Chapter 4: Moving Day

Bradbury Canal, October 11, 2131
Moving Day

The next two days were spent with Alan and Christa, weeping and packing. They would spend the night cuddled together for comfort, and in the corner sat the box full of the items from Laurel and Harrison’s office. After sitting next to the recording device for the required 24 hours, the paperweights began dumping the data they collected over the years to Ray’s recording device.

Finally, it was time to go. The train station was re-opened and the kids sadly gathered their suitcases and Ray put on his pressure suit and they headed toward the station. Their walk would take them past the auditorium where their parents died, but that route was closed and they ended up walking through a seedier section of Bradbury’s Canal than they would normally take.

“You! Clark!” came a booming voice from behind them. Ray recognized the voice. It was the Man Mountain from Marconi-Edison Bio-Electronics. “You owe me a job!” then a half drunken snarl he said, “I’m going to take it out of your hide.”

“Here, hold this,” he said, and he handed his helmet to Alan. “Don’t watch,” he warned with a wink.

In a move that was too fast to understand, the hulking beast ended up face down on the floor, his arm trapped between his shoulder blades in a thumb lock and Ray’s knee pinning his head to the floor. “You know where to find me,” snarled Ray. “Now get out of here.” He got up and let the gigantic man go.

“Who was that Uncle Ray?” asked Christa.

“A sparring partner,” said Ray.

They finally got on the train, and the two young teens, despite their horrible loss, were fascinated with the terrain sliding past the windows. Mars isn’t red, it’s brown. Endless brown. The kids have never been out of Bradbury Canal and it was all amazing, at least to Christa. “How long is our trip, Uncle Ray?” asked Christa.

“About four hours.”

“At this speed? Wow!”

Alan was oddly quiet. He didn’t speak the entire trip and when Ray got close to him; he turned toward the window. “See that ridge over there? That’s the lip of the Jezero Crater. What do you say we go fishing over there?”

“Fishing? That’s silly Uncle Ray,” said Christa. “There’s no fish on Mars.”

“Then, let’s terraform Mars so we can grow fish here.”

“There’s not enough gravity to hold a proper atmosphere,” said Alan and he turned his back on Ray.

“What’s with Alan?”

“I don’t know, he’s been weird for the past two days.”

Ray frowned. Of course he’s acting weird, he’s suddenly an orphan. He thought of something Alan might like to see... “We’ll be getting to Perseverance about the same time the daily freighter lifts off from Zhang field,” said Ray, trying to work up some enthusiasm in Alan.

“Zhang, that’s a funny name,” said Christa.

“It was named for the first man to land on Mars, Zhang Li Wei,” said Ray.

“He was the first man to die on Mars,” muttered Alan.