One Too Many: Book Three in the One in Three Hundred Trilogy

By J.T. McIntosh

“It’s not one thing, Bill . . . It’s the rain, and the winds, and the dust, and the heat . . . the food, things you can’t identify, things that taste like string. No milk. No coffee. No eggs. No meat . . . Being hot, cold, drenched, parched, tired, and restless, all within an hour or so. Oh I could scream!”

Life on Mars was far from heavenly for the refugees of Earth. Joining the existing human colony on the Red Planet gave them life, but at what price?

As time passes, Bill Easson will see first-hand the lengths to which humanity can be pushed . . . and the new frontiers on which it can survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781440559358

J.T. McIntosh

An Adams Media author.

Book preview

1

You and I ought to be friends, Bill, said Alec Ritchie, in his usual good-humored tone, because the two best-looking girls in what’s left of the human race come and visit us.

I grinned involuntarily. Is that a good reason? I asked. Anyway, I didn’t know I was being unfriendly.

You weren’t, Ritchie said cheerfully, but you don’t like me and you make only halfhearted attempts to hide it.

I didn’t answer that, because it was perfectly true.

Ritchie was one of those fortyish, stocky, even-tempered men who laugh a lot with their faces but never with their eyes, and whom hardly anyone ever does like very much. Lieutenant Porter was dead, killed in the lifeship crash that had broken Ritchie’s leg, but he probably hadn’t liked Ritchie either. Why he had chosen Ritchie and brought him to Mars was all too obvious. Ritchie’s daughter Aileen was almost certainly one of the two most beautiful girls on Mars, just as he said.

Whether Leslie was the other I couldn’t say. I was biased. Besides, I hadn’t seen all the others. Neither had Ritchie, but he was evidently prepared to guess. I imagined he would always be ready to guess, particularly if there was any percentage in it. Coming to Mars would have made no difference to that.

Earth by this time was dead, boiled sterile. Ritchie and I were two of the few thousand lucky people who had not only got a place on one of the lifeships but had also landed safely on Mars. Fairly safely, anyway.

And Mars?

Take one small, moribund planet, cold, dry, brittle, dark, and cheerless. Turn on spit for two months, one complete turn every twenty-four and a half hours. Serve piping hot to fourteen thousand hungry and uncritical guests just in from space.

And don’t blame any remarks they may make on Emily Post.

When all that extra heat from the new, brighter sun first hit Mars, practically all the water on the planet, whether it was ice, liquid, or mixed with the dust of erosion in the dull, bodiless mud of Mars, had been lifted right up into the atmosphere. A lot of the dust went with it. There were black clouds, sandstorms, dust storms, and, as soon as the particle-laden water vapor hit streams of colder air, torrents of muddy rain. It couldn’t have been an altogether pleasant time for the seven thousand people who had been on Mars at the time — the colony which had existed before the big migration became necessary.

But at that time I had been mainly concerned with getting my lifeship and the ten people in it to Mars, whatever the conditions there were like. That was enough to worry about without looking for more.

Well, I’d done that. That worry was over. Now all I wanted to do was stay in bed for twenty years or so, smiling modestly when people came to visit me and tell me what a magnificent job I’d done.

Sammy came to visit me and told me: You’ve been swinging the lead long enough, Bill. While you still had those bandages over your eyes there might have been some excuse, but now it’s high time you stopped malingering and started earning your keep.

Behind me, Ritchie laughed uproariously. That’s telling him, he spluttered happily.

This is a private discussion, mister, said Sammy coldly. Bill’s a friend of mine. We’ve been through a lot. We understand each other. If we did happen to want your opinion, we’d ask for it.

Sammy clearly didn’t like Ritchie either. Ritchie merely laughed again. He never lost his temper.

Where’s Leslie? I asked Sammy.

She’s working, pinhead. Don’t you know yet only one can get away from the job at a time? Work Party No. 94 can’t spare two people to come and hold your hand, even if you are pretending to be dying.

What’s the job you’re doing?

Digging holes, said Sammy succinctly.

And filling them in again? I asked, because that seemed to be the implication.

No, we don’t have to do that. The wind does it for us.

Who’s in charge?

Of the whole show, or just 94?

In the hospital we didn’t know much about the general situation. No one had time to explain it to us.

You tell me, Sammy, I suggested, taking it I know but nothing.

You don’t have to tell me that, Sammy assured me. "You always were an ignorant cuss. Well, such government as there is at the moment is on the additive principle. You know, you start with a hut, build two rooms onto it, then a corridor all around, then an east wing, then a hall, a west wing, some more corridors and an annex, all carefully planned so that every time you want to go to the lavatory you have to go up and down six flights of stairs and walk three miles along passages.

"Viz — the original colony had its own administration, of course, and when the big spaceships got here the top brass added themselves onto that, and when the lifeships arrived the lieutenants were added onto that, so that now — "

He interrupted himself and asked belligerently: Do you follow that, or can’t you understand a simple explanation?

I grinned. Now tell me who’s in charge of 94.

Me, until they throw you out of here. Leslie, when I’m not around.

So I’m still the boss, am I?

I wouldn’t say that, but you’re still supposed to take the rap for anything that goes wrong, if that’s what you mean. Lifeship crews are staying together as units, lieutenants in charge. Sometimes a work party wants a different lieutenant, or a lieutenant wants a different work party, and there’s a switch. But that isn’t happening often.

Surprising, I commented, but good to hear all the same.

You mean, Sammy, said Ritchie from the next bed, that as far as the work parties are concerned these so-called lieutenants are still the little tin gods — no chance for anyone else to step in and run things? No offense, Bill.

Sammy turned a cold eye on Ritchie again. I thought I told you this was a private discussion, he observed. And my name’s Hoggan.

Pleased to meet you, said Ritchie affably. My name’s Ritchie.

Sammy’s sense of humor almost got the better of him. He nearly laughed. He was hard put to it to remember he didn’t like Ritchie and retort bluntly: All right, Ritchie. You have my permission to exist. But do it quietly, will you? I want to talk to Bill.

Go ahead, said Ritchie airily.

Sammy stared at him for a moment, then turned back to me. Seriously, he said, there isn’t much need for government just now, and by the time we do need it there’ll be something better. On the whole, things would be all right but for — Holy Moses, what’s this?

We looked around at a sudden uproar of whistles and wolf calls from the other men in the ward. Sammy hadn’t heard it before, but I had. It meant Leslie or Aileen had just come in.

This time it was Leslie. She hurried along the ward, paying no attention to the chorus of approbation, and stopped at the foot of my bed.

I need you, Sammy, she said breathlessly, ignoring me. It’s Morgan again.

What’s he doing now? Sammy sighed, hoisting himself up in a way that showed how glad he must have been to sit down.

It’s what he’s not doing, she told him. I’ve done all I can, with no result. Now you’ll have to come and clout his ear.

You might have done that yourself, without bothering me, Sammy grumbled. Surely you didn’t let a little thing like that stop you?

That was the sling supporting her right arm.

Frankly, I did, said Leslie. Morgan’s looking ugly. She took a couple of quick steps, bent over, and pecked me briefly on the cheek. There was uproar in the ward again. Then she hustled Sammy out. Apart from that quick peck she hadn’t even glanced at me.

And odd though it might seem, I was pleased. I hadn’t thought Leslie was going to be as businesslike and brisk and good at handling people as it seemed she was. I should have known, I suppose. She had been a schoolteacher, and handling twenty to thirty boisterous kids was probably good practice for handling a work party.

So Morgan Smith was giving trouble again, which meant he had been giving trouble before.

"Who’s this fellow