Edmund Halloran watched the surface details creep across the large wallscreen at one end of the mess area of Yellow Section, Deck B, of the interplanetary transfer vessel Mikhail Gorbachev, wheeling in orbit at the end of its six-month voyage from Earth to bring the third settlement mission to the Red Planet. The other new arrivals sitting around him at the scratched and stained green-topped aluminum tables where they had eaten their meals, played innumerable hands of cards, and talked, laughed, and exchanged reminiscences through the long voyage out were also strangely quiet as they took in the view. Unlike the other views of Mars that they had studied and memorized, this was not being replayed from transmissions sent back from somewhere on the other side of millions of miles of space. It was really out there, beyond the thin metal shell containing them. Very soon, now, they would be leaving the snug cocoon with its reassuring routine and its company of familiar faces that they had come to know as home, to go down there. They had arrived.

The structure had lifted out from lunar orbit as a flotilla of three identical craft, independently powered, each fabricated in the general form of a T, but with the bar curved as part of the arc of a circle, rather than straight. On entering the unpowered freefall phase that would endure for most of the voyage, the three ships had maneuvered together and joined at their bases to become the equispaced spokes of a rotating Y, creating comfortable living conditions in the three inhabited zones at the extremities. The triplicated design meant that in the event of a major failure in any of the modules, everybody could get home again in the remaining two or at a push, with a lot of overcrowding and at the cost of jettisoning everything not essential survival, even in a remaining one.

The sections accommodated a total of 600 people, which represented a huge expansion of the existing population of 230 accrued from the previous missions. Some of the existing population had been distributed between a main base on Lunae Planum and a few outlying installations. The majority, however, were still up in Marsianskaya

Mezhdunarodnaya Orbital 'Naya Stantsiya, or Mars International Orbiting Station," awaiting permanent accommodation on the surface. In the Russian Cyrillic alphabet this was shortened to MAPCMOC, yielding the satisfying descriptive transliteration MARSMOS in English, accepted as the standard international language.

The region coming into view now was an area roughly twenty degrees north of the equator. Halloran recognized the heavily cratered area of Lunae Planum and the irregular escarpment at its eastern edge, bounding the smoother volcanic plain of Chryse Planitia. Although he knew where to look, he could see no indication of the main base down there. As he picked out the channels emerging from the escarpment, where floods had once poured out across the expanse of Chryse, which lay about a kilometer lower, an announcement from the overhead speakers broke his mood of reverie.

"Attention please. The shuttle to MARSMOS is now ready for boarding. Arrivals holding disembarkation cards ninety-three through one hundred twenty should proceed through to the docking area. Ninety-three through one hundred twenty, to the docking port now."

Halloran rose and picked up his briefcase and a bag containing other items that he wanted to keep with him until the personal baggage caught up with them later. As he shuffled forward to join the flow of people converging toward the door, a voice spoke close behind him. "It looks as if we're on the same trip across, Ed." He looked around. Ibrahim and Anna, a young Egyptian couple, were next in line.

"I guess so," Halloran grunted. Ibrahim was an electronics technician, his wife a plant geneticist. They were both impatient to begin their new lives. Why two young people like these should be so eager and excited about coming to a four-thousand-mile ball of frozen deserts, Halloran couldn't imagine. Or maybe he couldn't remember.

"We'll be going straight down from the station." Ibrahim gestured toward Anna; she smiled a little shyly. "The doctors want her to adapt to surface conditions as soon as possible." Anna's pregnancy had been confirmed early in the voyage. Although the baby wouldn't be the first to be born on Mars, it would be one of a very select few. The knowledge added considerably to Ibrahim's already exuberant pride of first fatherhood.