Electricity was the mainstay of the hyper-refined Martian technological setup. Only by electricity was it possible to replace the complicated interplay between plant and animal life, the atmospheric processes and the farms and industrial production which on Earth permitted civilized life to be maintained and improved.
It was, therefore, quite natural that electricity had attained an almost mythical quality on Mars, for it not only helped transmute the waste products of the lungs into rich and tasty foodstuffs and permitted air of respiration and structural steel to be manufactured from desert dust and polar snow, it kept the infinitely involved gearing of the entire civilization in rotation.
Hundreds of horsepower were invisibly at work for every Martian, day and night; and to them alone Martians owed the high state of their material welfare, which were, in effect, the air they breathed, the food they ate, and the clothes they wore. Electricity bore the voice and image of distant friends into homes whenever people might wish. By that horsepower people were borne to any point of the red globe within the space of a few hours. It kept in motion the huge productive machine whereby they were able to earn in a short four hours daily their portions of whatever joys material accomplishment could offer.
Such conditions naturally brought in their train the establishment of energy as a standard of monetary value. Since nearly all production was almost fully automatic, the number of kilowatts used in manufacturing any sort of goods became the determining factor of their price and valuation. More energy per person meant more riches for everyone. Thus, on Mars, kilowatt-hours took the place of Earth's gold standard of values.
Each time a new generating station was built, the amount of money in circulation increased, but no danger of inflation was incurred by this continual increase in the currency. Industries operated by the new source of power increased in productivity in the same measure as did the currency in circulation, thus maintaining a well-proportioned balance between the values of goods and money.
In bygone days, improvement of the general welfare and increase in productivity, together with medical and surgical advances, had combined to induce a marked rise in the population, exactly as had taken place on Earth since the dawn of the industrial and technical age.
For an extended period, the population grew faster than did the housing facilities and industrial production. During this time, decreased infant mortality in combination with greater general longevity prevented the Martians from benefiting from the increasing productivity of their industries. At one time the authorities were even obliged to impose taxes on children, for the rapid increase in population threatened to outrun the available respiration air, food and housing. Such a tax, brutal as it was, offered the only means of limiting the population below the danger point.
Later, the pendulum swung back again, and in a most interesting manner.
Industry had, by reason of sharp competition, tended to eliminate the human element in production and to utilize automatic machines as much as possible, with resultant savings. This development brought with it an increasing degree of standardization with the consequent dullness of uniformity about which Oraze complained so bitterly.
Nonetheless, it elevated human labor more and more into the regions of creativeness and utilized man's spirit rather than his muscles.
Throughout the lifetime of several generations, Man's liberation from bodily labor remained a Pyrrhic victory of very doubtful value, for the proud and experienced craftsman was replaced by a miserable machine watcher, who saw to it that the automatics did not stop, with a box of uninspiring index cards before him. But this unhappy stage was eventually overcome by the development of self-activating methods of registration.
An electronic equivalent to the punched card method of Earth, these methods gradually dammed the flood of paper.
Phonetic notation of the Martian language was introduced, thus allowing the typewriter to die a natural death and to liberate an army of unhappy girls. A dictating machine replaced it and transcribed the text directly from the spoken word.
When all this had happened, the last and lowest Martian became free of the major portion of any physical burden, and could devote himself to work of a creative nature, no matter what his profession or trade might be. The pendulum of increasing population reversed itself.
Every Martian who desired to earn his living in such a complicated scientific and technical world by creative contribution was faced with enormous demands on his professional knowledge by reason of the high scientific level of all professions. The breadth of knowledge to be transmitted to the youth by schools and colleges was beyond conception, and as this breadth increased, so did the costs of education.
The average age expectancy of a Martian man or woman was some 50 Martian years, or about 94 terrestrial years. It was not possible for the universities to graduate their students, fit to live their way of life, a day younger than fifteen to eighteen Martian years, despite their specialized methods of instruction. Thus the young folk were financially dependent upon their parents up to that age, in addition to the costs of their education.
Marriage prior to graduation was out of the question for all but a fortunate few. Having babies had become an expensive luxury, even without considering the underhanded tax situation. Not unnaturally, the danger of overpopulation died aborning.
It had been created by technical civilization's advent and was strangled by its growth.
Ahla and the neighboring city of Sugili were bitter rivals in athletics, and athletics played a vastly important role in the life of the Martians. Sport in general was not merely a safety valve for the ebulliency of youth as it is on Earth, where the exuberance of youthful spirits is offered an outlet, yet held in check by carefully thought out rules and limitations.
Rather was sport on Mars an elemental rebelling against the slavery of the troglodytic existence which bound the natural instincts and physicals energies of the young of both sexes, and deprived them of contact with nature and of the beauties of life in the open. It was also a revolt of their bodies against the danger with which mental overdevelopment threatened them. It was a broad revulsion against the push-button civilization where physical labor had been turned over to machines and electrical gadgets. Martian athletics were also a forum where the combative instincts of the younger Martians could find vent in constructive rather than destructive activity, now that the former warlike eras lay far in the past. Finally, they had become a favorite mode of indulging the long leisure granted the Martians by the four-hour workday.
Holt and a group of his companions sat in the stadium of Ahla under a huge dome of glass which maintained the artificial atmospheric pressure, the life of the planet. The arena was oval and surrounded by four rows of seats after the fashion of a Greek amphitheater. Natural sunlight irradiated the festive scene through the vast dome.
As the last day of the competition was reserved for the decathlon between the young men of Suguli and Ahla, Holt had felt that he could not miss the important event.
The brown bodies of the Martian youths were almost naked. Sinuous and beautifully knit, they went through the events of running, jumping, swimming, discus-throwing, shotputting and other sports with a grace and ease beyond all praise. The high and distance jumps positively astounded the Earthling visitors, despite their familiarity with the weakness of the Martian field of gravity.