If the trip to the Moon was long and boring, the trip to Mars was torture. The journey was ten times longer, the scenery was infinitely less interesting. Ten times as many hours to fill, and nothing with which to fill them. The small sleeping quarters on the A-537 were cramped, and not even remotely comfortable.
Garst spent most of the time reading. He said that all the adrenaline of flying needed some balance. So he was an avid reader. He brought an electronic reader with him on the trip, and stuffed it with thousands of books. He was working his way through them in alphabetical order by author. He especially liked old fiction novels. By the time the team left the moon, he was just finishing up with the Douglas Adams section of his books.
Priscilla was in the small exercise room for a good portion of the time. The team was prepared for their muscles to atrophy after a long time in space, so they had all spent time exercising their muscles. For Priscilla, it bordered on obsession. She would strap herself into a treadmill and run for an entire 2 hour briefing video on some of the equipment they were likely to find on Mars.
Sarah and Elliot spent a lot of time playing scrabble and card games. The games ended up being a light distraction while talking. They were both amazed at how much time they could spend talking, since they already thought they knew everything about each other. “Quack!” Sarah shouted, “and a double word score, 40 points!”
“Really? Quack? Do I need to get Garst’s dictionary?” Elliot teased.
“It’s the sound a bird called a duck made. Remember, I have a doctorate in natural sciences, I just know these kinds of things, Elliot.”
“Ok, ok, you can keep quack.” Elliot shook his head as he tried to find a way to build off her ‘Q,’ but sadly had no ‘U’ to pair with it. He vowed to himself that if he ever invented a language, he wouldn’t have letters be dependent upon each other, it makes scrabble so much more difficult. Maybe the ‘K’ had potential.
“Elliot, can I ask you something?” Sarah said. Her tone was gentler than before, almost timid.
“Of course, what is it?”
“Remember when you came back from your leave in Inner-London? I had asked you what was wrong, and you said you didn’t want to talk about it then. Are you ready to talk about it now?” She wasn’t sure how to break into this conversation, so she did her best.
“I guess so. I just got this feeling while I was at home that something was going on and nobody would let me know what it was. I kept asking Cheslie, but she would always change the subject. I just felt very distant from her and my dad, it wasn’t a very good trip. I felt like I might have upset them in making the decision to join this program, and I worried that I was distancing myself from my family. It really hurt, and I had a lot of doubts on the trip back to New Washington. When I saw you there, it just added to the conflict, because I knew that I had to stay on to help you with the work.”
“Elliot, your family wasn’t upset about the program. At least I don’t think they were. Cheslie seemed very excited last I talked to her.”
“I don’t know Sarah, it just felt weird.”
“Elliot, I have some bad news for you, and I have been putting this off, but I need to get it off my chest now, before we get to Mars. Elliot, your father died of Tuberculosis.”
“What? When?” It was as if a brick wall fell on Elliot right then. His head felt heavy, his vision blurred. The shock of what he had just heard took time to settle in. The trip home made more sense in this light, but it didn’t lessen the blow of the news.
“When we were at the Moon Base. I wanted to tell you earlier, but I didn’t want to have your feelings distract you from the preparations. You weren’t supposed to know at all, Albrick was forbidden from telling you, but he got a message to me the day before we left.”
“How could this happen? He was young, strong. What’s Cheslie going to do?”
“Elliot, Cheslie will be ok. She’s an adult now, she’ll take care of herself. They didn’t want to tell you he was sick when you were home, because they wanted to be able to enjoy the time together without worrying about Bruck. I know this is going to be tough for you, so I wanted to give you some time before we got to Mars. I’ll leave you alone.”
“Please stay.” Elliot said. He could feel himself choking up, and forced back the tears. Sarah sat on the bench next to him and pushed the small table away. She put an arm around his shoulder, which was just the trigger his tears were waiting for. He began to sob, head in hands. His body lurched as he struggled to take in breaths between moans. He turned and looked at Sarah, and she hugged him while he cried on her shoulder.
Sarah felt ashamed that in the midst of Elliot’s grief, all she could think about was the embrace they shared. She had felt a sort of tingle as she wrapped her arms around the grief stricken man who was her best friend. She knew that she should be sharing in Elliot’s grief, but had learned to repress feelings of grief long ago. Somehow she had not developed the same control over feelings of love. She rubbed her hand across Elliot’s back as the tears became slower. She knew there would be plenty of time to explore love later, once Elliot had recovered from his grief, for now, she needed to be a friend.
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