WILLIAM E. LOPEZ

Approx. 1,784 words

The First Snowfall

W. E. Lopez

Roland Gentry stopped the electric dune buggy, unplugged his helmet and stepped out, the self-sealing umbilical cord preventing his Mars-suit from deflating. Before him was a tiny structure, hardly bigger than a phone booth. He entered and proceeded down the steeply sloping steps until he was three meters beneath the surface where he came to a cylindrical airlock. Stepping inside he plugged his helmet in and felt the cool rush of air on his face.

Rollo pushed the comm button, “Mr. Stichanopolous? Roland Gentry here from All Planets News, may I come in?” Rollo’s tongue tended to trip over the multi-syllable Greek name. A voice came through his earphones at the same time he felt pressure upon his Mars-suit while the lock spun around it’s central axis and filled with air.

“Call me Stick, Mr. Gentry, before you tie your tongue in knots. Come right in. I’m presently in my study but I’ll meet you in the entryway,” his host said.

By the time the airlock slowly completed a half-revolution the pressure was equal. Rollo unplugged his umbilical and held his helmet beneath his left arm as he stepped from the lock to wait for his host.

Mike Stichanopolous was a barrel-chested man with broad shoulders, dark hair, and a single twinkling blue eye. He walked with a slight limp in the one-third gravity of Mars. Roland knew the man wore a prosthesis after losing that portion of his left leg below the knee. His right sleeve was rolled and pinned to his shirt where he had lost his arm above the elbow. A satin eye-patch covered his left eye.

“Welcome to my home, Mr. Gentry. Find a chair somewhere,” he made a sweeping motion with his good arm, “and I’ll find us something to drink. Coffee sound all right, or would you prefer a beer, maybe a highball?”

“Coffee sounds wonderful, Mr. Stich…” he faltered again on the polysyllabic name.

“Stick, or Mike, please.”

Mike headed for a breakfast bar where coffee was keeping warm in a carafe. “Milk or sugar, Mr. Gentry?”

“Black would suit me to a T, Mike, and the hotter the better. It’s still mighty cold outside.”

“You should have been here thirty years ago, Mr. Gentry. The weather was mighty cold then too. A lot more than it is today now that the atmosphere generators have been online these past fifteen years. Time was, a man without a helmet would die in a few minutes at most. Now, you can take your helmet off as much as twelve to fifteen minutes before you pass out, as long as you don’t exert yourself.”

“That’s what I wanted to discuss with you, Mike.” Stichanopolous finished pouring the two beverages and deftly carried both in his left hand as he hobbled to the living room and set them down on a coffee table near his guest. He picked up one for himself and remained standing.

“The good old days, you mean?”

“No, sir. I’m more interested in the atmosphere project itself, and what it means to the Martian colonials. You know, there’s a move in council to have a holiday named in your honor?”

“You’ve got to be kidding! Stichanopolous’s Birthday? I’d hate to be a kid in grammar school when that came up on a spelling exam. Why ever for?”

Gentry smiled as he set his coffee down and took out a voice recorder with hush-mike. He recorded a few notes but Stichanopolous couldn’t hear what was said. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but make a note of your reaction.” He set the mike aside and continued.

“Everyone knows how bleak this planet was when men first arrived. It was thirty years after first contact before a permanent habitation was established to house a scientific mission, and it was thirty years after that before the first colonists arrived.”

“Spare me the history lesson, Mr. Gentry. I was in the second load, with the plans tucked under my arm and an office not much larger than a meat locker. CONDEL had a charter from the UN to begin terraforming Mars, making it habitable for unprotected humans. I was the man given the job.

“It seemed like an impossible one at first, but the computers said different. The raw materials were all ready here. Billions of liters of water in the polar ice caps, needing only to be warmed again, then transported to the equatorial regions where humans could live and farm.

“Studies indicated trillions of kilograms of oxygen and other trace gases, existing as compounds within the Martian soil. All we had to do was warm the entire planet and we could literally create our own Garden of Eden. But if you’ve ever tried to warm a two-story house in Wisconsin, you’ll have some idea of the immensity of the project we were undertaking.”

“I’m was born in Montana, Mike. We get some pretty severe winters there also.”

“Hmm, yes, I’m sure. Well, Consolidated Developers sent me here to do a job, and they knew it would take decades. At least another twenty years before it will begin to pay for itself when they can start selling real estate over an entire planet.

“But we had to warm the planet first. The only practical means being to increase the green house gases in the atmosphere and the heat from the sun could be kept in the soil instead of radiating back into space each night. So, we set up a dozen generating plants, six north of the equator and six south of it. All spaced longitudinally equidistant around the planet.”

“I understand building those generating stations was not an easy task? Many of the workers suffered injuries and even death, you included.” The reporter occasionally held the hush-mike to his face as he dictated more notes. Stichanopolous kept speaking and paid the man no mind.

“It wasn’t easy, there are always accidents with any construction project. I lost the eye first, due to iron spalling when a rivet gun misfired. Years later, the leg went next when a forklift tipped over in the soft sand and dropped a load of steel on me.” Stichanopolous seemed content to leave the subject there but Gentry prompted him.

“And the arm?”

“Oh, that, sheer stupidity, nothing at all to do with the construction. My jump-bug pilot misjudged the wind one day as we were inspecting the work at stations farthest away from the inhabited settlements. We ran short of fuel and he made a mess of things while attempting a power off landing. It was worse for him, he was killed in the crash, but I managed to live. By the time a rescue crew go to me, frostbite had taken my arm.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. The questions I want to try and answer for my readers don’t concern what it took to build the generators, and not the hardships suffered by the workers. I’m trying to put everything in perspective and answer the why involved with making a new world habitable for mankind. Has it all been worth it?”

Stichanopolous stood silently for a moment deciding how he wanted to answer that question. “Come with me, Mr. Gentry. Bring your coffee, no sense letting it get cold.” Stichanopolous limped across to a plasti-glass door leading to a sunken patio just beyond the living room. He slapped a button next to the door and centrifugal compressors quickly drew down the pressure in the living quarters and storing the air in tanks for later reuse. During the seconds it took to reduce the pressure, Mike Stichanopolous kept up a running commentary for his guest. When the pressure was equalized the door easily slid inward and out of the way.

“I had this patio door installed ten years ago, Mr. Gentry. I knew that one day I would be able to sit out here in my patio, tending my rose bushes, which have yet to be planted, and relax in the mid-day sun. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will before I die.

“Those billions of gallons of water frozen and trapped at the pole will one day melt. In the warm summer months, we will have rainfall in this area. In winter, like now, there will be snow. Do you realize what that means, Mr. Gentry? The last time it snowed on Mars, dinosaurs still roamed on Earth. Perhaps even long before dinosaurs took their first steps. All that water has been frozen since this planet began to lose its atmosphere and then it’s heat. We are going to bring life to this planet once more. There will be a day when men can walk upon the surface of this planet without the necessity of protecting their puny bodies from a hostile environment.

“There will be farms and pastures, orchards and livestock, and we will have a chance to intelligently develop this planet, perhaps atoning for the way we have spoiled Earth. Has it been worth it? Has it been worth an eye, an arm, and a leg? If I have to answer that for you, Mr. Gentry, you can’t be much of a writer. This planet will one day become the fruition of all the dreams of every man and woman who has ever lived.”

Gentry cast his eyes around the small garden, still devoid of plant life with the exception of a few very hardy ferns imported from Siberia and two small patches marked potatoes and onions, undoubtedly imported from the higher elevations of the Andes Mountains. It was obvious that Stichanopolous felt great affection for the scrawny greenery, but Gentry scarcely gave it a thought. The indoor hydroponics gardens at each small outpost provided an abundant quantity of fresh greens and vegetables, obviously producing more than these scrawny plants ever would, while helping in the air circulation and replenishment process.

Why did Stichanopolous seem fixated upon his dream of rose bushes? You don’t eat roses, do you? He was beginning to feel that this wasted old man had spent a lifetime upon Mars, with nothing to show for his efforts except a mild case of insanity, but when a man is as well known and respected as Mike Stichanopolous it’s called eccentricity.

Gentry gazed at Stichanopolous for a moment, feeling very sorry for his host, but the man was not paying attention to him. Instead, he was gazing at the billowy gray and black cumulus clouds gathered overhead. As Gentry looked skyward, the first snowflake in a hundred million years touched his cheek.

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