Ro Cook stepped out of the shower and dried off. She found the recent meetings boring and had chosen not to go to this one with her father. She picked up her sweaty workout clothes from the floor, sniffed them, wrinkled her nose, and threw them in the hamper. Technically, the inhabitants of Metzger Base were not supposed to be working out. The base commander had prohibited any unnecessary burning of calories. But Ro had worked out every day that she could remember of her life. She wasn’t about to let a little hunger or a power-mad base commander stop her now. She had cut it down to half an hour though. That was all she could manage before her muscles reached failure these days.
She paused in front of the full length mirror. She tensed her arms and studied her biceps. She turned sideways, tensed the leg nearest the mirror and studied the muscles of her thigh and calf. She turned back toward the mirror and stared into her own face. She pulled her hair to one side, then the other. Then half over her face. Then she tied it back in the usual ponytail. She had never thought of herself as pretty and had never wanted to.
You don’t get ahead in this world by being pretty, her dad always said. You get ahead by being tougher than anyone else.
The thought of her dad pulled her away from the mirror. She looked around the room to make sure everything was clean and in order. She put on the fresh clothes she had laid out. She had just settled onto the couch and turned on one of the old Earth sitcoms that were available in the Metzger Base video library when her dad came home.
“Turn that noise off,” said Everett Cook. He sounded angry. But then, he always sounded angry. He wasn’t mean, for the most part. But he was gruff and unpredictable, and she always felt off-balance when he was around. Ro turned the screen off.
“Nothing from Earth matters to us any more,” said her dad. Ro nodded.
He saw that her hair was wet. “You worked out?” he said.
Ro nodded after a slight pause, holding her breath, afraid this would anger him further.
“Good,” he said. Ro exhaled, relieved.
“Stand up,” he said. Ro stood. He looked her over. “Bicep,” he said. She raised an arm and tensed. He nodded. “You’ll be ok,” he mumbled. “You’ll be ok.” He stood there looking at her arm but not looking at her arm. This was getting weird. Ro relaxed her muscle. Her dad continued to stare as his jaw tensed and released, tensed and released.
Ro did not usually speak to her dad unless he spoke to her, so she wasn’t sure what to do. After another minute, she felt uncomfortable not saying anything. “What was the meeting about?” she said.
He looked at her, and she almost thought his eyes were tearing up. Then his face hardened. “You’re going to Mars,” he said.
She wanted to show surprise, to raise her eyebrows and exclaim with a What?! But she was afraid this might set him off, so she kept her face calm and simply said “Okay.”
“There’s a cycler inbound. You and the other kids will rendezvous with it and ride it to Mars.” He paused. “There’s food on Mars,” he added, as if that weren’t clear.
She couldn’t help herself. “Just the other kids?” she said.
“That’s what I said!” he barked, face angry.
She didn’t flinch. That would only make him angrier. “Yes, sir,” she said quietly. He stared at her. She could hear his nose whistling as he breathed.
“There isn’t enough food and propellant to get everyone there,” he said after several whistly breaths. “Only enough for the kids.” He paused. “You know what that means, right?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Ro, “all kids are to go to Mars.”
He exhaled sharply, frustrated. “And what else?” he said.
She hesitated, not sure what he wanted. “Adults will be staying,” she said, the ing rising in a slight question.
“Adults will be dying,” he said.
Ro nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said.
“I will be dying,” he said.
Ro wasn’t sure what to say so she said “Yes, sir,” again. She never processed her feelings in front of him. How she felt about this would be determined once she was alone and had time to think.
His face softened slightly. She stole a quick glance and saw that his eyes were shiny again. His jaw tensed and released, tensed and released. “It’s okay,” he said. “I know I haven’t always been the best father.” His voice thickened and he paused. “But, since the day you were born, I would have laid down my life for you,” he said. He paused again. Cleared his throat. “It’s okay,” he said.
Ro didn’t know what to say. Her dad let his guard down so rarely that she didn’t know how to react. She said nothing.
Her dad shook his head. Took a deep breath. And the hard face she was used to was back. “Listen to me,” he said.
She listened.
“Starvation is a terrible thing. It reduces people to their lowest animal state. That would have happened here to all of us. You know that, right?”
She nodded.
“Even with the food you will have, you will all be at a calorie deficit for the entire trip. That’s five months. You will be starving for that entire time. Do not underestimate the severity of that. You will be starving.”
She nodded.
“There may be enough food to get you all to Mars, or there may not,” he said. He paused and stared at her, eyes hard. “You do whatever you have to to make sure there is enough for yourself,” he said. “If you don’t, someone else will.”
She waited, but he said no more. “Yes, sir,” she said.