Today's Reading
At the moment, it was a large rectangular packing module with built-in rehydrator taps and heating units. We'd be stuck with rehydrated food until we got the greenhouse up and running. We wouldn't get a full kitchen until sometime after that. The moment it was open, I intended to bake a pie.
When I stepped into the kitchen module, two of the newer crew members were stowing supplies. Jaidev Kamal looked up from a checklist. Jaidev had been a chemist working on the lunar colony and jumped at the chance to come to Mars, where he'd oversee the processes that converted in situ resources to consumables. "Oh, good. The inventory, it shows the kitchen shears in cabinet A7, but I cannot find them. Where did you keep them?"
"Um..." I looked around as if I could help out in some way, but I was still in the land of the familiar and strange. The kitchen was the same basic module as the one we had started with on the Moon, but with a decorative border of rusty diamonds painted at the top of the ceiling. That was probably also Dawn's work, since she'd been down. "I don't know. This is the first time I've been in the module."
Across from Jaidev, his wife Aahana smiled at me apologetically and rested a hand on his arm. "Elma wasn't allowed to land because she was too important as a computer on the First Expedition."
"Sort of..." That made it sound like it had been about me, but it had just been practical. Terrorists from the group Earth First had taken out the Deep Space Network, and that meant we hadn't been able to rely on Earth for navigation. "Mission Control kept the NavComps aboard. It's the first time down for me and for Heidi, too, when she lands."
"But you did the calculations." They were both from the India contingent, and Aahana had a British accent that was as plummy as the Queen's. Her specialty was geology and she'd worked on identifying lava tubes that could be used for habitation on the Moon.
"We both did. Redundancies." My smile felt too tight. She was making it out as if I was something special. NavComps did navigation and computing. Doing that math had been my job. Nothing more. "Do you want me to find Dawn? She might remember where things are."
"That's all right." Jaidev shook his head. "It's a get-ahead, so I can ask her when I see her. Did you need anything?"
Aahana's eyes widened. "Oh, I'm sorry. You probably came in for dinner." She stood and moved away from the water tap. "We're ahead of schedule but we still don't have everything unpacked."
"I actually came in to see if I could be helpful."
Jaidev consulted his list. "No...no, unless you have a way to improve freeze-dried meals."
"Beats the astronaut kibble."
Aahana laughed. "Nicole told us about that in training. I can't believe that was a real thing."
"Oh, we never flew with it." I looked at the bins stacked along one wall. It was so tempting to open one and start unpacking it, but they had a method and me jumping in to help would throw their plan off. "When it got damp, it was like glue."
"What did it taste like?" Aahana's eyes were bright with curiosity.
"Meat-flavored cardboard."
She laughed again just a little too loud and watched me just a little too intently. I'd managed to forget that Aahana had been fourteen when the Meteor struck. She literally went into this field because of me. I know that because she told me when we met. She had shown me a copy of her Lady Astronaut Club membership card.
During training and on the trip out, with a hundred people on the Goddard, her...her interest in my career hadn't been obvious. It was now. But she was a brilliant geologist who had done good work on the Moon.
She would settle down again. It was just because we were in a new place. I turned my attention to Jaidev, who had probably joined because of Stetson Parker, the First Man in Space. We got paired all the time in people's minds even though he'd hated me for more than a decade.
"Sol 1 dinners are stacked on the outside wall." Jaidev consulted his clipboard. "Bin 1632-A."
Aahana leaned in as if she were confiding a secret. "I knew you would want it—this being Frisol—so I made sure your kosher meals were accessible when we were bringing things in from the ship."
"Great." I did not have the energy to explain that keeping Shabbat was not a deciding factor in keeping kosher. "Thanks."
I extracted myself and went in search of the bin.
On Earth, Nathaniel and I were casually kosher, didn't mix meat and dairy when I was cooking but did if we were at a friend's house. But for the first time, I wasn't the only Jew on the mission, and I'd advocated for others in ways that I wouldn't have for myself. So there were kosher meals on this mission.
My first Shabbat on Mars. Don't ask me if I started crying when I pulled those vacuum packs out.
This excerpt ends on page 14 of the paperback edition.
Monday, July 21st, we begin the book The Black Orb by Ewhan Kim.
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