Special Effects: Red Earth

now as if Mars was the only viable planet for the future, and Earth was doomed.

A mass exodus occurred. Billions tried to board space freighters and cargo ships, trying to escape to Mars, but only a few million managed to make the crossing. The Earth, bombarded by massive pieces from the disintegrated planets, fell further from the sun and began to freeze over. The atmosphere collapsed, and all that had lived there, now died.

The survivors, safe for the time being on the second planet, watched as their former home became a white moon. There was nothing they could do. There would be no returning, not for many thousands of years. If ever.

Because the refugees had fled in panic, very little of the science or technology they were accustomed to had come with them. They reverted to a more primitive state, making their clothing and tools from the production of Nature. Weaving was reinvented. Agriculture and husbandry became the main suppliers of food. The working of minerals into metal provided instruments, utensils, machine parts. And weapons.

Families which had been complacent and satisfied with an idle life on the once civilized Earth became warlike again, marking out territories and threatening all-comers to keep away. Groups of people, separated by their skin colour or culture or language began to move away from each other, hacking their way through the thick Martian forests and jungles as they went.

Among these people were men called Pathfinders. They were Explorers. It was their job to push through the new territories and discover, if they could, places for farms to begin. And places where fortresses could be built. The new land had to be on higher ground, with difficult approaches for an enemy. There had to be water, and good soil, and there had to be room for the people who followed to settle, and establish a town, a city, a place to spread.

"This looks like a possibility," said Stubbs, leaning his body on an elbow.

Tucker, still nearly invisible in the dark shadows of the trees, said nothing.

"Hey!"

"Yes," said Tucker quietly.

"How am I supposed to know what you're thinking if you never talk to me?" said Stubbs, almost laughing, "Sometimes I think I'd be better off talking to a brick!"