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joined the doctor and his dazed opponent behind the car.
    The guard at the plane froze, holding his weapon as if it weighed fifty pounds and not bothering to seek cover, dispelling any notion these might be soldiers or even capable mercenaries.
    Wren, meanwhile, grabbed the other fellow with both hands and shook.
    “You pukes think you can just fly in to my country and pick it clean?”
    But the looter matched the doctor’s passion.
    “Get stuffed you fucking American.”
    “I’m no stupid American you piece of filth. This is my country and I’ll protect it from the likes of you.”
    “This is my neighborhood and that’s my house, right there so don’t go telling me what is or isn’t around here. You can’t keep us out; I came back for what’s mine.”
    Wren did not understand what the man was saying. Perhaps his preconceptions overrode reality.
    “So you admit it, you’re a looter.”
    Wren worked the sack open and emptied the contents: A badly warped photo album, a shoebox full of antique metal soldiers, a tweed flat cap covered in soot.
    “I can’t steal what belongs to me.”
    Wren pulled the guy’s mask off and saw a young man with a shaved head.
    “30 Edgerton Park Drive, my home it is and I’m here for every piece of my family I can find, because all we got now is a shack in a French shantytown.”
    Hawthorne considered the plane, the risk, and the gear, and said, “You must have spent a fortune to hire a smuggler to fly you in for family mementos.”
    The kid on the ground answered, “My mum’s dying and she hasn’t had a home in almost twenty years now, so her kids chipped in to pay. No Yank would understand, only a Brit would get it.”
    After several seconds of silence, Wren removed his own protective hood, revealing a thirty-year-old man with a round face, a crooked nose, and small eyes. He seemed more a boxer than a scientist.
    “I get it,” Wren helped the young man to his feet. “Grab your stuff and go. Tell your pilot to fly out over Sandy Bay, that radar station is off-line.”
    The kid carefully returned every keepsake into his sack and then hurried for the plane.
    Hawthorne stood next to Wren and watched the ramp close and the propellers lift the aircraft up and then off to the south.
    “Are you ready to leave?”
    “Fuck yeah.”

6. Kost
    Dr. Ellen Kost pointed at the projected map, although the audience needed no direction to see the gigantic crater.
    “Hellas Basin remains the engine driving Martian dust storms because of the temperature variation between the surface and the bottom of the crater. The increasing frequency and duration of these storms was forecast and is vital to any hope of terraforming success because they help warm the atmosphere.”
    The audience of two-dozen researchers and workers listened attentively, but Ellen worried that either she had lost them with her dull delivery or they had already spotted flaws in her presentation. She could almost hear them wondering why UVI entrusted weather orientation to such an unqualified woman who also happened to be thirty pounds overweight.
    “Unfortunately, static electricity inside these storms can lead to the splitting of carbon dioxide and water particles, which re-form into hydrogen peroxide which is toxic to organics. This contributes to the difficulty in growing organisms outside habitat domes.”
    They know this already, Ellen. You are just making yourself look stupid.
    “Nevertheless, importing hydrocarbons to Mars remains a promising method of increasing atmospheric pressure. Clearly, the lack of results is disheartening, but also a reminder of the complexities involved when dealing with weather on a planetary scale. However, the failure of the major colonizing powers to coordinate terraforming efforts adequately may be the single most important factor in the lack of progress.”
    She inhaled and then asked, “Any questions?”
    Ellen tried to smile and appear calm, but she worried they would ask a