Two weeks later, Mars loomed ahead, a great butterscotch-colored globe the size of a melon at arm’s length. Contrasting with the blue of the sky beyond—a darker, more familiar blue than that seen in Earth’s vicinity—the sight raised great and conflicting emotions in Arabella’s breast.
First and foremost, the approach to Mars promised an end to her time on Diana, and with it an end to many great annoyances. Free descent, for one, was far more troublesome in skirts than it had ever been in trousers, and she looked forward to the return of good solid gravity with a sense of keen anticipation. An alleviation of the very limited space and company on board ship was something else which she anticipated with great gladness. Most of all, though, she hoped for an end to the deep, abiding loneliness which had been her lot ever since the exposure of her sex. For her to associate with the crew on any thing other than a brief, superficial level would be entirely inappropriate given her sex, age, and station; to associate with the officers, on the other hand, was an exercise in frustration from which she had decided to abstain for every one’s benefit. Her primary company for the last three weeks had been Aadim, and to a lesser extent the captain, who had continued her instruction in navigation and clockworks on an informal basis whenever his other duties permitted. She took her meals in her tiny cabin.
She would miss the captain, though—miss him very dearly. And he, she thought or hoped, would miss her as well. She knew that he spent as much time with her as he could without attracting the opprobrium of his officers, and he said that he greatly enjoyed her company and conversation. But that was as far as his sentiments toward her seemed to extend.
Perhaps, she thought, it might be for the best that she would see no more of him after the landing. But, even so, the prospect weighed heavily upon her heart.
The end of the voyage also meant, for good or ill, a return to the planet of her birth. Though she had never before examined the face of Mars with her own eyes—on her departure for Earth, she had been too outraged and despondent for more than a brief, despairing backward glance—his warm, yellow-orange color and his every visible feature were as familiar to her as the lines of her own palm, though the latter was now callused and scarred. Her father’s atlas and globe had given her the English names of the forts, trading posts, major mountain chains and valleys, and primary canals, while Khema had instructed her in the Martian names of all the other geographic features—the native cities, canals, plains, and rilles.
On Earth she had felt heavy, sodden, and dull—oppressed by the thick and humid air, the smothering warmth, and of course the greater pressure of gravity. On Mars, she knew, she would leap and bound as she had when she’d been a girl, and enjoy khula and gethown and shktumaya and many other treats whose names and flavors she had nearly forgotten.
But most important of all, Mars meant Michael. She prayed daily that, despite the many misadventures that had delayed Diana in her voyage, she would not arrive too late to warn him of Simon’s perfidy.
Oh, how she would rejoice if—no, when, she reassured herself—she found Michael safe in the old manor house at Woodthrush Woods. They would laugh and play together as they had when they’d been children in dear Khema’s care, and hunt thorek, and steal sweets from the pantry.
Or perhaps not. Michael was the head of the family now, and she supposed he must have many serious duties to attend to. But she hoped they would still be able to steal away for a Sunday picnic of khula-nuts on the Shokasto Plain.
Either way, Simon would be sent packing and then entirely forgotten. Though perhaps a payment to his unfortunate wife, in recompense for the money Simon had wasted on his passage to Mars, could be arranged. Though she had helped hold Arabella imprisoned, and even discharged a pistol at her, she had done so only for the sake of her infant child.
Arabella’s pleasant reverie was interrupted by Watson, who had drifted up behind her as she stood at the rail, rapt in her contemplation of the rust-colored planet that floated above Diana’s figurehead. “Miss Ashby?” he said, “the captain requests your presence immediately. He says it’s urgent.”
*
When Arabella arrived at the great cabin, she found the captain at the window, staring into the blue distance with hands clasped behind him. The set of his shoulders, in addition to the message of urgency that Watson had conveyed, indicated that he was deeply troubled. “What is the matter?” she asked.