Jim Baen's Universe

Science Fiction Stories

Winds of Mars

Written by Bud Sparhawk

Illustrated by Bob Greyvenstein

The wind blew soundlessly across the red-gray Amazonis landscape. Arching high above the station’s masts were the fluttering tell-tails on the tug’s sails. Halsey “Sands” Ribblokenni barely gave them a glance as he headed for the dispatcher’s shack. His mind was more on the Tuesday night’s race out on the Tiblia Plantia. He was in third place in the latest series and, if he managed to win the next race, he’d move up to second.

For the third time in as many days he hoped Paula would be able to make it up from Anson in time to see him speed across the finish line, turn upwind, and spill the tiny morsel of Martian air that drove the buggy’s wing. In his mind’s eye he rehearsed leaping from the saddle, racing to her and proposing over their suit-to-suit link.

That they wouldn’t be able to manage more than a sterile embrace as they touched helmets didn’t trouble him at all. Waiting to propose until they were back in atmosphere lacked the drama he felt the moment required. Besides, delaying that willing, accepting kiss would make it all the more passionate.

Yes, second place was definitely within reach this time after working so hard at tightening the rigging and figuring out how to remove another quarter-kilogram from the frame. That alone would give him at least an additional half-meter per second. Even that was an advantage where most races were decided by mere seconds.

“Got a heavy load this morning,” the dispatcher said in greeting. “Got six tonnes of air tanks heading for OpOne.” Outpost One was located a few hundred kilometers southwest, across the high plantia. “Bad news is that there’s strong headwinds blowing. I had them put the big sail on the tug for the load you’ll be pulling.”

Sands groaned. With a heavy load and a headwind he’d be on the trail for ten hours at least. “How strong?”

The dispatcher glanced at the gauge. “About one hundred, but that will rise as the day warms up.” Sands had to grin at that. The warmest it ever got on the plateau was still sixty below freezing, and that only in midsummer.

Outside, he did his walk-around of the tug. It was far different from the light, slim racing buggy he owned. Instead of a single wheel at the prow, this clunky machine used a two-wheel fore-tractor. The rear outrigger wheels were large, nearly as wide as he was tall, and splayed outward at the base to maximize the huge soft tires’ footprints on the sand. Just behind the rear seat were the attachment points for the cargo pod. He checked to ensure that the pins that secured the tug to its load were locked in place.

Rising above his head and passing over the cargo pod was the huge gaff-rigged sail—nearly eighteen hundred square meters of aerogel fabric supported at the top edge by a spar projecting at a sharp angle from the tall supporting mast.

The gaff rig was a compromise between balance and power. A traditional sail would be so large that it would tip the tug in the slightest breeze. The gaff brought the center of the sail’s mass lower with no decrease in sail area. A lateen rig, on the other hand, would lower the center even more, but be harder to maneuver.

Had there been a nice following breeze instead of this near headwind they could have had a nice, steady ride. As it was, they’d have to quarter back and forth the whole tiresome way.

Jack, his linesman, finished checking the lines he’d control from the rear seat. His job was to make certain that each ran smoothly through the five sets of pulleys that gave him the mechanical advantage he needed to handle the long boom.

Sands dropped into the steersman’s seat and hooked his suit into the life support gear. “Check,” he said as soon as he activated the link.

“Whenever,” Jack replied as he buckled in. “I’m ready.”

Sands felt a jolt as the electric pusher moved them into position behind the cargo pod and began to push them away. The winds on these plains were so light that wind power alone was insufficient to overcome the inertia of the cargo pod. The pusher at least got their speed up to where the wind could sustain their movement.

The tug began to move, more from the force being applied by the pusher than from the light wind striking the sail. Sands turned the wheel to bring the tug into the wind; Jack let the boom swing free until it captured the wind and stopped fluttering.

They were on their way.

Four hours along the cleared trail and the landscape was as boring as ever. The wind was blowing so steadily that Sands had only had to quarter twice since they left, but not so far as to leave the cleared trail. The sun was high in the southwest, but it would drop below the horizon two hours before they reached their destination. Sands hated sailing in the dark, but there was no way they could avoid that, given Mars’ short winter day.

He noted that the tell-tails were streaming evenly along the sails surface to indicate a smooth airflow. Jack was obviously doing a good job of trimming. They were getting close to the edge of the cleared trail so he’d have to quarter back in a few minutes.

“I could use a drink about now,” Jack said to break the monotony. “Maybe some good Earth beer.”

“If you’re going to daydream why not imagine scotch?” Sands replied. “I drink nothing but the best in my daydreams.”

“Yeah, I think—What the hell is that?”

Sands felt the tug lean under a sudden fierce gust of wind before the right rear wheel lifted off the surface. At the same time Jack let go of the sheet and let the sail swing wide to ease the pressure.

Sands swore: Where had that blast of air come from? It was too early in the season for squalls and they were too far away from the hills to have a downdraft.

Sands turned the tug off the wind to bring the wheel back down. As the left wheel touched the loose drift sand at the edge of the cleared trail he felt the mass of the cargo pod fighting the change of direction.

He had to keep the cargo pod out of the loose sand or they’d lose all their forward momentum. The forward wheels threw aside showers of dust as they dug into the turn. The right wheel lost contact with the surface as the whole tug leaned in an extreme heel to the left.

Jack was fighting to spill wind but the tip of the sail was dragging in the sand and could not be let out any more. Sands wrenched the yoke, desperate to turn upwind.

Suddenly Sands saw a rock where no rock should be. As the fore truck hit, the yoke twisted out of his hands. He felt the tug tilt farther. His belt snapped and he flew along the sail, sliding away from the nearly vertical tug, ripping the thin fabric as he tumbled. His world was a whirl of sail, sand, and hard blows before the huge cargo pod rose above him and then descended.

“Paula” was the only word he had the time to utter

****

Louella was still fuming over losing the Jupiter race as they waited stationside for the transfer ship to arrive. The small shuttle would carry them out to rendezvous with the ship as it transited through near Jupiter orbit. The ship had already looped twice to intersect Io, skimmed Jupiter to pick up speed and flown outward to Europa. On this pass it would be near maximum speed on its way to Callisto as it left on its way to meet Mars in the eternal planetary ballet. These big ships needed all the gravity boost they could get to cover the distances without wasting fuel and every near pass to one of the moons improved their speed.

“Blacker is going to ream our ass over this, Pascal,” Louella complained as they gazed for the last time at the rosy orange arc of Jupiter they could see through the portal.

They made an odd couple, Louella, a large black woman and Pascal Dumay, a slight Frenchman. One would never know they were experienced ocean sailors and had just completed a harrowing voyage across Jupiter.

It was hard to believe that they had been sailing in Jupiter’s atmosphere just a few short weeks before, daring the winds, and damn near losing their lives in one of those ships that were a combination of dirigible and submarine. The only good thing about it was how the experience had cemented her friendship with Pascal.

Friendship was the only term for it. The bastard was wasting his good looks and cute accent charming the most attractive crewman instead of ministering to her needs. With only two crewmen, and one of them past his prime, she found herself in a different competition with Pascal.

What was it going to be like on the eleven-month trip to Earth?

The shuttle run was misery. They had to spend over three hours crammed asshole to elbow with four other passengers in a can barely large enough to contain them. It was hot, smelly, and nearly as uncomfortable as Thorn’s cabin had been.

“Have to speed up to match the ship,” the pilot shouted over the constant bang of the engines as it built up pressure and fired over and over again. “She’s doing nearly 5000 kps by now. We’ll pass her this loop and she’ll catch up to us on the next. Any of you want a peek as we pass, you’ll have to squeeze up here in the bubble. Only one at a time, though.”

Louella used her strength and size to assert herself so she could catch a fleeting glance at the confusing array of spars, tanks, lines, panels, and god-knows-what conglomeration that constituted the interplanetary transport as it whipped by them and diminished in the distance.

It had looked nothing like the fancy passenger ship they had used to reach Jupiter. Of course, back then they were being treated as the great JBI sailing team, celebrities almost, and in the good graces of JBI. Now they were just a pair of losers who had to return to Earth by the most economical means. She was absolutely certain Jerome, the young penny-pinching bastard who ran JBI, was behind this downfall, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Rendezvousing with the transport was more like a controlled collision than a graceful ballet. The jarring connection and sudden acceleration rattled Louella’s teeth.
“Sorry, I was a few kps short there at the end,” the pilot cheerfully apologized. “But we actually made it without killing anyone.”

She couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

****

Pascal was pleasantly surprised to find how commodious the transport’s passenger compartment was. Everyone had a private cabin, which was to say a three-by two- by two-meter compartment stacked like tubes around a common open volume on one deck of the PassCan, as the crew referred to it.

The can was the third largest cylinder that made up most of the volume of the ship, the second largest being the cargo pod, and the largest the fuel tank. The three were spaced along the central axis like a string of pearls. At the forward end of the PassCan were amenities and a magnificent view of the heavens. At the base were the passenger and crew cabins, life support, and maintenance bays. In the center was the water ring, a torus the center of which was the refuge where all would repair should the sun throw off a sheet of high-energy particles that the water could absorb. For the normal radiation they all had to continue the damn drugs that tasted like ten-year-old milk.

Thirty odd passengers were already aboard, having transferred on at Europa and Io. They appeared to be a mixed lot in age, gender, and appearance. Some looked hardened, as if they had seen far too much for their young age. Others appeared more settled, satisfied with their lot. One pair were obviously a couple, although Pascal could not understand what a rugged looking guy like that saw in his scrawny companion. Well, we all have our tastes, he thought. One of the men from Europa looked promising and had even smiled when their eyes met. That was encouraging, he hoped.

Dining was done in shifts, with each shift determined by some program a psychologist had probably designed to ensure that cliques did not arise to disturb the delicate balance that having so many people together in such cramped space would otherwise generate. This was fine with Pascal.

Tonight’s dinner companions were the odd couple from Io, Haley something or other and her companion, Matt.

They were prospectors, they told him. Both of them were heading to Mars, she to return to her home and he to follow her. Both were effusive about the wonders of the place.

“You haven’t seen anything until you’ve stood atop Olympus Mons and gazed at the stars,” Haley said. “I did that a time or two.” Pascal wondered how anyone could gaze in wonder atop a damn mountain. The thoughts of being on something that high sent shivers down his back.

“So, how was Io,” he said to change the subject.

“Smells like wet farts,” she replied. “Mars is better.” She smiled and added; “Smells like dry ones.”

“Io was beautiful and dangerous,” Matt said. “Like Haley here.” The big oaf grinned like he’d just bestowed her a glorious compliment. “Fire and ice,” he added and got an elbow in the ribs along with her smile.

“I actually spent most of my life on Mars,” Haley said. “Prospecting, mostly, although I did run one race down the big one.”

“She means Olympus Mons,” Matt explained. “Rode a fancy Mars bike and nearly killed herself doing it.”

Haley blushed. “Well, there were two of us so I can’t take all the credit.”

Pascal was horrified. It was bad enough to climb mountains and risk certain death, but to deliberately fly down the face of one on a bike was insanity.

Haley must have read the terror on his face. “It wasn’t that bad. Mons has a shallow slope—only about five degrees at the steepest part. Not at all like those tiny things on Earth. Matter of fact, if you stood on the side of Olympus it would look just like a slightly inclined plain, except for the chasms, craters, and piles of rocks. Not at all what you’d imagine a mountain would look like.”

“Thank God,” Pascal said under his breath.

“Have you heard the big news?” Matt asked later as they were eating the entree. “Jerome Blacker, the boss man at JBI, died last week. I caught the news upload just before dinner.”

Pascal was shocked by the news, but wasn’t surprised. It was obvious from their last meeting that the elder Blacker was nearing his end. The watery-eyed senior member of JBI’s management team had appeared to be a physical wreck with his thin buzzard’s neck, mottled skin, and a slight trembling that declared declining health. Jerome had looked older than his hundred and ten years—and at some point even his great wealth would not stay the grim reaper.

“How did it happen?” Pascal asked. He’d liked the old man on their few meetings and felt a pang of sorrow at his passing.

Matt shrugged. “Heart attack, stroke, something sudden. I hear JBI’s in complete disarray trying to figure out how to run the empire without him.”

Pascal wondered about that. “But his son was running the company anyway. I don’t imagine the loss of his father would matter that much.”

Matt put his knife down. “Son? Did I say that? No, the old man is still kicking. It was his son, the young Jerome that died.”

****

Louella was waiting in the lounge with her dinner partners when she saw Pascal emerge from the dining space. There was a strange look on his face as he rushed to her.

“Have you heard?” he asked before she could say a word. “Blacker’s dead—heart attack or stroke or something.” Before she could jump to the same, but wrong conclusion he added. “Not the old man—the son, Jerome, was the one who died.”

“The penny-pinching bastard who put us on this cheap-assed transport instead of a decent liner?” Louella shot back. “Well, good riddance. Maybe we’ll get better treatment now that he’s out of the way.” She reached into her pocket and held out a flimsy. “Maybe that news has something to do with this request we have from JBI. They want us to listen to a bloody too-damn-expensive conference call this evening.”

****

Louella fumed at the delay enforced by the slow speed-of-light transmission that made the conference call an agony of delay and deliberation. With a ten minute delay between exchanges with the JBI agent back on Jupiter, the term “conversation” took on a new meaning. It was more like making speeches at one another without the benefit of immediate feedback. Every misunderstanding took so long to correct that both sides were being very verbose in whatever they said.

So far she had learned that the JBI dinosaur was in panic mode, its body of thousands of employees and managers trying to cope with their sudden and unexpected loss. The majority of the company still operated normally, but eventually, without a head, the body would fail to coordinate its actions and begin to die.

She learned that the news of Jerome’s death had sent the price of JBI stock tumbling, with repercussions throughout the solar system due to the interrelations of system-wide corporations. Soon, other companies would be affected.

Old Blacker had even had his set piece to open the conversation, although Louella suspected that it had been prerecorded. “Lots of good publicity on the Jupiter race,” he’d said. “Your rescue gave us more news share than the winners. Gave us good legs in the PR front. Need to have more of that.

“Now we have to keep JBI in the news so people will forget about losing Jerry,” Blacker continued, his voice lacking any trace of remorse. “My damn flyspeck accountants tell me that we need to staunch the cash flow. We need more good publicity to restore JBI’s good name and stock price. News that will make people believe we are still a forward-thinking, risk-taking company worth investing in.”

“Fat chance,” Louella said to herself. “No way I’m going back to Jupiter for another damn race.” She and Pascal had nearly lost their lives when the combination dirigible and submarine that “sailed” the upper atmosphere of Jupiter had lost its sails and been cast adrift. Had it not been for the fortuitous meeting with Thorn and her pilot Rams Potswamynada they would have become Jupiter’s Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail the red seas of Jupiter forever.

“There’s a new race I want you to sail,” Old Jerome continued, bringing her thoughts back to the present. “GeoGlobal and First Mars are sponsoring entries with some local talent, none of whom have your experience. It’ll be an easy win and won’t take much time off your schedule. My people on Mars will send you the details. Expect great things out of you. Make me proud.”

A new race? The Honda Global wasn’t scheduled for another year and he certainly couldn’t expect her to run the Grand Vendee again. She had nearly lost her life drifting on an upside down racer in Earth’s Southern Ocean four years ago, an experience she didn’t want to repeat.

So, what race could it be and would she have time to regain the skills and feel for blue water sailing after they reached Earth?

For that matter, did she really want to get back into competitive sailing once more? After her adventures on Jupiter, sailing the Earth’s seas would be safer, but would also seem tame. Too tame, perhaps? Maybe it was time to settle down and get on with her life.

Pascal was as puzzled as Louella over Blacker’s statement about a new race. He thought he knew all the world-class blue-water races that were scheduled over the next two years and none of them were of a stature that would garner JBI the type of publicity old Jerome needed. What would it be?

The details came in the form of a massive download that had the rest of the passenger’s ill-concealed grumbling over the loss of their own time on the machine. The crew had to parcel the download into multiple files so that the reading stations could handle it.

The first sixty gigs were a complex contract that neither of them could understand, so arcane was the language JBI’s lawyers had formulated. It was only when they looked at the attachments that they realized the huge bonus JBI would provide if they won the race. What’s more, even if they did not win, the salary they would receive would more than compensate them for any lost time from whatever they had planned.

“I could build my own sailing school with that kind of money,” Louella said.

“And I could finally buy my ranch in Arizona.” Pascal sighed. “Or a villa in Marseilles.”

The dates of the race were puzzling. Their ship wouldn’t reach Earth orbit for another two months yet the race was scheduled to begin in forty-five days. How was that possible?

The second download had included a surprising location—Mars,

“How can there be a fucking sailboat race on Mars, for God’s sake?” Louella exclaimed. “There’s no freaking water, no seas, not even a damn pond.”

The download also provided their contact’s name, berthing arrangements, and even their departure dates for Earth after the race. Obviously JBI’s planners had covered everything needed to ensure that they would satisfy their contract.

Pascal had brought up a map of Mars and checked out the locations. “I see no possible settlements near this race location,” he said. “Near the equator just east of Arsia Mons it says. It looked like a flat plain—an unlikely place for open water. An accompanying satellite shot showed nothing but an empty, rose-colored plain of lava flows.

“It looks like a damn desert,” Louella exclaimed over his shoulder. ”How the hell can you sail on fucking sand?” She paused, turned to Pascal and said, “I think we need to do a little research.”

Pascal knew from the tone of her voice that she could already feel the lines in her hands as the red sands flew beneath her. “There is a woman on board who said she raced on Mars,” he said, recalling what Haley had said over dinner. “Perhaps we should talk to her before we make any commitments.”

****

Haley was less than informative about sailing on Mars. “Nothing I ever heard of,” she said. “Atmosphere’s so thin I doubt if it would be possible and this spot is pretty high up—about eight or nine klicks above the reference normal. Sailing, you say? Well, that’s the most foolish idea I’ve ever heard. We have more productive things to do on Mars than waste time on something as stupid as sailboat races.”

Pascal squeezed Louella’s hand hard before she could let loose a skin-peeling torrent of invective that expressed her utter contempt for those who thought sailing was stupid. “But wouldn’t you say the same about mountain racing?” he replied.

To her credit, Haley blushed. “Well, I guess so, but the Tai Chan race is sort of a tradition we’ve turned into a race, so it’s a little different. Besides, I was getting paid good money for helping out.”

“As are we,” Pascal continued, his fingers still digging into Louella’s arm. “But right now we need to know more about Mars. Are the winds strong and do they change direction quickly? How frequent are the sandstorms and how bad are they?”

“Wind’s so slight you never feel it on your suit,” Haley replied. “Which is why I can’t figure out how anybody could use it to sail. Sandstorms might whip up a breeze, but they aren’t that frequent, and mostly in the spring. They’re worse at the equator but some might occur further north. I think I heard the wind speed increases with altitude, but that wouldn’t matter much since it’s so thin.”

“Barely comes up to your knees,” Matt injected, repeating a joke long grown old.

Haley continued. “Most sandstorms aren’t strong but they sure are abrasive. Spend a few weeks getting hit by them and you’ll have your suit polished to a high shine.”

“Sandblasting does that,” grinned Matt. “Are you going to let your girlfriend speak now?”

Pascal jerked his hand away from Louella’s arm as if it had suddenly turned into a snake. “Girlfriend?” he said incredulously.

“Don’t make any assumptions about us,” Louella said angrily. “Pascal’s my crewmate and that’s a hell of a lot closer relationship than being married most of the time. Now, will one of you tell me where I can find out more about these Mars sailing, uh, boats?”

****

The ship’s library held an amazing amount of material on Mars and its atmosphere but little about sailing in any form. Neither was there any hint of any large body of water.

“I sure would like to know what the devil they’re smoking,” Louella said after reviewing the material about the Martian atmosphere. “The pressure only ranges two or three millibars, hardly enough to raise a decent wind.”

Pascal scanned further down the reference. “Maybe that’s why the typical wind speeds are under ten meters per second. Even the dust storms only get up to thirty mps!”

“This whole venture is starting to seem ridiculous,” Pascal replied. “It has little to do with sailing as we’ve known it. Without water what is the point of it all? I thought the Jupiter race would be interesting, but all we saw was the inside of our cabin and the black outside of the ships. I might as well have been in a simulator for all the thrill of sailing it gave me.”

Louella cocked her head to the side. “You mean it was all for nothing?”

Pascal hesitated for a moment before responding. “Not entirely. There were some moments . . .”

“Like saving my ass and Ram’s? Like overcoming your fear of heights? Like finding out that we actually mean something to each other? Was that all for nothing?

“Come on, Pascal; you won’t have to worry about falling. The area looks pretty flat for God’s sake, and how much wind can there be with hardly any atmosphere? Whatever they’re talking about will be a walk in the park compared to what we’ve been through. Hey, the money they’ll pay is more than we could get from the suits for the best race on Earth.”

Pascal considered. The Martian desert looked quite unlike Arizona’s, whose flat, distant horizons, rich colors, fantastic sunsets, and distance from the ocean had great appeal. Arizona’s high plains were cold at night, but the temperatures didn’t plummet as low as negative one hundred degrees Celsius. Even in the daytime, the Martian desert would barely reach minus twenty degrees, and that was on a warm day!

On the other hand, Louella had a point. With the money they’d already gotten for racing Primrose and the bonus they might receive if they won this ridiculous Martian race, he could do anything he wanted. He could build a home far from the ocean, far from anyone who knew anything about sailing, far from anything in his life to this point. He could finally be free to do as he pleased.

“I will do it,” he said. “But only for you.”

****

“I don’t like your contract terms,” Louella said to the JBI representative on Mars. They had gotten close enough while they went over the background material that the delay in transmission was a mere forty seconds, barely noticeable after their earlier experience. “We’ll need complete outfitting, training, and expert advice if we are going to compete in this race.”

“That’s all been taken care of,” the rep replied. “All you have to do is agree to land at Marsport. We’ve scheduled everything for you.”

“We want JBI to arrange first class passage to Earth after the race,” Louella demanded. “Yeah, and a bigger payment. I don’t have a lot of faith that we’ll be able to earn the bonus, given our lack of experience with this”—she choked to suppress a giggle—“Martian sailing thing.”

“I’ll download a video,” he replied angrily. “See if you can contain your amusement until then.”

The download brought some sense to the situation. It was a short movie that showed a group of wheeled triangular frames with huge sails tearing about a rose-colored plain at incredible speeds. Pascal was amazed at how the mechanisms managed to actually accelerate after they turned into the wind. “How is this possible?” he asked. The winds of Mars had to be too slight to drive such contraptions yet he could not deny the images before him.

When they returned to negotiations the next day the dry JBI man looked as if he had not moved a millimeter from his earlier position. Did JBI now have virtual executives, Louella wondered?

“Mr. Blacker has complete trust that you will do your job,” the rep said as soon as he saw they were on line. “The amounts we’ve offered are quite generous and far more than you could get elsewhere. I should point out that you have been off the race circuit for nearly two years and would have a hard time getting backing for ocean racing.”

Louella swore silently. It was too damn true. It would take her a long time to restore the network of backers and financiers she’d need to finance a race team. “Generous? You’re asking us to risk our lives sailing on an unfamiliar Martian desert. I think that deserves more than the pittance your employer offered.” She just wished she had a better idea of what she was talking about.

“Piffle. It isn’t that dangerous. Besides, Mr. Blacker made it quite clear that you were to participate in this race,” the rep replied. “Mr. Blacker is not a man to be trifled with.”

“We’re not his damn employees,” she shot back. “Tell Jerome that he can stick his Martian race up his ass if he expects me to delay my return to Earth for so little money. I want the damn bonus regardless of where we place or we’re not coming down to Marsport.”

The delay this time was noticeable—nearly a full four minutes, far too little time for the representative to contact Earth for advice, but enough time for a quick conference. “I am authorized to offer a third of the bonus as incentive,” the answer finally came. “You’ll get the remainder only if you win.”

Louella wondered if she should push the man further to see just how far he would go. But that long delay said that he had executed a carefully calculated comparison of cost against the benefits of publicity. JBI’s managers put a price on everything they did and this was no different.

“Deal,” she said after making him wait a few minutes. “I’ll tell my agent on Earth to sign the documents.” Scott, her agent, would crap in his pants when he saw the numbers and found out what she’d be doing for it.

****

The passenger compartment of the shuttle to the Martian surface was cramped, smelly, and obviously well worn. The hatch handles were burnished to a bright finish as was every place a hand could rest. “Polished by the dust,” the pilot explained as he shoved Pascal into his seat and pulled the safety harness entirely too tight for comfort. Ordinarily such close proximity to the cute pilot would have been welcome but the fact that both of them were encased in protective surface suits made the closeness less than enjoyable. “Dust gets into everything and there’s not a vacuum made that can get it all up. You’ll have to learn to live with it when you get below.”

The reason for the excessively tight harness became abundantly clear as the shuttle dropped to the surface. To Pascal it felt more of a controlled fall than a glide. The jarring landing took at least three bone-crushing hops before it settled into a bumpy roll. “Not bad,” the pilot said cheerfully. “We didn’t lose our wings this time.”

Wings? Was this stomach-clenching drop from orbit what passed for a glide, Pascal wondered? There must be even less atmosphere than he imagined.

He got no glimpse of the landscape as the passengers trundled through the tunnel and into the 'port. Dull gray partitioning and a strip of lights above gave the tunnel an industrial look. There was a gritty feel to the floor and, when Pascal glanced down, he saw the coating of reddish dust the pilot had described.

At the end of the tunnel a pair of efficient attendants helped them out of their suits and pointed the way to the electrostatic barrier that was supposed to keep the dust confined to the tunnel.

“If you will come this way?” a studiously polite young woman asked and led them to a waiting electric cart. “We’ve booked you on the train to Bilbis Patera. I’m to accompany you.” She glanced at her watch. “Sorry for the rush, but headquarters told me to get you to the Jovus Bubble as quickly as possible.

“Here are your schedules for the next week,” she continued as she handed across a pair of databooks. “You’ll have plenty of time to read them later, on the Bilbis Patera train. It’s quite a long trip—nearly nine hundred kilometers.”

Pascal had been trying to take in the sights of Marsport as they raced along in the open cart. Marsport was the largest settlement on Mars, but wasn’t much to look at from what he could see. The passage showed him nothing but low ceilings, narrow passageways, and few, if any, windows. Perhaps they were passing through the lower regions of the settlement, he thought, and the living areas were above them.

That thought disappeared as they dove down a ramp and passed through a larger volume containing what appeared to be a small park. It resembled nothing more than the center section of a huge shopping mall, but less glamorous than many he’d seen. “I wanted you to see our beautiful Central Park and not the less appealing parts of the settlement,” she said without a trace of sarcasm.

They continued along another set of low hallways. “Ah, here we are,” she finally announced as the cart stopped before a large hatch.

A pair of clamshell doors retracted as they approached to reveal a platform beside a long line of large wheeled cars. At the head of the line was a squat tractor, dwarfed by the size of the cars.

The woman indicated one of the cars and opened the hatch to a small compartment with six plush seats. “This is our private car,” the woman said as she flicked the doors closed. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. We will be leaving shortly.”

Pascal hardly heard her. The sight through the large windows beside the train revealed a stark orange landscape. Beyond the rows of cargo containers, industrial cranes, and piles of materials stretched a horizon that seemed to rise into the distance. He tried to make sense of the sight. “Since Mars was smaller,” he said, “shouldn’t the horizon appear closer than it would on Earth?”

“You’re looking up the slope of the old man,” the woman said as she leaned over him. “That’s Olympus Mons, the biggest mountain in the solar system. It’s so huge that the top of it is actually below the apparent horizon, which is really the side of it. Blows your mind, doesn’t it?”

She was lingering close entirely too long for his comfort, her breast brushing his shoulder as she pointed. She rested one hand on his arm.

Louella snorted. “You’re wasting your time, honey. Pascal’s not the type you could get friendly with.”

The woman blushed as she stood back. “Sorry, I had no idea that you two were . . .”

“We’re not,” Louella replied abruptly, realizing that the woman had made a second wrong assumption. Three strikes and you’re out, she thought. “They didn’t brief you on who we were?”

The woman appeared flustered. “No, they just told me to accompany you to Jovus. I imagined that you were two of JBI’s scientists. I escort a lot of hem through here.”

“Scientists is not the word for us, honey. Jesus, don’t you see the news? We’re the team that sailed JBI’s boat on Jupiter.”

In reaction to the blank look on the woman’s face, Pascal spoke up. “We had a few problems and had to be rescued. It was all the news a few months ago.”

“We’re here to race some Martian sailors,” Louella replied. “We’re JBI’s sailing crew.”

“I don’t pay much attention to the sports news,” the woman sniffed, her voice dropping a few degrees. “Taking time to care for JBI’s important guests takes all of my time.”

“Strike three,” Louella exclaimed.

****

The train’s trip to the Bilbis was less than interesting. It wound between large dunes and the walls of chasms for hours at a time. They’d been told that the tug could pull the train at a steady forty-five kilometers per hour but with all that emptiness it felt as if they were hardly moving. When they started she’d glimpsed industrial structures, storage areas, and construction sites. Marsport was expanding across the landscape, and not in an attractive way. In less than an hour, however, all traces of mankind disappeared, save for the markers of the train’s course.

Phobos cast a faint glow that produced few shadows as it raced across the night sky and too quickly disappeared to the west, not to appear for another four hours. After that there was nothing interesting at all.

Louella tried to sleep. Thirty damn hours on a train—what a waste of time.

The tedium of the long trip was boring and after the limited conversation with their boring companion Pascal had fallen asleep. With nothing else to occupy it, her mind came back to her future.

What would she do if she did stop sailing? Would she hang out with a gaggle of old sailing buddies? Settle down and admire her mantel full of trophies? Both options seemed too damn settled for her liking.

Maybe she could run a sailing school? She wouldn’t need to struggle for money, not if she won this race, so she could do it for the love of sailing alone. Maybe it was high time she contributed more to life than this constant fight to finance her boat and crew and then to drive them across the line to win.

It was something she had to seriously think about.

Jovus Bubble turned out to be a dirty pink balloon sitting atop a crater. Inside was a jumble of structures—one could hardly call them buildings—of various sizes. The terminal was an open set of platforms on either side of the train’s berth.

Louella was surprised to see some familiar faces among the crowd on the platforms, especially Georges Franchard and Randy Holiday. She hadn’t seen them since before the big Jupiter race that Georges’ team had won. Both had fought hard against her in other races, as well as the Super, back on Earth

“Finally found you, did they?” Franchard laughed when he spotted them. “I thought as much when I saw your names on the entry list last week.”

“We didn’t know you would be here,” Louella shot back. “Wait! What did you say?” Last week would have been before she signed her contract. “Obviously refusing JBI wasn’t really one of my options,” she said ruefully. “But why are you here?”

Randy gave her a boyish grin. “We’ll sail anywhere if there’s enough money involved—First Mars offered to sponsor me when they heard JBI was going to enter.”

“I still think it’s a stupid idea,” Georges said. “I can’t see how anyone could be interested in a race where there’s hardly any wind at all. Might as well sail in a vacuum,” he sneered.

“But GeoGlobal’s offer changed your mind, didn’t it?” Randy injected. “Besides, look on the bright side—we get a free tour of Mars.”

“I’ll miss the Volvo next year because of this,” Georges complained.

“We’ve all been away too long to build a team for the Volvo,” Louella said. “The Jupiter race took us out of the running. Crap, who knows what new tech they’ve thrown on those boats by now. No, I think this Mars race is probably the last sponsored one we’ll be able to get. After this it’s all dinghy’s and day sailing for us old salts.”

Randy sighed wistfully. “I’ll miss those beauties.” Louella wondered if he was referring to his thirty-meter racing machines or his former string of adoring female fans.

Randy’s glum face brightened when the JBI woman returned. “We’re leaving for Pavonis as soon as they recharge the train,” she said. “Please return to the car.”

“These are our friends,” Louella said. “Why don’t they ride with us?”

“I’m afraid that would be against company policy.” The JBI woman sniffed. “Especially since these two are with JBI’s competitors.”

“Randy Holiday,” Randy said smoothly, sliding up to take her hand and looking intently into her eyes. “I hate the thought of us being in competition on anything.”

Louella could see the Randy magic working on the woman’s libido. Had to be his damn aura or something. That line wouldn’t work in a cheap bar on a slow night.

“I don’t imagine it would hurt,” the woman wavered. “That is, if Mr. Dumay has no objections. . . .”

“Oh, I might,” Pascal said with a smile, twisting the knife in Randy’s gut for a moment. “But not this time.”

The scenery between Jovus and Pavonis was little different from what they’d observed on their first leg; dry orange-tinted sand covered with rocks of all sizes. In the flats each pebble seemed to have a drift of fine sand behind it, shaped by the wind into elongated teardrop forms.

“Well, that proves that there is some wind,” Pascal remarked when Louella pointed them out. “If it can move sand it could fill a sail.”

“Yeah, but enough to push a . . . buggy?” George stumbled over the word. “You’d have to have a pretty big sail for even a small amount of weight. I’d think the force to weight ratio would be too low to do anything meaningful.”

“But still, they move,” Louella replied, thinking about the video of those fast contraptions. “You can argue theory all you want, but the fact remains that these Martians are managing to sail, despite your commonsense arguments.”

Pascal laughed. “Can’t argue with facts Georges, so sit back and enjoy the scenery.”

Here and there they could see traces of human activity scattered across the landscape: a pit where someone had prospected, tracks in the ever-present dust leading off into the distance, and the occasional discarded piece of trash—it seemed that even into this remote desert humanity had brought its worse habits. What was not seen were any sign of human habitation or, for that matter, a structure of any size.

As the top of the Jovus Bubble faded from view behind them the horizon began to appear normal, that is, if you ignored the fact that it was much closer than that they’d seen from the decks of their boats on the open ocean—about twenty miles away instead of the thirty-some they were used to. For moments at a time it appeared that Mars was rolling beneath the stationary train.

While Georges, Pascal, and Louella found the sights fascinating, Randy pursued other interests.

Their guide giggled as he whispered in her ear.

****

Sands saw the black woman wrinkle her nose in disgust as she and a slender man stepped into the common room. He waited as they glanced around, obviously looking for him. He did nothing as they figured out whom to approach.

“You Halsey?” Louella asked as she came near.

“Call me Sands,” he replied. “Have a sit.”

“We’re the . . .” Louella began.

“No need to say. Obvious you’re newcomers from the funny way you walk and talk. I guess you’re the so-called expert sailors who are going to show us dumb Martians how to race.”

“We were told you could give us a few lessons,” Pascal said before Louella could explode over the obvious slight. “We’ve never done any land sailing before, much less here on Mars.”

“Not many Earth-bound have,” Sands said. “Now, all of a sudden, three big companies are throwing all kinds of money at it. Why is that?”

“JBI wants publicity,” Pascal offered. “I guess the rest jumped in for the same reason.”

Louella interrupted. “Which has nothing to do with what we need at the moment. We’ve got a month to practice before the race. We need to know everything there is to know about racing on this desert,” she waved a hand toward the outer shell.

“Yes,” Pascal said. “For one thing, how in God’s name can there be enough wind to move a boat in this thin atmosphere?”

“Buggies,” Sands sneered. “They’re called buggies.” He sipped his drink and made a face. “Marquilla,” he explained, raising his drink. “It’s an iced local brew with something the chemists swear tastes like lime. Personally, I think the stuff tastes like alcoholic rat piss. Want to order one?”

Pascal hesitated but Louella spoke up. “Damn right, I need a strong drink to wash the taste of this place out of my mouth.”

Sands signaled for two more. “That’s the dust. You get used to the taste of it after a while. After fifteen years I hardly smell it any more.”

Louella screwed up her face after one sip of her drink. “Christ, this tastes terrible.”

“You should taste it without the lime,” Sands suggested. “It’s worse.”

“You still haven’t answered the question about how you manage to get the boats . . . er, buggies to such high rates of speed,” Louella asked. “With a surface pressure under ten millibars how can Mars have any kind of wind force at all?”

Sands took another sip of his Marsquilla. “I hate this stuff but can’t afford Earth Scotch, even with what JBI is paying me to help you.”

“So why do you drink it?” Pascal asked.

“Takes the edge off,” Sands explained and slapped his leg. “Cheaper than aspirin.”

Before either of them could ask what he meant he started to explain the winds of Mars. “You’re right about the atmosphere’s density being a lot less than anything you’d find on Earth, or Jupiter for that matter. Mars is close to a vacuum by those standards.

“But there is an atmosphere and the air does move. A physicist told me that the force was about 1/100 of a wind on Earth traveling at the same velocity.”

Louella screwed up her face. “But doesn’t that mean the Mars winds have to be traveling a hundred times faster? I haven’t heard any evidence of hurricane force winds anywhere on the planet and it would take that to move something the size of your buggies.”

Sands smiled. “Good logic, but wrong. Look, the amount of air pushing a sail depends on both the mass of the air and its velocity. What moves the buggy is the kinetic energy of the wind.”

Pascal leaned forward and interrupted with rising excitement in his voice. “The kinetic energy is density or mass times velocity squared!”

“Right you are!” Sands grinned. “So if you do the math you see that our wind only has to move ten times as fast as an Earth wind to get the same effect.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Louella threw back the rest of her drink, coughed, and said, “How about another round. I think I might get used to this.”

“You stopped competing a couple of years ago,” Louella said after they finished another few rounds and were on more friendly terms. “Why did you do that? JBI said you were once the best land sailor on Mars.” Maybe his answer would help her understand her own future.

“Got stepped on by a dinosaur,” Sands replied and slapped his leg when he saw their puzzled expressions. “My transport’s cargo pod flipped and crushed my legs. Since then I’ve been making do with these sticks. They’re great for walking, but I no longer have the kins for sailing.”

“Kins is something you’ll have to explain.”

Sands shrugged. “Kins means Kinesthetic, if you prefer to use big words. You have to use your whole body to sail a buggy. You have to feel the tension of the sail on the frame through your legs and the resistance of the wheels with the yoke. You’ll have to understand the vibration from rolling across the surface with your ass and learn to use your whole body instead of depending on the senses you’ve probably been using.”

“So I have to wiggle around like this to sail?” Louella said and shook her butt.

Pascal snorted. Throw a decent looking guy at Louella after a few drinks and she started making moves. Just for once he wished she could shut down her libido.

And maybe give him a chance at the guy. He thought Sands was awfully cute.

“So you stopped racing?” he asked to get the conversation back on track, “when you lost your kins?”

“I still sail.” Sands tossed back the last of his drink. “So ‘won’t race’ is a better way of saying it. No sense racing a buggy if you can’t compete. Crap, I can barely keep up with the kids, let alone another racer.

“So I teach a little, drink a lot for the constant pain, and . . . try to think of reasons not to take a walk out on the plains without a suit.” There for a second it sounded as if he started to state some other factor but stopped himself.

“So why help us?” Louella asked. “Sounds as if there’s more to your reasons than the money.” She reached out and put her hand on his arm.

Sands shook off the gesture. “Reasons? Look, this is probably going to be the biggest damn sailing race Mars has ever seen and I want to be part of it. The best sailors, guys I used to beat regularly, are going to be in this race.

“You want to know why I’m helping you? It means that maybe, with your experience and my training, you could have an edge. I want to win, even if I have to do it vicariously. Does that answer your question?”

Pascal grinned. “Bien. So how do you think we can beat more experienced racers? I assume it won’t be easy while we’re wearing suits weighed down with air bottles and water jugs.”

“Every sailor will have the same handicap,” Sands explained. “The buggies will all have the same frame construction and rigging so it’ll be what you would call a one-design race.

“Look, I’ll work with you on how to run a buggy, show you a few tricks with balancing the sail, and fill you in on the tactics these guys might use against you. That might help you keep up, but barely. It’s going to take all of your experience with wind and sail to do better than that. Look, JBI’s betting that your blue water experience and the skills you learned sailing on Jupiter will make handling our little buggies easy.”

Pascal was certain he knew the answer to that challenge. He had no doubt as to who would adapt better to this environment. He sailed scientifically, calculating the best heading based on readings of barometer, wind gauge, and tell-tales. Louella, on the other hand, sailed instinctively, feeding off her senses to trim the sails and set the rudder. She’d clearly be at a disadvantage in this race.

“When’s our first practice?” he asked, anxious to prove his point.

****

Pascal’s first impression of the buggy was that there was hardly enough of the thin metal frame to support the amount of sail he was told it would carry.

The buggy’s eight-meter frame was a triangle of tubing, attached at each corner with flexible joints. The three sides were connected with half a dozen cross braces. A single mesh wheel supported the front of the buggy while two more, larger wheels, splayed from the rear corners and raised the rear a good meter higher than the front end.

In the center of the outer frame was the mast step. Rising from this was a fifteen-meter mast that tapered from base to tip. The mast supported a long spar at the top and a boom that extended at least five meters beyond the rear of the buggy, its weight balanced by a counterweight forward of the mast. Wrapped along the length of the boom was a bundle of plastic sheeting. “That’s the sail,” Sands said when he noticed where Pascal was looking.

“What keeps the whole thing from falling over?” Pascal wondered aloud as he gazed upwards.

“Despite their appearance, the spar, boom, and sail together weigh less than a hundred kilograms,” Sands replied. “The counterweight balances that weight so it has nearly no effect on the buggy.”

A saddle was mounted on a rail about midway between the mast and the buggy’s rear end. Directly in front of the saddle was the steering yoke. The frame’s rails supported a confusing array of lines and pulleys. He tried to relate these to the rigging of the sailboats he was familiar with.

In his mind’s eye Pascal could see how four of the lines running through the pulleys could be used to control the sail, but was puzzled by the others. “Why those extra pulleys,” he asked, pointing at the lines to either side of the saddle.

“They’ll control your position,” Sands answered. “You adjust the lines to shift your weight from side to side. You’ll need to shift to keep the buggy level. That counterweight won’t provide all the balance you need when the sail is full and the boom swings wide.”

Now that he mentioned it, Pascal noticed that the saddle slid side-to-side on short rails and was pivoted to allow the rider to lean to either side. Sailing this rig was going to prove interesting and exhausting if it required as much body movement as Sands suggested.

Pascal lowered himself into the saddle. “Too much room for my butt,” he smiled, wiggling around.

“Not when you’ve got your suit on,” Sands replied. “Besides, you’ll be strapped on the saddle to keep you from slipping off. Could break a leg or tear your suit.”

Pascal shuddered; a torn suit or cracked helmet would be deadly on this hostile planet. “That ever happen to you?” he asked, glancing at Sands’ artificial legs.

Sands shrugged. “Sort of; the safety strap broke when my tug flipped over.”

“That what you meant when you said you’d been stepped on by a dinosaur? Was that what you called the cargo pod?”

“No,” Sands said. “The tug went off the trail and hit a rock. That’s what tipped the tug, the rock.” He paused. “Funny thing was that the rock turned out to be a meteoroid from ancient Earth. That’s why I said a damned dinosaur did this to me.”

Throughout the conversation Louella had been walking around the frame, stooping to examine this feature or that.

He was used to the way men checked out Louella on the sly, not realizing that she went out of her way to parade her assets when she found a man interesting, which she was obviously doing in this case, and rather more than usual.

Pascal noted that not once had Sands so much as glanced at her. At the same time, he realized that Sands hadn’t paid that much attention to his own less obvious signals either. Something was definitely wrong.

****

Louella’s first attempt to sail Sands’ buggy was a disaster. The supine position that put her ass a few centimeters above the surface was unfamiliar, as was the awkward steering yoke, so different from a sailboat’s wheel. Her first glance at the huge sail looming over her head made her fearful that any shift would overbalance the buggy.

“The sail’s weight is negligible,” Sands insisted when she mentioned this. “You could easily hold every square meter of that fabric in one hand without straining, it weighs so little. Don’t worry, the counterweight will keep you somewhat level when she’s full of wind.”

The “somewhat” worried her.

Despite Sands insistence that there was a nice breeze she could see no evidence save the fluttering of the sail as she unfurled it from the boom that appeared too slender and flexible for so much material. Despite its appearance the entire assembly only massed a hundred kilograms, and weighed less in Mars’ weak gravity.

“Take the buggy straight out and turn downwind,” Sands suggested. “Don’t turn or pull the sail in until you get a feel for it or you’ll tip over.”

Louella doubted there was enough wind for to happen. She could barely feel the tension of the sail as she rolled across the hard-packed surface of Arsia Sulci. The buggy picked up speed but was still moving at what seemed a snail’s pace.

She played with the yoke that controlled the front wheel of the buggy. The buggy was quite responsive to her slightest movement, a quite different feel than what she got from moving a sailboat’s rudder. When she had gained more confidence in the degree of movement, she turned the yoke enough to bring the buggy closer to the wind and pulled the sail tighter. The buggy immediately picked up a surprising amount of speed for such a small adjustment.

Suddenly, before she could react, the buggy heeled to one side. She threw her weight to oppose the buggy’s tilt, attempting to twist so her feet could press against the downwind rail. She fumbled to release the sail, only to see its tip touch the sand momentarily before the entire buggy slewed into the wind and slowed. The sail fluttered uselessly above her. She was of all things, in irons—a tyro’s mistake.

“Weight and balance,” Sands shouted over the radio. “You have to shift your whole body before you adjust the sail angle.”

“I got that much,” Louella replied curtly. Damn, she felt like some novice on her first day of sailing. The reaction of the buggy to her moves was so different from what she thought she knew.

Or was it? The effect of wind angle on the sail and the propulsive force it exerted on the buggy was no different than the forces acting on a real sailboat. Sure, the buggy balanced differently than a sailboat, but that was something she was certain she could get used to. She had only to learn where the border of safety was: that thin line that separated disaster from success, the point where you skirted the edge to gain as much speed as possible to win.

As Sands had said, she had to find those edges if she expected to win.

****

Pascal’s experience was much the same. He had been watching Louella’s awkward movements and the resulting actions of the boat. Must remember to call them buggies, he chided himself. The trick seemed to be shifting your weight gradually and averting sudden movements. The frame was so light in comparison to the sail area that the slightest change in weight distribution altered the balance.

An hour later he realized how difficult that philosophy became when encumbered by suit, heavy air tanks, and assorted gear that kept his frail body safe from the Martian harshness. “Hard to move,” he grunted to Sands over the radio.

“Try to rotate your body around your belly,” Sands instructed him. “And try to keep your legs straight down the center line.”

That instruction puzzled Pascal until he realized that rolling onto one buttock while keeping his body stiff controlled the buggy quite easily. Better still, it was easy to make small corrections by doing this. “Thanks,” he radioed.

The play of wind on the sail was about the same as any breeze on Earth, or Jupiter, he recalled ruefully. On a normal sailboat the sail propelled a boat both through the action of the wind as it passed across the sail’s surface and the pressure exerted by the wind on the face of the sail.

He played with different sail settings as he raced back and forth across the surface. As he was trying to find the stall angle where the wind pressure was equal on both sides of the sail he noticed something strange.

At an angle that should have been so close as to decrease his speed the buggy suddenly sped up. Thinking it was a sudden gust he waited for it to die. When it didn’t he tried to figure out why. There certainly had to be a good physical reason for this amazingly different behavior.

In his experience, as a boat turns into the wind the angle of attack lessens but the apparent wind speed—the difference between the actual wind speed and that experienced by the sail—actually increases. Turn too much into the wind with an extremely low angle of attack, as he had been trying to do, and the increased drag and diminished degree of efficiency of the sail should cause a loss of accelerating force and bring the boat to a dead stop.

But with these buggies that did not happen until the sail was directly into the wind. Somehow, perhaps due to the light weight of the contraption or the lack of friction on the surface, the buggy actually took advantage of the apparent wind and increased its efficiency. Amazing!

He performed a few more runs to test his theory and perfecting the angle that gave him the greatest speed.

The third day of practice was better. Louella’d quickly become familiar with the differences between the feel of a boat slapping the water and the buggy’s wheels rolling across the hard-packed sand. Turning across the breeze was difficult, but turning to the wind was easier than she expected.

She was feeling quite confident when Pascal blew by her as if she were standing still.

“How the hell are you doing that?” she screamed over the suit-to-suit link. She was pulling as close to the wind as she should but getting nowhere near the speed he exhibited. He certainly hadn’t had more practice so where had he picked that technique?

“Pure physics,” he replied cryptically when she asked. “Stifle that damned intuition of yours and think about the force vectors you are dealing with.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Louella replied with heat. “There’s just the damn wind, sails, and buggy. It’s no different than a sailboat.”

She thought hard as she watched him move into the wind. His sail wasn’t luffing when, at that angle of attack he should be at a dead stop. What kept him from losing speed? Curious, she pulled her own sail tight, cutting the wind at an angle she was sure would make her lose driving the bubble of near vacuum these Martians called a wind.

Almost immediately the buggy accelerated. Instead of a flapping sail this close to the wind it was as if she’d been hit with a gust. That had to be it; the apparent wind was actually boosting the sail’s efficiency. She could sail closer to the wind than she ever had on Earth!

After a few more experiments she realized that the relatively low weight of the buggy in relation to the huge sail surface plus the trivial amount of drag from the wheels made the buggies act so differently.

A few turns later and she was not only keeping up with Pascal’s buggy, but was beating him on the turns. He was obviously unwilling to tilt too sharply for fear of a spill. Now it was his instincts that were the problem.

“You’re strapped in, for God’s sake!” she radioed. “You can’t fall out even if you flip the buggy. Besides, the mast will keep the buggy from going completely turtle.”

“I know that,” he replied. “But knowledge does not overcome one’s inclination.”

“Well, you’d better learn to ignore that if you want to win this race.”

“You’re both being too cautious,” Sands told them over drinks after their practice. “These buggies are a lot tougher than you might think. Despite what your eyes tell you, all that sail up there and the mast hardly weigh a thing in comparison to you and the frame. The center of gravity is just about even with your helmet. That means you could tilt the whole thing about sixty degrees before you overbalanced. In a strong wind you could probably get up to seventy-five degrees.”

“No way,” Louella exclaimed. The idea of sailing with her body nearly parallel to the ground was scary enough. It had to be downright frightening for Pascal. It would be even worse when he had to lean away from the direction of turn.

On the other hand, she thought, maybe a stronger breeze would make it easier to perform an inside turn if she had the wind pushing on the sail to help counterbalance. Maybe she could push those angles further, maybe up to eighty-five degrees?

It was worth trying.

****

As the weeks sped by there were both exhausted from Sands’s strenuous training schedule. There was scarcely enough time in the evening to grab something to eat before turning in.

“It’s the oxygen,” Sands told them. “You’re breathing a richer mixture in your suits. That dries you out and burns energy.”

“So why do that?” Pascal asked. “Why not breathe the same air as we do here in the bubble?”

“Economics,” Sands replied. “Oxygen is waste product of some of our industrial practices. Costs more to add the nitrogen, helium, and other crap we normally breathe.”

“Well, I’ve been breathing too damn much,” Louella chimed in. “I need a break. We both need a break.”

“I think you both deserve some time off. Tell you what, make a night of it and we won’t start practice until after noon tomorrow.”

“Gee, thanks coach,” Louella mumbled.