Sighing, I told Bateson I must return to my work.
As I walked away, he called to me, so that I turned back.
‘You know what the temperature is out there, Jefferies?’ He indicated the surface of Mars with a pale fluttering hand. ‘I understand it’s round about minus 76 degrees Celsius. Even colder than a dead body in its earthly grave! Nothing mankind could do would warm that ground up to comfortable temperate zone temperatures, eh? Do you imagine any great work of art, any musical composition, was ever created at minus 76 Celsius?’
‘We must set a precedent, John,’ I told him.
I left him alone on the upper gallery, gazing at the bleached landscape outside.