The Upper House was called the Council of the Elders and was limited to a membership of 60 persons, each being appointed for life by the Elon as vacancies occurred by death. In principle, the method was not unlike that by which the College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church is appointed. Usually the Elon chose historians, churchmen, former cabinet members or successful economic leaders who could offer lifetimes of valuable experience. The Council of Elders, however, had but limited authority. Proposed laws could be approved or disapproved as presented, but no riders, amendments or alterations could be voted. The Council of the Elders could stimulate, suggest and test legislation. Its main purpose was not action, but rather to assure the continuity of the basic thought on legislation, as also the protection of that thought.
A lower house, the Assembly of Deputies, was devoted to action, for here demands were made and wordy battles were fought.
The main distinction between the Martian Assembly and analogous terrestrial legislatures was the electoral system. The United Congress of the Earth was composed of representatives regionally elected after the tried and true examples of the formerly great democratic nations. The Martian Assembly of Deputies, on the other hand, consisted of representatives of certain occupational groups.
This peculiar electoral system originated in the structure of the entire Martian community which, despite the close relationship between the thinking and feeling of the individual and that of his Earthling brother, yet differed profoundly from the community of Earth. The ancient culture had long since emerged from the age when the welfare of the inhabitants of any region depended upon their being well and powerfully represented in the machinery of government.
The Earth had not yet cast aside the concept that the riches of any particular region, whether in natural resources or skill and energy of its inhabitants, should be devoted primarily to the welfare and comfort of those same inhabitants. Thus each country of Earth attempted energetically to elect such representatives as would most effectively further its own, immediate welfare and interests.
Thousands of years of civilization on Mars had permitted refined technology completely to remove all regional concepts. Racial prejudice, national and local patriotism had not existed since time out of mind. Conditions of life on Mars, vastly different from those of Earth, made it possible for the planet to be governed without any form of regional representation. It was possible to make any conceivable journey within the confines of the planet in less than four hours in the high-velocity subways. This, and the fact that the very concept of nostalgia was unknown, due to subterranean existence which prevented Martians from developing attachment to local scenery or dwellings, together with the standardization of all ideas and desires, had much to do with it. Other factors were mass production of all consumer goods, and synthetics had replaced organic and inorganic natural materials and foodstuffs. This, of course, abolished the distinction between naturally rich and naturally poor regions, so that there no longer existed "have" and "have-not" regional groupings with conflicting interests.
The aging planet offered its inhabitants very few natural riches, and they had found that their individual lots could not be improved by attempting to bring their particular regions to the fore, either politically or economically. So integrated had their economy become that any trouble afflicting one locality was immediately painful to the entire planet.
This, however, did not mean that utter peace and unity existed among the Martians, for there was only a displacement in the points at issue. Instead of geographical differences of opinion, political debates went on between the representatives of various branches of science, technology and administration concerned with maintenance and improvement of living conditions. Traders and transportation people would differ with sociologists; physicians could not agree with ventilation engineers; private industry would argue with government; employees had grievances against employers; and so on, ad infinitum.
The ultimate result of these differences was a congress of professionals from each of the complicated branches upon which the highly involved society of Mars was dependent, and each branch was represented in proportion to its importance. Mars appeared to be doing extremely well with this system.
There were, of course, local authorities to handle local problems. The fairy underground city of Ahla was the capital of Mars and had a mayor, as did New York. But the City Council was composed of elected professionalists, exactly parallel to the Assembly of Deputies.
Towards the end of the week of receptions and festivities with which Holt and his two companions had been welcomed, Glen Hubbard and the rest of the first landing party arrived in Ahla.
Holt had followed a suggestion of the Elon and instructed him to move his caterpillars to one of the great power stations at the southern rim of Thyle I, where there was a terminal of the underground freight system which spanned the planet. This freight system was wholly independent of the passenger transportation net and differed considerably from the latter, except as to being subterranean. The cars were extremely spacious and were coupled one to another as on Earth, and operated in tunnels no less than thirty feet in diameter. Unlike the passenger vehicles, they were suspended from wheels running on a monorail at the top of the tunnels. Movement was much slower than that of the passenger system, for extensive switching operations had to be undertaken to classify cars with different destinations. Nor would the monorail wheel suspension permit anything like the speed of the magnetically suspended passenger vehicles.
The freight tunnel to Thyle I carried primarily drainage pipe and earth-moving equipment for the pumping station of the region. The evacuated tunnel had airlocks at its terminals which permitted bulky freight to be moved into the atmosphere where the drainage pipe was installed. This was done by special ditch digging machines which did the excavating, laid the pipe, and then covered it, being manipulated by Martians in pressurized cabins atop the huge machines.
Hubbard had reached the station after three days of hard driving, sixteen hours a day.
Lieutenant Hempstead's Leopard had mired twice in the soft ground of the melting zone.
But Hubbard and Woolf had each time succeeded in towing him out. Finally they had reached the great concrete station, worn out and muddy.
The Martian attendants at the Thyle I station greeted Hubbard with the utmost courtesy and consideration, inviting him to step into the great building in advance of the rest of the party. With great politeness, they ushered him into a small, quadrilateral room and seated him at a table where they left him.
No sooner had the door closed than the light went out, greatly to Hubbard's consternation, for he felt that this might be some sort of trap. He was about to make a rush for the door when Holt suddenly appeared across the table from him against a milky, luminous background.
"Hello Glen, how goes it?"
"How on Earth — 1 mean Mars — did you get here so fast, Colonel?"
"I'm not really here at all," grinned Holt. "What you see is my astral body. We're talking by Martian telephone, and that includes television…"
Hubbard was almost speechless with amazement at the full-sized, colored, stereoscopic telepicture, for he would have bet his bottom dollar that Holt was really present. It was some time before he could get hold of himself enough to make notes from Holt's instructions as to the mode of behavior he should inculcate into his men so that no offense might be given the Martians. Then he had returned to the caterpillars, which he directed into the air lock. Here, they were lowered to the tunnel level and driven directly into the waiting freight cars. Since the latter were not pressurized, the Earthling crews remained in the caterpillars and kept their air conditioning running until they reached Ahla after a journey of some 12 hours.