But although the city looked like Earth, it smelled as dry and alkaline as all the rest of Mars.
I found the ticket office easily enough and went in. The young clerk barely glanced up at me. "Yes?" he said.
"I want to inquire about tickets to Earth," I said.
My hands were sweating, and I could feel my heart pounding too fast against my ribs. But my voice sounded casual, just the way I wanted it to sound.
"Tickets?" the clerk said. "How many?"
"Two. How much would they cost? Everything included."
"Forty-two eighty," he said. His voice was still bored. "I could give them to you for the flight after next. Tourist class, of course...."
We didn't have that much. We were at least three hundred short.
"Isn't there any way," I said hesitantly, "that I could get them for less? I mean, we wouldn't need insurance, would we?"
He looked up at me for the first time, startled. "You don't mean you want them for yourself, do you?"