As It Is On Mars, 3 Volume Set

In this new edition, the story is unchanged, as is the length of the book, but there is a significant improvement in how the tale is told in the beginning chapters. In Chapter One of the old edition, the scene was a Congressional hearing, where we find out only indirectly about the catastrophe on Mars. In the new Chapter One, the scene is the NASA landing site, where we directly experience the horror and anguish of the two survivors as they deal with the disaster and its aftermath. This edition also has three maps, and minor updates to reflect the latest Mars science and geology. The tale continues to be set on an accurate Mars, and lays the foundation for the very different struggle in Book Two of the Series, Give Us This Mars (2003), and finally the Great Martian War in Book Three, Give Us This Mars (2005).

From CHAPTER FIVE: The Graves

[SCENE: Evening at the landing site. Food gone, supply vessel sabotaged, John is about to kill himself.]

Five minutes later they were standing beside the graves. He began shaking her hand, but thought the better of it. He embraced her instead, as best he could.

In his grave was the narrow mattress from the wrecked rover. It was raised at one end by a flat stone underneath, to serve as a pillow. He switched off his headlamp, and clambered into the grave, about three feet deep. He lay down on his side, head toward the cairn, in an almost overwhelming emotional state. A tear ran down his face. He then switched on his interior helmet light. Denise, standing just a few feet away, responded by switching off her headlamp.

"Good-bye, Denise," came his voice over the radio from the grave. "Maybe we meet again on the other side."

"Maybe," she said. "Good-bye, John. I'll be joining you soon. I'll switch off your light when you fall asleep."

The sleeping pills were already working and he did not respond, but one last unspoken cry of protest managed to break into his ebbing consciousness. Shortly after, he was in a deep slumber, disturbed every so often by anguished dreams.

Denise walked a few feet farther back from the grave and watched. A few minutes later she came back, and bent down. She could see he was breathing regularly, with his eyes closed. Getting down on her knees she reached down to turn off his interior helmet light. But she found it hard to do. She noticed that a tear had lodged between his nose and one cheek. She began to be overwhelmed.

She did not move, and remained kneeling, looking at his face. He was still alive and she wanted to prolong the sight of him living. But after a few minutes, beginning to feel the cold of the ground penetrating her knees, she forced herself to switch off the light, and get up and walk away.

As she walked back to the rover, she could not think of why she had bothered to switch off the light. After all, what difference did it make, if he died with the light on or the light off?

When she reached the rover, she looked at the time on her wrist display. It was ten past nine. She could not go back inside. She decided she would sit on the bench nearby, and look at the stars in the eastern sky, until about ten. By that time he should be dead, she thought. There had been just under an hour's oxygen in John's air cartridge. I can't go inside until I know he's dead, she thought. At ten I'll walk over and check. I'd better bring a shovel, she thought, and fill in the grave this evening; I couldn't bear to look at his open grave in daylight tomorrow.

Then, sitting on the bench, the full impact of the terrible loss hit her hard. Her feelings were suddenly so intense that she could not contain them. She burst into tears, and just sobbed and sobbed.

Eventually, she stopped crying and felt a little better. But still she had difficulty keeping control of herself. She now admitted to herself what she had been unwilling to admit before. She had grown to like and trust him very much. In spite of all their difficulties, not one angry word had ever passed between them. There was thus not only the loss of a competent companion, but far worse, the loss of a very dear friend, whom she had been close to falling in love with.

And she thought, with mounting bitterness and resentment: if they could just have left us the supply vessel, with the food it carried, and not sabotaged it; I'd have settled for whatever existence we could manage here, without them having to spend a penny to rescue us. I'm sure we would have found some way to survive, at least for three or four years. Maybe even longer. We would have been very determined—we could have made something work. Why did they have to kill us, she kept asking herself. So they could all feel good about themselves? She could see no other reason. No, she thought, they wouldn't have felt good about themselves, leaving us here alive. They would have felt guilty about not rescuing us. That's why they had to kill us off, to save themselves from their guilt feelings.

The issue was crystal clear to her now, in her despair. If only the people on Earth had had more courage, she thought, the courage to say to us that they thought it was better to spend the rescue money on the many in need on Earth, instead of on us alone, and left us to live the rest of our lives here as best we could.

We would have settled just for the joy of being alive, even here on Mars. I would have, and I know John would have too—eventually. Being alive on Mars, and having a life to live, even such a strange one, is much better than being dead before your time. And who knows, it might even have been better than some of the awful lives people have on Earth.

Her emotions overwhelmed her again, and once more she wept bitterly. May God damn you, she swore to herself, her face in a fury, you didn't have to take our lives away from us, you didn't have to starve us to death, you didn't have to, you murdering bastards, you didn't....

It went on in this manner for quite some time. One emotional attack after another, one fit of wrenching sobbing after another. She could not stop it or control herself. The very depths of her soul had battered its way into her consciousness, an emotional battering ram forged in the heat of the terrible losses being experienced,...