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

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE YEAR ONE PEOPLE

Earth and Camp One, November 1980 to early 1981

The cargo ship returning to Earth had delivered its freight and had no paying load for the homeward leg. Its emptied holds stayed dark. Hale and Morozov occupied two berths in a small crew module; a flight crew kept the ship running. For months the passage was uneventful, marked by exercise, maintenance checks and the steady revision of their civilian training notes. The greatest argument concerned how much an emergency lesson could be shortened before it ceased to be useful.

On Mars, the November arrival was a line in a traffic report until the news pictures came through.

Nakamura recognised Hale first. He was walking behind a barrier on Earth, looking heavier under gravity than he ever had beneath a suit on Mars. Morozov walked beside him. Microphones appeared from every direction. Camera flashes struck their faces. The announcer called them returning pioneers, repeated the dates of the first landing and promised interviews throughout the evening.

The Mars communications operator advanced to the next recorded bulletin. There were crowds outside the reception building, interviews with people who had never met either man, and a slow replay of Hale pausing to touch an ordinary green leaf.

Richter leaned nearer the screen.

“They will never finish a briefing.”

The next message was technical, addressed to Shaw. Hale reported their arrival, the medical examinations and the protected training schedule. Morozov had appended a request for updated load diagrams. They had more than four months before the planned April launch and meant to use them.

The television pictures ran again that evening in a crowded common room. Han stayed long enough to see Morozov unsuccessfully avoid a microphone. Valdés watched Hale answer a question he could not hear beneath the noise.

Then a work call reached the room. Both successors got up.

The returning men would prepare the civilians for Mars. Their replacements would keep Mars ready to receive them.

By early 1981 even Richter and Nakamura could no longer identify everyone at Camp One by suit. Hale and Morozov were on Earth, preparing the civilian group; Valdés and Han were establishing their own working routines on Mars.

That bothered Valdés more than he expected. In mining camps he had learned how much could be recognised from a worker's gait before a word was spoken.

In the beginning, a figure crossing the plain was one of fifteen people. You knew the walk. You knew the suit repairs. You knew who leaned slightly left because of an old knee injury and who always carried tools in the wrong pocket.

Now shuttles came and went on schedules.

Military engineers rotated in.

Scientists arrived.

Technicians arrived.

Some people left.

Some chose to stay.

The base acquired arguments about office space.

Valdés stood in Arrivals one morning while the mechanical board clattered.

MARS ORBIT SHUTTLE 12

ARRIVED

The inner pressure door opened.

Eight new personnel came through carrying bags.

One stopped beneath the board and simply stared.

Valdés recognized the expression.

First time on Mars.

The newcomer looked through the terminal window toward the red plain.

“Is that it?”

Valdés stood beside him.

“That’s it.”

“I thought it would look…”

“Different?”

“Bigger.”

Valdés smiled.

“It gets bigger.”

The first civilian mission became the subject of rumors months before departure.

Who had been selected?

Why them?

Would they be permanent residents?

Could they return?

Would they receive land?

Would there be private businesses?

Could a civilian refuse an order from Shaw?

Shaw’s answer to the last question was, “We are about to find out.”

The colony had begun preparing civilian accommodation long before the final passenger list reached Mars.

Until then, most personnel had lived in barracks. The Army Corps of Engineers^*27 had brought the arrangement with them. The living modules were small, functional and windowless. Three or four bunks were stacked above one another, according to rank and assignment. Lockers took up what little floor space remained. Bathrooms and showers were communal.

Shaw had private quarters, though there was little room for anything beyond a bed, desk, shelf and tiny washing station. The washing station spared her the communal facilities when she was called out between shifts; it was not a private shower.

Hake, Morozov, Ricter and Nakamura shared accommodation. They had lived together in worse conditions and had never requested a change.When Hale and Morozov were called back to Earth Vladez was assigned one of the vacant places. Han, the Korean engineer who had replaced Morozov, received a small private room comparable to Shaw's, but without its washing station. She inspected it, set down her bag and asked where the electrical distribution drawings were kept.

The Soviet residential dome was planned differently. Its residents would share sleeping quarters, bathrooms and dining facilities, all managed by the Warsaw Pact administration. Even so, the Soviet planners took an interest in the new civilian apartments.

For the time being, Soviet and Warsaw Pact military engineers still lived in the same barracks as the rest of the construction crews. They worked alongside them, ate in the same mess halls and used the same communal facilities.

That was going to change.

New barracks were being built inside the Soviet residential zone, using the same modular construction methods as the civilian habitats. Once they were ready, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact personnel would move there, taking their equipment and personal belongings with them.

The deadline had already been agreed. By the time the first thirteen civilians arrived from Earth, the separation was to be complete. Every Soviet and Warsaw Pact resident, military or civilian, would be housed in the designated zone.

They would still work alongside the international crews where their assignments required it. But at the end of a shift, they would return to their own residential section.

Shaw's revised settlement plan had reserved a quieter district, away from heavy manufacturing, for civilian housing. Li now proposed twenty-five modular apartments along a pressurised corridor, with connections prepared for later extensions.

Each apartment would have fifteen square metres of private space.

Morel studied the drawings.

“Fifteen square metres?”

“Yes,” Li said.

“For one person?”

“That's the plan.”

“What are they going to do with all that space?”

“Live in it.”

The design included a bed, desk, storage, a kitchenette cabinet with a sink and a small heating unit, and a compact bathroom with a toilet, washbasin and enclosed shower. There were no windows. Residents would still depend on the main kitchens for most meals, but they could make a drink, prepare something simple and wash without joining a queue.

Han examined the water and electrical calculations.

“Twenty-five showers,” she said.

“Twenty-five metered showers,” Li corrected.

“Metering doesn't make water appear.”

“No. It tells us where it goes.”

Shaw asked whether the recycling and power systems could support the additional demand. Han said they could, within limits, provided the showers were fitted with low-flow controls and the hot-water system prevented everyone from drawing full power at once.

“Put the limits in the operating instructions,” Shaw said.

The first thirteen apartments were intended for the incoming passengers. Twelve more would provide room for later arrivals, temporary residents and changes to the manifest. The initial occupants would also test the design before the colony committed to a larger residential district.

The Soviet administration requested a comparable apartment section within its own residential zone. The modules would be much the same, but access and allocation would remain under the separate rules agreed on Earth. Identical walls did not require identical living arrangements.

The ship carrying the thirteen civilians was also scheduled to bring additional habitat panels, service fittings and equipment for subsequent expansion. Those supplies would not make the settlement complete. They would give the construction crews somewhere to begin after the first residents moved in.

The new modules arrived in sections. Crews assembled the pressure shell, connected the water and air lines, tested the electrical circuits and inspected every joint before fitting the interior panels. Construction competed with repairs, agriculture and the Mechanical Dome for labour and materials.

By early 1981, the first apartments were taking shape. Morel inspected one while the kitchenette was still missing and the bathroom pipes remained exposed.

“This is luxury.”

“It's unfinished,” Li said.

“I've lived in worse places that were finished.”

Li handed him an inspection sheet.

“Then you can help.”

The Arrivals hall was expanded again.

By 1981 the place already had an identity of its own.

The boards clattered above rows of benches. A coffee station appeared beside the cargo desk. A wall map showed the pressurized spine and the routes to agriculture, the Mechanical Dome, Chinatown and the outer installations.

Someone placed a handwritten sign near the inner hatch:

WELCOME TO MARS. WIPE YOUR BOOTS.

Shaw ordered it removed.

It reappeared the next day.

She left it.

• • •

The last military transport before the civilian group carried an arrival the terminal had no category for.

Her papers said DEPENDENT ACCOMPANYING ESSENTIAL SPECIALIST.

The medical section had underlined SEVENTEEN.

Sadie Blake came through the inner hatch beside a woman carrying a worn leather case. Neither looked particularly military. The woman had the deliberate walk of someone who had already located the nearest person wasting her time. Sadie kept one hand on her bag strap and tried not to stare at the suits hanging beside the wall.

Valdés checked the manifest.

“Dr. Evelyn Hart?”

“That is me.”

“Experimental metallurgy.”

“Unless something has changed during the flight.”

He glanced at Sadie.

“My niece,” Hart said. “She has her own clearance.”

“I have it here.”

“Good.”

Valdés turned the page. The attachment was longer than the medical summary. Somebody on Earth had argued about this young woman at considerable expense.

Evelyn Hart had worked in industrial research laboratories outside Pittsburgh, studying why experimental alloys behaved beautifully as test pieces and failed when somebody attempted to manufacture useful quantities. She distrusted an impressive result until it had survived repetition, inspection and the hands of a tired technician.

Mars needed that distrust.

The reduction furnaces were beginning to produce local metal. The batches varied. A bracket that looked sound might hide a defect which became important only when it cooled, took a load or went through its hundredth temperature cycle. Hart could help the colony learn which material belonged in a shelf and which might eventually be trusted farther.

The appointment required at least seven years. Its planners had pencilled her into successive construction phases before they asked whether she would accept.

She asked about Sadie.

Her sister Martha had worked in a diner. Martha's husband, Tom Blake, repaired buses. They had died in a road accident when their daughter was fifteen: an ordinary road, an avoidable mistake, a journey nobody had expected to remember.

Evelyn had driven to collect Sadie with a change of clothes in the passenger seat. She had never again considered her household a temporary arrangement.

The selection board offered financial provision, a boarding school and a promise that relatives would be consulted.

“Which relatives?” Evelyn asked.

Nobody answered that well.

“You are asking me to leave the person I am responsible for,” she said. “For seven years.”

“Your work is essential to the programme.”

“Yes. That is why you will have to solve the other problem.”

They returned with a shorter initial commitment. It still required years away. They suggested a guardian she did not know. They pointed out that there were no other children on Mars.

“Then you should not send a child there,” Evelyn said. “You are asking about a seventeen-year-old who has already had two years of people making decisions about what is best for her. Ask her.”

They did. Separately, without her aunt in the room.

Sadie asked about communications, lessons she could continue and whether she would be allowed to work. The questions were written down. Her answer was written down too.

She wanted to go with Evelyn.

The negotiations took months. The final authorization gave her a medical clearance, a place under her aunt's guardianship and a practical training programme. Evelyn signed the seven-year assignment only after Sadie's seat appeared on the manifest.

Now Valdés stood with the result.

“Welcome to Mars,” he said.

Sadie looked toward the little terminal window.

“Am I really the youngest?”

“Here? Yes.”

“Everybody keeps saying it.”

He put the manifest down.

“They will find something else to say.”

• • •

Their quarters had been arranged beside the technical accommodation, close enough for Evelyn to be called to the processing line without a rover journey. Sadie's room contained a bunk, a study surface and a cupboard that would not hold all the things she had been permitted to bring.

She unpacked the things that fitted first.

A photograph went beside the bunk. Her mother was laughing at something outside the frame. Her father's shirt had a dark mark on the shoulder where he had leaned against a bus. Sadie remembered the mark more clearly than the joke.

Evelyn knocked before entering.

“Will it do?”

Sadie looked at the cupboard.

“It will have to.”

“We can change the shelves.”

“Not that.”

Evelyn sat on the edge of the bunk. For a while they listened to a pump through the wall.

Singing had begun after the accident, at the suggestion of a psychologist who did not ask Sadie to explain every silence. There had been a song her mother liked. Sadie could get through the first verse before her voice failed. The next week she got farther.

The psychologist had not promised that music would make her well. It gave her something she could do with the feelings when talking became impossible.

She kept doing it.

On the long crossing she had sung quietly in an unused compartment, with Evelyn outside pretending to read a technical report. Now her aunt looked at the photograph and then at her.

“There will be somewhere,” she said.

Sadie nodded.

She did not yet know what that meant.

• • •

Her first job at Arrivals was to copy a revised cargo sequence onto a paper list before the next shuttle came down.

She copied it carefully.

She copied the wrong revision.

Corporal Ben Hargreaves, twenty-three and convinced he looked older, caught the discrepancy before the first pallet moved. He laid both sheets on the desk.

“See the time?”

Sadie saw it.

“I checked the number.”

“Number stayed the same. Order changed.”

She felt the heat rise in her face.

“I'm sorry.”

“Good. Now show me how you will check it next time.”

He waited while she did. Then he let her update the board.

Private Rosa Delgado was twenty-one. She could reverse a loaded cargo tug into a bay with less clearance than Sadie wanted to think about. At lunch she brought two cups to the desk and moved a stack of forms so there was somewhere to put them.

“Ben did that himself his first week.”

“Does he know you tell people?”

“Yes. He wishes I would stop.”

The third regular on the receiving shift was a twenty-five-year-old French loadmaster named Luc Bernard. He insisted that every tied-down load was checked before a vehicle moved and let nobody's rank improve a loose strap.

They were older than Sadie, but close enough in age to remember the discomfort of being the youngest person in a working room. They gave her jobs, explained what mattered and expected her to remember.

She learned the difference between a passenger awaiting a bag and a technician awaiting the pump inside it. She learned which hatch people drifted toward when nervous. She learned that a delayed status on the board could keep somebody at the window long after the shift should have ended.

There was study time after duty. Evelyn enforced it even when Sadie argued that she had already spent the day reading.

“Manifests are not an education.”

“They are quite a lot of reading.”

“Then you should be well prepared.”

Sadie was useful. She was also tired, occasionally lonely and still seventeen. The colony had to make room for all of those facts.

At the end of her first full working week, Rosa put a handwritten notice on the desk.

OPEN MICROPHONE. CHINATOWN.

“Come with us,” she said.

Sadie read the last line.

ANYONE MAY TRY.

She folded the notice and put it in her pocket.

While Sadie learned the receiving desk, Evelyn began checking the metal work that had brought them both to Mars.

Politics could wait for a cooling sample. Evelyn Hart could not.

After her arrival, she examined the results from the early ingots and asked for the rejected pieces. Li showed her the good shelf. She looked at it politely, then repeated the request.

The failures arrived in a crate.

She spent two shifts with them, cutting specimens and comparing the furnace record to what the metal had actually done. A change in composition had been blamed for one cracked batch. Hart found that its cooling history had also changed.

“Which caused it?” Valdés asked.

“We changed both. We cannot tell.”

“That is why we asked for you.”

“Then let me make two more pieces.”

She made them small. Han approved the reduced draw with such enthusiasm that Li suspected a future argument was being stored up.

One piece cracked. The other did not. Hart asked for another repeat before she would accept the result.

Sadie came to the laboratory at the end of a receiving shift and found her aunt studying the polished surfaces.

“Are you staying?”

“Ten minutes.”

“You said that in Pittsburgh.”

Evelyn checked the clock.

“You are right.”

She labelled the samples, put the covers on and left with her niece. The furnaces had acquired the specialist they needed. Sadie still needed the woman who had brought her.