Wellspring plunged into impassioned argument, sweeping aside Navarre’s wry comments in a torrent of rhetoric. Wellspring waxed eloquent about asteroids; chunks of ice the size of cities, to be dropped in searing arcs onto the surface of Mars, blasting out damp oases in a crust-ripping megatonnage. Creeks would appear at first, then lakes, as steam and volatiles peeled into the starved air and the polar ice caps dissolved into vaporized carbon dioxide. Crater oases would be manned by teams of scientists, biosculpting whole ecosystems into being. For the first time, humanity would be bigger than life: a living world would owe its existence to humankind, and not vice versa. Wellspring saw it as a moral obligation, a repayment of debt. The cost was irrelevant. Money was symbolic. Life was the real.