The inaugural launch of the Glass Slipper had just begun. Below, on the planet surface and in the lobby of the Holiday Inn, everyone breathing was under some contractual obligation of confidentiality with Marilyn Monroe, aka Electoral, not to shoot images. The media had offered over a million credits for any renegade employee willing to break the rules and send footage of the transparent glider. Marilyn had quickly made the offer moot on a number of levels: legal, financial, and personal consequences awaited anyone who defied her. She also maintained her ultimate trump card: her ability to invade and manipulate any digital signal sent out from this fourth rock from the sun.

Mars was currently nine light-minutes away from earth. The artificial intelligence promised she could use that time to stop any illegal images. She wasn't kidding. In the event her more subtly invasive techniques proved insufficient, she also had heavy-duty, high power electromagnetic pulse weapons scattered over the surface, as well as in orbit. She was confident her shielding would hold. No one would see this first flight.

The flight attendant warned, "We ask our most sensitive passengers to close their eyes for the next few minutes as we launch from the pad. The low gravity should make the ride very smooth. We can provide a small face mask if anyone prefers to avoid watching the launch." Everyone except Gerard would have paid to see this. In the low gravity, falling never felt that scary. Free-fall back on earth was like jumping off a ledge or a springboard into a pool. Here, it felt like walking down steps of a pool into deeper water.

In the back of the Glass Slipper, heavy metal inductance coils, compressed by large clamps, were armed against the docking station. Once the clamps were released, the expanding coils would push the Glass Slipper gently for several seconds.

"Hold on!" Captain Manning instructed the passengers. "This will be fun."

There was a loud thump, and a kick of gravity pushing the guests lightly against the back of their chairs. The Slipper began to accelerate down the ramp, the wheels emitting both a low rumble tinged with a high-pitched squeal. Below the deck, acceleration magnets used the movement of the glider to gently push and further accelerate the Glass Slipper. Soon they reached 40 kilometers-per-hour. The glider took twelve long seconds to accelerate and leave the upward edge of the ramp. Since everyone was sitting over a floor made of glass, they saw the edge of the ramp replaced by a rocky mountainside. Seconds later, the nose of the glider was not flying. Instead, it was moving faster and faster parallel to the side of the Mons on its way to the hotel.

As the glass ship slid down under the pull of the faint gravity, it slowly accelerated in its parallel path down the slope, but no air was there to slow it down. The screen above the command chairs posted a speed of 150 kilometers-per-hour and increasing. They were flying directly parallel to the side of the Olympus Mons. The horizon of the planet remained high up above their heads, giving each passenger the impression they were traveling over the ground when in fact they were speeding toward the planet.

At some point, the red rocky ground below the Slipper moved so fast that it began to blur. The transparent floor, which would have been a delight at altitude, was an exercise in terror. They were speeding toward the nets of the roof of the hotel. This was not for the faint of heart. In the hotel lobby, the view would also be breathtaking as the polymer craft approached.

The Slipper continued to gain speed, and at the last possible moment, when it seemed like the crash with the hotel was unavoidable, the pilots pulled on their sticks and the Slipper curved up and launched in the Martian sky as the wings bent in the wind.

"Here we go," said the pilot as he pulled his lever toward him. The long wings bent upward at each tip as the Martian wind, such as it was, began to support the craft. The trajectory went from sliding at a fixed altitude over the side of the Mons to a low quasi-orbit. The horizon high above their heads began to slide down, past the nose of the Glider, where it continued to drop as they left the Mons surface into the sky.

In the craft, weightlessness returned for a minute before the ship's trajectory flattened along with the real horizon ten kilometers up in the cold gas. Silent thrusters ignited, pushing the glider to an even greater speed. While the trajectory was that of a giant roller-coaster, the accelerations seemed much weaker because of the low gravity. Every passenger was gripping something or someone.

"Shooting for the hotel, how wise!" sneered Gerard to himself. The other passengers cheered. "Stupid, stupid, stupid . . ." mumbled Gerard, though he was impressed.

Above the bar in the Glass Slipper, amongst the bottles clipped into place, a speedometer read 2,345 kilometers per hour. As the ship climbed back up, the unobstructed view of Mars was beyond description. From within the Slipper, one felt like a bird. There was much more than the eye could see. No one, including the members of the staff, could talk. For several minutes, the craft rose silently in the faint atmosphere. The sound of wind against the hull was reassuring.

As it rose, slowly the faint gravity returned in the craft. In the silence provided by the Slipper, this hostile, alien new world appeared tamed and beautiful. The planet was an endless red desert. From this altitude, on the ground were endlessly varied shades of red and orange, coupled with equally varied geological formations. This was a planet of wonders. No human in the year 2072 could take this voyage without feeling like a speck of sand lost in the majesty of time and space. At this speed, the thickened atmosphere helped stabilize the glider, giving the pilots more control over the vessel.

With one exception, none of the passengers could take their eyes off the stunning landscape. Gerard was eyeing the little microwave. Even the hostesses were at first unable to muster the strength to unclip from their seats. Slowly the glider went up to ten thousand feet, and the rear thrusters were cut.

Classical music began to play. It filled the silence. In space, nothing else made sense.

The peaceful views of the red landscape helped Gerard tolerate his predicament. He was sitting on a glass seat, in a glass box, and moving at breathtaking speeds over a different planet. What could go wrong? The experience was unique, to say the least. The attendant clipped out, pushed a button, and uncorked a bottle of champagne.

"You may now get up and move about the cabin. We ask only that you keep in mind the fragile balance of this ship. Remember that we are in a glider, not a plane. Just don't all rush to one side at the same time." She smiled in vain attempt to remove the implied threat from her words.

Gerard grabbed a glass of champagne, it's upper edge was curved to help keep the liquid contained in the low gravity. He downed it in a single gulp and replaced his glass with a new one from the silver platter. He knew the beverage was the real thing. He looked at the bottle. It was one of the 2066 Petrus. They had used a thousand credit bottle for this dry run; at least they spared no expense. He finally looked below his feet at the land slipping past below. He could not believe it, he was on mars drinking French Champagne. What came next would hopefully be even better, he knew the menu; he had crafted it. As the microwaved warmed the appetizers, a pleasant smell filled the cabin.

His mind began to wander. He should never have signed up for this mission. He owed his ex-wife alimony, and a year here would pay off all his debts. He was doing this for his children back on earth. He missed them. Mars had that strange effect on people, nostalgia. The crew distributed an appetizer of fresh Atlantic salmon. "This is actually good!" said a passenger to Gerard, knowing he was the chef. "Salmon, here? Flown in?" Everyone laughed before Gerard had a chance to answer. His coworkers were trying to help him manage his stress.

Praises from billionaires would be a different thing. The chef's mood brightened when he noticed the warmed appetizers stuck well to the platter. That was one of the key factors in their selection, the other being a lack of loose particles that might tend to float. He looked around in the air of the ship and confirmed to his satisfaction that there was no loose debris.

The Glider left on a west-south-west trajectory. Seven minutes later, after aiming for the large sister mountains, which appeared small in comparison to Olympus, the Glider reached a midpoint between Ascraeus and Pavonis Mons. These were the only two bumps on this flat landscape.

Then he saw it. Others pointed. In the distance could be seen the western lip of what most called Dante's seven rings of hell, the deep Valles Marineris. This was where, two months ago, all of the members of an expedition had died, vaporized by the rarest of geological occurrences. As the ship began to arc around Mons Pavonis, Hell seemed to be their true destination. The hair on Gerard's neck rose. He could not shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly awry. Judging by the eerie silence in the ship, others shared his feeling. Gerard had great eyesight and could see, even from this distance, details in the relief of the surface. Gerard had exceptional sight, few knew this fact.

"Commander?" said the world-famous voice of Marilyn Monroe. She spoke softly and privately in the earpiece of the pilot. "May I intrude for a moment on this epic journey?" Pilot Manning looked around; he alone was receiving the communication.

"Yes?" he said.

"I would like you to alter your flight plan, a two-minute delay only."

"Why?" The co-pilot looked at Manning, a questioning expression on his face. The protocol was simple, Manning wasn't supposed to exclude him from any conversation. Manning looked at his co-pilot, gave him a thumbs-up and moved his lips to say “Marilyn.” The co-pilot nodded back.

"Sadly, I am not at liberty to disclose that. I need you to alter your route. All I can say is, ‘to be continued.’" He had no clue.

"This is a test, we can't deviate from the flight path, that's precisely why we are here. Weather?"

"Joe, you know me. I never cry wolf. You must trust me on this one. The last human who waved away my warnings was vaporized."

"Talk to flight control if you have a concern."

"I have," said the female voice, "they are equally stubborn. You humans are quite the lot."

"I cannot change the course, it's not up to me."

"Regulation CMR 1.031 gives a craft captain all authority over the flight plan. I have uploaded a new flight route into your system. Please believe me, you should follow it. Please don't die today."

"Why don't you simply take over the automatic guidance, if it is this important?"

"I would if I could. I am bound not to interfere. I should not even be giving you this warning."

The Commander was unclear what she meant. He looked around. There was no sign of any problem on the horizon. Mars was silent, and his ship in perfect working condition. "Marilyn, I wish . . . ."

"I understand. I wonder how human parents can ever educate their children." She was obviously annoyed. "If I told you the crew is in danger of death, would that change anything?"

"It would. What is the danger?"

"Sadly, I cannot say."

"Seriously?"

"Captain, you should trust me, I may one day be allowed to discuss specifics, but for the moment, I cannot. I reached out to you in this earpiece in great peril of a fragile peace. You personally knew Corvas, right? Minutes before his mission, I also warned him. Like you he ignored me, and the rest, as they say, is history."

"I trust you, but you don't expect me to simply turn around and jeopardize my career because you asked nicely and hinted at some unsaid danger, right?"

"Yes." The pilot thanked her, made small talk and he continued the flight without a change to the flight path. The Valles stood ahead. Manning clicked a button and relayed the conversation to the base making sure none of the passengers heard. The base confirmed she had also called and tried to warn them to abort. "Listen," began Manning, "I trust her." The beautiful scenery around him now radiated menace. He tried to smile to the co-pilot. Both men were now nervous, the digital creature wasn't one to warn lightly.

"Manning," said the base, "she does not like humans to steal part of her show."

"Still, maybe . . . ."

"In case of any minor deviation from the plan, you have full authority to return to base. If you don't finish the orbit and land anywhere from the dock on the other side of this mountain, we won't be able to return the Slipper for a launch this year."

"Sounds reasonable." The glide across the martian sky continued. Above them, Deimos shone brightly enough to distinguish its surface features. The deformed orbiting moon lit the dark sky and cast a moving shadow over the ground. The ride was as smooth as skating on ice.

The only man-made structure, a research post at the edge of the Valles, shimmered in the distance. It rested against the edge of the Valles, a dark slice in the surface. A very faint stack of smoke was still visible behind it.

"Why are we going there of all places?" asked Gerard, pointing at the smoke. "Are we looking for trouble?" No one paid him any attention.

"What type of food is this?" replied a guest grabbing something from a platter.

Gerard did not answer, the attendant did. "Pesto Escargot!" The man choked after learning of the type of protein.

"This is your Captain speaking." The man was only a few feet away from his passengers. He needed no intercom but used it anyway. "If you look to the left, you may be able to distinguish the antenna of the Electoral Center where Marilyn Monroe is broadcasting the 2072 competition. This is where the players, now only hours away from Mars, will go in a few days to play the last rounds of the incredible game we all love. And in my case, lost at. If anyone checks, I was kicked out at round two,” he added for levity. "Electoral Center is the tall black spike over there . . . at ten o'clock," Manning continued. "We are now heading over the Valles. On its edge, you can see the scientific outpost where a handful of researchers have . . . are studying the gassing stack. This is the source of the plume of smoke which arose this summer."

"Remind me about those parachutes,” someone piped up. “That must work wonders over that massive hole. Can someone confirm we are not plunging into Hell just for the fun of it?" The question was rhetorical.

The male attendant tapped Gerard on the shoulder. He handed him a pair of black Orbison glasses. "You have a call."

"A what?"

"You have a call." Gerard was stunned, no one had the money to call him from home. His grumpiness must have annoyed someone important. He took the glasses and put them on. Oil tycoons got calls, not him. This had to be extremely bad news. As he prepared mentally to speak to his brother and learn of the passing of his mother, the screens in the glasses lit up. Gerard slid the earpiece in.

"Don't talk, just listen," said Marilyn's voice as images of his home country formed ahead. He was back in France. He saw the creature called Electoral, the incarnation of Marilyn Monroe dressed in jeans and a simple shirt, on her knees between vines a pair of tweezers in hand. She was tying ropes to the base of old vines before the grape season. Gerard knew this place, it was his father's own backyard in the southern region of Marseilles. She removed her gloves, put down the sheers and spoke. "If anyone on the plane asks, I am your brother giving you bad news." Electoral had a reputation for being mysterious, but Gerard was shocked to the core nonetheless. After flying over Mars, he suddenly found himself back in his father's backyard. Gerard's knuckles clutched the chair arm as if to remind himself of where he truly was.

"I was opposed to the building of this polymer craft for reasons I cannot disclose to you at the moment. Don't be scared by what happens next. You are safe. In several hours, I will need your help with something. You will not watch the Presidential Challenge, I assume. Normally, without this call, you would refuse to help. Now that I have called and observed what comes next, I know you will help," she smiled as the man was desperately trying to make sense of the situation.

He was about to speak. She put her index to her lips, to remind him to be silent. "Why you?" she said. "I am trying to give you a reason to trust me later. I also agree with your assessment of the danger here. Man is showing very little respect and less humility for this new frontier. The ignorance and fearlessness of everyone around here is quite . . . let's say you are the only sane one around. I like that. We'll talk later. Just play along with these children. I will save your life now. You owe me, remember that." The glasses went dark.

Gerard was in shock. Had she just called this group children? He felt oddly vindicated, but the software bimbo was right, he had very little trust in her. Her call had piqued his interest.

Then, as if on cue, it hit.

The craft shook hard as if they were in heavy turbulence. The passengers felt it, and champagne went flying out of glasses in amorphous spheres as everyone bounced off their seats. Silverware and crystal glasses fell slowly back to the floor and bounced softly. The pilots kept their calm.

"Tower, we just felt a shake."

"Negative, Glass one."

"Tower, I confirm, one shake."

"The instrumentation shows no such disturbance."

"Tower, we felt strong turbulence."

"Fine, Glass one. We are investigating. What do you mean by a shake?"

As the pilot was about to respond, another wave of turbulence shook the Slipper. A stronger one. This felt more like a hit from a missile than atmospheric pressure variation. Captain Manning felt like the Slipper had just entered a zone of extremely dense atmosphere, like a vortex. This was not possible in such a thin atmosphere. That damn Marilyn had warned him, this was not a drill.

"Tower, a second bump. Stronger." The passengers tensed.

"Roger that. We are initiating emergency protocols on our end," said the voice over the intercom. "Please begin emergency landing protocol."

"What?"

"You heard me, Slipper one, we are taking no chances. We will drive to grab you guys wherever you land. Start distributing suits, masks, and gear."

Manning wanted to call Marilyn. He could almost hear the exasperation in her voice. It took no time for the pilot to instruct his crew. "Looks like we are lucky today, we are going to run the emergency protocols. Beautiful people, that's you, Johnny and Sarah, get the emergency gear out. Help our rich guests get suited up." His words were flippant, but nothing could hide their serious undertone. The hostesses were already opening little red safety bags.

"Tower, any idea of what this was?" asked Manning. In the distance, the door to Hell was getting closer. They were less than three minutes away from the edge of Valles Marineris.

"Passengers, we are not going close to the Valles at this point." The captain was trying to be reassuring.

Manning heard in his earpiece, "Instruments still show a clear ride on our end. Manning, give me something, what do you think this is? You're the expert."

"This is Mars. Back home I would think we hit a very focalized vortex of air or a large bird. Nothing seems damaged. No crashing sound. This was not atmospheric, I will tell you that much. My sky is perfectly clear."

A third shock hit the Glider. This time something in the mid-section cracked. The sound was like a fissure in an ice sheet. The force sent every person flying off his seat except for Gerard. The cook was in a strange mental place. He was looking at the scene with fear, but he remembered what Electoral had just told him. She'd said she would contact him.

"Told you so," grumbled Gerard to himself.

Manning spoke so everyone in his back could hear. "I need to depressurize this puppy as soon as possible. Hurry up and get those suits on to make sure you have air." He continued in the microphone. "Tower, I am requesting a flight change, we are going back home."

"Roger. You may correct course manually."

The passengers began suiting up. They all were well trained.

The glider slowly began to change course, turning to the left. The three Mons they had left behind them began to move back to the fore of the Slipper. "Tower, this is Slipper One. We are suited up. The turbulences have stopped. We are beginning depressurization." There was a silence. "Tower, you there?" A longer silence. The silence was much more stressful than the previous shockwaves.

"Tower, tower, come in." Manning decided against initiating the landing. Stuck hundreds of miles from base, they were as good as dead if no one could get to them in a couple of days. The fastest rover went twenty miles per hour.

Co-pilot Lui spoke. "Captain, orders?"

"Call Electoral." She would know what to do.

After a moment, a thick male voice came on the channel. "This is the Electoral Center, Georges speaking."

"Where is Marilyn?" asked the co-pilot surprised by the voice.

"Busy. What can I do for you?"

"Busy?" His reaction was instinctive. The software platform's CPU capacity was limitless. "How can she be busy?"

"Do we sound like a fucking travel agency? She does not want to talk to you. Is that better? She said she warned you, but you were too stubborn to listen. I picked up the call because I am not menopausal." Lui was shocked. He was speaking to the elusive creator of the artificial intelligence, who had just insulted his own creation.

"We are experiencing turbulence. We don't understand how that can be possible. In case of emergency, we may need to land next to you."

"Dude," the voice was clearly about to hang-up. "What you fuck?" The programmer was not really in a good mood. "Authorization granted on my end, God only knows what Marilyn will do. Try to get home if you can. Trust me, you better walk four hundred miles on this shitty rock than deal with her when she is this pissed off. Land here at your own risk, you have been warned."

This was a side of Electoral few had ever seen. The digital creature was extremely temperamental when dealing with intrapersonal matters. In the virtual world, she always appeared jovial and cooperative. She was an Olympic gold medal hypocrite, thought Manning to himself.

He turned, the passengers were in gear and all strapped in.

As Manning was weighing his options, the communication from the tower came in. "Slipper, sorry for the delay, we had to get earth's confirmation, and we are twenty seconds behind there. Your pressure seems to be holding. You are instructed to turn and try and fly back to base. Manning, we don't know where this crack is. Get Liu to use the hand laser to check for any breaches. We need you to turn the thrusters off, and manually bring back the Slipper on gliding mode alone. Go easy on her. We will call Electoral to request . . . ."

"No need," volunteered the Captain. His tone was that of a husband warning others away from his wife's fury. "We already have the green light from Georges to land there if we need to."

“Georges? The Georges?”

“Positive.”

The hostesses finished preparing the passengers for a crash landing. The glider turned very slowly; they were still high above the surface. Gerard, looking at the others in the vessel, saw one stand up, his eyes fixated on the Valles as if he could distinguish something invisible to the others. Then, the strangest thing happened. The screens in the slipper all lit up. A movie came on each screen, including the command station. It was the 2071 remake of Bloodsport, a B-series martial arts movie. Fighters were on a tatami mat, kicking each other's brains out.

"What . . ." The Captain looked up.

"Wow, that's so cool," said Gerard turning his gaze away from the Valles to the screen. "My favorite movie." This was no coincidence, thought Gerard.

Manning was unable to turn the movie off, but that was far from his first priority. With great finesse, he turned the Glider around the closest Mons and flew over the tall spike of the Electoral complex. It was surrounded by a round wall and black rock. After a couple of uneventful minutes, the co-pilot got up and went around shining a hand-held laser to check whether cracks had formed in the Slipper's hull. Reflecting light was helpful to see longitudinal breaks in the polymer.

The flight home to the pad on the Olympus Mons was, compared with these last minutes, relatively uneventful. The landing procedure required a mixture of grappling hooks and low-gravity elliptical drops. It was nothing short of landing a bird on an aircraft carrier. It was done under extremely stressful conditions.

"Welcome back, Slipper One. How was the ride?"

"I need a shower."

"We all do."

Gerard was puzzled. The Electoral participants were less than a day away and would land tomorrow. The Glider would obviously not be operational, and the Electoral platform was busy on different matters. As Gerard walked out of the Slipper, he passed the cockpit. The men were obviously upset about something.

He overheard one of them say, "What do you mean both orbital lasers are dead? How is that even possible?"

Gerard wondered what they were referring to.

The team saw a shuttle launch up in the air. Its destination was a satellite orbiting above. The word back at base was that something had gone wrong in the ship.