Yanci, Sherry, and I weren’t the only ones talking about the HX Chaser. The debate about whether or not to send it, and what it should do when it arrived at the HX, raged throughout the Solar System. Clearly going was risky. That raised two major questions: “Is it worth the risk?” and “What can be done to reduce the risk?” On the whole, Earther journaloggers talked mostly about the first question, and mostly decided no, it was not worth it. Mercurs, Belters, and Outers talked mostly about the second question, and that made a lot more interesting reading. Moonies and Martians came down on all sides of both debates.
I myself was very uneasy about the voyage, but the adventure and yes, the chance to advance mankind, still tugged at me. I started thinking, “Maybe we should take the second ship?” That is, until I returned to Earth for a vacation during my junior season at Hubble.
Coming home was painful for more than one reason. First off, the Second Siege of Titan had generated a lot more Security bullshit and Immigration red tape. Earth-gov knew not only that I had been on Mars but also that I had applied to crew the HX Chaser. So whenever I crossed any kind of border on my way home to Perugia, and especially when I first landed, I found myself pulled aside for questioning. It grew annoying.
I also found Earth expensive. For one example, I hadn’t gotten in the recommended amount of prep exercise on Mars, and I needed a pair of leg boosters for a few weeks while my muscles finished toning up for Earth gravity. My gosh, they were high-priced! Not just expensive, but big and cumbersome, too. I’d expected something like I’d seen Moonies wearing on Mars, the size of unpowered aluminum leg braces, but because these were nuclear powered, not NJ-powered, they were more like motorized wheelchairs in size and performance. (Okay, I exaggerate. Some. But after a day wearing them, that’s what they felt like!)
Worse, Mom, Dad, and some of the relatives kept leading the conversation into how, in spite of Earth-gov’s best efforts, bootleg HX tech was slipping onto Earth and corrupting its youth. What they complained most about was stuff I used pretty much every day on Mars, and somehow I didn’t feel corrupted. But I was smart enough to keep the peace. I just listened and nodded my head without laughing outright at their quaint ideas and crazy “facts”. Like, “Neutrino jets lead to terrible accidents”, which was no more true of NJ than of nuclear or any other power source. Although reckless Earthers did die using outlawed NJ jet skis, it was their behavior, not the tech, that killed them. Or “NJ causes cancer”, which was an outright lie.
Until then I hadn’t realized how intensely Earth society loved and hated forbidden HX fruit, and how crazy that made Earth people. Off Earth, an NJ jet ski death didn’t threaten society; it was just one more way to die, no big deal. What most threatened a colony’s community wasn’t taking personal risks, it was being a social parasite! Everyone contributed, no one sat around protesting they weren’t being given their rights. And nothing was more dreaded than sabotage. So Earth Firsters who grabbed headlines with sabotage against HX tech were considered deadly by Colony people, and no one raised off-Earth could understand why Earthers gave those people so much slack.
When I realized how different my attitude had become, I finally lost my worries about being on the HX Chaser. I knew what “you can’t go home again” meant, and that even if I didn’t head out on the Chaser, I would become a permanent Colonial. I couldn’t share Earth’s anti-HX hypocrisy and psychoses.
Going back to Hubble was a different kind of red-tape hell. Because my father was such a prominent Earth Firster, campaigning to be the next European President (he was successful, by the way), I was refused passage to Mars until I obtained and submitted a form letter from Hubble’s Dean of Humanities attesting to my character and good standing as a student.