We're Civilized!

On the scarlet plains of a future Mars, a tightly‑knit community has turned the planet into a living network of water‑filled canals. Women and children tend the thriving lichen farms, while men carve endless channels so moisture can seep from pole to equator, sustaining every generation without want. Their language lacks words for ownership or doubt, and each citizen feels a quiet, collective joy in the work that binds them together.

When a sleek Alliance ship finally touches down, Captain Thomas H. Griswold confronts a landscape of perfect order but puzzling emptiness. He and his crew meet the young ethnologist Berkeley, whose theories clash with the captain’s hard‑won pragmatism. As the crew surveys the endless sand‑lined waterways, a tension builds between the promise of a flawless civilization and the unsettling question of what, if anything, truly lies beneath the surface.