The pilot shoved open the airlock and kicked the stairs down. "Okay, girls. Carry your suitcases and I'll give each of you an oxygen mask as you go out. The air's been breathable for fifteen years, but it's still thin to newcomers. If you feel dizzy, take a whiff of oxygen."
The forty women just stood there and looked at each other. Nobody wanted to be first.
Annie moved forward, her bulky suitcase practically floating in her hand. She was a big woman with that wholesome expression which some women have to substitute for sex appeal. She'd made a great senior leader at summer camps.
"I'll go first," she said, grinning confidence into the others. "I'm not likely to bring out the beast in them." She waved herself out, letting the grin set and jell.
It was odd to feel light. She'd felt too heavy as far back as she could remember. Not fat heavy. Bone heavy.
The sweat on her face dried suddenly. She could feel it, like something being peeled off her skin. Arid climate.
It was cold. But she had the warmth to meet it.
There they were! Forty men. There were supposed to be forty. What if one of them had died! Who would go back?
"Not me," Annie prayed to herself. "Dear God, not me." She tried to count them. But they moved around so!
They were looking at something. Not Annie. The girl coming down the ramp behind Annie.
It was Sally, with the blonde hair on her shoulders. That's all they'd be able to see from there. The blonde hair.
But a man was coming forward. He had a tam-like hat pulled low to good-humored eyes, and an easy stride.
"Wait, Ben," one of the other men said. "See the others."
"I pulled first, didn't I?"
"Yeah. But you ain't seen but two yet."
"I want that blonde one. Let Gary see the others."
And he led Sally away.
He didn't feel her muscles or look at her teeth or measure her pelvic span.
After Sally came Nora. Nora giggled and waved, making a shape under the shapeless clothes. Wasn't that just like Nora? Okay. So she was cute.
Second man took Nora. He didn't wait for the others.
Third man took Regina. Regina looked scared, but you could see those big cow eyes a mile off. Regina obviously needed somebody to protect her.
The other girls came out. Annie counted and her heart hit bottom. Someone was going to be left over.
Four women, three men. They all felt embarrassed. It was the kind of thing the colonists would talk about for years. Who was last. Who was second to last. Spiteful people would remember, and in a tight little community, spite took root and throve on the least misinterpreted expression or—But then, this wouldn't be a tight little community, Annie remembered. The lichen farms were spread out over the whole temperate belt of the world. Because the lichens were grown only on hills, where the sand would not cover them. And because they did a more efficient job of oxygenating the atmosphere when they were spread over a wide area.
One man, hat in hand, even in the cold. A little shriveled man with a spike of dust-colored hair, but kind-looking.
"Aw...." he drawled in embarrassment. He clicked his tongue. "You're both probably too good for somebody like me. I don't know. Both fine women."
The two women stood in silence.
"What's your name?"
"Annie."
"Mary."
"Mary? My sister's named Mary. Fine woman." He took Mary's hand. "No disrespect to you, Annie."
They were all gone.
 
"I could take you on my Venus run," the pilot said. He, too, was embarrassed. "But I'm afraid I'll have a full ship after that. Unless you can buy the weight and space. I'd be glad to take you free. But the company...."
Annie's eyes were full but she wasn't going to let them spill.
Sally brought Ben by, already looking self-consciously married.
"I'm sorry, honey," she said. "Look, Annie, if you want to come stay with us until another shipment of pioneers come to break ground, you're welcome. Maybe you'd—er—find one of them you liked."
It was a gesture of kindness, of course, but it made Annie's eyes spill. She turned her head away, toward the red hills. Red and the cultivated ones green. Christmas colors.
"Sure," Ben said. "Swell. Any friend of Sally's is a friend of mine."
And the way they looked at each other made Annie's heart lurch.
"Thanks, kids," she said. "But I don't believe I'll try it. And don't worry. This isn't the first time I've been stood up."
"Are you coming?" the pilot shouted across the field. "Hate to rush you, but I've got a schedule to meet."
Was she coming? What else could she do?
"What happened to him, Ben?" Annie asked. "My—the other man that should have been here."
Ben worried a hole in the sand with one foot and cleared his throat. "He stayed home."
"You mean he's alive! Here?"
"Well ... yes. But he didn't—"
"Never mind. I don't need anybody to strum a guitar under my window. If he couldn't get away from the farm today I can certainly go to him. I've got a pair of legs that'll walk around the world."
"You coming?" the pilot shouted.
"No!" Annie cried. "I live here."
The spaceship took off, a phoenix rising from the flames.
Ben was shuffling his feet, hands in his pockets. "We'd be proud to have you stay with us, Annie."
"Oh, cut it out, Ben. I'm no hot-house rose. Just tell me which way and I'll find my own farm." She paused, trying to guess his thoughts.
"You think he might be disappointed when he sees me? Is that it, Ben? I know I'm no pinup girl. But I'm a worker and a breeder. He'll see it. In the end, that's what's going to count."
Ben was still making holes in the sand with his feet, trying to say something.
"Please don't worry," Annie went on, "your friend won't be sorry. If he doesn't want to marry me right away—okay. I can understand it. But I can give him a chance to watch me work."
"That isn't it," Ben said finally. "I think you look fine, Annie. It's—it's any woman. He told them not to send a wife for him. Any woman."
"But that's ridiculous. He knows the laws. Five years and then a wife. Why did he stake out in the first place?"
"That was before," Ben answered.
"Before what?"
"Aw, it's not for me to say. Why don't you just forget Bradman. He's a good enough guy. But not for you. You come—"
"Which way and how far?"
Ben looked at her hard. "Okay. On Mars your life is your own." He pointed. "Second farmbubble you come to. And you'd better hurry. It ought to take eight hours and night falls like a ton of bricks here."
Annie made it in seven. Easy.
She went up to the transparent hemisphere. He was inside working. She shouted, but if he heard her he didn't look up.
She went to the flap that must be the door. There wasn't anything to knock on, so she opened the flap and walked in.
There was nothing in the room but a cot, kitchen equipment and lichen, growing on a number of tables. The air was richer than outside and Annie breathed it thirstily.
"I'm Annie Strug," she said, smiling and wishing it wasn't such an ugly name.
He glanced up, angry blue eyes under a growth of black hair. He didn't say a word.
Annie set her suitcase down and looked out at the green growth on the hills.
"Look, Mr. Bradman," she cried suddenly, pointing a spatulate finger to the western horizon. "What in the name of heaven is that?" There was a catch of fright in her voice.
"We don't say 'mister' on Mars," he said reluctantly. "Brady. But you don't have to call me anything because you're leaving soon." He was a big, arid man with a sandy voice. But his hands, as he stripped the lumpy brown fruits from a giant lichen, were surprisingly delicate.
"What is it?" Annie asked again, turning instinctively to the big man for a reassurance and protection she had no reason to expect.
Bradman straightened and moved away from her, looking at the black giant growing up from the earth in the distance and moving straight toward them.
"It's a sandstorm," he said. "It'll be here in ten minutes."
Annie let out the breath she had been holding. "Oh. That doesn't sound so bad. I don't know what I thought it was. I was just frightened." She smiled shyly and apologetically at Bradman.
Bradman grimaced at her, his agate eyes frozen in a pallid face that should have gone with red hair. The sand-blown lines in his face were cruel. "Sister, you've got a smile like a slab of concrete. Don't try it again."
"You didn't have to say that," Annie said quietly, closing her eyes against the winds of her anger.
"You didn't have to come here," he replied. "Goodbye."
"I'm not leaving," she said, still holding tight the doors of her anger.
"I am." He paced heavily over the sand floor and pulled back the flap of the door.
"Where are you going?" Annie glanced back at the ............