A Colony on Mars by Cliff Roehr Read Free Book Online Page B

wal of the Shuttle. The Shuttle was equipped to handle 15 passengers along each wall and thirty more in the center sitting back to back. They located their seat belts and strapped themselves down. As they broke the connection and eased away from the orbiter they noticed another Shuttle arriving from the surface. The reentry flight took just over an hour. It was not scary at all, the Shuttle just glided into the hostile atmosphere and descended smoothly to the surface. On the way to the surface the passengers got a good look at the observatory. It was situated about two hundred yards from the freight elevator at the end of the runway. They also saw the giant radio telescope dishes mounted on the surrounding hil s. They landed on a long smooth runway and taxied to a small cement building adjacent to a platform that was apparently large freight elevator. Twenty feet above the freight elevator was a another platform that served as air lock when the freight platform was in the cavern. The airlock was connected to the shuttle and they disembarked into the elevator then the airlock was closed. Both the elevator and the Shuttle were pressurized. They stood as the elevator descended the equivalent of twenty five floors and came to an abrupt stop. The door slid smoothly open and they stepped out into a Mars cavern. Two hundred yards from where they had stepped off the elevator Tim noticed another elevator shaft running up the far wall and continuing on through the cavern ceiling.
    Tim and Carla took a deep breath, “Do you smell the stench, Carla?”
    “Yes, sure I do but they say you won't notice it after a while thank goodness.”
    “To me it smells like a sewer,” Tim added.
    The lighting was a little dimmer than expected, otherwise, thanks to his classes everything seemed as he had imagined it. They were greeted by both a Government representative and a Company Executive. The Government man appropriately declared, “Welcome to Mars, My name is Walter Potts, I am the project director and this is Thelma Potts, the Mars Colony, Inc. manager, she is also my wife of seventeen years. We both came up here with the Corps. Of Engineers twelve years ago, when we had to live in our Mars suits at all times. We are the oldest living residents of Mars and we are only in our forties. We are over age for being here but our duties require little physical exertion, you young folks are here to do the hard work. Do you want to add anything Thelma?” “No I just want to welcome these nice people to Mars and I hope to get to know you all personally as time goes by. I would like to tell you folks right now that things are different here.” As timing would have it just as Thelma said that a chicken flew by over their heads. “See what I mean,” she added. “Don't worry about the chickens, they come and go as they please but always go home to roost,eat and to lay their eggs.”
    “Do any of you have any questions that you would like to ask us now?”
    “Yes, I do, my name is John Prince, I played a lot of baseball up until the time I took this job. It never occurred to me that Earth sports just would not work on Mars, my question is are there any sports that you have here that we had on Earth?” True there are a lot of sports that can not be played in low gravity but there are several that do work and we play them, these include chipping a golf ball and putting, croquet, shuffle board and horseshoe pitching. There are some modifications to al of these sports to take low gravity into account but they all work and are interesting to play.”
    “There is one more but it really isn't a sport, it's low stakes poker, which is a very popular pass time. We started out playing no limit games but things got out of hand because everyone here has so much money. Some people were getting hurt badly at no limit poker so we set a five dol ar limit on any bet. It is enforced on the honor system but I have heard that higher stakes games stil go on. If caught