A light breeze blew over the Martian Lander as the cockpit door opened. The white-garbed hand of an astronaut—the flag of the United States emblazoned proudly upon the suit—came out, took hold of the ladder and exited the hatch. The astronaut looked around the desolate landscape before turning skyward, the polarized helmet betraying nothing upon sighting a brilliant light in the Martian night.

"Mission Control," the astronaut said in a female voice. "Ares landing successful. The Eagle has landed."

Silence, save for static, greeted the astronaut's radio transmission. Her hand tightened around the ladder's railing.

"Of course no one is listening," she said under her breath. "How silly of me…"

Beginning her descent, she kept a tight hold on the ladder. Her vision swam as tears, hot and painful, came unbidden to her eyes.

"This mission is over!" came the voice from a far-off memory—Captain DeSoto before he sent himself out the ship's airlock without a suit—but she brushed it aside. She took another step. Her objective, the Martian soil below, was so close now. The redness…just like she dreamed ever since she was a little girl. She could almost feel it beneath her feet, every particle and grain… The dirt of an alien world.

A tear spilled down her cheek as the ground crunched satisfyingly beneath her boots. She stood there for a moment, reveling in the moment of being the first human to stand upon this world—the dreams of entire generations fulfilled at long last. She cast her gaze back skyward to the light, dimmer than that of the sun during the daytime. Somewhere in the vast expanse of that darkness, bathing beneath the intensity of that light—a gamma ray burst—was the Earth.

Dying. Burning. No tears could ever drown the fires that plagued it now. Now and forever. She would shed them though. Shed them for the whole world.

Lifting her boot from the red ground, revealing its imprint, she took a step forward into the alien desert. Already the Martian wind began to blow dust over the footprint, seeking to obscure the twin from Luna. The astronaut paid it no mind. Instead she focused on the world ahead of her, ready to explore it. She would keep going for as long as she had the oxygen for it. One small step. One…last step for the people of Earth.