From Valles Marineris, a Sixteen-Minute Letter About Running Low on Nitrogen

VALLES MARINERIS — This dispatch reached Earth sixteen minutes after it was spoken, the one-way delay having widened again as Mars and Earth drift apart on their orbits. The message from the canyon settlements is measured but pointed: the colony, now approaching fifty thousand residents, is rationing buffer nitrogen for its greenhouse domes after a delayed resupply window. "We plan for the delay in everything — a question I ask now is answered after lunch," said settlement logistician Tomas Berg, whose team stretches consumables while the next transfer orbit opens. Life support is not at risk, the colony administration stressed; the squeeze is agricultural, slowing the expansion of the pressurized farms that feed new arrivals. As the population climbs toward the fifty-thousand mark, every resupply gap lands harder. On Mars, the distance is not only measured in kilometers. It is measured, every day, in the minutes it takes to be heard.