Regan smiled. He hoped all went well with the voyage. It would be a pity if he missed the opening of the Fair.
‘Will there be a brass band waiting?“ Nola asked.
‘You might call him that,“ Regan said.
‘Him?“
‘Dick Avery. He’s our man in Marsport. He’s supposed to meet us.“
They were waiting in Quarantine. The ship had landed, and sand-crawlers were clustered outside the main lock, waiting for the passengers to disembark. Medics were making their way through ship, beginning with the crew, moving on to the first class passengers next.
It was half an hour before the Regans were free to leave. The sand-crawler carried them across the spaceport and into the waiting dome of Marsport.
No brass band awaited them. Only a chunky, florid-faced man absurdly rigged out in purple tights and a pale green tunic. He was vast, enormously broad across the withers, and his bushy red beard gave him a comically piratical look. A massive hand enfolded Regan’s.
‘Good trip, Factor?“
‘Not bad at all. Dick, meet my wife, Nola. Nola, Dick Avery, Global’s representative on Mars.“
Avery and Nola exchanged remote glances. The big man clapped an arm around the Factor’s shoulders in a jovial, comradely way that no Global employee would have dared to attempt on Earth, and boomed, “Well, Factor, want to drop down to the office for a look around?” “I’d rather go to our hotel first,” Regan said thinly. “I’ll be along to inspect the office in time. This is a vacation for me, supposedly.“
‘Sure thing! Well, I’ll drive you to your quarters. I guess you’ll want to take a tour, like all the tourists, eh? This is your first trip up in quite a while.“
‘I haven’t been here since ’85.“
‘Lots of things different now.“
‘I imagine,“ Regan said. ”Such as the Martians themselves. I’d like to ride out and visit them in a day or so.“
‘I’ll talk to the anthropologists. They’ll arrange it.“
‘You do that,“ Regan said.
Nola was silent as Avery drove them through the streets of Marsport toward the transient hotel. Regan glanced at her. She was staring through the bubble top of Avery’s little car at the ramshackle tin buildings, the unpaved streets, the raw shabbiness of it all.
‘Disappointed?“ he asked.
‘A little.“
‘What did you expect? Paris?“
‘It’s all so ugly, Claude!“
‘It’s new. Jesus, Nola, it’s only sixteen years since the first manned ship landed here at all. They’ve come a long way in a short while.“
‘I suppose,“ Nola said with a restless sigh.
‘Remember, it was your idea to come here.“
She nodded and turned toward the window again. It was ugly, Regan had to admit. But it was the ugliness of energetic growth, the ugliness of a leggy colt, the ugliness of a skeleton that someday would be the core of something majestic. It was just a boom-town, now. A soaring dome covered a few square miles of red desert, and beneath that dome was layer after layer of brand new city-extending downward into the planet’s flesh, because it was cheaper to build that way than to extend the size of the dome.
The colony was under United Nations’ administration, but it had been developed by private capital-in contrast to the Moon base, which was U.N. all the way. A consortium of American and European firms had financed the project in 1979, with no one stockholder permitted to buy more than a one percent interest. That had been a direct slap at Global Factors, which, then under Bruce Regan’s still vigorous direction, had angled for a major share in the development of Mars.
Marsport was not alone on Mars. Five hundred miles away, in the Aurorae Sinus just north of the equator, was the Russian dome-languishing, now, from what Regan had heard. The Russkies had reached Mars first, early in ‘75, and their dome was the oldest on Mars. But the general economic problems of the Soviet bloc had hampered its expansion, and the Russian dome was unimportant, currently manned only by a skeleton crew of Czech technicians and a few geologists.
A third dome was rising now-three years old, and already of major importance. China, Brazil, and Nigeria were building it as a joint project, state-owned and state-run. A few U.N. men were on hand as window-dressing, as required by international law, but they had little say in the operation of the colony. In a few years it would be bigger than Marsport, Regan knew, and it was not a pleasant thing to contemplate.
What passed for a hotel in Marsport was not terribly pleasant to contemplate either-even the Presidential Suite, which Regan was lucky enough to have been able to reserve. It was six levels down, for one thing. There were no windows. The ceiling was eight and a half feet high, which would not have greatly disturbed the average apartment-dwelling Earthman, but which distressed Nola, mansion-accustomed, no end. The “suite” consisted of just two rooms.
‘It wasn’t like this on the Moon,“ Nola kept saying. ”It was much more comfortable there.“
‘The Moon base can afford luxury,“ Regan told her tightly. ”It’s a quarter of a million miles from Earth and chock full of exotic fuel sources. With the profit the U.N. makes out of the Lunar mines every year they could afford to build a Taj Mahal for visitors,“
‘The Taj Mahal was a tomb, darling.“
‘You know what I mean! Well, there’s no money to spare for frills up here, Nola. This is a pioneer world.“
Nola yawned. “I suppose. When do we visit the Old Martians, Claude?”
‘In a day or two. Why?“
‘I’m curious about them. And it’ll be an excuse to get out of this filthy town.“ She stared at the dull metallic ceiling, a yard above her head. ”I feel like a mole, crammed away down here! If this is the Presidential Suite, what’s an ordinary room like?“
‘Like a cell in a beehive, Nola.“
Regan didn’t mind her carping. It was to be expected from her, and he was determined not to let it interfere with his visit. She was adaptable enough to get used to it in a day or two, he figured. If she didn’t-well, too bad. It was his vacation.
He had a busy time of it. The Marsport Board of Governors tendered him an official banquet that night; he munched on tough chlorella steaks, drank algae wine, listened to speeches in praise of Global Factors, took some ribbing about the World’s Fair, and handed back some ribbing of his own about the local hotel accommodations. In the morning, Dick Avery took them on a tour of Marsport, Nola silent, visibly bored with the whole thing. “And this is our food-processing plant,” Avery would say. “That’s the atmosphere-generator building, over there. And this-”
‘The brothel?“ Nola suggested acidly.
‘No, Ma’am. That’s over on Washington Street. This is the public library, here. Ten thousand books on scanner disks so far, and growing all the time.“
‘How nice,“ Nola said. ”I’d like to borrow War and Peace for bedtime reading, if it’s available.“
‘That a history book?“ Avery asked.
‘A novel,“ Nola said. ”By a Russian. A dead Russian.“
‘That’s the best kind,“ Avery said, and they drove on.
Regan drank it all in. There was a sense of growth here, of bursting, shackle-breaking growth, that fascinated him. Simply to compare what had been done in the six years between his visits thrilled him. Let Nola toss her sarcasms around; let her feel jaded and cramped. She could never understand what was happening here. Here was a world that had been dead, and now was coming to life. Hydroponic gardens were turning the brick-red deserts green. Vast hydrolysis plants poured out synthetic rivers of real water. New colonists arrived, a hundred a month, and every day saw new tunnels built far below, new homes constructed. The hospitals were crowded, not with the sick but with the newly born.
A coppery taste of feverish excitement was in Regan’s mouth. He had caught the Mars fever, this time. To build, to plan, to expand-no need to fight the Board of Directors, there were no reactionaries here-to lay the groundwork for a stunning new outpost of humanity…