First Day on Mars
火星に着任した若い技師ノアの、期待とかすかな不安の一日
Noah has just arrived at Colony Eleven, the newest on Mars.
He is a young , and this is his first mission far from Earth.
For six long months, he had travelled across space to reach this red world.
When the airlock opened, a wave of cold, dry air touched his face.
The here felt strange, because his body was much lighter than on Earth.
Every step he took seemed slow, as if he were walking through a dream.
Outside the thick windows, the stretched out in endless shades of rust and orange.
The sky was not blue at all; it glowed with a pale, dusty pink.
Noah had seen many photographs, but nothing had prepared him for the real thing.
A tall woman in a grey uniform came forward to greet the new arrival.
"Welcome to Colony Eleven," she said. "I am Captain Vega, the head of operations."
She explained that the colony had been built ten years earlier by the first settlers.
About two hundred people now lived and worked inside its sealed metal domes.
Noah's job was to look after the life-support system, the heart of the whole colony.
It controlled the air, the water, and the temperature that kept everyone alive.
"Without that system," Vega said quietly, "none of us would survive a single hour."
Noah nodded, feeling both proud and nervous about such an important .
She led him down long corridors that hummed softly with the sound of machines.
Everything looked clean and modern, yet something about the silence felt heavy.
The other workers smiled politely, but their eyes seemed tired and a little .
Noah told himself that he was only imagining things after such a long journey.
That evening, he stood alone at a window and watched the distant sun set.
The two small moons of Mars had risen slowly above the darkening hills.
He had dreamed of this moment for years, ever since he was a boy.
Yet as he looked at the quiet, red world, a stirred inside him.
He did not know it yet, but Colony Eleven was hiding a dangerous secret.