The colony directors arranged courtesy tours of the other two domes for him. A jet helicopter carried him through the thin air, high above a barren red plain dotted here and there by the clumps of lichenoid vegetation. They called at the Russian dome first. It was a depressing place, half-populated, echoing. Touring it, Regan felt a certain morbid satisfaction at its failure. Sad-eyed, lean-faced Czechs gloomily showed off their power plant and their hydroponics works. A plump Rumanian leaned close to Regan and whispered in bad French, “You know? You could buy this place for ten kopecks! Just ask, and they would sell it. And glad of it!”
Regan spent half a day there, and the copter took him onward. “You’ll see a different story at the next dome,” Dick Avery warned him.
‘I imagine I will,“ Regan said.
‘Those poor Russkies! What a flop!“
Avery sounded gleeful. But Regan found it impossible to rejoice in what he had just seen. The decline of Soviet economic strength was simply the handwriting on the wall for his own country. An overextended, overdeveloped nation, shackled by debt, thrown into turmoil by a sudden awareness of adversity, could collapse fast. Ten bad harvests in a row had done the Russians in. Their international and interplanetary commitments had become millstones round their necks once bellies went empty. The trend was running the same way in the United States-a national debt in the trillions, farm shortages where once there had been unmanageable surpluses, persistent unemployment-none of them pleasant things to regard. They could all be overcome, Regan thought. But would they be?
No. Not so long as fat-cat prosperity replaced aggressive dynamism. Some spark had winked out, in the United States. He wondered if a simple thing like a World’s Fair could light that spark again. A rallying point, a symbol, a gleam in the sky-would it work?
The copter spiralled down. A bronze sand-crawler of Congolese make was waiting to take the visitors into New Dome.
It was small, smaller than Marsport and just as scruffy. But it was growing fast. The hum of construction work approached an uncomfortable level. Black and yellow and brown men sweated in the artificial warmth. Everything was flimsy, everything done on the cheap, for these new nations were financing their dome on shoestrings and matchsticks. But no matter. The dome was growing, and one of these decades the colony would be self-sufficient, and the investment would pay off.
‘They work hard here,“ Avery murmured. ”Whenever our boys start slacking off, we ship them over here for a visit It scares them enough to go on double shifts.“
‘How are the relationships between the two colonies?“ Regan asked.
‘Friendly enough,“ Avery said. ”They’re willing to let us have our little chunk of Mars, because they know they’re going to take over all the rest. And we feel the same way.“ ”Any attempt at coordination?“
‘Some. We’re trying to arrange things so we don’t duplicate each other’s research and production. Let them grow tomatoes, we’ll grow cabbage, that sort of thing. But it’s hard to arrive at any agreements. They’re such touchy bastards. Terribly proud of being here at all, you know, and so they take a pretty lofty attitude toward us.“
‘They’ve got a right to be proud,“ Regan said. ”Look where they started from fifty years ago, and look where they are now. And where they’ll be fifty years from now.“
‘I suppose you’re right,“ Avery said, and for once a look of distress crossed his jowly, beaming face.
A Nigerian named Jason Mbondze showed the Regans around. He was a six-footer, black as space itself, with daz-zlingly white teeth gleaming in his purplish face. He wore tribal robes, and carried himself with military stiffness. His attitude toward the Factor was a mixture of arrogance and deference; he seemed fearfully pleased with himself and with the achievement here, but yet he was well aware that millions of dollars in Global Factors loans had helped to build this dome. He seemed to be saying silently, We needed you and you helped us, and we are grateful. But we will soon pay our debt to you, and then good riddance to you!
‘Here is our water plant,“ Mbondze declared. ”Capacity is five million gallons a day, but next month we double that. Would you like a bath?“
Regan forced himself not to laugh. “Not just now, thanks.”
‘You and your lady may bathe at our expense. It will be our pleasure.“
‘We’re deeply honored,“ Regan said. ”I appreciate the sacrifice.“
‘No sacrifice at all,“ the Nigerian said, a trifle sharply. ”We have plenty of water. Plenty! It is no sacrifice!“
They got past that sticky moment, and went on. Nola was quiet, as if sensing her sarcasms might be unwanted here. The tour reached its climax atop a three-story building that looked out beyond the dome wall to the desert.
‘Our atmosphere-generating plant will be there,“ Mbondze said sweepingly. ”Five years, we build it. You know our dream? Real air on Mars! No domes! We have the plans drawn. Generators every hundred miles. Create a carbon dioxide belt around the planet-greenhouse effect, raise the temperature. Plant forests everywhere. It will take seventy-five years. The cost, one hundred billion dollars. We cannot finance it alone, but Marsport will help. We are talking to them about it. No more domes on Mars! A self-sustaining atmosphere in seventy-five years!“ Mbondze’s eyes glittered. ”It will be paradise here!“
Regan nodded. Unaccountably, his legs began to tremble. No domes? A hundred billion dollars? Call it a hundred fifty, before they finished. It wasn’t much, really, considering what it cost to build these domes, to tunnel downward into the ground for new accommodations. How much was the World’s Fair costing, anyway? Maybe forty billion, figuring in everybody’s expenses. For a sideshow. And to breathe fresh air under the open skies on Mars… “Yes,” Regan said. “It will be wonderful here.”
By nightfall they were back in Marsport-nightfall being simply the disappearance of the absurdly tiny sun. Regan used up a few thousand dollars phoning Earth, checking on the Fair, on the doings of Global. All was well. Bolivia and Belgium had paid advance rent on their pavilions. Reservations were being booked now for flights to the Fair Satellite. Global Factors stock was up to 116. The inventory of unsold World’s Fair bonds had been reduced by $35,000,000 more.
Regan slept badly that night. He was overstimulated, overexcited by the things he had seen, the plans that had been put forth to him. Lying awake, he clenched his fists, pressed them together until the knuckles popped. There was so much to do here, he thought! So much. And they were doing it, too. A bespectacled, bland-faced anthropologist named Curtis called for them in the morning, after their austere breakfast in the hotel dining room. He was young and earnest-looking, and, as he promptly explained, he was only a part-time anthropologist. “I’m studying the Old Martians twenty hours a week, but I’m also a fork-lift operator.” He laughed, self-consciously. “Anthropology is more or less of a luxury up here. But somebody’s got to study the Old Martians while they’re still around.”
‘Is it far to their village?“ Nola asked.
‘We can be there in an hour,“ Curtis said.
The crawler moved at anything but a crawl-eighty miles an hour over the hard-packed sand. There were no roads in the desert, but none were needed. The fierce wind and tumbling sand had worn every hill flat over thousands of years, in this part of Mars. A few rocks studded the desert, sturdy boulders of incredibly brilliant colors, blues and reds and greens, that had somehow resisted the constant weathering process. Larger bluffs rose here and there. Splotches of Vegetation, grayish-green, stained the red landscape.
‘The Martians were practically in our back yard,“ Curtis said. ”Less than a hundred miles from Marsport, but how were we to know? We had found plenty of their ruins, but the Carbon fourteen datings told us they hadn’t been occupied for ten thousand years or more. And then one day a prospector walked into a cave and there they were!“