To: Commander, Inter-System Relations
From: Captain, S3SS Ship FreeToePie
Subject: Predicate
We arrived orbit Mars on 23 inst., Venarch, 2071.
I blasted my shuttle towards Mars at full speed. At the Z-one point I pulled a 180 brodie, put my foot in the carburetor, and settled to the surface like a feather.
I don’t know what all that means, really, but my grandpappy said it when I went to visit him last summer.
I entered the airlock, put on my suit, and checked myself in the mirror. Suits haven’t really changed much in the last hundred years. I thought I looked remarkably like Alan Shepard when he went traipsing around the moon back last century.
I cycled the lock and stepped out onto the surface. I didn’t waver at all. The gravity was substantially less than Sol Three but substantially greater than the zero I had been dealing with. As a matter of fact, I felt a little heavy.
A welcoming committee of about a dozen were there to meet me. We exchanged a few high-fives, moved into the dome’s airlock, and removed our suits.
That’s when they beat the turd out of me. Without the suits we didn’t look alike, anymore.