Hao wiped the fog of his breath from the spacecraft window, unable to tear his gaze away from the awe-inspiring spectacle. The brilliant blue globe of the Earth—now terrifyingly small—hung against the blackness in such a fragile way that it seemed as though the universe was mocking him. All his dreams, fears, conquests, and defeats rendered laughable, as he floated inside a giant tin can with two dozen other fools, traversing the deathly void.

It had been a few days since launch, but the nightmares were still fresh. Quite beyond the expectation of being burned alive in a terrible explosion, what Hao had not been prepared for was the sense that the spacecraft, barely moving off the pad, drifted around like a felled tree—swaying with uncertainty before gravity lay inexorable hands upon it. The effect was caused by the engines gimballing back and forth to maintain stability. For a moment he had been sure they were going to tip over.

Then there were thoughts of the dreaded ‘conjunction’. While the views outside their crowded vessel were visually stunning, and a welcome distraction from the misery of shipboard life, they also served as a persistent reminder that death lay behind a half inch of steel or glass. Hardly much protection against a chunk of paint moving faster than a bullet. When the vessel maneuvered as part of its regular maintenance activities—placing the Earth into a blind spot—it seemed as though nothing existed but the star-studded void. Hao most dreaded the coming weeks when neither Earth nor Mars would be larger than a bright dot, and wondered how he might hold on to his sanity.

There was always exercise; cycling and rowing stations were set up, and even body extensions against elastic restraints. Unfortunately, accustomed to heavier lifting, Hao felt unchallenged and under-stimulated. Meanwhile his hard-earned body shrank, becoming more fragile every day. For privacy, he only enjoyed the personal space of a small cupboard; to browse mindless nonsense on the internet or watch the same tv shows and movies on repeat.

“Hey partner, trying to bring yourself back down to Earth?” the voice of Kerry Finnegan interrupted his thoughts, and he hid an annoyed expression.

“I’m just appreciating the majesty of the cosmos.”

“I wanted to invite you for a game of chess. Gotta keep your mind sharp hey?” Kerry wasn’t fooled by his cliché shield. Since the group had started interacting closely in the months before launch, the bright young electrical engineer had worked diligently to get under everyone’s skin and figure them out. She was almost obnoxious in her persistence, and Hao struggled daily to keep her at bay. His objective mind understood, and was perhaps even impressed by the woman’s tenacity; any subject and every person were fascinating to her, and if you weren’t careful she would have you sharing every detail of your life, and that of your friends, family and casual acquaintances.

For the rest of the prospective Martian colonists she was a godsend; providing the social glue that kept them from descending into Lord of the Flies madness. Unfortunately, Hao did not want to share, and while he found space travel to be deeply trying, he had his own mechanism of coping. It involved peace, quiet, and loneliness, disturbed only by occasional small talk.

“Did they say when the next solar drill would be?” He asked, attempting to change the subject. The drills required them to rush into the spacecraft’s mid-section, where water tanks surrounded the compartment. The drills began with an alarm and were usually a ripe source of fun as passengers bounced off each other to get in first. The last person in would usually be subject to some form of public humiliation. They allowed themselves this indulgence of frivolity as a necessary release, and every few drills, one would be performed with the severity of good order.

“Next drill is on the schedule.” Kerry chided him. “How about that game?”

“Maybe some other time. I’ve never been very good at chess, I’m afraid—wouldn’t want to give you a boring game.”

“Aw come on—a tough guy like you afraid of little old me?”

Hao looked away. He knew that in this environment he didn’t have the right to be hostile and was about to attempt more small talk when another figure drifted close.

“Don’t give in Hao, she’s setting you up.” said Jamey Knox, a chemist specializing in Methane refinement. “Lord knows she’s swindled half of us out of our chocolate allowance.”

“You knew the terms of the bet when you agreed to them. And you’d seen me play a dozen games. I swear—there’s a certain type of man that sees his friends get thrashed and can only think ‘Aha! But I will be different!’ Kerry complained.

“Absolutely correct.” Jamey grinned.

Hao felt himself moved to smile, and nod in agreement. “But in my case,” he protested, “I just don’t understand chess. Never had the mind for it.”

Jamey thought for a moment. “What about a different form of chess? Weren’t you telling me the other day about Jiu Jitsu?”

“Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and I only took a few classes. But that’s impossible in zero g anyway.”

“Well hold on a moment,” Jamey mused. “I’m sure you would agree that with all these flights and the psychological stress they impart, there must be a non-zero chance of someone cracking.”

“Well with the tough selection criteria and all the testing they do… but sure maybe it could happen.”

“A crazed person throwing a fit would be a serious threat to the ship, no? Wouldn’t it be helpful to have some kind of training to control a person like that?”

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“Oh yes.” Kerry agreed, getting excited. “Imagine if a big guy like Hao got claustrophobia and started bouncing off the walls.” She winked at him. “I’d want to know if a weakling like me could do something about it.”

“To be honest, now that you’ve mentioned it, I find the idea fascinating.” Hao nodded, “but I don’t know how it would work.”

“This is what they hired us for.” Kerry said. “Solve problems. We should get to work on this.”

“Sign me up for classes.” Jamey grinned.

“Hao, can you pass me the wrench?” Rho asked, her voice tinny over the suit radio and clouded by heavy breathing. She squatted by one of the fixed drill emplacements they had already installed, waiting patiently while Hao fetched a wrench from the rover. He walked it over to her, legs still shaky on the rocky Martian surface. Almost hourly he reminded himself that no colonist yet had smashed their impact-protection helmet open after a fall, but that invited the inevitable conclusion that someone would have to be first.

She thanked him and began locking in the braces for the drill that would punch down through the blood-red surface of the planet. Once armed, the drill would burrow down up to a dozen meters, in search of the most sacred and inaccessible resource in the solar system—water.

“You want to run the drill this time?” She smiled at him, and he swelled with pride. Rho had quickly recognized his strong mechanical skills and sought to push him towards greater and greater responsibility. In his previous career, he had been more used to micro-managers who would often hold him back.

“Thank you.” He said, sincerely, and then, since he felt their relationship had grown quite strongly over the weeks since his arrival, threw in a joke. “Once I’ve stolen your job, I’ll be sure to treat you generously.”

Rho laughed. “Well actually that’s kind of the point. If i get killed, you’ll need to be able to push my body out of the way and take over.”

Hao shivered. If Rho had one character flaw it was her morbid sense of humor. She joined him at the portable drilling station they had unpacked from the Rover and walked him through the startup sequence.

“Just go straight down for the first five meters, and we’ll see what we find.”

“Shouldn’t water ice be present just under the topsoil?”

“Normally yes, but we pretty much drained this area dry in the first years. Now we need to go deeper.”

Hao guided the drill down slowly under Rho’s watchful gaze. Their greatest concern was the presence of metals which might damage the drill; any unusual resistance was carefully probed before digging resumed. After a short wait the drills inbuilt water sensor beeped, signaling their contact with ice. Then they inserted the Magnetic Resonance probe into the drill string and initiated the mapping program. Within a few seconds they saw that a twenty-meter sheet of ice lay beneath their feet, stretching for kilometers in every direction.

“We struck blue gold boys!” Rho hollered and slapped Hao’s back. He congratulated himself that he didn’t flinch this time.

“Now we need to calculate the heat energy required.” he said.

“Good. Talk me through it.”

“If we provide too much energy to the heating element, then too much ice will flash to steam and explode out through the drill emplacement—possibly killing us both or destroying the rover and stranding us out here.”

“Right. We call this a sub-optimal outcome since it will require either an expensive rescue operation or a substantial amount of paperwork for our overworked colleagues. Not to mention the disruption to the logistical network needed to get a new rover and water trailer out here.”

Through the reflected image of the Martian landscape on her visor, Hao saw the woman wink.

“Uh… yes. But if the heat energy is insufficient, too little of the ice will melt before the heat can propagate, leaving us with very little water, and the heating element dangling in a void. So we work from the volume of the trailer, thermal capacity of water, and take care to calculate the desired level and time limit to run the reactor—subtracting ten percent as a safety margin.”

“You got this Hao! Guess I can go sit in the rover and read my book. Kidding! You connect the heating element and I’ll plug the hoses from the trailer.”

Though Hao rarely heard much sound through his helmet, the shriek of steam boiling up through the drilling rig and into the trailer was muted, but quite audible—together with the subtle vibration passing through the soles of his boots. Within minutes around six thousand gallons of water had transferred into their tank, the exterior vanes glowing as the heat began to dissipate into the thin Martian air.

“Another couple of days’ worth of water from one expedition.” Rho said cheerfully, as they drove back to the colony, trailer in tow. “This new technique works wonders.”

“It will certainly allow us to rapidly expand manufacturing operations.” Hao agreed.

“Do you get that glow yet?”

“Glow?” he wanted to turn to look at her, but the bulky suits prevented much movement in the cramped interior of the rover.

“We’re building something every day; a real and tangible foundation for a new civilization. I’m addicted to that feeling.”

“You sound like Martell.”

“We’re both true believers. Most people here are.”

She let the statement hang in the air, but Hao didn’t take the bait. “You must be excited for his arrival.”

“Oh my God, are you kidding? Two years of video messages and in a few days I’ll be able to jump on top of him. You’ll have a couple of days off work obviously.”

She laughed raucously and despite himself Hao couldn’t contain a chuckle. “You’re irrepressible.”

“I hope so. Ah—home sweet home.”

They passed over a low ridge and Hao had to look carefully to make out the shape of the colony against the red plain. A series of bulges and ripples marked the cavern roofs that sheltered them from radiation and dust, and here and there bulky decontamination airlocks dotted the terrain.

“Puts me in mind of a lizard clinging to the last bit of shade in a desert.” he said.

“Will you come for a drink later?”

“Oh… yes of course. I’m sure I have some Orange juice left on my ration card.”

“Good man. Once we transfer the water, if you can clean out the trepanning tray on the drilling module, I’ll give the rover a wipe down?”

After stowing his suit Hao almost jumped into the decontamination shower. In training they had spent nearly a full day going over the dangers posed by Martian dust and the toxic effects it would have on the human body. Although they went through a suit decon in the outer airlock, he didn’t trust it, and began to itch even as he extracted himself from the sweaty armor.

Hot water ran across his skin, and he began to feel whole again. The insidious silent desert faded to a distant corner of his mind, pushed back behind a comfortably thick wall of artificial dirt bricks. Hao let the heat and steam soak into his body and when he closed his eyes he was in a shower on the Danang Sun Peninsula, after a day of swimming and hiking in the hot sun. Once finished he would step out into the balcony of his private penthouse, where a young air hostess would hand him an ice cool Daiquiri. He could almost taste the sharp citrus pouring down his throat and it almost made him drool; the colony rations were painfully meager when it came to fruit.

The heavenly thoughts evaporated with the steam as an automatic timer disabled the shower and the vent sucked the compartment dry. Hao banged his head against the wall and took a deep breath. At least he could look forward to the Orange Juice.