The “Bar” shifted under Gregor’s feet. The plastic bulbs on the walls looked like nothing Gregor would serve, but he did admit that the alcohol stored in them was as good as what he used to serve.

It turned out, he mused, that getting a trip to Mars was simplicity itself. All one had to do was hold one’s breath and push off the station. In a couple of hundred years, your corpse would reach Mars: no problems. Finding a faster, more survivable trip, on the other hand: that posed real problems. There were no passenger or freight transits scheduled to Mars for the foreseeable future. Something about tariffs or blockades or politics.

Now they were in this dingy bar again drinking their problems away. Hope, figuratively and literally, had departed. Literally, she was somewhere talking to her old friends, trying to rustle up a roundabout route. Figuratively, the tantalizing chance to get off of that desolate dirt-ball had only opened the door wider to despair. Meanwhile, his stomach was spinning uncomfortably.