Second-to-last installment of part two. We can start part three on Monday.

A bit more description of where Saras lives and works, both a local level and a higher one. As much as I’d like to get into a discussion of the terraforming and civil engineering, this is still an almost 9-yr-old chatting with her uncle. It’s better to keep things personal.

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Leaving the apartment complex, they stepped out under the dome of the residential complex.  The ones with the greatest faith, about ten percent, went about in normal clothes.  Everyone else had a suit on in case of integrity failure.  It had only happened once since Saras had been there, with six dead, two being children.  After that, suits were mandatory for any girl under seventeen and any boy under twelve.  The urge to protect precious breeders.

The above ground tunnel to the labs was also where they would be exiting.  With three others in an airlock – one of whom recognized Laszlo and greeted him in Russian-accented English – after it cycled, they walked about ten meters to where the flits were kept at charging stations, putting their nosepieces in.

“That’s ours for the day,” Saras said, pointing at what looked like a two-seater motorcycle from Earth.  But this had a larger and enclosed engine for the little reactionless motor, and three short skids rather than two wheels.  She turned to him.

“You’re older and a spaceship pilot, so if you want to…” Saras began, stopping at his hard look.

“Your craft; your expertise.  Lead me,” he replied.

“Sir!” She went and gave a brief description of what it could and could not do.  Power for six hours; half that if she was showing off.  “And I plan to.”

There were restraint belts but, “I’ve never used them,” so Les just shrugged.  She took out her goggles and indicated her uncle should put them on, too.

“Let me check with local control,” he watched her eyes flare like the rising sun.  “Done.  My pre-flight will take maybe five minutes.”

Talk as you do, he said to her.  I want to learn this device.

Device.  What Minerva called that thing which had whisked her grandmother and other uncle into the future.  How is that even possible?  Dang it, I need to focus up, here!

Six minutes later, they were straddling the flit.  Saras lifted.  Ten meters.

“You have any fear of heights?” she called back.  They would be out of signal in seconds.

“Not that I know of.  Planning something scary, little niece?”

“Yes.”

They jerked up at forty-five degrees, the Martian sun behind them, illuminating the huge canyon mouth to the northwest.

A river, maybe half a mile wide, flowed beneath them, toward the northeast and the Chryse Sea.  The Tharsis Rise was higher on their right as they came up on the canyon, proper.  Saras let go of the handlebars with her right for only a second, to point down.

“We’re building a dam, just there,” she shouted.  “Aqua gave us just enough time to do the basic civil engineering before the Second Inundation.  It will make the failed Three Gorges Dam in former China look tiny.”

“We?  Us?” His mouth at her right ear, Les didn’t need to shout.  “You have gone native!”

Not again!

“Look ahead,” she yelled to change the subject.  The walls were perhaps fifty miles apart.  “I call it the Argonath and want twenty-mile tall statues of grandmom and Emperor Alexei of Russia, one on each side, but people just laugh at me.”

“I think,” she shook just a little at his breath, “it should be you and Kira.  This will be the Argonath in all of my reports.”

At over two hundred miles per hour, they raced into the canyon.

“A much larger version of Thermopylae,” Les said, looking down, left and right.  And thankfully not so close to her.  “Going all the way to the end?”

“Please.  That’s two thousand miles!  Here…” they descended a few hundred feet.  Plants, scrub grass, bushes, some trees.  “The pressure is twice that of the regular surface and thrice of the Tharsis Rise and mountains.  See that?”

A series of huts.  Two of maybe a dozen looked up in time to wave.

“Illegal colonists!  We all know they’re here.  But these are exactly the kind of people we need right now.”

“We?” he laughed again.

She accelerated and made a complete rotation about their vector of travel, pleased that she disoriented Les enough to grab her waist to steady himself.  Jinking right, they were in a side channel, headed to one of her favorite places.