CHAPTER 1

Lying in his bunk, his arms crossed behind his head, Sean Doe stared moodily at the gray ceiling of his room. Another four hours of isolation, he thought bitterly. The rest of them were out exploring, and he was stuck here like a prisoner. Well, it wouldn’t last much longer.

Sean had started by counting the days. Days had become weeks, and weeks had turned into months. Soon now, he thought, soon.

Mars was a hostile world. One that, he had often been told, had a million ways to kill him. However, he had never expected that he might be bored to death. After Sean had broken the rules of Marsport, the human colony on the red planet, he had lost the privilege of working on the surface. When the rest of the twenty Asimov Project kids were outside, Sean was confined to his quarters—a small, small room, smaller than a standard prison cell back on Earth. Though he had his computer and access to the entertainment database of the colony, he still chafed under the exclusion.

It wasn’t fair. True, he had violated the rules, but then he had saved lives. It had taken place when a surface crew had become lost during a terrific Martian storm. When the colony’s administrators hesitated before risking the lives of a rescue party, Sean and two of his friends had gone out on their own. They had found the lost team and had saved their lives.

Still, a tribunal had taken Sean’s pressure suit from him and had forbidden him from going out onto the surface for six whole months. The other kids had tried to make it easier on him. Jenny Laslo never talked about what they did out on the surface, and if Roger Smith or Alex Benford—two of his friends who tended to get excited when they talked—began to discuss areology or meteorology or astronomy, they would suddenly stop and change the subject.

Sean turned over onto his side grumpily. He didn’twant to be protected. He wanted to hear about the outside. More than anything else, he wanted to get back his blue pressure suit and go outside. Well, in a few more days, just a few …

He noticed the time and touched the remote, switching on the TV feed. Dina Brandis, who was an AI technician in her real life, had become the colony’s newscaster. She did a fifteen-minute news summary every day, and that, at least, gave Sean some idea of what was going on.

She did not look happy. The colonists of Marsport had been isolated from Earth for well over an Earth year, and the strain of trying to become independent was wearing on them all. Like many of the colonists, Dina had begun her stay with a military haircut. Long hair demanded water for washing, and in low gravity it could be a nuisance. She had let hers grow a little, though, and now she had a short bob, dark and attractive. Her face had a strange elfin cast, with almond-shaped green eyes and sharply slanted black eyebrows. Now her expression was pinched and weary.

Good afternoon, everyone, she said, speaking directly into the camera. First, the good news: Water supply is steady at one hundred ten percent of requirements. Lake Ares reached full pool this morning, and biologists say the fish in it are doing well. The colony’s emergency reservoirs are being filled and currently are at forty percent capacity. When they reach fifty percent, the council will approve extended shower rations.

Sean smiled. He could imagine the cheering that would bring from the crowd in Town Hall, the big meeting dome. A constant complaint was that everyone in the colony felt dirty and smelly. Water was scarce on Mars, but the new pipelines seemed to be doing the job.

Dina went over more reports. Outside the domes and corridors of Marsport, the Southern-Hemisphere Martian summer was ending. The long autumn would come on in a stretch of unsettled weather, dust storms, and twisters that could destroy unprotected installations. Exploration teams had discovered new lava tunnels leading back into the bulk of Olympus Mons, north of the colony, and plans were being made to venture into these natural passages to see if they could be used or adapted for expansion.

And then, after a pause, Dina sighed and said, On the darker side of the news, the last transmissions from Luna have created arguments and dissensions among us. Executive Director Amanda Simak has this statement to make.

Sean sat up in bed, intent on the screen. Dr. Amanda Simak had been one of the driving forces in persuading the governments and corporations of Earth to create Marsport as an experiment in human colonization of different worlds. More important to Sean, she was his legal guardian. Her face looked older to Sean, more careworn these days.

My fellow colonists, Amanda said in an even voice, "I want to remind you of something and ask something of you. First, I want to remind you that in losing contact with Earth, we lost contact with old wounds, old habits of thinking, and old prejudices. In a classic work of science fiction by Ray Bradbury, humans living on Mars discover that they have become Martians. That is what has happened to us. We are all Martians now, because we have no means of returning to Earth. This is home.

"My request is this: cease your animosities and your accusations. We now know that the collapse of order on Earth resulted not from the political acts of one faction or another, but from a combination of causes. The Yellowstone supervolcano erupted without much warning, and it destroyed much of Earth’s communications network and much of its agricultural capacity. A biological war between China and India unleashed a plague that took billions of lives. Most governments of Earth have collapsed, and until the fighting factions can make peace among themselves, the planet has no hope of recovery.

We are, literally, cut off from all this. And yet fights have broken out here on Mars. Please, please, remember that no one here is responsible for our losses. We knew going in that our survival would be chancy and that we had no guarantees. We have succeeded so far by cooperation. I honestly believe that our only hope of surviving into the future is to maintain that cooperation. Hold on, hold together, and we will make it. Thank you.

Dina came back on with more news of preparations for the coming season and then signed off. Sean swung out of bed, switched off the TV, and left his room. Technically, he supposed, he was in violation of his sentence, but no one was paying much attention to that, not after five months and three weeks.

Sean passed many colonists he knew as he threaded his way through the corridors, opening the heavy green-bordered doors and passing from the dormitory wing to the common wing, through the education wing, and to the administration section.

Amanda was in conference, he discovered. He waited, tapping his foot with nervous energy for three-quarters of an hour, and then Amanda, Dr. Harold Ellman, and Lieutenant Tim Mpondo came out of her office, still talking. Ellman looked angry, but then he always did—his face wore a perpetual scowl. Sean had learned early on that the short, powerfully built man disapproved of the whole Asimov Project, which had transported twenty orphaned children to Mars to learn how young people could adapt. Worse, Ellman seemed to disapprove especially of Sean. Ellman had been the one to decree that Sean had to lose his surface privileges.

But now Ellman didn’t seem to notice him, and even Tim Mpondo, usually genial and smiling, left without saying hello. Well, Sean, Amanda said, crossing her arms. How are you feeling?

Sean knew that was a loaded question. Sean had … well, not instincts, but a knack, anyway, of foreseeing trouble ahead. It wasn’t anything magical, no spooky ESP, no crystal gazing or consulting the spirits. It was more a habit of noticing trends and developments without conscious effort, and of his subconscious making educated guesses. The guesses were more often right than wrong, but Sean could put no name to them but feelings. He had felt that Earth was on the verge of crisis, for example, just before he had left for Mars. Now he said, I really came to see how you were feeling. You looked tired on TV.

I am tired. Yesterday a half dozen Asians accused four Euros of being Levelers, and the Euros defended themselves. It got nasty. They almost started fighting. The council’s putting together a tribunal to mediate, but—she shrugged—rationing, isolation, hard work … It’s rubbing all our nerves raw.

But we’re in good shape, Sean objected. The pipelines are working; we’ve stored enough food to see us through the winter; we haven’t lost a colonist in four months or more. We’re doing well.

We’re surviving, Amanda said. And, yes, that is doing well, considering where we are and what we have to work with. But we’re balanced on the edge of a razor, Sean. No wonder some of us are bleeding.

She looked so weary that Sean impulsively hugged her. She chuckled. I missed you while you were on Earth and I was out here, she said. "Sometimes I wish