Then we went upstairs and took a look at the zero-gee toilet. We'd sort of trained on it in Denver, in the Vomit Comet, the big ancient plane that gave us fifty seconds of zero-gee at a time—up and down, up and down, all day long. I was able to get my feet into the footholds and lower my butt into place, but that was it. I'd learn about the rest soon enough.
    But not too soon. There was a regular toilet next to it, with a sign saying FOR USE UNTIL 0.25 G. So we had a few days.
    The "personal hygiene" closet looked claustrophobic. Once a day you got a plastic bag with two washcloths wetted with something like rubbing alcohol. Get as clean as you can, then put the same clothes back on. It would be a little better on the John Carter, better but weirder—zip yourself up in a plastic bag?
    The galley was on the opposite side of the room, just a microwave and a surprisingly small refrigerator, and a bunch of drawers of food and utensils. A fold-down worktable.
    In the middle of both rooms, both levels, was a round table with eight seat-belted chairs, I guessed for socializing. Wouldn't it be smarter to have smaller, separate tables? Just in case there turned out to be somebody you couldn't stand the sight of?
    After six months, that might be everybody, though, including the mirror.
    Mustn't think negative thoughts, as Dad says. Only two weeks in this one, and then a change of scenery for five and a half months. Then a new planet.
    "It's funny," I said quietly to Card, "on the boat over, I thought I could pretty well tell who were the rich people and who were the neo-Martians."
    "Fancy clothes?"
    "Or careful down-dressing. An ironed tee-shirt, that's a dead giveaway. With clean old jean shorts?"
    "But here—"
    "Yeah, and it's not just clothes. No makeup or jewelry. That has to rag them. It's going to be interesting."
    "Some of the Martians are rich, too," Card said. "Barry's dad's an inventor, and he has all