Mountaintop

A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTER SEVEN.

When Flandry and Djana reach the top of a mountain from where they should be able to radio for help, they see:

a steep drop to a flat horizon (such steepness possible only in low gravity);

radio masts, visible through binoculars, on the horizon;

on every other side, jumbled rock, ice and shadows;

scattered stars;

scattered clouds;

the sun, Mimir;

the planet, Regin.

"The wind whimpered around." (p. 243)

Wayland is desolate but it is a world:

"'...about three per cent the mass of Terra but half the surface pull. It's that dense.'"

-CHAPTER TWO, p. 210.

- dense with easily extracted rare metals, uranium, thorium, neptunium, plutonium, osmium, platinum...

Flandry's response recalls van Rijn:

"...my God! My greed!" (ibid.)

Not Mirkheim but something.