By Mike Muzzy · © 2026 Mike Muzzy. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE HARVEST

The agricultural dome, late 1980

The agricultural dome’s first full mixed-crop harvest took place under artificial daylight while a dust storm moved across the plain outside.

Alina had planned it for weeks.

She had weighed every crop, recorded water consumption, nutrient input, lamp hours and losses. Nothing about the harvest was ceremonial.

The final preparations began before the morning shift. Alina checked the scales, inspected the storage containers and made sure every harvesting tray carried the correct plot number. She had spent too many months recording the growth of individual plants to lose track of them at the last moment.

One of the technicians had already brought a knife to the lettuce beds.

“Put that down.”

“I was checking whether it was sharp.”

“You can check it without cutting anything.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“Good.”

The knife went back on the bench.

The storm had begun during the night. Outside, visibility had fallen to less than a kilometre, and fine dust moved across the dome's exterior panels. Inside, the lamps continued their regular cycle. The plants had no idea what the weather was doing.

Alina preferred it that way.

The potatoes came first. The growing containers were opened one at a time, and the contents carefully separated. The technicians collected every tuber, including those too small to eat, then weighed the remaining growing medium to establish how much had been lost or retained.

The first container produced less than expected.

The second was better.

The sixt contained a potato that had grown around a piece of irrigation tubing.

Valdés, who had come to help move the heavier containers, held it up.

“Does this count as equipment damage?”

Alina examined the tubing.

“Put it on the scale.”

“The potato or the pipe?”

“Both. Then separate them.”

He did as instructed.

The dwarf wheat had grown well enough, though several heads were poorly filled. The beans had produced a reasonable crop. Lettuce was abundant, but its water content made the figures less impressive than the trays suggested.

Alina had warned everyone about that.

A kilogram of lettuce was not a kilogram of potatoes, however pleased people might be to see it.

The tomatoes were another matter.

They had descended from seeds that had arrived without proper authorization and had already caused more administrative trouble than their nutritional value justified. The plants had survived transplanting, changes to the nutrient solution and a period when the lamps had been reduced to conserve power.

Some fruit had split. Some remained green. Several had developed pale patches where the light distribution had been uneven.

The ripe ones looked magnificent.

Alina cut one open to examine the interior. She measured the flesh, checked for damage and placed the two halves on a marked tray.

Valdés watched.

“Are we allowed to eat that one?”

“After I finish.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

He went back to moving containers.

By midday, the central workbench was covered with labelled trays. Potatoes occupied one end, followed by beans, lettuce, herbs and tomatoes. The wheat had been bundled separately for drying and later processing.

Every item had a number.

Every number belonged in a report.

Then Morel arrived with a camera.

“No.”

“Alina.”

“No.”

“This is history.”

“This is potatoes.”

“On Mars.”

“They remain potatoes.”

Shaw appeared behind him.

“Let him take the photograph.”

Alina glared at both of them.

“Fine. But nobody touches anything until I finish weights.”

Morel waited while she completed the final entries. He photographed the workers first, then the trays, then Alina standing beside the harvest with her clipboard still in hand.

“Could you put that down?”

“No.”

He took the photograph anyway.

The harvest included potatoes, dwarf wheat, beans, lettuce, herbs and the stubborn tomatoes descended from unauthorized seeds.

The yield would not feed the colony.

That was not the point.

The point was repeatability.

The plants had grown using mostly recycled water, processed waste streams and controlled nutrients. They had survived power reductions, pump failures and one fungal outbreak that Alina had treated like an invading army.

The fungal outbreak had cost them two trays of beans and nearly a week of work. Alina had isolated the affected section, changed the air circulation and ordered every tool cleaned before it crossed from one growing area to another.

The rest of the team had considered her excessive until the infection stopped spreading.

She had kept the damaged plants for examination.

They were still in a sealed container at the back of the laboratory.

By late afternoon, the figures were beginning to make sense.

Some crops had performed better than predicted. Others had consumed more water or nutrients than their yields justified. The potatoes were promising. The wheat needed more work. The herbs had grown so well that Alina suspected someone would soon propose giving them additional space.

She intended to refuse.

There were more important things to grow.

The harvest also gave the team something they had lacked until now: enough completed crop cycles to begin comparing results rather than making estimates.

A successful plant was useful.

A successful process was better.

The unauthorized rice and soybeans grown behind the Mechanical Dome had already demonstrated that food crops could be raised on Mars with enough ingenuity and a willingness to ignore regulations. Their first harvests had reached the kitchens before the Agricultural Dome was ready to produce anything comparable.

Alina had examined those results too.

The improvised beds had provided valuable information, though the records were incomplete and the growing conditions difficult to reproduce. She had no intention of pretending the work had not happened simply because nobody had obtained permission.

But the Agricultural Dome had a different responsibility.

It needed to establish how much water, power, labour and growing space would be required to feed a known number of people. It needed predictable yields, not occasional surprises. A system that worked once was encouraging. A system that worked every time could be included in the colony's supply calculations.

At the end of the shift, Alina approved a portion of the vegetables for the kitchen.

The rest went into storage, further testing or the next planting programme.

Valdés watched the trays being carried away.

“That's all?”

“That's enough.”

“We've been looking at those potatoes for months.”

“And now you've seen them harvested.”

“I was hoping for a larger reward.”

“You can help clean the containers.”

He declined.

At dinner that night, every person received something fresh.

The kitchen staff had spent the afternoon trying to divide the available vegetables fairly. The potatoes were boiled. The beans were cooked with the usual ration supplies. Lettuce and herbs appeared in small portions beside meals that otherwise looked much as they always had.

The tomatoes required more care.

There were not enough ripe ones for everyone to receive a whole fruit, so the kitchen sliced them thinly. People who had not tasted a fresh tomato in months watched the knife move across the cutting board.

Someone asked for salt.

Someone else wanted to know whether the seeds could be saved.

Alina, passing through the serving area, answered the second question before the cook could.

“Already done.”

At the tables, people examined their plates before eating.

One technician smelled his lettuce.

“What's wrong with it?” his colleague asked.

“Nothing. I forgot what it smelled like.”

Across the room, a woman bit into a tomato slice and frowned.

“It's sour.”

Alina turned towards her.

“Which one?”

The woman looked down at her plate.

“The tomato.”

“I know it's a tomato. Which tray did it come from?”

The kitchen supervisor intervened before the conversation became an investigation.

“Eat your dinner, Alina.”

She sat down.

Valdés had potatoes and a slice of tomato.

He looked across the table at Alina.

“Whole potato this time.”

“You earned it.”

“How?”

“You did not touch my tree.”

He cut the potato in half.

It tasted like a potato.

That pleased him more than he had expected.

The meal did not last any longer than usual. People finished, returned their trays and went back to their shifts. The storm continued outside, and the next day's work had not changed.

But the kitchen received more comments than it normally did.

The lettuce was good.

The beans needed salt.

The tomatoes were too sour.

The potatoes were excellent.

Alina asked the kitchen supervisor to write everything down.

The following morning, the agricultural team began preparing the next planting cycle. Harvesting had freed growing space, but the containers needed cleaning and the nutrient solutions required adjustment. Some of the growing medium could be reused. Some had to be replaced or treated.

Alina revised the crop allocations using the previous day's measurements.

The wheat would receive less space until its yield improved. Potatoes would receive more. The tomatoes could remain, provided the next cycle justified their consumption of water and electricity.

She also reserved a small section for further rice and soybean trials, using what had been learned from the improvised beds in the Mechanical Dome.

The decision required a change to the planting schedule.

She made the change.

The agricultural team transmitted the complete results to Earth.

Within days, universities requested data. Governments requested projections. Companies requested meetings. Newspapers requested photographs.

Morel's picture of Alina holding her clipboard appeared in several of them.

She was not pleased.

A university asked whether the tomato plants had been selected for their resistance to Martian conditions.

Alina replied that the plants had grown inside a pressurized, heated dome under artificial lighting. Their ability to tolerate conditions outside it had not been tested and was not part of the programme.

Another correspondent wanted to know when Mars would become self-sufficient in food.

She sent the current production figures, the estimated daily nutritional requirements of the colony and the projected capacity of the dome.

The answer was clear enough.

Not soon.

The colony's food system had become another argument for permanence.

The first generation of Mars planning had assumed that every major life-support input would originate on Earth.

Now water came from Mars.

Some oxygen came from Mars.

Some food came from Mars.

Some metal came from Mars.

The direction was obvious.

The percentages were still small.

The trend was not.