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that’re scattered all around here were torn out of the ground,” Trumball explained, straightening up. “Some of them might be from volcanic eruptions, but most of ‘em were blasted out by meteor impacts. Mars is a lot closer to the asteroid belt than Earth is, y’know, and so gets hit by meteors a lot more.”
    They seemed to be walking away from the dome, out toward a boulder the size of a house. Red sand was piled up on one side of it.
    “You can see a field of sand dunes out there,” said Trumball, and they saw his gloved hand pointing. “They must be pretty stable, because they were there six years ago, when the first expedition landed.”
    The pointing hand shifted against the tawny sky. “Over that way you can see the land starts rising. That’s the eastern edge of the Tharsis bulge, where the big volcanoes are. Pavonis Mons is roughly six hundred kilometers from us, just about due west.”
    The view shifted again, fast enough to make some viewers slightly giddy. “To the south is the badlands, Noctis Labyrinthus, and about six hundred kilometers to the southeast is Tithonium Chasma, the western end of the big Grand Canyon. That’s where the first expedition found the Martian lichen.”
    Turning again, Trumball walked toward a small tractor. It looked almost like a dune buggy, but its wheels were thin and springy looking. It was completely open, no cabin; the seats were surrounded by a cage of impossibly slim metal bars.
    The viewers saw themselves slide into the driver’s seat. The Zieman boy muttered, “Way cool!”
    “I want to show you our standby fuel generator,” Trumball said as he started up the tractor’s engine. It clattered like a diesel, but strangely high-pitched in the thin Martian air. “It’s about two klicks— kilometers—from the dome. Been sitting out there for more than two years now, taking carbon dioxide out of the air and water from the permafrost beneath the ground and making methane for us. Methane is natural gas; it’s the fuel we’ll use for our ground rovers.”
    Before putting the tractor in motion he turned around and leaned slightly over the vehicle’s edge. “Take a look at the bootprints,” Trumball said. “Human prints on the red sands of Mars. No one’s ever walked here before, not in this precise spot. Maybe you’ll put your footprints on Mars someday.”
    “Yah!” the nine-year-old whooped.
    Trumball drove twenty-eight million paying viewers (and their friends or families) slowly toward the fuel generator.
    “It’s not much to look at,” he admitted, “but it’s a very important piece of equipment for us. So important, in fact, that we carried another one along with us.”
    Once they reached the squat cylindrical module, Trumball got out of the tractor and rested a gloved hand on the smooth curving metal side of the generator.
    “Feel that vibration?” Dozens of millions did. “The generator’s chugging away, making fuel for us. It also produces drinkable water for us.”
    “I’m thirsty,” the five-year-old whined.
    Trumball walked them around the automated module, found the main water tap and poured a splash of water into a metal cup he had brought with him.
    “This water is Martian,” he said, holding up the cup. “It comes from the permafrost beneath the surface of the ground. It’s laced with carbon dioxide, sort of like fizzy soda water. But it’s drinkable—once we filter out the impurities.”
    As he spoke the water boiled away, leaving the cup utterly dry.
    “Martian air’s so thin that water boils even though the temperature here is below zero,” Trumball explained. “The important thing, though, is that there’s an ocean of water beneath our feet, all frozen for millions and millions of years. Enough water to supply millions and millions of people, someday.”
    Mrs. Zieman murmured, “I didn’t know that.”
    After precisely one full hour, Trumball said, “Well, that’s all for today. Got to pack it in now.