Mars is slowly becoming a living world. New grasslands are spreading across the once-dead deserts, and experimental cattle herds graze under alien skies. The fragile agricultural program may determine whether the Red Planet can truly sustain human life. Then the cattle begin acting strangely—forming patterns, attacking each other, and moving as if guided by a single unseen will.
Lynne Marcein is already the most watched woman on Mars. She is weeks away from giving birth to only the second child ever carried to term on the planet. While her engineer husband struggles with bureaucrats back on Earth, Lynne discovers that something ancient has returned. The mysterious Martian aborigines—energy-feeding entities once believed defeated—have found a new host inside the minds of the station’s cattle. If the creatures gain strength, the entire agricultural experiment could collapse, leaving the Martian colony without its most promising food supply.
With communications disrupted and her husband still millions of miles away, Lynne must act on her own. Using telepathic abilities and the help of a few trusted allies, she attempts a risky plan to drive the intruders out of their stolen bodies. The problem is growing quickly, and every hour counts. Meanwhile her pregnancy reaches its most dangerous stage, forcing her to balance the fate of a colony with the life she carries.
Snowstorm on Mars is a tense and imaginative science fiction tale set during humanity’s earliest struggle to transform another world into a home. Sam Merwin Jr. blends frontier survival, alien menace, and planetary engineering into a story where one decision could determine the future of an entire planet.
Sam Merwin Jr. (1910–1996) was an American editor and writer who played an important role in mid-20th-century science fiction publishing.
