Martian Time Slip

But the catch in the ad was simply that, once on Mars, the emigrant was guaranteed nothing, not even the certainty of being able to give up and go home; trips back were much more expensive, due to the inadequate field facilities. Certainly, he was guaranteed nothing in the way of employment. The fault lay with the big powers back Home, China and the U.S. and Russia and West Germany. Instead of properly backing the development of the planets, they had turned their attention to further exploration. Their time and brains and money were all committed to the sidereal projects, such as that frigging flight to Centaurus, which had already wasted billions of dollars and man-hours. Arnie Kott could not see the sidereal projects for beans. Who wanted to take a fouryear trip to another solar system which maybe wasn't even there?

And yet at the same time Arnie feared a change in the attitude of the great terrestrial powers. Suppose one morning they woke up and took a new look at the colonies on Mars and Venus? Suppose they eyed the ramshackle developments there and decided something should be done about them? In other words, what became of Arnie Kott when the Great Powers came to their senses? It was a thought to ponder.

However, the Great Powers showed no symptoms of rationality. Their obsessive competitiveness still governed them; right this moment they were locking horns, two light years away, to Arnie's relief.

Reading further in the paper, he came across a brief article having to do with a women's organization in Berne, Switzerland, which had met to declare once more its anxiety about colonization.

COLONIAL SAFETY COMMITTEE ALARMED OVER CONDITIONS

OF MARS LANDING FIELDS

The ladies, in a petition presented to the Colonial Department of the UN, had expressed once more their conviction that the fields on Mars at which ships from Earth landed were too remote from habitation and from the water system. Passengers in some cases had been required to trek over a hundred miles of wasteland, and these included women and children and old people. The Colonial Safety Committee wanted the UN to pass a regulation compelling ships to land at fields within twenty-five miles of a major (named) canal.

Do-gooders, Arnie Kott thought as he read the article. Probably not one of them has ever been off Earth; they just know what somebody wrote home in a letter, some aunt retiring to Mars on a pension, living on free UN land and naturally griping. And of course they also depended on their member in residence on Mars, a certain Mrs. Anne Esterhazy; she circulated a mimeographed newsletter to other public-spirited ladies throughout the settlements. Arnie received and read her newsletter, _The Auditor Speaks Back_, a title at which he gagged. He gagged, too, at the one- and two-line squibs inserted between longer articles:

Pray for potable purification!! Contact colony charismatic

councilors and witness for water filtration we can be proud

of!

He could hardly make out the meaning of some of the _Auditor Speaks Back_ articles, they were phrased in such special jargon. But evidently the newsletter had attracted an audience of devoted women who grimly took each item to heart and acted out the deeds asked of them. Right now they were undoubtedly complaining, along with the Colonial Safety Committee back on Earth, about the hazardous distances separating most of the landing fields on Mars from water sources and human habitation. They were doing their part in one of the many great fights, and in this particular case, Arnie Kott had managed to gain control of his nausea. For of the twenty or so landing fields on Mars, only one lay within twenty-five miles of a major canal, and that was Samuel Gompers Field, which served his own settlement. If by some chance the pressure of the Colonial Safety Committee was effective, then all incoming passenger ships from Earth would have to land at Arnie Kott's field, with the revenue received going to his settlement.

It was far from accidental that Mrs. Esterhazy and her newsletter and organization on Earth were advocating a cause which would be of economic value to Arnie. Anne Esterhazy was Arnie's ex-wife. They were still good friends, and still owned jointly a number of economic ventures which they had founded or bought into during their marriage. On a number of levels they still worked together, even though on a strictly personal basis they had no common ground whatsoever. He found her aggressive, domineering, overly masculine, a tall and bony female with a long stride, wearing low-heeled shoes and a tweed coat and dark glasses, a huge leather purse slung from a strap over her shoulder... but she was shrewd and intelligent and a natural executive. As long as he did not have to see her outside of the business context, he could get along with her.