The Mysterious Planet

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IT WAS A FINE MORNING on Mars, clear, crisp and cold. In a little over a hundred years the great air factories had increased the oxygen content until it could be breathed without a mask, and had added enough carbon-dioxide gas to let the air collect and hold the faint heat of the sun. Now it was like a morning high in the mountains on Earth.

Bob Griffith breathed in deeply, enjoying the piney scent of Martian cactus, and let his breath out again in a frosty whirl. After nine months at the Space Academy on Earth, it was good to be home again. He stopped at the entrance to the Space Navy port to glance back at the city of Tharsis, where the Naval Administration building rose up with elfin grace possible only on a world of light gravity. That and the port had dominated his dreams since he was old enough to know that he wanted to be a naval officer, like his father.

Still a few weeks short of seventeen, Bob was already beginning to look like a man. He was still growing, lacking two inches of six feet, and his body hadn’t fully rounded out; but the fur parka he wore now concealed his slimness. The quiet seriousness of his face seemed to add a couple of years to his age, though his gray eyes held hints of fire in them. Normally, a cowlick in his brown hair would have added a touch of humor, but the typical crew-cut of an Academy cadet had removed that, much to Bob’s satisfaction.

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