 Who is the 'dope' on Mars?
THE DOPE on Mars By JACK SHARKEY Somebody had to get the human angle on this trip ... but what was humane about sending me? Trip time is supposed to take 260 days (that's one way), so we're aimed toward where Mars will be (had better be, or else). He keeps bent low over a welded-to-the-wall (they call it the bulkhead, for some reason or other) table, scratching away with a ballpoint pen on the maps, and now and then calling numbers over a microphone to the pilot. The inertial gravities didn't bother me so much as the gyroscopic spin they put on the ship so we have a sort of artificial gravity to hold us against the curved floor. He is kind of squat, with a vulturish neck and close-set jet-black eyes that make him look rather mean, but he was pleasant enough, and said I could call him Pat. I still don't know Jones' first name, though Pat spoke to him, and it sounded like Flants. Also, I am one of the first five men in the history of the world to see the opposite side of the Moon, with a bluish blurred crescent beyond it that Pat said was the Earth. Actually, he explained to me, the screen is supposed to keep the image of space locked into place no matter how much we spin. I told him I hoped it didn't mean we'd land on Mars upside down. With Martian rime, Venusian slime, And a radioactive hoe.
 The narrator
 Kroger, the biochemist  Jones, the co-pilot  The narrator  Desmond, the pilot