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The Martian Lecture Series
Aug. 1st, 2008 02:42 pmI'm going to try and take part in an August Writing community, writing bits of fiction now and again. It's been ages since I wrote anything but newspaper articles, instructional modules, and game colour text. So, here goes...
"The one thing you've got to realize about Mars is this - It is a desert, the purest desert men are likely to visit.
You chaps have your Atacamas and Saharas and such, and I grant you those are nasty places that would swallow a battalion - captain, band and all - without so much as a belch.
But Mars, now, Mars... there you have something altogether different. Take your Atacama, as dry and dusty a place as you're likely to find on God's Earth, and put it atop the Alps. The air's so thin it takes cookie half an hour to boil a two-minute egg, 'cause the water keeps bubbling off into steam. Not that a chap would do something so stupid as boil water in an open pot on Mars. It's all pressure cookers and the like, there, and no one in the field boils a dem thing anyway, because the water's worth more than gold.
And it's cold! Damned cold, which is why we're always sending Canadians to man the canal pumping stations away from the equator. Now, I was in the Kush with Napier during the 40s, so I know hot and I know cold from both ends of it, and I know the old saw about “easier to put on more clothes in the winter than strip to your bones in summer.”
But the cold you get at night on the Martian plains cuts right through the thickest overcoat and blanket, and you get the whole regiment crouched around coal stoves, and half of them losing toes and fingers to frostbite anyway.
Once, at the equator, the glass reached 58 degrees at noon, and the chaps were stripping to their underthings and dancing about, while the locals gasped like beached fish and called it a punishment of the gods. You're more likely to see 70 below, and most summer mornings the batman had to crack the ice in the basins before we could wash.
But the cold and gasping air are nothing compared beside the desert, the chilly dryness that turns your tongue to cotton wool and stings your eyes. I've read newspapermen saying we wear the goggles and scarves to keep out the dust. That's stuff. We wear 'em to keep in the spit and tears. You go around panting in that poor thin stuff they call air, and the water just wicks out of your belly, and you feel your insides shriveling. There's not a drop o' surface water between Syrtis Major and Aubochon, clear halfway 'round the globe, and nothing comes from the skies, save dust and a thin, keening wind.
The only place to find water is under the Kraags, and the Kraags are home to Johnny Martian, and Johnny Martin isn't sharing.”
- transcript from lecture “Six Months in the Phaethoniis,” by Brigadier Franklin Begg, HM Own Martian Rifles (Ret.), delivered to the Royal Astronomical Society, August 1st, 1888.
"The one thing you've got to realize about Mars is this - It is a desert, the purest desert men are likely to visit.
You chaps have your Atacamas and Saharas and such, and I grant you those are nasty places that would swallow a battalion - captain, band and all - without so much as a belch.
But Mars, now, Mars... there you have something altogether different. Take your Atacama, as dry and dusty a place as you're likely to find on God's Earth, and put it atop the Alps. The air's so thin it takes cookie half an hour to boil a two-minute egg, 'cause the water keeps bubbling off into steam. Not that a chap would do something so stupid as boil water in an open pot on Mars. It's all pressure cookers and the like, there, and no one in the field boils a dem thing anyway, because the water's worth more than gold.
And it's cold! Damned cold, which is why we're always sending Canadians to man the canal pumping stations away from the equator. Now, I was in the Kush with Napier during the 40s, so I know hot and I know cold from both ends of it, and I know the old saw about “easier to put on more clothes in the winter than strip to your bones in summer.”
But the cold you get at night on the Martian plains cuts right through the thickest overcoat and blanket, and you get the whole regiment crouched around coal stoves, and half of them losing toes and fingers to frostbite anyway.
Once, at the equator, the glass reached 58 degrees at noon, and the chaps were stripping to their underthings and dancing about, while the locals gasped like beached fish and called it a punishment of the gods. You're more likely to see 70 below, and most summer mornings the batman had to crack the ice in the basins before we could wash.
But the cold and gasping air are nothing compared beside the desert, the chilly dryness that turns your tongue to cotton wool and stings your eyes. I've read newspapermen saying we wear the goggles and scarves to keep out the dust. That's stuff. We wear 'em to keep in the spit and tears. You go around panting in that poor thin stuff they call air, and the water just wicks out of your belly, and you feel your insides shriveling. There's not a drop o' surface water between Syrtis Major and Aubochon, clear halfway 'round the globe, and nothing comes from the skies, save dust and a thin, keening wind.
The only place to find water is under the Kraags, and the Kraags are home to Johnny Martian, and Johnny Martin isn't sharing.”
- transcript from lecture “Six Months in the Phaethoniis,” by Brigadier Franklin Begg, HM Own Martian Rifles (Ret.), delivered to the Royal Astronomical Society, August 1st, 1888.
