: A family of settlers exploring Mars homesick. To ease the melancholy, the father of the family forwards to Mars a wooden house in which they lived on Earth.
Bob dreamed of a colored glass door.
Bob - one of the first colonists of Mars, moved to the "red planet" with his family
Father raised him in his arms, he looked through a strawberry-colored window, and the world was transformed, becoming warm and joyful. The lawn in front of the house seemed like a Persian carpet, the cold rain became warm, and people got rid of their pallor.
Bob, Kerry, and their sons moved to Mars a year ago.
Kerry is Bob's wife who doesn't like Mars
During the day, they worked and studied, these classes distracted them from unnecessary thoughts, but at night they felt like homesickness. Bob dreamed about the Earth, and Kerry packed up every evening to get home on the nearest rocket. Bob was afraid that one day his wife would really pack her bags.
Kerry lacked earthly little things - an old, creaking wooden house, each room with its own voice, favorite furniture, warm evenings on the porch, conversations with neighbors. Here, on Mars, they lived in a prefabricated all-metal house, the sky was dark purple during the day, and alien stars appeared on it at night.
One night, Kerry finally decided to return to Earth, and then Bob admitted that he had spent all the money they had accumulated on a surprise that he promised to show in the morning. If Kerry doesn’t like the surprise, she can fly away.
When the cold sun rose, the whole family went to the locker. Along the way, Bob tried to explain why he believes that one day Mars will become a real home for humans. He compared people with salmon, which every year overcomes unthinkable obstacles in order to get to a place that he had never seen, and continue his family.
A man will also master the planet after planet, so that his family does not die out, in order to protect his descendants from any possible disaster. If one day the Sun explodes, humanity will survive, because it has time to leave the Earth.
People think that they are going to explore Mars for money, unusual landscapes or adventures. But in fact, “something is ticking inside a man”, and this makes him move further and master as many worlds as possible “so that nothing could ever destroy humanity”.
If at all there is a way to achieve immortality, which people always talk about, then here it is: scatter in all directions, sow the universe.
Bob realized this right after arriving on Mars. Part of him was rushing home, but he understood: if they returned, everything was gone. Then he thought that most of all they were tormented by longing for their favorite things, and decided to use the old, “to start a new one” - to light a new fire using the coals of an old fire. And this new one is worth any money.
In the meantime, the family approached the storage room, where the cargo brought by the transport rocket lay — a lot of packages, packages and boxes of different sizes. Near their prefab house, they opened the packaging, and it turned out that these were parts of their wooden house from Earth.
Bob decided to ship to Mars everything that connected them to the house. So far, only a part of the furniture and the porch have come, but over time the whole house will be here. At the top of the porch, Bob and Kerry installed a colored glass door, peered through a strawberry window, and it warmed the cold Mars.
Bob believed that “soon there will be a shady street”, Kerry will sit on the porch and talk with neighbors. From this place the city will begin to grow, and Mars will change, become close as a home.
