Podkayne of Mars

I don't care what the electronics engineers say; there is a vast difference between a "piano" and a real piano. No matter if their silly oscilloscopes "prove" that the sound is identical. It is like the difference between being warmly clothed-or climbing up in your Daddy's lap and getting really warm.

I haven't been under house arrest all the time; I've been to the casinos, with Girdle and with Dexter Cunha, Dexter being the son of Mr. Chairman of the Board Kurt Cunha. Girdie is leaving us here, going to stay on Venus, and it makes me sad.

I asked her, "Why?"

We were sitting alone in our palatial salon. Girdle is staying in this same hilton, in a room not very different nor much larger than her cabin in the Tricorn, and I guess I'm just mean enough that I wanted her to see the swank we were enjoying. But my excuse was to have her help me dress. For now I am wearing (Shudder!) support garments. Arch supports in my shoes and tight things here and there intended to keep me from spreading out like an amoeba-and I won't say what Clark calls them because Clark is rude, crude, unrefined, and barbaric.

I hate them. But at 84 percent of one standard gee,

I need them despite all that exercise I took aboard ship. This alone is reason enough not to live on Venus, or on Earth, even if they~were as delightful as Mars.

Girdle did help me-she had bought them for me in the first place-but she also made me change my makeup, one which I had most carefully copied out of the latest issue of Aphrodite. She looked at me and said, "Go wash your face, Poddy. Then we'll start over."

I pouted out my lip and said, "Won't!" The one thing I had noticed most and quickest was that every female on Venus wears paint like a Red Indian shooting at the Good Guys in the sollies-even Maria and Maria wear three times as much makeup just to work in as Mother wears to a formal reception-and Mother doesn't wear any when working.

"Poddy, Poddy! Be a good girl."

"I am being a good girl. I learned that when I was just a child. And look at yourself in the mirror!" Girdie was wearing as High-styled a Venusberg face-do as any in that magazine.

"I know what I look like. But I am more than twice your age and no one even suspects me of being young and sweet and i

"You want me to look like a hick tourist!"

"I want you to look like Poddy. Come, dear, we'll find a happy medium. I grant you that even the girls your age here wear more makeup than grown-up women do on Mars-so we'll compromise. Instead of painting you like a Venusberg trollop, we'll make you a young lady of good family and gentle breeding, one who is widely traveled and used to all sorts of customs and ma

knows what is best for her-totally uninfluenced by local fads."

Girdle is an artist, I must admit. She started with a blank canvas and worked on me for more than an hour-and when she got through, you couldn't see that I was wearing any makeup at all.

But here is what you could see: I was at least two years older (real years, Mars years, or about six Venus years); my face was thi

"Satisfied?" she asked.

"I'm beautiful!"

"Yes, you are. Because you are still Poddy. All I've done is make a picture of Poddy the way she is going to be. Before long."

My eyes filled with tears and we had to blot them up very hastily and she repaired the damage. "Now," she said briskly, "all we need is a club. And your mask."

"What's the club for? And I won't wear a mask, not on top of this."

"The club is to beat off wealthy stockholders who will throw themselves at your feet. And you will wear your mask, or else we won't go."

We compromised. I wore the mask until we got there and Girdle promised to repair any damage to my face-and promised that she would coach me as many times as necessary until I could put on that lovely, lying face myself. The casinos are safe, or supposed to be-the air not merely filtered and conditioned but freshly regenerated, free of any trace of pollen, virus, colloidal suspension or whatever. This is because lots of tourists don't like to take all the long list of immunizations necessary actually to live on Venus; but the Corporation wouldn't think of letting a tourist get away unbled. So the hiltons are safe and

the casinos are safe and a tourist can buy a health insurance policy from the corporation fbr a very modest premium. Then he finds that he can cash his policy back in for gambling chips any time he wants to. I understand that the Corporation hasn't had to pay off on one of these policies very often.

Venusberg assaults the eye and ear even from inside a taxi. I believe in free enterprise; all Marsmen do, it's an article of faith and the main reason we won't federate with Earth (and be outvoted five hundred to one). But free enterprise is not enough excuse to blare in your ears and glare in your eyes every time you leave your own roof. The shops never close (I don't think anything ever closes in Venusberg) and full color and stereo ads climb right inside your taxi and sit in your lap and shout in your ear.

Don't ask me how this horrid illusion is produced. The engineer who invented it probably flew off on his own broom. This red devil about a meter high appeared between us and the partition separating us from the driver (there wasn't a sign of a solly receiver) and started jabbing at us with a pitchfork. "Get the Hi-Ho Habit!" it shrieked. "Everybody drinks Hi-Ho! Soothing, Habit-Forming. Deelishus! Get High with Hi-Ho!"

I shrank back against the cushions.

Girdie phoned the driver. "Please shut that thing off."

It faded down to just a pink ghost and the commercial dropped to a whisper while the driver answered, "Can't, madam. They rent the concession." Devil and noise came back on full blast.

And I learned something about tipping. Girdie took money from her purse, displayed one note. Nothing happened and she added a second; noise and image faded down again. She passed them through a slot to the driver and we weren't bothered any more. Oh, the

transparent ghost of the red devil remained and a nagging whisper of his voice, until both were replaced by another and just as faint~-but we could talk. The giant ads in the street outside were noisier and more dazzling; I didn't see how the driver could see or hear to drive, especially as traffic was unbelievably thick and heart-stoppingly fast and frantic and he kept cutting in and out of lanes and up and down in levels as if he were trying utmostly to beat Death to a hospital.

By the time we slammed to a stop on the roof of Dom Pedro Casino I figure Death wasn't more than half a lap behind.

I learned later why they drive like that. The hackle is an employee of the Corporation, like most everybody-but he is an "enterprise-employee," not on wages. Each day he has to take in a certain amount in fares to "make his nut"-the Corporation gets all of this. After he has rolled up that fixed number of paid kilometers, he splits the take with the Corporation on all other fares the rest of the day. So he drives like mad to pay off the nut as fast as possible and start making some money himself-then keeps on driving fast because he's got to get his while the getting is good.

Uncle Tom says that most people on Earth have much the same deal, except it's done by the year and they call it income tax.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree- Dom Pedro Casino is like that. Lavish. Beautiful.

Exotic. The arch over the entrance proclaims EVERY