Mars was a distant shore and the men spread upon it in waves. Each wave different, and each wave stronger. The first wave carried with it men accustomed to space and coldness and being alone, the coyote and the cattlemen, with no fat on them, with faces the years had worn the flesh off, with eyes like nail heads, and hands like the material of old gloves, ready to touch anything. Mars could do nothing to them, for they were bred of plains and prairies as open as the Martian fields. They came and made things a little less empty, so that others would find courage to follow. They put panes in hollow windows and lights behind the panes.
They were the first men.
Everyone knew who the first women would be.
So the second men were Americans also. And they came from cabbage tenements and subways, and they found much rest and vacation in the company of silent men from the tumbleweed states who knew how to use silences so they filled you up with peace after long years crushed in tubes, tins, and boxes in New York.
And among the second men who looked, by their eyes, as if they were on their way to God...
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