The first thing you miss on Mars is the green. The things hardest to get used to are the reds and the yellows and the tired browns. Never is there any bright rich green filled with the promise of spring as I grew used to in Kentucky back on Terra. Because this is a dying planet and even when the Martian spring does come, there is a feeling of tiredness in the air.

And the warm rain on your face. You miss that too because there is no rain on Mars. You keep looking at the sky, hunting for the big black thunderheads that sent people running for cover back in Kentucky. You look and look until your eyes ache and even the sting of icy cold rain would be nice.

The water here is all underground and in the canals. It is good water, running down through the bogs and the rivers and the marshes in spring when the big northern ice cliffs melt.

It is very funny about the ice cliffs. Up there it snows in the winter I guess because they get higher and higher until they are like mountains. Then in spring, they melt in a few days. Nobody knows much about the ice mountains because they are in the middle of the forbidden polar zone. It is said there are Martian people up in the forbidden circle but I don't think so. Because why would anybody live in such a place when the level lands and the old sea bottoms and the canals are down here!

Anyhow, we never go there. The only Martians I ever saw are the ones that come by like tramps asking for food. We always give it to them because they are always hungry and we don't want any trouble. And then there is Barzoo. He was here when we came. He lives in a little stone house out beyond the potato fields. All Martians have hard brown skins—almost like shells—and instead of white in their eyes, like Terrans, they have light green, and the pupils are always jet black. Looking at a Martian is a little hard to get used to at first but after a while it's all right.

Dad and Mom made me stay away from Barzoo at first, but he was harmless and now they let me visit him. We talk but I can only understand a little of what he says and he can't understand much Terran. He is a funny man, Barzoo. He never smiles and gives you the idea he has only contempt for Terrans. But he takes me and shows me where the big gadfish hide in holes in the canals and how to catch them with a white pebble on the end of a line.

Nobody minds Barzoo.

I am Thomas Wilks Junior, but everybody calls me Tommy. I am fifteen years old and I 

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