The first book in Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr series. There has been an outbreak of food poisoning caused by Martian food, and David Starr, youngest member of the Council of Science, must go to Mars and take a job as a farmboy for a while to find out why. During the book he meets his friend Bigman Jones who accompanies him on all his subsequent adventures, and the native Martians who have never before been seen by the human colonists on Mars.