"Everything the Long Way, the Hard and Devious Way"

"Tydore's Gift."
By Alfred Coppel (Alfredo José de Araña-Marini y Coppel, 1921-2004).
First appearance: Planet Stories, September 1951.
Reprinted in Science Fiction Gems, Volume 7 (2014).
Short short short story (4 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

"So unpredictable, these dead-world Tower Dwellers! Take old Tydore, who placed such an inestimably valuable gift in the greed-hands of one he hated."

Too late Marley learns that Earth is Earth and Mars is Mars and never the twain shall meet . . .

Typos: "millenia"; "miniscule."

Resources:
- The Big Three with the Big Scoop about our author: Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).

- There's up-to-date information about Mars in fact (HERE) and fiction (HERE), in addition to The Red Planet's impact on human culture (HERE).
- Maintaining a viable colony on Mars is an iffy proposition at best, as demonstrated in a story we featured a year ago (HERE).