Mercury Read Online Free Page A

delicious. He pulled in a longer swallow.
    The room’s only table was on Alexios’s far side, so there was no place to set the bottle down except on the floor. Yamagata saw that it was tiled, but the plastic felt soft to his touch.
    ‘Now then,’ he said as he deposited the bottle at his foot, ‘where do we stand? What are your major problems?’
    Alexios leaned back in his chair and took a palm-sized remote from the table. The partition on Yamagata’s right immediately lit up with a flat screen display.
    ‘There’s Mercury,’ Alexios began, ‘the gray circle in the middle. The blue oblongs orbiting the planet are the first four solar power satellites, built at Selene and towed here.’
    Yamagata said, ‘With six more on their way here from the Moon.’
    ‘Correct,’ said Alexios. Six more blue oblongs appeared on the screen, clustered in the upper right corner.
    ‘So it goes well. How soon can we be selling electrical power?’
    ‘There is a problem with that.’
    Despite the fact that he knew, intellectually, that no project proceeds without problems, Yamagata still felt his insides twitch. ‘So? What problem?’
    Alexios replied, ‘The point of setting up powersats in Mercury orbit is that they can generate power much more efficiently. Being almost two-thirds closer to the Sun than Earth is, we can take advantage of the higher power density to—’
    ‘I know all that,’ Yamagata snapped impatiently. ‘That is why I started this project.’
    ‘Yes,’ Alexios said, his smile turning a trifle bitter. ‘But, as they say, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’
    ‘What do you mean by that?’
    ‘The very intensity of sunlight that improves the solar panels’ efficiency so beautifully also degrades the solar cells very quickly.’
    ‘Degrades them?’
    The image on the wall screen changed to a graph that showed a set of curves.
    ‘The blue curve, the one on the top, shows the predicted power output for a solar cell in Mercury orbit,’ Alexios explained.
    Yamagata could see for himself. A yellow curve started out closely following the blue, then fell off disastrously. He looked along the bottom axis of the graph and gasped with dismay.
    ‘It gets that bad after only six weeks?’
    ‘I’m afraid so,’ Alexios said. ‘We’re going to have to harden the cells, which will cut down on their efficiency.’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘I have my people working on that now. I’ve also taken the liberty of transmitting this data back to your corporate headquarters on Earth so that their experts can double-check my people’s calculations.’
    Yamagata sank back in the little chair. This could ruin everything, he thought. Everything!
    As quickly as he gracefully could, Yamagata returned to the Himawari riding in orbit around Mercury. He sat in gloomy silence in the little shuttle craft, mulling over the bad news that Alexios had given him. From his seat behind the two pilots, however, he couldn’t help watching the European woman. It wouldn’t do to pay any attention to her in front of her superior, he reasoned. Still, she was a fine-looking woman with strong features. The profile of her face showed a firm jawline, a chiseled nose, high cheekbones. Nordic, perhaps, Yamagata thought, although her hair was a dark brown, as were her eyes. Her coveralls were tight, almost form-fitting. Her form pleased Yamagata’s discerning eye immensely.
    Later, he thought. I’ll dig her name out of the personnel files. Perhaps she would not be averse to joining me for an after-dinner drink this evening.
    He had almost forgotten her, though, by the time he reached his stateroom aboard the fusion-torch ship. His quarters were spacious and well-appointed, filled with little luxuries such as the single peony blossom in the delicate tall vase on the corner of his desk, and the faint aroma of a springtime garden that wafted in on the nearly-silent air blowers.
    Yamagata peeled off his sweaty coveralls, took a quick shower,