Resignation
He'd only read a little more of the report when he laid the tablet down and grabbed the fone and called his secretary. "Book a flight to Mars as soon as you can get me there," he said.
He composed a letter to his daughter. "Dear Destiny," it said, "I wish you'd stay in touch. I'm in the middle of reading your fiancee's report and I see you're getting married. Please wait until I get there, I want to give my dau

Last weekend Mars, Ho! passed the magic 40,000 words, the number of words necessary for a science fiction work to be a novel.

This chapter goes between the present chapters seven and eight.

Movies
Destiny and me woke up at the same time the next morning. We cuddled a while, made love again, then made coffee and took a shower together while the robots made us steak and cheese omelettes and toast and hash browns. Destiny put on the news. There was something about a problem in one of the company's boat factories; some machinery malfunctioned and killed a guy. I sure took notice of that! They didn't really have much information about it, though

Heads
"Good morning, Mister Green."
"Good morning, Mister Osbourne. Ladies, gentlemen, I had a particularly trying day yesterday, as a few of you know," the CEO said, looking at his chief of engineering. "We have a serious problem in the company and it lands squarely in your laps. Folks, we're getting complacent and sloppy and it stops right here and right now or heads are going to roll.
"I

Ease
I guess Destiny had stayed up and read or something. I woke up about six, started coffee and was glad the robots were almost as good at cooking as they were bad at making coffee. Unless it had to do with barbecue sauce, and who has barbecue in space? Especially for breakfast?
Or pork, I remembered. I don't eat pork, it's too damned expensive these days and I like beef and chicken better, anyway, but George Wilson, one

Engineering
The company's co-founder, largest stockholder, and CEO was annoyed; this was certainly not his best day, golf aside. He'd spent too much time on the course and only had time for a little more of Knolls' report, and now he had to chew out that incredibly stupid chief engineer, who was knocking on his door and in danger of losing his job. This could have crippled the company. "Come in," the CEO said.
It seemed th

Note: There will be a chapter inserted between chapters nine and ten. Chapters have been renumbered in the manuscript.

First, I want to thank you folks for your suggestions, although I didn't see them until I logged in this morning. The answer came to me last night when I was sitting on my porch with a beer in my hand and several in my gut.

I'm having a math and physics problem: math and physics is getting in the way of the plot in Mars, Ho!

I originally thought it would be a six month trip, but math got in the way since they were getting gravity from propulsion. So I shortened it to a two month trip, and to do that I had to have Earth and Mars on opposite sides of the sun -- but orbital mechanics makes waiting shorten the time.

Junk
I felt pretty good the next day when I woke up. Destiny was still asleep, so I started coffee, told the robot to make breakfast and no robot coffee, damn it! And took a shower.
Huh? Bacon, eggs, and hash browns for two. Destiny would be awake by the time I got out of the shower. Huh? Why? Over easy. Christ, guys! What difference does it make how the God damned eggs are cooked?
Sh