Operation Isis

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E. Hoffmann Price. Operation Isis

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In memory of Wanda and 1932, when she said, “Instead of hunting another job, dream up stories for the magazines. I’ll do the typing and we’ll make it.” And so we did.

The spaceport of Maritania, the only city of the Martian Mining, Manufacturing & Agricultural Project, was in the easternmost of the ever-expanding complex of interlocking domes that retained the synthetic atmosphere of the developed region and the water vapor exhaled by its lakes and meadows. Beyond the spaceport and well into the level area bulldozed in the midst of the red desert’s wilderness of jagged outcroppings, the Garuda Bird towered above her landing struts. A kilometer-long enclosed escalator led from the vast waiting room and was connected by airlock to the cruiser’s boarding port.

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Comparing the cultivated expanse with the remainder of the ruddy disc, he wondered whether his son would live long enough to see the complex of domes removed.

The consortium of scientists was working on an isotope of nitrogen, using solar or volcanic energy—or both—to produce the heavy form of the gas that made up eighty percent of Earth’s atmosphere and which, with its greater atomic weight, would not readily escape as had the original Martian atmosphere.

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