Free They Dreamed of Poppies (a novelette) by Saul Tanpepper Page A

meantime, no alternative opportunity had presented itself.
    That was nine months ago. The stores would last, maybe, two more years.
    We hastily assembled a small team of eleven of our best people  — scientists and engineers and mechanics, along with nine of their family members, plus some animals, and a hold full of plants and seeds — and we set out to see if maybe we might salvage something from the Mars attempt.
    I was chosen to lead them, which meant that I would not be staying. Rather, my job is to take them, get them established (hopefully), then return to the station, where I still have family. Six months to get there, six more back. A year in between for the colonists to get everything ready for us.
    Three hundred and eighty-six human beings. We numbered ten times that many after the biolab experiment we called Earth failed four decades ago.
    An alarm on my control console begins to sound, informing me that we have finally arrived.
    I take us in over Syrtis Major first, site of the initial landing more than twenty years ago and the smallest permanent settlement. I don’t expect to see much. All eyes are on the monitors and everyone’s talking.
    As soon as we have visuals, the chatter stops. “See anything?” I ask, since I need to focus on flying. The general consensus, once the initial shock wears off, is  . . . dandelions.
    They beg me to stay. They want to make another pass, to explore. I keep going. I have my orders.
    At Zephyria colony, we find sunflowers.
    And then, as we pass over Mare Tyrrhenum at a risky two hundred feet, Siobhan Tierney, our chief scientist, says the ground is covered in mustard. Bryson insists it’s buttercups. They begin to argue, but stop when we leave it behind.
    Each of the sites is covered in vibrant blooms. The terrain in between is still as barren as it had been for the billions of years preceding our arrival, but the growth appears to be spreading, sending out tendrils in all colors following the crevasses of the ancient Marscape. Earth flora now covers thousands of alien acres.
    We arrive in Aeolis by mid afternoon, site of the largest and most established colony. It’s impossible to tell anything specific about the terrain visually, since it’s covered in growth, so the Auto-Nav selects a smooth, flat spot two kilometers outside the encampment’s perimeter, and there I lower the massive landing pod and all they will need to begin anew. It’s as close as I dare approach to avoid possible contamination.
    I am entranced. There are more blooms here than I’ve ever seen before, covering the ground as far as the eye can see. Gorgeous rolling vistas of brilliant color.
    Most of the plants appear to be wildflowers and are thus largely without nutritive value for us. Still, my spirits soar. I have to fight the urge to go down there and lay in it. But the infection prevention protocol dictates that I remain on the ship in isolation, just in case I might be exposed to something harmful. It would be devastating if I were to convey an alien disease back to the station.
    Not that it really matters, in the long run. If we die, we die. Nevertheless, protocol is protocol.
    Once I’ve disengaged the pod from the winch cables, I reluctantly retreat to a low altitude, geosynchronous orbit and switch on the remote cams.
    Now I am truly alone.
    I satisfy my longing to be down there by slipping into childhood memories. I picture the hill behind our house in Upstate New York  — what used to be New York — and me lying on the carpet of daisies and clover in the deep shade of the one lone, massive elm. That tree managed to defy nearly everything humans and nature could throw at it, whether smog or whittled adolescent avowals of love that proved not to be so immortal after all. Against a canvas of grass, concrete and sky, a vibrant floral rainbow splayed itself out each and every spring. I spent the first half of my childhood playing beneath the perfect isosceles of the tree’s