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.”