Flirt With Danger

 Is there (much) life on Mars?

Let me introduce myself, my name at birth was Peter Higginbotham. When I was 21, I changed it to Frank Flick. I changed it with business failures, in turn, Robin Miller, Roger Cook, Hubert Friar, and at last, Harry Bailey. I got them mostly from Canterbury Tales.

We'd been persuaded by Adolph Konig to go, the temptation to sell a pitch was inevitable. Konig bent the knee to Americanisation by dropping the umlaut. After the big meeting the pitch sell wasn't mentioned, we just went along for the ride to get American venture capital, we had no chance. So the youngest and fittest of us was selected, 1000 in all. There was a “reality” TV show to accompany it, you had to compete your fitness to be selected, the TV show put up a billion pounds to buy into it. 1000 giggly blondes were selected from it – it was fixed. Adolph Konig wasn't going, instead he'd have the important task of overseeing the mission.

Adolph Konig's father was a Nazi and he got brought to the USA as part of Operation Paperclip.

He'd be contributing 10 billion dollars to it, as well as all the development costs. He was lucky he had an AI, naturally based in Silicon Valley, firm to be able to contribute. He was born rich, aided with the American president's tax cuts – with a little dollop of financial engineering by accountants smart as machetes.

I didn't fancy being imprisoned for the rest of my life, but my extreme competitiveness led me to applying.

The metal alloy was SnOW – tin, osmium and tungsten. Tin was added to the mix to make it an alloy. Osmium and tungsten just made separate crystals. Our ship was made of it.

Dr Sorensen took care of the health needs, he'd been a successful plastic surgeon in Hollywood, many of aging film stars were 'cured' by him. For successful, read rich.

We were flying to Mars in effect a tin can, breathing recycled farts (courtesy Thomas Harris). A life imprisonment sentence albeit in luxury. We'd be waited on by robots – they were about 4 feet tall and cylindrical; housemaid robots were painted pink, the medical robots were colour-coded pale green, the security robots were red-orange and had a nerve weapon, at the lowest level merely stinging, and the medium level stun and the highest level lethal, the flight crew were colour-coded as light blue-grey in an approximation of the RAF uniform.

We'd have to go for seven months of sheer boredom to get to Mars. The lift-off was terrifying and exciting when you realise you sat upon two hundred feet of explosives. After that, there was a spacewalk to get to the spaceship that was to take us to Mars. I didn't fancy a spacewalk, and it left me dizzy and threatening to puke up.

Zero-gravity is entertaining at first, but then we mostly male entrepreneurs hit on the giggly 1000 blondes who'd won the TV show. It was entertaining for a couple of months, screwing the blondes, but it started to get a drag when we'd screwed a couple of blondes. they didn't go home from it and show they'd snagged a rich, fit, young cosmonaut.

After a couple of months, we started separating into our own living quarters. Mental health became a major concern: we kept to our own quarters, becoming isolated.

The earth was no prize anyway, it'd become a burning, pollution-baked and war-torn hell. The average temperature, even in Lincoln, was 38C. The capital had moved from London, which was underwater, and anyway, the right-wing separatists had insisted on Lincoln. The politics were toxic but if that what was needed to generate a honest profit.

The 'tin can' was spinning slowly, in order to generate centrifugal force to imitate gravity. It spun at a rate of 1.5 revolutions every second, and it was 5,000 feet wide. Unnecessarily, the centre compartments were taken up by storage space, in fact there was the future generation of embryos in there. I didn't fancy the fact of growing old amidst a bunch of teenagers, not to mention being surrounded by babies, having to wash nappies. I had no fatherly instincts at all.

We'd had a questionnaire to sign up for this mission, mainly on racial ancestry. The main concern that were white, we'd had to show recently-taken photos and we had no Jewish ancestry. I didn't know my great-grandparents so I made some names up, just so long as they weren't accused of being Jewish.

I'd made up my name, abandoning three pseudonyms after companies went bust.

On the way to Mars, Barry Rowe died of a heart attack, he was perfectly healthy before. It limited the genetic diversity of any colony. Dr Sorensen autopsied him, he died of a hole in the heart. The autopsy room was on the rim of the spaceship. In a religious service for him, there was no eulogy and the service was remarkably spartan. he was expelled into space.

I visited Chloe Parker and she made the announcement, “Dahlink, I'm pregnant”. Meanwhile, she wan't blonde at all, 'collars and cuffs'.

She expected me to be delighted, and I was probably the opposite, I couldn't stand the fake German accent, she thought she was trying to be like her heroine, Nico. She was an amateur harmonium player, as well.

“Dr. Sorenson has got some pills that can deal with that”, Dr. Sorenson was based in Los Angeles where he'd made a success of his plastic surgery business. For “success” read “accumulated wealth”. He was originally from Sweden, where he qualified, and eager for success, immigrated to the USA. Abortion pills were banned in the USA, but he had managed to smuggle them on board.

Also, I smuggled on board a pistol that I had printed using a 3D printer. It was made of plastic and didn't show on the metal detection scanners. I had to sneak a bunch of bullets, held by the Adolph Konig-impositioned, Keith Foster, as captain. Naturally, Americans couldn't go anywhere without firearms.

A fusion plant was sent to Mars, even though it didn't work. The fusion plant was supposed to drive environment processing, which didn't work as well. A fission plant and solar panels created our electricity, the waste was freely available because Mars had loads of spare land and more radiation didn't count as Mars had plenty of radiation scattered all over its' surface.

Also, on the same trip I visited Anastasia to have sex with her, she was a great great-great-daughter of the original Anastasia Romanov, or she claimed to be.

Chloe Parker had got an illegal pill off Dr Sorenson, and she had the abortion in a zero-gravity toilet, very messy I'm sure, I wasn't there, avoiding it at all costs.

Keith Foster had been named as captain, a personal friend of Adolf Konig. He was supported by the flight crew, and the security robots, he'd got several to flank him. Foster was tall, and slightly stooped, his complexion was a little grey and his hair a bit long and thinning. He had teeth virtally rotting, unusual for an American.

After procrastinating, I challenged Foster for the captaincy, I would be made into the monarch eventually, captaincy was the first stage. Monarch of the Mars colony was a gambit I eagerly anticipated. I attacked Foster, putting my plastic gun against his neck, forcing him to his knees. The robot entourage froze, unable to handle this challenge for the captaincy. I forced him into a foetus position by threatening to execute him. While I was doing it, I became aware that my trigger finger was perspiring and trembling. Indeed, I have never killed a person before.

.”Will you surrender the captaincy? Otherwise you leave me no choice but to kill you. Execute rather than kill, this is a legal position.”

I squeezed the trigger and the gun exploded. Dr Sorensen looped his belt over my wrist, to prevent my bleeding to death, he was slim enough to not need a belt. And then, one of the security robots fired a stun shot, finally awakening. They had been conferring with the artificial intelligence guiding the ship.

I woke up in a bed in the sick bay. Dr Sorensen said,

“While you were out, I amputated the fragments of your right hand. Your right wrist forms a stump, very neatly. Your gun exploded, hitting you in the forehead. The scar will fade after a few years. Also, Captain Foster has a nasty wound in his head. He was not badly affected. He urinated in his trousers, the robot entourage took care of that. You will be nauseous for a few days as one of the security robots fired a stun shot at you.”

I had no ill-mention towards Captain Foster, I never had had. He was only in my way to be monarch. Meanwhile, Konig had formed a grudge against me.

The entry to Mars was a bit of a nightmare. The first sign we had was when the parachutes opened by jolting surprisingly. The descent was rapid and the retro-engines fired to brake our descent.

Life on Mars had it's disadvantages, at least the gravity was low enough, we had fun by bouncing around, but when that wore off we couldn't stand the lack of gravity weaken our bones and muscles.

The Firmament, made out of clear plastic, (Pretend Christians had had their joke) and there was a micro-meteorite storm due but the shield wouldn't go over it, it was broken. An engineer, Peter Shaw, had to go out in it. He would be wearing an armoured pressure suit. The armoured pressure suit was made of the alloy, SnOW, and there would be kevlar patches on it in the most upper-most places. The kevlar-SnOW alloy was impossible, so it had to be put on by nylon tapes, secured by eyes in the fabric of the SnOW pressure suit. The viewport was made of heavily strengthened glass and was of a minimum suit. Peter Shaw went out in the night and he didn't return. At least an engineering (the engineers was the flight crew repurposed, as they wouldn't be needed henceforth) crew of robots was sent out to drag his corpse back. They brought his corpse back and Simon Shaw burst into tears: he'd been having a secret homosexual affair with Shaw, secret because Konig disapproved of homosexuality, he had to pretend he was Christian.

It was rumoured that Konig had gone bust. Or he wasn't interested in Project Mars any more.

Some fell ill with fever. On the first month, there were 5. By the end of the second month, there were 19. Dr Sorensen treated them with broad-spectrum antibiotics, and the pale green robots did likewise, the antibiotics had no effect. Eventually Sorensen had a blood analysis did on them, the pathogen proved to be alien, Martian form of life or the old bugbear, mental health.

ABeing imprisoned in the tin can as to being imprisoned under the Firmament was little better.

t the end of the first year, were running out of antibiotics, general supplies, and air. There were rumours there was a supply ship, unknown as to the supply ship's entry to Mars, there were rumours about it being by parachute and retro-engines being to brake it's descent.

I had a taste for running in the long grass, meantime there was no grass on Mars, there was only ankle-high dust. I left the airlocks of the 'firmament' open. Everyone could suffocate, it was better by dying a slow death because the supply ship wasn't coming, or even, had lifted off. I had had my ambitions killed, anyway, by not becoming monarch.