Mars is My Destination, a 1962 novel written by Frank Belknap Long

Mars is My Destination: a Science-Fiction Adventure, by Frank Belknap Long (1962)

Pictured: Paperback original (New York: Pyramid Books, 1962), #F-742, 158 p., 40¢. Cover painting by John Schoenherr. Here's the description from the back cover:

There was trouble brewing on Mars -- bad trouble. Two giant industrial empires fought for control there, and their struggle imperiled the whole Mars colony. Civil War -- atomic civil war -- could break out any second, leaving Earth’s only foothold in Space a mass of radioactive rubble. But both antagonists were too politically powerful for the Colonization Board to take a direct hand. One man was needed to take charge -- one man who could act fast and decisively, brutally if he had to. Ralph Graham got the job. And then people began dying around him ...

An obituary of author Frank Belknap Long appeared in the January 5, 1994, issue of The New York Times.