From the front matter:

        We could steal away in the rovers soon,
                        beneath a dawn-red sky.
        And flee along the valleys wide,
                        between escarpments high.
        Escape ere the drifting ice fog lifts,
                        dispersed by the morning sun,
        Ere the deep blue hue of the dawn clouds fades,
                        and a new day is begun.

PROLOG

JURGEN EINDORF, the mission's chief flight engineer, was as good as his reputation, and on Friday, July 10, 2048, he engineered a safe landing, on a flat, sandy surface on Elbow Plain. In the Martian calendar, it was Sunday, Alpha-October 14, just a few weeks past the fall equinox.

The third manned landing on Mars was so smooth it was hardly felt by the twelve astronauts inside. Computers, guided by radar beacons on the ground, brought the squat cylindrical lander in automatically.

Had it not been for the silence after the ear-splitting roar of the rocket engines, and then a monotone computer announcement of a successful landing, the twelve could not have told for sure that they were down, and that the European Space Agency had succeeded in safely landing a rescue mission on Mars—where NASA had failed just two years earlier.

Minutes later, when that monotone computer announcement of the successful landing reached Earth, cheers and shouts of elation erupted at Mission Control just south of Toulouse, and indeed all over Europe. But in high places in the United States, the feeling was very different.

After touchdown, Captain Richard Derk, his two first officers, and three others, remained seated around the circular edge of the lander's lower personnel floor. Each of the six had a small view port to the right, but none of them could see anything outside except for dense, swirling clouds of orange dust. The lander's powerful rocket exhausts had created a blast crater under the lander, throwing up enormous clouds of dust in the process.

Nobody said anything. They were mostly experiencing a feeling of relief, mixed with curiosity and even elation—they had landed safely on Mars, only the third set of humans ever to do so. For the present they were content to remain seated and watch the drifting dust outside.

The mission commander, Captain Derk, calm and collected, lay back in his severely reclined seat. He was used to command, descended directly from a long line of aristocrats, all of them leaders in their time, right back to the infamous Norman Duke Gilbert D'Erque, whose army had laid bloody waste to large parts of Saxon England during the Norman Conquest. Captain Derk was a man it did not pay to cross.

At that moment, this twenty-first century Norman aristocrat was experiencing a certain exuberance, both at the prospect of new lands to conquer and control, and at the prospect of becoming the first governor of a lucrative Mars colony.

The dust settled quite quickly. Captain Derk looked to the northwest. He expected to see a red, rock-strewn valley floor, with the famous Stem Gap in the distance, ten miles away. This was the huge, mile wide gap in the northwestern escarpment wall of Kasei Valley, and the entrance to the sanctuary of Leaf Valley. It had been clearly visible during the descent, until just before touchdown and the clouds of orange dust.

But now, with the dust settled, the Captain was surprised to discover that he could no longer see anything remotely like the famous landmark.

He ordered his crew to stay seated. Seconds later, he was out of his seat, checking the view through each of the six view ports in turn. What he saw through each was much the same, and not at all what he had been expecting.

He suppressed feelings of anger. They had promised him a sheltered landing spot—as good as inside Leaf Valley. But this was just a hole in the ground. They'll pay for this, he thought to himself. They'll not put me in a hole in the ground.

But they had put him in a hole in the ground, at a strategic disadvantage, well outside the sanctuary of Leaf Valley. And they had another surprise waiting for him too.

CHAPTER ONE

High Stakes

EVERYBODY HAD been convinced. There could be no doubt. The survivors of the first manned missions to Mars had all died of starvation.
        So it came as a complete surprise six years later, in August of 2044, when NASA discovered they were still alive. When further inquiry confirmed that they were not merely alive, but flourishing, and had built a prosperous settlement in a place called Leaf Valley, the world was stunned. And when the settlers revealed the extent and sophistication of their settlement, in a remarkable video recording they sent to Earth, there was even shock, and envy too.
        Before that August, nobody had ever heard of Leaf Valley, but a careful NASA study of the video recording showed it to be a natural sanctuary, a kind of Martian Shangri-La, and an ideal place for human settlement. Because it was low down, it was usually warmer than the high, cold, wind-scoured plateau surrounding it, and it had higher pressure air for the same reason; it was protected from severe dust-storm winds too, by its enclosing precipices and escarpment walls; and, most importantly, it had a . . . .
       . . .
       . . .

        If all that was not enough to stir imaginations on Earth, the video also revealed a Zen monastery in Leaf Valley, at its southern end; it was the home of a Japanese Zen master, sole survivor of the failed Japanese mission of 2038. The monastery lay high up, at the edge of a precipice, with breathtaking views over the valley below.
        In the upper echelons of Government, in both the United States and the European Union, the reaction to the images of this Martian settlement, and the unique valley that sheltered and nourished it, was initially more shock than surprise. That shock soon gave way to envy at what the settlers had accomplished, and that envy soon gave way to desire—and even lust—for possession and control. A later revelation of very large copper deposits, conveniently close to Leaf Valley, intensified these feelings.
        It was obvious from the video images that copper had been used extensively in the construction of the settlement, and the source of this copper very quickly became a matter of engaging interest on Earth. NASA geologists were soon searching for it, carefully scrutinizing Mars terrain data, sent back to Earth by survey satellites in earlier decades. And well before the end of 2044, they found it.
        The copper was coming from what appeared to be exceptionally large deposits in a mountain with a ridge summit, which the settlers had called Chiselhead Mountain. The mountain lay within Kasei Valley, only about ninety miles south of Leaf Valley.
        It quickly became clear to both NASA and the European Space Agency, ESA, that the assets of the Leaf Valley region were of enormous value. Shortly after the discovery of the settlement in 2044, NASA estimated a value of at least a trillion dollars for the valley.
        Initially, the great value of the settlement lay in the simple fact that it drastically reduced the cost of a mission to Mars—to less than a tenth of the cost of the disastrous 2038 NASA mission. It was no longer necessary to ship a greenhouse, tens of tons of food, habitat, Mars rovers, or an extra Earth return rocket that would make its own fuel on Mars. A single mother ship, equipped with a simple landing craft, carrying maybe a Mars buggy or two, was now sufficient.
        The lander would just need rocket engines powerful enough to get it back up into orbit at the end of its stay on Mars. It could be light weight, and could land with only half its rocket engines firing for only a few seconds, because its large fuel and oxidizer tanks, needed to get it off Mars later, could be close to empty for the landing. Once down on Mars, the lander could get fuel and oxidizer from storage tanks filled earlier by the Leaf Valley chemical plants. During the visit, the crew could make use of the Leaf Valley living quarters and greenhouse facilities.
        Both NASA and ESA soon realized that the original trillion dollar estimate for the value of the Leaf Valley region was too low. That estimate had been based only on the hundreds of billions of dollars the settlement would shave off the cost of a mission to Mars.
        By late 2044, after scientists found out about the very large copper deposits at Chiselhead Mountain, it was easy to believe that in years to come, with advancing technology, a way might be found to bring copper economically from Mars to Earth. There was thus the additional possibility that a Leaf Valley colony could one day pay for itself, as well as enormously benefiting the mother country. And who knew what other treasures remained to be discovered? It was no wonder that envious, lusting eyes were directed at Leaf Valley. Its true value was incalculable, probably in the trillions of dollars.
        Before 2044 ended, both the U.S. and the E.U. were drawing up rival plans for taking control of Leaf Valley, for the purpose of founding a potentially lucrative Mars colony.
       . . .
       . . .

You can continue reading this excerpt, for about 25 pages in all, at Amazon's online book store.