Utah

Prime Space's headquarters for the Mars mission is located in Utah near the San Rafael Swell. It is chosen because its rocky, cavernous terrain is similar to that of Mars, so when the astronauts disembark from Primitus it will be a suitable simulation. This works perhaps too well, as after a particularly realistic simulation, Sergei is convinced that the crew is in fact on Mars. Before they depart for the mission, Sergei takes Dmitri out into the Swell, which the author describes evocatively, "The valley was like a science-fiction movie, with mushrooms and gnomes and globules all made out of rock, some four or five meters tall, some like toadstools" (98). Sergei tells his son that the rock formations are approximately ten million years old.

Primitus/Red Dawn

Primitus is the name of the spaceship that the astronauts occupy during the mission simulation. Ostensibly the ship never leaves the...