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was only sand a decade ago.
    Who knows where it will end? I myself favor the theory that in a hundred years the equator will be a wasteland, never dropping below a hundred degrees at night, and most humans will live north and south of the tropics, including Antarctica.
    Or on other planets. Why not? We’re doing fine on Mars, with much harsher conditions. More people are moving to the moon. Then there are the asteroids. Even if we totally wear out the Earth—and nobody really thinks that will happen, life of some sort will adjust, just as it did after the dinosaurs died—something will survive. Maybe it will only be cockroaches, but something will survive.
    Always look on the bright side, that’s my philosophy. Though it’s a little depressing to think of cockroaches as the bright side.
    EARTH PORT THREE WAS a standard orbital environment, pretty much like the other three circling endlessly about ten thousand miles over the equator. Picture a can of creamed corn. Peel off the label and paint it Navy red. Now blow it up so the diameter at each end of the cylinder is about a thousand yards. Set it spinning at a rate that will produce .38 gees inside. Now extend pipes out each end along the spin axis and stud it with docking collars, and you have a stable long-term space environment. Navy regs don’t allow personnel to stay in zero gravity for more than three months at a time, which would mean a lot of hassle moving people back and forth from Mars for R&M leaves, so we have to have access to spin gravity.
    I could have let the autopilot dock us, but I wanted to test my rusty piloting skills, so I kept my hand on the stick as I eased her in. Just like riding a bicycle, they say, and they were right. It was as easy as if I’d done it only yesterday. I got a satisfying clank, flipped a few switches, and looked at a row of green lights.
    “This is your captain speaking,” I said, with no little satisfaction. “We have docked with Earthport Three … six minutes ahead of schedule. You may now unfasten your seat belts and exit the vehicle through the lock on the control deck. Please check around your seat for any items you may have forgotten you brought aboard. Thank you for choosing the Martian Navy for this flight. Please contact us again for all your Earth-to-orbit transportation needs.”
    I was bundling my hair into a manageable mass and wrapping an elastic band around it when my passengers came floating up through the deck and toward the airlock in the docking collar. One guy was looking a little green. An ensign looked at me and smiled, gave me the thumbs-up, but the commander didn’t seem so happy, probably pissed off by my docking announcement. Probably a lifer asshole. Screw him. I didn’t ask to be in this woman’s Navy; I was drafted, like most everybody else. Gold braid didn’t intimidate me, unless it was being worn by somebody in the chain of command over me.

4

    SO WE’VE SPENT a little time together now. You’ve been with me from Pismo Beach to Earth orbit. I wouldn’t say we’re actually dating, but I think you know me well enough now that it’s time to meet my family.
    Let’s don’t do it at Deimos Base, though that’s where a lot of them met me. You know how chaotic those scenes are, and I just hate them, don’t you?
    (FYI, the trip home was a total bust in terms of male companionship. The crew was too busy or paired up, at least for the duration, and as for the passengers, I never saw such a collection of total losers. It’s what comes of universal conscription, we girls agreed. They have to take everybody.)
    Let’s move right on to the Utopia Planitia Time Suspension Facility.
    UTOPIA IS JUST a big depression in the northern hemisphere where there’s nothing really going on, like so much of Mars, only worse. There’s not even a lot of craters there, just a big flat plain with a rail line running straight through it. There’s a landing field that is used mostly by ambulances. Looking at