Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven Page B

though this one felt underpowered. A lift field wasn’t a rocket. The Earth it pushed against was too far below.
    He wrapped the cloak around himself. The Earth had rotated into somebody else’s midnight as it turned beneath the hovering X-cages. Mars and the stars of Taurus hadn’t moved.
    They flew alongside a spacecraft like a bullet standing upright, and took their turns in the airlock. Lifted by antigravity beamers on the large X-cage, Svetz entered free fall.

14
    The Minim was big. Three reclined chairs faced up into a transparent nose cone. Behind those was considerable cargo space. Svetz noted a rolled-up net, and a door in the hull big enough to admit a van.
    â€œRoomy,” he said.
    Zeera said, “We don’t really know what kind of seeds a tree this size makes—”
    â€œThey’ve got to stand up to reentry,” Miya said, “at worlds maybe bigger than Earth—”
    â€œA seed could be as big as that door,” Zeera said. “If it’s bigger, we’ll have to strap it to the hull.”
    Tools were mounted around the cylinder wall. Svetz noted stickstrips for three pressure skintights and three flight sticks. He waved at devices mounted in sleeves—
    Zeera pointed. “Sonic stunners. Long-range blasters. Translators.”
    Three of everything. Wide stickstrips along the wall, to tether three crew for sleep. We can refit a Moon Minim spacecraft, Ra Chen had said. Svetz had refused to go to Mars, and then they’d built for three.
    Miya had heard his refusal. He could lose her! Willy Gorky was manipulating him, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice.
    â€œZeera, can this ship talk to the Center?”
    Zeera tapped a device like the talker in the small X-cage. “Get me either chairman,” she ordered.
    â€œWait one,” a tech said.
    Gorky’s voice. “Ready?”
    â€œZeera Southworth here. No showstoppers. Hanny Svetz wants to talk.”
    Svetz said, “Willy, this ship will clearly support three. I want to go to Mars, if it’s all right with Chairman Ra Chen.”
    Silence crawled. Then Ra Chen asked, “Svetz, are you in free fall now?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow do you feel?”
    â€œNo problems.” No motion sickness.
    Gorky’s voice. “I don’t know what the small X-cage will do. Can we pull it back without a pilot?”
    Ra Chen: “Yes.”
    Gorky: “Glad to have you, Hanny.”
    Miya broke in. “Willy, that changes the ship’s mass by…?” Her eyes questioned him.
    â€œSixty-one kilos,” Svetz told her.
    â€œMiya, you oppose this?”
    Miya locked eyes with him and said, “No, Willy, I’m for it, but rewrite the instructions for boost.”
    Gorky: “Have to pull the cage back anyway. Our twenty minutes are up.”
    The large X-cage blinked, gone and back again. Miya snapped, “Seat webs now! ” and didn’t watch Svetz’s initial clumsiness. A ruddy dot above the Earth’s limb waited.
    He felt no thrust. The large X-cage shrank out of sight. A few minutes later the Earth was flowing past and the daylit crescent was narrowing.
    Zeera watched her instruments. “Willy’s pulled back the large X-cage again,” she said. “Boost One accomplished. We’re in orbit at eight KPS.”
    Svetz said, “Orbit? I thought we were on our way.”
    â€œWe’ll close-approach the Earth. Then the X-cage pops back and the antigravity beamers hit us again. This ship’s too heavy to get into Mars intercept in one boost.”
    Miya nodded as if she understood, so Svetz did too. He moved about the cabin, testing his agility. He looked over the gear that hung on stickstrips along the cylinder wall. “Zeera? A translator for Martian? ”
    Miya answered. “Hanny, these have been used in United Nations sessions for near a thousand years. They can translate thieves’ cant and old