At the Yutal Spaceport in New Hungary, Mars hundreds of bodies were flowing from a giant tin can that was being cooled by water jets shot on its surface. Among these arrivals was Redd, donned in the garb of the nine-to-fiver: polished leather shoes that carried the sun, sharp trousers ironed to a point, an overcoat that hung over a suit and tie like an ancient tribal bearskin, and, from the neck to the top of his head, a space helmet.

“Please do not remove your space helmet until after you have safely vacated the spaceport” was what the intercom told the crowd of people, the people already executing a revolt against the monotone voice. The main concern was if something decided to burst the bubble that protected the airport and all the air wooshed out. Space travel technology was advanced but the spaceports were still like air pockets on bubble wrap. Nine-to-fivers required air to arrive at their daily grinds alive.

Redd and the other people in the spaceport could see its leathery walls billowing like they were under the surface of a cubical ocean. A storm was forecast in New Hungary, Mars today.

Spacing made Redd sick, sick in his stomach, sick in his brain, and sick all through his toes and fingers. Spaceflight was the constant unnerving thump of a pair of angry nuclear engines, speckled with the sudden pop! of solar spittings from the sun warming the metal hull. Taking off or landing in a tin can made Redd want to tranquilize himself and forget the whole thing. So he always did.

“For health and safety reasons, passengers cannot tranquilize themselves in flight.” is what the space attendant says at the pre-flight safety presentation. Once an entire tin can had to do an emergency landing on an asteroid outlet due to growing engine temperatures. In the skirmish to “leave in an orderly manner, single-file” (as per the space attendants words) a tranquilized passenger was left behind snoozing a dream about running to the mountains to leave his family and become a monk. They cooked.

So Redd didn’t tranquilize himself, but instead drank a bottle of juice while hustling out of the airport. He wasn’t in a hurry, he still had twenty-minutes before his shift, but the general smell of spaceports gave him full-body queasiness. Redd was a man who’d never get his space legs.

The juice was in a bottle about the size of a Duracell D battery and splooshed around like laundry detergent choked in a graduated cylinder. It tasted like childhood orange and it clung to the throat as it went down. Redd loved it. He called it his calming juice, it was branded with a bright red label and a pink rabbit and called itself Duracell’s Senile Syrup.

Redd wasn’t the only one racing to rip off their helmet and squeeze down a baby bottle of calming juice. Most everyone was performing the ritual, and if they weren’t, they were tearing through handbags and backpacks to hunt down their medicines. A queue had formed at the vending machine that sold Duracell’s Senile Syrup in ten different flavours. It popped them out of Duracell D battery-sized hole like bullets from a gattling gun ammo reel.

The spaceport sung with the sound of juice being squeezed from little plastic tits. Already Redd was feeling the wave of calm reside over him as he arrived at the train station in the spaceport. How was it that he’d arrived here again? He knew he was at the spaceport train station waiting for the number 300 on platform twelve, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember how he’d got here. Everyone else at the train station with Redd felt the same way.

Through a large bay window in the spaceport, Redd could see a large tin can taking off, its thrusters decorating the base of the ship like a green dress made of bioluminescent algae. The dress gradually grew in length as it propelled the metal column through the lower cloud layer. A green glow gradually shrank away on the nimbostratus that had been breached by the nuclear leviathan. Redd invented an unpleasent scene in his mind where he is strapped to a seat in the tin can and it is violently rattling as it pushes through the atmosphere. Redd shuddered, he was glad he’s never had to fly in one of those.

As the number 300 pulled into the station the bubble wrap spaceport popped. The storm outside had been getting all excited and found the strength to throw large rocks around. Some of them were sharp, like Redd’s trousers. One particularly good throw by the storm had met spaceport skin with an infinitely sharp thorn. It made the same pop! sound as on spaceflights between Earth and Mars, followed by a gushing wind like someone had put a vacuum cleaner nozzle in both your ears.