"It's also important to vary your stimuli. I always look for new things to shock the system. Just as you make muscles grow by shocking them, you make the mind grow by shocking it."
This is a clever (and beautifully illustrated!) concept of staking your claim on an asteroid, moon or planetary surface. In this case, the surface of Deimos, one of the moons of Mars.
Here is an illustration of the stake-markers used to claim a designated area:
(From Placement of claim stake-markers from The Radium World by Frank K. Kelly )
Half-stumbling, half-walking, half-crawling on our knees over sharp-pointed slides of jagged rock, panting with an almost unbearable thirst, sweating beneath the load of our armor, we labored at the task for three unforgettable hours, carefully keeping our faces averted from the siren brightness of the Pool. But at last the job was done. We were very confident that our claims were now impregnable, incontestable...
See also the earliest reference to asteroid mining from Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898) by Garrett P. Serviss.
Compare to asteroid mining (blasting) from Asteroid of Gold (1932) by Clifford Simak, the meteor miner from Salvage in Space (1933) by Jack Williamson, asteroid claim law from Jurisdiction (1941) by Nat Schachner, space placers from The Day We Celebrate (1941) by Nelson S. Bond, the asteroid mining robot from Catch That Rabbit (1944) by Isaac Asimov, the asteroid mine from Love Among the Robots (1946) by Emmett McDowell, the coal mole from The Web Between the Worlds (1979) by Charles Sheffield, and asteroid metal from The Mechanical Monarch (1958) by E.C. Tubb.
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So my mother-in-law has come to stay and, for once, I don’t know why I was worrying about it. Visits by anyone usually make me tense. I can’t seem to get away from the 'is my house tidy enough?’ panic.
I then get into a state about food and what to cook and 'are any towels clean?’ and 'oh God, why don’t the children ever flush the loo?’ and, though my mother-in-law has not once complained about the stench of boy in the downstairs bathroom, a visit usually sends me spiralling out of control.
But not this time. In fact, a rather wonderful calm has settled on our house. For a start, my husband and I cannot row in front of his mother, which means that the past few weeks of friction seem to calm down somewhat.
Part of it is, I am sure, down to my husband’s mother. Every time I turn around she is baking, cleaning and washing up. She is also, fortunately, one of those blessed women who doesn’t moan about the way her grandchildren are being brought up. Every time they swear – 'I said ship, not sh—,’ Jerry keeps saying to her – she pales slightly but not once does she tell me they shouldn’t have such dreadful language at their age.
If she did, I would be forced to explain that having a teenager in the house has put paid to anything resembling innocence. The other day Raymond, now nearly 14, took Jerry’s birthday presents – a Dr Who figure and a Dalek – and placed them in such a compromising position even I blanched.
'It’s only man sex,’ Raymond said giggling.
'I know,’ I said.
'Do you?’ he said, looking slightly shocked.
The presence of my mother-in-law also means my husband and I go out for dinner and bond over talking about her. We discuss the fact she has been ill, what the doctors have or haven’t done to help, whether or not she should move to live near us.
At the end of her last evening with us my husband leans back in his chair and says, 'What a lovely night.’ We walk home, hand in hand, under the stars and, as we go to sleep that night, I bless the day she came to stay.