Mercury

Saito immediately launched into a description of his visit to Goethe base on Mercury and the problem with the solar panels on the powersats.

He ended with, “This Alexios person claims he has sent the data to your experts. I am anxious to hear what they think about it.”

And then he waited. Yamagata got up from his chair, went to the bar and poured himself a stiff Glenlivet, knocked it back and felt the smooth heat of the whisky spread through him. He paced around his compartment, admired the holograms of ancient landscapes that decorated the walls, and tried not to look at his wristwatch.

I know how to pass the time, he said to himself. Sliding into his desk chair, he opened a new window on the wall display and called up the ship’s personnel files. Scanning through the names and pictures of the pilots aboard took several minutes. Ah! He smiled, pleased. There she is: Birgitta Sundsvall. I was right, she’s Swedish. Unmarried. Good. Employee since…

He reviewed her entire dossier. There were several photographs of the woman in it, and Yamagata was staring at them when his son’s voice broke into his reverie.

“Alexios has transmitted the data on the solar cells’ degradation, Father,” Nobuhiko replied at last.

Yamagata immediately wiped the personnel file from the screen, as if his son could see it all the way back on Earth.

Nobu went on, “This appears to be quite a serious problem. My analysts tell me that the decrease in power output efficiency almost completely wipes out any advantage of generating the power from Mercury orbit.”

Yamagata knew it would be pointless to interrupt, and allowed his son to continue, “If this analysis stands up, your Mercury project will have to be written off, Father. The costs of operating from Mercury are simply too high. You might as well keep the sunsats in Earth orbit, all things considered.”

“But have we considered all things?” Yamagata snapped. “I can’t believe that this problem will stop us. We did analyses of cell degradation before we started this project. Why are the actual figures so much worse than our predictions?”

Yamagata realized he was getting angry. He took a deep breath, tried to remember a mantra that would calm him.

“Please call me,” he said to his son, “when your people have more definite answers to my questions.” Then he cut off the connection and the wall screen went blank.

Technically, the Mercury project was not being funded by Yamagata Corporation. Saito had officially retired from the corporation soon after he’d been revived from his long cryonic sleep. Instead, once he left the lamasery and returned to the world, he used his personal fortune to establish the Sunpower Foundation and began the Mercury project. As far as Nobu and the rest of the world were concerned, the Mercury project was devoted to generating inexpensive electrical power for the growing human habitations spreading through the solar system. Only Saito Yamagata knew that its true goal was to provide the power to send human explorers to the stars.

Saito—and one other person.

PAHS

Even after a dozen years of living with the lamas, Yamagata could not separate himself from his desire for creature comforts. He did not consider the accommodations aboard his ship Himawari to be particularly sumptuous, but he felt that he had a right to a certain amount of luxury. Sitting at the head of the small dining table in his private wardroom, he smiled as he recalled that the great fifteenth-century Chinese admiral Zheng He had included “pleasure women” among the crews of his great vessels of exploration and trade. At least I have not gone that far, Yamagata thought, although the memory of the Sundsvall woman still lingered in the back of his mind.

Seated at his right was Bishop Danvers, sipping abstemiously at a tiny stemmed glass of sherry. He was a big man, with heavy shoulders and considerable bulk. Yet he looked soft, round of face and body, although Yamagata noticed that his hands were big, heavy with horny calluses and prominent knuckles.

The hands of a bricklayer, Yamagata thought, on the body of a churchman. On Yamagata’s left sat Victor Molina, an astrobiologist from some Midwestern American university. The ship’s captain, Chuichi Shibasaki, sat at the far end of the table.

Bishop Danvers had come along on Himawari because the New Morality had insisted that Mercury Base must have a chaplain, and the project manager had specifically asked for Danvers to take up the mission. Danvers, however, showed no inclination to leave the comforts of the ship and actually go down to the planet’s surface. Hardly any of the ship’s mainly Japanese crew paid the scantest attention to him, but the bishop did not seem to mind their secularist indifference in the slightest. Sooner or later he would go down to Goethe base and offer the men and women there his spiritual guidance. If anyone wanted some. What would the bishop think of pleasure women? Yamagata wondered, suppressing a grin.

Danvers put down his barely touched glass and asked in a sharp, cutting voice, “Victor, you don’t actually expect to find living creatures on Mercury, do you?”

Victor Molina and Bishop Danvers knew each other, Yamagata had been told. They had been friends years earlier. The bishop had even performed Molina’s wedding ceremony.

Molina was olive-skinned, with startling cobalt blue eyes and a pugnacious, pointed chin. His luxuriant, sandy hair was tied back in a ponytail, fastened by a clip of asteroidal silver that matched the studs in both his earlobes. He had already drained his sherry, and answered the bishop’s question as one of the human waiters refilled his glass.

“Why not?” he replied, a trifle belligerently. “We’ve found living organisms on Mars and the moons of Jupiter, haven’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

“And what about those enormous creatures in Jupiter’s ocean? They might even be intelligent.”

The bishop’s pale eyes snapped angrily. “Intelligent? Nonsense! Surely you can’t believe—”

“It isn’t a matter of belief, Elliott, it’s a question of fact. Science depends on observation and measurement, not some a priori fairytales.”

“You’re not a Believer,” the bishop muttered.

“I’m an observer,” Molina snapped. “I’m here to see what the facts are.”

Yamagata thought that Dr. Molina could use some of the lamas’ lessons in humility. He found himself fascinated by the differences between the two men. Bishop Danvers’s round face was slightly flushed, whether from anger or embarrassment Yamagata could not tell. His hair was thinning, combed forward to hide a receding hairline. He refuses to take rejuvenation treatments, Yamagata guessed; it must be against his religious principles. Molina, on the other hand, looked like a young Lancelot: piercing eyes, flowing hair, strong shoulders. Yamagata pictured him on a prancing charger, seeking out dragons to slay.

Before the discussion became truly disagreeable Yamagata tried to intervene: “Everyone was quite surprised to find creatures living in the clouds of Venus, and even on that planet’s surface,” he said.

“Silicone snakes, with liquid sulfur for blood,” Captain Shibasaki added, taking up on his employer’s lead.

Bishop Danvers shuddered.

“Incredible organisms,” Molina said. “What was that line of Blake’s? ‘Did He who made the lamb make thee?’ ” He stared across the table at the bishop, almost sneering.

“But none of those creatures have the intelligence that God gave us,” Danvers countered.

“Those Jovian Leviathans just might,” said Molina.

The table fell silent. At a nod from Yamagata, the two waiters began to serve the appetizers: smoked eel in a seaweed salad. Yamagata and the captain fell to with chopsticks. The two others used forks. Yamagata noted that neither of the gaijin did more than pick at the food. Ah well, he thought, they’ll feel more at home with the steak that comes next.

Bishop Danvers wouldn’t let the subject drop, however.

“But surely you don’t expect to find anything living down on the surface of Mercury,” he said to Molina.

“I’ll grant you, it’s not the most likely place to look for living organisms,” Molina admitted. “The planet’s been