- <b>Astronaut Nick</b>

“He’ll be here,” the red-haired girl said as she looked out the bubble window of the classroom’s south wall.

“Nah, my older brother says Astronaut Nick is a fake,” said the blue-eyed boy with the curly brown hair. He too was looking out the bubble window.

Jimmy Carrico wasn’t sure who he believed. At age nine, he didn’t want to appear too credulous in front of the older kids. After all, what could anyone say about the legend of a red-suited space man who was supposed to be flying all the way from Earth to deliver gifts to the children of Olympus Mons Colony?

“Your older brother just wants to spoil the fun,” the red-haired girl said, turning her head to make a disapproving frown at the blue-eyed boy.

Jimmy hadn’t been on Mars long enough to have learned too many names. Mostly he kept quiet, did his schoolwork as best as he was able, and endured the inevitable rude comments. It was bad enough trying to learn to function in Mars’ heavier gravity, but trying to do it and save face in front of the other kids at the same time, was often an impossible task.

“He’ll come riding in his rocket sled,” said the red-haired girl. “Him and his crew of elves.”

“He’s never come before,” he said. “What’s so different that suddenly he’d show up now?”

The salmon-colored sky had faded to gray, and little ice crystals were gradually floating down to land on the brownish-red landscape below—Martian snow being the dividend of the work which had brought the Carrico family to Mars in the first place.

Every year, the Mars Terraforming Project needed more people, and every year those people hurled more comets into Mars’ upper atmosphere. Enough to begin changing Mars’ climate so that moisture was able to condense out of the air—especially in the higher elevations. Since Olympus Mons colony was dug into the foothills of the biggest extinct volcano in the solar system, and the volcano got dusted on a regular basis these days, the children had a front row seat for what their parents claimed was history in the making.

“Big whoop,” said the blue-eyed boy, who turned away from the window and sauntered back to where some other boys were gathered to eat their noon meal.

Jimmy stared out the window, watching the little white flakes fall. There weren’t many. In fact, it was hard to believe that something so small could turn the ground white in a single afternoon. But it had happened twice before in two previous weeks, and now it was happening again.

“What makes you so sure?” Jimmy said cautiously, sliding off of his chair and walking to stand near the girl—both of their faces pushed into the bubble window so that they could look around.

“Before my Grandma died,” said the red-haired girl, “she told me about Saint Nicholas.”

“It is,” the red-haired girl said. “At the end of every Earth year, Saint Nicholas rides through the sky in his sleigh, bringing gifts to all the good children.”

“Sorry,” Jimmy replied, feeling sheepish. “I guess I have a hard time believing in anyone who rides a sleigh through the sky. I’ve seen pictures of earth. I know what a sleigh looks like. They can’t get off the ground.”

“But Astronaut Nick’s sleigh has rockets,” she said. “And when he comes, he’ll bring things for all of us. Well, all of us who believe in him anyway.”

Jimmy considered. It was an enticing idea. He hadn’t been able to bring much from Ceres. The family’s small quarters in Olympus Mons were barren—their crates not yet arrived via bulk freighter—and while video games and other three-dee entertainments could be had in plentiful quantities, there were times when Jimmy missed being able to hold an actual toy in his hands.

Why had they moved, again? Jimmy could still remember how excited his parents had been. The whole family would be partaking in the greatest engineering project of the age. The robot scouts sent to retrieve the comets from the Kuiper Belt would keep bringing them until Mars had been rendered inhabitable. The Carrico family would be helping to prepare the surface. It might take decades, or even centuries. But there would come a day when there’d be no need for habitats. The air would be like Earth air, and it would be thick and warm enough to go outside without suits—something Jimmy had never done on Mars, and not on Ceres either.

Ceres. On Ceres, Jimmy had real friends. On Ceres, he could fly down the corridors and across the gym, at the merest push of his toes. Stuck on Mars, Jimmy plodded and sweated, his cheeks pink, and his muscles and joints complaining. The doctor said it was normal, for children born in the asteroid belt—that Jimmy would get used to it. But the longer Jimmy endured the struggle, the more he hated it. And hated the fact that his parents had applied for emigration from Ceres in the first place.

“Wait!” she said. “You’re new, but you don’t talk to people. What’s your name? You can at least tell me your name.”

“That’s probably what your Mom calls you,” she said. “What do you call you?”

“That was my Great Grandpa’s name,” she said. “I like that. My name’s Tessa.”

“Hello,” Jimmy said, still looking over his shoulder. She seemed to be waiting for him to say more to her.

He merely turned and walked out of the room, his feet slapping painfully hard on the deck.

“No,” Jimmy said, not looking up from his tray of microwaved turkey and beans.

“No,” Jimmy said. “It’s just that … I’d like to believe this Astronaut Nick guy can help me, but I don’t believe it.”

“It sounds to me like one of those things parents tell to little kids, that always wind up not being true.”

“Well if you don’t believe in him,” Tessa said, “of course he’s not going to be true. Astronaut Nick doesn’t bring presents to doubters.”

Jimmy closed his eyes, remembering how delightful it had been on Ceres, flying through the sports chambers with his friends as they played Wall Ball. You had to be good with angles, and you had to learn how hard to throw the ball to get it to carom just right, while not throwing so hard that you flipped yourself completely around. Teams of Wall Ball players could use each others’ inertia to make shots at the goal without spinning out of control. Of course, if the other teams were equally good at working together, they could use their inertia to deflect the ball and make return shots. Players would hang onto each others’ ankles, knees and elbow interlocked, all of them pirouetting as a unit …

“Okay, so Nick doesn’t bring gifts for doubter,” he said, perhaps a bit harder than he’d wanted.

“That doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said. “Nobody can help me anyway. Here on Mars … they hardly ever let us go outside, and I’m heavy no matter where I go, and always dropping things or bumping into stuff, and our quarters are small and my friends are all far away, and I won’t ever get to see them again.”

Jimmy stared at his spork, then plunged it into the turkey on his plate, carved off a hunk of the meat, and stuck the hunk into his mouth.

“Two,” she said. “Olympus Mons uses the New Solar Calendar like all the other off-Earth colonies and stations, but I have an app on my desk computer that stays synchronized to the old Earth calendar.”

Now it was Tessa’s turn to be circumspect. She poked at her beef strips covered in brown gravy.

“I’m keeping my wish a secret,” she said. “Supposedly if you keep it secret, there’s a better chance it might come true.”

“Then how is Astronaut Nick ever supposed to find out what you want?” Jimmy asked, somewhat exasperated. He’d put his spork down and was staring across the table, directly into Tessa’s face. Her red hair fell across her forehead and partially obscured his view.

“Not yet. I am trying to figure out how to word it just right. I’m using the school house net to do it. You can do the same.”

Jimmy thought about it. The whole idea sounded highly improbable. But the earnestness of Tessa’s words, the seriousness of her expression, had him halfway convinced.

“Sure!” Tessa said, sitting up and grinning. “After lunch, come over to my desk and I will type it into a message I’ll send to you, and then you can use it to type your own message.”

“Seems like short notice,” Jimmy said. “I mean, two days. How can he possibly be ready to deliver anything without knowing far enough ahead of time? When my parents moved us from Ceres we knew months in advance that we were coming to live here, and the Olympus Mons people knew months in advance, too.”

“You just have to trust him,” Tessa said. “Astronaut Nick won’t let you down. If you’ve not been making trouble, and if you believe hard enough, Astronaut Nick will keep his promises.”

They ate quickly and in silence for the rest of the meal break, Jimmy’s head beginning to spin with the imagined possibilities.

The following day, Jimmy used all of his recess and lunch period to compose his note to Astronaut Nick. The address Tessa had given Jimmy seemed as legitimate as any, and since Tessa said she’d sent hers off in the morning, Jimmy felt compelled to get his sent as quickly as possible.

Only, he agonized over how to phrase his request. Composition had never been Jimmy’s strong suit, and every time he thought he had his message put together in a coherent fashioned, he saved it as a draft, came back to look at it later, and realized he wanted to change everything around.

Finally, as the school day came to a close, he pestered his teacher into letting him have an extra twenty minutes at his desk. He erased everything he’d written previously, typed in three succinct sentences, and clicked the SEND button on the message header, watching it vanish from his desk screen.

Jimmy went home that night, exhausted, and slept more fitfully than usual. Which was saying something, since Jimmy had not enjoyed a solid night’s rest since coming to Olympus Mons.

The next day, Tessa and Jimmy kept an eye on each other, but didn’t talk much. If there were other kids in their class who’d also sent e-mail to Astronaut Nick, nobody was saying so openly. Jimmy definitely got the impression that the older children found the whole idea preposterous, and this meant the younger kids were keeping a low profile—whether they actually believed in Astronaut Nick, or not.

Finally, when the day was over, and people were headed out the door to go find their parents in one of Olympus Mons’ many and various work labs, Tessa and Jimmy met in the same window bubble where they’d had their first conversation a few days before.

The tiny white water crystals were falling again. This time in what seemed to be record quantity. The rock and soil outside had already begun to turn white, and Tessa watched the natural display with a look of rapt fascination on her face.

“My Mom says that the snow on Earth gets so thick, you can ski on it,” Tessa said.

“People go up in the mountains and put these long, thin, springy boards on their feet, and they sort of coast down the mountain riding on nothing but the snow.”

“Wow,” Jimmy said, trying to imagine just how much snow would have to fall in order for it to heaped around the walls of their classroom to that level. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it was possible, though he’d certainly seen the pictures of the great mountain ranges on Earth, such as the Grand Tetons and the Himalayas. If the snow didn’t melt every summer season, it would build up over thousands of years to form giant bodies of ice called glaciers.

Mars had some permanent ice at its poles, which Jimmy had also seen in pictures. But compared to some of Earth’s glaciers, Martian ice was puny. Though, maybe, if the terraforming worked as planned, that wouldn’t be true forever? Jimmy tried to imagine the slopes of Olympus Mons having enough snow on them for riding down, using nothing but a pair of thin boards strapped to the bottoms of his feet.

“No, that’s a bad idea,” Tessa said. “Grandma says that you have to be asleep when Astronaut Nick visits, or you’re going to get passed by. He knows when you’re asleep, and when you’re awake.”

“I hope you get what you want,” he told Tessa honestly, letting his mind drift over the brief words he’d written in his message.

That night, Jimmy was even more restless than usual. He tossed and turned in his little bunk, his mind trying to unravel the trick of how any astronaut could land at Olympus Mons in a rocket sleigh, sneak into the center living complex without being seen, and leave gifts for those children who’d written him to ask for something. Tessa had told Jimmy that the old Earth legend of Saint Nicholas supposedly had the man sliding down the chimneys of fireplaces—in order to lay packages and toys beneath decorated conifer trees brought specifically into the house for the occasion.

Jimmy found the idea of trying to fit down something as narrow or as filthy as a chimney—the school library said it was equivalent to a spaceship exhaust—unnerving at best. Wouldn’t the man get claustrophobia? Wouldn’t he run out of air? How could his space suit possibly fit, especially with the bulky helmet?

The more Jimmy thought about it, the more he began to suspect that the entire idea was just a lot of wishful thinking, which made him even more homesick than usual. He scrunched his head into his pillow and quietly wept, so that his parents in the next compartment would not hear him. He was too big to be like a baby. This was his hurt, and his hurt alone, to deal with. It wasn’t fair that he’d had to leave Ceres, but he wasn’t going to let his parents know. They certainly weren’t going to change their minds—they’d talked non-stop about how exciting and wonderful Mars was.

The hatch to his bunk compartment was slightly open, as it always was. But this time there was a different sort of light streaming in. Not the usual pale yellow of the night light that illuminated the way to the tiny family latrine, but a more subtle green and red, alternating every few seconds, like the flashing of an emergency beacon. Only those tended to be orange, and this light was much more gradual. Green, slowly dimming and transforming to red, then brightening, then dimming, slowly transforming to green, then brightening, and so on and so forth.

Jimmy watched the light for a long time, his fuzzy senses not quite able to register what the light might mean.

Then he remembered that this was supposed to be Astronaut Nick’s night, and Jimmy’s heart instantly quickened its pace.

Jimmy had to find out. He slid carefully out of his bunk, his feet resting on the deck. He slid his slippers on and padded deftly to the hatch, cracking it open on its hinge so that he could get a better look. Across the hatchway, from the direction of the family living and dining area, the red-to-green-to-red light emanated. Jimmy stared at the closed doorway to his parents’ compartment, and then at the small latrine, and then back to the open hatch to the living and eating area.

There was a single bubble window in the east wall of the eating and dining area that had an unobstructed view of the Olympus Mons landing facility—where the big shuttles from the orbital cargo and space liners would occasionally put down. Jimmy had ridden in just such a shuttle when they’d come down from orbit. The ship he now saw sitting on the nearest pad looked nothing like a shuttle.

It looked for all the world like an oversized sleigh—something from out of the history pictures of Earth. Only this sleigh had been extensively modified, to include a kind of canopy over the seat where a driver might sit at the front. There was no team of horses—not even reindeer, as Father Christmas was reputed to have used in legend. But the snow was falling more heavily than Jimmy had ever seen it since coming to Mars. Enough so that a little heap of it was crusted over the top of the window bubble, and the red and green running lights of the odd-looking ship on the pad reflected off a million little crystal mirrors as the flakes slowly fell.

Jimmy snuck to the main hatch to the family compartment and hesitated, wondering if his exit would trip an alarm. Back on Ceres, all of the family housing had alarms that activated if ever the children left their family quarters without being cleared by a parent first.

Jimmy touched his hand to the palm reader at the door, and the hatch slid quietly to the side, no alarm to wake Jimmy’s parents.

Jimmy stepped out into the corridor beyond, his eyes still transfixed on the picture of the sleigh-like craft resting on the pad. Then the hatch slid shut, and Jimmy was left to contemplate whether what he’d just seen was real, or illusion.

He walked softly—but quickly—down the corridor, his ears keenly listening for the first hint of an adult’s footsteps. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was engaging in something illicit. As if being discovered would merit the severest of punishments. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to know, about the other-worldly craft he’d seen on the pad. He wasn’t even sure he wasn’t dreaming, or sleepwalking.

But his feet kept moving. Down the corridor, through an intersection, down another corridor, through yet another intersection, and on and on, until finally Jimmy found himself at the main observation dome that overlooked the landing pad proper.

Jimmy had not been imagining things. The sleigh still sat there, its red and green running lights slowly oscillating in a hypnotic fashion.

Jimmy spun and flattened against the railing that ringed the interior deck of the dome—his heart in his throat.

The man was wearing a space suit with extra room in the middle, for his prodigious belly. The suit had shiny black boots, and the cuffs and waist ring and neck ring were bright white, while the suit itself was a deep, cheerful red. He had a similarly-colored helmet under one of his arms, and his face was covered in a very short, but also very dense layer of white beard, with an accompanying moustache under his nose. A pair of antique spectacles were drawn up close to his eyes, and he was bald on top, save for a ring of dense, closely-cut white hair that ran from one ear, around the back, to the other ear. His cheeks were pink and he seemed to be amused about something.

“Who—who—?” Jimmy tried to say, but his words came out in a cracked squeak.

“Who do you think, James?” the man said, his mouth splitting in a full grin.

“James?” Jimmy said, tasting the name on his tongue. Tessa had been right, only Jimmy’s Mom ever called him that—or occasionally, his Dad, when Dad was angry. Which seldom ever happened. Jimmy didn’t like to get in trouble.

“Ordinarily,” the man said, “I don’t like having you youngsters interrupt me in the middle of my business, but it just so happens that I was coming to find you—or, it seems you found me. Your request was definitely on the unusual side. I wanted to talk to you about it, to be sure you knew what you were asking me for.”

“You can … take me back home?” Jimmy whispered, his heart hammering at his ribs. “You can fly me to Ceres?”

“Ceres, or the moons of Jupiter, or even all the way to Pluto, if you want,” the man said. “Nothing’s impossible for Astronaut Nick, you know.”

“Then … you’re real!” Jimmy exclaimed, taking two steps away from the railing and examining his interrogator more closely. The man was obviously old, by the looks of him, but Nick radiated a decidedly youthful vibe that was difficult for Jimmy to put his finger on. The eyes behind the spectacles were somewhat crowded by folds of skin, but they sparkled with energy and hints of wisdom.

“Of course I’m real!” Astronaut Nick said, bursting out with a huge chuckle that seemed to begin at his belt and boom up and out through his throat. Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Jimmy glanced around, waiting for another adult to appear and ruin the magic. But no such adult—nor even another child—materialized.

“Now then, young man,” Nick said, “let’s get down to business, shall we? I’ve got a lot more to do before my work is through. And if you’re going to Ceres, there’s no time to lose. So, just to be clear, you really want to go back? That’s your wish? You wouldn’t like, say, a model space liner kit, or one of the new three-dee video game packs? Something like that?”

“No, it’s not. And it never will be. Please, Astronaut Nick, take me back to my friends on Ceres. Take me to where I belong!”

The man in the suit seemed to consider Jimmy for a moment, then he took a step towards Jimmy and slapped his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.

For the first time, Jimmy noticed that Astronaut Nick had a huge, red, velvet-fabric sack resting on the deck behind him. It appeared to be filled with square and rectangular items.

“How else are we going to get you to out of the airlock, and to my sleigh?” he said. “Do they have vacuum suits your size here?”

“Exactly,” Nick said. “So, if you will simply crawl in, please, we’ll be on our way.”

Astronaut Nick opened the mouth of the sack as wide as he could, and Jimmy stepped hesitantly toward it. All he had on were his one-piece pajamas and a pair of slippers. He’d not thought seriously enough about what might happen if Astronaut Nick actually came to fulfill Jimmy’s wish. What would his parents think when they woke up in the morning and Jimmy was gone?

“Come on now,” Nick said, frowning with impatience. “If you’re getting cold feet, just say so, and I’ll let you be. Astronaut Nick is a busy guy, and there’s plenty of other children across the solar system who need my attention tonight.”

“No!” Jimmy said. “I don’t want to stay. Okay, I’ll climb into the sack. Just promise me this won’t hurt.”

“You won’t feel a thing,” Astronaut Nick said, keeping the mouth of the sack held open wide.

Jimmy stared at the sack, feeling himself teetering on the knife’s edge of his indecision, then practically threw himself at the sack, and was promptly swallowed up as he fell an unlikely distance down into a massive pile of wrapped packages.

Space wasn’t like Jimmy remembered it. There was no tedious countdown, no painful waiting as traffic control cleared the launch, then the shuttle ride, then the long period of docking. One moment Jimmy felt and saw the mouth of the sack close over his head, the next he felt himself being lifted and hefted, and then the next he was being set down, and the mouth of the sack opened back up.

Only, by the time he peeked out, he was staring at the cold blackness of the night sky, with stars all around. The sack was sitting on the floor of the upper deck of Astronaut Nick’s sleigh—the part which Jimmy had previously seen, and which was covered by a single-piece dome canopy. Nick himself was still clad in his space suit, this time with the helmet on, and he was rapidly waving his black gloves through a series of holographic control screens that floated in his lap.

“Nor should you,” Astronaut Nick said. “At the gees we pull, if you felt anything, you’d be turned to jelly!”

Nick kept working, then noticed his companion’s horrified expression, and he burst out with another Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! which didn’t sound any less loud even though it was coming through Nick’s helmet speakers.

“Don’t worry, James,” Astronaut Nick said. “In three hundred years of doing this, I’ve never had so much as a single accident. Isn’t that right, Chief Engineer?”

An improbably small person—also clad in a space suit very similar to Nick’s—suddenly popped into view. From whence the person had come, Jimmy couldn’t tell, but the voice was that of a cartoon character.

Jimmy watched as the little person hopped up onto the seat next to Nick, pulled up a series of holographic controls, and began to go to work right alongside Nick himself. The view through the little person’s helmet didn’t give Jimmy the greatest profile, but he saw an old man’s face with a beard and a moustache, and oversized, inhumanly pointed ears.

“It’s not polite to point, James,” said the smallish, space-suited creature. Jimmy watched as the Chief Engineer waved his little hands through numerous flashing diagrams and displays, tapping out instructions pantomime-fashion. A series of holo windows all blinked bright green, and the little man stood up and gave Astronaut Nick a proper salute.

“Thank you,” Nick said cheerfully, and then the little creature vanished—presumably through a hatch in the floor that James couldn’t see, since he was still staring over the edge of the sack in which he sat.

Jimmy had no time to prepare, as suddenly Nick’s finger zinged through a series of holographic triggers, and all the stars in space flashed like camera bulbs. They froze at that point, and grew even brighter, then they ran and smeared like melting wax across a black velvet canvas.

Jimmy’s stomach wasn’t happy with the accompanying sensation, and he slapped a palm over his mouth to keep from making a mess in Astronaut Nick’s sleigh, when just as quickly, the stars all snapped back to normal and Jimmy’s stomach righted itself.

In the distance, a dark sphere blotted out part of the view, with a thin crescent showing along one side where the sun reflected. In patches across the sphere’s black side, clusters of lights shone brightly. Familiar clusters of lights.

Nick merely kept manipulating his control holographs, and the view shifted dramatically as Nick’s sleigh zoomed down to the surface of the asteroid at an improbable speed. There was barely any sound, other than a variably-pitched humming that seemed to correspond with the sleigh’s motion through space. Eventually the sleigh came to rest on a pad not too unlike the one back at Olympus Mons, and Nick looked down at Jimmy as Jimmy sat perched in Nick’s sack.

“Yes! Yes!” Jimmy said, almost jumping up and down on the heap of gifts that had been cushioning him during the ride.

Jimmy nodded eagerly, then held his breath for an instant while Nick shut the mouth of the sack tight. Again Jimmy felt himself being lifted, hefted, and carried. To eventually be set down on a flat surface some time later, after passing through what sounded like—in the muffled confines of the sack—several airlock cycles.

They’d landed on the pad nearest to where Jimmy’s quarters had been—he knew this part of Ceres well enough that he probably could have walked through it blindfolded. As on Mars, there were no adults, nor even any children. Jimmy reveled in the miniscule gravity, and somersaulted his way down one of the corridors, whooping with joy at the freedom of his movements. No more clunky, plodding steps. Jimmy soared like a bird, artfully pushing off here and there as his toes and fingertips made contact. Given time, he’d have gradually settled to the deck. But on Ceres, even children possessed the strength of men, and Jimmy celebrated his return with an unselfconscious display of microgravity acrobatics that would have done any seasoned spacer proud.

Astronaut Nick trailed behind, his helmet off and clipped to a tether at his waist, while he towed his large sack of presents from another tether. Nick’s movements were much more reserved, but no less deft. He kept pace with Jimmy despite Jimmy’s headlong rush for home.

Finally, they arrived at the hatchway to Jimmy’s parents’ quarters. Jimmy slapped his hand on the palm reader and laughed as the door slid open, allowing Jimmy to spring inside and carom off one of the walls. They had a spectacular star roof which had been left open, allowing natural light to flood in through the centimeters-thick, ultraviolet-blocking vacuum glass.

Jimmy gradually came to rest against one of the walls, and when he was done catching his breath—the exhilaration of the moment having been almost too much to stand—his brow furrowed.

“What’s the issue, James?” Astronaut Nick said, allowing himself to slowly sink to the deck, along with his cargo.

“Yes?” Nick said, a white eyebrow raised over the top of the rim for his spectacles.

“It’s home,” Jimmy said. “But … it’s not home. I don’t get it. This is where we used to live. And look at how much room there is here! We have three compartments, and that’s not even including where we sleep! But … it’s too … it’s too empty.”

“Yes,” Jimmy admitted. “The furniture is gone, my Mom’s paintings aren’t on the wall, Dad’s Wall Ball trophy isn’t over in the corner in its case, and there isn’t the smell of bread baking in the bread maker.”

“Well, of course,” Astronaut Nick said. “Your request was pretty clear. You said you wanted to go back to Ceres—that you wanted to go home. So, here we are. This is home.”

“But it’s … it’s not the same!” Jimmy said, feeling more and more uneasy with each passing moment. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I wanted to come home to the way things were before we left! I wanted it to be just like it used to be. I don’t want to be stuck here with a bunch of empty rooms!”

“No!” Jimmy blurted. “I never want to go back there! I hate it at Olympus Mons!”

“Well,” the man in the red and white space suit said, “you’d better get used to living by yourself. You won’t have your family here to take care of you. Some of your old friends are present, but then, it’s been awhile since you left, and some of your old friends have moved on as well. There are other colonies in the solar system, you know. Not everybody gets to stay in the same place. In fact, most people don’t.”

Jimmy stared up through the star roof, his eyes beginning to brim with tears. He’d dreamt of this moment for so long, and now that he was finally getting to have his wish, he was realizing that maybe what he’d wished for, wasn’t going to be possible after all? No matter if Astronaut Nick was real, and could perform spaceflight miracles.

“You know,” Astronaut Nick said, “it’s really not too late for me to get you back to Mars. If we’re quick about it, we might even get you back in time for you to crawl into bed before your parents know you’re gone. That thing you feel in your stomach right now—the sadness—just think how your mother and father will feel when they wake up and you’ve gone, James. They won’t know where you are or what’s happened to you. There isn’t even a note to tell them.”

Jimmy felt his throat close up. He wrapped himself into a ball on the floor of his empty, silent former home, and began to cry.

Eventually he felt a strong hand touch his shoulder. Astronaut Nick’s voice was calm, deep, and gentle.

“James,” he said, “I’ve given a lot of boys and girls their wishes over the years. Not every wish is always meant to work out the way you think it should work out. Now, I’ll ask you one more time—yes or no—do you want to stay here on Ceres?”

Jimmy held his arms across his chest, not looking at anything. His eyes were shut tight, and the liquid that spilled from them was hot.

“I want it to be like it was,” he sobbed, his nose stuffed up. “I want my old life back!”

“I know,” Astronaut Nick said, maintaining his firm grip on Jimmy’s shoulder, “but one of the things you’re going to learn quickly as you get older, is that things are always changing. You will always remember how wonderful the past was—and these memories will be like treasure in your heart. But there isn’t any way to go back. Not really. Because you will change too. The you that used to live here, he’s already gone. There’s a new you waiting to come to life, at Olympus Mons. If you’ll stop being stubborn, and let it happen.”

“Nobody likes me there,” Jimmy sniffed. “They all think I’m a stupid, clumsy klutz.”

“Nobody?” Astronaut Nick said, a hint of amusement in his tone. “Don’t be too sure about that. Let me read you something I got in my e-mail not long before I came to visit you.”

Jimmy vaguely sensed Astronaut Nick rummaging for something in a pouch strapped to his thick, red-colored leg. He brought out a small touch pad and used his thickly-gloved fingers to deftly slide and tap along the pad’s surface, until a white screen with text on it glowed up into Nick’s old face.

“Let’s see, this comes from someone named Contessa Canfield—a classmate of yours if I am not mistaken. I’d been expecting her to ask for a set of super blocks building modules, which she’s been dying for since her birthday, but you know what she asked for instead? Let me read this. She said: Dear Nick, please help Jimmy Carrico to be happy. He’s my new friend at school and no matter what I do I can’t cheer him up. Not even telling him about you makes him smile. I’ll give up anything you were going to bring me this year if you can find a way to help Jimmy be happy. Thanks, Tessa.”

“She did,” Astronaut Nick said, turning off the pad and sliding it back into the pouch on his leg; then zipping the pouch closed.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to Mars, James? Seems there’s more than two people who’ll miss you an awful lot if you’re not there to see them tomorrow. Any girl who’d give up presents in the hope that she could bring joy to a new friend, is someone I’d say is worth keeping by your side. Not many children grasp the true meaning of Christmas. I think Tessa is one of them.”

Jimmy felt a new lump form in his throat. He debated his choices, staring around him at the barren walls of his former house.

“Yes,” Astronaut Nick said, “but that’s also something you’re going to have to get used to. Just as your Mom and Dad got used to it. Just as every adult gets used to it. But just because something is hard, doesn’t mean you won’t ever be happy. In fact, you just might find that the harder something is, once you get through it, the happier you can be on the other side. Because happiness isn’t a time or a place, James. Happiness is in here.”

“It’s also in the other souls with whom you share this universe. You’re not old enough yet to really understand, but someday very soon, I think you will. You just have to trust an old man to know what’s he’s talking about. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy snuffled, “okay, I think I get it. Maybe. Mom, Dad, Tessa, I don’t want them to be sad. And they’d be sad if I was gone. And now that I’m here, I am realizing here is gone too.”

Jimmy rolled out of his bunk and came to rest lightly on his feet, his balance a bit unsteady. He’d spent much of the night enjoying Ceres’ gravity. Being suddenly back in Mars gravity was unsettling. But also, strangely, for the very first time, comforting too.

Jimmy pulled himself up and walked—thud-footed—out of his chamber and into the family living and dining area. The heady smell of freshly-baked bread hit his nose, and Dad had put some music on the surround sound speakers. Something cheerful, with bells in it. A tune Jimmy suspected he’d heard before, but couldn’t quite place.

“Good morning, Jim,” Dad said, perched over by the bubble window. “You really should come see this.”

Jimmy walked slowly over and then leaned into the window, his eyes scanning about.

There were space-suited figures wandering around outside. Adults and children alike. A thick blanket of white fluff covered the ground to a depth of several centimeters. One of the adults was wadding a packet of the snow in her hands, then playfully flung it at one of the children. Promptly, all of the children stooped to collect snowballs of their own, and almost immediately a spectacular multi-target barrage of hurled projectiles ensued.

One of the children saw Jimmy and his parents looking out through their bubble. The space-suited child loped over to stand at the window.

“I don’t know,” Mom said, suddenly getting a better look at Jimmy in the morning light. “Your eyes are puffy and it looks like you’ve been crying. Do you have a cold?”

“I’m okay,” Jimmy said. “Really. I’m alright. Let me go rinse up and use the latrine, and I’ll be fine.

Five minutes later, Jimmy was at the same observation dome where he’d stood the night before—or thought he’d stood the night before, when Astronaut Nick had first made his acquaintance. Ten minutes after that, Jimmy was outside in a suit of his own, running in the kangaroo-hop fashion all the other children had learned to adopt since coming to Mars, until he too was engaged in the great snowball war which had come to the slopes of Olympus Mons.

When things quieted down, Tessa and Jimmy found themselves paired off and walking over to the landing pad where the big shuttles ordinarily touched down.

Jimmy hadn’t dared speak a word of his experience to his new friend. He wasn’t sure she’d believe him—because he wasn’t sure he’d believe him, either. The memory of the prior night was already becoming soft around the edges, and tinged with the flavor of dreams. Of course it wasn’t possible that Jimmy had actually ridden in a hyperspace sleigh back to Ceres, when the journey from Ceres to Mars, and vice versa, ordinarily took weeks. Even when Ceres and Mars were closest to each other in their orbits around the sun.

She and Jimmy loped up to see what it was. They found what appeared to be a large, green-and-red, striped stocking, containing numerous thin, red-and-white striped sticks, each wrapped in plastic. There was a little colorful hand-written tag attached to the stocking that said: For Contessa and James, soon-to-be best friends. Merry Christmas, Nick.

They passed the gift stocking between them, examining the solidly tangible feeling of the candy canes between their gloved feelings.

In times of old when days grew cold and nights grew long and no one went outside much, rewarding well-behaved, cooped-up kids at Yule time made good sense.

But what about those naughty kids? They could really get carried away back then! Mercedes Lackey wrestles with that notion in this special Secret World Chronicle installment.

—KO

Back | Next
Framed