Mars Centre rested on the bed of a long-dried sea three hundred miles from the North Pole. It looked as it had always done, a huddled collection of adobe huts, domed, tamped from the chemical-treated sand of the arid planet. Over the course of the years the settlement had grown, and yet, despite the slow increase of population, the settlement still seemed a rough and temporary affair as if the inhabitants had always known that one day they would have to move.
Five miles from the settlement the squat atomic pile rested, half-buried from the wind-blown dust. From it thick cables snaked to both the settlement and to the idle machines of the refining plant, and the flame-scorched area of the landing field with its high control tower, lay a full mile to the south. Of agricultural land there wa
