They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But let me tell you, no one ever came to Mars looking for green pastures or manicured lawns. About all we have here is dust--orange-red dust that has rusted the entire planet with coppery deserts stretching all the way to the horizon and beyond. It's the ugly, rusted dust of decay, of a world that has lived far past its usefulness, and remains, like scrap iron, a relic of the past.
No, it wasn't any green that lured adventurers to Mars. And it wasn't the red either--the iron and copper deposits were as plentiful as pebbles on a beach, and in this age of disposable plastics and superconductors, they were just as worthless. No, just one color could make men leave behind the safe security of a lush, green Earth and venture into a perpetual frozen desert to live and die.
That color was gold.
I joined the gold rush back in the twenty-teens, blinded by visions of quick riches and an early retirement. Armed with a third class shuttle ticket, a second-hand servo suit, and a first-run mining 'bot I'd picked up cheap at a Federation auction, I dropped out of graduate school and went to Mars to make my fortune.
The reality sobered me quickly, and if I hadn't met Laura on the flight I probably would have cashed in everything and come crying back home. The gold turned out to be as elusive as the atmosphere, and before the year was out, anyone with any brains had moved on to the newest colony on Triton, where at least some of the gold dreams proved real.
By then, Laura was gone, too. But I've stayed behind, waiting. Even though the science ships still stop here every three or four years to keep the tiny domed research station running, I just haven't been able to climb back on board that shuttle and leave this rusted rock of a planet behind.
It's been over forty years now since she wandered off into that tunnel. And even though I've known all along that she'd never come back, I just couldn't give up waiting. I've stayed here and watched over the research station, like an old grizzled lighthouse keeper from centuries past. They don't really need me here, but I have their pity and the small allowance of supplies they leave behind. I think they do it as much for Laura's memory as for me. And it's as good a place as any to write poetry, especially the depressing kind.
Every now and again, I'd go off and search for her. I just can't help it.
But now, after all these years, my search has finally ended. This time, when the shuttle comes, I'll be heading back to Earth, even though I can no longer call it home. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, so I really should go back and explain this right--take it from the beginning, so to speak. Otherwise, you'll think I'm just a foolish and romantic old man and you won't really understand.
Laura wasn't the first woman I'd known, but she was and always will be my only love. She had that rare combination of intelligence and beauty that is as hard to find as Martian gold, and like all of us on the shuttle, she, too, had a dream. With her brand new Ph.D. in hand, she wanted to prove her theory that life had once existed on Mars.
"I can't possibly hope to find intelligent life," she'd say to anyone who would listen. "But I expect that something lived there. Bacteria or fungi, perhaps. And if they did, there would be fossils. Microfossils, granted, but the evidence will be there."
When she spoke about it her hazel eyes would glaze over with passion, and her lips would curl up in a smile that was both angelic and deadly serious at the same time.
I fell in love with her on the spot, and by the time we reached the tiny domed settlement on Mars, she was mine. Poetry might not make a man rich, but it's one of the surest ways to a woman's heart.
The next six weeks were the happiest of my life, even though I found no gold and she found no fossils. By day we'd go off to our separate adventures--she and the team of scientists searching for her dream, and I searching for mine, even though I had already found it but didn't know. Each evening was a new reunion; the morning parting was, as the Bard said, such sweet sorrow. We held onto each moment as if it were our last. Almost as if we knew....
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