The chamber had been divided into two stories by a floor of bamboo trunks, set in a slot in the brick wall two and a half meters overhead.  The segmented cylinders made a sweet green ceiling, lit by neon tubes hung under them.   Against one wall was a magnesium and bamboo staircase, leading through a hole to the upper story.  She climbed up to have a look.  Split bamboo over the trunks made a fairly flat green floor.  The ceiling was brick, rounded and low.  Up there they would locate the bedrooms and bathroom; the lower floor would be living room and kitchen.   Maya and Simon had already put up wall hangings, made of nylon from the salvaged parachutes.  There were no windows; lighting came from only from the neon bulbs. Nadia disliked this fact, and in the larger habitat she was already planning, there would be windows in almost every room.  But first things first.  For the time being these windowless chambers were the best they could do.  And a big improvement over the trailer park, after all.

As she went back down the stairs she ran her fingers over the bricks and mortar.  They were rough, but warm to the touch, heated by elements placed behind them.  There were heating elements under the floor as well.  She took off her shoes and socks, luxuriating in the feel of the warm rough bricks underfoot.  It was a wonderful room; and nice, too, to think that they had gone all the way to Mars, and there built homes out of brick and bamboo. She recalled vaulted ruins she had seen years ago on Crete, at a site called Aptera; underground Roman cisterns, barrel-vaulted and made of brick, buried in a hillside.  They had been almost the same size as these chambers.  Their exact purpose was unknown; storage for olive oil, some said, though it would have been an awful lot of oil.  Those vaults were intact two thousand years after their construction, and in earthquake country.   As Nadia put her boots back on she grinned to think of it.   Two thousand years from now, their descendants might walk into this chamber, no doubt a museum by then, if it still existed-the first human dwelling built on Mars!   And she had done it.   Suddenly she felt the eyes of that future on her, and shivered.  They were like Cro-Magnons in a cave, living a life that was certain to be pored over by the archeologists of subsequent generations; people like her who would wonder, and wonder, and never quite understand.

# # #

More time passed, more work got done.  It blurred for Nadia, she was always busy.  The interior construction of the vaulted chambers was complicated, and the robots couldn't help much:  plumbing, heating, gas exchange, locks, kitchens; they had all the fixtures and tools, and could work in pants and sweatshirts, but still, it took an amazing amount of time.  Work work work, day after day!