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MERCURY

BEN BOVA

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are

used fictitiously.

MERCURY

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bova, Ben, 1932-

Mercury / Ben Bova.-1st ed.

p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

ISBN 0-765-30412-0 (acid-free paper)

EAN 978-0765-30412-4

1. Mercury (Planet)-Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.O84M47 2005

813'.54-dc22

2004065925

First Edition: May 2005

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the memory of my friend and colleague,

the star-seeker Robert Forward;

and to A.D., of course;

but most of all to the beauteous Barbara.

History will remember the inhabitants of [the twentieth] century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk

to the moon in sixty-six years, only to languish for the next thirty in low-Earth orbit. At the core of the

risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.

-Buzz Aldrin,

Apollo 11 astronaut

A species with all its eggs in one planetary basket risks becoming an omelet.

-Stephen Webb

Where Is Everybody (Copernicus Books, 2002)

prologue:

the long search

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state...

As he had every night for more than twelve years, Saito Yamagata wearily climbed the winding dark

stone stairway to the top of Chota Lamasery's highest tower. He could feel the cold winter wind

whipping down from the low entrance to the platform at the top. It was going to be a long, bitterly cold

night. No matter. Yamagata was seeking atonement, not comfort. Atonement-and something more.

Once he had been a giant of global industry. Yamagata Corporation had even reached beyond the Earth

to build the first solar-power satellites. Men trembled at his slightest frown; fortunes were made when he

smiled. Then he had been struck down by an inoperable brain cancer and died.

That had been Yamagata's first life. Yamagata's only legitimate son, Nobuhiko, had personally

administered the lethal injection that allowed the doctors to pronounce him clinically dead. More carefully

than an ancient Pharaoh, Yamagata was preserved in a stainless steel sarcophagus filled with liquid

nitrogen to await the day when his tumor could be safely removed and he might be brought back to life.

By the time he was cured and revived, Nobu was physically the same age as his father. Yamagata burst

into laughter when he first saw his son: it was like looking into the mirror when he shaved. With great

wisdom, he thought, Yamagata declined to resume his position at the head of the corporation. Nobu had

done well, and to demote him now would shame his son intolerably. So the elder Yamagata retired to this

lamasery carved into the distant Himalayas to contemplate his first life. However, he did not live as the

lamas did; he had comfortable furniture and decorations carried laboriously up the mountains to his bare

stone cell. He maintained contact with the outside world through the latest electronic communications

systems, including a satellite relay lofted especially for him alone. To the despair of the grand lama, who

earnestly wanted to teach Yamagata the way to enlightenment, he brought in his own cook and even

managed to gain weight. And he began to write his memoirs.

Perhaps because he dwelt on his former life, Yamagata found it impossible to stay entirely away from the

corporation he had founded. He spoke to his son often over the videophone system in his quarters. He

began to offer advice to Nobu. He envisioned a grand plan for Yamagata Corporation, a plan that

extended far beyond the Earth. He led the corporation into the Asteroid Wars.

It took the slaughter of the Chrysalis habitat to shock Yamagata into realizing what he had done. More

than a thousand helpless men, women, and children were massacred senselessly, needlessly.

I did not order the attack, he told himself. Yet he found that he could not sleep. Even his cook's most

tempting preparations became tasteless, unappetizing to him. In his mind's eye he kept seeing those

terrified, innocent people screaming in helpless horror as their space habitat was torn apart.

It took Yamagata many weeks to realize that he felt more than guilt. For the first time in his lives he felt

shame. He was ashamed of what he had set in motion. I did not order the attack, he repeated to himself.

Still, it was the inevitable consequence of the war that I willingly started.

Unsure of himself for the first time in his life, racked by a sense of shame he had never felt before,

Yamagata begged for a private audience with the grand lama, hoping the old man could soothe his inner

turmoil.

"There has been a tragedy," he began, hesitantly.

The grand lama waited for him to continue, sitting in silent patience on the low couch of his chamber, his

head shaved bald, his ascetic face bony, hollow-cheeked, his dark mahogany eyes squarely on

Yamagata.

"There is a war going on in space," Yamagata continued. "Far from here. In the Asteroid Belt."

"Even here, such rumors have been whispered," said the grand lama, his voice little more than a soft

murmur.

"A few days ago more than a thousand people were killed," Yamagata stumbled on. "Slaughtered. In a

space habitat."

The lama's lean face went gray.

His heart pounding, Yamagata finally blurted, "It may have been my fault! I may have caused their

deaths!"

The grand lama clutched at his saffron robe with both hands. Yamagata thought the old man was having a

heart attack. He stood before the lama, stiff with shame and guilt, silent because he had no words to

express what he felt.

When at last the grand lama recovered his self-control he looked into Yamagata's eyes with a stare that

pierced to his very soul.

"Do you accept responsibility for these murders?" he asked, his voice now hard as iron.

It was not easy for a man of Yamagata's pride and power to stand there humbly asking forgiveness from

this aged, robed lama. He feared that the old man would expel him from the lamasery, shame him, accuse

him of polluting the very air they were breathing.

"I do," he whispered.

The grand lama said, "For more than four years you have lived among us, but not as one of us. You have

used our sanctuary and our way of life for your personal convenience."

Yamagata said nothing. It was true.

Slowly, in words as hard and unyielding as the stones of the mountain aerie itself, the grand lama told

Yamagata that he must seek true atonement or suffer the deadly weight of guilt forever.

"How do I do that?" Yamagata asked.

The lama was silent for many moments. Then, "Become one of us, not merely among us. Accept our

way. Seek your path to atonement. Seek enlightenment."

Yamagata bowed his acceptance.

Heavy with remorse, Yamagata started out on the path to atonement. He sent his cook back to Japan,

got rid of his comfortable furniture and electronic equipment, moved into a bare cell, and tried to live as

the lamas did. He fasted with them, prayed with them, slept on a hard wooden pallet. And every night,

winter or summer, he climbed the high tower to spend hours alone in contemplation, trying to meditate,

trying to find true atonement in his soul.

The grand lama died, since the sect did not believe in rejuvenation treatments, and was replaced by a

younger man. Still every night Yamagata climbed his weary way and sat cross-legged on the cold stone

floor of the tower's platform, waiting for-what? Forgiveness? Understanding?

No. Yamagata realized over the slow passage of the years that what he truly sought was enlightenment, a

satori, a revelation of the path he must follow.

Nothing. Night after night, year after year, not a glimmer of a hint. Yamagata prayed to the deaf heavens

and received nothing in return. He wondered if the fault was in him, if he was not worthy of a sign from

the vast universe. Deep in his soul, though, he thought that perhaps all this meditation and mortification

was nothing more than cleverly packaged nonsense. And this troubled him, because he realized that as

long as he harbored such thoughts, he would never find the path he so desperately sought.

So he hunkered down against the stone rail as the cold night wind gusted by, his teeth chattering despite

the padded coat he had wrapped around himself, his fur hat pulled down over his ears, his chin sunk on

his chest, his inner voice telling him that he was a fool for going through all this pain and humiliation. But

doggedly he remained there, waiting, hoping, praying for a revelation.

It was a bitterly cold night. The moaning wind was like daggers of ice that cut through him mercilessly.

Yamagata sat alone and miserable, trying to ignore the freezing wind, trying to find the path to atonement.

Nothing. Only darkness and the glittering points of thousands of stars staring down at him from the black

bowl of night.

He stared back at the stars. He could make out the Big Dipper, of course, and followed its Pointers to

the North Star. Polaris was a thousand light years distant, he remembered from an astronomy lecture

many years ago.

The nearest star was Alpha Centauri, but it was too far south to be seen from these frigid mountains.

Suddenly Yamagata threw his head back and laughed, a hearty, full-throated roar of delight that he

hurled back into the teeth of the keening night wind. Of course! he said to himself. The answer has been

all around me for all these years and I was too blind to see it. The stars! My path must lead to the stars.

BOOK I

THE REALM OF FIRE

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are

nothing novel, nothing strange; They are but dressings of a former sight.

ARRIVAL

Saito Yamagata had to squint against the Sun's overwhelming glare, even through the heavily tinted visor

of his helmet.

"This is truly the realm of fire," he whispered to himself. "Small wonder our ancestors worshiped you,

Daystar."

Despite his instinctive unease, Yamagata felt physically comfortable enough inside his thickly insulated

spacesuit; its cooling system and the radiators that projected from its back like a pair of dark oblong

wings seemed to be working adequately. Still, the nearness, the overpowering brightness, the sheer size

of that seething, churning ball of roiling gases made his nerves flutter. It seemed to fill the sky. Yamagata

could see streamers arching up from the Sun's curved limb into the blackness of space, huge bridges of

million-degree plasma expanding and then pouring back down onto the blazing, searing surface of the

photosphere.

He shuddered inside the cramped confines of his suit. Enough sight-seeing, he told himself. You have

proven your courage and audacity for all the crew and your guests to see and remember. Get back inside

the ship. Get to work. It is time to begin your third life.

Yamagata had come to Mercury to seek salvation. A strange route to blessedness, he thought. I must

first pass through this fiery inferno, like a Catholic serving time in purgatory before attaining heaven. He

tried to shrug philosophically, found that it was impossible in the suit, so instead he lifted his left arm with

the help of the suit's miniaturized servomotors and studied the keyboard wrapped around his wrist until

he felt certain that he knew which keys he must touch to activate and control his suit's propulsion unit. He

could call for assistance, he knew, but the loss of face was too much to risk. Despite the lamas' earnest

attempts to teach him humility, Yamagata still held to his pride. If I go sailing out into infinity, he told

himself, then I can call for help. And blame a suit malfunction, he added, with a sly grin.

He was pleased, then, when he was able to turn himself to face Himawari, the big, slowly rotating fusion

torch ship that had brought him and his two guests to Mercury, and actually began jetting toward it at a

sedate pace. With something of a shock Yamagata realized this was the first time he had ever been in

space. All those years of his first life, building the power satellites and getting rich, he had remained firmly

on Earth. Then he had died of cancer, been frozen, and reborn. Most of his second life he had spent in

the lamasery in the Himalayas. He had never gone into space. Not until now.

Time to begin my third life, he said to himself as he neared Himawari. Time to atone for the first two.

Time for the stars.

LANDFALL

Even with three subordinates assisting him, it took Yamagata nearly an hour to disencumber himself of the

bulky, heavily insulated spacesuit. He was dripping wet with perspiration and must have smelled ripe, but

none of his aides dared say a word or show the slightest expression of distaste. When they had helped

him into the suit Yamagata had thought of a Spanish toreador being assisted in donning his "suit of lights"

for the bullring. Now he felt like a medieval knight taking off his battered armor after a bruising

tournament.

Going outside the ship in the spacesuit had been little more than a whim, Yamagata knew, but a man of

his wealth and power could be indulged his whims. Besides, he wanted to impress his subordinates and

guests. Even though his son Nobu actually ran Yamagata Corporation and had for decades, the elder

Yamagata was treated deferentially wherever he went. Despite the years of patient instruction that the

lamas had spent on him, Yamagata still relished being fawned upon.

Money brings power; he understood that. But he wanted more than that. What he wanted now was

respect, prestige. He wanted to be remembered not merely as a wealthy or powerful man; he wanted to

go down in history for his vision, his munificence, his drive. He wanted to be the man who gave the stars

to the human race.

Yamagata Corporation's solar power satellites were bringing desperately needed electrical power to an

Earth devastated by greenhouse flooding and abrupt climate shifts. Under Nobuhiko's direction, the

corporation was helping to move Japan and the other nations crippled by the global warming back onto

the road toward prosperity.

And freedom. The two went hand in hand, Yamagata knew. When the greenhouse cliff struck so

abruptly, flooding coastal cities, collapsing the international electrical power grid, wrecking the global

economy, Earth's governments became repressive, authoritarian. People who are hungry, homeless, and

without hope will always trade their individual liberties for order, for safety, for food. Ultraconservative

religious groups came to power in Asia, the Middle East, even Europe and America; they ruled with an

absolute faith in their own convictions and zero tolerance for anyone else's.

Now, with the climate stabilizing and some prosperity returning, many of the world's peoples were once

again struggling for their individual rights, resuming the age-old battle that their forebears had fought

against kings and tyrants in earlier centuries.

All to the good, Yamagata told himself. But it is not enough. The human race must expand its frontier,

enlarge its horizons. Sooner or later, humankind must reach out to the stars. That will be my gift to

humanity.

Can I do it? he asked himself. Do I have the strength and the will to succeed? He had been tough enough

in his earlier lives, a ruthless industrial giant before the cancer had struck him down. But that had been for

myself, he realized, for my corporation and my son's legacy. Now I am striving to accomplish greatness

for humanity, not merely for my own selfish ends. Again he smiled bitterly. Foolish man, he warned

himself. What you do now you do for your own purposes. Don't try to delude yourself. Don't try to

conceal your own ambitions with a cloak of nobility.

Yet the question remained: Do I have the determination, the strength, the single-minded drive to make

this mad scheme a success?

Finally freed of the suit with all its paraphernalia and boots and undergarments, Yamagata stood in his

sweat-soaked sky-blue coveralls, which bore on its breast the white flying crane symbol of his family and

his corporation. He dismissed his subordinates with a curt word of thanks. They bowed and hissed

respectfully as Yamagata turned and started up the corridor that led to his private compartment and a hot

shower.

Yamagata was a sturdily built man, slightly over 175 centimeters tall, who appeared to be no more than

fifty-some years old, thanks to rejuvenation therapies. In his youth he had been as slim as a samurai's

blade, but the years of good living in his first life had softened him, rounded his body and his face. The

cancer ate away much of that, and his years in the lamasery had kept him gaunt, but once he left the

Himalayas to begin his third life he soon reverted to his tastes in food and drink. Now he was slightly

paunchy, his sodden, stained coveralls already beginning to strain at the middle. His face was round, also,

but creased with laugh lines. In his first life Yamagata had laughed a lot, although during those years of

remorse and penance he had spent with the lamas in their stone fortress high in the Himalayas there was

precious little laughter.

Freshly showered and dressed in a crisply clean open-necked shirt and fashionable dark trousers,

Yamagata made his way to the ship's bridge. He thought about dropping in on his two guests, but he

would see them later at dinner, he knew. As soon as he stepped through the open hatch into the bridge

the Japanese crew, including the captain, snapped to respectful attention.

Waving a hand to show they should return to their duties, Yamagata asked the captain, "Are we ready to

send the landing craft to the planet?"

The captain tried to keep his face expressionless, but it was clear to Yamagata that he did not like the

idea.

"It is not necessary for you to go down to the surface, sir," he said, almost in a whisper. "We have all the

necessary facilities here on the ship-"

"I understand that," said Yamagata, smiling to show that he was not offended by the captain's reluctance.

"Still, I wish to see the surface installation for myself. It's near the north pole, I understand."

"Yes, sir. Borealis Planitia."

"Near the crater Goethe," said Yamagata.

The captain dipped his chin to acknowledge Yamagata's understanding of the geography. But he

murmured, "It is very rugged down there, sir."

"So I have been told. But personal comfort is not everything, you know. My son, Nobuhiko, enjoys

skiing. I cannot for the life of me understand why he would risk his life and limbs for the joy of sliding

clown a snowy mountain in all that cold and wet, but still he loves it."

The captain bowed his head. But then he added one final warning: "Er... They call it 'Dante's Inferno'

down there. Sir."

DATA BANK

The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is a small, rocky, barren, dense, airless, heat-scorched world.

For centuries astronomers believed that Mercury's rotation was "locked," so that one side of the planet

always faced the Sun while the other side always looked away. They reasoned that the sunward side of

Mercury must be the hottest planetary surface in the solar system, while the side facing away from the

Sun must be frozen down almost to absolute zero.

But this is not so. Mercury turns slowly on its axis, taking 58.6 Earth days to make one revolution. Its

year-the time it takes to complete one orbit around the Sun-is 87.97 Earth days.

This leads to a strange situation. Mercury's rotation rate of nearly fifty-nine Earth days is precisely

two-thirds of the planet's year. A person standing on the surface of the planet would see the huge Sun

move from east to west across the dark airless sky, but it would slow down noticeably, then reverse its

course and head back east for a while before resuming its westerly motion. At some locations on

Mercury, the Sun rises briefly, then dips down below the horizon before finally rising again for the rest of

the Mercurian day. After sunset the Sun peeks back up above the horizon before setting for the length of

the night.

Counting the Mercurian day from the time the Sun appears directly overhead (local noon) to the next

time it reaches that point, it measures one hundred seventy-six Earth days. From the standpoint of

noon-to-noon, then, the Mercurian day is twice as long as its year!

The Sun looms large in Mercury's sky. It appears twice as big as we see it from Earth when Mercury is

at the farthest point from the Sun in its lopsided orbit and three times larger at the closest point. And it is

hot. Daytime temperatures soar to more than 400° Celsius, four times higher than the boiling point of

water, hot enough to melt zinc. At night the temperature drops to -135° C because there is no

atmosphere to retain the day's heat; it radiates away into space.

With a diameter of only 4,879 kilometers, Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system except for

distant-most Pluto. Jupiter and Saturn have moons that are larger than Mercury. The planet is slightly

more than one-third larger than Earth's own Moon.

Yet Mercury is a dense planet, with a large iron core and a relatively thin overlay of silicon-based rock.

This may be because the planet formed so close to the Sun that most of the silicate material in the region

was too hot to condense and solidify; it remained gaseous and was blown away on the solar wind,

leaving little material for the planet to build on except iron and other metals.

Another possibility, though, is that most of Mercury's rocky crust was blasted away into space by the

impact of a mammoth asteroid early in the solar system's history. Mercury's battered, airless surface

looks much like the Moon's, testimony to the pitiless barrage of asteroids and larger planetesimals that

hurtled through the solar system more than three billion years ago. Caloris Basin is a huge bull's-eye of

circular mountain ridges some 1,300 kilometers in diameter. This gigantic impact crater is the center of

fault lines that run for hundreds of kilometers across the planet's rocky surface.

An asteroid roughly one hundred kilometers wide smashed into Mercury nearly four billion years ago,

gouging out Caloris Basin and perhaps blasting away most of the planet's rocky crust.

Despite the blazing heat from the nearby Sun, water ice exists at Mercury's polar regions. Ice from

comets that crashed into the planet has been cached in deep craters near the poles, where sunlight never

reaches. Just as on the Moon, ice is an invaluable resource for humans and their machines.

DANTE'S INFERNO

Yamagata rode the small shuttle down to the planet's airless surface in his shirtsleeves, strapped into an

ergonomically cushioned chair directly behind the pilot and copilot. Both the humans were redundancies:

the shuttle could have flown perfectly well on its internal computer guidance, but Himawari's captain had

insisted that not merely one but two humans should accompany their illustrious employer.

The shuttle itself was little more than an eggshell of ceramic-coated metal with a propulsion rocket and

steering jets attached, together with three spindly landing legs. Yamagata hardly felt any acceleration

forces at all. Separation from Himawari was gentle, and landing in Mercury's light gravity was easy.

As soon as the landing struts touched down and the propulsion system automatically cut off, the pilot

turned in his chair and said to Yamagata, "Gravity here is only one-third of Earth's, sir."

The copilot, a handsome European woman with pouty lips, added, "About the same as Mars." The

Japanese pilot glared at her.

Yamagata smiled good-naturedly at them both. "I have never been to Mars. My son once thought of

moving me to the Moon, but I was dead then."

Both pilots gaped at him as he unstrapped his safety harness and stood up, his head a bare centimeter

from the cabin's metal overhead. Their warning about the Mercurian gravity was strictly pro forma, of

course. Yamagata had instructed Himawari's captain to spin the fusion torch vessel at one-third normal

gravity once it reached Mercury after its four-day flight from Earth. He felt quite comfortable at one-third

g. Leaning between the two pilots' chairs, Yamagata peered out the cockpit window. Even through the

window's tinting, it looked glaring and hot out there. Pitiless. Sun-baked. The stony surface of Mercury

was bleak, barren, pockmarked with craters and cracked with meandering gullies. He saw the long

shadow of their shuttle craft stretched out across the bare, rocky ground before them like an elongated

oval.

"The Sun is behind us, then," Yamagata muttered.

"Yes, sir," said the pilot. "It will set in four hours."

The copilot, who still had not learned that she was supposed to be subordinate to the pilot, added, "Then

it will rise again for seventy-three minutes before setting for the night."

Yamagata saw the clear displeasure on the pilot's face. The man said nothing to his copilot, though.

Instead, he pointed toward a rounded hillock of stony rubble.

"There's the base," he informed Yamagata. "Dante's Inferno."

Yamagata said, "They are sending out the access tube."

A jointed tube was inching toward them across the uneven ground on metal wheels, reminding Yamagata

of a caterpillar groping its way along the stalk of a plant on its many feet. He felt the shuttle rock slightly

as the face of the tube thumped against the craft's airlock.

The pilot watched the display on his panel, lights flicking on and off, a string of alphanumerics scrolling

across the screen. He touched a corner of the screen with one finger and a visual image came up, with

more numbers and a trio of green blinking lights.

"Access tube mated with airlock," he announced, reverting to the clipped jargon of his profession. To the

copilot he commanded, "Check it and confirm integrity."

She got up from her chair wordlessly and brushed past Yamagata to head back to the airlock. He

appreciated the brief touch of her soft body, the hint of flowery perfume. What would she do if I asked

her to remain here at the base with me? Yamagata wondered. A European. And very independent in her

manner. But I have a dinner appointment with my two guests, he reminded himself. Still, the thought

lingered.

After a few silent moments, the pilot rose from his chair and walked a courteous three steps behind

Yamagata to the airlock's inner hatch. The copilot stepped through from the opposite direction, a slight

smile curving her generous lips.

"Integrity confirmed," she said, almost carelessly. "The tube is airtight and the cooling system is

operational."

Yamagata saw that the outer airlock hatch was open, as well, and the access tube stretched beyond it.

He politely thanked the two pilots and headed down the tube. Despite her insouciance, at least the

copilot had the sense to bow properly. The tube was big enough for him to stand without stooping. The

flooring felt slightly springy underfoot. It curved gently to the left; within a few paces he could no longer

see the two pilots standing at the shuttle's hatch.

Then he saw the hatch to the base, which was closed. Someone had scrawled a graffito in blood-red

above the curved top of the hatch: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Yamagata grunted at that. As he reached out his hand to tap the electronic panel that controlled the

hatch, it swung open without his aid.

A lean, pale-skinned man with dark hair that curled over his ears stood on the other side of the hatch,

wearing not the coveralls Yamagata expected, but a loose-fitting white shirt with flowing long sleeves that

were fastened tightly at his wrists and a pair of dark baggy trousers stuffed into gleamingly polished

calf-length boots. A wide leather belt cinched his narrow, flat middle.

He smiled politely and extended his hand to Yamagata. "Welcome to Goethe base, Mr. Yamagata. I

can't tell you how pleased I am to have you here. I am Dante Alexios."

Yamagata accepted his hand. His grip was firm, his smile gracious. Yet there was something wrong with

his face. The two sides of it seemed slightly mismatched, almost as if two separate halves had been

grafted together by an incompetent surgeon. Even his smile was slightly lopsided; it made him appear

almost mocking, rather than friendly.

And his eyes. Dante Alexios's dark brown eyes burned with some deep inner fury, Yamagata saw.

Dante's Inferno indeed, he thought.

SUNPOWER FOUNDATION

Alexios showed Yamagata through the cramped, steamy base. It was small, built for efficiency, not

human comfort. Little more than an oversized bubble of honeycomb metal covered with rubble from

Mercury's surface to protect it from the heat and radiation, its inside was partitioned into cubicles and

larger spaces. Goethe base was staffed with a mere two dozen engineers and technicians, yet it seemed

as if hundreds of men and women had been packed into its crowded confines.

"We thought about establishing the base in orbit around the planet," Alexios explained as they walked

down a row of humming consoles. Yamagata felt sweaty, almost disgusted at the closeness of all these

strangers, their foreignness, their body odors. Most of them were Europeans or Americans, he saw; a

few were obviously African or perhaps African-American. None of them paid the slightest attention to

him. They were all bent over their consoles, intent on their tasks.

"My original plan was for the base to be in orbit," Yamagata said.

Alexios smiled diplomatically. "Economics. The great tyrant that dictates our every move."

Remembering the lessons in tolerance the lamas had pressed upon him, Yamagata was trying to keep the

revulsion from showing on his face. He smelled stale food and something that reminded him of

burned-out electrical insulation.

Continuing as if none of this bothered him in the slightest, Alexios explained, "We ran the numbers a half

dozen times. If we'd kept the base in orbit we'd have to bring supplies to it constantly. Raised the costs

too high. Here on the surface we have access to local water ice and plenty of silicon, metals, almost all

the resources we need, including oxygen that we bake out of the rocks. Plenty of solar energy, of course.

Ben Bova - Mercury

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