What a great story! I love how after all these decades the whole "Martian paranoia" still works. As i read the story I had no idea it was going in the direction you took, and once I got there I was thrilled with the ending.

Welcome to SteemIt. You are a great addition to the community and I look forward to reading more.

One small tip - In the long run you will probably get a little more traffic if you were to use some of the bigger tags like fiction, or writing alongside your preferred ones like scifi, horror and the like.