Prologue
February 5, 1989
Robert Zubrin steadied himself as he prepared to take the first step onto Mars. It wouldn't do to have the first step turn into a fall, no sirree, it wouldn't.
But what words should be choose? He had through long and hard about it, and asked all sorts of people for suggestions, including the crew of Athena 5 (Sally Ride had given him some pretty good suggestions, but none of them seemed to have that spark needed, the spark that Gorelick's famous words on the moon ("That's one small step for a woman, one giant leap for all humanity") had.
Suddenly, it came to Zubrin what he should say. Combing the words on Apollo 7's LM descent stage's plaque with some of his own would work.
And so the first words on Mars were:
"We come in peace, not just to explore, to discover, but for all humanity."
And Robert Goddard, back at Mission Control in Houston, smiled the widest smile anyone had seen him smile in decades.