She read the list, all the names of our friends who had come out on that first ship. The names of men and women who had died, one by one, and left their farms to their children—to the same children who now crowded close about the platform and listened to her read, and smiled up at us.
She came to the end of the list and looked out at the crowd. "Thank you," she whispered.
They shouted then. They called out to us and pressed forward and held their babies up to see us.
looked out past the people, across the flat red desert to the horizon, toward the spot in the east where the Earth would rise, much later. The dry smell of Mars had never been stronger.
The first Martians....
They were so real, those carved figures. Lewis and Martha Farwell....
"Look at them, Lewis," Martha said softly. "They're cheering us. Us!"
She was smiling. There were tears in her eyes, but her smile was bright and proud and shining. Slowly she turned away from me and straightened, staring out over the heads of the crowd across the desert to the east. She stood with her head thrown back and her mouth smiling, and she was as proudly erect as the statue that was her likeness.