Tom was famished. After two days in space with no food, he was famished. He looked at the gauge on his air supply. It would hold out for another day or so. By then he should have reached the New Paris Mars Colony. And food. He had ditched his parachute as soon as he touched down, which removed about a third of his suit’s weight, but it was still a little heavy. Not too heavy, in Mars’ light gravity, but enough to be a burden. *Two days earlier* Prisoner number 1740195945, or Tom Adams as he was formerly known, crept along wall of the narrow corridor deep in the center of Lowell Penal Colony, located on Phobos, Mars’ innermost moon. He moved slowly, carefully. Although he now wore a regulation issue pressure suit, and looked like one of the guards, he was still careful. Word hadn’t yet gotten out about the guard he had just killed and stuffed into an incinerator on level XVI. He didn’t want to kill him, but he needed the pressure suit. Now he had to make it to the outer maintenance airlock before they figured out what was going on. Since the guard’s body was by now hopefully burned beyond recognition, that gave him a bit more time. After about fifteen minutes he entered the airlock and the door slid shut behind him. He entered the security code on the keypad, a code which had cost him a week’s canteen rations to bribe out of prisoner number 3283195959 who worked in maintenance and had regular access to the airlock. Three days ago, right after giving Tom the code, prisoner 3283195945 had been killed in what appeared to be a random prison murder, which were common here. Nobody bothered to investigate, as they never did. One less mouth to feed. Whoever did it just saved the taxpayers a pile of money. Now Tom didn’t have to worry about being ratted out. Once outside he began trudging across the barren, airless surface of Phobos. Inside the prison the artificial gravity simulated Earth-normal gravity. Once outside, he was subject to Phobos’ nearly nonexistent gravity where he could move a good deal faster. The suit wasn’t nearly as heavy out here. He had taken one of the heavy-duty suits, which included a rather weighty emergency parachute. In the prison’s simulated gravity it weighed about 150 pounds, but outside it was nearly weightless. The prison was situated on the side of Phobos that faced away from Mars. For ten long years all Tom could see out of his cell window was black space, with an occasional appearance by the bright bluish-green star that was Earth, and a faint white one that was Earth’s moon. His destination was on the other side of Phobos, a four-hour walk in the almost zero-G conditions on Phobos. After about an hour the enormous disk of Mars began to loom above the horizon until it eventually dominated the sky. He finally reached his destination, a point where Mars was directly overhead. He looked around until he spotted a small rocky projection from which to start. It took him only a few seconds to reach the top. He stood up and looked up at Mars. Then he summoned all his strength and jumped. He hurtled skyward, not even slowed by Phobos’ gravity. His jump exceeded Phobos’ tiny escape velocity, and after a few seconds he escaped the minuscule influence of the tiny moon’s gravity. Now there was nothing to do but wait as Mars’ gravity pulled him closer and closer to the Red Planet. And freedom.