Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

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A World of Difference

Also by Harry Turtledove

Wereblood

Werenight

The Misplaced Legion

An Emperor for the Legion

The Legion of Videssos

Sword of the Legion

Agent of Byzantium

Noninterference

A Different Flesh

A World of Difference

The Pugnacious Peacemaker

Kaleidoscope

Krispos Rising

Krispos of Videssos

Krispos the Emperor

Earthgrip

The Guns of the South

Departures

The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

The Prince of the North

Worldwar: In the Balance

Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance

Worldwar Striking the Balance

The Two Georges (with Richard Dreyfuss)

The Stolen Throne

Hammer and Anvil

How Few Remain

The Chronicles of Theophanes: an English translation of

anni mundi 6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813) (nonfiction)

A WORLD OF

DIFFERENCE

Harry Turtledove

I Will

Hodder & Stoughton

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Hodder & Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline PLC

The right of Harry Turtledove to be identified as the Author of this work has

been

asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act

1988,

10987654321

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the

prior written

permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of

binding or

cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 340 71270 8

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Mackays of Chatham VLC

Chatham, Kent

Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline PLC

338 Euston Road

London NWI 3BH

To the memory of my father-in-law Frank Frankos...

and for Barney the Frog.

Author's Note

Mars is boring. Turns out it's too damn small. But what if it

weren't...

MINERVA is the fourth planet out from the sun in the solar

system, the first planet past Earth ~ orbit. At its nearest approach

to Earth, Minerva is the brightest object in the sky except for the

sun and moon. It then looks to the naked eye like a brilliant,

gray-blue star of magnitude -5. 9. Sometimes it may even ex-

ceed that brightness for a short period. This is the result of the

famous "Minervan flash," which occurs when breaks in the

cloud cover above the planet ~ surface allow the sun to reflect

directly off ice or water. Long before the cause of the phenom-

enon was known, it gave the planet its name: the Greeks called

it Athena, after their fiashing-eyed goddess of wisdom. Minerva

is the Latin name for the same divinity.

Since the invention of the telescope, Minerva has fascinated

observers. It is the only worm in the solar system besides Earth

where water can exist as a liquid, and the presence of oxygen in

its atmosphere has long suggested that, like Earth, it is a home

forlife.

Since 1965, American and Soviet space probes have greatly

added to our knowledge of Minerva. Despite the planet ~ thick,

cloudy atmosphere, we now have reliable maps of almost its

entire surface. Not until 1976, though, did the Viking I space-

craft actually land on the planet. The Viking analyzed Miner-

va~ lower atmosphere, and the craft's biological experiment

package and the photographs it returned to Earth confirmed that

there is life on the planet.

Viking I ~ last photograph, arguably the most famous ever

taken, confirmed far more than that. It proved humanity is not

alone in the universe, for it shows a Minervan native carrying

what cannot be anything but a deliberately manufactured arti-

fact-whether a weapon or simply a pole remains the subject of

hot debate. Transmission from Viking I ceased immediately after

this photograph was made...

R Herrg Turtledove

I ii i ii I I I

TABLE DF MINERVAN DATA

Equatorial diameter: 9,264 miles (14,909 kin)

Mass: 8.35 x 1024 kg (about 1.4 times that of Earth)

Density: 4.81 g/cn? (about 87% that of Earth)

Surface gravity: 1.02 that of Earth

Escape velocity: 7.60 miles/second (12.22 km/sec)

Greatest distance from sun: 154,800,000 miles (249,120,000

km)

Least distance from sun: 128,350,000 miles (206,560,000

km)

Sidereal day: 24 hr 37 rain 23 sec

Mean solar day: 24 hr 39 min 35 sec

Sidereal period: 687 days

Synodic period: 779.5 days

Albedo: 45-50%

Surface atmospheric pressure: about 1,500 millibars

Atmosphere: Nitrogen, 800; oxygen, 17%; argon, 1.2%;

water vapor, 0.7%; carbon dioxide, 0.6%; other

gases, 0.5%

Moons: 3 (Sophia, Parthenia, Arachne)

--From the Encyclopaedia America article, "Minerva."

Reproduced by permission.

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AWorldofDifference!,AlsobyHarryTurtledoveWerebloodWerenightTheMisplacedLegionAnEmperorfortheLegionTheLegionofVidessosSwordoftheLegionAgentofByzantiumNoninterferenceADifferentFleshAWorldofDifferenceThePugnaciousPeacemakerKaleidoscopeKrisposRisingKrisposofVidessosKrispostheEmperorEarthgripTheGunsofthe...

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