The First Martian Girl

Every time someone asked Reem where she was from, she gave the same answer — and saw the same astonishment on their face:

"From here. From Mars."

Reem was thirteen, and she was the first child in history to be born on a planet other than Earth. She was born in the little medical room at Hope Station on the night of a sandstorm, with her mother holding her father's hand and everyone in the station waiting outside the door, holding their breath. When they heard her first cry, they clapped and wept, and wrote in the station log: Today, Mars has a daughter.

Hope Station was a cluster of white domes linked by glass corridors, standing on the edge of an enormous canyon called Valles Marineris. A canyon four times deeper than the deepest place on Earth, and longer than a whole country. It was the last station humans had built in this part of the planet. Beyond it there was nothing but red desert, rocks and silence, all the way to the horizon. That was why everyone called it the Last Station.