The next afternoon Parkhill did some target practice in one of the dead cities, shooting out the crystal windows and blowing the tops off the fragile towers.
The captain caught Parkhiil and knocked his teeth out.
August 2001: THE SETTLERS
The men of Earth came to Mars.
They came because they were afraid or unafraid, because they were happy or unhappy, because they felt like Pilgrims or did not feel like Pilgrims.
There was a reason for each man.
They were leaving bad wives or bad jobs or bad towns; they were coming to find something or leave something or get something, to dig up something or bury something or leave something alone.
They were coming with small dreams or large dreams or none at all.
But a government finger pointed from four-color posters in many towns: THERE’S WORK FOR YOU IN THE SKY: SEE MARS! and the men shuffled forward, only a few at first, a double-score, for most men felt the great illness in them even before the rocket fired into space.
And this disease was called The Loneliness, because when you saw your home town dwindle the size of your fist and then lemon-size and then pin-size and vanish in the fire-wake, you felt you had never been born, there was no town, you were nowhere, with space all around, nothing familiar, only other strange men.
And when the state of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, or Montana vanished into cloud seas, and, doubly, when the United States shrank to a misted island and the entire planet Earth became a muddy baseball tossed away, then you were alone, wandering in the meadows of space, on your way to a place you couldn’t imagine.
So it was not unusual that the first men were few.
The number grew steadily in proportion to the census of Earth Men already on Mars. There was comfort in numbers.
But the first Lonely Ones had to stand by themselves.
December 2001: THE GREEN MORNING
When the sun set he crouched by the path and cooked a small supper and listened to the fire crack while he put the food in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
It had been a day not unlike thirty others, with many neat holes dug in the dawn hours, seeds dropped in, and water brought from the bright canals.
Now, with an iron weariness in his slight body, he lay and watched the sky color from one darkness to another.
His name was Benjamin Driscoll, and he was thirty-one years old.
And the thing that be wanted was Mars grown green and tall with trees and foliage, producing air, more air, growing larger with each season; trees to cool the towns in the boiling summer, trees to hold back the winter winds.
There were so many things a tree could do: add color, provide shade, drop fruit, or become a children’s playground, a whole sky universe to climb and hang from; an architecture of food and pleasure, that was a tree.
But most of all the trees would distill an icy air for the lungs, and a gentle rustling for the ear when you lay nights in your snowy bed and were gentled to sleep by the sound.
He lay listening to the dark earth gather itself, waiting for the sun, for the rains that hadn’t come yet. His ear to the ground, he could hear the feet of the years ahead moving at a distance, and he imagined the seeds he had placed today sprouting up with green and taking hold on the sky, pushing out branch after branch, until Mars was an afternoon forest, Mars was a shining orchard.
In the early morning, with the small sun lifting faintly among the folded hills, he would be up and finished with a smoky breakfast in a few minutes and, trodding out the fire ashes, be on his way with knapsacks, testing, digging, placing seed or sprout, tamping lightly, watering, going on, whistling, looking at the clear sky brightening toward a warm noon.
“You need the air,” he told his night fire.
The fire was a ruddy, lively companion that snapped back at you, that slept close by with drowsy pink eyes warm through the chilly night. “We all need the air.
It’s a thin air here on Mars.
You get tired so soon.
It’s like living in the Andes, in South America, high.
You inhale and don’t get anything.
It doesn’t satisfy.”
He felt his rib case.
In thirty days, how it had grown.
To take in more air, they would all have to build their lungs.
Or plant more trees.
“That’s what I’m here for,” he said.
The fire popped.
“In school they told a story about Johnny Appleseed walking across America planting apple trees.
Well, I’m doing more.
I’m planting oaks, elms, and maples, every kind of tree, aspens and deodars and chestnuts.
Instead of making just fruit for the stomach, I’m making air for the lungs.
When those trees grow up some year, think of the oxygen they’ll make!”
He remembered his arrival on Mars.
Like a thousand others, he had gazed out upon a still morning and thought, How do I fit here?
What will I do?
Is there a job for me?
Then he had fainted.
Someone pushed a vial of ammonia to his nose and, coughing, he came around.
“You’ll be all right,” said the doctor.
“What happened?”