Life in space/ part 1 and 2; squatters on Mars

Life in space/part 1

fiction
edward w pritchard

editor's note
Bold and adventurous attempts to see the future and tell how things might be deserve to be applauded. None more bold or often wrong than minor writer ed pritchard. Here look how Pritchard sees Mars from a vantage before anyone went there. [ harry bailey editor]

start
life in space/[part 1]

When you first get to Mars it's not what you thought it would be like. Later after your illusions about yourself and life have dried into the red dusty rock of the Martian surface you blame the writers, the writers who you read as a child and who speculated from the security of earth on what Mars and space travel would be like. The writers who got things so wrong about Mars. It's really not about Mars at all, but it's about life trying desperately to thrive; even if for a while in the hostile environment of space and anywhere away from the sanctuary of Earth.

I came out to Mars on the rumble run, from the Moon to Mars nonstop. Me and my eighteen year old bride Daria. Just the two of us on a seven month extended honeymoon; us and an eleven man crew and 75 security cadets headed for a three year tour of Jupiter. All eighty six of them and me too couldn't keep our eyes or thoughts off Daria after the first two weeks away from earth.. A Woman in space is a rarity and a pretty woman is very unusual.

Mars first impression:

The first thing I saw on disembarking on Mars was the Mercator rats. On the tail, for defense and protection they have a large bulb of flesh. Through evolution or something the bulb is flashed at anything behind the rat and shows as a distinctly human face. The faces are supposed to look like celebrities from earth, or at least that's what general opinion is. It's unsettling and a good inhuman way to start to accommodate one to the unfamiliar Martian environment.

end part 1

Part 2
Life in space; squatters on Mars

My new bride Daria and I had just arrived on Mars and we were both eager to make our fortunes mining meteors. We hoped to find a small piece of land somewhere far from the settlements on Mars and attract asteroids containing rare and valuable minerals and metals from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. We had bought at great expense the latest technology, six huge  plastic magnets, to attract the floating space debris to our space ranch from the money I had made from investing in the recent scam to colonize Phobos, one of Mar's two moons. Phobos was supposed to have somewhere in it's core two new elements unknown on Earth or anywhere else. Luckily, although I invested most of our money in the scam about mining  Phobos, which never did have anything valuable on it's porous surface; I was able to sell my shares early in the bubble and we reaped a small fortune which we invested in the plastic magnets. 

At this point in our new marriage, Daria had absolute faith in me and after the windfall of the money from the Phobos scam she was more than willing to endure the hardships of living with me as squatters in a sod hut on Mars and would work and work night and day for two years wrecking her health to chase my dream of fame and fortune as a Martian explorer and entrepreneur. Only later would I regret how I had overworked my new bride and how I had put her life and health in danger in the hostile Martian environment.
end part 2