Explore "The Foxholes of Mars" by Fritz Leiber on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The wars of the far future will be fought with giant spaceships, but it will still take the infantryman to hold down the planets. And some of the thoughts bred in the foxholes of Mars or Alpha Centauri Duo or Rigel Tres will be fully as bitter as some of those dredged up in the foxholes of Earth.
Ever inward from the jagged horizon the machines of death crept, edged, scurried, rocketed, and tunneled towards him. It seemed as if all this purple-sunned creation had conspired to isolate, to smash him. To the west -- for all planets share a west, if nothing else -- the nuclear bombs bloomed, meaningless giant fungi. Invisibly overhead the spaceships roared, distant as gods, yet shaking the yellow sky. Even the soil was treacherous, nauseated by artificial earthquakes -- nobody's mother, least of all an Earthman's.