The door opened with a gentle swish and I pulled myself into the room beyond. It was a larger one, as far as things went up here, and the room’s occupant sat reclining in a chair. The straps around her ankles, waist, and chest kept her securely yet comfortably in the chair. Her head was turned to one side as she gazed out the small window in the wall.

  “It’s the views here that will really get you,” I said as I situated myself beside her on the other chair in the room. “No one quite understands what that means until they’re here and see it for themselves. Some people find it unnerving but most are inspired; everyone stops and stares though. Nothing can ever truly prepare you for it, not even seeing the pictures other people have taken. I’ve been up here for just over fifteen years and I still catch myself pausing and staring out of the windows in awe.”

  She nodded groggily and I made a quick visual check to make sure her IV was still dripping. 

   “I found it difficult to sleep here at first,” I went on, “the constant, albeit gentle, rumble of the ship, not to mention the tight sleeping bags we have to sleep in can make it a bit uncomfortable for a while. I once tried sleeping outside my sleeping bag and kept bumping into things, waking myself up. Now I can hardly imagine what it would be like without them.”

  I chuckled to myself and the woman smiled faintly. She was still too out of it to hold a real conversation but over the years I’d come to find that having someone talking to them as they woke up helped ease them into the transition. I loaded her data file on the room’s display panel and began skimming through it to see if there was anything I could pick out to talk about with her.

    Lucinda Raya, born at one of the mining habs on Mars, she lived there until she contracted out to Earth Transit Technologies as a Materials Maintenance Operator. She’d just finished her training on Mars and we’d picked her up a few hours ago to begin her first contract term of eighteen months. The sedation during launch was standard for anyone who wasn’t Earth-born due to the effects of prolonged exposure to micro-gravity. If any bones were broken by the force of the launch it would be that much easier to treat them if they were already sedated.

  The first contract was always the most risky for any new crew member, but particularly so for those who required less training and thus were more easily replaced. Any new crew member who didn’t meet ETT’s standards was let go at the first available orbit. That policy had led to numerous people winding up stranded on planets they were ill suited for but there was little motivation for ETT or the various countries and corporations they serviced, to change the policy. Efficiency was crucial in the space industry.

  “Where am I?” Lucinda murmured and I turned off the display panel; new contractors were often upset when they discovered how much information was made available to their superiors.

  “You’re on the The Damocles,” I told her, “You’ve just been picked up from Mars to begin your first contract with Earth Transit Technologies as a Materials Maintenance Operator and I’ll be training and supervising your work during this transit. How are you feeling?”.

   Lucinda took a few moments to respond.

  “Can I have a drink?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I told her and got up to get her some water.

  She’d done remarkably well on the launch. The med-team monitoring her reported no broken bones, no vomiting, her vitals remained strong, and she seemed to be coming out of the anesthesia fairly well. All good signs. Even still I wasn’t sure how to feel about her yet. She was the sixth new MMO I’d been sent in just as many Earth-Mars transits and none of her five predecessors had been kept on beyond their initial contract. The last one never even got to go beyond Mars orbit. He took one look out the windows and instantly started screaming about how he couldn’t get out. It was a difficult thing to watch but not entirely unheard of. Some people just couldn’t handle it. He had to be ejected out of the airlock, or decompressed as we called it. There were no more scheduled surface-to-orbit launches and ETT policy wouldn’t allow for him to remain on board. That was my least favorite aspect of the job but since crew fell under Materials Maintenance it was my duty, and now also Lucinda’s, to decompress any crew member or passenger who was deemed a significant threat to the overall efficiency and safety of The Damocles. Fortunately such events were rare and I avoided dwelling on the people I’d decompressed into space. Most people who caused problems were simply locked in a storage module until we reached orbit and then sent to whatever surface we were orbiting. If they were lucky that would be Earth.

    I helped Lucinda undo the straps that were holding her down to the chair and handed her the water pouch. She took a few sips and sighed before looking back out the window. I couldn’t tell if it was relief or longing that I saw in her eyes. Perhaps it was both. Mars was the only home she’d ever known, but I knew from reports that it was not an easy home to live in. Few parents would ever choose to have and raise their children in such austere conditions and most children born on Mars would never be able to leave. The mining companies paid for the miners transit to and from Mars, as long as they completed their contracts. Any children born at the habs had to have their transit paid for by the parents and no transit was cheap. There were now some third generation miners on Mars because their great-grandparents couldn’t afford the transit for their children once their contracts were up and they had to leave their children behind. The mining companies didn’t mind providing basic shelter and care for the abandoned children since they had little choice but to sign contracts to mine for them once they were old enough to work. It was that or starve.

  “If there was one thing I could change here,” I said to break the silence, “it would be the food. I completely understand why we’re limited on our choices, and the fact that there are any options here at all is astounding, but everyone misses certain favorite foods. That’s why I always save a little extra money from each pay cycle for whenever we’re transiting near Earth so I can afford to have some of my own personal favorite snacks brought up. Don’t bother trying to get ingredients for entire meals since that’s way too expensive. Snacks are great because you can ration them out over most transits and always have a little something to look forward to at the end of a long day.”

  Lucinda didn’t look away from the window.

  “I imagine it’s similar to what I’m use to,” she murmured.

  “Maybe,” I conceded, “though there’s not much fresh produce up here since they don’t tolerate launches very well.”

  “Really?” She asked. “I mean, I thought there were gardens on board.”

  I patted her on the knee. She wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last to hear of such things, and while it wasn’t a complete lie, neither was it the complete truth.

  “Some transit barges have larger gardens, but those are generally ferrying populations of workers and settlers and having some fresh produce is necessary to keep everyone healthy when moving that many people around. The Damocles’ gardens are small and only for the officers and any VIP passengers who may be on board.”

  “Oh,” she said and I could tell she was disappointed.

  “It’s not so bad,” I assured her. “There’s almost always a small surplus that goes on the crew market and you could put some of your pay towards a carrot or two, maybe even a potato. I never do personally because I prefer my snacks, but the cost would be about the same so you can pick whichever you prefer really and be just fine.”

  She perked up a bit at that and finished her water.

  “Well,” she sighed as she pushed off from the chair gently and floated up into a upright position, “I’m feeling pretty good now. Let’s get this IV out of my arm and then you can start showing me my duties.”

  I smiled. I was worried she’d fail to pass ETT’s first test and not show initiative for her job within the first twenty minutes of regaining consciousness, but so far so good. It was a little known clause in the contract everyone signed to work for ETT that you couldn’t quit or retire of your own accord without having a replacement trained and ready to go. I initially signed on for what I had thought would be a quick three years, just two contracts. But debts and delays and a lack of anyone to replace me had left me working on this transit barge for so much longer than anticipated.

  “Do you still have family on Mars?” I asked Lucinda while we began the general tour of the ship.

  “I have a half-brother there,” she replied, “He’s been mining ever since he was old enough to work though so I never saw him that much.”

  We passed out of the med-bay and paused.

  “This is the Main Corridor,” I explained, gesturing down the long passage that stretched out before us. “Though most of us on board call it the hall of a thousand doors.”

  “It looks similar to some of the habs on Mars.”

  “Yeah, I imagine you’ll find a lot of design similarities on board. ETT’s parent company also operates a number of mines and it makes sense to re-purpose known technologies rather than try and reinvent the wheel every time. For the Ceres operation they actually landed an older barge on the asteroid to use as their initial hab. Much more efficient that way, especially since the barge was scheduled to be deorbited at Venus.”

  I saw the concern in her eyes. Technically speaking what ETT did wasn’t illegal since Ceres hadn’t been inhabited before, and so didn’t fall under any of the intersolar treaties. But everyone knew barges were only deorbited when they were unable to meet certain safety standards and using one such barge as a hab, where there were no other habs they could go to in case of emergencies…

  Lucinda did not voice any concerns over it, though, and so passed yet another test. Questioning ETT’s decisions and voicing concerns was for the officers to do, not the crew.

  “So what’s the most efficient way you’ve found to perform your tasks?” Lucinda prompted me as we drifted slowly down the corridor.

  “Daily pressure checks should be done on each module,” I explained and stopped at one of the doors to demonstrate. “In addition to the digital display, you should perform a manual check once a week. Open the side panel, slide out the pressure gauge, and make sure it matches the digital display. Expect to have one to two pressure meter discrepancies per transit. Replacement gauges are in the main utilities storage module at midship. You can expect a minor decompression in a module about one out of every four transits, and a major decompression in one out of every seven. The last decompression event on the Damocles was two transits ago in a module holding Martian ore. A micro-meteor punctured the hull, I noticed the pressure loss within a few hours of the event while doing my regular daily pressure checks. I depressurized the module, located the puncture, and repaired it all in the space of fifteen hours, six of which were an EVA. A total of four kilograms of atmosphere was lost, the cost of which was reported to the captain and he deducted it from my pay, as per required.”

  “So the quicker we fix things, the less they deduct?”

  “I tend to think of it as the more inefficiencies we prevent, the more we get paid.”

  She nodded and we moved on further down the corridor.

  “Seems everything is about efficiency up here,” she mused.

  “That’s the key lesson to learn, really,” I agreed.

    Lucinda paused at a door and looked through its window into the module beyond.

  “Why’s this one empty?” She asked. “I thought every module was suppose to be filled. Make the most out of each trip, efficiency and all.”

  I moved beside her to look into the module and for a moment I saw a man inside staring back, fear in his eyes and I remembered his cries as he pounded on the door.

  “Didn’t they cover that in your training?” I asked and pushed the memories away. “There’s always one module left empty in case there’s the need to decompress any of the materials on board.”

  “What, like your garbage?”

  Lucinda opened the door and pulled herself into the small module and began examining it.

  “No, there’s very little actual waste on The Damocles. Also, the oxygen lost during a decompression is quite valuable and so they’re only done when the materials are deemed too great a threat to the efficiency.”

  “It’s got such a big window,” she observed.

  It was true. The decompression module had the second largest viewing port after the command module. A number of the crew would sometimes go to the decompression module just for the view. I usually used the smaller windows throughout the rest of the ship for my viewing. Although I had to admit, standing in front of the large bubble of reinforced aluminized glass that it was an impressive sight. Leaning forward I could just see the edge of the Martian disk and the dark, jagged lines along the equator marking the various mines and their habs.

  The door shut behind me.

  I spun myself around in time to see the light indicating that the door was unlocked blink out and the light indicating that the door was sealed turn on.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, though I felt my heart racing as the answer to my question was only too obvious.

  Lucinda met my gaze and for a moment we just stared at each other.

    “Efficiency,” Lucinda finally stated and then she turned her gaze slightly to the side where I knew the official order for my decompression was being displayed on the panel beside the door. She must have been briefed on this prior to her launch and began to read aloud just as I had done on similar occasions. “Earth Transit Technologies, Mars-Earth Transit Barge Damocles, Senior Materials Maintenance Operator: your most recent bone density and muscular distribution studies have shown you are no longer fit to return to a gravitational environment. Such an attempt would result in serious and costly medical care and treatment. While your contract length entitles you to all such care, it has been determined that with you being only the first of many contractors concluding long term voyages resulting in similar physical degradation that providing the required medical treatment for all would significantly impact Earth Transit Technologies economic efficiency. As such you are to be decompressed upon leaving Mars orbit. The oxygen expended for your decompression will be deducted from your pay and the remaining income, if any, due to you for your current contract, along with your other material assets, will be transferred to your listed Next of Kin at Earth Transit Technologies earliest convenience.”

  Lucinda paused and I knew the uncertainty she felt at what she was about to do, knew what effect it would have on her, and knew how few choices she had if she wanted to ever see landfall on Earth.

  “It’s alright,” I said, trying to control my fear and feelings of betrayal. “You don’t have to decompress me just yet. I still need to finish your training and during that time I can make an appeal or even see about extending my contract—

  “Thank you for your many years of service,” Lucinda finished hurriedly and the whoosh of rushing air tore me away from the door and out into the starry void.

  It was, at least, a stunning view.