Pioneers

From 50 million miles away it more resembles a clear, LED light bulb plugged in amongst strings of yellowish, incandescent ones than it does a blue planet, but that clear tint is unique in the night sky, and therefore beautiful. The eye is drawn to it, and lingers upon it wistfully, as a moth does a flame. The light looks inviting to an alien creature. Alien creatures desire a place to call home above all else. I know this, because I am now an alien. No wonder then that human life somehow found its way to that light so many millions of years ago. You would bend to pick up a golden rock at your feet, and you would strive to reach a silver light in the darkness. It is impossible to look up at Earth from this distance without gasping, as you would gasp if the rug of life were suddenly pulled out from under your feet.

From our module on Mars the night sky is astonishingly brilliant. There is little in the way of atmosphere to distort the strange constellations that are visible from this different site angle, nor are there city lights to degrade their brilliance, only the tritium reds and greens glowing from the monitors and guages of the many consoles inside the module.

High overhead, much higher than Earth’s golden, dream-stirring moon, a weak Martian moon blushes pale pink, like candlelight seen through cotton candy. Soon will come another moon, this one smaller and much closer than Earth’s. This one is frighteningly close as it trails by at a discernible, unlunar-like speed. This moon is not round, but is only “roundish.” It was clearly once a meteorite that is now as trapped as we are inside the tub-drain vortex of Mars’ gravitational pull. This moon is so close that you can distinguish it‘s bulges, and it’s crags without the aid of a glass as it snail crawls past you three times a day.

The nighttime landscape seen through the pinkish moonlight is the same as the daytime landscape in that it is desert-like, and barren. Somehow, even at night, there is the rusted, pinkish tint to go with the metallic odor that poisons the air, and the iron ore flavor that bites at your tongue, even in the recycled oxygen of the module.

In our bunk my partner sleeps. She is not whom I would have chosen, but she is my partner, and she is a good, sensible one. I am likely not the one she would have chosen either, but we have, over these two years, travelled together, feared together, worked together, cried together, and now we have also loved together, as the scientists said that we would. Those scientists seem to know everything, except what might come next. Should we ever get back to Earth, I wonder if she and I would part? Is it love we feel toward one another, or is it need? Does it even matter? Regardless, I am happy to have her, as she is a woman, and she makes it feel like love.

She wakes, and climbs up beside me. Together we watch the Earth glow among the lesser stars as we think our thoughts. Ours are different thoughts, surely, but also the same... as we are both humans, and alone, but we are at least alone together.