ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Lynn Harper and her colleagues at the NASA Ames Research Center, who answered my myriad questions promptly and cheerfully and provided many of the technical details in this story (for example, making glass bricks from in situ materials on Mars). I have taken a novelist’s liberties with their excellent information, of course, so any faults with the techniques and technologies used by the characters in this tale are my own, not theirs.

The mission plan for the Second Mars Expedition was adapted from the Mars Direct concept originated by Robert Zubrin, as detailed in his book, The Case for Mars. Again, I have deviated from the specifics of his concept, but the basic mission plan stems from his innovative and highly creative work.

Ed Carlson, South Florida Area Manager for the National Audubon Society, kindly provided the background information about the Living Machine, an organic technique for using solar energy, bacteria, and green plants to produce potable water from waste water. This served as the basis for my Martian explorers’ garden, which provides them not only with the bulk of their food but recycles their water. Living Machines, designed and built by Ocean Arks International, are at work in South Burlington, Vermont; Sonoma, California; Henderson, Nevada; the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Collier County, Florida; and elsewhere.

Dr. Janet Jeppson Asimov kindly granted permission to quote the late Isaac Asimov’s “classic” limerick.

My good friend Philip Brennan patiently detailed the methods used by modern geologists to date rocks.

Alexander Besher graciously answered my questions about the Russian language.

The term bytelock was coined by another good friend, Jan Howard Finder, who defines it thusly: “When the Information Superhighway slows to a crawl or stops, you are experiencing BYTELOCK!”

The quotation from Freeman J. Dyson is from “Warm-Blooded Plants and Freeze-Dried Fish,” by Freeman J. Dyson, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 280, No. 5, November 1997, p. 69.

The quotation from Malcolm Smith originally appeared in “Facing Mars Rationally,” by Malcolm Smith, in Spaceflight magazine, Vol. 40, No. 2, February 1998, p. 45.