Chapter 4
The first manned spaceship from Earth had reached Mars in 1970. During the next twenty years, careful preparation had been made for establishing a colony there. The site had been picked—in the region known as the Aurorae Sinus just north of the Martian equator—and the plastic dome had been set up. Tools and oxygen-manufacturing equipment were transported piecemeal by expedition after expedition over the course of two decades. Finally, in 1991, the first permanent settlers were sent.
At first they had lived in temporary pressurized huts. But rapidly the houses rose, row after row of them, two-story metal structures designed for use rather than beauty. Mars Colony’s streets were laid out in squares, each street named after a city of Earth, and each cross-running avenue named for a country. Each house was so designed that it could be sealed airtight in case of an emergency. If the dome were pierced by a meteor, few lives would be lost.
The area the colony could cover was limited by the size of the dome. For that reason the Mars Colony was expanding downward instead of out. Already a second level had been completed, a hundred feet down, connected to the surface by many elevators, and work was proceeding on a third. All of the non-residential buildings had already been transferred to Lower Level One. Most of the colonists still lived on the surface, but all new arrivals were given quarters underneath, and when any of the colonists married they, too, set up housekeeping on the lower level. The plan was to build five levels altogether, providing living space for about fourteen thousand people. When that figure had been reached, a second dome would be built fifty or sixty miles away, and Mars Colony Two established.
That figure would be reached in the near future. About three hundred new colonists arrived from Earth every year under the resettlement plan. The Earth government paid passage costs, provided the colonists agreed to remain permanently on Mars. You could return to Earth after thirty days if you found colony life unattractive, but after the thirty days were up you had to repay the government for your passage fare if you decided to call it quits and go home. About one out of every ten new colonists gave up and returned to Earth after seeing what Martian life was like. But those who stayed, stayed for good.
Besides the three hundred new colonists coming from Earth each year, there were hundreds of babies born to the old settlers. Only married couples and their children, if they had any, were allowed to become colonists, and anyone who was born on Mars or who had come as a child was required to marry by the age of twenty-one. There was no room for bachelors or spinsters on a brand-new world. Colonists who had come to Mars as five-year-olds when the colony had first been opened, now had two and three children of their own. The population was expanding rapidly, and was intended. Mars Colony had the busy, bustling atmosphere of a have of bees. Everyone worked hard. Everyone did his job.
Nothing went to waste in the young colony. The air was forever being purified and recirculated. The sand brought up from the lower-level excavations was broken down, and oxygen and metals were chemically extracted from it. Vegetable gardens grew under artificial light. Water was manufactured chemically.
At first, everything the colony needed had to be brought up from Earth. It was a tremendously expensive process to ship large machines across space. But each year the colony grew a little more self-sufficient. It could now build its own sand-crawlers and trucks.
It was tooling up for large industry. Within a few more decades Mars Colony would no longer depend on Earth for anything.
The Chambers family was assigned a two-story dwelling on the lower level. The upper level was set aside for Dr. Chambers laboratory. On the ground floor were three small rooms. The only furniture was four simple beds and a few chairs. There was no kitchen because all colonists ate together in community mess halls.
The were given a small printed booklet called Information for New Arrivals. Some of the rules were very interesting.
All permanent colonists over the age of fourteen Earth years had to work eight hours a day, and all settlers between the ages of ten and fourteen were required to put in three hours a day at whatever tasks they were asked to do. Children under ten were exempt from actual labor, but were expected to help out whenever asked. The job of carving a colony out of a barren planet left no room for slackers.
School attendance was required up to the age of fourteen. Those who passed certain tests could continue their education through the college and graduate school level. Others left school and became full-time workers.
Colonists and visitors were on their honor not to smoke more than four cigarettes a day. This was to avoid strain on the air-purifying machinery. The rule did not bother Dr. and Mrs.
Chambers since they didn’t smoke.
Meals were served at very specific hours at the community mess halls. Food was not sold, but handed out on a work-coupon basis. There was no was to buy extra portions, but you could earn extra coupons as a reward for hard work. Visitors got the minimum coupon allowance, but they could get extra coupons if they volunteered to work.
There was no video in the colony, but films from Earth were shown every night. Four movies were sent up each month, and each was exhibited for a full week. There was also a colony dramatic group that gave plays the first weekend of every month. Admission was free to all these events. There was not yet much use for money on Mars since there was nothing you could buy with it. Everyone worked, and everyone got fed, and so far there were no serious snags in the system.
That evening, the Chambers family had its first taste of Martian food. The nearest mess hall was at the corner of Hong Kong street and Belgium Avenue, which was only a few blocks from their house. A line outside the mess hall had formed when they arrived, but it moved rapidly.
Soon they found themselves in a large, well-lighted hall.
It was cafeteria style; you carried a tray and asked the servers for whatever you wanted. A menu posted on the wall listed things such as roast beef, broiled chicken, and baked ham. The vegetables sounded familiar, too—potatoes, asparagus, peas, and carrots.
When they were seated Jim cut off a chunk of roast beef and tasted it. He frowned. “It’s just like the real thing! How do they do it?”
“It is the real thing,” Dr. Chambers said, laughing.
“You mean they have cows up here, and pigs, and chickens, and all the rest? Where do they keep them?”
“In laboratory flasks, Jim.” Dr. Chambers smiled broadly. “They use tissue cultures. A small piece of meat is placed in a chemical bath and stimulated to grow. It keeps on growing indefinitely. They just slice off chunks whenever mealtime comes around.”
“The vegetables, too?” Sally asked.
“No, they grow the vegetables here,” her father replied. “But they just don’t have room for farm animals.”
The meat certainly tasted convincing. The vegetables did, too, though there was a difference about them. It was hard to define, but the taste was subtly Martian.
All four members of the Chambers family went to bed early that night. Their handbook informed them that at eleven each night the lights were turned off in all residence quarters to conserve electricity. By that hour they were all sound asleep, anyway.
Breakfast the next morning was almost disappointingly ordinary. Orange juice, toast, bacon and eggs, milk or coffee—there was no hint in the menu that this was an alien world forty million miles from home.
After breakfast Jim and Sally walked to school. The school building was at the far side of Lower Level One. They reported to the principal’s office, as they had been told to do, and were assigned to classes—Jim to the seventh grade and Sally to the sixth.
There were thirty boys and girls in the classroom Jim entered, many more than in his class on Earth. He realized that up here classes had to be bigger because there were fewer teachers.