Mars is a Bummer, Man

By Frank Severino

You can take people off Earth, but can you take the Earth out of people? Humanity's first mission to Mars hits a nasty speed bump. Personality, passion and persuasion form a deadly triangle on the first Martian colony.

This new novelette by science fiction author Frank Severino cynically explores notions of character, class, human expansion, legacies and what the future might regrettably consider inspirational or historically valuable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Severino
• Release date: Jun 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458046215

Frank Severino

Author.

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Mars is a Bummer, Man

A NOVELETTE BY FRANK SEVERINO

PICFISH PRESS eBOOKS

June 2011 ~ V1.08 ~ Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Frank Severino

All rights reserved.

Mars is a Bummer, Man

 Not much going on here, Rodney James, Tech Officer for the first human mission to Mars kicked a small rock.  It skittered-off like a scared lizard, too fast for appearances.

What?  You’re joking, right?  Andrew Mahoney, a geologist, winced at the silhouette of James in the dim Martian twilight, "We’re the first group of humans on Mars!  The first people to settle another planet."

The mechanic shrugged, "Sure, I mean, someday this place will be great.  Suburbs and strip malls!  Disney World Mars.  Got the same land mass as earth.  People need land and a place to put billboards.  Got one-sixth the gravity; I can finally dunk a basketball.  But, right now it’s just an endless sea of oxidized dust and rocks.  Must have been one hell of a war, because there is nothing here.  I mean, seriously.  It’s a rust bucket.  We knew that and we still came."

Andrew’s knees threatened to buckle.  What are you on about?

This is as good as it gets, James replied. "We’re at the equator and it’s summer and it’s seventy degrees at my feet and freezing at my head.  There’s negligible atmospheric pressure, it’s all carbon dioxide and wintertime is a frosty one-hundred-fifty below.  If I take this suit off, I die."

Andrew stammered, B-bu-bu yeah, b-but the suit’s light. He stretched the fabric illustrating its elasticity, On Earth, this thing’s thirty-seven pounds not counting the boots or the O-2.  On Mars it feels like jeans and a t-shirt.

Rodney scowled, With the t-shirt pulled over your head during a waterboarding session, maybe.  Does that change the fact there is no grass to walk on, or if there was, you couldn’t go barefoot without your feet exploding and your brain boiling from the pressure differential from head to toe?

This is the frontier, man.  Hardship is inevitable for the first few generations, Andrew was dismayed by his colleague’s attitude.

Rodney scoffed, "Frontier.  Shyeah.  See any dangerous bears or lions or raging rivers or stormy seas to conquer?  Any endless dark forests moist with green moss and thick canopy of leaves?  Can you hear malevolently-plodding sandals of Druids as they shuffle around Stonehenge chanting and sacrificing virgins?  How about the Orient—The Far East—rife with mystery, intrigue and profit?  At least give me some glimpses of strange, primitive, feather-wearing indigenous natives with ochre on their faces darting in and out of the jungle thicket.  Fill the sky with massive flocks of multi-colored birds churning the sky with raucous chaotic noise.  Add swarms of stinging insects to test the limits of your sanity making you want to dash headlong into a river full of piranha and crocodile."

You want mosquitos? Andrew asked incredulously.

No, I’m just saying, Rodney picked up a rock and flung it over the lip of a crater, "where’s the payoff?  Lewis and Clark—those guys went on a roller coaster ride—white water rapids in a canoe, hunting wild game, trading with Indians.  Stanley and Livingstone plunged into the interior of Africa chopping with machetes every foot of the way—poisonous snakes, malaria and man-eating beasts at every turn.  The wonderment of Marco Polo arriving at the court of Kublai Khan!  This?  He threw another rock.  This