Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven Page A

they’d have fallen. If they’d fallen, we’d have found them. This tree is sterile, and aside from all that, I, Hanville Svetz, am not a cosmonaut!”
    There was a brief pause … and Miya was watching him.
    Willy Gorky said, “Twenty years ago I’d have killed you to steal your seat on that ship.”
    Ra Chen’s voice: “Never mind, Svetz. Drop it, Willy. We’ll send Miya and Zeera. You come home in the small X-cage.”
    Miya’s eyes closed. Svetz curled up next to her and let it all drift away.

13
    He woke to Miya’s voice.
    He was looking at a bullet-shaped spacecraft backlit against dark Earth and marked with riding lights. He knew what to look for: a faint halo around the ship, fading into nothing at one rim, was the shell of the large X-cage.
    â€œYou’re awake? Good.” Miya was already wearing a skintight in brilliant yellow patterns. “Svetz, this is a pressure suit. The helmet unlocks and flops back if you’re where you can breathe. Flops forward to close, lock it or it’s explosive decompression. Unzip everything before you get in. No, wait, strip first.…”
    She watched, clinically detached, as Svetz zipped himself into the pressure suit. Stickstrips held it open against the wall, and it was still difficult. Limb by limb, then torso; lock each zip. From shoulder to waist, the back of the suit was a shell ten centimeters thick: enough to enclose circuitry and an air and water recycler. The bubble helmet locked against it when open. The rest of the suit was very flexible, very thin. It fitted him like skin on a dieter, just a little loose. He smoothed out some wrinkles. He pulled the big bubble down over his head, wiggled it into lock, and set the air going.
    Miya guided his fingers to sensors under his chin. “This is your voicelink,” her voice boomed, receded. “This zooms your helmet.” Miya’s face expanded enormously. “The other way—” The room pulled in around her. “Fisheye.”
    Looking down at himself he saw the patterns of a brilliant green lizard. Miya’s skintight was yellow and orange flames, like a bird he’d once glimpsed and lost. Waldemar Ten would have loved it, but he’d asked for a spotted owl .…
    Above Earth’s black night side, a half-seen circle opened like a flower and puffed a haze of ice crystals. Spacecraft and circle separated. In a haze of frost a tiny pressure suit moved toward them.
    Stickstrips held an elastic belt twenty centimeters wide, with Space Bureau insignia on an even wider buckle, and a hooded silver cloak. Svetz left the cloak but donned the belt. Miya nodded and reached for a handle.
    Svetz was used to changing gravity. He had a grip on the chair before the hatch opened. Air roared out; Svetz stayed put. The suit shrank in vacuum. Now it fitted him like skin on a sausage.
    Vacuum outside, pressure in his helmet. The suit put pressure on his skin, but air still pulled itself into his lungs. He had to pull the belt tight around his belly before he could exhale.
    Miya had placed herself near the hatch to catch him, but only now did she look back. His heart leapt. The skintight had shrunk around her. She seemed to be wearing nothing but yellow and orange paint.
    Zeera Southworth pulled herself inside and moored her flight stick. Zeera in a zebra-striped skintight was a marvelous sight. Her gaze brushed his crotch, which may have showed signs of his interest, and he saw a swallowed laugh. “Svetz. Want to see a rocket ship?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œTake the cloak,” Miya advised him.
    A flight stick was lift field generator and power source built into a meter and a half of pole, with a control ring at one end and a brush discharge at the other. Spinoff from Space Bureau, of course. The women bracketed him as they crossed to the large extension cage. They needn’t have worried. Svetz knew flight sticks …