It doesn't help that Dargo Solingen, the general administrator in charge of the settlement, seems determined to make Carmen's life as miserable as possible, perhaps out of jealousy over the growing relationship between Carmen and a pilot, Paul Collins.

When Carmen and some friends decide to treat themselves to a skinny dip in a tank of water collected for use in the settlement's hydroponic farms, Dargo Solingen catches them in the act, and Carmen learns that the administrator is secretly monitoring her and other settlers. Nursing her anger and needing to be alone for a while, Carmen sneaks outside for a night walk in a suit and helmet, bringing along a robotic "dog" with a radio and extra oxygen tanks, only to fall through a hole in the ground. Trapped, out of range of the base, with a fractured ankle, her oxygen running out and her suit losing heat, she realizes that she will freeze to death long before anyone can find her.

Carmen is sure she is hallucinating when she has a vision of a most unlikely rescuer, an ugly creature with tentacles and what looks like a potato head. But the alien and its companions are only too real, having established a settlement on Mars long before humankind even thought of exploring the solar system, and it's not at all clear that their intentions are entirely peaceful.

Making the difficult seem easy

In Marsbound, Joe Haldeman again demonstrates his mastery of hard science fiction. His style is so transparent that he makes telling this sort of story look easy until you realize just how much information and detail is packed into seemingly simple passages. Carmen Dula is the perfect narrator for this tale, as readers view her world through the eyes of an appealing, extremely bright, sometimes insecure and always curious young woman on the brink of maturity.

The realistically rendered technology of this future Earth includes a space elevator (presumably modeled on the "beanstalks" depicted in Charles Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds and Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise, both published in 1979, which pioneered this idea), the spaceships bound for Mars, the facilities for collecting water there and a space station built to house both humans and aliens.

In addition to realistic near-future detail, Haldeman also offers some very interesting and original aliens, who have apparently been preparing for a meeting with humankind for a very long time. Carmen's encounter with them almost proves lethal to the people of the Mars base when they are exposed to alien microbes, and even after Earth embarks on a crash program to prevent such incidents in the future by building a space station to quarantine the aliens and the people who have been exposed to them, there are considerable doubts about the aliens' true intentions. Carmen's earlier conflict with Dargo Solingen takes on added significance when the two women have to work together on the space station, known as "Little Mars."

Marsbound is a solid piece of science fiction set in a future that clearly has its problems (the author mentions or hints at some of the more serious ones, including a terrorist attack using nanotechnology that has killed millions) but seems to be overcoming many of them. Younger readers should enjoy this hopeful novel, while older readers might find it an antidote to cynicism.