Mars

THE LONG WINTER

The blue world was far luckier than its red companion. Closer to Father Sun, bigger, it held its deep oceans of water and protective mantle of air. Life flourished.

Not without interruption, however. Not without calamities. Great creatures took command of the seas, the land, even the air, only to die away completely into utter extinction. At times the hand of death swept the blue world so thoroughly that it was almost emptied of life completely.

Yet each time life struggled back, repopulating the blue world with new and different creatures.

Great sheets of ice marched outward from the poles; massive glaciers came grinding down from the mountains to cover the land with layers of ice miles thick. So much of the oceans’ waters was turned into ice that the level of the sea sank. The blue world turned white and glittering under the pale sun of winters that lasted a hundred thousand years or more.

The cold reached the red world, too.

The red world had not yet fully recovered from that great cataclysm of long ago. Yet a broad new sea had arisen, gleaming water that covered almost half the planet. Enormous volcanoes reared their mighty peaks toward the stars and spread hot lava and steaming gases over the land. There was still energy deep beneath the red world’s crust, the molten energy to build the tallest mountains of all time.

As always when there is water and energy, there was the chance for life to begin. Water and energy and time: those are all that life needs.

But then the cold began to do its deadly work. The great hemispherical sea froze and vanished into the ground. The volcanoes stilled. The red world began a long, long winter that has lasted to this very day.